Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler caral Book seven This Inevitable ruin chapters twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
and fifteen. In these chapters, we have got some hanky
panky going on behind the scenes. We already knew, but
somebody really straight up tries to suicide bomb caral Wild
and also skunk attack the Worst. Welcome to spoil Me,
Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. Michael's here
in the chat telling me that Dungeon Crawler Car got
picked up by Peacock, So, uh, I guess that's gonna
be a thing. I am really here's my I'm just
going to address this like just for a brief moment,
and then I'm just gonna get out of it and
go straight into the book. But my main concern any
time that you are dealing with a storyline that is
so anti capitalist is that it is going to be
totally diluted and the messaging is going to be changed
in such a way because it is making people uncomfortable
and we have to like not give the prolls any
fucking ideas. It's just, you know what I mean, that's
something that I would be the most worried about, no
matter who picks it up. I feel like that's something
that tends to happen, and I hope that they don't
make that mistake because I genuinely that's the point, you know. So,
but it's certainly what happened in my opinion with the
Hunger Games. I felt like they just the whole point
was not what they focused on, and it was very
frustrating to me. It was they It's just sort of
the thing, though, is what appeals to the executives who
want content is the flashy, bombastic story, and that is
what they focus on adapting, and the actual like bones
of it are way way less important than the spectacle,
and so they fall into the very trap of the
people in power in the property. So we'll see. But
let's get this bitch rolling here, shall we. So reminder
that the last chapter ended with Carl, you know, being
really emotional, finding out about everybody who had arrived to
fight on his side, and the folks who were authors
of the cookbook, and then we start chapter twelve with
krawler Ikecha. If I could only see him again. It
would change everything. I am jealous. Those of you with community,
with friends, with family my kind are castrated and cast
out as such. I think my perspective is unique, so
much different than the one who came before me York,
who appears to have come from a hive, yet says
he always felt alone his entire life. We are so different,
but upon reading his words, I felt such kinship. I
wonder did he survive. Those of you reading this, If
you're ever free of this place, I pray you seek
out the others who came before. It is a dream.
Can you imagine? Together? There would be nothing. We couldn't
do nothing. And the community aspect is like literally what
has been keeping Carl going, you know this, looking around
at his friends and realizing that he that there are
people that he has really grown to care about. It's
h like this is what drives people who have something
that they can look around and be like, this feeds me.
Are very lucky and not I don't enough folks have it,
and I am not one at all, of course, with
my job to say, like, the internet isn't real, but
the internet does feed you in the same way that
an in person community can feed you. They're very different things.
And the support that he is getting here in the dungeon,
it's really kind of awful to know that when in
the before times, as he puts it, he was like
so much more alone than he is now that things
are so dire, And it's really how shit off and
will go is. It's not until things get extremely bad
that folks feel the need to band together, and it
has to be going extremely badly for everyone for that
to happen. There be times where it's the opposite, where
if it's you only going through something really tough, then
suddenly everyone disappears on you. I personally haven't really had
that as something that like, you know, but I know
enough people who have so Anyway, they're entering Princess Posse
base camp and it says there's a red alert incursion
into your territory. Enter the flag room to see the
details and later on the fact that the AI handled
it this way, their adjutant takes some It takes exception two.
We'll get to this in a moment. The skeleton of
a new building was in the process of being erected
around the shop up a small hill. A second larger
building stood it was stone, but I couldn't see how
big it was. It also was encased in metal girders.
Multiple workers crawled over both structures. They were boxing the
safe room, men protecting it. It appeared they were expanding
the size of the other structure up the hill connecting
the two. And I just want to mention once again
in light of the airship that Louis got and then
this with like metal girders, and he just scribes like
the smell of welding and burnt tar. Everybody has access
to tools, abilities, and materials beyond what I was ever expecting.
I really thought we were going to be dealing with
a medieval style of warfare with magic, so it would
be upgraded. It would definitely be more dangerous than actual
medieval warfare. But this is different. It's very much feeling
like we're not too far outside of what it would
be like if we were actually to have battles in
our own streets, you know, where there's like, if anything,
they're being given more resources than we would probably have
a lot of us. And this is when everybody spots
Karl and they begin to have very strong reactions to
both him and to Donut of course they spot Carl first.
He's just very large. But there's this guy Penn, who's
in level sixty two fortification engineer, And Carl looks around
and realizes that like a lot of people have that one,
and they all are at like a higher level. Everyone
who's another class is still at sixty, but the engineers
are leveling up because they've been doing so much let's see.
Oh yeah, so this guy hugs him and gives him
a kiss on each cheek, and I love donnu, Carl.
Why does everyone kissing you all of a sudden. That's
like the third person in an hour. You're going to
get mono. Oh that's funny. Everybody begins to do this
like hup sort of chant, which very much reminded me
of like the three strong men from I think Family
guy that like right around on a unicycle, or maybe
there's just two of them, you guys don't talking about anyway.
That's why I pictured here for a second. But uh,
it's just a moment of everybody like thanking him in
this way, and it is at first kind of weird
and awkward, and then it becomes very powerful and inspiring,
which is how that shit works. It feels very goofy
at first, before you've really got rolling, and then all
of a sudden there's something in it, you know, so
we need to see the stronghold that I have to
go back and help Rose that I don't have. Finally said,
Tippid is walking them through the camp. Everybody's waving at them.
