Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl chapters forty two through forty five.
In these chapters, I was correct about the fact that
the next interview wasn't going to go as smoothly as
the last one. Honestly though, it was pretty fun to
get to see Carl take control of the situation and
absolutely crush it the way that he does. How satisfying.
Welcome to spoil Me, Welcome to the show everyone. I
am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning
this episode. Michael, this has been so much fun. And
this section. I listened to this while I was taking
a walk with pippin the other night, and it was
dark and I didn't get a chance to take him
until like probably like ten thirty PM. And I'm always
very conscious when I am listening to an audiobook that's
particularly funny that it might be extremely creepy to people
when I am out in the dark laughing all by myself,
I feel like, probably it comes across as unnerving, and
so yeah, I just tried to keep behold of myself
this time, but I definitely like more than once was
cackling this whole vibe. I I'm just going to get
into it. Let's just start so chapter forty one or
forty two. Sorry, they we pick up with them still
in that green room sort of area, And the way
that this works is like that they are able to
see things but not be seen because it's all virtual,
So they can like appear to be sitting in the
seats that they will eventually be shown to the audience
in and so watch the whole thing even though the
audience isn't observing them yet. And it's sort of like
a fun way for this to be set up because
I just like the fact that he gets the chance
to get the measure of this guy before he's on
stage with him, so to speak, because the other two
dudes who get pulled on are obviously completely unprepared for
who it is they're talking to, Like I'm not really
sure there's a way to be prepared for who he is.
But I don't blame them for like handling things. I
won't say as poorly as they did, because they're really
I don't feel like they did. It's just that they
were put in a position with a fucking maniac, so
they were doing their best, and it does seem like
there might be like just almost like they're they're not
understanding the intent of the show, which is to be
mean spirited, so they're confused by it. Which is always
something that I find fascinating is when a person just
like can't conceive of the fact that somebody is just
trying to be a piece of shit. And so it's
almost the tactic that people have taken to lately when
they say, like, if somebody makes an offensive joke, pretend
that you don't get it, and ask them to explain
it to you, and all of a sudden, they're going
to be a lot less eager because the whole thing
is supposed to be it's funny because you share the
same biases that I do. But now if I don't
get it, then one clearly I don't share those biases,
because otherwise the joke would have made sense to me.
And secondly, now you have to explain that you have
these biases, and it makes you look like an asshole.
So that's sort of what it feels like here, is
that these guys are just like not getting what's supposed
to be going on, and it's resulting in this weird
energy because they are being led by the hand through it.
And clearly that's part of what this fucking dude enjoys
is the fact that like the dawning horror right of
these dungeon crawlers as they begin to understand what it
is that he is setting them up for. So for Carl,
he gets such a leg up sitting on the side
and seeing exactly the way this guy operates so that
he can go in there with a particular attitude. So
the opening of this I focused on a group of
humans sitting in the second row, hooting and screaming and
laughing boisterously. There was a cruel air to their laughter.
It was almost a tangible thing, like a black, malevolent
cloud that embraced the presence of the entire audience. I
was reminded of that day when my dad and his
friends broke my sling shot. They'd been firing rocks at
squirrels laughing in a similar way. These humans in the
second row were all male, and they were all about
twelve or thirteen years old. It seemed the entire audience
consisted of young, pre and early teen males. One of
them was wearing a red shirt that said glurp on it.
Glurt glurp. The audience yelled, glurt glurp. Donut, I said,
talking quickly, this crowd is going to be a lot
different than the last one. They're all kids. I don't
think they're the happy cartoon watching kind either. Carl, we've
gone over this, Donut said. You sit there and look angry,
and I do the talking, remember, and then they get
the on air soon and we have this guy. No,
you little cunts are gonna love today's surprise panelists here.
Maestro had to bang some blimey mud skipper tail to
pull this one off. But nothing is too good for
Maestro's piglets. Suck it, suck it, good piglets. Glurt blurt.
The audience screamed, glurt blurt. I hate him so much.
