Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book five The Butcher's Masquerade chapters five, six, seven, eight,
But but them, Sorry, guys, I just got away from
me for a second. In these chapters, for once, Carl's
plan wasn't great. He really overestimated himself this time. There
are plenty of times where his plans haven't worked out,
shit's happened, But this is the first.
Speaker 2: Time that I was like, really, dude, come now. Welcome
to spoil Me.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very much to Jackie for commissioning this episode. The saraph
EM's got a comment here in the chat. This opening
bit summed up, get out there and kill kill kill Wait, no,
not them. The thing is, though, it seems like they
want them to do this because of the thing with
the hands, so I can't even say that. It's like
they go wait, not them, because they seem to be
fine with it. Michael says, imagine being donut. She thinks
she's in for a nice day of relaxing grinding, and
she suddenly dragged smack dab into the middle of a
thousand hunters who want to kill her, and like, this
is exactly what I was so worried about last episode, guys,
when I said, I love that she's willing to trust Carl,
no questions asked, and I'm really worried that this is
going to result in him losing the trust. And it
literally she says, I am never doing one of your
plans again until you explain to me what it's about
to be that goes down. And I'm not mad at
her for that, For the record, she is right to
react this way. It just makes me really sad because
I loved that that was their relationship and it's so
it's like it just sucks to.
Speaker 2: Me that it's over already.
Speaker 1: You know, I just didn't want this for them. So
let's just start at the beginning. So chapter five we
get an opening, and that's like pretty much been the
theme in the past couple books is that the chapter
opens with like an entry from a crawler in the cookbook.
I think it's sort of interesting that what we're getting
into now is a little bit.
Speaker 2: More of.
Speaker 1: Uncertain and t where there's a mention of like they
say that these are all the same floor, but it
seems like that can't be true because folks previously have
mentioned such and such, and we don't have those here.
Speaker 2: There's always.
Speaker 1: Points in the entries where they're like, things may vary,
you know, your results may vary. But this is the
first time that it's like we're being told a thing
that is untrue. And I find that pretty interesting personally,
just because why would they lie about it. This is
not my saying I don't believe you, because why would
they lie about it. I believe you, but I don't
understand why they would lie about it.
Speaker 2: Both of those things.
Speaker 1: It just feels like, what advantage do they get by
pretending it's the same floor design every time? And I
can't think of what it could be. I really can't.
I I don't know, I don't know. I'm not coming
up with anything. So that has got my attention a
little bit. And he mentions that the political landscape is
the same, and that like the general setup is often similar,
but it's just that they're details that are very different.
And he mentions Elves and also Naiads and how both
of them fucking suck and if you approach them.
Speaker 2: They will attack.
Speaker 1: They don't give a shit, and that you know, it's
like a sort of free for all with them, so
it is advised to.
Speaker 2: Leave them the fuck alone.
Speaker 1: And the idea of like, well, these things are as
bad as each other.
Speaker 2: Why do I feel like our guys are.
Speaker 1: Going to make the fucking Naiads and or Elves the
center of some plan at some point? There's just something
about this warning that had me personally going, ah, jeez,
oh boy, what is that? What are we gonna do?
I just I got a bad feeling about this. Michael says,
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I
appreciate Matt being willing to put in characters who are
more competent than Carl. Too many series in this genre
feel the need to slabber all over their main characters
as the greatest genius ever. I'm so sorry. It took
me a moment to understand what Michael meant by slabber
all over and I get that now. You mean like
they suck their main characteristick, which is very funny considering
Carl tell somebody to suck a stick this chapter. Michael
also says Miriam Dom and Pony are really, really good,
and I agree, Michael, this is something that I'm not
sure sure if I meant to agree with them on
this or not, But for the record, there comes a
point in these chapters where Carl is like, it became
clear to me that we needed to get away from
these weirdos as soon as possible. And I was very
much like, they're just as weird as you and donut
like there's a weird dynamic here for sure, but there's
nothing about them that made me feel like you aren't
safe with them or they don't have your back. So
for me, their weirdness was extremely uninteresting and very secondary
to their competence and their abilities and all of that.
And the fact that Carl was just like, well, we
need to get away from these guys. I was like, Carl,
all the thing is considered for somebody who is as
bonkers as you are, you've got a really low threshold
for weirdness in other people. Like it just felt weird
to me, how because he was like this with them
last time. This is not an isolated reaction for him.
He just has a very extreme sort of revulsion from
all of them. Like there's Miriam at one point smiles
at him, and he had been having that like warm
feeling of Mom's here to save me kind of, you know,
and then she smiles and reveals her teeth and he
is repulsed by her, and I just kind of wanted
to be like, Bro, they did this to her, though,
you are being framed in a way that isn't fair
on all of the wrap ups, because they have an
agenda in making you not appeal to certain crawlers as
like somebody that they want to cooperate with. This is
a thing that they do on purpose.
Speaker 2: And I just.
Speaker 1: Felt like the fact that he reacted so strongly to
her teeth with like, this isn't something that she wanted.
This isn't something that is like a race that she chose,
and she only drinks blood from things that Prepotente has
already killed because she clearly like just feels a way.
Speaker 2: About having to do this.
Speaker 1: I just didn't understand the intensity of his reaction to
them overall, and I know that I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'm sorry, but since Michael brought up Miriam and Prepotente,
I just like there's just something about how harsh Carl
is toward them that I was genuinely puzzled by, because
they feel like really good allies to have and they
have like been there more more than once for you.