We're getting a lot of information in these chapters about things,
and I'm going to be totally honest with you all.
I am not keeping a lot of this straight. I
am in a weird position here. Felt like whenever I
cover books the way that I do, I know a
lot of folks won't have followed either that. There are
plenty of people out there who also didn't really process everything,
but the difference is that they don't have to explain it.
They don't have to be on camera talking about whether
or not they understood, and so they can just let
it wash over them and then move forward and read
and things can just unfold, Whereas I either have to
get it or I have to admit that I don't,
and so I'm allowing it to mostly wash over me
because I don't feel like the mechanics of everything are
the most important or interesting part of the story. I
do think they matter, especially in terms of the way
that Karl manages to bend the rules. The whole point
of the way Karl operates is he figures out the
way that things are supposed to work and finds a
way around it. So in that respect, the rules are
important so that we can understand the cleverness in breaking them.
But I can still appreciate it in retrospect. I don't
need to be able to predict it. I don't have
to do that level of you know what I'm saying.
So anyway, we had a few thousand of us choose
that fortification engineer race so they could build fast. It
lets them level with construction. We have several alchemists who've
been making the materials since we got here, and we
have a solid staff who can enchant the walls. There's
a Yank named Langrim who used to run the enchantment
guild here, and they really know what they're doing. And
I'll say that the audiobook narrator pronounces it yank, and
I just kept thinking that it meant like Southerners calling
me a yank, for example, And that's not it's ye NK.
So Karl asks what are the safe room rules, and
he says, lots of small changes in a couple big ones.
Once the fighting starts, it's going back to the blood
bar system, which I kind of like. So I'm looking
forward to that second rule, no mercenaries inside guildhalls during
the last two phases except for a small staff of
up to nine people at a time. It means we
have to build sleeping quarters for all these folks, and
we won't be able to keep a reserve. And the
orc adjutant of yours can clarify, but most of us
aren't getting into your guildhall once fighting starts. That was
a big sticking point with some other teams, because the
active crawlers can still use their regular safe rooms to
a point. With the blood bar. As for achievements and
all that weird stuff, no, thank the Gods, we don't
get that, just level modifications and messages, And I do
really like the no thank the Gods that like probably
the AI was just as snarky and irritating and shitty
that he doesn't want to have to hear it or
deal with it, and so it just being the mechanics
of things that makes a lot of sense. That he
would just be like, yeah, I do not want to
be thrust back into that kind of energy again, thank you.
But no, all non NPC officers have safe rooms of
their own, and they'll have built their strongholds around. One
big exception is a Lemmig team, but we can talk
about that later. This change will hurt the operatics and
the Naga the most, both of whom are known for
hiding rather than fighting. So yeah, if they do hide,
it's not going to be in a safe room. They're
going to have to find a way to hide outside
of safe rooms, which isn't impossible, but it's certainly more
difficult and it's not going to allow the same sort
of like complacence. So we have the mention of like,
we've got to hit the nagas first yet again, and
then starts to act weird and this is very funny.
So there is something that's like this big door that
is really odd looking and it's battered, oversized, cumbersome door
apprentice quality, and they're pulling the door open and Tippet says,
once we get it open, we have to close it
right away because and then it flies all the way open.
Somebody yells she's out again, and it's the dinosaur Tina
who's calling Mongo papa again. Audiobook narrator very creepy. The
way that he does her voice, it's very it's like
very demonic. I hated it. And the two of them
are like extremely happy to see each other, and then
we go inside and see Kiwi, who is back in
her form. I keep forgetting that Kiwi had been a
bear and not a human. I don't know why. In
my head it was that she had been a human.
But she is a bear, and she is really pregnant,
and they you know, her and Mango when she was
a dinosaur fucked a lot many times, So the chances
of her being pregnant by Mongo specifically seem to be
pretty much one hundred percent unless she was out here
fucking anyone else. I don't see how she could have been.
There weren't other male dinosaurs, so unless she fucked a
bear after turning back, and I don't think there was
enough time for her to get this pregnant, unless a
bear's just station time is way shorter. So what the
fuck are those babies gonna look like? Are they gonna
be dinosaur babies? Are they gonna be dinosaur bear babies
like Barosaurus? What are we having? I I do not
know what to expect, And I can't imagine if we
have a bunch of fucking mangos and we have accelerated
pet leveling, that is a very good slash dangerous slash
potentially volatile fighting force. This like, I don't know how
many you can have either, I don't do they have,
Like she's in bare form, So would she give birth
to more than one at a time? Or is it
just one? You know what I'm saying. I don't know
how when it's when you're a dinosaur, you lay eggs.
That's not how this is working here. But is it
possible that she's pregnant with more than one fetus? Is
that why she looks so hugely pregnant because she's carrying
a Essentially, bears have litters, but it's not a large number,
you know. I feel like the max is usually like three,
maybe four, not like with kittens or puppies where you
can have up to ten even sometimes more. But anyway,
Kiwi gives Mango a big hug and then turns away,
and Mango does not seem to know what to make
of anything. He's just really confused. Of course, Donut is
having uh. She says, if this turns into some weird
furry porn thing, I'm going to lose my absolute shit.
