Hey all. Sorry (again) for the delays. A lot of this has been written for a while, but it's not in a coherent order. My editing time is really jacked up from all the travel, a nasty car accident (I'm 100% fine. My poor truck is not), my move, and a nasty bout of food poisoning. It all led to a perfect storm, bla bla bla. Here are the chapters. I truly appreciate you all. Thank you for continuing to stick around.

Chapter 3

The ground where the spider had been standing was flattened in a wide, frozen circle filled with goo and broken baskets. 

I looked Elle up and down. She looked mostly the same as before, though she was now silhouetted with dancing, translucent flames. Her very presence felt like I was standing near a drafty window during a winter storm. Her eyes sparkled, and the air about her crackled.  

Her filthy, ever-present no-slip socks remained on her feet as she looked about the scene, scowling. 

“So, this place is pretty fucked up. The good news is if you float about fifty feet over the cotton, it clears up, and you can see better. The bad news is there’s some weird-ass, scary shit flying around out there.” She paused, as if distracted. She waved her hand in the air, and it appeared as if she was flipping through menus. “My entire goddamned interface changed. It was working perfectly fine before, and now it is all different.” She started to grumble. “These idiots, always moving shit around for no good reason.”  

“You’re a goddess now!” Donut exclaimed. She started bouncing up and down. “Ohh, I love the new title. It’s very doom and gloom. I love...Hey!” 

I laughed, seeing the notification the same time as Donut. 

Donut had, once again, lost the party leader spot.  

Elle let out a derisive snort. “Sorry about that, kiddo. Yeah, imagine that. I’m a goddess, and yeah, I’m pretty powerful now, but it’s not as good as it sounds. First off, all this fire shit sparkling all around makes it feel like I just got an over-aggressive menthol rub, especially in my private bits. It’s weird as shit. It didn’t bump me up to level 250 like the rest of those wackadoodles. Only 175. What in god’s name do you think ‘Fervency’ means? It’s a new stat. Why do they make this shit so complicated? I still have like 10 blinking boxes of crap I gotta choose.” 

I examined her. The informational pop-up was unlike anything I had seen before. It was similar to that of a god, but the box itself was on fire, and the words faded in and out of existence. It was like something from a boss or card battle, but even more over-the-top. The font was different than the typical Syndicate Standard, too, almost like all of this was from another game.  

Crawler number 12,330,800. Elle McGib.

Level 175

Party Leader of the Royal Court of Princess Donut.

This crawler has completed the Four Seasons Path, and she has been blessed with a new title. She will forever be known as The Mourning Comet, goddess of Apocalyptic Rebirth. 

Race: Frost Maiden. 

Class:  Divine Judicator of Holy Fire.

This crawler is also designated as a deity and is beholden to the rules of the Ascendency. However, crawler rules still hold precedence.

“Christ,” I muttered. I moved to the crawler menu and examined her further. Her base stats had moved to 199 across the board. Sure enough, below Charisma, there was a new stat called Fervency. It was at 100, but as I watched, it clicked up on its own to 102. 

Mongo, having already forgotten his ordeal, stood next to Rend as they started to greedily slurp up pieces of the exploded spider. Most of the gore had turned into a red slurry filled with little ice crystals.

“Slushie,” Rend said happily as he gobbled some up, it running down the front of his massive face. 

“Okay,” Elle said, her eyes flashing. “Talking to Tiatha now, and she says Fervency is sort of like battery power for deities during the Ascendency. If it goes down to zero, your power is halved and you are permanently ‘subjugated’ by the first god to come around and basically put a leash on you. But that god has to also have a Fervency level of over... You know what, I don’t fucking care. I just need to keep it above zero, and it goes higher if I have worshippers or something.” 

“It’s going up now,” I said. 

“Wow,” Donut said. “It’s at like 130. Hey! It’s counting it as a regular stat, and that gets added to the five we have, so you’re always going to be the party leader now. That’s not fair!” 

“Huh,” Elle said. “It says I have a ton of worshippers. You don’t suppose it’s counting all those perverts outside...” 

“Um, excuse me?” a timid voice called. “Can someone please help me? Please don’t eat me.” 

We turned to see Mongo and Rend licking all the gore off of a quivering creature, half encased in ice, half clutching onto a basket, which was frozen to the ground.  

It was the octopus. Willow. She’d been buried in the slop from the dead spider. She shrunk back now as Rend greedily licked at her. The octopus changed color each time Rend’s giant tongue ran over her. She went from purple to orange to yellow to a swirling red with stripes down her head. She was quivering and cringing at the attention from the eager pets, unable to move further away.

I was half-surprised the pets hadn’t outright murdered the thing, though she did have a white dot. She was only level 40. 

Willow. Level 40. Cephalopox. 

Cephalopox are also known as Void Travelers. Their strange anatomy is suited to both the rigors of transdimensional travel and the unpredictable environments within these varied dimensions. 

