The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #4)

by Matt Dinniman

Donut: THIS IS RUINING MY FUR. AND IT’S HOT. I DON’T LIKE THIS, CARL. MONGO IS MISERABLE. Carl: Mongo is still in his container. You don’t know if he’s miserable or not.

There was a crude sign over the large, double doorway. It read “Hump Town. Bang twice to enter.”

Donut continued to hack in my ear. “Hey, don’t puke on my shoulder.” “Where else am I going to do it, Carl?” she said between breaths. She proceeded to puke on my shoulder. “Goddamnit, Donut,” I said. “In ancient Egypt, it was considered an honor for a cat to vomit upon you. You should thank me.”

If you’re into weird shit, Weird Shit Alley is up against the far wall on the northeast side of town.

“Yeah, we’re a brothel town. What did you think? Now get out of here. And again, stay out of city hall.” New Quest. “Stay out of city hall.” Find out what’s in city hall. It just might be important. Reward: You will receive a Silver Quest Box. “Well that’s, I don’t know. A little obvious,” I muttered

“You’re close,” a new, almost-familiar voice said.

He looked at me as if I just asked to see nudes of his mom.

Imani: We would have an NPC helping us if Elle hadn’t iced him. Elle: He was being suspicious. We’re on our way back to the island. If we crash, we crash. There are boats everywhere. We have our pick. Imani: Not all of us can float, Elle.

Donut gasped. “Carl, Carl, I got a good one this time!” She glowed as she read the book. I took a deep breath. “Donut. We talk about the spellbooks before we read them. Remember?” “Unwad your panties, Carl.” Katia laughed. “You got that from Elle.” “I know, right? She’s been teaching me sayings from the olden times.” “That’s not very princess-like,” I grumbled. “Oh, Carl. Just chillax.”

I laughed. “Hey, Donut. If we were back home, you’d finally be able to knock that vase off the high shelf.” “That thing was a menace, Carl. It was haunted.”

Reward: You now have the option to worship the god Grull. Admin Note: There is a new tab now available in your interface. I laughed. I looked up at the ceiling and said, “Grull can suck my dick.” Donut and Katia, who’d both just received the same achievement, also laughed. “Worship Grull? At this point, I’m quite sure it’s the other way around,” Donut added.

The next achievement came in the AI’s creepy, I’m-touching-myself-and-smoking-a-cigarette voice. New Achievement! Smushed for Daddy. You have been stepped upon by a deity. You have survived the encounter. And while this wasn’t the pink-fleshed suppleness of a human-shaped foot that crushed your fragile, wet body, it’s nice sometimes to switch things around. You know, just to test the boundaries of your own limits. When one experiments, oftentimes one finds new and exciting ways to get that rush. While fun, it wasn’t quite the same. You probably don’t realize how lucky that is for you. Reward: You have received a Platinum Spicy Box. “For fuck’s sake,” I muttered.

You’re either the universe’s greatest sniper, or you’ve been a sneaky, little, portal-using bitch.

You’d have a great career in politics ahead of you if, you know, we hadn’t destroyed your world and all the governments and stuff.

New Achievement! Extinction Event. You have, with a single attack, killed every last member of a non-unique species on a dungeon’s floor. That’s not an easy thing to do, and it takes a special brand of asshole to pull something like this off. Species killed: Wall Monitors. Reward: You have received a Platinum Asshole’s Box!

“I am saying this right now, Carl,” Donut announced the moment she received the scroll. “I am a cat. Cats do not swim. Cats do not go in water. It is unnatural, and it is not going to happen.”

Mordecai: Your chats are still protected if I’m in on it. If you need to vent, make sure you do it to me.

If added to a trap, additional options become available. Such as “Target any healers within range” or “Target anyone who thinks it’s okay to put mayonnaise on hotdogs.”

Thanks to the bandit’s intervention, the human planet survived another 100 years before it was obliterated in an unrelated conflict.

Super Spreader. You have been given the power of every plague rat and kindergartner since the dawn of time. You may pass any active debuffs onto a target of your choice once per hour. This does not remove the debuff from yourself.