And oftentimes when Donut kind of throws a tantrum about things,
it's like it's always a little funny, but the way
she delivers the line will be sort of predictable in
a way that makes it slightly less funny. To me,
I'll be honest that I'm going to lose my app
shit is just so completely exactly how I would have
phrased it myself that when she says it almost verbatim
how I would have said it, I cracked up a
little bit. I was just like, look, me and donutsy
eye to eye a lot. But then there are times
where I'm just like, girl, we are just fucking the
same person a little bit. So then we go to
entering the Fortress of unyielding power and authority, which is
called if you are going to turn it into an acronym,
the FUPA, which I at first was told was short
for fat upper pussy area. I have since been told
it is fat upper pubic area and can also apply
to men. I don't know if anybody is accurate on
that front either way, because I don't think anyone's an
arbiter of this sort of word, so I think it
can mean whatever. But uh, I, this just very much
is the exact type of joke that I would expect
the AI to want to lean into. So, oh man,
I'm sorry, I just saw. Miss T says it applies
to men, and Michael says, I had no idea there
was another term that pupa applied to. I thought the
joke was that it sounded ridiculous. Oh, Michael, you precious angel.
I'm so happy to be here to tell you what
fupa means and that it wasn't a gossip girl reference.
Miss T. I have intimate knowledge of a certain male fupa,
which I love very much. And Michael says, I should
have known Matt wouldn't have some puerile intention with his jokes, wouldn't. Yeah,
so uh this, he says, well, were you going to
change the name to because the AI got sick of
them changing it back and forth and froze it on
this one, and so Doughnut's annoyed about not being able
to change it. And when he says, what would you
have changed it to? And she says, I don't know, Carl.
Now I'm angry and I can't properly create when I'm angry,
which I really need to put that one in my pocket.
I can't properly create when I'm blank, and it's going
to be any emotion at all. Florian had already put
it in the chat, and in seconds there were dozens
of animated responses. At least said it was hilarious and
MANI was with Donut campaigning against it. Tran suggested calling
it the Foop instead. I could tell it was going
to become a thing with half the people calling it
one name and the other half calling it the other.
I kind of like the foop, not because I really
have an issue with fupa as a joke, but there's
something about foop that it's so quick and so tidy.
I just sort of like it as a as a sound.
So I sort of want to just go with foop
and may do. We'll see, So we step in. We
stepped to the side as two NPCs rushed by Haullingwood
looked like bags of mortar. They were in the body
of bugbears. But I knew there were some of my changelings.
There was another dot ahead. It was an elite. He
had the pink glow around his name indicating him as
a soldier Elite Herman the fleet Ogres Strongman level seventy Legionnaire,
Princess Posse and he they go into the room and
there's like this moment before stepping inside where he's on
chat with Florin saying like, tell me about the scouting system,
because they agreed to do all of this via message,
and that way you know if there's anybody listening in.
Because there's this asumptions that spies are already in our midst,
which is really sad to think, but unavoidable. I believe
I think they're likely correct. It just makes me really
bummed out because it's been such a show of unity.
To know that probably someone's faking that is a real
sad thought. Let's see, Ellie is off toward the Naga side.
The beaver guys casters or whatever are talking. They're with
that talking turtle guy. Have you figured out how the
peacetime incursions work? Yes, only those with the Scout endorsement
can go over the borders without a pass. If they
get discovered. They're immediately teleported back to base during the
ceasefire and can't go stealth again until the fighting starts.
If they hit a trap, it'll still go off and
kill them. We only get eighteen scouts. That's what those
towers are for. We need full coverage. Build a tower
and man it with a group of four or five
folks with proper observation and ping spells, and we can
keep the enemy scouts away. Already teleported out a dream
scout and one of those octopus face fucks from the prism.
I'll bet my left sack we're already infested with enemy spies.
We got to get them towers up and do a
full sweep and do it fast. And Carl says spamming
traps too, And he says, I'm on it. But there's
an eagle guy who's gone subterranean. He wants access to
your trap. Table says he can prevent tripper spells. So
this is when they step into the room and there's
a mention from Carl that there's a smell of rock
and moss of like you know, the outside, but there's
also a really strong scent of sweat, which he finds weird,
and I think that it is a result of this
ogre freaking the fuck out, actually, and he is in
pain and like kind of writhing, and he says, been waiting,
Brother says, you good, supposed to do it already, been
fighting it tell Brother tells sorry. Dozens of little info
boxes all popped up, popped up around the ogre, all
at once, and that was when I realized he wasn't
wearing magical gear at all. He was covered in explosive satchels,
and he there's watch out, Carl, watch out in italics.
And I'm not sure as I'm reading this, like what
is that in italics? And it's the voice narrator is
he says it in an odd voice. But I wasn't
putting that voice together with she Maria. I was not
clocking what was happening here at all. So I'm really
curious if you guys picked up on the fact that
that italicized bit was her talking to him, because I
definitely didn't. And all of a sudden, here comes a
fucking orc who just mashes her battle axe into his
head and kills him and then says, I can only
do so much for you, And this is Baroness Victory
aka that bitch aka Minu Fave aka Goals. I am
so sorry, but I really if anything happens to her,
I am going to be very upset. I love her
so much. And later on there's a point where Florin
is like, I don't know if I should be terrified
or in love, and I'm like, in love, Floren, you
should be in love with her. You absolutely should. This
bitch is absolutely clutch and is so fucking practical about everything.