And as is said later when he gets in this
stupid argument with prepotente A, Miriam's like that wasn't very nice, Carl.
We did save your life, and she was like dead right,
you know, I I don't know. There's just Karl occasionally
will have priorities in who he deems like cool to
hang out with or rely on that I don't really
understand because I thought it was going to be about
competence and variety of abilities and whether or not they
are decent people who want to do the right thing,
and these guys check all those boxes to me. So
it's weird, you know it Just like I don't even
know if I want to say that it's out of
character exactly, because a part of me kind of wants
to say it feels out of character, but he has
done it consistently enough that it doesn't actually seem out
of character. It's just more a strange aspect of his
character that they don't really understand. Sarah him says, maybe
he just has an issue with goats, but yeah, this
is Carl being a bit of a dumb dumb Michael says,
maybe related to what he said about Lee, Nah, he
recognized how driven incompetent she was, but he didn't think
they could party together because they drive each other to
murder the other. Maybe maybe that's what he meant about,
just like we have to get away from these guys
or else I'm gonna kill them.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's that simple.
Speaker 1: It just it felt much more like a judgment on
their personality, like that they aren't safe. And maybe I'm
just like reading that into what he said and that's
not really what he meant. That's definitely possible, So okay, sorry, sorry, sorry,
let's back up. Donut as we arrive in the city
is just like what the fuck is going on? And
again Carl is like not telling her. I really, look,
I get that part of what's happening here is that
the way that they monitor the plans that the Crawlers have,
Carl feels like he can't tell Donut because there's a
possibility that he will be stopped, that zeb will get involved,
that they'll tell him you can't do this, you know.
So it's it's that there is like this difficulty in
communication that means that they have to work in such
a way that they don't talk out loud to each
other about it. I maintain though, that if he had
really prioritized it, he could have figured it out. They
have that whiteboard on the inside of the bathroom. He
could have gotten Donut more on board with this plan,
and frankly her like, I feel like if she had known,
there's a possibility things might have gone more smoothly somehow,
you know. But I just it bothers me that he
decided it felt it felt more like he was using
the fact that it's difficult to communicate to make an
excuse for not communicating, rather than that actually being a
valid reason. It felt like he just didn't want to
be bothered and kind of just wanted to do what
he wanted to do. And she deserves a lot better
than that. Especially, I will remind you all, bitch is
low level at this point, Like she is not in
a place where he should be excluding her from the
plan and just dragging her along as an accessory for
somebody who has repeatedly mentioned how low level she is
and that it concerns him. He's not acting like it
concerns him. He's just not you know. It bothers me
a lot that he keeps claiming this is something that
they need to work on, but also continues to treat
her like a child. Really, either this is a priority
that you really feel like you need to work on,
or you don't, and it feels like you must not.
It feels like that can't be of interest to you
if this is still the way that you're behaving with her.
So I just think that, Look, I'm just gonna say it,
donuts low levels are partially Carl's fault. That's just a fact.
And I'm not saying they're all his fault. I'm not,
but they're partially his fault. And the plans that they
come up with often do not seem to involve utilizing
her particular skill set in a way that might be like,
she has her charisma at this bonker's level, and perhaps
there was a way that we could have utilized that
in this mix somehow, you know, But instead it just
sort of feels like she didn't even have a job
to do here. I correct me if I'm wrong, guys,
but it seemed like he came in, he had his
whole plan, and he was just sort of relying on
her as a backup for defense. But she didn't really
like the one role is within the move of Predator
where they both go invisible and she uses her feet
her heat vision goggles.
Speaker 2: But other than that.
Speaker 1: It was very much like he even says, if things
go bad, just go down the stairwell to the next floor.
That's really shitty, bro, that you would put her in
the position where if this plan that you didn't inform
her of goes left, she has to skip this whole
floor and go to the next one without having gotten
to level up or do anything before arriving there, and
you're putting her in that spot where these are her
only options. I just think that's kind of like remarkably shitty,
and it just I will say, there was a moment,
you guys after the episode, the podcast episode, after I
wrapped on recording it, and I was thinking about what
is it that Carl could possibly be wanting to go
to this city for, and he asks specifically like, go
take me to the stairwell.
Speaker 2: In this city.
Speaker 1: I was almost wondering, is he just trying to get
to the stairwell to skip the floor entirely, which would
have been fascinating to do as a storytelling exercise, you know,
we're expecting that this floor there's going to be a
whole bunch of stuff that goes down, that the story
is going to go a certain way, and then maybe
we just skip it entirely. I don't think that's necessarily
like a good idea, but it would certainly be fascinating
and there's a lot of potential within that, you know.
But it's a very different thing for him to put
Dona in the position where she would be the only
one doing that and possibly either leaving Carl to die
or leaving Carl on this floor alone leveling up and
doing a bunch of stuff. He's already i think, more
than ten.
Speaker 2: Levels ahead of her.
Speaker 1: You know. It just it just bugged me, man. I
just did not like any of this. It's really the
first time that one of his plans, from like top
to bottom. I felt like I was just crossing my
arms and staring at him, like, this is your big idea?
Are you fucking serious? And it's not like nothing in
this plan works out. It does somewhat still work out.
So I'm not trying to say that this was a
complete disaster, but it would have been had they not
been rescued.