Extinction Sigil Tattoo Wall Monitor Race. Removes automatic hostility for any natural enemies of lizard-class creatures. Warning: holding this Extinction Sigil will cause lizard-class enemies to deal 20% more damage against you. Any Wall Monitors will deal 150% more damage against you. You may only hide this tattoo with a cover-up sleeve.

“Holy shit,” Mordecai said. “Can I see it?” He picked it up with his talon, and it was shaking. “Who’s Pawna?” I asked. “She’s the goddess of peace,” Mordecai said. “In the pantheon, she’s Grull’s sister and arch enemy. Don’t take this now. Save it.”

Pawna’s Tears. This potion adds plus five to any spell or skill of your choosing.

He can now train one of his skills to fifteen, take the potion, and raise it to twenty. It is, quite simply, the single best item of loot he has received since he entered the dungeon.” “Not including the pet biscuit,” Donut said. “Not including the pet biscuit,” Mordecai agreed.

I don’t have access anyway. I’m a proper fucking lady. I got a Club Vanquisher ring.

“I can be anything you want, honey,” one of them called after me as I walked away. “I have the biggest library in town.”

Flint says the gnomes are bomb-dropping cowards. He says anybody who uses a bomb is a pussy.” “Flint sounds like a real peach.

It’s probably the gnome leader guy’s kid or something.” “Maybe it’s his pet,” Donut said. “Nobody wants to bomb their pet.

“I don’t like it,” Donut said. “It doesn’t let you haggle. Also, it’s broken. It says my hats are only worth one gold piece each. We need to get it fixed.”

Plus they gain some of the abilities of the race they choose. Sometimes I think that’s better. I’m never going to be able to fly, not like them.”

“Toe,” Louis said, cracking up. “Get it?” he said to Firas. “Get what?” Firas asked. “The joke! The name of the bar is a joke.” “The Toe is a joke?” “Yes, man. Come on. It’s a camel town. You wouldn’t call a restaurant back home the human finger, would you? You’d just call it the finger.” “What?” Firas said. “I don’t get it.”

“Or what?” Louis said, suddenly sounding inexplicably hostile. “You gonna blow us up?” “No,” Donut said, jumping on the table and scattering their glasses. Vodka spilled everywhere. “Carl won’t hurt you. But if you’re not a part of the team, we are going to make sure you are kicked out of town. Have you seen the mobs out there in the desert? I haven’t seen anything lower than level 30. And since you two chuckleheads are level 22, I don’t think that will go so well. Now say, ‘We’ll be there, Carl.’” “We’ll be there, Carl,” Louis said, swallowing. “Lovely,” Donut said.

Katia and I worked on the first part of the design while Donut and Mordecai went shopping. But before they left, Donut took one look at the vehicle-in-progress and said, “I’ve decided to name it the Royal Chariot.” She flipped her tail and exited the room astride Mongo, following Mordecai. “What the hell, man,” I said as the tooltip popped up over the unfinished vehicle. It didn’t yet have a description, but the system suddenly labeled it The Royal Chariot - Contraption.

Katia and I discussed using the chariot’s body as a chassis for a much-larger, more flexible vehicle. One where she was the vehicle’s body. But she wasn’t fully onboard with the idea. Not yet. Plus, I made the mistake of suggesting we start calling her “Katia Prime,” and she didn’t find it nearly as amusing as I did.

Tracked All-Terrain Suicide Machine. The Royal Chariot – Contraption. If a snowmobile got drunk on moonshine and had a sweaty, ill-advised night with a hillbilly’s coon-hunting ATV, this oversized birth defect of a vehicle would be the result.

We stopped outside the gate and started to quickly disassemble the vehicle. When we were done, I turned one last time to look south. And that’s when the bombs started to fall on the distant town.

“But not all bars are true saferooms. Generally if the proprietor isn’t a Bopca, then there’s like a 50/50 chance. The Toe is not a real saferoom, but as long as we’re in the personal space, we’ll be fine. I think there might only be one or two other places in town that’ll protect crawlers.

