Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast.
Speaker 2: This is spoil Me covering Dungeon Crawler Carl chapters twenty
one through twenty six. In these chapters, we face a
couple more bosses, and we also meet up with a
group of elderly people and their caretakers and find out
some disturbing things. It's uh, I'm concerned, I'm worried. Welcome
to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha.
Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode.
And Michael is here in the chat along with Rob
and ms T and Brett. So have a little group today.
Lovely to see you all. Yeah, you guys. I so
this section has it opens.
Speaker 3: Up the world a little bit.
Speaker 2: I feel like, I want to say it that way,
where there are a lot of things that are possible
when you set up a story like this, the entire
world being crushed and then people from all over winding
up down here and how would that work?
Speaker 3: And I really.
Speaker 2: Really enjoy as we are getting into this with like
a bunch of old people. The what we're doing is
dealing with ableism in one of its most basic forms.
Because a lot of people just sort of dismiss concerns
about accessibility and stuff because they don't need them, and
they fail to consider that they themselves are only temporarily
able bodied. If you get old, you will need help
if you're lucky enough to get old, and if you
are unlucky, you may wind up disabled for other reasons
a lot sooner than you planned. And so there's a
sort of sense of like, well, we could help those
people if we wanted, without ever including yourself in that future,
because we just never really think of ourselves as being
on the way to the same destiny. It's always like no, no, no,
but that won't happen to me. And it's a similar things,
like so many different situations in life that we will
not ever see ourselves in. And it's like, by failing
to help those people, you are ultimately shooting yourself in
the foot your future self, because you are not.
Speaker 3: Having empathy for.
Speaker 2: All kinds of situations and all kinds of people and
all of the types of challenges that a variety of
people face. So I think that this is a compelling
section that is probably going to wind up heartbreaking, and
I am worried about it. So let's start chapter twenty
one we find out that, like the results of the
trap that Carl set for Frank and Maggie is undetermined.
I am fully assuming that the two of them are
still alive.
Speaker 3: They just seem like the kind of.
Speaker 2: People that would be suspicious of finding an unlooted corpse,
that they would have their guard up in a certain
sort of way. I don't know, And I just think
that if they were to have been killed, I don't
know necessarily that the game would have given him like
a notification or an achievement for it. But I just
feel like these are not characters that you set up
and don't bring back again. It's just not going to
be that easy to get rid of them. So there's
another achievement, bitch meat reward. Bitches don't get rewards. And
he actually laughs here. It's the first time that he's
sort of like, it's the kind of thing where I
feel that it would be very easy to see the
fact that he laughs at the notification as a positive indicator,
but I think it's actually the opposite, you know. I
think that he has gotten so used to this new
normal that the fact that he's laughing along with the
jokes is actually kind of dire. Do you know what
I'm saying?
Speaker 3: Like that, The.
Speaker 2: Acceptance that it indicates isn't a great thing. I can
understand it, but I just feel like it's a red flag.
So we drove for hours, seeing no signs of people.
It was difficult to gauge how fast we were moving,
but I guessed about twenty miles an hour. My chopper
pilot skill rose steadily as I drove. Once I hit
level five, the throttle actually allowed me to increase our speed.
And they're just trying to explore, find some other people,
just like you know. They're trying to level up still,
and he has donut keep her map up on full screen.
The bathrooms were continue to be all over the place.
My thoughts wandered to my father. If he could only
see me now sitting on this thing, holding my legs
out so they wouldn't burn on the sides of the
glorified moped, he'd laugh, call me a damn fool. He'd
been a motorcycle guy, not a full time leather clad biker.
He was more of a weekend warrior. I hadn't talked
to or heard from the man in over twelve years,
not since he'd abandoned me that day, leaving me all
alone in the world. The way he says that day,
I am assuming is the day that he said, I
don't need you to like me, but you will respect me.
And the fact that he hasn't spoken to him since
that day when he was twelve years old, is like
incredibly fucked up. Like I'm trying to think what could
have been going on, and I am sort of wondering
if he went after Carl's mom and Carl stood up
for his mom and his dad just was like, you
know what, and like fucked off and never came back.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: I never really expected his father to still be alive.
I really thought. And it raises the question, now, are
we going to see this man in the maze in
the dungeon? Because like, this is the thing that you
have to kind of roll with with stories like this.
How many million people are left, like three million something,
And it's highly unlikely that anybody Carl knows is still
going to be alive.
Speaker 3: It's just you know.
Speaker 2: But also if they are, I would understand doing that
As a writer. I wouldn't even be mad at it.
It would just be the sort of thing that feels
really really unlikely. And I can't tell, like what kind
of story we're writing, because it depends on what it
is the author is trying to do and whether or
not you want there to be a scene of I
don't even want to say reconciliation because I just don't
think that sounds like it's in the cards for the
two of them, but maybe a like emotional moment of
running into him, running into his ex girlfriend.
Speaker 3: And I think, maybe that's not what we're doing.
Speaker 2: What I keep thinking about here, guys, if you haven't
watched the movie Wild, it's called simply Wild Wyld. It
has Reese Witherspoon in it as like almost the only
character in the movie, and it's a story based on
a true story and autobiography of a woman whose mother
died and she had had nobody else in the world.
Her mother was like her entire world, and when her
mother dies unexpectedly quite young, she kind of goes off
the deep end for a little while, doing drugs, fucking anybody,
and finally decides to get her shit together and walks
the Pacific Crest Trail, you know, from start to finish,
and that's like a big journey for her, and she
throughout the way this movie is done, and it's that
it's like there's no soundtrack, there's no nothing, it's just
the natural sounds of wherever she is, unless she's thinking
back in time two moments with her mother, and that's
the only time that music pops up, because that tends
to be what spur her memory, is the sound of
this certain song that was on in the kitchen when
they were doing this thing, or when they were in
the car or whatever. And so most of the movie,
like you don't actually really meet almost anybody that this
main character is connected to. It's all done through her
own flashbacks and thoughts as she's traveling alone working through shit.
So that's kind of what I'm thinking here as well
a little bit. It's just like him on his own
journey and just working through shit in a very direct
way that I don't know would have been possible otherwise. So, oh,
I'm sorry, there's a bunch of comments that I missed.