Speaker 2: He would have died.
Speaker 1: I don't know what would have happened to Donut, because
it seems like they were far enough away from the
stairwell at that point that I don't know she could
have gotten there in time.
Speaker 2: So even the fact.
Speaker 1: That it worked out seems like it was low key,
not because of his plan.
Speaker 2: It was despite his plan, and.
Speaker 1: Just the I'm not used to having this kind of
like doubt for me in his mind, or in.
Speaker 2: Carl's mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I expect that he has thought things
through to a good degree, and it just seemed like
that had not happened here at all. And I don't
really know what to blame for that. If it's just
that he's getting he's letting himself get so angry that
that's sort of overriding his better judgment or what, you
know what I'm saying, I don't know. Michael says Donut
would have just joined Katya. No, Michael, I mean that
Donut wouldn't have lived if they hadn't been rescued and
Carl got taken out. I don't think Donut would have
made it to either the the stairwell down or out
of there right then.
Speaker 2: Maybe she would, but like they were in a really
bad spot. Man.
Speaker 1: You know, I just I am not impressed, Carl. That's
what it comes down to. I am not impressed. So
and the whole plan is basically that he wants to
sneak in and set some bombs up. They are going
to be like, He's going to be able to detonate
those when he needs so he thinks he does not
count on the interaction of other people in the environment
with the bombs that he has to leave unattended, which
it turns out lowers their stability significantly and makes them
liable to go off at a time that is not ideal. Also,
what Carl does not bet on is that there are
going to be traps everywhere. It's really kind of like
obvious when you stop and think about it. Of course,
all of these hunters are going to be aware that
they're going to be crawlers who try and come at them,
So of course they have traps in place around like
the main city where all of them hang out where
they are drunk and completely have their guard down like
of course, you know, but it doesn't occur to Carl,
and he isn't good at adapting. Once he realizes that
the traps are in place. Later on, they are fleeing
and he winds up running right into one of the traps,
and despite having that ability that warns him, he's going
too fast and he's not able to stop, so they
set one off right away. And this is the sort
of thing that it's just like he just got a
little too cocky and really seemed to think that he
knew every bit of how this all was going to
go down and didn't like consider how the people who
have done this, probably many times, these hunters, how they
would be prepared for exactly the kind of assault that
he's attempting to pull off here. Seraphim says, I do
think it's mostly him just focus on focusing so much
on hurt the people who are trying to kill us
that he's overlooking a lot else, And I agree Seraphim.
Michael says, they were already out out of the city right.
If I recall, Carl collapsed once they got outside. He collapsed,
but they were like people converging on them, so like
it it could he they were not in the city proper,
but like if it maybe maybe she would have been fine.
I don't know. It just feels like considering how close
they came.
Speaker 2: It just it is.
Speaker 1: Whether or not she would have survived in the end
is sort of a moot point in just that it
would have been very bad for her, and he just
doesn't seem to really care. Yeah, Michael says he was
very lucky. The trap he set off was an alarm
trap and not one of the immobilization ones. The people
converging on them were Miriam Domin prepotente, right, that's what
I remember. Well, there was somebody firing on him with
bolts that was like under an invisibility spell. And I
can't recall if once they leave, once they get outside
of the city limits, is that person not able to
pursue them further or I don't remember exactly how that works.
But anyway, so he sets this up and what he has,
what he decides to do is he wears the Ring
of Divine Suffering, which I genuinely was a little startled by.
I don't know about you guys, but I I didn't
think that his plan was going to involve that ring as.
Speaker 2: The first step.
Speaker 1: I was expecting if he ever had to use this,
that it was going to be something he got pushed
to and did against his own better judgment, knowing that
it was maybe a mistake, but that he was in
a really desperate spot, sort of like with the Gate
of the Pharaoh Gods, where it's just like I have
it if I absolutely must, I'd rather not, and so
I will mostly discount that as an option unless there's
not a better way to do this. But instead the
whole plan revolves, it seems, around him wearing this ring
to begin with. So, okay, everybody's telling me that the
hunters can't leave the city yet, and I think that
there's because like when Karl gets out of the city
and looks back, he can't see them, and he can't
see the road or anything. So I guess because what
I was thinking is if somebody is firing on them
with crossbow bolts, that they could keep firing on them
even after they have left the city.
Speaker 2: But I guess that's not.
Speaker 1: Their vision is occluded the same way that Carls is,
and they can't see outside the city to shoot him either.
Speaker 2: So okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So he uses the ring, and the way that it
works is that you mark somebody for death, and until
they are finally killed, you suffer a d buff and
there is a foot like a toe ring that he
got as a prize earlier on that uh does a
it's a super spreader.
Speaker 2: So what he.
Speaker 1: Does is puts on the ring marks somebody gets the
de buff and then uses the ring or uses the
toe ring. I'm having to really differentiate between my rings here,
so that when somebody comes and attempts to attack him,
he kicks them, hits them with the de buff and
that will, in his original plan, spread to a lot
of different people, right, and unfortunately there's only one person
who gets.
Speaker 2: Hit with it.
Speaker 1: My assumption is that the super spreader thing, it infects
them with the same version of it as him. So
once he kills this guy, their de buff also goes away.
Speaker 2: And there's just a lot.
Speaker 1: About Carl in this scene that's really unnerving.
Speaker 2: The way that he taunts this dude about like you
want to know a secret, your.
