The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #5)

by Matt Dinniman

I was about to respond when the notification came. Both Donut and I stopped dead on the bridge. Admin Notice. Congratulations, Crawler. You have received your third and final sponsor! Viewers watching your feed will now see advertisements produced by all three of your sponsors. Sponsor’s Name: The Apothecary. Additional details available in the Sponsorship Tab of your interface. “Carl, Carl, I got another sponsor!” Donut said. “Someone named the Apothecary!” “Yeah, that’s who I got, too,” I said. “They must’ve spent a lot of money to get both of us.” “Hey,” Donut said after a moment. “They sponsored Prepotente and Miriam Dom and Lucia Mar and Katia and both of those two-headed guys, too! And Elle and Imani too!” “Interesting,” I said, trying to parse the information. I had a pretty good idea who this was. I’d only seen the term “The Apothecary” once before. It’d been during a mob description back on the fourth floor. Krakaren. The real Krakaren, not the weird caricature version they had in the dungeon. But the collective mind that was slowly making her way across the universe. I had no idea what she really looked like, but I doubted she was an octopus thing. It was rumored she was involved with the company that ran the tunneling system, which was owned and operated by the Plenty, who were goat people. If this Apothecary collective was the Plenty’s silent partner, it meant they likely had a bottomless reserve of money. The fact they’d gone through and sponsored most of the ...