I live for this energy. You guys, you do not understand. Look,
I am not trying to pretend that I can't be
irrational about shit, Okay. I am not trying to pretend
that I'm always measured and careful and reasoned in my
response to things. Everybody knows that's not true about me.
Anybody who's met me for two seconds knows if you
ice a cake and a color I don't like, I
am going to be fucking pissed about it. And there's
no reason nobody cares. It's nothing. But I am aware
that I'm being silly. Okay. There is a type of
person that lets their own weird baggage get in the
way of doing things that makes sense in a broader
sense that makes me crazy, and it's part of why
I am socialist. Is is it just actually the evidence
all points to this is good for society and has
been historically and is right now in other governments and
other countries at all. You know, I am not letting
the fact that socialism is a word that makes people
curl up and die get in the way of seeing No.
Evidentially this bears out, and I find it so annoying
when people just get like triggered by these words that
cause them to completely close off. And this is a
woman who is coming in here with the energy of like,
I'm here to uphold the rules, and I don't care
if you break the rules. I'm upholding them. It doesn't matter.
I'm not like on your side. It looks like I'm
on your side, simply because the people who most often
break the rules are the guys in power who fucking suck.
And we can all agree that they fucking suck. But
don't think that means I'm cool with stretching them for you,
because obviously, if we're gonna do that, we're gonna have
to hide it from her, which is interesting. I absolutely
love this vibe, And I think upholding of the rules
is not an inherently good thing, to be clear, because
things being a law does not have anything to do
with the morality of it. So I'll be very curious
as it all progresses to see where she draws that line,
because it seems like she's pretty interested in morality in
a way, in the way that she determines it with
like honor. So where does she fall How egregious does
a rule have to be for her to finally go,
I'm not doing that. No, I won't uphold that. I
feel like it's probably gotta be pretty bad. I there
has to be, like you know what I'm saying. I'm
just this. I just am very here for it. I'm
so into it. And here comes this moment she says
that was an unlawful assassination attempt by Sensation Entertainment, and
I will be calling foul. I will be filing a
grievance against the Dream who now owned the entertainment company.
They were exerting undue influence on one of their elites
to affect faction Wars. Princess Doughnut. That was an admirable
shot and it may have saved you all she uses
her magic missile. I will file for you to get
credit for the kill. The orc paused, looking up at
the ceiling. No, she suddenly said out loud, angrily, pointing
at the ceiling. Absolutely not. That was clearly a foul
by the corporate interest to purchase sensation, and if you
don't like it, you should reread your own rules. In addition,
you are out of line by not warning me he
was being influenced. She paused again. I accept your apology,
she finally said. She's running the fucking AI. I love
it so much. The AI is just like, mam, I'm
very sorry, and she's like, yeah, the fuck you are sorry,
Get out of my face with your sories and follow
your fucking rules. I am just in heaven with this bit.
I wish that she was in every scene from now on.
So they go into private chambers with her, and here
is when we get the notifications that are oh so distressing.
So they step in and a bunch of fucking windows
begin to pop up for them, tons and tons of notifications.
There's no organization to any of it, and Carl and
Donut both are like unable to see because they're floating
in front of their vision, so they're having to like
get things out of the way and figure out how
to organize it all. And he is beginning to see
a bunch of stuff from what's called the spam folder.
And I saw three little dots indicating someone was in
the middle of typing a message in the Prism chat
and I realized it was coming from our side. Donut
don't and Pristinadia needs to know how I feel about
her portrayal, Karl. She knows, don't poke at anyone yet,
do not her rumped. But she didn't send the message,
so most of this stuff was useless, and everyone had
started calling the list the spam folder. These were world
chat messages not directed at us, hidden scale notifications, and
dozens of other pointless game announcements. I blinked at the long,
long line of strange notifications. I read the most recent
ones from just a few moments earlier. A sense of
horror overwhelmed me. And I really like how this is written,
because it is a slow reveal of exactly what's happening.
At first, I'm just sort of like, wait, what, And
then as he goes on, I'm like, oh my God,
Like I just got complete goosebumps all over me. I
was like, this is such bad news. Gloom rayth phase
failed to activate. Mind Balance prevented activation. You're attempted disabled.
Mind balance was prevented by mind balance. Your mind balance
has risen to level mind level nine. It had been
level five just a few hours ago. I moved my
eyes down the suppressed notifications page. My heart thrashed. There
were hundreds of these entries, over and over again. There
were pages of me attempting to cast something, and each
time it got stopped. The Balance skill came from my
new toe ring, though now it was trained up so much,
I'd still have the skill minus five levels even if
I took the ring off. I didn't dare she Maria
was trying to cast spells and activate skills without my permission.
Oh my god, y'all. I like, you know, when he
got that mind balance skill, I was like, that would
have been real nice a little while back, and I
didn't realize what a huge boon this is. Like, I mean,
this is who is responsible for him getting that toe ring.
That's the AI, right, this is like the AI is
like that, That's what would it have been like for
Karl without that ah, that is so so scary, and
Carl is remembering, now, watch out, Carl, watch out, and
that she managed to break through for a second. So
even though his level is increasing really rapidly because she
keeps trying, she's slowly gaining the upper hand. If she
broke through at all and spoke to him, you know,
like that is just really really worrying. And Mordecai he
like contacts him and he's like, we need to talk.