Speaker 1: Bait, The gleefulness of it, it was really upsetting. And
I'm not saying that Carl hasn't got the right to
be angry or to do all of this.
Speaker 2: I'm not arguing.
Speaker 1: That it's simply the excitement he seems to feel about
it is. It's just extremely creepy like I wasn't ready
for the joy of it that he is clearly feeling,
and it's it's again one of those things where.
Speaker 2: It's like that is not.
Speaker 1: Unreasonable when people have done to you what they have done,
and these folks are here to treat it like a vacation.
They are here for the fun of killing you, guys,
actually killing you. That is a really really it's the
kind of thing where it's difficult for me to even
wrap my mind around how I would feel about people
doing that, because it is so monstrous that I can't
even fully comprehend it. And thus, again I am trying
not to police how Carl is feeling. However, I can't
help my reaction to it, and I was a little
revolted by it. If I'm being honest, it may just
be kind of.
Speaker 2: An issue that I have to deal with.
Speaker 1: That like, if you are trying to take down an enemy,
doing that is going to involve no small measure of
satisfaction in certain ways, you know, and that the people
that you are partnered up with to do this sort
of thing might take more pleasure in it than you do.
But it's hard to see it coming from a person
who has for the most part, it feels like been
so guarded that when he has let that down in
this scene and just like is jubilant at killing these people,
it's jarring to see. This is the first time that
he's going up against folks that he considers complicit in
all of this. Everybody else that he's gone up against,
the only exception being Loita, who doesn't care out because
she wasn't in the game. She was an appendage of
the game, and him taking her out like there was
a particular satisfaction because of the way that she was going.
She was fucking with him and Doughnut specifically, she was
party to the torture of Zev's family that was really
really personal in a way that being jubilant at her
death felt like I got it and I was one
hundred percent there with.
Speaker 2: Him and behind it.
Speaker 1: With these people, it's there's still one hundred percent complicit,
but it's it's an indirect sort of thing in certain ways.
So the vibe of him going at them with this
energy is really different.
Speaker 2: And again.
Speaker 1: That indirectness is very temporary because soon these people are
going to be explicitly going after Crawl, So right now,
coming at them, this way.
Speaker 2: There's just a part.
Speaker 1: Of me that's sort of like, oh, this feels really icky,
but is it?
Speaker 2: Is it? It's really not. You're doing what the game.
Speaker 1: And this is the argument that he has with himself later,
where he's like, I am playing the game as they
built it and set it up. I am doing the
thing according to all of their rules. And if they
feel a way about it, then they had better go
in and change those rules, which they will do probably
in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: But it just it.
Speaker 1: There are certain things that I think many of us
in this day and age are trained to clutch our
pearls over and I like to interrogate that reaction because
I think in many cases we have been trained to
clutch our pearls so as to discourage any rebellion or
revolt of any kind. It is a tool of the
oppressor to have us like be like, you shouldn't be violent,
Yes you should. Any revolution that succeeded like it was
a result of violence, with the exception of like one,
and it is held up often as like proof despite
it being objectively an outlier. So when I have this
response to Carl and I'm just like, yikes, dude, I
really do like to step back and be like, why
why am I feeling this way right now? Is this
even valid? Then I'm reacting like this, Like do I have.
Speaker 2: The right to react like this?
Speaker 1: You know? And honestly, I don't think I do. I
don't think I do.
Speaker 2: I think what Carl is.
Speaker 1: Doing is right and his reaction is fair. It's just
it turns my stomach a little bit.
Speaker 2: It just does.
Speaker 1: And probably were I in his shoes, it would not
at all anymore. If I were any crawler, I would
probably be fucking fist pumping right along with him and
loving him, taunting them and all of that. I think
it's just really hard for me because we have dealt
with so many other characters that he has been up
against earlier in these books. It's just hard for me
to differentiate that these aren't NPCs, these aren't victims. They
are part of the regime doing.
Speaker 2: This to crawlers.
Speaker 1: And so I think I'm having difficulty making that switch
in my mind and not seeing what he's doing as cruelty.
It's justice in response to you know. So I think
that's kind of just where my hang up is. Is
like we've literally never encountered any of the people who
are part of the party in power here in the game.
And so I'm having just a bit of like a
stumbling block to processing what all this means and the
fact that these people are like genuinely dying. This is
not an in game dying. This is dying dying.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's the.
Speaker 1: Whole way that like this winds up going down is
it's in combination with the traps that he was not
prepared for, and the there are spells that are going
off obviously in response to him and donuts presence, like
people are tracking them, and I thought that was particularly interesting.
This is evidence of the fact that somebody is sharing
outside information, just as he complained, and he complains loudly
and often, as he puts it. Later on we find
out that he talked about this with his lawyer and
they wind up getting rid of the h being able
to see the chat because probably it was just way
too easy for people to share information and cheat using that.
And but there's still of course going to be other
ways to cheat and share information, and you know, fuck
somebody's entire time up. So yeah, there's no way that
anybody should know they're here, know to cast this spell.
To find them, but they do somehow, and that's also
something that really winds up like eating into the time
that he had planned on being able to utilize here,
because the point is to get this one guy, use
him as bait, and then get everybody coming at him,
because his goal was to find the mayor and take
that person down and then he would be the mayor,
which not a terrible idea in theory, it's just the
plan itself on how to accomplish this is just really
not thought out well. And the way that it works
as well, with like the safe room and the personal space.
