Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book four Gate of the Farh Gods,
chapters thirty two and thirty three. In these chapters, there
is a secret plan and then there's the public plan,
and I don't know entirely what the secret plan is,
and there's apparently litigation surrounding it, and you, guys, I
want to know so bad. Welcome to spoil Me, Welcome
to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very
much to Michael for commissioning this episode. I am first
of all, guys. I had thought when I started listening
yesterday to this section that I was going to be
able to finish the book, and then looked at the
chart and realized I had one more episode, and I
was like, dah, there is so much like. This is
something that I'm actually a big fan of. There's a
couple of ways that you can do this. You know,
whenever you are going to have there be a surprise
in the final act of a story, you can have
it be that your audience knows the surprise is coming.
You can try and make the surprise like act like
there's not going to be a twist at all, or
you can give them a hint that a twist is
going to come and hope they forget it, which is
something that like Jim Butcher does a lot in The
Dress and Files. He'll have Harry on the phone with
some character off screen and just be hanging up when
somebody comes in, and that's your hint that he was
in touch with somebody before they go to the big showdown.
And so when eventually the cavalry arrives, you can think
back to, oh, he was getting off the phone with Karen.
I should have known he was setting something up with her,
but you just kind of gloss over it at the time.
If you're able to pull off the there's no twist,
I swear, and then you make a twist happen. If
you can do that, well it's great. I do really
like this though, where you are aware that there is
I don't want to say a twist because it doesn't
really count as a twist when the audience is aware
of it, but you know that what it looks like
isn't what's going to happen, And the author wants you
to know what they are saying isn't what's actually going
to happen, and then you get to try and like
spitball and come up with ideas about what that actually is.
I am going to be honest, kids, I thought about
this and the only thing that I can even think
about is sending all the NPCs onto that like ninth
or whatever floor the gate of the paralh gods will
open into. I don't know if that even is anything,
like you know what I'm saying, and other than that,
because it seems like what he's trying to do has
to do with other cross and from I believe the
whole what do you call it? A big part of
what they're doing that is potentially something that the game
runners could shut down but don't is rescuing everybody using
the actual gait itself. That is something that I it
didn't occur to me just because of drawing something out
of the nothing every time and just the you know,
then you pull a god in and it just becomes
such a complete clusterfuck. But it didn't really occur to
me that like, potentially it might still be worth it
if it's an avoidable situation. Depends on if it is,
can you guarantee that? And like as we see, there
are a lot of things that are dependent on one
another another, not just like within the bubble, where it
seems here in their bubble, if we had solved the
underground thing first, it would have been better for the
entire puzzle. But like the other bubbles are having things
happen in them that once the bubbles burst or once
the uh like if a god shows up in one
and is too big for it. There's one that had
filled with water, and these people solve it and the
bubble pops, and there are other folks who are like
on the ground near that bubble that wind up getting
drowned by the water that came out of a different bubble.
I just really want to register my profound irritation with
this being how it works. And this is part of
what's like so funny about the parallels between a game
like this and how life actually works, because it, like, folks,
it's almost impossible to do anything that isn't somehow affecting
other people in your life, especially if it's like on
a large scale. You know what I'm saying. And I
really really enjoy and I mean this in like a
I hate it actually kind of way, but the idea
that like, you're just minding your own business. You finish
your puzzle, you feel good about it, you are out,
it's done, hooray, maybe we can help somebody else. You're
out here altruistic, and then you get fucking killed, not
because somebody was coming after you, not because anybody decided
they were gonna kill a puppy and they don't care
about you, purely a side effect of them solving their puzzle,
and that kills you. This is like, it's such a complex,
weird thing, and globalization has definitely made this more of
a thing as well, where now everything is on such
a huge scale that the choices we make more directly.
It's always been that there's ripple effects to anything we do,
but it didn't used to be such a traceable, one
to one kind of cause and effect as it is now.
And it makes me think of like in the good Place,
how eventually somebody tries to get like a good score
on Earth by going down and just purchasing a tomato
to make a sandwich, and they accumulate all of these
negative points in just buying a tomato because the store
that they have to go to everybody is underpaid and
the people who harvested the tomato were being exploited, and
there's chemicals that are used on the tomato that we're
destroying the environment around the farm. There are so many
factors that negatively affect everything that you fucking can't help.
What are these people in the other bubble with the
water supposed to do? Not solve because they're going to
kill the other crawlers. Like, there's only so much much
that you have control over, and yet it doesn't change
feeling responsible for things. You know, that's the part that
makes me so sad. So all of it is just
like it's it's so deeply unfair, and it's also really
deeply relatable and understandable in a particular way. That's like
it just makes me sit back and think because you know,
it's the same question that always comes up, especially when
you have people who are acting in bad faith in
like comment sections where you say like, oh, hey, we
should improve you know, the working conditions for the kids
that are being forced to mind cobalt for our cell phones,
and then they're like, oh, but I bet you posted
this from your cell phone. Huh, Like it's a real
gotcha kind of question, and it's like, yeah, I participate
in the society that I would like to improve. Wow,
you really got me, you know, like, there's just this
sort of accusation that unless you are able to be
completely separate from it, you don't get to criticize it.
And it's asinine. It's so stupid. So anyway, oh my god,
Michael brings up the good place in the in the chat.
That's so funny. It was a buy a flower for
their grandmother. If I recall, says Michael. Okay, a guy
five hundred years ago got one hundred good points for
buying the flower. The modern day lost five points overall
because of all the complex crap of modern day economics.
There you go. Yeah, it's just the world functions differently
when we have the kinds of immediate communication and trade,
and you know, the United States interfering with the actual
governments of neighboring countries because they want cheap bananas, like,
it's fucking bonkers. I almost said it's bananas. Then I
realized that was a poor taste considering. But apologies everybody,
that was not on purpose. So anyway, yeah, this I'm
getting ahead of myself, as I do, but I just
it really was making me think of that. So chapter
thirty two, This is so interesting note by Kroller, Justice Light.