And Mordecai says, if it's about that presence, Rosetta caught
me up and we're working on a solution. We have
a few options, none of them pleasant. There's something that
Carl says a little bit later that makes me think
something about Katscha's rehab is like gonna have something to
do with the she Maria thing. When we get we'll
get there, I'll point it out. I don't know if
that's right. I might just be kind of misunderstanding it,
but uh sorry, Michael in the chat says, when I
was reading, I didn't clock it as she Maria, but
the Jeff gives it away with his voice. But maybe
if I hadn't read it first, I also wouldn't have
realized it immediately. She Maria's voice is distinctive once she's
kind of gotten talking, but just that little bit wasn't
distinctive enough for me to really realize who it was.
When it was revealed to be she Maria, my blood
went cold. And then she really is pretty awesome about victory.
The female works of the Royal Family rock, the male
one seemed to be pieces of shit. Agree, Ah, Henry
is here or Henri I'm not sure, says I'll have
to catch us on the replay. Just wanted to sail
of the coverage. Ion't be here on the next live.
Thank you so much, thanks for coming. Michael says, we've
heard how hard skills can be to level so it's
going so it going to level nine within a day
or two is pretty insane, exactly, And now we know
why the AI said he needed the ring and didn't
know how fucked he actually was. Jeff says, could She
Maria be intentionally training up his mind balance skill? It's
funny you say that, Jeff, because there was a part
of me that sort of wondered that also, And I
can't decide like a part of me wants that so
much to be true. Because I don't want Carl inhabited
by a thing that's like just trying to completely take
him over and run him. On the other hand, I
don't see how it benefits her for him to have
it higher. So that's the main thing is that I
don't think she Maria is is somebody who's thinking bigger picture.
I think she is an NPC whose goal is exactly
what it looks like. That said, the NPCs are behaving
according to the AI, and so is the AI assisting
in some of this happening the way it is. Perhaps
it all kind of comes down to, like who is
in the end really in control, And I genuinely I
don't know. I don't know there is. And there's a
part of me of like, you know, we had that
moment of meeting those gods when they were their shrines
needed to be repaired and they were being given options
of who's shrine to repair, and Carl is being talked
to by two different gods who basically can like see
Carl's mental illness and can see, oh, sweetie, you're not
doing too well. Huh, you are in dire straits. Actually
I can help with that. And is it possible that
she Maria knows Karl's going to be more susceptible to
another kind of attack, and I won't survive if he
doesn't survive, and so I have to level him up
to get him there. It's possible. That's the thing is,
like everything is sort of possible, but regardless, Carl's not
in control of any of this. And that's the part
that's so upsetting, is that you want to think the
best of it just for the fucking comfort. But if
it's not, or if it is, it doesn't matter, because
it's happening whether he likes it or not, and that
is so upsetting. Ugh. Anyway, donuts, first question to Victory
is your sister was she nice or was she a jerk?
If the oork Woman was surprised by the odd question,
she didn't show it, but she did appear to think
about her answer. My sister Ugly and I once had
a very similar outlook on life. When she married into
the royal family, she lost a lot of who she was.
I suppose she was quite unhappy with how things had
turned out for her. We had not spoken in a
long while, but she did send me a message before
she died, asking if I was planning on being an
adjutant this season. She was going to the School of
Pendra Club to meet up with the King and wanted
to have an outing before the fighting started. Why do
you wish to know, Princess? You can judge someone based
on how they talk about the dead And Carl messages
her and says, what TV show did you get that from?
And she says, I didn't get it from a show.
I really want to know you picked her out and
I need to know if we can trust her, and
he says, we don't trust anybody, but something tells me
she's okay, and she says, but you trusted sister, and
is and look how that turned out, which a fair
It's an interesting answer. She doesn't say yes or no,
She just shares facts and sort of is like, you
can draw your own conclusions from the straight up information
that I'm telling you, which is a very interesting approach,
you know, and and the kind of thing that I
you know, I'm not able to resist fucking editorializing. I
would definitely be like, you know, I used to like
her and then lately not so much. And she doesn't
even go that far, although I do think that the
subtext is what you're saying that you know. So let's see.
The shanty town is usually small and unimportant and doesn't
usually form until after the fighting begins and the NPCs flee.
It is now quite large and completely circles Lrocos, giving
the NPCs extra layers of security. One you control. We
have three town upgrade coupons. Can we use them for this? Absolutely?
And with the new city defense system the AI created,
you may be able to get something similar to what
they have in Loroccos. But you may also use the
coupons for your base here, and that may be a
better choice. The ORCS territory had the most rivers and lakes,
including the large, fast moving river that eventually drained into
Larrocos itself. The Rocky Peaks made their way into Rolling Hills,
which was the area of the operatics in Pine number two.
The body of the main body of the enemy is
massing on your border here, Victory said. Initial estimates appear
there about one hundred thousand strong. And I love Carl
has a moment of just complete dissociation here and she
just ignores it as he's like panicing, going, wait, how many?
