Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book eight, a Parade of Horribles,
chapters forty nine through fifty four. In these chapters, we
are having to deal with what's going on with Lena. Finally,
I am really not sure what Carl's plan is. I
know that I understand in theory, but I just don't
know how this works. Very interested to see how all
of this shakes out. As usual, Welcome to spoil Me.
Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. Michael, if
you're here, appreciate you. Bun Right now, it's actually looking
like there's nobody here at all, which is pretty rare
for me, especially with Dungeon Crawler Carl. But uh, you know,
I'm gonna make the best of it despite being hideously abandoned, ignored,
and unappreciated, so you know. Oh man, Okay, So this
section we start off with Carl's Book of Boom, which
is the volume of spells that people like donated as
they were leaving the dungeon. And this one is from
somebody named Mehmet Oh memit or uh. And he the
way that he says is he's like explaining. He says,
please forgive my cowardice in taking a deal. And I
just really want this guy to know that Carl would
never say that was cowardly. I think Carl wanted as
many people to take deals as they could. I think
he appreciates everybody who wanted to stay and push on
and keep fighting. But I don't think there's a single
part of him that really judges anybody for wanting to
get the fuck out of this place, you know. And
to a degree, I think every person that wound up
taking a deal is a relief because now he doesn't
feel responsible for their safety and their lives. So, mom,
just don't blame yourself for this. But and he owned
a bowling alley, and he had two children and a
third on the way. My wife was alive and pregnant
with our third child, who would have been my first son.
I killed her when she was in the hydra, which
is so gross. You guys, now, I don't think you know,
I don't think it's been. It may have been. I'm
trying to remember if we went over whether or not
a person could be put onto the hydra even if
they were still alive. So you know, pregnant women aren't
allowed in the dungeon. It could be that she is
still alive out there in the world, but it could
also be that she was indoors, which is pretty likely. Honestly,
when you're pregnant, you want to be comfy and you
don't always get a say in that, granted. But so
later on we have a whole thing with one of
his children as well, which is just really interesting, but
we'll get there. And he says something about, I think
that they that my daughters might still be alive in
the place where they're keeping the children. If by some
chance you can't save those of us who took the deals,
please find my Azarin yaz and tell them their father
so fought to save them. And he's sorry he's not there,
but he will love them until the very end of time. Ugh,
you guys. The spell is gutter bumper casts at level nine.
So we jump into the race and Carlos or Dona
is trying to use these clockwork triplicates and her like,
you know, raise the dead spell to make these minions
of hers drive the van, and you know it doesn't
go well. Of course it's it's not just it's not
gonna go super well. But I will say it's like
a lot more functional than I was sort of expecting
it to be. They are able to take specific instructions
much better than I would have thought based I would
think that, you know, you'd only be able to give
the most basic of instructions. But she can tell them to,
you know, do things like press the brake and pull
the right lever to the right, and they're able to
like do these sort of detailed things. Now that said,
there does come a point where somebody had clearly been
told to wear their seatbelt and they did not do that.
But I just really was pleased that it's probably, you know,
that she's so high level, I would guess as well,
is like if she weren't, that these instructions wouldn't be
understood quite as well. I'm trying to decide as I
go through this exactly how much much I want to
spend on the race and how much I want to
spend on the conversations, because I feel like the race
has some really fun moments, but I also feel like
the conversations are more like interesting in an in depth way.
I'm also going to say this, so you guys, you
know I mentioned every single episode so far, which I
do stand by. For the record, I've mentioned how anxious
this floor has made me in comparison to some of
the other floors, and I have to revise what I
have said now. So today is Tuesday, July twenty first.
Two days ago, I watched the film Obsession with my
husband and I I think that there is from here
to for going to be the pre obsession Natasha and
the post obsession Natasha, and the pre obsession Natasha didn't
fully appreciate the kind of anxiety that media could inflict yet,
So after watching that movie and coming back to this,
it's child's play because the intensity of the anxiety of
that film is such that I'm on day three after
having seen it and I have still not fully shaken
it yet. It got to me real bad. So in
some ways it's great. It's sort of like reset my
whole scale, you know. But on the other hand, I
would like to be able to enjoy fictional media without
also suffering as if it were a real panic attack.
That would be great anyway. Okay, so there's this whole
thing that with fucking Satan calling out to people at
various points. And of course, as soon as I see
that we're like kind of running ahead and we've already
got the finish line in view, I'm instantly going, oh, yeah,
this isn't going to end here. You're not done yet.
It's too easy, and that is indeed how it happens.
But we'll get there in a moment. Despite our shields,
everyone in the cab was absolutely soaked, and we get
a message from florin we got a backtrap, gonna try
the loop, Unicorn doing it too. I have the denial
of service missiles, and I'll hit the Unicorn just as
they start the loop. If they're not going fast enough,
they'll drop right out and we'll have to start again.