I made a mistake today. I killed an NPC. I
shouldn't have. We are strong people. The skyfowl of the
White Cliffs this is a skyfowl which is the same
race that Mordecai is. And it really got me like thinking,
does Mordecai was that always? His name? Is the name
he has here? Like his name or what? Is it
possible he could have written in this and we wouldn't
know it was him. We do not take insults without retribution.
He was a proprietor of a store selling trap supplies
in a large settlement here on the sixth floor. I
needed what he had, but he insulted me, so I
killed him. It let me take the item that was
on the shelf, but he had so much more. He
always said the items were in the back, but there
was nothing there. I think everything was in his inventory.
But it appears shopkeepers don't drop their full inventory if
you kill them. Now the town guards are after me,
and the shop, which was a good source of supplies
for me and many others, is just gone. And I
fear the whole operation is going to fail thanks to
my actions. It was the only trap shop on the
whole floor. This is something we should make note, we
should know and remain aware of. Do not make the
same mistake as me. Killing of these innocents should be
kept to a minimum unless absolutely necessary. It's honestly kind
of funny that he's like talking saying like, killing of
these innocence, the dude was already innocent. Just because he
insulted you, you decided to kill him, Like, that's you
being fucking bonkers. But it feels like he's not apologizing
for that part at all. He's just like, I wish
I had known what would happen, but not that I
have learned. Maybe I shouldn't just kill people because I've
been insulted. And I mean, I can see how when
you have a kind of value system that makes it
responding to an insult with murder is a reasonable response.
I don't think changing your mind on that is going
to be very easy, so, you know, fair. But I
just couldn't help but laugh a little bit at the
whole vibe of this, of it just being like, yeah,
we should really not do that to these innocents. Oh
you say now, okay? And the idea that like, the
storekeepers don't drop all their stuff. Of course they don't.
That would make it so easy to just completely deprive
everybody on the floor of everything while taking it all
for yourself. Like that would just break the game if
it was possible to do that, So I would never
have expected that to be possible. I also wonder if
this person got like tracked down, did other folks know
they were responsible for murdering the shopkeeper and thus the
deprivation of everybody else of these traps, and were they
kind of like, oh, we need to get this guy
for doing this. There are some folks I think that
would have that attitude, but it doesn't really help them
in like, in the end, taking down the dude who
killed the shopkeeper doesn't bring the shopkeeper back to life
and make their inventory available again. So I think that
a lot of folks would just kind of be like,
what a fun idiot, and like keep it moving, which
I think is likely the best attitude to have. But
I wouldn't be surprised if he had wound up with
some more enemies by the end of that day than
he had expected. So, oh god, sorry, guys, I just
heard something and I think one of my cats knocked
something over. It just sounded very loud. So let's see
surrenderl Gore. He's gone. The world is still too hot.
Everything melted. One of us can fly, and she's going
out there to put the last crystal in place, which
will pop the bubble. We're going to have to go
down the stairs right after. Thanks for the Platinum box too.
I got an upgrade for my flamethrower. A guy in
my group got a Tomb of Heel party. Everyone is
getting good stuff. So even though they're not able to
directly go in and like help them, they are helping.
But this has resulted in something that can be advantageous
to them, which is really nice. Carl, meanwhile, is he
has these tattoos on the backs of his hands that
are one is a sun with like straight pointy triangle rays,
and the others rays are like wavy. I'm really curious
about what that means, if like the straight rays are
just regular sunlay and the wavy rays are more intense
sunlight or vice versa, if there's like any real meaning
to those at all, or what. But Mordecai, it turns out,
knows right away that he has begun to worship a
god because a shrine appears in their space, which turns
out to be very handy because he's going to have
to make a sacrifice of a drop of blood every day,
and if he can't get to like a proper shrine
on the floor, he can do it from there. Which
I've got to admit the idea that it's like you've
got something right within your where you sleep, right near you.
I just see this being a pretty easy thing to
keep up with. Unless and this is something that I'm
not really sure if I am reading this right or not,
but so I'm gonna read this. You must adhere to
the following rules. You mustn't cause harm to fellow worshipers
of Embress. That one might be pretty tough. That might
be pretty tough, Like there's all kinds of ways that
can pop up and fuck you. So that one made
me nervous. You must stop and offer a single drop
of blood at an Embress temple at least once a day.
If no temples are found in a thirty hour period,
you must make me offering at the shrine that has
now appeared in your personal space. The way that sounds
makes it seem like, if there is a temple on
your floor, you need to find it and like or
at least within a reasonable distance, and that then doing
it at your shrine doesn't count, like because there's a
temple that you should be going to instead. I don't
really think that's what it actually means, but it just
kind of was warded in such a way that it
made me concerned that the lack of clarity could be
exploited to really screw carl over because I get very
paranoid about that kind of thing. Five percent of all
looted gold must also be tossed into the shrine, which
of course I knew immediately. Don't know what was gonna
get pissed, and she is five percent is like it's
not as steep as it could be, but like that's
not nothing. You may not own or wield any magical
gear that is blessed by the God Hellic, which as
far as I know, he doesn't have anything in his
possession right now that falls under that. So I think
we're good with that. And then you must successfully complete
all issued church quests. There goes another one, Like I
church quests, there is something about how anything could like
that could mean or manifest in so many ways. I
am worried that it's the sort of thing that will
make it like difficult to just do the missions that
you're meant to do for the floor, because this thing
goes in direct opposition to the mission. Once again, it's
me putting. It's me like just using my anxiety to
create a worst case scenario of how this could really
screw you. And it may not come to that, but
ordinarily in life I would just be like, hey, the
worst case scenario isn't necessarily likely, relax. But we're not
in life. We are in a game with an AI
that likes to toy with you, with bad people who
want to watch you die, So the worst case scenario
is much much more likely. And thus I'm just like
all of these things there is too much room within them.
