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March 29 - April 16, 2025
A few hours later while I sat in the emergency room waiting to get my hand, my arm, and my goddamned ear stitched up, I’d described, to the unimpressed nurse, the noise Donut had made the moment she’d entered the water.
“Donut,” I called again. “Calm the fuck down!” Carl: Donut. Chill. You’re sinking. There’s a mob coming. Donut: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Carl: MONGO NEEDS YOU. Donut quit twisting, her hair fluttering around her. She quickly looked about, still in a panic.
“Please, Carl. I’m sorry. I don’t like this. Can we go? Please?”
Donut sputtered as a fish slapped her in the face.
She had a piece of seaweed attached to her tiara.
“That was pretty awesome,” I said once it was clear we were safe from the sharks. “Go fuck yourself, Carl,” Donut said.
New achievement! Milquetoast! You somehow managed to win an important boss battle without actually killing the boss. That’s like paying money to a prostitute just so she’ll cuddle with you. Reward: You’ve received a silver Pacifist’s Box.
and how this works is a byzantine process that I do not yet understand,
“Are you saying we can open a gate directly to the ninth floor?” I asked.
I barely heard him. I was focused on the second-to-last scenario. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
it all flashed, and everything turned to… A loud error message blocked out the rest of her note. Warning: An item in your catalog is no longer eligible to be held in inventory. It will be forcibly removed in five seconds.
“Uh, Carl,” Katia said. “You dropped a head on the floor.”
Lika Love Doll Head. This item is possessed with the Withering Spirit of Psamathe. Psamathe, or Samantha as her friends used to call her, is a minor deity who was banished to the Nothing by her father after he found out she was kicking around with some ancient king guy. She’s usually accompanied by her trusty sidekick, a sand ooze familiar who also happens to be the cursed child of her union with the king. You know, typical god stuff. And if you think that’s peculiar, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Those guys hanging out in the halls of the Celestial Ascendency on the 12th floor get themselves
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“And she would’ve gotten away with it if a certain little dinosaur hadn’t knocked her over and shattered her into a thousand pieces,” I said. “Good boy, Mongo!” Donut said.
She turned to Katia and lowered her voice. “He wiped his hand on me once. You know, afterward.” “That is absolutely not true!” I exclaimed.
“So you tricked that guy into coming here?” Donut asked. “I must say, I am impressed. Men are so easily tricked, but still. Bravo. I’m always tricking Carl here into doing things for me, but you talked him into opening a different dimension for you.
“I already have a talking cat, a dinosaur, a Katia, and a grumpy eagle guy in my party. The last doll we had didn’t work out. I mean no offense, but the inn is full. Especially for a creature who is probably going to get us murdered by an angry god at any moment.”
Carl: She’s a talking sex doll head, and she keeps threatening to kill my dead mother.
On the next floor, we can get a new module that’ll allow us to hire mercenaries and additional staff. We can stick her in one of those slots. Donut: I LIKE HER. AND I DIDN’T KNOW WE CAN HIRE MERCENARIES! CAN I HIRE SLEDGIE?
“We’ll deal with her later. We have four and a half days left. I want to get that fourth castle taken care of as soon as possible because as soon as that’s done, we’re going to start rescuing as many people as we can.”
Florin!
I felt my heart quicken. “How many of the fifteen thousand are outside people usually?” He shrugged. “A rich faction will bring maybe two hundred.
Is he gonna send them to the nothing?
“The Hunting Grounds are a different sort of thing. The factions can, and sometimes do, send people to the sixth floor to collect gear. But it’s dangerous because they are not protected. It’s the only place in the game where they can really die.
“Plus, he insulted Mongo. He said, and I quote, ‘Donut and her stupid dino-chicken irritate me to no end.’ Mongo is just a child. If he could read, he’d be appalled. I can take criticism, but picking on a child? That’s just uncalled for. I bet he sucks his thumb and thinks of his grandmother when he touches himself.” “You can take criticism?” I asked. “I’m serious, Carl.”
Women can’t get pregnant in the dungeon. Our periods stop, and we get a notification informing us we are no longer able to conceive until after we fulfill our crawl.” “Wait, really?” I asked. “I never received anything like that.”
Donut just nodded. Despite her loud insistence that she was never going back into the water, I could tell she was struggling with guilt over this. I patted her on the head. “We need you to keep us safe. Okay?” “Be careful,” she said, rubbing her head against my hand.