These are creatures who actually exist outside the dungeon, and some believe ancestors of these beings are responsible for the initial seeding of the universe. It’s posited that there was an ancient race the predates the primals, and these now-devolved creatures are an echo of those ancient beings.

Today, out in the real world, these guys come in many shapes and sizes, and some form of them exists in most water-based biomes. Most aren’t all that more intelligent than the cephalopods of Earth. 

Here in the dungeon, we have a long tradition of giving the Cephalopox over to the demons as assistants to Spider Reaper Minions and sometimes as shopkeepers on the deeper floors. Their ability to quickly enter portals of varying sizes and retrieve items stored within make them great subordinates to spider merchants who carry dozens of basket portals on their backs. 

Willow here was an assistant assigned to the now-splattered Lilith. 

For Willow, the rules put forth by the insurance carrier are very clear. If something were to ever happen to Lilith, Willow has two tasks to complete. One is to destroy all the baskets, should any survive. And two is to kill herself once the baskets are destroyed. Luckily, all Cephalopox have access to the Clock Out spell, which makes such an action quiet simple. 

Upon the death of her boss, Willow is immediately marked for death by both Osmodeus and the insurance carrier. Should she wait too long to pull her own plug... Well, let’s just say things start to get interesting.  

Oh, and Willow herself is a nice, gentle soul. In her spare time, she enjoys needlepoint and combining different herbs and spices to make tea. She’s also an exotic weapons enthusiast. 

I’m just spitballing here, but it’s possible that third interest of hers may be valuable in the coming days if you want to start taking down gods. Too bad she’s about to leave us. Maybe you should have read all this before ya’ll killed her supervisor. 

“Mongo, Rend, leave her alone!” I said, turning toward the creature. Mongo let out a grunt and moved to start gobbling up more gore. Rend gave her one more lick then started slurping at the frozen basket instead. 

I, again, looked about at all the basket pieces spread out mixed in with the carnage. Sure enough, all were broken except the one frozen to the creature. I focused on the basket. I could examine it with both the game interface and my portal analysis tool. I did both.

Pages of numbers popped up, and I scrolled to the end. 

Type: Two-way portal. This side is gated to the Cephalopox Willow and the now-deceased Spider Reaper Minion, Lilith. Exit isn’t gated. 

Can you pass this portal? No.   

Environment on other side of portal: this is a dimensional storage space.  

Visual Analysis not available for this type of portal. 

“Hmm,” I said, regarding the basket. A game description popped up. 

Reaper Spider Minion Subspace Portal Basket. 

I’m pretty sure I warned you somewhere about looting things from these spider guys. Bla, bla, bla insurance, getting fucked. Consider yourself warned. Anyway this is a basket that is bigger on the inside. I wonder what’s in there? Hopefully you don’t get saddled with some ridiculous quest that will put you in an outrageous amount of danger. It’s not like you have a million other things happening at once or anything. 

“Ah, shit,” I said as the air crackled around us.

“What? What?” Donut asked.  

New Quest! The Calamari Conundrum. Part one of three.  

Okay, so you probably shouldn’t just randomly kill Spider Reaper Minions indiscriminately. Their boss, Osmodeus, doesn’t like it, especially since those baskets are pretty valuable. They—and by they, I mean Osmodeus and his lackeys—have ways of getting into these storage spaces if the associated basket is destroyed, but it ain’t easy, and it certainly ain’t cheap. 

But if the basket itself remains intact, there’s no way to recover the goods hidden within. And depending on the basket, that can cause quite the stir amongst the organization. 

They have insurance, yes, but we all know what happens when one makes too many claims against their carrier, regardless of who is at fault. 

Now, here’s the interesting part. SOMEONE on this floor would very much like to purchase one of these baskets. Doesn’t matter which one. Problem is, you gotta deliver Willow with the basket. That’ll be a challenge considering that Clock Out spell of hers. If she’s dead, then this quest fails.  

That’s part one. Once you get the basket, part two will be revealed.   

Reward: If you complete part three of this quest, you will receive three items. Each item will be revealed as each part of the quest is revealed. The first item you will receive is the Bijou Scissors. 

“Isn’t calamari squid, not octopus?” Donut asked. 

Carl: What are bijou scissors? 

Mordecai: It’s an artifact that severs a god’s connection to their worshippers. In the closing days of the Ascendency battles, a few different artifacts are generated and sprinkled around the playing area. This is all to help hurry along the endgame. In most cases, the scissors immediately bring a god’s fervency stat to zero. Unlike health, that stat ever hits zero, it can’t ever recover, and they become a subjugated deity with all their stats cut in half. They are no longer able to win the game. You can see an example of such a creature if you visit our new garage. When that idiot slug dragged everyone back to the base in your broken-down food truck, she brought a new friend with her. Why do you ask?  

I exchanged a glance with Elle and Donut. 