It makes it seem for our end of things like
it's not that big a deal, But to me reading it,
I'm going, oh no, oh no, Like it's just so
open ended that it makes me way way more nervous
due to that. So that's just to start. And then
all adherents and good standing receive the following holy benefits,
access to all temples of Embrus. All temples of Embress
now appear on your map. All temples of Hellic now
appear on your map. All worshippers of Embress will be
indicated with the symbol. All worshipers of Hellic will be
indicated with the symbol. All helic worshiping and PC's do
and mobs killed by you will now offer one hundred
percent more experience, which is insane. Immunity to burn effect.
All physical attacks by you have a ten percent chance
to inflict burn free access asterisk to Club Vanquisher, regardless
of previous current affiliations. Every five consecutive days of worship
you will receive a boon from the God. Additional benefits
and responsibilities will become available as your worship circle increases.
And we have a little bit of Karl like looking
at these and thinking, actually, that's a pretty solid you know.
And the first boon that he gets is constitution raised
by twenty five percent for thirty hours, which is pretty solid.
And that's a reward for reuniting Embers with the puppy.
But then the quest find out who killed my son,
and I knew that this was coming when the description
of the puppy included his son was killed by unknown
person or persons. I was like, all right, that's definitely
going to be coming up. I did not expect, though,
for Karl to be like lead detective on the case.
I thought it was going to be the sort of
thing that like eventually that would unravel as part of
going through the floors, you know. But it being the
main event for Carl specifically and not the main event
for like a whole floor is really interesting because, you guys,
I don't know if the people listening to this are aware,
but murder mysteries are kind of catnipped to me. I
fucking love them. I just there. They're so much fun.
They they can be. There's so much you can do.
You can make a murder mystery into a straight up comedy.
It can be tragic, it can be a mixture. It
can be something that's like very revealing about something like
an injustice in our actual world. It can be completely fantastical.
Everything about murder mysteries is so up to whoever is
in charge of it, and they are so ripe for
all kinds of like character exploration and human nature exploration,
you know, like all of that sort of thing. So
personally finding out that we're going to be dealing with
a murder mystery. I will tell you what, my friends,
I'm here for it. I am so so here for it.
I'm very excited. So anyway, I don't know that this
is like really going to take up that much of
his time to begin with, because it says that there is.
It says there's no time limit for the quest. However,
you will receive a smite if you attempt to exit
the eighteenth floor of the World Dungeon before this task
is complete. Reward that depends on who did it. I
don't like that one little bit. What that sounds like
to me is if it turns out a person that
I like is guilty this, I'm going to take it
out on you that I feel betrayed by that person.
And it may not be what it means at all,
but that's what it fucking sounds like to me. Also,
the fact that the like I don't know what a
smite is, does receive a smite kill you? Does that
just cause like horrific pain? Does it take a limb off,
like I don't know what the effect of a smite is?
And that determines Also the way that I feel about
some of these things. And in addition, the fact that
there's like not a time limit means that this mystery
might take a real back seat. And I got very
excited initially when he was given this as a quest,
but then when it was said that we don't need
to worry about how soon you do it, I got
a little disappointed because I thought, maybe this isn't going
to be as much of a focus as I was hoping.
So I guess we'll see, you know, I'm just sharing
how I feel about this overall, and I'm very anxious
about the parameters. But I really really love the idea
of a murder mystery. And then new quest kill Heleck,
God of Son and Life, my twin brother, and he
knows that helic is unlikely to have been the one
who killed his son because he was in a whole
meeting with everybody at the time of the murder. There's
also the possibility that there is like some shape shifter
god who was there and looked like Helck and actually
Helick did do it, Like I don't know, you know,
regardless though Hellck is has an expiration date on him,
it's like, I don't know, I don't think he killed
my son, but I still want him dead because fuck
that guy, and you will receive a bonus if his
death is painful. Helick must die before you reach the
twelfth floor. If he still lives, you will receive a
smite reward. Slaying Hellck will result in a celestial god
box warning. Killing a god may have some unintended consequences
for all crawlers think And yeah, Karl basically is just like,
all right, well, I can't worry about that right now.
These gods that I have seen so far are level
two hundred and fifty, so that's like out of range
so utterly that there's no point in even worrying about
it at this point, which I'm going to go ahead
and assume that he's going to use the worst what
is it, uh, the Carl's doomsday scenario thing, that you
could use that to kill a god, I guess, but uh,
I don't know how you do that without also killing
everybody on the floor. So it's not like knowing the
means of the murder of a god is really the point,
because it's how would you manage to pull that off?
That's the question. Also, the idea of like really hating
your twin brother like this, and the consequences of killing
a god of like the Son and Life. I just
don't think that Empress is somebody who gives a fuck
what happens to the people who are on the planet
that you do this too. So I am very worried
about the effects of killing Heleck because I just think
Empress doesn't care what happens to everybody else, and so
it could be really dire and really awful, and he
wouldn't give any shits at all. I don't like it.
This all makes me very, very nervous. So let's see,
I'm trying to find oh yeah here, So the part
where a donut immediately is like you're just going to
have to remove yourself from his religion and Carl says
Bee's parents paid twenty percent of their income to their church.
They used to get mad at her when she didn't donate.
This is something that I am so blown away by. Like,
first of all, the facts that churches are tax exempt
is just the biggest scam in the entire world. But
I cannot imagine donating that much of Like, look, I
already pay taxes at about a twenty five percent rate
because I'm a small business in the United States, I'm
sure now actually it's more around thirty percent. And you know,
I make about fifteen bucks an hour after expenses, so
I'm making really around twelve dollars an hour for the
work that I do in the end, and that's assuming
I'm just doing a forty hour week, which isn't usual.