I didn't even see em. Han says, nurses in an
old person's home have an incredibly tough job, hard to
keep yourself from becoming desensitized, and the good ones are
amazing people. Yeah, Rob says, then throw on just cause
fallacy too. We'll get into that, and Michael says, I
always excuse the super unlikely moments in plots as we're
following one person in a million who rolled NAT twenties.
Everyone else died or weren't interesting enough to follow. And yeah,
like I said, if they turn up, I will have
a problem with that, you know, but I will say
that it's like I won't help, but be able to
comment on the fact that this just seems like unlikely
if he's gonna run into anybody. I feel like his
dad makes more sense than his mother or ex girlfriend
or whatever.
Speaker 3: But who knows.
Speaker 2: So finally they see a sign that says stares plus people.
It's written in spray paint that is still tacky when
he touches it and it's like still wet, and he
says that it's red spray paint. For a moment, I
was like, is this going to turn out to be blood?
But he can tell it to spray pain and blood.
I could see several ex's on my map indicating mob
corpses just down the hallways. These were white horned goat
things with mouths full of fangs. Loutable corpse Chilly goat
level four killed by crawler Brandon On with an assist
by crawler Chris Andrews. Two inventory empty, and his concern,
understandably is that even though these are other crawlers, they
put up a big sign probably this is some sort
of trap. It turns out that is not the case.
They are people who need some help and also are
apparently like a little bit naive about how things are
working here, or maybe naive is too strong a word,
but I feel like the energy that I am getting
is that they are desperate enough for help that they
are just willing to take the risk, you know. And
Donut is like, all right, if you want to zoom out,
we can see the stairwell, and I didn't see it,
says stairwell to floor two, which the fact that they
found one is interesting. Look, there's something written on the ground.
This road is safe. We're gathered a mile and a
half this way. Do not go deeper into the spiral
or you will activate the burrow boss. Just as Donah says,
I wonder what's in there. Something rushed past on the
other side. It was like we were standing on a
train platform. Whatever it was it was something fast, something big,
very very big, and they find this gate. If we
slid under the gate, it would no doubt slide closed.
Speaker 3: And trap us.
Speaker 2: Let's wait a second, I said, I want to see
what it is. We didn't have to wait long. The
creature whatever was rushed by in a flash, too fast
for me to get an info box. It rolled like
a ball. It was pink, fleshy in the size of
the entire hallway. It was like a nightmare pac Man monster.
It made terrible grunting noises as it rocketed by, shaking
the walls. The stench of sewage wafted it up as
it passed.
Speaker 3: Yikes.
Speaker 2: So we eventually find out what that is, and it's
knowing doesn't really help actually, So at first, from far away,
he sees like forty people gathered together and he's like,
oh sweet. But then as he comes closer he sees
how old almost everybody is, and it's just like, oh shit, wheelchairs, walkers,
nobody is like dressed for this either. You know, they're
all in pajamas and stuff. And it says an older
woman stood apart pushing seventy, not one hundred.
Speaker 3: Like the others.
Speaker 2: Black eyes watching us she stood stiffly, wrapped head to
toe in an endless amount of scarves. She leaned on
a shopping cart filled to the brim with blankets and
other odds and ends, including a plastic pink flamingo that
had an arrow stuck.
Speaker 3: In its head. I love that so much.
Speaker 2: And we find out later that this is Agatha, who is.
Speaker 3: Quite a character. I am. I'm curious about her.
Speaker 2: They get approached by a chubby black guy who turns
out to be Brandon, and he has a Bronze star
by his name. I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong.
That we find out what these bronze stars stand for in.
Speaker 3: The achievements.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of feeling like maybe it's something about having
saved lives or I don't know, because you know, he's
clearly here, like trying to help these people, even though
we're sort of at a point where I don't know
that that's going to really be possible, my guy, But
I had not really considered the fact that when new
people meet Carl and Donut, the fact that he is
called Royal Bodyguard and she is labeled Grand Champion Best
in Dungeon. It's like the fact that she can talk
now doesn't change anything about the way that she looks
or comes across to people, So they kind of take
a moment and reevaluate Carl for a second because they're
thinking maybe he's a bit looney Tunes. And then she
speaks and everybody is like, oh shit, that's what's going on.
Brandon went to a knee and patted Donut on the head.
She looked simultaneously outraged and thrilled that he.
Speaker 3: Had touched her.
Speaker 2: Well, it's nice to meet you, Princess Donut. I'm sorry
if I offended you, pretty girl. I've never met a
talking cat before. It's quite all right, Donut said, mollified,
apology accepted. I really enjoy this a lot. It's hard
for me to know with her charisma how much that
affects other crawlers and how much that affects the game itself.
Only I have to assume it doesn't really work on
other crawlers, but I don't know that. Oh they're telling
me in the chat that it's for killing a boss,
so thank you.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: Didn't remember that at all. Despite what I had seen
earlier with the Goat corpses, it appeared there were only
four people in here in fighting shape. Brandon and Chris
were six around. Hispanic woman Yolanda Martinez, was fifty and
stood about four foot eleven. She was level five and
carried a bow and had a quiver over her shoulder.
The fourth was a woman carrying a long sword. She
too wore scrubs, though she also wore a magical cloak.
Her name was Immani. She looked to be about twenty.
Her terrified, hollowed out eyes suggested she had seen some shit,
and MONI had a lot of skulls, one big skull
followed by two more regular ones. When I hovered over it,
it said crawler killer times twelve, so the big skull
is short for ten. She is level ten, and Doughnut
in text is freaking out and being like Karl, oh
my god, it's another murderer. But Carl can tell from
this woman's demeanor like, I don't think she's like Frank
and Maggie at all. And eventually we find out that
there was a really bad fight and that this woman
put a bunch of old people to the sword to
save them from a much worse death, and this caused
her to rapidly level up. And it's like, you know,
just such a horrific way to level up. But it
becomes a question later on for Carl, if people are
aware this is possible, then they might target a group
of old people expressly to level up and kill all
of them. And when he brings this up, Donut is like,
nobody is that evil?
Speaker 3: And I was just like, girl.