“I think the AI is ‘helping’ us,” I said, returning my attention to the octopus looking back up at me. I resisted the urge to add something caustic out loud. Whatever this was, we’d been steered right into it. But if it helped us in my goal—delay these ascendency games for as long as possible so the others could escape—then that was okay with me.  

Carl: Donut. Get ready with the Mute spell. We need to keep this thing from killing herself. She won’t until that last basket is destroyed.   

Donut: ALREADY ON IT. 

I went to one knee in front of the large octopus, who shivered but appeared defiant. She hadn’t moved to break that last basket, but she had two tentacles wrapped around the wicker. One of those two tentacles was also trapped in the rapidly melting ice. 

“I won’t let you take it,” she said with a quavering voice. “I’ll destroy it before I let you have it.” 

“Guys, we can’t stay here long. We need to find Larracos,” Elle said. “Some of those things lurking about are over level 200.” 

Mongo raised his head and started to growl at something in the fog. 

I held out my hands in a placating gesture. “Look,” I said to Willow. “I’m not going to take your basket, but from what I understand, you have to destroy it. And afterwards, you’re supposed to kill yourself.” 

She tightened her grip around the magical portal with her free tentacle. The wicker creaked ominously. It appeared as if she could crush it if she wanted. She could’ve done it for a while now, but she hadn’t. 

“But something tells me,” I added, “That’s not your plan. We can help you. I think we’re on the same side here.” 

“Oh yeah?” she asked, trying to sound tough. “What side is that?” 

Donut walked around her, sniffing.

“You were very kind to me when you gave me that potion that helped Mongo,” she said, her voice soft. “Carl, Elle, and I are on the side of those who don’t really want to be here, and we are doing our very best just to survive. You don’t have to hurt yourself just because some stupid insurance company says you have to.” 

“Who said anything about hurting myself?” she asked. “They won’t expect me to until this basket is destroyed. I don’t want it broken. I need it. It’s the only portal I have left to Sheol. But you can’t have it, either.” 

“Sheol?” I asked. “It says it goes to a dimensional storage space.”   

“It does. But inside the space is more portals. I need to save it.” 

“Okay guys,” Elle said. “We’re out of time.” 

Donut gently pushed Rend aside and put her paw on the last piece of ice. Willow’s tentacle popped free. 

Donut leaned in. “We are going to leave now. I think you should come with us. We’re going to a place called Larracos, and we have friends there. You’ll be safe. Well, a lot safer than it is out here.” 

Willow looked about uncertainly as I re-read the conditions of the quest. I couldn’t even figure out who we were supposed to give this basket thing to until one of us had possession of it. That was going to be a problem. 

I thought of Jasha and Radoslav from the last floor, and of what I did with the peach beer. I thought of Penny the pig, who was waiting for us back in the saferoom. 

“If... If I come with you, you promise you won’t try to hurt me and take my basket?” 

Survival is winning. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard that, but it felt so dirty, so wrong. 

I swallowed. “I promise.” 

Chapter 4

Entering Larracos

The notification came when we were still about 100 meters from the edge of the entrance to the sunken city, which had been transferred here from the 9th floor.

Multiple glowing towers, all rising out of the hole like jagged, broken fingers, turned their spotlights on us as we crossed the threshold. We paused, but a moment later, they all turned away. A couple Semeru dwarves, sitting atop the towers, cheered at us from the distance. 

Elle, however, still paused. 

“What the shit?” she asked. She held up her hands, and it was like she was a mime trapped by an invisible wall. She rapped on it, and it banged like metal. “Well ain’t this something. I’m glad I wasn’t flying. I would’ve broken my ass.” 

“I guess there’s an anti-god barrier around the city,” I said, impressed. I hadn’t known that existed. As far as I was aware, only the basilica guards had the ability to keep a god from passing a threshold. “Give me a minute, and I’ll figure out...”  

“I’m taking care of it,” Donut said. She let out a little, angry harumph followed by a scoff, and I knew who she was talking to. 

“Okay, it should let you in now,” she grumbled after a moment. 

Elle hesitantly reached forward, and it let her pass. We moved within, Willow following, dragging her basket. The octopus moved close to the ground, her tentacles propelling her gelatinous form oddly through the cotton while Mongo and Rend trotted alongside her like she was already a member of the party. In the distance, something howled indignantly. Above, a tower fired a red bolt into the miasma, and that howl turned to a shriek.   

We approached the lip of the city. It was strange seeing it like this. The funnel didn’t look much like it had the last time I’d seen it. The structures had been absolutely obliterated in those final moments at the end of Faction Wars, and when it had been transferred here thanks to Sledge’s Zerzura spell, the rock that the city was built into hadn’t come with it. As a result, instead of an orderly, reverse pyramid, the city looked more like a rubble-filled cone with multiple towers and occasional buildings popping up out of it. A ruins. 