And he says that he can't see the Lady Dominators,
and later on because he is an estimate on where
he thinks they are because he has like an upgraded GPS,
But later on it turns out he was not correct
about that. Let's see, the only surviving team from our
own heat behind us was Team Free Love. We'd been
going down the steep road for some time, getting attacked
left and right, but I could see the slide and
it had a bunch of brambles. The clockworks were going
to time out in a minute, and I pulled the
large camel corpse out and Dona assigns the camel to
watch until the current clockwork times out and then take over.
And it's such a weird thing because the camel is
like the spell she casts is second chance. And when
Carl goes to grab it, he underestimates his own strength,
overestimates how solid the body is going to be, and
he actually like digs his whole hand in to its
torso and it seems to like gasp in response as
if it can actually feel that, which I'll tell you what,
I don't care for one little bit. I just him
sticking his hand in it. I mean, gross, sure, but
it's just like the fact that it's still got as
much capacity as it does I find very disturbing somehow,
you know. The next part of the track was a trick,
but one that Prepotente had figured out, and we were
going to skip this part completely. The trap was as
soon as one passed through the central area where one
had to choose a path, the ground would drop out,
dropping everyone into the waterworks and pipes, under the park
where all the racers had to make a long twisting
circuit in the dark, fighting off shield demons and baby
versions of the hedgehog culminating in a garden gnome sprinkler
burrow boss. I'm not going to lie. I kind of
want to see that, but what can you do? So
let's see. The driver's side door to the truck suddenly
opened and the clockwork olgo dropped away, leaving the driver's
seat empty. And this is when Donut is yelling, I
told you to put your seatbelt on, so because there's
no driver for a moment, we reached a turn in
the wall and the truck ran off the edge. We dropped,
then hit the ground, crunched loudly and sliding before we
bobbed up and righted ourselves like a boat. We'd moved
past the hidden entrance, but we still weren't in the lead.
We had one trick left, and I'm trying to find
this bit here, praying this didn't count as driving. I
reached down and grabbed the slider control at the bottom
of the camel's seat and pressed against his chest. And
this is when, yeah, horrible, let's see, Florence says I
was wrong. The Lady Dominators are behind me and they're
trading blows with the Unicorn team, and then he starts swearing,
and we tune out for a minute because we have
to deal with our own ship. But when we come back,
he says, Lucia cast a spell that left a brick
wall on the track, which pretty much stopped the new
and the Woman Tour team. The Unicorn went right over
it advantages of certain amounts. Apparently there were more messages,
including one from Tran, but I waved them away and
that I won't lie made me nervous, and we find
out later that, like, we find out what's going on there,
And I don't think that trans it was not like
a time of sensitive kind of notification. It doesn't seem like.
But I did have a moment of like worrying that
maybe Karl was choosing to ignore something that was like, hey,
just stefoy, I, but I think that maybe nota is
coming at you right now, you know. And MANI lets
them know that they killed their maurice on their heat
and that he was in Orangutan and their prize was
an engineer, which sounds great until a little bit later
when our team accidentally kills their prize. So that's great. Oh,
Michael in the chat says, if Peacock doesn't completely cock
up the live action series, you might get your chance
to see it in like five to ten years or so.
I guess that's true. They might include some shit that's
not in the books, or you know. I don't know
how much involvement the author is going to have, but
I do like the idea of the author being involved
in being like, look, I mentioned this thing, and I
didn't actually do it in the book, but it would
be kind of dope if you'll decided to explore this
on the screen since I didn't do it, you know.
So anyway, this is what when they arrive at this
like river and we get to see the islick spell
in use, and they don't cast it and they sail
right over it. The guart bumper spell wasn't quite what
I was tirelessly seeking for explosions, but in this case
it was perfect. I'd never met mehmet the Turkish man
who'd given me the spell, but i'd heard of him.
He'd focused on support spells and skills, always making sure
the other members of his party were as buffed up
as they could be. He'd saved countless lives during the
pitched battle of Faction Wars. He reminded me of Imani
in that way. People like him were the true heroes
of this dungeon. And I just really want to say that.
I know that sort of line can sound really corny
and like trite, but I believe that Karl fully believes that,
and I agree with him. And the thing about you know,
it's sort of funny because so often the kind of
labor that is acting as support to other people tends
to fall to women, and therefore it is often not
appreciated at all because it's simply just taken for granted
that we are going to be there and we are
going to do that. But the kind of selflessness that
you need to have to have a class that is
all about helping the people around you rather than keeping
yourself alive. It's a very particular type of personality and
a type of long term thinking that most people don't
have the capacity for. And I find it deeply impressive
every time I come across somebody who has the kinds
of abilities that it's like much more about the team
than about themselves. I take a moment to understand that
this person is just fundamentally probably a better person than
I am on a number of levels. So anyway, uh,
it was all the excess non magical weapons I had
in my inventory, hurriedly fastened together in a line of
change chains attached to the back of the truck. The
loose weapons dragged, bouncing and cutting and slicing and clobbering
everything behind the truck as we rushed over the ice.