Speaker 2: The fact that these folks are so unlikely to survive
deeper levels would make a lot of people feel justified
in killing them because they are just doing what's going
to happen eventually anyway. And I think that's some rationalization bullshit.
But a lot of people would manage to convince themselves
that it's not that big a deal. I really believe that.
I think they'd know in their gut it was wrong,
but I think they would talk themselves into it.
Speaker 3: And you know, like.
Speaker 2: Agatha is only level two. Just for the record, there
were two hundred and fifty of you, Yeah, Brandon said
more quietly. Not everyone came down here, and not everyone
who did.
Speaker 3: Is still with us.
Speaker 2: The fire started and quickly quickly engulfed the outside of
their building. Apparently it was Agatha who started this fire,
so everybody had evacuated in the middle of the night,
and when they evacuate, then the place gets crushed and
this like stairway opens up, but there are people standing
right over where the stairway opens, and they just fall
in and they aren't even at the bottom of the stairs.
They are just never seen again. So nobody knows what
happened to those people. And Agatha walks up to it,
and she's got her uh like, she's got a grocery
cart that she keeps rolling between like she's homeless, so
that's what she keeps all of her stuff in. And
she goes up to it and it turns into a
ramp to make it easier for her to go down,
which enables everybody to go down in wheelchairs as well.
It's trying to get people to go down. We didn't
mean to go all the way in, but it was
warm in there, so I pushed a few residents into
the entrance where the ramp wasn't so steep, so that
hot air was blasting on them. I figured we could
wait there till we knew what we were going to do.
Only a few of the cops in paramedics remained after
the collapse. They just took off running like they had
someplace better to go, but some stayed and helped me
bring the residence into the warmth. We moved several over,
but then after we'd moved about half the residence into
the warmth, it just stopped letting me leave. My foot
was trapped. My brother wasn't even in the hole, but
when he grabbed my hand, it wouldn't let him move either.
It started hurting after a minute. It only stopped when
we moved down the ramp. When we got that twenty
minute warning when it said anyone lurking in the stairwall
wouldn't get out, we just went in.
Speaker 3: We didn't have a choice.
Speaker 2: We had about twenty guys with us, including a couple
firemen and cops, who decided to go in.
Speaker 3: Most didn't.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if Frank was part of this group.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Most of these folks haven't moved hardly at all since
we got here. We've been bringing them food from a
safe room a mile away. The cops and firefighters went
in when we first found the place. The gates closed
and about five minutes later opened up again, and those
guys were just gone. Our tutorial guide, Mistress Tiatha, said,
all borough and city bosses will have stairwells for the
first four or five levels, but there will be a
bunch of other stairs in random places too. A couple
of us went out searching for them, hoping we could
find a stairwell that's either easier to get to than
this one.
Speaker 3: This was a while back.
Speaker 2: They're all dead. You can see when they die on
the party menu. They all got picked off by something
that's been hunting them, one by one, even doctor Gracie,
she was a damn MMA fighter. US four were the
last of the non residents, US and Agatha. And Agatha,
by the way, is the source for the spray paint,
so that's handy. I am curious what else she's got
going on in that shopping cart of hers. And the
safe room that is nearby, which had been a waffle house,
is at capacity, and nobody is leaving. Everybody has decided
to just wait shit out. And I said this from
the beginning, that like, if the safe room was nice enough,
that's what I might do. Just go in there, have
some lovely meals, watch the fucking madness on the TV,
and just let myself get squished.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I probably wouldn't go that route.
Speaker 2: I know myself pretty well by now, and I think
I'd wind up trying to fight. But it would be
pretty tempting. I would, you know, I'd have to think
about it. And there's this gnome thing that's cooking food
and singing.
Speaker 3: They all love it.
Speaker 2: Those folks at the waffle house made a vote and
decided they're not coming out. And Brandon's brother, Chris, he says,
not exactly mute, but he don't say too much. Think
of him as silent Bob. If he says something, you
better listen. And her I asked, indicating Imani. We got
attacked once right after we found that tutorial. I don't
really want to talk about it, man, but Imani, she
had that sword and several of the residents. We were
taking them in groups to Tiatha. They can't move so quick.
It was for the better letting those things burn them.
That'd be much worse. I had questions, but I knew
some things were best left unasked. Those people can't walk,
so the dungeon's' fast healing and all the healing spells
don't work. Oh it's amazing, but it's a curse too.
All of these folks have been cured of hundreds of
little ailments, not one of them brought any of their medications,
and it's been okay. But at the same time, they
ain't getting any younger or stronger, and those who've lost
memories or cognitive function that hasn't been fixed. It's like
it cured anything that's going to kill them, but it
didn't make them any better than they were either. And
that is really interesting to me, because like there's gonna
be plenty of little ailments that people younger do suffer
from as well, and obviously it seems like Carl didn't
have anything like that. But I wonder, you know, like
if it's just funny because like when you live in
the United States and healthcare is such a complete shit show,
this is sounding to me like not a bad deal,
which really should give you some idea of how direed
is here, Like oh, well, you know, I mean, you
don't get stronger or younger, but like everything else is.
Speaker 1: Taken care of.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's ah, where's.
Speaker 1: The stairway again?
Speaker 2: How do I get tell her?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: God, the original plan was to gather as many people
as we could and storm the maze. I think it's
shaped like a spiral, but nobody was coming, so they
went looking for other exits, and that didn't work out.
Speaker 3: So well, we can't just leave them.
Speaker 2: I was hoping maybe if we could get them down
to the second level, we could do the same thing
for the third. And if they'd all get to choose
a class, maybe they wouldn't be you know, useless, Donut asked,
I nodded. I felt for the guy and the other three.
Would I have stayed even when it was so damn hopeless?
These four the idea of giving up their duty wasn't
even a question. I spent some time recounting our story.
I can do something similar with this boss. I think
I can build a bomb that'll go off in it's
own when the monster hits it. That way, you don't
have to get locked in there to fight. It won't work,
Yolanda said, you know those little doors, the ones that
let you see the monster.
Speaker 3: They're protected.
Speaker 2: I thought to try to hit it with my bow,
but the arrow bounces right off. I poked at it
with my finger, and it feels like clay.
Speaker 3: It glows blue if you touch it.