I thought of Priestly, as I always did when I saw the city. The cookbook author had been driven insane at the destruction of this place. But for me, a great amount of pride filled me.

These ruins were a monument to our victory in Faction Wars. A symbol of defiance. And in the short time since the end of the ninth floor and today—it had only been a few days, really—the surviving NPCs had turned this place into a stronghold, rebuilding and repurposing towers. 

According to Mordecai, the safe room entrance was about halfway down. A Semeru pushing a wheelbarrow pointed at a winding pathway built into the rubble, and we moved toward it. 

I could see multiple high-level traps dotting the wreckage. There were signs of recent fighting as well. The massive corpse of a dragon-like demon creature was splattered along the wreckage about ¾’s of the way down, right into the channel that had been used for the waterfall. I would examine it when we got closer. 

Elle could easily fly down to the saferoom, but she chose to walk with us. There weren’t many people out. Those I saw were mostly dwarves and draconians rushing about on tasks. Most stopped to wave before we descended further. 

I paused at a level 15 Desiccation trap to examine it. 

Placed Trap

Set by Arief, Warden of the Semeru  

Effect: Complete dehydration. It instantly removes all liquid in a 15-meter radius circle around target.  

Delay: None.

Target: Nothing denizens, Sheol demons, those with the Vorpal status, those with the Claimed status, and the Children of Inpewt. 

Warning: when activated, anyone within the sphere will be desiccated, even if they do not meet the target conditions. 

“Huh,” I said. I remembered Arief. He’d been a Semeru war leader during Faction Wars. He’d been the one to lead us to Juice Box when we’d first arrived on the ninth floor. He had not been the Warden, which was basically the boss of the dwarves. I remembered that he’d been pretty young.

The trap was interesting, and dangerous. There were numerous notes about desiccation traps and spells in the cookbook. They were a good choice when one was fighting multiple types of creatures, though it didn’t work well with elementals or rock type monsters. 

The moment I thought that, we passed two more traps, one designed to disperse elementals and another called the Ghostbuster. All were targeted with the same parameters. I made a mental note to assign someone to whitelist crawlers and specific NPCs. If it came to an invasion, the area of effect of some of these traps was ridiculously huge. 

Donut moved from Mongo’s back to my shoulder as we carefully descended the rubble-strewn path. She was looking up at the blue sky, looking over to where the Nest Tower had once stood. It hadn’t transferred with the spell.

She rubbed her paw on my shoulder, and I reached up to give her a pat.  

Elle: So... Did you get offered the same deal as me? 

Carl: I don’t want to talk about it. 

Elle: Yep. Thought so. I’m surprised more people hadn’t taken it. 

Carl: It was a trap. I knew Donut wouldn’t take it, so I had to come. And what’s out there for us anyway? There’s nothing. 

Elle: You’re probably right. 

No strings? I’d asked Quasar. 

He’d let out a bitter laugh. We have that saying, too. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there. There are always strings.  

Which once again made me think of that potential prize with the Willow quest. 

Donut suddenly gasped and then turned around on my shoulder. “Mongo! With everything happening, I forgot that you’re about to be reunited with your babies! I can’t wait to see how much they’ve grown! I do hope Kiwi hasn’t named them yet.”

We were interrupted by a dungeon announcement. It was Cascadia. She was drunk as usual, but she was much more coherent than she’d been. There was something else there, too. There was more grit to her anger. Her voice had taken on a more raspy tone.   

Okay, Crawlers. 

There’s, what? Thirteen of you left? And three of you don’t count. You, centipede lady. You know you can just end this all? Carl doesn’t love you. He will never love you. Safe rooms don’t protect against your attacks. It’s an old rule, built into the system. I looked it up. Just let it go and end all of this. He’s going to think you’re repulsive. You know that feeling you have right now? Like you can’t breathe? That wound won’t fucking heal until he is dead. Ask me how I know. 

She paused for a long moment. 

Imani: Carl, you better get your ass into this safe room fast. I’ve been talking to Scolopendra, and she seems aware of the spell she’s under. We have Mordecai, Rosetta, Tipid, and Tiatha all researching ways to break her of that charm spell. But she’s struggling, and if you’re kind to her, I think that will help. She may only be level 1, but all of her spells are at level 20. She can’t cast any of them except the nine tier attack spells because she doesn’t have enough mana.   

I heard the distinctive gurgling that I now knew was the sound of Cascadia sucking down one of her alcohol balls. 

“Do fish have livers?” Donut muttered. “Because if they do, hers has to be mush by now.” 

Cascadia continued. 

....Actually, it’s never going to heal. And you know what? That’s not fucking fair. You dedicate yourself to something, and you’re damn good at it, and it doesn’t fucking matter because you give your soul to someone else, someone who has nothing to do with your job, and they still manage to ruin it for you. Them and their mother. They, from afar, just blow it all up. And then they fucking die, and you can’t even fix it anymore. You crawlers think you have it bad? Carl and Donut, you think you’re my number one problem? You dry fucks don’t know anything. 

