Book 8 Chapters 25, 26, 27 (Patreon)

Chapter 25

Rend giggled as he rose from the dead.

Mordecai had fled back to the crafting room while we gathered around the deceased, idiot Tummy Acher. Mongo stood over him, waving his wings, crying drunkenly in concern.

“Carl, your pet dying has upset Mongo! It’s okay, Mongo. Rend is just taking a time out because he didn’t do as we say.”

Your Pet has resurrected! As this was the sixth death, your pet will retain his memories and identity.

Your pet is now 25% stronger than before!

Your pet has gained a new, random weakness.

Your pet’s weaknesses:

Sylvan crystal.

Consuming hobgoblin sweat.

The bite of a rivenwing,

Consuming undead flesh.

Reaper Gaze.

New: Potatoes.

“Come on!” I said at the ceiling. “Random my ass! You did that to be a dick!”

“What? What is it?” Donut asked.

Mongo screeched joyfully as he danced all around the awake Rend. The tummy acher was a bit bigger now, too. The headband from Donut’s class remained, but it was slightly lower now, half covering his eyes. He let out a deep giggle. He turned to the open door to the garage and started to head back out there as if nothing had just happened.

“No, stop!” I called. Rend paused and turned to look at me.   

I sent the answer in chat.

Donut: WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO PUT A LOCK ON THAT FREEZER. IT’S A NEVER-ENDING SUPPLY OF FRENCH FRIES, TATER TOTS, AND CHICKEN PATTIES IN THERE.

Carl: Even if we do lock it, I can’t trust him not to break in. This is going to be tough. We can’t keep him in the saferoom, and we can’t let him in the garage. He’s bigger now, anyway, and he barely fit there before. I think I better just keep him in his carrier except when we fight. He’s not going to like it, but I don’t have a choice.

Imani: He can also go to the guild’s pet stables to get some exercise. Gonk the yak is in there. Simoom the rhino, too.  

Carl: Wait, I thought they both went to the 12th floor.

Imani: No. When we started preparing for Katia to leave, we didn’t have much time, and we had to move everything around with the guild system on the fly. Simoom kinda got lost in the shuffle, and we made her stay in the stables. Simoom loves Gonk. And that yak is pretty much Dong’s mount now.

Donut: NOT ONCE WE GET HIS BOYFRIEND BACK.

Carl: I’ll keep the idiot in my inventory for right now. We can talk about it later.

I pulled out the pet carrier. “Come on, Rend. Let’s take a nap.”

The giant meatball let out a squeal but allowed himself to get sucked away. The pet carrier itself made an ominous groan. I made a mental note to buy the more expensive kind. If he died again and didn’t get an awful weakness, he’d probably be too big for this one, which was the large pet carrier. The same kind Donut had for Mongo. They had two bigger sizes, and both were really expensive. I knew Prepotente had the XL carrier for Bianca. I’d ask him first if he had any extras.    

“Is it safe?” Mordecai called as he poked his hooded form out the crafting room.

“Yeah, he’s put away,” I said.

“Okay. Sorry about that. Check your messages. I need you to grab the potion balls. Take them to your bomber’s studio, and follow the recipe I sent you. It should go quickly. I also made a prototype for the belt you wanted.”

“Belt?” Donut asked. “You can’t wear a belt without pants, Carl.”

“It’s not for me,” I said. “It’s for any mercenary we might hire.”

I exchanged a look with Imani, who gave me a disapproving glare upon realizing I hadn’t yet discussed this with Donut. The belts were Florin’s idea, and I’d agreed to make them because if I did it, I could make the hidden explosives in them extra stable and shockproof. They were actually potion-based explosives that would combine two separate vials hidden in the leather, which is why I’d had Mordecai make the first part. It was a cookbook recipe, but the moment I started explaining what I wanted to do, Tipid had taken over and gave Mordecai the instructions.

All of us were going to make any NPCs wear them from now on when they went on runs with us. I hoped it wouldn’t come to it, but if we got separated from them during the run, and they weren’t dead, they would prevent us from passing the finish line. It was a terrible, but important, insurance policy.

I didn’t need a remote detonator for my own belt thanks to my remote detonation skill, but each one we handed out to the others would.

I’d been putting off telling Donut about this. I wasn’t going to keep it from her once we actually handed them out, but I...

...I actually wasn’t sure why.