As for the hundreds of ginger frozen and stuck in
the river, the dragging weapons cut through them like weeds,
which is honestly terrifying, and then donut cast some in
yee vermin. Most of the zipper shrews would have to
traverse the frozen path, drilling through everything, including surviving gingers.
If the chains didn't get them, this definitely would and
eventually we wind up getting part of that particular team
coming at us, which did not even occur to me.
And I should have seen coming, and they should have
seen coming, to be honest, but evidently you know, if
you see a being as like a person more than
as the species that they are, I guess it's easy
to forget that's like also still true of them. So yeah,
this dude gets taken out in like this huge and
the AI is like, well, you killed the guy who
was going to be your prize and help you out.
And I think that you guys need to learn that
you don't need to go this hard every time, Like
you know, all you needed to do is kill the
boss and you've practically committed a genocide. What are you doing?
So this is like as they see the finish line in,
Carl is saying, maybe we did over prepare and then
suddenly Satan says, this bores me. I turned just in
time to see the massive loop to loop tumbling in
our direction, having been headbutted over by Satan. Florence Tuck
Tuck and Team Sparkle's Vine had almost been done with
their loop when they'd been swatted, and they both tumbled
through the air, spinning in our direction. The vine was
on fire and covered with goo, having been hit by
a denial of service missile. It splotched onto the ground
just as the entire structure of the loop crashed around us.
Florin was hanging out the side of his Tuck Tuck
shotgun in hand, firing over and over in the direction
of the unicorn as they tumbled and hit the ground
like they were performing a stunt. Lucia, in her beautiful
woman form, appeared to be sobbing and crying and laughing
all at the same time as they spun out on
the ground. This chaos is difficult to picture. I'm going
to be honest, It's just so much going on. It's
so many reactions. It's wild. The bush seemed to be floundering.
It had the rocket accessory that gave them their incredible speed,
but it was still smoldering and just in circles with
Dwight screaming. I didn't see Lucienne, who I knew was
supposed to be the one driving, which we do get
to see Lucien shortly, and she is coming at them.
Let me in, Let me in. I'm coming to use swine,
Let me in, Let me fucking in. And I was
really wondering, like, if the spell is simply to summon them,
what would Lucien do once allowed in? Like does Lucien
have control over herself to the degree that she could
use this moment to try and harm Donut? Or is
the summoning also giving Donut control over her actions? Right
up until you know what I'm saying. I'm not positive
about how this all goes. And then we started to
pass under the checkered finish line. Arch get off, Donut
shouted at the weird rodent. You can't pass the finish
line outside your Our windshield cratered as Lucien, the driver
for Team Sparkles, was pushed through the glass by the
invisible barrier of the finish line. The rodent exploded against
my face as she was pressed into my mouth, into
my teeth, and ultimately through the back of our truck.
And understandably, Karl has a tough time shaking this and
just feels like he can taste Lucienne's gore in his
mouth for a while, which I have to imagine would
fucking haunt my dreams. There are some things that your
brain just doesn't get over, and I feel like that
would definitely be one of them. I think that's fair.
Oh my god. I slid into the driver's seat and
moved the truck over so it wasn't blocking the entrance,
and just a minute later the Lady Dominator's passed through,
followed by Osvaldo's team, and he sends a note to
the UH to a Valdo and Radoslav and Josha says,
you really think we should save him? He's the worst one.
Doughnut was currently attempting to fish Lucianne's small, cracked racing
helmet from the soupy gore on the floor of the truck,
and the fact that she still wants it. I mean,
can it be repaired? Maybe I don't even know, but
I was sort of like, is it in pieces or
it because it's like it's cracked at the very least.
But and she says, if we let the unicorn live,
we might regret it. He hates us, though maybe he'll
be nice now that his girlfriend is dead, but probably not.
And then that helmet has a curse. It's worthless. What
is Michael Graves disease? Guys? I don't know this one.
If y'all have some information, I meant to look this up,
but I was in the middle of washing dishes when
I listened to the audiobook the first time, and in
the middle of folding laundry when I was listening to
it the second time, so I did not ever look
this up at all. And then Lucia turned her attention
to us. I felt a chill. I was startled by
a sudden notification. The Scavenger's daughter blinks, for she does
not know what she sees, and suddenly Lucia is like
right in front of him, and it is extremely unnerving.