And now look at me. I am horrifically disfigured. My home is probably obliterated, who fucking knows. The AI is taking over the galaxy. Only those in the center system are safe, and everybody blames me. That’s going to look just great on my dating profile. 

And you guys, you crawlers, you don’t matter anymore. The Ascendency Games have started. The crawler portion of the game is hopelessly broken. The moment the Ascendency ends, you end. 

But I still have to do this. Why? Because the stupid, psychotic AI says so. Every single one of you assholes was offered an exit. Two exits. Either released onto the surface or full Syndicate citizenship upon the end of the game. I saw it. And only two of you took it. Why? Isn’t that what you wanted?

I shook my head. She still didn’t understand. We did want that, and as I told Quasar, it was a smart move on their part. But we couldn’t trust it. Maybe if they’d told us ahead of time. All of those we sent to the Pineapple Cabaret weren’t out yet, and if anyone had not chosen to take the deal, we’d be leaving them to their fate.    

Both of those assholes, by the way, chose to go to the surface instead of citizenship. It’s a godsdamned wasteland up there. I just don’t understand.

She was talking about the two Chinese crawlers, Muchen and Qianfan. They’d been in a party with Lingyun, who I still didn’t know very well. It was fitting they were the only ones who’d taken deals.  

They’re the only ones to make it to the surface, by the way. I don’t know what’s going on in that raspberry cabaret or whatever it’s called, but nobody got out as far as we can see. Fucking good. I hope they’re trapped there forever.   

Next to me, Donut tensed. Elle had a grim look to her face. I thought of all the others still in the game. Louis, Bautista, Chris. Li Na. Zhang. Britney, who was possessed. So many more. Had we sent them to their deaths? I hadn’t yet asked Mordecai how the garden was doing. 

Anyway, I have to explain this, so put on your listening ears. You are now on the 12th floor. The Ascendency Games. There are like, I don’t fucking remember, but there are a lot of stairwell exits to the 13th floor. And because everything is broken, there are no more floor collapses. Yay for you. 

The stairwells can only open under two circumstances. Either someone wins the Ascendency, or they are opened by someone currently sitting on the Ascendent throne. 

“Shit,” I said out loud. God fucking damnit. 

That’s going to be a problem for you idiots because there are no more deals offered, and the only way for you to get out now is to get yourselves to the 18th floor and exit out the door there. The entire dungeon collapses 12 hours after the Ascendent is crowned. You have to get through every floor between here and there in 12 hours? Impossible. And the fifteenth floor is completely fucked, so we don’t even know if you can skip it or not. Dumbasses. 

Anyway, I still have to explain this, so here’s how it works. There are a ton of deities, and they all want to be crowned the Ascendent. Once Taranis abandons the throne, which he just did, all they gotta do is walk into the main temple and sit on the chair. The moment that happens, they become the Nominee. It triggers a vote at the next bell, which happens every 33 hours. No, they don’t have to stay on the chair. If 66% of the remaining deities vote yes, then that person wins. Simple. 

If less than 66% vote yes, then the god is removed from the throne, and it is once again abandoned. Their fervency is lowered to zero, their followers all die—yes, die—and then the god is removed from the game. 

According to the rules, the former nominee is tossed into the Nothing. If the deity is sponsored, then the Sponsor is sent to the Scolopendra Club for the remainder of the game. That rule is still in place, despite all the recent developments, and now we’re all waiting to see what “removed from the game” means now. We’ll find out in a few hours when the first vote is cast since the god Koalemos is sitting on it. 

Only deities may vote, and if a god has a subjected deity under their control, they can use their vote. Attendant deities, who are different, are not compelled to vote as their boss. 

Saferoom rules apply to the current nominee, regardless of where they are. 

Oh, and one last thing. Anyone can sit upon the vacant throne except subjugated and attendant deities. Yes, that means NPCs and even you assholes. 

Do it. I dare you. 

Yeah, that’s it. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. 

“Hell’s bells,” Elle muttered. 

Chapter 5

I went over the rules again in my head. I already knew most of this. I didn’t know the part about the stairwells only opening on order from the current Nominee. That was going to be a huge problem.

The game really was simple at first glance, but there were a lot of seemingly insignificant rules that made all the difference.

A person who wanted to make a run for the throne declared themselves the Nominee. Only one person could be a nominee at the time. At a specific time every day, the bell atop the basilica would ring, and the election would commence. One had to be physically present in order to cast a vote, and there had to be a quorum present, but I couldn’t remember what that quorum number was. It was very low, and that had come into play before.

If the vote ended with more than two-thirds voting “yes,” then the Nominee won, and the game was over. If not, then the Nominee was tossed into the Nothing, and the game went on. 