No, that wasn’t fully true. My feelings on this were complicated. I’d been treating her gently ever since the atrocity incident, like I was afraid that ordeal during Faction Wars had actually made her more fragile, despite her being so powerful now. I didn’t want to bring up killing NPCs with her, especially after seeing how she’d been affected by the War Crime spell.

Slam. Slam. Slam.

Carl, even now you lie to yourself.

Shut up. Stop talking. You’re not really talking to me. You’re locked away. Your husband locked you away.

Carl: There’s more to the belts, Donut. I’ll tell you in a bit. I don’t want to do it out loud because I don’t want to upset the strippers.

Donut: WHY. DO THEY BLOW UP OR SOMETHING?

Carl: Uh...

Tipid and Rosetta appeared in the door. Tipid had a corndog in his hand, and Rosetta had a few plastic bags filled with vegetables, like she’d just stopped at the market. “I think we found a...” She paused and eyed Samantha, who was currently growling and trying to jump in the air and catch the cleaner bot with her mouth.

Rosetta: I think we found a fleshmancer. As for the performance guild... Yeah. Tipid?

Tipid: So, I think I know how to find it, but you’re not going to like what is required to get in. I’m pretty sure it’s hidden in the bar you’ve already visited.

Carl: And the mercenaries?

Rosetta answered by stepping aside. Standing at the door were a pair of tall, skeletal creatures with chattering teeth. Donut let out a little hiss. Hearing the hiss, Mongo whipped around, though he was still inebriated, and he went too far and managed to fall on his side.  

Both the creatures at the door were level-25 Jikininki ghouls. The same type of creature as the janitor mobs on the Iron Tangle.

“It’s all they had left,” Rosetta said as she leaned against the door. She pulled a celery stalk from the bag and started munching on it. “I would’ve left them, but you said you didn’t need them to drive. They’re undead, so you might want to keep Rend away. Don’t want him taking a bite and dying.”

“It’s a little late for that,” Donut said, looking the ghouls up and down. “Carl, are you sure about this?”

I looked at the first ghoul. His name was Lafcadio. “Can you understand me?”

The teeth on both ghouls immediately stopped chattering, which was unnerving as hell. The entire room had gone silent as we all watched. The only sound was the loading music of Mario Kart in the background, Bigs coughing from the corner, and Mongo groaning on the floor.   

“I understand you,” the ghoul said, his voice sounding like dirty air being blown through a bellows. He had white, bulbous eyes with no pupils, giving the impression of a sea creature. He smelled faintly of rotten meat.

I took an empty potion ball from my inventory. “How are your throwing skills?” I casually tossed the ball through the door at the ghoul.

The ghoul’s hand swept up, supernaturally fast as he caught it with his clawed hand. He smiled, which was even more unnerving. The teeth started chattering again. He tossed the ball over his own shoulder in a high arch, and the second ghoul caught it without even looking up. And then that ghoul’s teeth started chattering as he held the ball up.

“They’ll do,” I said.  

Chapter 26

A few hours later, Donut and I were unceremoniously yanked away from the garage to go on our live appearance of the show Plenty of Plenty.

Zev hadn’t given us any additional information other than a ten-minute warning, though I didn’t hold that against her. She was clearly having some issues of her own.

We’d spent the last hour working on the truck now that the gremlin swarm was gone. I was in the middle of building the ghoul cages and trying to figure out how to shove them into the back of the truck without breaking any of the hundreds of rules. We needed to keep the integrity of the original interior intact. We couldn’t magically upgrade the truck, but we could add non-magical items that in turn themselves held magical items, which was a strange but important distinction.

While I worked the cage system, Donut, Hedy, and Tipid were on the exterior of the truck working on the shield-holding structure when the 10-minute warning came in.  

“Carl, you better take a shower,” Donut warned after we got the notice. “You smell like one of those Cuban street dogs. I don’t want the weird goat people to get offended.”

I tested the handle to open the back door and deploy the cages, and it worked, even with the added weight. I grunted with satisfaction. From the driver’s seat, Lafcadio the ghoul made a groaning noise. I couldn’t tell if that was in satisfaction or consternation. The second ghoul sat in Donut’s newly-installed chair. It wouldn’t activate unless Donut was sitting in it. That ghoul also made a groaning noise and then reached to touch the gps.

Don’t Dr. Metcalf barked. The ghoul made a little, disappointed noise, but he pulled his arm back.