Speaker 2: They look like entrances, but they ain't. I think maybe
you can go in that way if you push yourself
really hard. But I wouldn't try it, and I wouldn't
be pushing no bomb through that. The only way in
is through this big gate, and the monster doesn't go
in that first room, so you can't hurt it without
getting locked in. He also Carl says here I told
him of our encounters with neighborhood bosses, and I was like,
did you tell them about Frank and Maggie? Though I
really wanted that to come up, and it doesn't. He
doesn't mention it.
Speaker 3: So Carl has to.
Speaker 2: Have a moment here where he's deciding what am I
going to do? Am I gonna try and help these
people even though it's ultimately hopeless? Or am I going
to take off and just try to make it with Donut?
And he says, the people, the ones who died while
looking for more stairs, which direction did they go? How
long did the last one? How long ago did the
last one disappear? It could have been them Frank and Maggie,
but that would mean they'd gotten into this area before us.
That didn't make sense. We were pretty far from where
we'd last encountered them. Behind me, one of the elderly
women started sobbing. If I'm gonna die, I might as
well do it in the.
Speaker 3: Pursuit of a worthy cause.
Speaker 2: I really liked this attitude of like, look, I already
have felt it was very unlikely that I was going
to get any further into this than I have. I
as well use that time to do something that makes
me feel like I'm doing the right thing. And honestly,
this is like what it's all about, in my opinion,
When people treat the world like it's a contest to
get to the top, it just seems like they're so
profoundly missing the point. And it's almost tragic because it's
like you're doing to yourself something that nobody asks you
to do, and it's warping your view of yourself and
other people. So even though you may prolong your life,
you are doing it at the expense of not only
the people around you, but your own soul. In a way,
how good can your life really be if you don't
have the humanity left in you to give a shit
about other people. That's the point, you know. It's it's
something that I am.
Speaker 3: I really like.
Speaker 2: This is something I've mentioned on other shows as well,
is that I am very much of the belief. After
you get to a certain level of wealth, your brain
gets warped and something's wrong with you. Because if you
reach that point and your instinct is not to pour
that money into other people's lives to help them, I
don't understand you, Like, I genuinely don't.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I am over here barely making it, and I am still, like,
you know, paying Rashan five hundred dollars a month out
of what I'm making from the show because she fucking
needs it to pay her mother's.
Speaker 3: Rent, you know, and like I really kind of can't.
Speaker 2: Afford to do it, But also I like, I gotta
do something, you know. I just don't understand holding on
to things for yourself and your self ownly because it
just seems ultimately so pointless. So then you get to
be alone on your pile of gold, and now what
who fucking you know? So I just the idea of
like getting ahead in business by throwing other people under
the bus as well? How is it? How do people
like justify this to themselves and sleep at night? You've
got there's got to be something wrong with you if
you are willing to sacrifice the well being of millions
of people who work for you so that you can
earn an additional few million dollars this year when you
already have so many millions that you probably wouldn't notice
if it went like half of it went missing. It
probably like wouldn't affect your life, you know.
Speaker 3: I just genuinely think.
Speaker 2: You can't get to a level of wealth without being
a bad person.
Speaker 3: And I think it's that simple.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of things in my life that
I have had the opportunity to do or go in
a certain direction and make a lot more money if
I had done X, Y or Z, and I had
to not make the choice that would make me more
money because it felt wrong. There's all kinds of examples,
and I won't get into all of them, but there's
a million places where I was facing a fork in
the road and I could decide to do the thing
that many people would consider the smart business decision, and
all I could ask myself is but.
Speaker 3: Can I live with that? Though?
Speaker 2: And ultimately I was like I couldn't.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the ones that is the most sort of
recent is deciding to take the Harry Pottery down. Harry
Potter was far and away my most popular show, covering
that with Rashaan, she was totally unspoiled. It was a
huge success and became a major part of my life
for a while.
Speaker 3: And then JK.
Speaker 2: Rowling decided to become a fucking monster, and I just
couldn't justify making money off of a property that had
been created by somebody like that where I'm on tape
and Rashaan is on tape singing their praises and like
kind of handwaving issues in the text and all this.
There was just so much about leaving it up that
would compromise the message I am trying to put into
the world. And I took it down and it cost
a lot. I lost a lot doing that. It was
a it was a tough choice. I'm not gonna lie,
but I just didn't leave it up and keep profiting
off it. It just felt wrong. And it's like, I
just think, if you are willing to sacrifice your own
ethics for money, you are killing a part of yourself
and so making the money, you're trying to like fill
a hole that could have been filled with your soul,
but you made the whole by compromising the things that
allegedly really mattered to you, And now you've broken yourself
somehow and you're trying to like patch yourself back together
with money, and it's not going to work.
Speaker 3: It's not going to do what you want, you know.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I just this attitude of just what am
I going to do while I'm here? That's for the best,
instead of trying to think survive, you know, I'm only
going to surround myself.
Speaker 3: With quote useful people. I think this is the only
way to live.
Speaker 2: I like, the only way that you on your deathbed
don't feel like there's real regrets that you wish you
could go back and change. So anyway, this is uh
like a nice moment of learning who Karl is because
I was pretty certain he would make this decision, but
I I didn't really know, And I think that's it.
You never really know until you're in it. So are
there any other rest areas? Yeah, we know of two.
One doesn't have anything in it except a vending machine
that hands out wrapped candies. They taste like piss, but
give you a plus one boost to your dexterity. The
machine only works once a day, that fucking clothes. The
next place is further down a taco bell from Peru
and has full facilities, including coffee and beer, good beer.
And they talk about like clearing out the other quadrants
and that there are these like lizard creatures that poison you,
and he is like, they're nothing to fuck with. By
the way, I had to like use up some potions
in order to live long enough that the poison affect
war off.
Speaker 3: I barely got out of there.
Speaker 2: So Carl is like, Okay, we're going to go and
spend the rest of the day like dealing with that
and leveling up. Get some of those cans out of Agatha,
and I'm going to take him with us. And he
doesn't tell them what he's going to do with them,
but what we find out later is that he's going
to alter the signs so that they are they send
people in the wrong directions, and he says beware of
other crawlers, but he again hasn't specifically mentioned Frank and
Maggie bugs me guys. I really feel like he should
be giving them specific names of people to watch out for.