I'm normally working more than that. So it's just a
sort of weird thing to think about even having that
much money that I could give away twenty percent of
it and still get by like that in itself is
mind blowing to me. And when I was growing up,
when I was very young, my father was a coke dealer,
and so we had all kinds of money, and we
lived in a really nice condo and I got anything
I wanted up until about like age seven or six,
and then my dad decided that he had found Jesus
and he wasn't going to sell drugs anymore, and he
wanted to get rid of the condo and anything that
was like bought with blood money, as he saw it,
and he began tithing a huge portion of his paycheck
to his church, and it was a real bone of
contention between him and my mom because there were things
that she wanted for me. You know, when you are
in public school, there's a lot of stuff that is
not just included. There are field trips that cost quite
a lot to go on, and it's not mandatory that
you go, so you just don't go if you can't
afford it. There's a say, t training that is paid,
you know, after school stuff that you have to buy
extra books for. And there were things that she wanted
for me that we couldn't afford, that we could have
afforded if he had not been tithing. And she really
felt a way about it because she wasn't a member
of the church, you know, And I think about that
a lot, just like I don't know how much he
was tithing. I'm not even sure my mother was fully aware.
It's possible that, like she didn't know until they went
to do their taxes at one point and then she
found out. And that's why it seemed like suddenly there
was this thing between them, because it did seem to
like very appear like kind of overnight, this issue. So
I had my suspicions that it was something like that
where he was tithing and she simply didn't see his paycheck.
She just saw what was like deposited and then later
saw his paychecks during tax time and was like, what
the fuck. But it's just mind blowing to me, especially
considering the churches that get all these donors look like
fucking sports arenas, and it's the kind of thing that like,
if you haven't seen a church like that, it's hard
to explain. But the I understand the role that church
plays in a lot of people's lives and that they
are it's like a home for them, and it's their family,
and so spending all of this money on a building
that is well equipped and comfortable and safe, all of
that is important and valid in its way, but it's
the fact that you're not paying taxes on any of that.
That's the part. Everybody deserves a community that they can
feel that way about. But unless it's a church, it's
like it's a whole different enterprise. And then that's setting
aside the actual corruption in a lot of churches, you know.
So anyway, this whole thing, the idea of twenty percent
guys twenty percent that you're able to just like give
up and live without, what is that like? So let's see.
Mordecai also called me an idiot, but he was distracted.
He said he needed us to get back to the
safe room as soon as possible. Thanks to Samantha's help,
he'd figured out the yam thing. He had a potion
for me, which I'm very curious about. And then, you guys,
this moment, fresh blood splattered on the metal that was
from Kwan's passage. I smiled, looking down at the bare
arms still in my hand. Had I just been walking
with this thing in my hand? Huh? You guys, I
know that I said I didn't like Doughnut telling him
that he was crazy, and I stand by that. I
don't like it. But the fact that Carl was walking
around carrying that arm and didn't realize it is genuinely
a problem that's really worrying kids. I don't like that
at all. That was a moment of me just being
so uttered, like I don't know why, but I fully
thought he had put that shit away in his inventory.
And it's a moment for me that I'm like, oh God,
they can exploit that so utterly for the recap later
ripping it off. I felt was totally valid in the moment,
and not even really Carl's fault exactly, but I knew
that they'd be able to edit that in such a way.
Finding out that Carl's just walking around holding it that
really made me put my head in my hands and
I was just like, oh, there is no way to
make that not look insane. I immediately just felt away
about that. Not a good look, Carl, That's all I'm saying.
And we get then the uh like Doughnut being like
he's really going to be after us now and that
Carl should have killed him, and Carl's like, look, I
I fucking tried. This is when he looks at the rings.
The first one was plus two for strength. He puts
that one on the second ring, rock Guard's Ring of Sniping.
This amber stone ring is named after Rock Guard, one
of the Dungeon's most infamous crawlers. This Orchish warrior was
known for his uncanny ability to swoop in at the
last moment and steal glory from other crawlers, gaining the
best loot and experience. Everybody hated him. It was great
fun fact. This guy led his season's top ten list
until he was knifed in his sleep by his own mother.
Luckily for you, crawlers can't be killed by other crawlers
and safe rooms anymore. The shame really wearing this ring
inbuse the following benefits, the ripe benefit, the loaded benefit,
and ripe is. All creatures with less than fifty percent
health are indicated on your map, and loaded all non
hidden creatures wearing magical gear are indicated on your map.
Particularly useful when you only want to hang out with
the real fashionistas and not just the posers wearing fake shit.
Also good if you want to sneak up behind someone,
bonk them on the head, on their head and steal
all their stuff. So yeah, that is pretty intense. Carl
does put this ring on. I don't blame him for
putting it on. I will say, I really hope this
doesn't become a thing for him, because I just can't
really respect it. However, you gotta do what you gotta do,
you know, like hmm, So I'm not gonna be too
judgy about it. And then the last ring is a
gold ring that is like stuck on his finger, clearly
because Kwan never took that ring off. This is something
that really happens. I think it was last year or
the year before, Rashan had to go to a jeweler
and have her wedding ring cut off her finger because
she never took it off and she gained weight and
she finally was like, probably I should get this thing resized,
and she tried to take it off and she couldn't,
so she had to go to a jeweler who was
able to remove it and resize it for her. And
that is apparently what happens here, because in the effort
to get the ring off his finger, Carl like breaks
the finger and it's just gold, sappy gold ring, worthless,
toss it. But when he holds it up, he sees
carved on the inside of the ring it says for Daddy,
and Carl holds onto it. He tries to put it
back on the finger and it won't go all the way,
but he just winds up putting the whole thing in
his inventory and thus holds onto the ring as well.
And I am really curious if it's going to matter
to Kwan that Carl has that ring when you've lost
everything and you have exactly one piece of nostalgia that
you've held onto your entire life, and then everything that
you knew gets smushed flat. I could see that mattering
a whole lot. I am not this way, which is
kind of funny considering that I can be a materialistic person.
I really love comfort, I really love beauty, but I
also am weirdly Uh, what's unromantic is not the word,
I guess like unsentimental. A thing can be meaningful to me,
and I will be sad if I lose it, but
if I know somebody else has it, I'm not just
gonna move heaven and earth to get it back, because
in the end, it's just a thing, you know. But
not everybody is like that. A lot of people, you know,
they take certain things as practically as good as the
person themselves if it represents like somebody important in their lives.