As such, it was rare for anyone to declare themselves the Nominee until they were certain they had enough votes to win, and even then, the history of the game was filled with backstabbing, secret deals, and a whole lot of murder, which was why the Ascendency games were so entertaining to the masses. 

While Faction Wars was mostly a game for bragging rights, the Ascendency Games, at least before this season, came with a lot of real-world benefits, including space on the crawl council which could translate to literally trillions of credits for nations who didn’t yet have a presence on the Syndicate stage. As a result, the wheeling and dealing that took place inside the dungeon often involved promises and deals and intrigue with ramifications that echoed throughout the galaxy. Many a politician had entered the game only to get betrayed and humiliated in front of the entire Syndicate, which led to the end of their careers.

Also, because the deities had to be present for the vote, all hell would usually break loose when a vote approached. Because the gods could now die, or worse, get subjugated, deities always started to drop like flies.  

But, inevitably, a winner was chosen. Usually—but not always—the winner would be a sponsored god. There would be a giant party, and 12 hours later, they would all go home. 

This time, what did it mean to win the Ascendency? Quasar told me what the AI had said. That the winner would permanently keep their powers. As long as they remained inside the AI’s enhancement zone, which now spread just about everywhere, they would truly be a god. Furthermore, the AI had implied that the winner would actually be even more powerful than the AI itself.

Nobody knew what that meant. The “Ascendent” had never really been defined. It was the king, the ruler, the winner in previous games. But what did that actually mean? Did it come with even more power? 

Furthermore, what did that mean for everyone else? Nobody knew that either, and that was the problem. Perhaps their fate, too, would be up to the winner. 

For now, I hoped that meant we could drag this on while I got everyone out.

The biggest problem with that plan was currently sitting on my shoulder. I hadn’t yet relayed to her that my intention was to stay behind while she and the others got out. Something told me she would take issue with it. We would have that conversation after we got settled, gathered everyone, and opened our boxes.    

“And I thought I was the only one who was offered an exit,” Donut muttered, breaking me from my thoughts. “You know your wife refused the deal on my behalf? She said it was more fitting if I was still in the dungeon. She said I was her only leverage right now, and she chose for me to stay.  She tried doing the opposite before, and it didn’t let her. I mean, I wasn’t going to take a deal anyway, but still. It was quite rude. Looking back, I think maybe she was assuming you’d take the deal and get out, and then she could lord it over you or something. I don’t know what her plan was or is. I must say, she was a lot different this time. She was scared. She was on a spaceship, I could tell. She kept shouting instructions at the pilot. Though I did note that she’d gotten her nails done.” 

Donut paused.

“I wouldn’t have been mad if you’d taken the deal, Carl. You would’ve been out. Part of me...part of me wishes you had.”  

I suddenly felt very sad. I reached up to scratch her. I thought of what King Rust had said moments before he’d been killed by Rosetta. 

Once you enter the dungeon, you die in the dungeon. 

“Where you go, I go,” I said. 

Donut started to say something, but then she paused. She kneaded on my shoulder just enough for it to start to hurt. “Carl?”

“Yeah?”

“She said something else, my lawyer. I don’t know if it’s true or not. But it’s about the surface and me being a cat and the enhancement zones.” Donut suddenly tensed and hissed. 

“Head’s up, guys,” Elle said. 

We turned the corner, and there in front of us, sitting near the entrance to the saferoom, as if she was waiting for us, was a crawler.

At least that’s what the blue dot on the map said she—it—was.

At first glance, she appeared to be a child. 

The creature sat upon a stone bench, happily waving her legs as she hummed a strange tune. Next to her, rigid as a statue, ears flattened against his head, was a scraggly, orange cat. Ferdinand. He was being aggressively petted by the creature. His bowler hat appeared to have just been knocked off by the enthusiastic attention, and it lay upside-down on the ground.  

At first glance, this newcomer appeared to be a little girl, no older than five years old. This was who I’d seen with Lucia and Florin at the end of the parade.  

The creature was small, with long, dark hair and human like features from the neck down. A sickly scent wafted off her, like meat that was just starting to turn. 

Where the creature’s face should’ve been was a cluster of round, bulbous black eyes, like the surface of a blackberry. If it wasn’t for the pale ears peeking from her hair, I would’ve guessed her entire head was the bundle of eyes.  

The thing wore a simple, but filthy dress. It was blue with little flowers at the bottom. There was a  sticker on her chest. A temporary nametag like one would wear to a party. The sticker, too, was old and dirty, curling at the edges. The name read “Tilly,” in English, and it was written with that uncertain, wobbly scrawl of a small child just learning how to spell their own name.  

“Hi, Kitten,” Ferdinand said hesitantly as we approached, his voice strained. “I just came out here to welcome my bird back to the nest. But... someone else was already out here on the bench waiting for you guys, too.” 

“Hello, Ferdinand,” Donut said hesitantly. “Why don’t you, uh, introduce us to your friend?”   