And she stays on task because she is not one
to be distracted by his panic. So, oh, sorry, Michael
is saying, I would think regarding s Maria, I would
think she wants more control because she would trust herself
more than Carl to keep him alive. Her trying to
activate gloom Wraith would have kept him alive but killed
everyone else in the room. Yeah, this is the thing.
Is like, what she wants to do, whether or not
it's to his benefit, is in his benefit in the
most purely keep him alive sense, and not in as
I have any interest in his well being kind of sense. So,
whether or not she's doing this to try and level
him up on purpose, the side effect is she doesn't
care about anyone else around Carl, and thus he would
have another whole kind of baggage to carry along with
having eaten Legion's eye, which is horrifying. Let's see, have
you familiarized yourself with the ramp up? Now? This is
the part that I found the most confusing. There are
four phases. We're in phase one right now, the ceasefire.
Then there's the ramp up, open hostilities and the peeling
of loroccos. When the ceasefire ends, the ramp up begins.
It lasts one hundred and eighty hours, which is such
a strange measurement of time, you know what I'm saying,
Like you could just say, however many days. We're all
in the same time zone here, so just say so
many days. It's just a weird you know what I'm saying.
I don't know anyway. There are no celestial summonings. Egress
into enemy territory by non scouts is only allowed through
narrow kilometer wide gates. Each corridor is at the same
spot and it's where the enemies are massing. And most importantly,
offensive magic and teleport magic or skills will not be
allowed during this second phase, which is fucking ben nanas.
It's just offensive magic. Magic designed to cause direct harm.
Magic are skills designed to transport you from one place
to another. There'll be a suppression field. You can use
such spells now, but the ability goes away the moment
Phase two starts. The Wraith phase is an offensive skill,
not a spell, and it will work. It's a phase,
not a teleport. Puddle Jumper will not work. The Gate
of the Paraoh Gods will not activate. You both have
multiple spells that will work, such as Torch and hole
and wisp Barmer, but unfortunately many more that will not
traps will work as long as they're not teleport or
summon traps. They have to be static. You can't repurpose
them as weapons or artillery ammunition. And the rest is correct.
It is designed to force bloody hand to hand combat
and non magical artillery. During this time. You will be
at a severe disadvantage. The other eight teams will have
the numbers, and they're v astley superior weapons that they
brought with them from outside. If you can survive this
first week, then you might survive long enough to start
moving offensively. This is such a bummer because like and
Karl has this exact same thought. Later, there had been
all of this reassurance from Tippis that like, yeah, sure
the mercenaries came in with their weapons, but they weren't
able to choose races or spells or anything. And I'd
rather take my thing over theirs any day. And I
don't know if he knew about the ramp up, if
the rules about it had changed, or if he knows,
and he just really believes that they will get past
the ramp up itself and it will be he will
have the opportunity to use those spells or what. But
it does seem to me like there is they are
really fighting an uphill battle here. What on your town?
Can they attack that place during the ramp up? Yes,
but if they capture it, they still won't be able
to get into your territory or into Larroccos. They will
attack if it's left undefended. I suggest treating with the
NPCs to help defend the town. The bulk of the
enemy forces will be concentrated on you, and they won't
want to commit a lot of resources to taking the ring,
as they will automatically get it should you fall. It's
a tactically important prize, but not during ramp up. And
basically what she says is you're going to be facing
a lot of people who aren't going to want to
risk lives if they can help it. They are not
going to want to do lots of little maneuvers against you.
They are going to want to have one big, decisive
punch that takes you all out, using their superior numbers
and their weaponry in one shot. These are not folks
who have like military experience, and even the mercenaries are
going to be people who often went up against unarmed opponents.
So they're mostly security forces and they aren't really going
to be used to this kind of thing either, And
that is at least an advantage for our people is
they have been straight up in battle for fucking months now,
so in that respect, our people and former crawlers have
way more experience. And he says one hundred thousand was
a lot of enemies. I'd once gone to a concert
with twenty thousand people and I couldn't get over how
many people that was all at one place at one time.
This was five times that. It was an insane amount
of enemies. And I really appreciate that like mention of
the concert, because this is something that got brought up
for me when I was covering something in one piece.
Marine Ford is this massive battle and there are so
many people that just get laid out right and left,
and yet they're keep being way more people to replace them.
And at one point I was just like, we're all
supposed to be on one island together, Like, how how
many people am I supposed to think are here? How
would this work? And Florian, who commissioned that, like he
commented something like, have you ever been to a huge
stadium concert. Think about that number of people, and that
really did help put it in perspective. The biggest concert
I've ever been to was Renaissance Beyonce, and it was
eighty five thousand people and it was stunning. I was
in the nose. I was literally three seats down from
the furthest you could possibly get from the stage, and
it was it was so overwhelming looking down and seeing
how far away she was. You couldn't even tell that
she was a person from that far away, Like the
screens and everything were totally necessary to know what was
going on, and it was just really it put it
in perspective for me and thinking about like that being
the number of enemies that you're facing down more than
that even who that's a lot. So Florian is talking
about how they have built defenses and they're creating a
no man's land, just like one of those areas that
crossing is like really hazardous tons of traps and also
people that can like snipe you, and if they break through,
we'll have multiple fallback positions. Then once they're through, they'll
be able to flank us until we get to the
FUPA one hundred thousand troops on one side, ready to
pour over us like ants. Earlier, Tippet said had been
a mistake for them to arm themselves with existing gear
and not take classes and spells. I wasn't so sure
about that anymore. This is when Louis katcha Batista, Samantha
and a few others as it's put come into the
room and Samantha is crying because Louis got married, and
she tries to be like you, like, what did you
think I was gonna do? You should have told me
you were getting married, And Ruby is like you said
or not Ruby Bonnie Bonnie says, well, you said you
would like pull her out of the way and jump
into place at the last second. And Samantha's like, first
of all, you're a little kid, so you don't know
what you're talking about. And second of all, even if
I did do that, that's no reason to not tell me.