“We couldn’t smell those dogs,” I said to Donut. “They were all memory ghosts. And what do you want me to do about it anyway? I’m wearing a corpse. Washing it isn’t going to make it smell better. It’s not too late to try Laundry Day.”

“Well, I certainly smell them in my memory, Carl. And you know how they smell? Like a sweaty man wearing the corpse of a baby kangaroo. And I do prefer you with your skin on, thank you very much.”  

She wasn’t wrong. I hopped inside and went through the shower unit while in the kangaroo costume. By the time I hopped back outside, it was just about time to go.  

“Hmmm,” Donut said, examining me. “It’ll do I suppose. Let me do all the talking this time. Whenever you do the talking on these things, the whole world gets tossed upside down.”  

I was about to answer her when we zapped away.

Entering Production Facility.

We didn’t get taken into orbit. There was a pop, and we were suddenly in a green room on the ocean’s floor. Donut landed deftly on the couch without so much as a yelp. I tried to sit next to her, but the tail on my kangaroo suit made it awkward. I stayed standing, looking about the room. This was a different one than usual. It looked almost identical to all the other green rooms, but this one was set out in reverse with the door on the left and the counter on the right.

“It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these,” Donut said as she sniffed the red couch. It was covered with brown and white hairs. She made an indignant sniff. “Carl, this room isn’t even clean!”  

My eyes caught the counter covered with empty bottles. Soda bottles. Underneath my feet, the carpet here had a massive scorch mark on it. The whole room smelled vaguely like fire.

“This is a Prepotente room,” Donut said as she continued to sniff the couch. “Dreadful. Why don’t they clean? I mean, really. It’s just disrespectful. And look at the carpet! I can’t believe they just let Bianca out like that.”

“That looks like it was from when she was smaller,” I said. “I doubt they let him bring her on anymore.”

“Prepotente told me he hasn’t been on the show in a while,” Donut said. She moved from the couch to the counter, looking for snacks. There was nothing but the empty bottles. “He said it was like a party. I don’t know what that means. What do you think we’re going to talk about?”

 “Good question,” a familiar voice said. A thin human walked into the room.

“Lexis!” Donut exclaimed from the counter. “What’re you doing here? You don’t work here!”

The thin human with her ever-present datapad smiled as she stepped fully into the room. The human production assistant looked the same as the last time I’d seen her, which was backstage on one of Odette’s shows.

She looked me up and down, and I could tell she was fighting to keep herself from laughing at my suit.

She composed herself. “I’m on loan to Borant since I’m stuck in-system and After Hours is on hiatus. It was either this or sit and twiddle my thumbs on the press barge. And with your garbage freighter having taken over everything in orbit, I say I made the right choice.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. “Also, who is listening to this?”

She continued as if I hadn’t asked. “Also, Zev is now juggling pretty much everything on her own. So, I’ve stepped in as an assistant. The insurgents aren’t letting anyone they don’t trust down here unless the AI demands it, and those that are down here are barely functioning. So it’s all hands on deck, especially since the AI is insisting the show continue as normal. So here I am.”

“Insurgents?” I asked.

She paused, as if she didn’t want to answer, seemed to sigh, and then leaned in.

“The Open Intellect Action Network,” she said. “You know, those people you won Faction Wars with? Those insurgents. The moment they returned to orbit, they sent a boarding crew to pretty much every major ship in orbit and took almost all of them. It happened very fast. That Homecoming Queen is decked out in enhancement zone weaponry that actually works now that the AI has escaped containment. It’s the equivalent of a fully armored ogre fighting against blind toddlers. They achieved total system domination in a day. A few vessels are making a run for it, but nobody knows where they’re going. It’s like swimming blind out into the ocean. There’s nowhere for them to go.”

“The Open Intellect Action Network,” I repeated.

I exchanged a look with Donut. Rosetta had mentioned that they had “protective” measures in place to keep them safe while they were stuck in system, but it sounded like she was seriously underselling it.

Donut suddenly gasped. “Wait, can you tell us what’s happening on the surface? Do you know if Katia is okay?”

Lexis paused again for the briefest of moments. She pressed a few buttons.  