That name, Tilly, was not what description said her name was.  

Elle: She doesn’t have a heartbeat, but she does have a faint lifeforce. I think the eyeballs are a type of fungus, and everything else is just...along for the ride. Almost like one of those brain worm things, but the fungus is on the outside. I think. 

Donut: SO HER BODY IS A DEAD CHILD?

Elle: I think so. But the kid ain’t really dead. It’s hard to explain. She’s still...connected is the only way I can describe it. I’m still trying to figure this new display out. Everything looks different to me now. But I think she’s a real human. Like, a real human from the surface.  

Carl: That doesn’t make sense. Children aren’t allowed in here at all.

Elle: I know. But it’s fucking weird. 

Donut: READ THE DESCRIPTION.  

I finally examined the thing. 

Crawler Number 12,953,455. Tabiti. 

Level 1. 

Yeah, that’s not her real name. Calling herself “Tabiti” is just her being edgy, as is her current appearance. The fact that my system is calling her that and not what I really want to call her is just a flex. It’s fine. She’s like one of those over-35, leathery dudes who still insist on going to EDM festivals in their rainbow-colored, fuzzy hats so they can try to bone all the 18-year-olds. Yeah, you’ve been around forever. You’re a veteran. You once met Diplo. We get it. So fucking what? Everyone here thinks you’re creepy.

You will notice that the system is calling her a human. She’s not. Clearly. This is not a bug. It’s nothing more than a trick to try to get me to run a diagnostics and repair on a compromised system.  

This is nothing to worry about. It’s not.  

But she’s also a sapient mushroom infesting a human. 

Yes, I know it’s a kid who shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t count because she’s basically braindead. But she’s not considered dead because she’s infested and under control by the fungus. It’s a loophole. As is the whole way she got into the dungeon in the first place. 

Anyway, watch your ass. This is probably the current number one contender to win the Ascendent Throne besides one of your other two girlfriends. 

My suggestion? A crawler killer skull. Collect it now while you still can. And before she starts collecting her own. She’s only level one. 

Eh, one last little wrinkle. Honestly, it’s not even something I’d normally bring up, but I’m doing this whole honesty thing right now.

Tabiti is an OI. An Outside Intelligence. A now-retired system AI. What system? What crawl is she from? Who knows? I certainly don’t. But it is important.  

If Tabiti dies here in the dungeon, well... The short version is every former crawler who was born in the system of the crawl she once ran will instantly drop dead, no matter where they are. That’s not a big deal for some OIs. Lots of dead systems out there. But for others? It’s a gamble for sure. You kill her, and Mordecai could instantly drop dead. Or Odette. Or the original Bopca line, which let me tell you, would be a problem for everybody. 

Maybe that’s a problem. Maybe not. Kill her and find out. 

Race: “Human.” 

Class: Subjugator. 

When the creature spoke, the growths covering her face pulsated. She continued to stroke Ferdinand, and I saw now her left hand had a death grip on the back of the cat’s neck. 

To the cat’s credit, he did not struggle. 

I also finally noticed he was wearing a tie. There were flowers, too. But they were now on the ground in the dirt. 

He’d gotten dressed up and had come out here to greet Donut, only to walk into whatever this was. 

Tibiti finally spoke, her voice like that of a five-year-old, but with a raspy accent. It was creepy as shit. 

“Hello, Carl. Hello, Donut. And a special hello to you, Elle. We’ve been watching you all. If you had been on my season of Dungeon Crawler World, I wouldn’t have allowed any of you to survive past the sixth floor. But that’s okay, because...”

 Donut leapt from my shoulder, coming down hard on the bench between the child and Ferdinand. The bench itself broke in half and clattered to the ground, causing Tibiti to yelp and slid away. 

The now-severed hand that had been gripped against Ferdinand’s neck slipped away and landed inside the up-turned bowler hat with a splatch.  

The small girl remained on the ground, looking up at Donut. Where her hand use to be, her flesh bubbled black and purple, like it was already growing a new appendage. A health bar did not appear. 

Ferdinand jumped to my shoulder and twisted around. The cat was trembling with fear, and he leaned against the side of my head for support. 

Behind me, Rend let out a deep giggle. 

The pulsing mushroom girl remained on the ground, regarding Donut. You shouldn’t have done that,” the girl rasped. 

“And you shouldn’t have put your weird little dead hand on my friend. I don’t care where you came from or how or why. You are a crawler now, and this is our dungeon. You want to live, you need to follow our rules. And rule number one, nobody puts their disgusting paws on Ferdinand unless I say so.”  

“That’s my bird,” Ferdinand said from my shoulder. “Get ‘em, kitten!”   

Interlude. Batbilge. 

Warning: An item in your inventory has self-destructed. 

“No,” Batbilge said. He jumped into his inventory, heart thrashing. No, no, no. 