I just think that's the smart thing to do here.
And he's like, we're gonna watch the episode, get sleep
and come back, and then we are going to go
in there and fuck that boss up. And twenty three
is us going off by ourselves to grind, as he
puts it, and deal with this fucking boss.
Speaker 3: This is a real weird one.
Speaker 2: So first we have the Troglodite Pigmy and the AI says, oh,
these fuckers with an intelligence just shy of an off
dropped toddler. The standard Troglodite Pigmy Warrior would be harmless
if it wasn't so damn fast or venomous. So first
of all, here we have Donut using slightly overpowered missiles
to take them out, and she like he kind of says,
you really need to reserve that a little bit more,
and she argues with him about it. But then later
on she uses a slightly lower powered missile.
Speaker 3: So I do enjoy that.
Speaker 2: Like, despite Donut always being contrarian and protesting him giving
her instructions, it turns out that she is listening to him.
You know, I like that because I can beat this
way as well. I'll be like in the moment just
kind of like eh eh, and then later on I'll
just fine, I'll do it that way, you know. So
I saw myself in that a little bit, and he
tells her, like, you have a lot more strength than mine,
it's double what mine is. You really do need to
learn how to fight with your clause, And later on
we find out, eh, not really not in this body,
she doesn't. I am wondering what happens if he gives
her a different, like enhanced pet treat, because I don't
know if she'll lose the ability to talk, or if
that becomes something that rolls into the next like change
that overcomes her. And if she loses the ability to talk,
that'll be really weird. Like I have to assume she'd
still be able to communicate with him via the text chat, right,
So that's probably how that would work, but I feel
like things would be harder. And also she has insisted
that she's not going to change race, so the only
physical changes that will happen to her will be due
to those biscuits if she eats anymore. I don't remember
if they were if it was mentioned that they heal
or do anything in particular. And now she's not technically
a pet because she's a member of the party. I'm
not sure if he can even feed them to her anymore.
There's a lot of like you know, things up in
the air here.
Speaker 3: So the Boss room.
Speaker 2: The front door was one of those glass automatic sliding doors.
The sign on it was in English. It said open
twenty four hours and fitness weights gains. It was a
high ceilinged gym. Signs hung on the wall, filled with
slogans like today is the day you gain and excuses,
don't lose calories and release the beast. I feel like
it should be excuses, don't burn calories, don't lose calories.
Speaker 3: That doesn't really make sense. I don't feel like that works.
Speaker 2: The place smelled of sweat and oil and testosterone. From
around the corner, I could see racks of fitness equipment.
While not tiny, the place was much smaller than the
last boss room. I didn't dare throw a dynamite stick
in here.
Speaker 3: First of all, just quick.
Speaker 2: There are lots of women waitlifters, but it's melso testosterone.
Because of I am assuming the weird male creature that
is in here.
Speaker 3: So this guy is called.
Speaker 2: The Juicer, with a body enhanced by the finest anabolic
steroids the dark Web has to offer. The Juicer spends
his days pushing iron, iron snapping necks, and crying that
his pimple infested sack is a third the size.
Speaker 3: It once was.
Speaker 2: Having reached a planateau, rage now fills his enlarged heart.
All he ever wanted was to gain, But right now
he'll settle.
Speaker 3: On bringing out the b.
Speaker 2: And the narrator says the pain for I would say
a good five seconds. He stretches that word out.
Speaker 3: It is really something.
Speaker 2: It's like he had to take a real deep breath
before that delivery.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: Oh God, and also right here, all he ever wanted
was to gain, But right now he'll settle on bringing
out the pain. I feel like it really should have
just been bringing the pain. That's the saying, right, I'm
gonna bring the pain. It's not I'm bringing out the pain.
I just I've got some notes for you. That's all
I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Apologies.
Speaker 2: I just feel like there were a few things here
that I get what you're doing, but probably could have
tightened it up a little bit.
Speaker 1: So this.
Speaker 2: Okay, Emhon is in the chat, Michael says, is the
hord Or and more too horrifying because she seemed to
have kept most of her faculties or this one where
they clearly fucked with his head. I say the first agree.
Speaker 3: Now, look, I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 2: Part of me feeling this way is that I am
also a fat woman who is forty years old. So
I just identified more with the hoarder, which is unfortunate.
But also she was able to say too much and
it was so much more upsetting. It's still upsetting here
when he is saying like, hey, no it hurts.
Speaker 3: I just.
Speaker 2: Have rarely played video games where people are like crying
for mercy while you kill them. It's not something that
usually happens in the games that I play, or the
characters that I choose to play and the paths that
I choose within the game. So even though this guy
was like he is mixed with another creature, they have
made him actively less human. That helped, but it did
not totally undo how I was feeling. And this dude's like, whole, bro,
the monstrosity croaked.
Speaker 3: I need a spot, bro.
Speaker 2: And then he like chucks a fucking weight from the
It's not like a dumb bell. He throws like what
are called plates that you put on a barbell.
Speaker 3: Those weights. I have a bunch of those right over here.
Speaker 2: Mine are pink and there's some guys look just off
topic really quick. But I have had my eye on
these plates that are decorated to look like donuts with
sprinkles for so long, and I have been like wanting
to buy them, and they're just I.
Speaker 3: Don't need them.
Speaker 2: I can work out with the ones that I have,
and I am, but I do. I do want them
very very badly. And I understand the irony of wanting
to lose weight and lift weights that look like donuts,
but I don't care, and I stand by it. So
long story short, this dude comes very very very close
to killing Carl, and Dona is required to jump in
here and the description of her attacking I'm trying to
find the spot here. She emerged flying through the air,
claws out like a tiger pouncing on unsuspecting prey. She
landed directly on the monster's massive, bulbous shoulder, and she
bit down hard on his vein covered neck as her
rear legs scrabble at his back. Tendrils of green and
red tissue went flying as if she were a potato
peeler gone haywire. That was some real imagery there, that
like she's a potato peel like that. I don't know why,
but guys, that is embedded in my brain and I'm
just like, oh God. But like she manages to do
enough damage here that it kills this thing because of
blood loss. Right, she does some here, but he tosses
her off like she's nothing, and she comes so close
to death. I wasn't worried, I'll be honest. I was
sure she was going to be fine, but it was
on my mind that he has these pet biscuits and
is he going to have to rescue her by giving
her one? And will that change who she is? And
that doesn't wind up being an issue, but I wonder
if that's going to be how things go at some
point later, you know. So he gets all of these
like achievements because they killed the thing as he's trying
to like heal her, and so he's getting very irritated
because they're taking up his screen. And then I had
a scroll of heal critter. I read it, but it
didn't work on her. The scroll evaporated for my menu
with an error message no valid target available.