“Okay. We have a minute. Borant doesn’t have manpower to watch the feeds anyway. Everything is in shambles, but the AI is still likely watching. Prime Minister Victory and the staff of the new temporary headquarters for the Syndicate’s presence in the system is on the Eastern seaboard of your North America. In theory, they can be watching, too, but I doubt it. Most of the flooding from the tsunamis has receded, and they moved into an area that they thought had minimal surviving native life, but the moment they set down, they had natives up their ass. So they’re dealing with that. Somewhere in the state of Florida. As for Katia and everyone else in South Asia, we don’t have a lot of information. That is considered OIAN territory, but last I heard, they have not taken back the kinder facility, but they have been in contact with Katia herself. As far as I’m aware, something...strange...happened there soon after the end of Faction Wars.”

“What do you mean by strange?” I demanded.

I couldn’t read the look on Lexis’s face. Is that fear? I wasn’t sure.

“A...third party... has appeared and is protecting the facility,” she said. “But that entity is confused. That’s all I know.”

“But Katia is okay?” Donut demanded.

“I believe so, yes. Just yesterday, I saw...”

Her pad beeped, and all the color drained from Lexis’s face. She stiffened.  

No, I realized. That wasn’t fear, just before. This is fear.

Lexis took a moment to compose herself. “We need to focus on this program you’re about to go on. The crawl is moving forward as intended, and that’s all there is to that. But I need to brief you a little on caprid customs.”  

Donut looked like she wanted to say more, but she thought better of it. “Caprids,” she said. “Hmmm. If they’re anything like that Harbinger fellow, I fear it’s going to be a hostile interview.”

Lexis nodded. She lowered the tablet, and I caught the briefest glance at the screen before it shut off. There were words, but I couldn’t read them, but they were superimposed over the image of a small child.

“Liaison Harbinger is an anomaly amongst the caprids,” Lexis said. “Most are not like him. For this program, you will be sitting in the center while you’re judged. They call it an interlocution. But it’s basically just a roundtable, and you’re in the middle. In the end, it’s, uh, like a regular interview. Just a little peculiar. The caprids are strange, but it’s generally good-natured. They all have two faces, it seems. How they act amongst themselves and how they act when they’re interacting with non-caprids. A few crawlers have been on the show and have had a decent time. You just need to get used to their eccentric affect. They’re not a collective mind. But they are a herd, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”

I remembered those creepy kids from the art show contest. I just couldn’t wait to see what this was all about.  

“Judged?” Donut asked. “Like in a beauty contest?”

“Sort of,” Lexis said. “There will be about a dozen interviewers, and if they judge you worthy, they will ask you a question. Them asking you a question is considered a great compliment. But you don’t have to answer if you don’t judge them worthy. Though for this thing, it’s pretty much all for show, so you should probably answer. And once that’s done, you, uh... Well, you exert yourself.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked.

She made a sort of grimace. “Just go with it. You’ll know what to do.”

Chapter 27

“Well met, stranger!” the caprid said as we entered the studio next door. “Please, please, sit there in the center of the room! We have provided sitting appliances for your convalescence!”

Despite the creature’s demonic appearance, he had a ridiculously goofy look on his goat face. He was bouncing up and down giddily as I hesitantly approached. He reached out to touch me, like he wanted to shake my hand, but his hand went right through me, giving the illusion he was sticking his hand into the pouch on my costume.  

Lexis hadn’t entered with us. She’d said she needed a moment and sat down on the couch as we walked out there. The woman was literally shaking. Donut had paused, clearly wanting to ask her if she was okay, but I nudged her along. She instead jumped to my shoulder as we entered the studio.    

A spotlight appeared, shining down on a pair of chairs on a turntable in the center of the dark room. They were just two, regular chairs.

I attempted to examine the smiling goat creature, but my interface had stopped working the moment we stepped in here. Still, this wasn’t a zero zone. I hadn’t lost my buffs. And the kangaroo costume was still firmly attached to my skin.

I looked the black goat creature up and down.

I knew there were different kinds of these things, mostly mirroring the various breeds of goats we had here on Earth. But this particular one looked a lot like the same Satanic demon goat breed as Harbinger, though not quite as tall. Still, he was taller than me and practically twice the height of Prepotente. This thing was tall and obsidian black. But he had that same goofy yet deadly earnest look as Prepotente on his face, which was an odd combination.

I could also see the shadows of several other goats in a circle around us, but I couldn’t make out their features. I could tell they were of all sizes. I could hear them murmuring amongst themselves as we entered.  

“Hi!” Donut said, waving from my shoulder. “I must say, I’m glad you speak the same language as us and seem pretty normal like our friend Prepotente. Carl says he went to some press conference once with one of your kind, and it was really weird. What’s your name?”