So I don't know if this is something that maybe
Carl can like use at at some point later to
bargain his and donut safety from Quan, or if it's
the sort of thing that Quan will just it would
be very funny if it's like I think this means
so much to him, but it was similar to like Rashaan,
where I just got fat and I couldn't take it off.
It doesn't matter to me. Anymore, but I doubt that
it's that. So then we get a notification from Katchya
about how lewis eight monkey soup and got sick. He
rushed into the personal space bathroom before I can stop him,
And it turns out that they have come up with
a system for communicating outside of what can be seen
by fans and perhaps by the people who run the game,
because it's in a bathroom, which they don't have cameras
in there. I won't say that I can guarantee they
won't see it. I really possibility that when you open
the door, if it's on the inside of the door,
perhaps a camera could catch a glimpse of the thing
when the door's open for a moment. But it's the uh,
the what do you call it? Author set that he
got that came with like a bottle of ink and
the scratch note pad that he has in his inventory.
If he writes on that, the words appear on the
paper in the bathroom. The container sat on a little
shelf I had installed on the inside of the stall, and
both Katcha and Donut knew by now to be careful
when they push the door open. That idiot must have
spilled it because he tries to write Louis a note
that says if you see this, don't say a word,
but instead it says Louis, if you see And that's
as far as he gets, which results in Lewis later
talking about how their bathroom is haunted and Carl manages
to get him to shut the fuck up. But it's
very likely that somebody noticed Lewis talking like this and
has started to get interested and maybe put two and
two together and uh, yeah, that just sucks, that really does.
Like that. The ink running out is such a prosaic
fucking problem. And let's see, uh, they were not. Let's
see he's talking about the bathroom. The main bathroom in
the personal space was like the bathrooms in regular safe rooms.
You wopped in and there was a sink and a
mirror against one wall. The upgraded shower was on one
side in the pink tiled room, and the stall was
on the other. The metal stall door had a lock
on it and looked just like any typical bathroom stall
one would find anywhere from before. They were not exclusive
spaces like the random ones throughout the dungeon. Inside the
wide stall, there was a single toilet, a stand up urinal,
and a magical litter box. Mordecai has a shape shifter
apparently didn't ever use the bathroom. Unlike Katya, NPCs couldn't
enter the bathrooms or any of the other rooms like
the training room or crafting room without being escorted in.
When the Dromedarian kids needed to go, we sent them
back out into the safe room, or just told them
to hold it if that wasn't possible, like when a
god was outside trashing the world, Katya escorted them in
and removed the paper inking quill before they could see
it and say something out loud. Fellow crawlers were a
different story, and this is you know, they're trying to
keep people out of the bathroom as much as they can,
put them off as much as they can, and him
rushing in there because he got sick, it was just
like unavoidable. They at first had just tried to write
with dry erase marker on the metal of the inside
of the bathroom, but the cleaner bot kept erasing it.
And I just want to register my surprise that the
cleaner body even needs to clean the bathroom, because considering
the fact that those things seemed to be like up
kept the same, Like it's I don't know if it's
the same now, but there was a point where they
were in a safe room and when Carl went into
that bathroom, or no early in the first one, he
puts the toilet paper and into the toilet bowl, and
when he opens another bathroom, it's got the same toilet
paper in the bowl. So he's like, Okay, it's just
the same bathroom everywhere I go. And I was just
sort of assuming that, like, whatever the bathroom situation is,
that's being like managed by the game and is a
sort of separate thing. But evidently not so the cleaner
bot is coming in here, and you know, Carl says,
why don't you check out the magical shower. You won't
get the buffs, but I think you can still use it.
Lewis uh okay, because he started to be like, you
didn't tell me your bathroom was haunted and he's just
trying to shut him up. And then later on Kotcha
finally manages to get him to shut up, but it's like,
you know, she has to basically like slap him across
the face to get him to stop. He is very
oblivious It's like when somebody is kicking you under the table,
trying to get you to stop saying a thing, and
you don't know, you don't understand that it's a signal
to shut the fuck up, so you're just like, oh,
why are you kicking me? Like that's the vibe I
get off of Lewis. Let's see, Oh right, Carl starts
talking to Himani. We're in the space now. It doesn't
look like we can get to a Desperado club easily,
so you're gonna have to run it. Katchi's coming over
now to help with the coordination. Remind those guys it
has to be quick. How many bubbles are we doing, Imani?
Only eight bubbles have met the requirements. The eighth one
has one crawler in it. It's just over five hundred
crawlers total, and most of them are in the first
four groups. There's several more begging for our help, but
they're gonna have to wait until phase two. In order
for us to help people trapped inside bubbles, they had
to meet a few requirements. First, they needed someone with
asss a Desperado club. Second, all survivors of the bubble
had to be in the same quadrant. The second requirement
was a tough one. We could only feasibly open one
gate per bubble. It meant three of the four castles
had to be taken. Everyone else had to be dead
or some combination. Sometimes people weren't one hundred percent sure
if another quadrant was empty of crawlers, those guys got
put on the standby list. We didn't do it to
be assholes, but we weren't about to unleash a feral
god in a closed bubble filled with crawlers who couldn't escape.
And yeah, the fact that this has to be I mean,
it's just it's just the requirements to get this done
effectively and not hurt people, you know, Like all of
this makes sense, but it's a tough call to have
to make, you know. And Imani is the one who
is just like, I'm not helping anybody if it means
that I'm leaving other people behind. And Ellie evidently knows
when people are lying. She's like good at it, And
it's not described as a skill that comes with like
her race or anything. It's just said Ellie apparently had
a knack for telling if someone was lying. So I'm
wondering if that's just something that Ellie has always had,
or if it is a side effect and it's not
stated that way, you know, She Katya and Amani were
conducting the interviews at the Desperado and she'd already weeded
a few crawlers out after it was determined they were
lying about the populations of their quadrants, and that really sucks. Like,
of course you're gonna run into people who just don't
really give a fuck who else survives, as long as
they survive, and that's just that's just gonna happen. I
won't lie. Maybe I'd be tempted to do that too.