And this is when Doughnut's like, oh, it's just the
first wedding. There's a real one, like a bigger one later,
and everyone's like, oh my god, don't know. Why would
you tell her that? And I would love to give
her some like really smart, clever ulterior motive for saying this,
but I don't think so. I think she just blurted
some shit out. So this chapter ends with like Bonnie
talking about how Scarn and a few others are playing
with the airship and Louis hired gremlins. We bought an
upgrade for our door guns. I've patted the tiny gnome
on the head. You shouldn't have to think about that
sort of stuff, the little girl gave me a chilling smile.
I shouldn't have to think about killing out worlders. Why
shouldn't I have they stopped thinking about trying to kill me?
Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. So final chapter is fifteen
time until the ceasefire ends thirty three hours, and I
really like there have been times where it has felt
like we have all the time in the world, and
this is definitely the timing of every thing is making
me feel very anxious. I would be sitting down and
coming up with like a schedule for stuff because I
would be so worried about getting everything done. And I
have time blindness, so a schedule is sort of essential
for me when there's many things to be done within
a given period. We just have so many people that
we have to get onto our team. We have got
to level up our meatball guy. There's just a lot
and it's overwhelming, you know. So fifteen starts off with
our friends watching it this weird rolling ball that is
a mob and they're all like remembering the weird swine ball.
But it's not that it's slower. It's not making the
same kinds of sounds and it stinks in a different
way this. There's a few new people in the mix
here with them as well. There's body, a level sixty
big game spear hunter who's really kind of taciturn, And
there's a couple of these dream elves who are not
dream elves, they're just regular elves, but they're like really
white skinned, and they are talking about getting a variety
of different tattoos depending on like what group they wind
up stationed with, and they've already gotten one that's like
a combo human cat tattoo. Donut is not impressed, and
when she's like, well, what if you want to wind
up station with somebody else, they're like, well, we have
more skin. And she says something to Carl like is
this what it was like when you first enlisted? And
Carl is like, it kind of is which is weird
because these guys are like a thousand years and they
are not behaving like that at all. Let's see, I
was starting to come to the uncomfortable realization that everyone
acting fairly human like was normal for the people of
the syndicate, that the general citizenry of the galaxy as
a whole were all similar to us in so many ways,
despite their vastly different anatomies and cultures and environments. I
didn't know what that meant, but the knowledge made me
feel strangely unsettled. It was the same feeling I had
during the Iron Tangle, when I just knew I was
missing something, something important, And I can't help but think
that this is like because y'all are coming from the
same seeds, like they're mining you for resources, and those
resources are all coming from the same place, the same
like little tiny AI computer chip basically. So it's that that, like,
there's a similarity in the structure of the programming in there,
I think. But maybe maybe that's not it. That's just
what my assumption is. So let's see, we were at
the very edge of the map, humping down, humping down,
Oh my god, ah, sorry, guys, hunting down one of
the mob incursions into our territory Rolling Battle Formation Ball
level seventy. Now it turns out that what we've got
here are skanky skinkers, skank skunk Warrior. These things, long
story short, are like what if skunk's stunk even worse
than they do? And it's funny. Last night I was
out with my husband. We were taking the dogs home
from the dog park, and we passed a skunk that
was standing on the side of the road, and I
had a moment of just like, oh shit, because I
was really worried it was going to run out in
front of the car. It didn't move, and my husband
didn't even see it our dogs how and just kind
of turned and watched it. But he didn't try to
like jump out of the car or anything. But I do.
There's a point here where the AI says, I hope
you have some hot hydrogen peroxide, soap and baking soda ready,
And I actually do have like a little tupperware bin
in my trunk that's got a huge bottle of hydrogen peroxide,
a huge box of baking soda, and a I think
it's just like a container of down dish soap and
rubber gloves, because I have talked to so many dog
owners that have their dogs have run into skunks, and
you know, if you are out when this happens, the
last thing that you want is to get your dog
into the car with you to bring home to deal with,
like without having washed it down or anything. So it
was just funny because this was all on my mind
last night after passing that skunk and being like, well,
at least I know I had stuff with me if
something were to happen. But this is obviously way way
more intense. First, before we get to we have Jamal.
You guys. Jamal. Jamal is a one of those guys
that's made out of like a tattoo, and he is
a hammerhead shark who's apparently quite fat, and Carl has
made him these sort of crab leg like appendages with
which to walk around, but Jamal insists on jumping on hopping,
which always breaks them, and apparently has done this. This
is I think the third time that he has done this,
and he has a He talks in third person. The
voice that he is given is almost a kind of
like Indian, a sort of sing song. I must give
you an apology. I just did a little hop and
then the metal pieces did break again. Jamal has so
many stories to give, and Jamal is giving you all
of them. And this dude is driving Donut really crazy
because talking in third person, I love her saying I
have very few pet peeves, which is just patently false. Donut.