I nervously watched the little needle that kept me apprised of our viewer count, and it was starting to spike. That was always a bad sign.
Katia: We should be fine as long as you guys don’t bring attention to yourselves.
-____-
Katia: The flying green dot just flew back into the temple I think. But the large thing is coming. Carl, there’s music. Music I haven’t heard before. Carl: GET OUT NOW. Donut: DON’T ABANDON CARL. Katia: It’s coming. Oh, god. Oh, god. It’s reaching for the sub, Carl.
Admin Notice: Three items in your inventory have been placed under an administrative lock while an appeal in the Syndicate court determines if these items are… The message appeared and disappeared in a flash, almost too quickly to read or understand. It never finished fully displaying. And then another message appeared and disappeared just as quickly. Admin Notice: Court determination: Lack of Standing for all plaintiffs. Administrative lock removed. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Torn Book Page. This piece of paper was mercilessly ripped from a perfectly-innocent book. Anybody who thinks to mutilate books in such a manner is obviously a terrible person. I mean, one minute this book is sitting there, minding its own business, and suddenly… BAM! It’s torn away from its home. And even if it gets returned, you can’t just repair that sort of thing. It’s irreparably harmed. Anybody who would do that is a real jerk. It’s a lot like what we did to you guys.
Fucking clerics. What a bunch of nerds. Am I right?
Another curiosity is the She Who Wails. Or Wailing Shrieker. A rare ghost, it is formed when a grieving widow dies of her despair, in the dark, on hallowed ground, while the corpse of her affection rots nearby. These were often purposely created to guard tombs, oftentimes at the direction of the ailing pharaoh or king himself, who would ply the woman with affection in order to have ready stock upon his burial. Sometimes he would do this with a harem of women, if he was especially paranoid about keeping his treasures safe. The women would not know this was to be their fate.
A massive, glowing form approached the sub. A shark. A shark the size of a mountain. A shark? That didn’t make sense. Then I saw the tentacles flowing behind it. A sharktopus. A fucking sharktopus. Donut is going to be pissed she missed this one. “Oh,” I heard myself say. “That’s not good.”
Admin Notice: This Special Event boss battle is being streamed to all special event subscribers. Admin Notice: Congratulations. You have been opted into the Beta testing program. We are testing a new format with this battle. You may be asked to complete a survey on the completion of the fight, should you survive. Thank you. B…B…B…Boss Battle!
Donut: WHAT ABOUT YOU? WON’T THE DEATH CHARGES HIT YOU, TOO? Carl: I really hope not.
And who’s the daddy of these precious little babies? Who knows? Lusca is a whore!
The male Octo-shark who brought you down here already got his and is now long gone. Just like your real daddy!
and then it finally depicted the massive creature pooping out a cartoon skeleton of a human wearing heart-covered boxers. And then it showed a cartoon Donut with tears flying from her eyes.
In each birthing of 2-3,000 pups, only one or two survive. In other words, their odds of survival are better than yours!
“It looks like Carl is going to use the gate to escape!” “Shut the fuck up, Kevin,” I said as I worked.
“What was that potion?” Katia asked. “The potion of bloodlust,” I said.
Warning: Your oxygen levels are low. Plus you’re just sitting there being all boring and shit.
One of the round buzzsaws dislodged and shot through the water, spinning and disappearing into the darkness, like a tire rocketing off a crashed car.
Donut: CARL I JUST WENT UP A LEVEL, AND I DIDN’T EVEN DO ANYTHING. I SHOULD STAY BACK MORE OFTEN. THIS IS GREAT.
Vadim: Oh god, oh god. They’re in the pod with me. Oh god. Carl: What? What? Vadim: The pain amplifier… Warning: This message is from a deceased crawler. “Yikes,” was all I could bring myself to say.
Quest Complete. The Gate of the Feral Gods.
New Achievement! Who Let the Gods Out?
Reward: Whatever is about to happen is going to hit the Dungeon Crawler World blooper reel for sure.
I watched one die once on the recap episode, but that was during the Celestial Ascendency, and all gods lose their invulnerability on the 12th.
“If I had gone in there, I would’ve been smushed on the ocean floor. You know how I feel about getting smushed. I’m not one of your hamsters, Carl.”