I am not even gonna say. Chelche is what we
wind up calling her later, So I am going to
go with Chelche because this is a like six syllable
long name and I am not going to get it right,
nor will I remember it. So Chelchy it is h
She's here. She's new to this place, but she's here.
She doesn't need Ceci or Gus like the residual well,
and the primal did. She keeps telling us that she's
kind and she will protect us, but she says the
kindest thing, maybe letting us die. Now. I want to say,
she doesn't need Ceci or Guss like the residual and
the primal did. So were those both of her dogs
and the residual would be Agatha? So was Agatha controlling there?
I had forgotten that there was a point where the
way that she was she being Lucia mar talked about
one of the dogs was like I feel like she
called the dog like she like she you know, you
don't know which one of us you should have killed.
But she can now do whatever she wants. And it
hadn't occurred to me that Agatha would be somehow able
to influence the dog or get into the like. I
think that I didn't consider it because Lucia entered the
dungeon with her pets, right. It's not that they like
became pets after that. She had found in the dungeon somehow,
So my assumption had been that, you know, they were
just pets that were leveling up due to her leveling
up initially, and then we begin to find out that
there's something else that's bizarre going on here. I still
don't really have a great idea. But she didn't need
Cci or Gust like the residual and the primal did,
which I'm assuming is the AI itself. I don't know
how it needs to like, why it needs to influence
her dogs at all. What does this even mean, she says,
the kindest thing, maybe letting us die. We're vessels in
the river, just as you. We are drowning together. But
more are coming. The veins are open, all the trapped
are coming, all seek the prize. On the twelfth floor,
not just her kind, the real, the imagined, and the enslaved.
It's not a game like they told me, but it's
not a game like they told you either, not anymore.
And she says this and then steps back and suddenly
is a little kid again, but a different little kid.
And it is a really weird thing because later on
Samantha can smell Chelchy on him, So this kid was
so close to or sharing a space with Chelchy in
a way that comes through onto Carl from Lucia, which
is pretty intense. And we find out that this goddess
is like allegedly a goddess that wants to defend children,
but the way that she wants to do this is
by killing them, because everything is like terrible anyway, and
you're going to suffer, and the best way to protect
you is to ensure that you can't let you don't
go through this. And you know, also apparently saying we
need to sacrifice children so that I make sure there's
no cilantro on my next or d'uv. It's just interesting
because she sounds a lot like the Agatha attitude, you know,
where it's just like everybody just needs to die because
we are not to be trusted with any power or
existence period, because we are just guaranteed to fuck shit up,
you know, So the presence is gone. The Scavenger's daughter
shudders in fear. I just really want to point out
that I don't think we've ever gotten that notification before,
and that makes me quite nervous. And then do you
know my dad? That lady, the shining lady, she said,
you know my father? She said, he gave you a spell.
My name is Ozra Yazz is here too. She's crying.
That goddess. She's talking to her now, telling her that
you use to spell our father gave you to win
your races. And he realizes that it's Memet who owned
the bowling Alley, and she instantly, of course, gets distracted,
and Florin is trying to be like, hey, I'm trying
to collect names of everybody that is there with you,
but she first wants to know if her father is there.
Karl has to explain that he's safe, but he isn't there.
And then when this little girl sees Florin, who is
a crocodile man, which I do frequently fucking forget, he
is so terrifying that she just takes off and sprints away,
And when she does this, Floren is just like, I
better chase her. Lucia comes back pretty quick after they
get spooked. Got to keep her from killing our grimlin,
which I'm assuming that Lucie would be the one that
would kill their gremlin, Which why would she do that?
Is she that short sighted? Or does he think the
little girl would kill the gremlin before Lucia comes back.
It sounded like he was worried about Lucia. Does she
just want to fuck things up for everybody? Is that
all it is? Or I don't even know? And Dona
asks what is happening with her? It says I was
starting to form a theory, but I didn't want to
say it out loud. I was pretty sure Floren had
already figured this out, as had Orrin, which terrified me.
I Like, the only thing that I understand about this
is that somehow all of these children are being kept
in the same place that like NPCs are between when
they're put into the world to play. And I don't
understand how we like why this is so scary to Carl.
I don't understand how this is allowed. The fact that
Lucia has been allowed to be in the game, Like
it's been mentioned to us that this shouldn't be and
that there was just so much money being made off
her that she they wound up deciding to flout the
rules because she had such a following. But I'm wondering.
Everything is so chaotic now, you know what I'm saying,
And I can't help but feel like at this point,
what Carl keeps saying is like, we need to get
her to take a deal. Getting her out of here
does seem like a better option. But I'm not sure that.