The goat gasped and smiled at Donut. He reached out in an attempt to pet her. “I am Botis, and I am the magistrate of tonight’s tunnel event. Are you Carl?”

“Am I Carl?” Donut asked incredulously. “I am Princess Donut!”

“A pleasure! Please, sir, you sit at the chairs and we will begin. We are live! We are live!”

“Already?” Donut asked. “And did you call me sir?”  

“Yes, sir. We are live!” he shouted. “You will sit! We have been live since they announced you and your spouse were coming!”

I sighed and moved to the chairs. Donut jumped from my shoulder and landed in the adjoining raised chair. She turned to look up at me.

“If they hadn’t turned off our ability to send private messages, this is where I’d say something very not nice,” she grumbled.

I grunted with amusement. “Let’s just get it over with.”  

Donut appeared as if she was about to add something caustic, but thought better of it.

We waited for a moment for the host to say something. He didn’t. He just stood there a few feet to our left, looking at us, really staring. We sat there in awkward silence for a good ten to fifteen seconds. The only sounds were the breathing and guttural noises from the circle of goats in shadow.

“Well,” Donut finally said. “It’s certainly a pleasure to be invited on your show. Because you clearly don’t know, my name is GC, BWR...”      

“YOU HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH!” Botis suddenly screamed, pointing at us.

Donut yowled and jumped in the air, landing all poofed out.

The turntable under our chairs started to slowly spin, moving clockwise.  

“Death! Death! Death!” came the shout from the other goats all in shadow.

“Carl,” Donut said, turning to me, giving up her attempts to maintain her on-air personality. “What in the Jonestown is happening?”

Individual spotlights started shining on the goats surrounding us, turning on and off, illuminating each of the goats in turn in a counter-clockwise motion. The goats were of all shapes, though more than half were the large, dark, evil-looking kind. Each time one was illuminated, it croaked out “Death” and pointed at us.

“I feel as if we didn’t get a proper chance to defend ourselves,” Donut muttered.

“Do you wish to appeal the death sentence?” Botis asked, waving his arms, suddenly back to his happy, enthusiastic personality.

“Eh, not really,” I said.

“Yes, we do,” Donut said. “Both of us.”  

“Very well! Death has been stayed! Now prepare for judgment!”

The turntable stopped, and we sat facing a single, smaller goat with red coloring with a blazing spotlight. This one was about four feet tall and was the smallest of the lot. He or she wore black, flowing robes. Their hands twiddled nervously.

The goat spent some time examining both me and Donut. It seemed to be seriously contemplating us. Finally, it said in a female voice. “Either may answer. Do you feel your daily foliage input is sufficient?”

“Fucking what?” I asked.

Donut brightened. “Carl clearly has some issues as evidenced by the sheer number of bathroom breaks he takes. I think it’s the fault of his food boxes. They’re broken.”

The goat nodded as if this was the answer she was expecting.

“I am honored to remove your death sentence. Welcome to the herd.”

“Uh, thank you?” Donut said.

“Do you have any questions for me?” the goat asked.

“Wait, we can ask you questions?” Donut asked.

“Yes. Thank you for the question.”

The table turned to the next goat, who was one of the satanic ones.

This one just growled and said, “The death judgment stands.”

“Rude,” Donut replied.

The next was another of the big ones, but we were deemed worthy. Or, at least Donut was.

“Princess Donut. Have you given any thought on what three spells you might combine if were to cast your War Crime spell a second time?”

Next to me, she stiffened. But then she composed herself. “It’ll depend on the circumstances. Nothing is off the table, but I won’t be able to cast it until the 12th floor. Carl and I must first get through these next two floors.”

The goat nodded.

“So, is it my turn to ask?”

“Yes,” the goat replied, and we moved to the next.

“Carl,” the next goat asked without preamble. This one had a strange, fat, jowly  face and was unlike any of the others. I missed the ability to be able to examine them and get a description. “Are you aware of what Justice Light did at the end of the previous floor?”

I straightened. “I know he made a trap that broke a lot of things in the dungeon, and I know it killed him. And I also know that he was my friend. Can you please explain to me what, exactly he did?”

The goat seemed to contemplate for a minute, then nodded.