Speaker 2: There's like one bar. This strip is.
Speaker 1: Filled with pubs and stuff, but there's only one that's
a proper safe room, so they have to flee there
when the bomb goes off, and the doors to the
personal spaces are like in a hallway of that bar,
so the hunters could in theory just like camp out
outside the door of their personal space and wait for them.
So they can't just go hide out. They have to
go in to escape the bomb blast and then immediately
leave again and relocate to somewhere else where the hunters
can't find them, which hadn't.
Speaker 2: Occurred to me.
Speaker 1: I really kind of thought, Oh right, they can just
flee to their personal space. That's nice forgetting that there's
like a physical door that exists that people can come
knock on, you know. Yeah, it's a real moment when
they flee in there and Donut mentions the city name,
I can't remember it, and Mordecai is just like, wait,
we areware and loses his entire tiny little mind. So
when they flee is when Carl winds up setting off
a trap because he's running too fast to catch it
with his ability, and somebody it's him.
Speaker 2: With a crossbow bolt.
Speaker 1: They are using an invisibility spell, and when they hit him,
that bolt has a spell on it that slowly drains
his health and also leaves a trail behind him of blood.
Speaker 2: It makes it so that.
Speaker 1: Even if his health goes back up briefly, it just
continues to drop back down again, and the trail of
blood will make him easily trackable, which at this moment
isn't super helpful to them because they can't leave the city.
But nevertheless, and they wind up getting rescued by Prepotente
and Miriam because they once again interrupted a fucking spell
that these guys were working on, but Prepotente is the
one who's pissed about it. Miriam is really like it
wasn't going to work anyway. Somebody was already noticing and
and intervening, and I think that we were going to
have to split any second as it is. So, Yes,
it's annoying that you interrupted a spell again, but it's
really not a big deal actually in the end.
Speaker 2: And I'm trying to jump ahead to this point. Sorry, guys, I.
Speaker 1: Forgot how to stop doughnut sweetie, do not touch the bolts.
Oh my, that is a lot of de buffs. I
will help, he will be okay. We are safe here,
trust me. Somebody screamed, which is of course Prepotente. Chapter
six opens with the the entry about the mercenaries and
that they are there are so many like appendages to
the contract and so many like rules about where they
can be located and not that it makes working with
them almost not really worth it. And I found this
compelling in light of the fact that we have our
mercenaries now that work with us, that we don't have
to deal with those particular difficulties with necessarily, at least
when it comes to like payment and stuff. But there
are certain ways that they function that I'm like, I
don't know if that.
Speaker 2: So let's see.
Speaker 1: If they die, you can't loot their bodies, and our
contract stipulates you have to pay their daily rate for
the rest of the floor, which is kind of bogers. Second,
it's easy to lose them. If they leave with me,
it's fine, the door opens and we walk out together.
Otherwise it automatically defaults to the last place they entered,
as if they were a regular crawler. So if they're
not right there with you when you exit, they could
end up three or four safe rooms away. One of
our guys left and never came back. He's still alive
and I can see him in the chat. But the
prick is just wandering around some town having a good
old time. And I can't even fire him because you
have to bring them back with you to let them go. Oh, plus,
their levels mean next to nothing. My forty orc is
a better fighter than my fifty dwarf who is now dead.
By the way, twenty two more days at fifteen hundred
gold a day.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is a scam.
Speaker 1: I have to agree.
Speaker 2: That's bonkers.
Speaker 1: Like this is very much we are pretending that this
is an advantage to you so that we can continually.
Speaker 2: Rip you off.
Speaker 1: And as we see a little bit later with the
way that they have changed up how big your party
can be and this guild thing. Every time the Crawlers
begin to figure out a way to have some sort
of advantage, they find a way to take it and
make it so that you have to pay for it,
which is also exactly how things always work. We can't
have people outsmarting the system. The system will always adapt
to capitalize on whatever it is and exploit it, you know.
So let's see him trying to find the spot where
him and Prepotente get in this argument. Oh and there's
a moment where he's looking at Bianca, the goat that's
gotten to the size of a cart horse, and it
gets bigger and bigger every time it levels up until
it reaches level fifty. Eventually it will grow wings, It
will be scary as shit. It will also be one
of the most powerful badass pets available within Dungeon Crawler world.
And Doughnuts like they make her sound mean, but she's
sweet and I really wouldn't mind spending a little more
time with Bianca. I think she seemed kind of dope.
Speaker 2: But and.
Speaker 1: Let's see new achievement. You cross the line you didn't
even know what was there. You used an artifact of
divine suffering for the first time. Hopefully there aren't any
unintended and unadvertised side effects of using such a powerful
and eas magical item. Which when Dona is telling Carl
how mad Mordecai is that he used this, she says,
Mordecai has mentioned that it is addictive somehow, and I
don't remember if that was mentioned before. I think it was,
but I can't fully remember. And Carl is just really
not taking that seriously enough in my opinion. I get
that it's just like extremely inconvenient to his plans and everything,
and that sucks. But I don't know if you think
you're going to be able to outsmart the results of
this device, Carl. I don't think it works that way.
I don't think that this is like a willpower thing.
I think that they do something physically, probably to your
body chemistry, like heroin does, and I am concerned about it.