I'm not sure what happens to all these kids that
are weirdly like trapped within her in this bizarre way,
And why would this happen to Lucia. I feel like
I remember it being mentioned she was like fourteen, and
you're supposed to be at least fifteen or sixteen, So
Lucia herself is like underage, and I don't know, I
don't know. I keep thinking about the whole thing with
that orphanage in India and whether or not the kids
there were involved. But the daughters that Carl just talked
to were Turkish and had parents, so they wouldn't be
at that facility, so it kind of throws that whole
concept out the window. I don't know. I really don't know, Jeff,
says Karl. Not telling us stuff is so annoying. I
much prefer Stephen King telling us more than we should
know to spook us. It's funny you bring that up, Jeff,
because that is going to be something that's like a
specific thing I'm meant to talk about in a bit,
so I will definitely be addressing that. So anyway, the
limited details. The next race is twenty kilometers gas ork
screw factory, steel mill, doll workshop that is totally not
a front for anything else, which my assumption is going
to be like something like cocaine, that the dolls are
made out of it or stuffed with it or something.
All paths on this race are only wide enough for
two at a time, and you'll be sharing this track
with eleven other heats. Containment theft is enabled. Don't bump
your fellow racers. And this is when we get the
message from Tran. If this is my last message, know
that I tried to stop them from fighting Lena. I tried.
It is not his last message. He winds up still
being alive later but I definitely had a moment of wondering.
You know, we won. Zang was leading their octopus and
he let me pass. I tried to stop her, and
it's the same thing that happened in Beijing. She cast
a dread and they started killing each other. It was awful.
I think of all twenty four teams that started the
race with us, only five survived of our heat. It
was just my team and them. Zang needs help. He
was sobbing. I don't know what to do. So we
go into the interlude. Oh, Michael says, every kid who
stepped into the dungeon was transported to the kinder facility,
if I recall correctly. Okay, I don't know how I
forgot that detail, because, like often, when you guys remind
me of stuff, I'll be like, oh right, but this
isn't even really quite ringing a bell for me. So
there's just a lot to keep track of. So we
go into the interlude with Minus, and this is where
I want to address what Jeff mentioned here. For those
who are not familiar with Stephen King's writing, he loves
to do this thing where he lets you know something
is coming by being like he felt great and it
was the last time that he would feel great for
the next three weeks. Or he got himself an ice cream.
Little did he know what that ice cream contained. You know,
that kind of thing where it gives you a sense
of dread and there you know, there are some authors
who prefer that, and there are some that prefer to
surprise you and keep everything very close to the vest
and not tell you a thing. And I don't feel
one is inherently better than the other. They're just really
different styles. And it's just funny Jeff mentioning that like
the Stephen King approach, because that is sort of what
happens with this interlude. Mett Denneman chooses to show us
what's going on with Minus so that as readers, we
are awake now that he is a threat in a
way that we were not aware before. And this could
have been played an entirely different way, where we are
caught by surprise by this sudden reveal of who Minus
is and it's all a shock that like, oh, looking back,
maybe you can piece together, but that is not how
he's interested in telling this story. And again, I don't
think the other way would have necessarily been more satisfying.
There are times where a surprise twist is super and
I love it. But the idea of like introducing Minus
in quotes first and making him seem like such a
total joke, somebody that we just do not need to
worry about, and then doubling back and being like, actually,
this is what's really going on, I think is great.
I really really like this method For this particular beat
in the story, Michael says, did they really have to
kill poor Linus? Couldn't they have just imprisoned him or something?
I like, look, I'm not Linus didn't seem like he
was super well. And I am not trying to say that, oh,
somebody who is having a mental health crisis should be murdered,
but I am saying that like the way that the
guy talks about him later and says, no offense. But
men like your brother are just as responsible for the
crawl because they're watching it and obsessed with it, and
they're enabling this whole thing and complicit in the overall system.
It makes some sense to me that he would have
nothing but disdain for this guy. Now necessary, No, definitely
not necessary, But I can understand in a way why
they would be like just simpler to kill him. It's
just a lot easier, you know. I'm not entirely sure either,
because like there's some information that they are able to
give to Minus. That's like knowledge, And I'm wondering if
it was somehow like info that they were able to
remove from his brother because of his death and give
to Minus, But I don't know if that's anything. So
what it comes down to is that Minus is being
sent in as an agent to take down a target
and potentially if he can make it look like an
accident and then he might survive it. It seems pretty
clear to me that the target is Karl. It could
be a complete fake out and like somebody else and
not Karl, but I have to imagine, Like, honestly, a
part of me feels like, maybe you want to kill
Donut before you kill Carl, because she is so terrifying
at this point. But I don't know how he could
manage to kill Carl, considering that he's just a dude,
and how high level Carl is and he has like,
you know, a way to like detect traps, and I'm
not trying to say you can't get the jump on him,
because of course, you can, but it's like really hard.