Speaker 3: You just wasted a.
Speaker 2: Valuable scroll, demass. I couldn't cast my heel spell on her,
even if I did have enough man of points, which
I didn't. So I'm assuming that the way this would
have worked is that he would have to give her
the scroll and she would have to read it and
it would work on her rights. That's why it says
no valid target available. It's just weird to me that
he would have a scroll called Heel Critter. This is
what's making me wonder about her being a pet anymore?
Would that have worked on her if she were still
classified as a pet. Like, I'm just trying to figure
out exactly what it is about the situation that made
this not work. Michael says, I've tried to do evil
runs in games and couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: Agree, I can't. I never can.
Speaker 2: I don't care if it's not real, I just can't.
He doesn't have any more enhanced pet biscuits, just normal ones.
He only got the one from the legendary box. Oh shit,
I thought that box had like a bunch of them
in there. Oh. I completely misunderstood how that was going. Okay,
So I've been like operating under this assumption that this
is going to change her permanently in some way again,
but if she gets changed, it's going to be.
Speaker 3: A different thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you for clearing that up, Michael, because I
definitely have thought that he had more than that. And
Rob says, no valid target because she's not a critter anymore. Okay, yeah,
that's what I was thinking. She five hundred regular biscuits,
one enhanced. Okay, that's probably one of those moments where
listening to the audiobook gets me a little bit confused.
So here he's like, thinking, maybe I can give her
a healing potion, and he remembers that her bar because
there's like a timer cool down between taking healing pots.
He remembers her being longer than his, and he's like,
what can happen if you take them too close together?
So he tests it out for himself and he gets
you've been poisoned. So he realizes, like, I can't give
her another one because that would kill her because her
health bar is so low. And then finally there's this
cracking sound as her leg sets itself, and all of
a sudden, her health bar starts to crawl upward again.
And I love this. The way that this narrator does
this is very funny because he kind of gives her
almost like an accent here out of nowhere. She's had
just almost a British accent sometimes, and I say British,
eh kind of, not even really, but like this here,
I have been grievously injured in battle. In saving you,
I have made the ultimate sacrifice. I can feel my
life fading away, Karl. I'm circling that last bend into
the drain.
Speaker 3: This is the end.
Speaker 2: I used my claws, like you said, and I have
perished as a result. Miss Beatrice is going to be
most displeased with you.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is gold.
Speaker 2: Tell Ferdinand, tell him I loved him. I loved him
ever since I first saw him. And then this mortal
coil is shit, and he's just like, all right, all right,
get the fuck up.
Speaker 3: Enough of this.
Speaker 2: I love it so much, oh God. So I spent
some time grabbing all the weight equipment I could carry.
Free weights and dumbbells littered the room. I took them all.
I grabbed multiple weight bends, which weighed nothing. Once I
removed the bars, I broke down a door I hadn't
noticed earlier, and within where several mats and heavy medicine
balls and various pieces of broken gym equipment, along with
some wrenches and other tools all into the inventory, including
the broken door. I then took everything off the office
counter on the receptionist desks, including a laptop with a
dead battery and a cabinet filled with paper files. Why
are you even bothering, Donut, asked, having fully recovered. If
we can lift it, then we can take it. It
only takes a second. The system is really good about
categorizing it all. For some things like that cabinet, it's
faster to pick up the whole thing and add everything
into the inventory than to search it. For example, I
held out my hand and a half full bottle of
Johnny Walker black appeared. This was hidden in that cabinet somewhere.
The inventory system lets me keep it all together, and
it lets me take things out of it too.
Speaker 3: It's great once you figure out how to work it.
Speaker 2: We don't know what will be useful and when, so
if it's not bolted to the ground, it's going in
the bag. This is, in my opinion, the core attitude
to have. If you don't have a limit on your inventory,
why the fuck wouldn't you take everything that you can
One you can sell things. Two What if you managed
to get into a floor that stays open for a
really long time, and you got all this stuff so
that you can train, You can do weightlifting and stuff
to actually like maybe physically make yourself stronger somehow. I
don't know what that effects when the game has so
many buffs and what not built into your equipment, but like,
I could see this stuff being really useful in a
variety of ways. Also, I will remind you guys that
I related strongly to the Horder character, so I guess
it's probably no surprise that that is the direction that
I am going in here. But I will say that
the weight limit in Skyrim was my mortal nemesis while
I was playing that game, having to drop stuff bummed
me out so bad, And like, it's the half of
it is just like a wooden plate, a heel of bread.
It's not likely to be that useful, but you never know.
The difficulty in that game as well is if you
go to sell shit, the vendor that you're dealing with
has a limited amount of gold to spend, and so
even if you've got a ton of shit in your
inventory to sell, you can only sell so much of
it before they literally run out of money, and then
you have to find a different person to go sell to.
I don't know if that's how this is going to
work in this game, or if he can just take
almost everything out and sell it all at once. You know,
I don't know, because the inventory is different for him.
I have to assume that the selling will operate differently.
Speaker 3: But it may be the same.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this whole like take everything because you never know.
I mean, they are coming across some really weird shit
in this game. I just don't think there's any way
to predict the kinds of bosses or monsters or.
Speaker 3: Just different areas of the.
Speaker 2: Map, and you never know what could come in handy.
So then they go see Mordecai and he goes over
their fight and decides to tell them how they could
have improved the whole thing. He says, the Goblin boss
is pretty tough, so the killing him the way that
you did brilliant. And then the juicer that's a new thing.
Programs about your culture are reaching all corners of the galaxy.
The bosses are part of that. It's like this every season.
When you hit it with that heavyweight, you did the
same amount of damage as you would have with your fist.