And there is a whole thing later with this, like
sound in the back of his mind that he acknowledges
having been there. His whole life basically that I was
sort of, hey, what's that about, buddy, And it's just
he like barely looks at it before turning away, you know,
it's just barely mentioned and then.
Speaker 2: Sort of yikes.
Speaker 1: And there's also a moment when he's sort of like,
I can't remember if it's here when he's down and
trying to like wake wake up, or if it's later,
but he has a sudden memory of like going into
the basement on his birthday that day and finding his mom.
So we knew that she had killed herself, but I
don't think I realized that, like she had killed herself
and he had found her. Everything about his story gets
worse and worse, y'all. And it's like just the fact
that it's on his birthday as well, like why it
what you thought this was like good for him, ma'am?
Speaker 2: Did you really? Did you really?
Speaker 1: Or did you just want out and told yourself what
you needed to tell yourself to make it so that
you weren't inflicting hideous trauma on your son, Because it
feels to me like it's more that second.
Speaker 2: One more than likely. But yikes.
Speaker 1: So here here's the achievement that I did really like
the delivery from the audiobook narrator, You've permanently killed a
non crawler biological. They ain't just dead, they dead dead
their children and are now orphans. Their mothers are gnashing
their teeth and cursing your name, and you're just sitting
there all alive and shit and girlfriend, I am all in.
Speaker 2: That was pretty good. That was pretty good. It's rare
that the AI gets me to like genuinely laugh, and
that one got me. So yeah. A lot of the.
Speaker 1: Like achievements are just about how many people he has
just killed, the volume of people, you know, all of that.
He finds out about how many were NPCs, and that
was more than two hundred, and he's like, it doesn't
bother me, and that's probably fucked up that it doesn't
bother me, But I genuinely believe that these NPCs are
better off dead, so, you know, like it is what
it is, and he thinks, this isn't on me.
Speaker 2: They started this.
Speaker 1: These are their rules their game, which I find interesting
that he's like, they started it, and later when he's
arguing with Prepotente, he says something about how like, well
he started it, and then immediately is like I sound
like such a little shit. Is that what we're like
kind of trying to say here that it's is saying, yeah,
well they started it justifying all this. I mean, it
would be one thing if you were targeting people at
pubs in the real world who are just living their lives.
These people are here to kill crawlers explicitly though, So
I feel like it's like that those things don't really
compare to each other, and maybe the author didn't mean
to compare them, and it's just a coincidence that those
things sounded so alike to me. But I just wanted
to acknowledge it because it got my attention a little bit. Uh. So,
let's see Zev chimes in here and is saying that
their numbers are crazy right now, and she says there
will be additional security protocols put into place before you're transferred.
Speaker 2: This was not my doing, and.
Speaker 1: It applies to all crawlers. As long as you're not
attempting to assassinate me or a member of Odette staff,
you shouldn't have to worry. Also, I'm being asked to
tell you ventions of the Daughter is still active and
that you shouldn't participate with other elites. You figure out
a way around it if you make a good faith
effort to extricate yourself. I don't see it being an issue.
And they talk a little bit about the shows that
they go on with Miriam, and she goes on something
called Plenty of Plenty. Pony doesn't do too well on
these programs, but he's okay when there are other goats around.
Pony likes it because they allow his brothers and sisters
to come out, and they have new plants for them
to try each time. The last time they had no treats.
I find the program a bit unsettling, but it helps
Pony relax. I have ten unaltered boers and pet carriers
in my inventory, and I thought in the audiobook that
she said bores, But I'm realizing like this, looking at this,
it's spelled brs And when I am looking it up,
I'm getting Dutch and Huguenot population that settled in Southern
Africa in the late nineteenth century. I feel like, that's
not what this author meant.
Speaker 2: So if anybody wants.
Speaker 1: To inform me what that means, let me know. But
she says it's unsafe, and so she keeps them in
pet carriers all the time until they get into like
their personal spaces.
Speaker 2: So this is the.
Speaker 1: Point where him and prepotentai in an argument. He sets
off all the traps in one shot, which, uh, it
just lets them know where traps are, but it doesn't
actually like disarm the traps, as we know from the.
Speaker 2: Description of it.
Speaker 1: And after they get in this argument, Miriam insists that
they like hug and make up, and Prepatente is one
down to do this and actually comes up and hugs
Carl and then afterwards behaves like.
Speaker 2: They are besties.
Speaker 1: And I really love this a lot, guys. I love
that Prepitente has the abilities of like a two hundred
year old age but apparently like the emotional capacity of a.
Speaker 2: Six year old.
Speaker 1: It's just such a weird cas and that he like
obviously looks at Miriam as mommy in a very literal way.
Speaker 2: It's just very funny to me.
Speaker 1: And you know, done up being in his chat being
like you better hugim more else you're gonna look like
real asshole.
Speaker 2: She's not wrong, So.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I'm trying to get to the because there's
like all kinds of stuff to talk about that I
I could.
Speaker 2: Spend a bunch of time.
Speaker 1: They wind up in a safe room that's actually a
Whata Burger, which, uh water burger is good, but it's
wildly overrated. It's one of those things that like it's
talked about.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, you gotta go, man, but if you go, you.
Speaker 1: Are going to be kind of like, I mean, it's good.
Speaker 2: I guess it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's not earth shattering by any means.
Speaker 2: It's just like.
Speaker 1: Just different and mostly not that different. But I understand
whenever you hear about a place that's like familiar, being
in one of the safe rooms, that you'd instantly go,
oh my god, get me blanklyink blank you know.