I don't think so, I really don't, but like who knows,
you know, but uh yeah, yeah, it would really suck.
Donut tell them if they try to steal the gate,
Carl will rip their arms off like he did to Kwan,
and they have to go back and forth and explain
about what happened there. The plan was pretty simple. Everyone
in each group had to gather outside the entrance of
the Desperado Club. The person in the first group would
enter and obtain the gate pieces. Once outside, they'd dial
in the coordinates provided by Katcha, and the gate would open,
since the distance wasn't that great. The amount of time
was usually less than a minute for the portal to open,
and they'd all go through. They would end up in Humptown.
The gatekeeper would be the last. The moment they went through,
the gate would close, and a paraoh God would appear
in their still closed bubble. While this was happening, the
gatekeeper would return to the Desperado and hand the gate
to the next in line, who would do it all
over again, which is a pretty sound system. And this
is like the point where we get eventually like a
description of a god that goes into a bubble and
it's way too small for them, and so the god
is like disgustingly killed and it fills with gore and
makes the whole surrounding area stink horrifically. And there's also
like Mordecai's advice that gods have a tendency to either
fight or start fucking when they encounter each other, and
usually both, Oh my god, So you know, summoning two
gods like that is a good way to distract the
other from coming out and just unleashing destruction on anybody.
So let's see, I'd sent leuis at to escort Katschia
to the Desperado after he and Furist would help wrangle refugees,
and this is when he's like, he blurted out some
things about it being haunted, but Katcha put her hand
on his shoulder and squeeze so hard that even he
finally realized to shut the hell up, considering that she
can basically exert the force of I imagine like a steamroller.
That must have been pretty intense. And Carl is just
thinking about all of the NPCs that he is sentencing
to death, and it's telling himself they're better off dead,
we're freeing them, which, like I guess, is probably an
indicator that sending the NPCs through the gate isn't the thing,
the surprise thing that's happening later. But it is just
really it sucks that you can know in a way
that a thing technically is true and it doesn't feel true.
You know, it doesn't make it better that this thing
has to be done. Just sucks. So Carl had left
his boxes that he had gained from his previous thing
for opening while everybody else was working on this part
of the plan, because he cannot be involved because evidently
there's another thing that's happen happening. So he starts looking
at his achievements and boxes now and one of the
achievements is a man of God and this isn't actually
a pretty funny one that I enjoyed. And the new
achievement disarming personality. Oh my god, sir, sir is me
talking to the AI sir, And then he gets enchanted
handcuffs and they are pretty badass. There's not a key.
You are just the only person who can unlock them,
and there you can give, like it a word that
unlocks them, because like initially when it says there's no key,
they're unlocked magically by you, sort of like, okay, that
sounds good, but it could be a problem if you
are not in a position to unlock somebody that needs
to be released from them and nobody else can do
it but you. But then it says you may also
institute an optional safe word or phrase that disengages, which
I'm assuming he can tell to anybody and they can
unlock it on his behalf. So that kind of like
negates that problem by making it so that it's better
than a key, where a key can be stolen from you,
or you can lose it or you know what I mean,
like somebody can sneak it off you, pickpocket you, or whatever.
It's not like people can't find out what the magical
word or phrase is in other ways. So it's not
perfectly safe, but I find that's a big advantage. And
also nobody can break out of them unless they are
at least two hundred strength, which I'm not totally sure
what Carl's strength is at right now with all his
buffs and everything, but I'm feeling like pretty confident it's
not even at a hundred. I may be wrong, but
I'm wondering about, like Maggie may Chris, if they are
at two hundred, like could he lock them up with this,
because that's the thing is, like the strength of that
race is really high. So I'm wondering if that's something
that could be because that could be very convenient if
we're trying to do something to them, you know, without
killing them. I don't know. So he gets then a
spell called pingu and it's basically said that like anybody
who knows what this is lives in fear of hearing
it an area an area god I sound British an
area of one kilometer around the cast or plus five
hundred meters For every ten points of intelligence. Environmental factors
and obstacles may increase or decrease range duration. Instantaneous ping
travels at the speed of sound cool down five minutes,
sends out an audible ping that gives the distance and
location of all non crawlers and non red tagged mobs
in a circle around you. It will mark targets beyond
the range of your map. Targets hit with ping will
hear an audible ping noise, but they will not know
from where the ping originates. Higher levels increases the amount
of information about the target. At level five, you may
imbue the ping with fear, which is italicize, which is
obviously some sort of other ability, And that is pretty
intense to be able to find, like as he mentions,
not being able to find crawlers or mobs, it's a drawback,
but NPC's elites and hunters really that it's huge And
I'm going to be very interested to see how he
utilizes that spell, because I can't help but think it's
going to be constantly in use. There are some spells
that are just like that once you get them, it's
practically you know, there's a game I'm playing right now
and I played it before called Wildflowers. That is, it
was on the Switch on Steam, and I now am
playing it on my iPhone using like this controller that
you attached to your iPhone. And there are certain things
in that that you just like you brew potions to
use to make yourself faster or to make it so
that things just get drawn toward you, and those those
potions wear off and you just have to keep a
constant stock of the ingredients for it all the time,
and it just becomes a main part of your gameplay.
Is like keeping this thing maintained and this spell with it,
Like a five minute cool down is so short, you know,
I would think this would be getting used on the
daily if it were longer cool down five minutes. This
is going to get used multiple times a day, I
have to assume. And why would you want to ping
and include fear? What advantage does it really give to? Like,
I imagine that fear is more than just somebody being afraid.
It's got to be something that like causes a d
buff to them of some kind. And I'm very curious
about that so yeah, all that is just really it's
it's there's a lot of potential for that that could be.