“Certain NPCs will be safe. I would be safe if I was in a saferoom. The whole room would be protected. If there aren’t any crawlers or basically any former-crawler or off-world NPCs in the room, the room is probably destroyed. There are additional rules if there’s only one saferoom in an area, but it’s pretty complicated stuff. The long and short of it is, Borant-owned NPCs are not protected by the saferoom system if they’re the only one there. They’re only protected if you are there.”

Florin, as a human, had kind of a mysterious background. He said he was from France, but he had an Australian accent. He was in Africa when it all went down. They didn’t really give the guy’s full story, but he mentioned something about “private security.” I knew what that really meant. He was a mercenary of some sort. He’d also come into the dungeon armed to the teeth, but he now relied solely on his automatic shotgun, which appeared to be heavily modified even before he received the magical, unlimited-ammo upgrade. Ifechi eventually chose a healer class, and Florin picked the crocodilian race. They had been separated when they hit the third floor, but they quickly found one another. It showed them hugging and sobbing as they reunited. They were more than just friends, I realized.

“Jesus,” I said. “And I thought the goat was crazy.” “Prepotente is crazy, Carl,” Donut said. “You’re crazy, too. Lucia is something different. She’s insane.”

You will not break me. Fuck you all. I will break you.

“I call dibs on the dogs,” Donut said.

The show ended with the promise of more bloodshed and more hilarious outtakes of us silly crawlers struggling to survive. I pictured myself punching the host over and over until his head caved in.

But we weren’t someplace else, and she was killing people. Good people. She had to be taken care of. I didn’t want to admit it, but part of me was happy that there was nothing I could do about that right now. We only had a limited number of fellow crawlers to deal with on this level. That shit weighs down on you after a while, I thought.

There was a warning that just because we were outside that we shouldn’t use the big, wide world as a bathroom and that there were restrooms in the towns. But if we had to go while we were outside, they wouldn’t penalize us. We needed to announce that we were going to the bathroom out loud, wait five seconds, and then do our business. The idea was so ridiculous, it made me want to laugh.

A changeling who can switch that quickly is very dangerous. Remember, unlike doppelgangers, changelings gain some of the abilities of the race they’re mimicking. She can turn into a gorgon at the snap of the finger and hit you with a petrify spell, then switch to a rocksling to shatter your stone body into dust, and then turn to a forge ogre and take that dust and pressurize it enough to make it a diamond. All before you could say “Ouch.”

I tossed her a gold coin, which she deftly caught in midair. Her hand moved so quickly it reminded me of a viper strike. She didn’t turn her head to catch the coin, which gave me an unexpected and sudden chill.

“Don’t forget our date tonight, big boy. Maybe I’ll try out that Nurse Joy person you were describing.”

Vom

Earlier, I had been assuming that Firas was from the middle east somewhere and Louis was Spanish. It was now clear that both of them were fellow Americans.

I was in the middle of renegotiating my personal vow not to outright murder fellow crawlers when Mordecai jumped across the room, landing heavily on the same side table Firas had his boots upon. The table shattered into pieces. Mordecai spread his wings out and leaned forward, glaring at the two wide-eyed crawlers. He lifted a claw, careful not to actually touch or make a movement toward either of them. The razor-sharp talon glinted like a knife as he pointed it at each in turn. “I want you two fuckwits to listen, and I want you to listen carefully. I don’t know how in the gods you survived this long, but I am about five seconds from telling my client to eviscerate both of you and to use your bodies as zombie meat shields. And don’t think she can’t do it. Isn’t that right, Donut?” Donut growled. “We are in a very dire situation here. But guess what? You two mouth breathers hit the survival lottery when you got put in the same quadrant as us, and you’re too stupid to even realize it. You can still get out of this, and you can still make it to the sixth floor if you take this seriously. If you don’t, you are doing more harm than good. And we do not have time for that. I have a drink that I am going to make for each of you, but it’s going to take about five minutes. So help me gods, if you two don’t shut the hell up and just listen, you will not persist long enough for me to make the potion for you.”