Speaker 2: And there's a.
Speaker 1: Conversation between because like Katya has come back and she
has brought Lewis and for Us with her, and they
talk about like him getting engaged. Chris and Clayton were
not there. Katya said they were outside in the bar
waiting on Team Metal Luck, who was still making their
way to the town. And when Donut is heading to
the bathroom, she's like stopping Mordecai and she says, look,
we all know what you're gonna say. I've told Carline
pissed and I just want to get this out of
the way. Yeah that was fucking idiotic, and yeah it
was suicidal. I'm not abandoning him. Yes, he's gonna tell
me the plans from now on. We are not going
to split up or have some storyline where we.
Speaker 2: Have to get back together.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna have to get over it. So don't
say you don't know what you're dealing with. And I
did enjoy this very much. So then we go to
chapter eight where Carl is realizing that he this is
the part where he's talking about this thing in his mind.
So I'd run out of books to read. I needed
a new outlet. But more importantly, I needed to rest,
not sleep, rest, like really rest. Most of the time
while I was idle, I was actually writing in my
third scratch pad, composing thoughts for the cookbook. It just
dawned on me that I was spending every free moment working.
Even when I was playing Frogger. I was really just
on autopilot and writing stream of consciousness words straight into
the draft section of the scratch pad, planning scenarios, theories,
recreating others, recipes and comments from memory as an exercise
to make sure I could recall them. My brain was
always working, turning everything over and over, which is frankly
also how I am. It's just when I heard that
there are people whose brains can like kind of just
go into idle mode, I was astonished because I just
never thought that was something anybody could do. I thought
everybody was like I am. And it turns out like
there are plenty of people out there who are like
I am. I'm not alone in that. But I just
thought this was like just how it is, and evidently not.
I am very jealous. Recently, I'd been noticing something hidden
in the back of my mind. It was difficult to explain,
almost like there was a bubbling, meandering stream hidden back
there in the weeds of my brain, nestled deep deep down.
It had always been there, which meant I was so
used to the quiet murmur of the stream I never
noticed it. But recently that sound was starting to get louder.
Only it wasn't a sound, not really. It wasn't even
a physical feeling, just a sense of flow, and that
sense was changing, rising in volume. It had gone up
just a hair but it was enough for me to
finally notice. I'd only found one way to mute. It
only when I was completely calm, fully at rest, when
we were in the heat of it all, like when
we'd been fleeing 's a cow. It was right there
the street getting louder. Okay, a lot to unpack.
Speaker 2: He is this.
Speaker 1: Rage because it feels like Carl has had a particularly
traumatic past that he has not really dealt with.
Speaker 2: It's possible that he.
Speaker 1: Has seen a therapist, but I don't feel like he's
ever mentioned it, so I'm going to assume no.
Speaker 2: I am genuinely like.
Speaker 1: Unsure the fact that being calm makes that sound kind
of die down. What I find so unnerving about this
is how relatable it is because I had this conversation
recently on a True Blood episode with my friend Miles.
Speaker 2: But like we were talking about how.
Speaker 1: One of the things that aids with having ADHD and
this overactive mind is complete silence and lack of simulation.
Not listening to music, not listening to a podcast, not
reading a book, not having a game to play, just
sitting and maybe eating a meal, sipping on a cup
of tea, or just sitting in the yard looking at
the clouds and the trees. And that's all. But how
particularly difficult that is to make yourself do because you
have ADHD. That's the thing, the very thing that's best
for you is also the thing that's the hardest to do.
And that being something that I understand with Carl. I
want to be like, oh, it's just something like that, right,
But like Carl's whole situation is so much more extreme
and exaggerated that I feel like it can't be just that.
Speaker 2: I don't know, and.
Speaker 1: Describing it as just like a bubbling stream makes it
sound not exactly really dangerous, just.
Speaker 2: Innocuous.
Speaker 1: But if something like that gets big enough and overflows,
it can be very dangerous. And I'm just not sure
how much to worry about this, you know what I'm saying.
And it's also interesting that this is coming up now
in book five, but he never mentions this.
Speaker 2: In other books.
Speaker 1: And if this isn't like kind of supposed to be
the result of the increase in anger, you know, because
that's the reason I kind of went for, is it rage?
This being the first floor that he can access hunters
and people who are complicit in what's being done to
him and everyone else on earth, that.
Speaker 2: Would make sense.
Speaker 1: That he feels a real particular way about it here
on this floor when there's something to be done about it.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to interpret this anyway. This is
when they open their boxes and every Hunter Killer box
has a hand in it, which at first Dona is
disgusted by, until the announcements come on later and talk
about the Butcher's masquerade and she now suddenly wants way
more of these hands. Carl winds up getting five hundred
and ninety five thousand gold from all of his boxes
because he gets thirty five one of them he didn't
earn here, but the AI is just like, yeah, but
you know you deserve that last one earlier.
Speaker 2: I just didn't give it to you then.
Speaker 1: And let's see, he gets a sigil of night Worm's
Nasty Little Web of Suffering, which is a spider web
tattoo on his elbow, which I noticed on the cover
and I was like, he didn't have that tattoo before,
so that must be something he gets in this book,
and it gives him access to the Guild of Suffering,
which is actually not a real guild and not a
real religion.
Speaker 2: It's just like this cult.