It just I can't even think of the number of
applications for it. So let's see chapter thirty three. Oh right,
really really quick. He gets an update about Louis, who's
helping people come through the gate and how people are
like so happy, they're crying, and yeah, I think that
maybe I don't know, guys, I'm so curious. I know
that Carl is at the root of this plan because
he's the one who assembled the gate, but I don't
know how much other crawlers are aware at how like
the level of Carl's involvement here, because I keep thinking
about him rehabilitating his public image, you know, and whether
or not things like this are going to warm people
to him. And I know that like the Nightmare thing,
the Nightmare Express, like the whole thing with the train
probably did a lot in that regard as well, but
I don't know how effective. We haven't actually heard that
much about the highlights in regard to how he is
being portrayed, So I'm curious about that. But okay, so
I got to speed it up. Thirty three We start
with an entry from Crawler Priestley about Loroccos, which is
that inverted cone city, and he is just marveling at
how unbelievably beautiful it is, and that he thinks that
it has to be based on a real place because
it just feels too complete and too genuine, and that
it is so full of culture and life and beauty that,
knowing they are going to destroy it, he's like, I
think it's going to fuck me up pretty bad, which
we find out from Carl that later on there's an
entry from him that's like complete rubbish, you know, it
doesn't make any sense, and it's obvious that this guy
was broken by the destruction of this city, and I'm
very interested to see it. So let's see. Oh right,
this is when we get like the reports back about
the bubbles and their effects on the bubbles around them,
which have already gone into most of this, and he
goes back to the safe room. Mordecai is looking around
at the mess because there's been kids watching all these movies.
They were watching The Last Unicorn, now they're watching the Goonies.
Doughnut remained in her room, glued to the social media board.
Her addiction to the thing was starting to worry me.
She occasionally popped out to complain about someone who said
something mean, but she and Mango were having some much
needed alone time, and that is something to worry about.
That's fair enough. I think it's good that she keeps
her eye on it since Carl has been so oblivious.
But you know, it's very easy to get way too
wrapped up in social media. I am very guilty of that,
and I have gotten so much better over the past
couple of years at reminding myself like this isn't what matters,
and like making myself back out of it. I don't
even like to say this isn't real, because unfortunately it
is real. What happens on social media actually affects the world.
But I don't need to be contributing to that toxicity,
and I can remove myself from it for my own
sanity and health, and I'm getting better about it. But
their lives literally depend on it, and so her being
hooked to it is really really understandable. And let's see,
Oh right, there's a mention of the recap episode. It
didn't show anything about the gods and the author's quest
or the folks escaping, but it was clear they were
saving it all for the next episode, so evidently there's
nothing about him ripping off what's his face's arm either.
They get an update about after some very careful discussion,
some unfortunate litigation that we want, and with the input
from the syndicate, we've decided to allow this method of
bubble escape to continue. However, we've been forced to block some,
but not all, of the secondary summonings. The pharaoh gods
who've been escaping are random and sometimes new even to us.
Each pharaoh who appears has a sixty six percent chance
to summon a corresponding deity. One of the resulting sum
in gods was assaults the Vinegar Bitch, which is an
incredible name. That would have been an extinction level event
for this floor and the next. What she can kill
more than one floor? That's fucking bananas? What uh? Anyway,
So congratulations opening that gate will Unlesia Farrell God, but
the odds of summoning an active god in the process
is now much less. And then, since so many of
you are choosing to descend early, we've decided we better
get some six floor info out of the way. And
she talks about how there are classes that might have
new choices that they have to make as they go
into the next floor, and that it's optional for a
lot of folks, but that it is highly recommended to
read the fine print on that. I'm happy to announce
the guild system will become active on the sixth floor.
This will allow you to better organize parties and share
personal space upgrades without forcing a person to join your party,
which is really really great. I'm kind of wondering about
this in regard to Katya, but we look at there.
The process will be a bit expensive, but if you
sell your unwanted gear on the market, it should be
doable for most crawlers. We highly recommend you take advantage
of it. And finally, some of you may have heard
by now third party tourists will be joining us on
the next floor and they'll be hunting you and your gear.
Isn't that exciting. We have a record number of hunters
participating this season thanks to a generous anonymous sponsor who
was willing to pay entry fees for anyone who wanted
to join in on the fun, which I have my
guesses on who that is. So let's see, I'm jumping
over to the part where we'd managed to save about
fifteen hundred crawlers total. Nobody had tried to steal the gate,
much to Donut surprise. I wish that number of saved
crawlers was higher, but more and more bubbles were popping
on their own thanks to the work of the survivors inside.
A distressing amount of bubbles had gone dark. There were
also bubbles where the people inside had no access to
the Desperado Club or Club Vanquisher, which was still closed
for repairs. It turned out if you destroyed the entry
pub to the Desperado or the church for the Vanquisher,
it removed access to the club. For those crawlers, we
could only offer our sympathies and advice. Can you imagine
how much that would fucking suck to be in the
course probably of solving one of the other of your bubble,
to have destroyed a way out like that? Oh my god,
I would be so livid and oh sorry. Michael says
I hated the potion part of the Witcher three. I
was happy with the update that handled applying the oils
for you. I don't know about that on Michael, It's
honestly so fucking awful. They have the ability to just
make this amazing, real, vibrant city easily since they apparently
resetted every crawl and they just use that power to
do so much good, to provide color for the background
of their little war game. This is the thing. This
is the thing about the real world as well. We
have all the resources to make this place not terrible,
but we put them in these like incredibly fucked up places,
and you know, like for what we could solve world hunger.