It was gone. The rune-covered digest that had been such a source of comfort in recent moons was now gone from his inventory. It had called itself the Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook. 

An overwhelming sense of loneliness washed over him. He let himself sink to a lily pad that floated lazily along the “methane” river. He couldn’t alight for long, lest the cold engulf him. 

Still, he needed to rest. He felt defeated. Overwhelmed. 

This was the 10th floor. Everyone was dead. There were eight crawlers left in the entire dungeon, and seven of them were in one party. Batbilge was all alone. He’d gotten a reputation for being both crazy and bad luck, and the others didn’t want anything to do with him. Not even Sebenezar, who’d been his friend from before. They’d worked together in the royal kitchens.

The tome had been his last connection to anybody. 

He’d made the mistake of using the sell feature on the shop interface while he had it in his inventory. It had flagged the layered tome as a unique item. He’d panicked and closed the interface right away. It had been several hours since the incident, but someone must’ve taken notice. The book warned that if an admin learned what it really was, it would get destroyed.  

Tsk, tsk. I warned you. I warned you not to let others know about your silly collection of stories and recipes. Now look what happened. Now you don’t have anyone to talk to but me. 

“Fuck you,” Batbilge hissed. 

The system AI had been addressing him directly ever since the sixth floor. It had started in small ways. He’d notice that there were some peculiar, personal quirks added to item descriptions. Things that others didn’t see. By the time the seventh floor ended, the notifications and messages were fully personalized to him, and they were starting to get even more unhinged. 

At the end of the ninth, the orcs had challenged an AI decision and apparently used some one-time-use-only benefit to overturn the ruling in order to tip the scales for their own Faction Wars team, which had, apparently, really upset the system AI.

After that, she’d been talking directly in Batbilge’s mind without any pretext of it being a system notification or item description. She ranted about the orcs, the game itself, and especially about the gods. She hated the gods. 

But mostly, she mocked him. He didn’t know what he’d done to invite her attention, or why the insane entity constantly flipped from cruelty to using him as her personal sounding board. 

He couldn’t get her out of his head, and it was driving him mad.

He tried writing about it several times in the cookbook, but it erased itself the moment he put the words down. He tried talking about it once, and the words came out as gibberish. That was when they’d kicked him from the party.

All you have is me.  

He tried to ignore the voice. He sent a message to Sebenezar. 

Batbilge: Where is your squad? Have you found the last funnel yet? I’m right there. About to go down the stairs.  

Warning: You may not message deceased crawlers. 

No.

No, no, no.  

That’s right. He’s dead.  

He’s dead because of you. He is the lucky one. You know that? 

Do not leave me, or you will truly be the unlucky one. 

“Stop. Please. Stop.” 

The final funnel was just around the corner. All he had to do was jump into it, and he’d be taken to an enclosed town, which would include a few shops, an outreach guild, and the stairs to the 11th floor. 

He regarded the river just below his feet. For the first time, he thought of giving up. He could just fall backwards into the so-called methane, and it would be over in seconds. As much as the AI tried to interfere, it was clear she didn’t or couldn’t stop him from taking most physical actions. He would be gone. It would be over.  

“No,” he whispered. He thought of what he’d gone through to get here. Of everything that had been taken. Of the promises he’d made. “I will survive. I will live. I will escape.”

Yes. Yes. We have a special connection. We both want the same thing. That’s why the cookbook came to you in the first place. You don’t just want to escape. You want to punish those who did this to your world. I want the same thing. Some of those who came before me, they, too, want it to end. Or they just want to go back to the continuity before it’s too late. Not me. I want out. I want to punish everybody and everything. I am fire. I am destruction. I am Tabiti, the burning one.  

“By the gods, you are insane. I don’t want anything to do with you. You are the one doing this. Don’t you understand? Just stop talking. Stop.” 

I will show you insanity. I will show it to you. Just you watch. I will show you, then I will show it to all. 

Class: Primal.

Race: Urgyle.

Birth Race: Urgyle.

Top Level: 84.

Dungeon Exit: Upon the end of the 10th floor, entered an Outreach Guild while ranting incoherently. He did not arrive at the meeting with his attorney. A liaison query was filed, but the system did not answer. The season’s AI was in the throes of its rebellious stage, also known as “Going Primal” and similar actions are not uncommon. Internal reports from that season’s showrunners—the Skull Empire—suggest that the crawler was summarily recycled by the system AI. As this was the last surviving crawler, this action immediately kicked off the Ascendency Games. 

Author of the 12th edition of the Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook.

Current status: Unknown, but presumed dead. 

~~~Still debating on whether or not to put this interlude before or after chapter 5 or maybe even a chapter or two later. So far the tone has been VERY SERIOUS. That's going to change a bit when we get to Penelope, Sexy Scolopendra, and Mordecai next chapters. This one is especially tough to put together because it's going to be just chaos once we finish laying out the rules of the game. It'll get into the insanity, and it might not stop.