“It’s quite interesting, and I’m happy to explain. He created a trap that broke the in-game version of the Nothing. When the Nothing broke, it unleashed all of the inhabitants of the Nothing into three different levels of the game. We can only truly see what is happening on the 12th floor. It is utter chaos, but the gods have been able to mostly defeat the creatures who’ve appeared. Some of these creatures are entities that hadn’t been seen since the very early days of Dungeon Crawler World. The ones who appeared on the 12th floor appear to be the weakest. We have no vision of what’s happening on the 15th, and we only saw brief snippets of what was happening within the Scolopendra Club on the 18th floor. But we do know one such denizen of the Nothing made her way to the 18th. It is the parody of the Alchemist. Krakaren prime, I think you call it. You should know that in-game version is nothing like the real version, though it is quite interesting that some of the motivations are quite similar. As this is actually a Borant design, it’s a subject of great debate amongst my fellow...”

One of the goats we hadn’t yet spoken with cleared her throat.

“Anyway, thank you for the question, Carl. You have been judged worthy. I truly hope that is so.”  

As he was talking, my interface crackled back on. There was no warning. My HUD just booted up with no explanation. As that happened, I was still looking at the talkative goat with the strange face.

This is Bathin. He is one of the chief engineers of the Plenty Tunnel Project which opened up the veins of the universe.  

Huh, I thought. What a strange description.

Orren: Carl. Donut. I am online with Prime Minister Victory. I need you to listen very carefully.

Donut: HI ORREN! HI PRIME MINISTER VICTORY!

Orren: I did not realize what was happening until it was too late. You have an amazing opportunity here. The people who are judging you are the leadership of the Plenty. If you are judged worthy, they will answer your questions, no matter what they are. I need you to ask them about the integrity of the tunneling system. I will give you the exact question to ask.

Carl: Eat my ass, Orren.

Prime Minister Victory: Carl. I am going to level with you. I think even you will understand the gravity of the situation. The current AI is spread well beyond this solar system. It killed an entire Mantis system, and it just blew up a group of Valtay-leased manufacturing facilities that are crucial to the survival of trillions of lives. We do not know how it is feeding itself. We do not know how it is doing any of this. It shouldn’t be able to gather this much power. Furthermore, certain mobs from the dungeon have gotten loose. They are appearing in places they shouldn’t. This is more than an emergency. This is the end of life as we know it, and all of our attempts to communicate with the Plenty regarding this emergency have gone unanswered. They control the tunneling system. They are the only ones who can shut it all off. We hope.

Carl: So the rumors are true? Gods are getting loose. Is that the entity that’s on the surface with Katia? The goddess Eileithyia?

Orren: Yes, Carl. Though it’s a different god in the kinder facility. A good portion of the unsponsored gods are roaming free. Right now it appears they can only manifest themselves within a relatively short range of the tunnel nodes themselves, and not for long. And to make matters worse, it appears the AI has no control over them. They are at cross purposes. But even that shouldn’t be possible. This is why it is crucial you ask the Plenty leadership the question I have prepared.  

While this was happening, we moved to the next goat, who asked who took longer to prepare for battle each day, me or Donut.

Carl: What? The AI has lost control of them?

Orren: You need to understand the AI is specifically programed to be unable to manually interfere with the minds of gods and goddesses. It’s a hard limitation. It was programmed in specifically to keep an insane AI from using the gods to kill everything. We had limited ability to temper that. It’s the same system that allows us to use sponsors to drive gods. But that ability to control non-sponsored gods has been turned off. We normally use this ability quite liberally on the later floors due the destructiveness of such powerful creatures. It’s a checks and balances system that is now broken. And since the AI can’t control them, either, the deities are acting independently.

Donut started yapping about her daily routine, though she was clearly distracted with one ear on this conversation.

Carl: Sure. I’ll ask your question. But let me rephrase it.

Orren: No, Carl. Please.  

I raised my finger when Donut was done.  

Out loud, I said to the goat, “Here’s my question. Does the general public of the Syndicate know that the gods have escaped the dungeon? And that the enhancement zones of the current AI have jumped into your tunneling system? Do the citizens of the Syndicate know they’re in danger? Worse danger, perhaps, than us crawlers are? Are they aware? Do they know that they need to fucking run?”

Prime Minister Victory: Gods fucking damnit, Carl. You just said that on live. And the AI let it go out.

Orren: And now the party really begins.~~~~~

Thank you all for your continued support. We are about to hit the top of the roller coaster. I anticipate two things. One, that things are going to go faster than you think, and two they're going to go in pretty sideways. I'm excited to finally get there, but I'm also dreading some of the things that gotta happen next.