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

by Matt Dinniman

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Donut said. “The dinosaur is also a vampire? Big Tina is a vampire tyrannosaurus rex?” “She’s an allosaurus,” little Todd said, looking up from his mother’s fur. “She has three fingers, not two. That means she’s an allosaurus.” “I know how to count, Todd,” Donut said. Quest Update. The Recital. Surprise, motherfuckers. Strap yourselves in. You don’t know the half of it. It’s about to get bumpy. Outside, the world rumbled as Tina roared again.

Level 5+7+12+6+10+2 = Level 42 21.8% of the whole. This is a minion of Big Tina.

Donut: MAYBE IF YOU WEREN’T ALWAYS STEALING OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCE, YOU’D BE HIGHER. Tserendolgor: Are you still on that? That was three floors ago. And I didn’t see you at CrawlCon, so I must be doing something right. Donut: WHAT? WHAT?

“I don’t feel very welcome here, Carl,” Donut said.

Donut: CARL, MONGO IS REALLY MAD AT YOU.

I’M MAKING ONE OF THE MUSHROOM GUYS STAND OVER ME BECAUSE THEY’RE GOOD UMBRELLAS.

One of the later Land Before Time movies played on the screen, which I thought was a little fucked-up because they’d just watched their dad get eaten by a dinosaur, but they seemed to like it.

Miriam Dom: Carl. I hate to be a pest. But are you coming?

Mongo, who hadn’t gotten a chance to notice the movie at the previous location, started screeching and jumping up and down once he noticed the cartoon dinosaurs on the screen.

I froze in midair. Pulsing, EDM music started to play, pounding over the rain. Oh fuck, oh fuck, what is this?

The claws crushed and pulled at the same time, trying to pull me apart like a hot mozzarella stick.

Donut had scrambled up one of the trees, and she emerged from the canopy like a wizard atop a mountain, tiara glittering in the new light.

just before I slammed into the still-screaming-despite-its-goddamn-head-was-on-fire vampire dinosaur.

“You punched that vampire pterodactyl in the dick!” she cried. “You put a hole right in it!” I groaned as I stepped away from the gore. The rain continued to pound. “Yes, Donut. I was there. But it was female. It didn’t have a dick.” “Then you punched her in her lady garden!

Note added by Crawler Volteeg. Seventh Edition> I miss her. I miss her so goddamn much. Is it worth it? To survive this place with her gone? No. No, I don’t think it is. <Note added by Crawler Drakea. 22nd Edition> This is Volteeg’s first, last, and only entry in the cookbook. Fuck everything about this place.

“Carl does love me,” Donut said.

and as you might know, the stun effect compounds each time it is applied.

“He was an opposite vampire!” Donut said. She turned to me. “I wonder how that works. Does he vomit blood on people instead of suck it away?”

“You didn’t ask me here to protect you. You asked me here to kill you,” I said. “Yes,” she agreed.

Donut: IF WE KILL MIRIAM, PREPOTENTE WILL KILL US. IT’S WHAT I WOULD DO IF ANYBODY HURT YOU.

Donut: THIS IS JUST LIKE WITH CHRIS. IT’S AN IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION. Carl: No, Donut. It’s not impossible. It’s just hard. Very hard.

I thought of Drakea’s note after Volteeg’s one and only entry. Fuck everything about this place. I thought of Prepotente, watching this and unable to move. I imagined what he must be feeling. I thought of my mother, who’d ruined everything when she’d gone.

Miriam leaned her head on Prepotente’s frozen shoulder as the sun rose up over the trees. The rain had finally stopped, just long enough for the light to shine brightly on a clearing in the middle of the forest in this forsaken place. A health bar appeared, and it slowly started to drain away. Donut: Carl? Would you do the same thing to save me? Carl: Without hesitation. I will break you all. “My beautiful boy,” Miriam whispered as she turned to dust. “My beautiful boy.”

She did have a pair of little, orange, traffic-cone like hats she’d taken off some gnome-like creature, and she told Donut it was okay if she had one of them. Donut tried not to show her excitement.

The callous crawlers Carl and Princess Donut watched and did nothing as she died in agonizing pain. Nothing! (Actually, not nothing. Someone should probably ask Carl why he suddenly has three new points to his intelligence stat. Suspicious!)

Some are nothing more than mini-Grinders, also known as Shrillings, also known as Shambling Berserkers. We’ve all seen these before, most notably in some of the train stations at the end of the fourth floor. Yes, they can get pretty big and annoying, but it’s not anything you really need to worry about. Hardly worth a regular quest, let alone a world one. You’d have to be a total idiot to let one of those things kill you, especially during the day. I’m looking at you, Nihit Kumar who’s about two seconds from getting... Oh, that’s a shame. Gross. Anyway,

So, here’s the quest part. Kill all the Odious Creepers before the sun sets tonight. For every Creeper you kill, you will receive +5 to a random stat. For every five you kill, you will receive an additional +5 levels. The crawler or hunter who kills the most will get an additional prize.

If you don’t kill all of them before the sun sets tonight, bad stuff will happen. And I mean every single one of the fifty Creepers. And by bad stuff, I mean something completely batshit. And not just to the crawlers, but the hunters, too. So all of you cowards sitting on your ass in Zockau need to get to work.

“Also, have you noticed how the A.I. refers to itself as ‘I’ way more often than it used to? It always did, but something has changed.”

Carl: Holy shit. Be careful. Make sure you only work with crawlers you trust. This has potential to get out of hand. Donut: STAY AWAY FROM THAT DOG LADY. TSERENDOLGOR. WHAT KIND OF STUPID NAME IS THAT ANYWAY? HER MOM OBVIOUSLY DIDN’T LOVE HER. Katia: Donut, she’s a very nice person who had a very difficult life. And her name is Mongolian. Donut: EVERYONE IS HAVING A DIFFICULT LIFE RIGHT NOW, KATIA. SHE DOESN’T GET EXTRA CREDIT BECAUSE SHE HAS A STUPID NAME. Katia: Okay, Donut.