You need to understand how powerful your bare knuckle skill
is become. It's just as good right now as any
unenchanted weapon you may find. I understand it's not convenient sometimes,
but I recommend sticking with a bare hand attack. Also,
you wasted the confusing fog scrolls. Next time, have the
party member with the highest intelligence read any scrolls. Yours
made it last fifteen seconds hers, it would have lasted
one hundred and twenty seconds. Her shred attack is very powerful,
but it's useless unless she gains more armor and more health.
You're lucky she hadn't broken her neck. Picking a class
or a race with a high base constitution will help,
but not much. She needs to load up on items
that enhance it, and those tend to be less.
Speaker 3: Common, so.
Speaker 1: She is.
Speaker 2: This is when she says that she's not changing from
a cat. She demands that Carl change into a cat,
and he's like, yeah, that's not happening. In fact, I've
decided to stick with human, so that's what I'm gonna be.
And then she gets a spell called puddle Jumper. She
can teleport herself and up to three others to somewhere
else within her line of sight. It will be especially
useful if you come across rivers of lava or other
impassable locations. Higher levels of the spell allow her to
go further. If she manages to hit level fifteen, it
works almost as well as teleport, one of the most
powerful important spells to have in the dungeon. Twenty minute
a cast and a tight and second delay and a
five hour cool down. It's not good as a combat
spell with that long of a delay, but it's still
great to have. And He's like, all right, well, healing though,
we need to focus on that. And Mordecai is like, well,
you've got heel scrolls and I bet you're about to
get some more. But stop letting her use melee attacks
unless it's totally necessary. Her strength stat is phenomenal for
this floor, but it'll catch up to her later. She's
in the wrong body to properly utilize that stat for
hand to hand combat. Plus, our health is simply too low.
Your dodge skill is level four, keep working on it.
Once it hits five, it'll be much easier for you.
So then he mentions the Burrow boss to Mordecai, and uh,
Mordecai is just like, you need to just find a
different set of stairs there. Most of them aren't going
to be guarded.
Speaker 3: Just go somewhere else.
Speaker 2: And he's like, dude, I don't think we're going to
find another set of stairs. We like traveled all over
and this is the only one that we came across.
I think this is it. Do you have any tips?
And Mordecai is like, first of all, I'm not allowed
to tell you anything like that because it's considered cheating.
But and then he talks about how every boss has
their own particular weakness that is exploitable if you're like
really paying attention to how they worked, and he you know,
with the Lama, it was his throat. With the Juicer,
it was the bite to the neck, which makes sense
because his veins were like really prominent. Mordecai points out
that the hoarder, she had the bugs coming out of
her mouth, and if they had killed one before it
actually came out, she would have choked to death on it,
and that would have killed her, which is so hideous.
You guys just like just you know, like, oh my god.
But and he says, there have been clues every time,
there will always be clues, and he gets a gold
Brawler Box, a pile of Ninja Stars and Chanted sure
a kin of Bloodless times one hundred and when it
says the damage increases by eight percent, does that mean
from the original mount or compounded? And Mordecai comes back,
like he goes off in his head for a second
and comes back and he's like compounded. So that's pretty
damn good, But they are really really fragile. The Golden
Looter Box contained yet another skill potion, a determined value
skill Tonic. I drank it, leveling the skill up to two.
I couldn't see a difference in the menu. The Brawler
Box contained the best of the lot, enchanted War Gauntlet
of the Exalted Groll plus three in strength in fist
mode only, plus one Dexterity, plus two skill levels Iron
Punch skill plus one two skill level of Powerful Strike.
A wrist bracer that transforms into a spiked war gauntlet
of Orchiesh Steel when the hand is shaped into a fist.
Remove this item before you jerk off, which did crack
me out? If you use this weapon to strike adherents
of the war god Grol, you have a one point
five percent chance to transfigure your target into the deity himself.
Trust me on this.
Speaker 3: You don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: So he asks about telling who worships grow Mordecai explains
that equine creatures worship, and also they often have blue
paint on their faces, and that's a giveaway. And then
he says, and he's really careful, just so you know,
Grol isn't a real god. There are no real gods
in this game.
Speaker 3: You said you.
Speaker 2: Worry that some of these bosses and mobs are like
you here against their will. That's not always going to
be the case, especially later on. Remember that there are
no gods here, just those who pay.
Speaker 3: For the privilege.
Speaker 2: And I am thinking what he's trying to tell him
might have been more relevant if Karl had been somebody
we knew was explicitly religious, because what I'm getting from
this is that maybe there are people like who are
religious who get tricked into doing things because a god
they believe in is being mimicked in the game, and
they think they're doing something that God is telling them
to do, when really it's just some asshole who gets
to play Christ for the day, you know, But I
don't know, it might be a whole different thing. Oh
my God, you guys, I'm so sorry. I'm just realizing
that I am at an hour already and I haven't
even gotten to the final chapter here. Honestly, though, this
chapter is like, it's a boss fight, but there is
just so much fighting, and I feel like this is
something that's very easy to talk about quickly. So they
watch the next episode of the game and are not
featured again, which obviously Donut is really pissed about, but
we kind of have skipped over that and go right
into them entering the area where the boss is. Agatha
refuses to be left behind, and she says something like,
I think that roly POLYI is the one that's going
to get us all killed. And I'm assuming she's talking
about Brandon because he's chubby, but I'm not positive that's
what she meant.
Speaker 3: I think that's what she means.
Speaker 2: And they see this thing rolling around and they finally
get the Ball of Swine, one of the rarest most
deadly battle formations of the Tuskling Thirty Tuskeling Knights and
their Lady Loves combine a gathering of Tuskling aristocracy at
an alcohol fueled, sexually charged orgy of war, lust and sometimes,
just sometimes, the wild ancient battle magic that permeates their
war torn world casts the spell forming the ball. This
particular ball has been transferred here for your entertainment. The
magic won't allow them to stop until every last drop
of crawler blood is squeezed right out of their human bodies.
And I love later donuts, like, ugh, why is that
as human bodies? Why can it be blood squeezed out
of their human and feline bodies? Which, you know what,
she has a really good point. We need to work
on our inclusion and our language. So this thing is just,
oh my god, it held a oh.
Speaker 3: She was referring to the.