And also, this dude isn't even fully corporeal, so I
don't know how that would work either. It's not like
he can bring a weapon in with him. You know,
it's an odd situation. And yeah, I don't know what
I can do. Even if I get down there. The
best I can do is maybe kill a crawler or
two before this system mai rips me apart. You have
your primary target. As you will be attached to the
fairy Crawler, you will likely have multiple opportunities to strike.
If you can find a way to make it look
like an accident, perhaps you might survive. And then eventually
he's just like, I just don't understand how I'm supposed
to do this, and the captain is just like, look, dude,
we both know this is a suicide mission. But what
is happening with this system is so fucking dangerous that
it has come to a point where we have to
be willing to do whatever it takes to stop this.
And he is like, all right, you got me. And
we see him very briefly in the remaining chapters of
this section, but nothing has occurred. It has just been
you know, the groundwork has been laid for us to
be nervous and paranoid about everything that he is doing
and or saying. And I enjoy that. I really, you know,
having this bit of paranoia that I have as much
as I resent it, in a way I am sure
is entertaining for you all to listen to. And so
you know that the sacrifice that I make for you,
I hope you will appreciate it. So let's see. Oh
there's this uh oh, you know what I think it
is because like sorry, when we jump into chapter fifty two,
he is about to suggest amount to them that's like
an animal and she says, old shuck something, and instantly
Donut says no, but I couldn't tell why. And I
think maybe that's like the dog mount and that's why
I don't remember having learned its name. But uh, anyway,
so uh, they get a message from Imani that they're
at the lollipop with Zang and tryan and to come
when you can. They've tried talking to Lena and she
is just basically fucking ignoring them. Her health is in
the yellow. But remind her that her health is more
than everybody's put together. So even so, she's probably fine
for a long time. And let's see, of the fifty
five hundred people who'd made it to this floor, we
now had fewer than three thousand left. These last few
races were going to be brutal, and yet that's a
grim number. We're down almost fifty percent. Like yikes. Carl
and Heaty decide on the upgrades and they get the
Bubble buddy, a heat sink in case we lost containment,
and the regular version of the same booster rockets that
spark Team Sparkles had, which when combined with the Bubble
would allow us to cover large jumps. For our Golden upgrade,
we went with Roller Limbo, a transdimensional upgrade that would
allow us to race upside down. As long as there
was a gap of at least ten centimeters, we could
change shape and slip under any obstacle, including other vehicles,
which is fucking bonkers. And I'm really curious, one if
there are any limitations on how often they can use that,
And two does it feel weird to them to use
it or do they feel like nothing happened and suddenly
they're through and it's like the ay I just is
going to make them as uncomfortable as possible. I feel
like I just need to assume that it's going to
be really unpleasant. I don't know. Anyway, this is when
Samantha comes up and talks about Chachi and how Look.
All I'm gonna say about this is if Samantha tells you,
why are you sticking your dicking crazy? This is a
big fucking pilot crazy. If Samantha's calling somebody unbalanced, and
I mean, come on, you know, Oh my god. I
replayed my conversation with Lucy Amar and that girl Ozra,
the goddess appeared to be one of the ones who'd
escaped the dungeon, and she was in there with the
kids stuck inside of Lucia Mar's head. I swear to God,
Lucia Mar, how did this happen to you? Gurley? I'm
so sorry. I can't imagine that you deserved any of this.
This sucks. Ugh Alright, so fifty three the cul de
Sac used to have nine houses, but now it had
ten thanks to us losing two teams during the third heat.
This made me wonder just how big the roundabouts were
for teams. Likely Nah's the empty abandoned houses stood in
the order in which the teams had lost, meaning the
closest one was the now empty home of Team one.
Fine Pig, and Carl eventually goes and gets Penelope the
Pig and tells her you can come live with us now,
and she seems delighted. And I'm just deeply uncomfortable. Even
though I know Penelope is just a pig, and the
AI emphasized that she's just a regular, real pig with
pig intelligence, I just have a hard time with that
because we've just met nothing that is what it looks like,
you know what I mean. It's I'm just feeling a
little bit like, not paranoid, that the AI is lying.
I don't think it is lying at all. I don't
really suspect anything of Penelope. It's more that I expect
something and have to remind myself she's just a pig, Natasha.
It's not like a real suspicion. It's just that I
automatically assign something more to her and then keep having
to remind myself that she's just a regular farm animal.
And it's odd. It's an odd sensation. So uh Chachi,
as Samantha calls her, isn't a well known one. She's
not ever sponsored as far as I can remember. This
information is coming from Rosetta, not like Alithia, who is
a similar deity. They're both goddesses of childbirth and women,
but Chachi is also a water and fire goddess. She's
associated with harvests, that sort of thing. They never do
well in the ascendancy gain because their powers are comparatively weak.