I took a knee in front of Prepotente. It was weird. Even though he was motionless, I could feel it. I could sense it coming off of him, like electricity off a live wire. Or heat radiating off a stove. The sense of utter despair and anger and misery and loss. He’d thought of Miriam as his mother. He’d just watched her die as he sat by, helpless. Christ, I thought. I knew exactly how that felt. The realization was like a punch to the gut.

He screamed at the pile of ash. This wasn’t his normal cry. This was haunting, almost silent, like he couldn’t get the sound out. Like wind rushing across a desolate landscape. He screamed, over and over until he had no more. “Oh, mother,” Prepotente finally said, his voice raspy. “Oh, mother, what did you do? Please. Please, no.” He turned to look up at me and Donut. Muddy tears ran down his face. “She was going to play piano for me like she used to. She was going to sing me my special song.”

“She said everything was going to be all right, but it was a lie. A dreadful lie,” Prepotente said as Donut returned to my shoulder. His hands trembled. He was oblivious of the danger around us. “What am I going to do now?”

“Don’t worry, Carl,” Donut said. “I’m quite practiced in the matter of taming dinosaurs.”

“I wish you’d never given me that pet biscuit. It’s not worth it,” Prepotente said to his dead mother’s ashes. “We’d all be gone now. It would be quite better, wouldn’t it? We’d be together.” I could barely hear him over the rain. But no, I realized. The rain had stopped once again. My head throbbed.

“Good job,” I said to Donut as the raptor sniffed at my crotch and growled. “You did it.” “Of course I did it, Carl,” said Donut. “After all the torture we put Mongo through, what else did you expect? Now, Kiwi, we do have a few rules to go over. Rule number one is not to molest Mongo again. Rule number two is to not eat Carl.”

The goat returned his attention back to me and Donut. “If I can’t exist in a world with my mother, then nobody even remotely responsible for her death can exist in this world, either. I am going to kill all of them, or I am going to perish trying.”

Donut: CARL. I’VE JUST HAD A TERRIBLE THOUGHT. DO YOU THINK THE PLENTY WANTED MIRIAM TO DIE? Carl: Yes, Donut. I believe they did. I didn’t add that I was almost certain that Prepotente believed this, too. This was also something that trauma could do. It could make you blind, and it could open your eyes wider than they’d ever been, all at the same time. The implications of this, I could not predict.

“Hey, at least Prepotente doesn’t blame us for the death of his mother,” Donut said as we set out. I wasn’t so sure about that, either.

Prudence the ursine barkeep sat on the couch with both of her cubs on either side. Samantha was in her lap, getting her hair stroked by the bear. I didn’t ask.

“You go, buddy! I like the bigger ladies, too,” Louis shouted at Mongo. Mongo looked at Louis through the door and squawked, waving his little wings joyfully.

“Bye Carl and Donut,” Louis said as he scooped up the remaining two jugs. “Bye Mongo and Mongo’s girlfriend! Bye Samantha! Bye rock dudes and bear dudes and Mordecai!” Samantha sighed as Louis left. “Juice Box is so lucky.”

New Achievement! B’sieging! You’ve used siege equipment to zero in and attack a boss monster from afar. That’s cheating! It’s like trying to kill someone with a bomb. What a bitch move! Reward: You’ve received a Silver Siege Master Box! Donut: I RECEIVED A VERY RUDE ACHIEVEMENT. MONGO AND KIWI ARE APPALLED.

I hit the lever, and the rock went flying. Donut: YOU HIT IT PERFECTLY. THE GREEN STUFF IS GETTING ALL MESSED UP BY THE RAIN. Carl: Mordecai said it would actually help. He said it would be quick. Sure enough, the notification came just a few seconds later. System Message: An Odious Creeper has fallen. Crawler Princess Donut has been given credit for the kill. 30 Creepers remain. “What the hell,” I muttered. Donut clambered down the tree and landed on my shoulder, all poofed out and proud, despite being soaked by the rain. Mongo and Kiwi scrambled down a moment later, expertly jumping from branch to branch like they were born in the trees.

Carl: I was just thinking the same thing. Hopefully one of the hunters will have the balls to do it. Donut: IT WON’T BE VRAH, I BET. HER LADY BALLS ARE STILL ON FIRE.

Howdah containing the Familiar of Queen Imogen of the High Elves. This NPC is Intangible. You may not physically touch it. This NPC is Invulnerable. You may not harm it.

This is a high elf. A DNA test would tell you that they’re identical to bush elves, but that’s only because DNA tests don’t detect when someone has a giant stick rammed up their ass.

“Donut!” I cried, rushing back toward the cat. Please, please. Mordecai: What’s happening? What’s going on! She was unconscious, but her Cockroach skill had activated. It’d saved her life. I used a scroll on her, but she’d remain knocked out for a full minute. Holy shit, I thought, scooping her up. Holy shit, that was too close. I held her little body to my chest, and I just breathed, comforting myself with sound of her little heart.

They’d almost killed Mongo. That wasn’t just the whim of an NPC. This was planned, a story movement engineered by the showrunners. I thought of Prepotente, sobbing when Miriam had died. They were doing this to all of us. Ratcheting up the drama for the floor’s finale.

Then she, surprisingly, closed her eyes and snuggled up against my chest. Her entire body trembled. “Carl,” Donut said, her voice soft. “Did you see who it was, when the curtain opened?”

Fucking ferdinad