There are people who exist right now with the wealth
personally to simply end it, and we just don't. They
just don't. And I can't imagine how that resource and
not doing it. I just can't what it's so Yeah,
So they get back to Humptown, uh, and there's a
small crowd of crawlers that are applauding for them, and
Carl is like surprised to see people because he thought
they'd all have gone down the stairs, and Donut has
to be like, you need to stop looking so grumpy
and like wave to these people. They're grateful to us,
would you please play along? And then we actually meet
EFFETCHI And I really really loved this this guy is
he is so grateful to Carl, and he is basically like,
ife was so incredible, and when I lost her, I
really was fucking done. And and then I heard about
a dude who put himself at a huge disadvantage to
save a bunch of people who couldn't do anything for him,
and I fucking remembered, Oh, if it wasn't the only one.
There are other good people out there who give a shit,
And it was what kept me going. And I really
get this, you know, I really really do. It's like
the equal and opposite of a person like Kwan existing
one person who can really ruin it for everybody, but
also one person who can take it upon themselves to
make the world better just because they feel the need,
you know. And he winds up going off by himself,
but he basically is like, I owe you one, so
let me know if you need anything. And then we
go to the Desperado Club and it turns out that
Carl got from his fan box the Frogger video game,
which he thinks was given to him as a troll gift,
but that he's actually really grateful for because it's like,
weirdly helping him to relax and kind of escape the
pressure of what's going on right now. We ended up
performing three more rescues using the gate, and then we
have this thing with Katya and like, I'm over time
right now, but I'm going to start talking. I think
that there's gonna be more implications to this in the
next chapters, probably, but Kotcha is essentially she's like, I'm
not leaving the party yet because I don't want to
fuck up our personal space. But Eva is out there
and she is trying to reform the daughters, and people
who have no leader are going to her because they
have nobody else who will take them in because they're
low level, and she is getting them killed, and somebody
needs to fucking stop her, Like I need to get
in there and protect them. And I love this the
idea of after having been treated so badly, that Katchya
would step in and take the place of Hecla and
be like, I will help you all, especially because she
can like literally become a human shield. But I think
she would prioritize them learning to take care of themselves.
I don't think she would use the human shield ability
that she could need that she could often because she
recognizes now that she's gone through it the importance of
figuring out your own skill set and how important you
can be even though you didn't value yourself. So under substandably,
Donah is super upset and keeps trying to kind of
like persuade her to stay. Carl realizes that he's been
taking Katya for granted, which yes, true, but he also
is aware that she has made her mind up. You know,
there's nothing about the way she's telling them this that
indicates that she is uncertain about her next move, and
he seems to agree that this is probably good for
her and good for other people as well. So I
really appreciated Carl's outlook here that he is willing to
acknowledge that he is sorry to see her go and
that he doesn't want her to go, but also that
it's not up to him, and this is what she
wants and it's a reasonable request. And you know, Donah
is sort of like, I get you wanting to protect
these women, but we could help you with that, and
Katya is like, no offense, don'tut, but you guys are
always into some wild shit and I can't be part
of that and also help these other women because I
will be drawn into whatever crazy shit you guys are
doing because it's unavoidable. You're like this vortex. And also
any women that I was helping or that we brought
into the party or whatever would also be pulled into
that and they're not ready for that. And that is
completely true. And she tells Carl, like, you helped me
realize what I'm capable of, so I really thank you
for that. But also the days that you guys were gone,
I was able to see that I can do it
on my own and I'm okay, and it was really
really important for me building my own confidence, and I
really liked that. And also a boauptista, Lewis and fear Us,
Gwen and her team, Daniel and a few of his friends,
and Flora have all agreed to help me. So they're
to be sizeable group, and I'm interested to see how
that all develops, because it's basically like you know, that's
we're looking like fifteen people over here with just Donut
and Carl as their own two party or two group party,
two party party anyway. But I think that this is
really fair and I am happy for Katya and I'm
looking forward to seeing what she does. And he gives
her back Eva's saber I think it is, and tells
her to give it back to Eva, And I'm interested
to see also some of that information. I'm wondering if
we're going to get any update from Katcha via chat,
or if we're going to actually see it on highlights
or you know how all we're going to get that information,
and let's see. Once the portal opened, the change things
would return to the sixth floor. The journey of the
Twister from our bubble to Imani and Ellie's world was
thankfully uneventful. Mordecai insisted the portal would not allow crawler
passage from floor to floor, even if it was just
one floor down. So we were sending the Twister through
with the Changelings, but without Lewis and for us. Immediately after,
they were going to go through the regular stairwell, where
hopefully they'd be able to recover the Flying House, which
is a really cool idea. I really like that as
a means of bringing tools over. I'm so curious if
that's going to work. I hope it does. And then
with the gate back in our possession, we'd implement the
final phase and I'm extremely interested in that. Lee June
gets in touch with Carl and is talking about the
tentacle monster and the Agatha is there. Don't know where
she came from, but she's only level twelve. Interesting, let's
see Immani and Ellie rushed into the club. They both
looked exhausted. Kachya walked up to Ellie and gave the
floating woman a long hug. You guys be careful, okay,
we always are, Ellie said. She gave me a little
wink and patted Donut on the head. I'm looking forward
to being able to mix it up with you guys again.
This floor was a real drag having to do it
all by myself. She says this right in front of Amani,
and Amani doesn't even respond. Ellie, come now, ma'am. Ellie
pulled the three gate pieces from her inventory and handed
them to me. I took the three items and pulled
them into my inventory. I turned to Katya. She had
entered the Desperado on the ground level and this was
where we were going to separate. I pulled her into
a tight hug. Donut was suddenly there on my shoulder,
also rubbing up against Katya. Kotcha wrapped her arms around me,
widening them like the flaps on a sting ray, hugging
us so completely it felt as if I was being
wrapped up like a burrito. This would be the last
time we were together on this floor. We stood like
that for several moments. Phase four had officially begun. So
next section is the end of this book, y'all. I
have got to wrap up. I'm way over but looking
forward to seeing what's happening, so I will be eager
to finish this one up. Thank you guys again for
hanging out with me, and thank you to Michael for
commissioning this one. Until next time, tutalu, motherfuckers. That was
an Unspoiled Network Podcast two