Let's be very very honest. First of all, you're a pet,
so all of your peeves are pet peeves. But also
setting that aside, you get irritated by many things, so
you know, stop it. Anyway, he talks about how he
used to be an apex predator and now he can't
even hop and how unfair it is, and oh my god,
I'm so sorry. Michael in the chat says, Jamal refuses
to stop trying to jump the shark. I hate you
so much right now, Michael, get out. I'm about to
boot you. I'm one step from booting you. Oh my god.
So we're leveling rend up here. So what Carl does
is he almost kills a mob and then he just
holds rend out to bite down on it. And this
accelerated leveling up. When we say accelerated, I mean that shit.
He is growing before our eyes. At first, he's so
small that he literally fits in the palm of Carl's
hand and is like a meatball size. By the end
of all of this, he's like a bowling ball. I think,
maybe even a little larger. But of course we have
the horrible effect of the stink attack, and we also
meet He wore those little uh where is it? This
mob looked like all the others, except he was maybe
a little smaller. He wore a blue conical wizard hat
with glittering star and planet patterns and little sparkles tinkled
off the top of the hat. Fancy boy level fifty
five skank skunk battle wizard. And there's a part in
this description. He's actually a lot weaker, but he has
a lot of spells designed to get the warriors to
do what he wants. Funny how that works, isn't it.
In books and movies, the leader of a gang is
almost always the physically strongest want but in reality, oftentimes
it's the opposite. The leaders tend to be the richest,
or they lead simply because of tradition. They tend to
keep their power by engineering a situation where things would
get temporarily worse if they were gone. It takes a
certain amount of desperation before people finally stop caring about
their immediate futures and start looking at the long term.
I just really there's a lot of sentences in the
Kindle versions of these books that are highlighted, and mostly
they're joke lines. They're funny lines, which I get. And
then there's little gems like this that are not highlighted
by anybody according to kindall, and I am just driven
mad by that. This is where it all happens, guys,
in these little moments, and you just don't it's just
the jokes that get you. Uh, this is bars right here.
Oh my god, fucking Christ. Anyway, the horrible attack. Carl
also gets to utilize a gloom rath here, which is
super gross, and he thinks about the fact that this
is what the rage elemental did to Yolanda and is
just disgusted. But uh, Doughnut gets hit along with Mango
with this stink and it's so bad that everybody in
it is vomiting and the people outside of it are
close to vomiting. Jamal doesn't have any sense of smell left,
and he's like saying, how grateful he is for that
A little bit later on body. Meanwhile, I disabled the mobs.
There will be suffering from our allies, but they will survive.
We wait. That was by far the most words I'd
heard from him. So, yeah, the stench is going to
last for three hours before it goes away. The only
thing that they can think of to do is Mordecai
is going to make a potion for Donut that dampens
her sense of smell and taste. I'm worried about, like
potentially this being something that disables them noticing that something's wrong.
You know, like if you're so overpowered by the scent
of this skunk thing, what if there's like a smell
of smoke that would let you know something's on fire,
but you're not clocking it, you know what I'm saying. Anyway,
I am running out of time, So we're almost at
the end of this chapter, and I'm just going to
really quickly hit the end of this. Uh. She's complaining
about the skunk thing. Carl is saying, three hours and
it's gone is way better than it would have been
had you got hit by a skunk in the before times,
to which She's like, I was an indoor cat that
was never going to happen stop it, which she does
have a point. And let's see why isn't that thing
affected when my poor mongo got sick. It's not fair.
He's pretty resilient. Well, we should have let him collect
the sample of myss for Mordecai. What do you think
he wants that stuff for? Anyway, body appears on the trail,
indicating he'd found the found the path to the safe room.
He disappeared again. I am like really hopeful that Bodie's
not somebody that we need to worry about. The fact
that he's just barely talking. Ah, I don't know, guys. Now,
I'm now I'm like suspicious of everybody. Ellie says, I'm
pretty sure I found all the artillery batteries on both sides,
but I can't be one hundred percent. But we got
a new problem. There's a nasty surprise. Ready. Remember when
you said you wanted me to find out why the
robot guys wanted pet leveling accelerated while I found out
And uh yeah, So that's the end of chapter fifteen.
So we've got some bad news coming up. Oh my god.
Michael says, there are people who say they don't get
why people say they're anti capitalists Vibes and Dungeon Crawler
Karl they must be joking. People who are not picking
up on the anti capitalism in Dungeon Crawler Kral are
the most media illiterate human beings I have ever heard
of in my life. If you are listening to this
and you don't get what I'm talking about, I don't
know what could be clearer. And if you've been listening
to the podcast this entire time and you haven't gotten
it by now, you probably should stop listening to this
and just go do some basic research on the history
of capitalism and socialism and it's effect on cultures and economies.
I just don't really know how much clearer this man
could be. And it's wilful. It's just wilful. If you
don't get it, you're trying not to get it. That's
all I can assume. All Right, I've got a wrap.
Thank you guys again, until next time to the Loom motherfuckers.
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.