Speaker 2: Boss as Michael because it's rolling. I swear to god,
I can't believe that. I didn't even think of that.
That is so funny. Michael also says the description of
throwing stars was hilarious. Was absolutely my experience with my
mom back in the day when she bought me some
of them. I did to read that, but I saw
that I was running out of time. And I also
kind of want to ask my husband if he ever
got any, because I feel like that would also be
his exact experience. So they are like approaching this thing
and they have this plan that they have put together.
I pulled the heavy Goblin table from my inventory and
placed it on its side all around me. The others
went to work. We've been practicing this for hours. We'd
gotten it down to less than twenty seconds, and another
twenty to pull it for the main structure, and another
twenty to put it all together. And they have made
this thing that Brandon is calling the speed bump. Him
and his brother, it turns out, aren't nurses. They are
maintenance guys, and they know all kinds of shit, and
so they have some tools and they are able to
put a lot of things together, which is really really handy.
The goblins had hand cranked drills and toothed bolts designed
to screw into the holes they created. Brandon and Imani
had received items that gave them boost to their strength.
This is just like something they do on that show
The A Team. Doughnut had exclaimed, but maybe mc guiver.
Once the top was bolted into place, Brandon, Imani and
I drove to the last crucial moved to the last
crucial part. The braces for the roof five heavy duty
barbell poles designed to hold more than a thousand pounds
of weight each. I discovered if I held my hand
in just the correct place and called the heavy pole
from inventory, it wedged itself perfectly between the roof and
the ground, solid as a concrete pillar. I love these hacks.
I really hope that this isn't the sort of thing
that gets patched later, so it's coming at them. If
the boss had any sort of fire or lightning or
asset attack, we were absolutely fucked. So far, it seemed
each boss only had one main attack, and this one's
was pretty obvious. It rolled right the fuck over you.
So he describes being in a car with his parents
fighting and how he climbed to the back as far
as away from them as he could.
Speaker 3: Get relatable.
Speaker 2: I didn't ever climb to the back because I wasn't
allowed to climb around the car. But I've definitely had
like recurring nightmares that I'm in the backseat and my
parents are too busy fighting to see that we're going.
Speaker 3: Right off the road.
Speaker 2: The main cab of the truck tilted violently, broken away
from the rest of the body. My dad heard the accident,
looked up into the rear view mirror, muttered, that's a shame.
I just kept driving as my mom yelled at him
to stop.
Speaker 3: He didn't.
Speaker 2: I this is so funny. This dude is riding their
ass and gets the top of his truck like just
sliced off because he goes under an overpass that is
too low, and honestly, as much as I can understand
being like we have to stop and help him if
he is on your ass like that, I really can't
even be that mad at his dad for not stopping.
Like you are risking your life and everybody else is
when you tailgate like that. Sorry about it. Life comes
at you fast, bruh. I mean, you know, I have
very little tolerance for people who drive in a really
agro manner. I find it to be extremely shortsighted in
the way I have described a number of other things
where it's just you are screwing yourself. How do you
not see it?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Anyways, And I'm just like, I want to talk about this.
You know what I'm gonna do, guys.
Speaker 3: I Am going to.
Speaker 2: Describe this fight a little bit more depth in the
next episode. But I am like ten minutes over almost
seven minutes, and I just really don't want this to
be too too long.
Speaker 3: But I'm just gonna give just a couple of extra minutes.
Speaker 2: Okay, Despite their fragility, we'd use several of the stars
to create the spike strips, nothing more than a pair
of stars placed between two pieces of bolted together wood.
The strips wouldn't be stopping the monster by themselves, but
each time it rolled over one, the amount of damage
inflicted on the boss would increase by eight percent, which
is a very very clever tactic. The entire structure shuddered
and slid with a horrifying screech. All four of the
ceiling braces popped out of place and went flying. One
bounced hard off Yolanda, throwing her over. The terrible stench
filled the now dark chamber, and unending, high pitched squealing
filled the air. And so they're stabbing at the thing,
and like, what we eventually see is that the tusklings
have all come apart from each other and are no
longer in a ball, which means that they are like defenseless, and.
Speaker 3: It's really awful.
Speaker 2: They're in fancy dress. They are wearing tuxedos and gowns.
They are holding like champagne glasses and whatnot. Let's see
The men were all level four and the women were
all Level five. This one was slightly taller and fatter.
She wore a glittering red gown with multiple leather straps
looped over and around her.
Speaker 3: Like a vest.
Speaker 2: It was like some sort of weird bed sm get up.
She too, was looking around, dazed and screaming in confusion.
It seemed like they had no memories of their time
in the pig ball. They were victims, just as their
other bosses had been, but their dots were red. Time
was running out and they weren't human, and a part
of me is like, hmmm, are you sure? I just
considering what they can do, I'm like, I don't know
who is and isn't, and like does it matter that
they're not?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I kicked at her, savagely, screaming, maybe crying. I kicked,
and I kicked until her health bar went away, and
Agatha winds up getting hit, But she is, like it
seems otherwise, not really in immediate danger. The purple hued
arena spread around us, the size of an entire quadrant.
The music still beat, colorful lasers shot through the space
like we were in a massive nineteen eighties themed roller rink.
I knew exactly what had to be done to get
the force field to drop.
Speaker 3: There were more of the.
Speaker 2: Tusklings than there were of us, but they were shocked
and confused having been transported from their own world to
this place. They were weaponless, they were untrained, and they
were slaughtered. And that is the end of the chapter.
Speaker 3: And it is pretty grim.
Speaker 2: Kids. Yeah, I don't care for it. I just feel
really bad for them because they just don't know what's
happening even you know, it just sucks.
Speaker 3: Everybody is just.
Speaker 2: Well, what else can be said? All right, friends, I'm
going to wrap this up since I'm so overtime, but
I appreciate you all hanging out with me in the chat,
and thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this one.
And I hope you all are enjoying the coverage.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I really really do want to say, like it helps
so much when there are people in the chat. It
just makes it feel like there's really someone listening to this,
you know, because even though I know people do listen afterwards,
it sometimes can feel like I'm just talking into the void.
Speaker 3: So it's appreciated.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, Until next time, did aally motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: That was an unspoiled network. Pat