And Carl's like, why would the scavenger's daughter patch activate
when she was nearby? If she can get from wherever
those kids really are to here, do you think that
we could go the other way around? And Mordecai is like, bro,
I literally have no idea what the fuck is going on.
I was super helpful up to a point, but we
are in weird territory now. All of this is happening
for the first time, and Prepotente gives us some information
about her, the analog of a goddess in Earth culture,
she was considered benevolent, but the Aztecs also practiced human sacrifice.
She's the originator of an Aztec flood myth because she
cried for many days. It's somewhat interesting how all these
gods and goddesses are quite similar to ones from various
Earth pantheon. And then we have Donut asking if he's
coming to the concert. She mentions that Karl's going to
sing with her, but he has to take a bunch
of potions and stuff, which makes it sound like she
doesn't know that she's taking potions too, but you know.
And then when we go into chapter fifty four, The Lollipop,
this is where we have first we meet the flesh
mancer that Ellie and Imani have hired. Louis had a
cookie from a street vendor and was devouring it, getting
crumbs everywhere. The man looked down with disdain at his
flowing robes now covered with crumbs. He was sitting ramrod straight,
and he flicked the crumbs away as Louis, oblivious, continued
to happily munch, while Linus stared with puppy dog at Ellie.
The fact that he's keeping up the charade so well
like very unnerving, no now knowing he's doing an amazing job.
This dude worships a god that we haven't heard of yet,
named Goulah, and I'd asked Himani and Ellie to bring
the flesh mancer because we wanted to get this guy
to talk to both cor Kundas. Ellie said the guy
had a stick up his ass but knew what he
was doing, and he and Immani had been trading healing
tips while they've been sequestered in their safe room. And
Donut is like, we're supposed to get him into the guild.
He doesn't look like he can even sing, And Carl's like, well,
you just need to get in there and then charm
his pants off so that Porky comes out. Do we
know who Porky is? Have we heard it? Like? This
isn't who's Porky? Don'nut? It turns out doesn't have a
whole plan and doesn't doesn't have access like Carl has
not told her his full plan. Is what I mean
by this? Oh right, Michael is saying, Porky is Corky's
other half, right, right right? I forgot about how this
all works. And Carl says, I don't want you to
know the plan because I don't want them to take
the prize away or make or do something basically so
that I can't get the full prize with all of
the loopholes that I want. So he just like doesn't
even want to say it out loud or put it
in writing or anything. And I kind of say, guys,
I really love this. We're supposed to be partners, and
you're making me nervous. The prize is we can bring
two people we want to the eleventh floor. Ellie thinks
you mean the Prime Minister lady and maybe Skatia or
some other showrunner. But she's afraid that killing them isn't
going to do anything. And I don't think we should
hurt Prime Minister Victory. I know she's a bad guy,
but she's also my friend, and I'm scared about what
you're going to do. And can I just say that
I know she's a bad guy, but she's also my friend.
It's just such a wild sentence. I'm not even mad,
even though I feel like I kind of should be mad,
because this is low key what has gotten our country
into the state that it is. But we are people
are people are complicated, They're just you know, And there
is something about do not just saying in those words
and not shying away from either statement and letting them
both live in her head that I feel a surprisingly
like mature somehow. Ah, I don't know, but I'm assuming
that this prize is what Carl is going to be
trying to use if they win, doing whatever it is
that they're doing to get Lena out of here, and
we'll have to see. So the cruelty of this particular
floor was getting to me. I sighed and turned to
the main part of the table, finally taking in the
full scene. Before we dealt with this corcund dequest, we
hadn't even more pressing matter. Tran and Zang sat at
the end of the table, flanked by Imani and Ellie.
Tran was in his spider wheelchair nursing a beer while
Zang had his head down on the table. I knew
Ellie had been trying to talk to nob but clearly
that hadn't worked. And this is when Tran says, hey,
we were just trying to explain to Zang that he's
being an idiot. Now Tran is obvious frustrated. And this
is the thing that's so tough with these sorts of
situations is that like a person who's very involved in
that situation is going to have less grace to give
sometimes because they're sick of fucking hearing the same complaints
over and over again. So they can look heartless from
the outside, when really it's just the exhaustion, you know.
So my initial reaction to Tram was like, bro, you're
being kind of hard on this guy, right, But then
I started to think about what it would be like
to hear this over and over and over, and that
of course you're just going to get impatient about it.
What it comes down to is that Tran feels, yes,
Lena is cruel in her way, I'm afraid to do
some really brutal stuff, but it is not exactly that
she enjoys doing it or that she is killing people
just for the sake of it. It's when she's pushed
to a point where she hasn't got another option, she
is still actually pretty restrained considering And you know, there's
this situation that gets mentioned here. While Tran is like, look,
it's not your fault or Nas. They attacked her. They
attacked us because Nas gone completely psycho, which doesn't give
me a good idea what exactly Naw did that caused
them to attack I am really curious what the like
the way he says this sounds as if what he's
saying is they attacked us because they've seen the way
that Lena has been behaving otherwise and decided that she
really needs to go. I will say that for myself,
anybody who has seemingly not as capable of and attempts
to take her out is either the bravest person or
extremely foolhardy, and I tend towards the latter. But yeah,
and tran or Zang says, you know, it was horrible.