Speaker 1: So we don't get a lot of information on that,
and then we get a description of like turning in
arcade tickets. It's a very long thing that I actually
did really enjoy. But what it comes down to is
every hunter's hand that you get, you get to turn
in for like a reward at this party later. And
then we get the highlight and it sort of interrupted
because a part of it is redacted. But when they
come back, Murderer Dimitri or Max and Popov screamed on
the show. The screen was now showing things that had
happened at the very end of the Last Floor, and
it had returned in the middle of a scene the
two headed Crawler fought with another human I didn't recognize
in the final moments of the Last Floor. The guy
they fought was a big guy, leather clad with a
shaved head and a war gauntlet similar to my own.
They would have brained the guy, but they suddenly all
flew off their feet as a giant foot crashed into
their world and then jumped away, which he notices as
the demon Slit's foot. And unclear what exactly they were
fighting for in the first place, whether or not the
fight has ever been resolved, that's all we get. We
have Kacia flooding lorocos. It portrayed Kasia's stoic face at
what she'd done, and then it cut in a shot
of me laughing from some other time, which I thought
was particularly funny. This does not that seem to bother
Carl here, he's just sort of accepting that they're gonna
be doing this and is like, what can do well?
You know, And there's a mention here of the build
that Ellie is doing, called a four seasons build, which
Mordecai says has never been completed. People have gotten to three,
but not four, and he's just sort of interested to
see if she manages to make this happen. Finally, then
we get the leaderboard. Carl is still number one, Donna
is still number four. She is level forty one and
he is fifty four. So yeah, she's just crossed over
into the forties. We really need to get things going
for her. And then we get the announcements and the
description about the uh what do you call it? First
of all, getting rid of access to private chats. However,
Barrent reserves the right to take your conversations and play
them during any and all non live broadcasts. Party members
share certain quests and will share experience. All personal space
upgrades are shared. Party members may examine each other's properties,
but you know, and then they say, we're breaking up
any parties larger than thirty people. But we're implementing a
guild system. And I won't get into all of this,
but suffice to say there are tiers to how much
how many like different benefits will come to your guild
that you start. One person is supposed to be like
in charge and they can kick people out. There will
be guild only upgrades. Some of these are pretty spectacular,
so you'll definitely want to check it out. And I'm
super cure about that. For a small licensing fee, may
share most pre existing environmental upgrades, and there's an option
to change sharing experience for a fee. There are many
more rules and exciting upgrades. The BOB because will have
all the information you need to get started. And this
is like one of those things that just is another
advantage to people who can afford it. You know, it's
just anything, and none of this is necessarily based on
who deserves. It's who can pay, who has friends who
can pay, Just like now, it's just the way it
fucking goes and then at the end of this floor,
we'll be having a party. Isn't that exciting? Only the
top fifty crawlers in the dungeon will receive an invite,
but all invited crawlers will be able to bring a
plus one. Don't worry about your safety. Need to know
is there will be music, dancing, a costume contest, a
pet beauty contest, a talent show, and prize is available
to all who attend. And I really thought that it
was going to be Donut in the beauty contest, forgetting
that she is considered a crawler. So she is going
to enter mongo and is fucking thrilled. And I love
Carl starting to say Donut, we are not and don't
even think about saying we are not doing this.
Speaker 2: Donut.
Speaker 1: She paused, I have very little and this is something
we are going to do, and you are not going
to stop me. I just stared at her, look, I said,
trailing off, Mordecai, don't worry.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to her, will come up with a compromise.
Speaker 1: And so what Karl winds up saying is just we
won't even get to the party if you don't focus
right now.
Speaker 2: And she admits that this is true. But uh, I
just love of.
Speaker 1: How all of like she goes all in on. We
need to start training, We need an extra hour a day.
We need to find a seamstress, a walk coach. We
need to purchase the upgraded pet shower to get all
the bloodstains off. How many more MPCs can we hire?
We have to see the standards manual immediately, all of
this like she is so on it, and I can
feel how comforting it is to be like planning for
something that you've done a million times that you have
real experience with.
Speaker 2: I understand why.
Speaker 1: You would be like, oh, absolutely, we're doing this. Fucking
shut up and just let me drive just this one time.
You know, I'm not mad at it.
Speaker 2: Go for it, donnut.
Speaker 1: I don't trust this Butcher's masquerade thing. They say, oh,
you'll be safe. I don't know why I should believe
you at all. And then the chapter ends with I
could hear it again, that river in my mind, rushing, tumbling,
crash and getting fatter and louder by the moment it
was starting to hurt.
Speaker 2: Just a little.
Speaker 1: That was okay, I'd rest later. So like, is this
related to the ring of Divine suffering. Is it not
that the ring does something to you out of nowhere,
but that it amplifies something that's already in you? Possibly
just very worrying. Just don't like any of the implications here,
you know, thumbs down. I just don't like that you're
using it, Carl. I get why I do, but like,
I don't necessarily feel like it was really worth it
what it did just now, that advantage felt very minor,
and I don't know, man, it just I wouldn't be
willing to do it. I'll just say that I wouldn't,
but you know who the fuck am? I all right,
I gotta wrap up, But thank you guys again for
joining me, and thank you to Jackie for commissioning this episode.
I hope you all are enjoying the coverage, and until
next time.
Speaker 2: To the loom. Motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: That was an unspoiled network podcast.