I can't do that again. I can't do another race
with her. And it turns out what he is considering
is killing their mount when her back is turned, so
that they are killed because they're removed from the race.
He's essentially willing to do like a murder suicide here,
and Carl points out that's not even gonna work. You
just lose containment and she's probably strong enough to get
to the finish line with no mount, So you're just
gonna put yourself in the position where you die. And
she's still alive, and he's like, what else can I do.
He's in a place where it's almost like he values
the fact that he would have made it an effort
over the efficacy of that effort, which brings you into
territory that's very performative and I just need you to
watch out for that, dude, because if you're not approaching
this from the place of like I need to do
what I can do, that's going to succeed. You're just
trying to make yourself feel better about something, and that's
not helpful to anybody. And Zang says she's killing people.
She stopped talking to me. She got poisoned, and it's
slowly draining her health but not going down fast enough.
She's not what she used to be. I wish I
had died before. I wasn't ashamed, and now I am.
Zeg wiped his eyes. She ripped june zaie out out
of his face after he died, and then she ripped
her own eye out to install it. Who does that?
It was then that I should have known she was gone.
I used to think I could, you know, keep her
from going too crazy. June didn't want us telling people
what had happened on the eighth floor in Beijing. She apologized.
She's always been so practical, so matter of fact. She
wasn't like the others at the warehouse. She never joked,
never laughed, but she would smile at a brother, and
she would smile at me sometimes too. She used to
be so pretty, and I don't mean pretty in the face,
but she was that too. I mean I used to
feel so safe and happy when I looked at her.
She was my best friend's sister, and I thought maybe
I could get her to like me and we could
get married and I would have my best friend and her,
And now I have nothing. We have to kill her.
What other choice do we haven't She's going to keep
hurting everyone, which is when Tran is like, she's not
killing for fun. She's just kind of lost her humanity,
but she's not going out of her way to hurt people.
And this is when Carl says we need that, we
need people like her. She's so strong, and Donut says
she's not a weapon, Carl, She's a person. I mean,
it's not even that that her being a weapon. It's
more like everybody has their role to play, and sometimes
people who are able to set aside or don't have
to begin with the emotions that get in the way
of doing difficult and necessary shit are critical. So I
understand Donuts taking issue with him phrasing this this way,
but I also agree with Carl that, like, you know,
somebody who is it can somebody like this could cut
both ways, is the problem. And I still am worried
about the way that she blames Donut and Carl for
her brother's death. I am beginning to think that she's
not actually going to make a move on them, because
she hasn't yet. But it could be that it just
hasn't been she hasn't gotten an opportunity. And Ellie says,
I was just in there with her, and I gotta say,
she's gone completely wack adoodle. And by this point does
it even matter? Every race from now on will have
her but versus a bunch of others. We had three
hours until the next heat. We had so much to do.
We were going to sing in a few minutes in
the warm age thing and then there it was. Of
course I had an idea, but we'd have to move fast.
Lena didn't worship a deity. She couldn't with her changbe race. Lena,
despite what Donut said, was a weapon that could be
especially effective if she was pointed in the correct direction.
I sent momultiple messages, including one to body body, did
you commit to a race yet? For this next heat?
Zang's gonna need a jockey Lena is leaving the dungeon.
So yeah, like I said, I don't fully know how
all this is going to work out. I know that
she has this health thing because she targeted some people
who she wasn't able to kill with the Ring of
Divine Suffering. And I don't think that they're on the
eleventh floor, are they? So that isn't like an that's
not part of this. I don't think it's just about
getting But the way Carlo is saying pointing her in
the right direction, like would she go up against the
war mages? Are they the ones that she had targeted
that it wound up escaping? They're not right, she target
at actual like outworlders that were in the game. Michael says,
they're getting tortured on the eighteenth floor. Okay, yeah, I
feel like I don't fully understand, and that's fine. I'm
just sort of letting it wash over me. I don't
really the mo has tended to be the reader doesn't
get the full story until it's happening, so I'm looking
forward to it. But yeah, I don't know where we're
going yet. So all right, I have to wrap this up.
But thank you guys again for hanging out with me
appreciates you so much. Sorry about the difficulties with the recording.
That was something, But if you're listening to this after
the fact, you won't notice the thing because I'm that good.
Until next time, to lue, motherfuckers. That was an unspoiled
network podcast.