Oh my god, you guys. I look, I'm gonna I'm
gonna preface this with something first. I want to acknowledge
there is a ton of excellent content on YouTube, really
really good stuff. Okay, I am not trying to say
if you are on YouTube, then you are trash, because
that's just fucking idiotic. I actually kind of want to
spend more time on YouTube in some ways because I
feel like I have not taken advantage of everything has
to offer, and there are so many independent creators on
there that deserve more attention, and I just tend to
watch like network TV, you know. So I just really
really want to be clear that I am not trying
to group in all YouTubers, because that's doesn't make any sense.
It's like acting like my podcast is the same as, like,
you know, an NPR podcast like that doesn't even They're
not even what you know. But when I think of YouTube,
this is the reason I haven't done as much with it.
This vibe is what I think of unfortunately, and I
really feel like that I am not alone in that.
I really think that maybe this is a hurdle that
YouTube has had to learn how to jump and navigate,
because I cannot be the only one that sort of
has this weird hang up and bias where I just
associate the entire platform at it, like just off the
top of my head, with this very juvenile, like cruel
and mean spirited sort of energy. It's I think improved
some the way that oh my god, Rob is in
the chat says one hundred percent, don't let friends drink
from the algo stream. Yeah, this is That's kind of
what has has been a bit of a stumbling block
for me is that I don't know where to start
in watching certain things on YouTube. To get the algorithm
working for me, I would be going in blind and
potentially set the algorithm up to show me more of
something that I didn't like, and I don't know how
to undo that. Like, there have been a couple times
where things have shown up on my feed and I
have tried to figure out how to like click them
and be like, don't show me anything more like this,
and I can't figure out how to do that. I
only wind up clicking through and starting to watch it,
and then I have to remove it from my viewing history,
which it seems like that's kind of the only way anyway.
All I'm saying is I think that the worst parts
of YouTube are like this, and that this is like
one of the first steps towards young men getting radicalized
by maniacs that have no knowledge or information and yet
have a platform. And it's such a fucking mixed bag, guys,
because on the one hand, and I think that in
part the fact that we don't need to have any
special education and we can still create content. Is one
of the great things about the Internet that there is
something beautiful about the fact that you can just share
anything as long as you are able to put it
out there, like if you have the right equipment to
do it, anybody can do it. And it's part of
what I love about podcasting that it is so open.
But of course there's that double edged sword to it,
where then you get absolute fucking maniacs. And there was
some I can't remember who it was, but it was
some actor the other day and he was like a
very He was not famous, but he was somebody that
I saw in a weird little thing and I was
sort of like wondering about what else he had done.
And I saw a link to an interview with him,
and I don't remember the name of the show. It
was something like Ugly on the Inside, I think was
the name of it. And it was these two guys
interviewing him, and I felt like I lost half my
brain cells watching this, Like I think I got through
about fifteen minutes, which is like admirable, frankly considering, and
they the person that was being interviewed was the most
intelligent one in the room for sure. The two dudes
who run the show. It was like talking to like
it felt like they were like fourteen years old. And
I was at least relieved when I went into the
comments that everybody was dogging on these guys because apparently
a lot of other people had followed this actor to
this interview, and so most people were there for him,
and they were just appalled by how bad the show
was overall. And I did feel better about that, because
there's nothing worse than watching something and thinking it is
god awful and then seeing everybody hyping it up and
being like, what am I crazy? Is this gaslighting? Like,
I at least felt better. Everybody seemed to be in
agreement that these guys were complete fucking morons. But it's
it's you know, part of having an open platform is
that you get what you get. Rob says, the best
thing you can do is use an alternative client like
new Pipe, which doesn't auto play videos. I do not
know what you mean, Rob, I didn't know that YouTube
auto played videos. Uh that I don't like that. And
I also don't know what new Pipe is and why
is it a client and not a platform. I have
a lot of questions, Rob. In short, but let's get
back to the book. So this dude, the whole point
of this, we find out later, is likely that he
and his brother are being given this show to keep
them busy and out of their dad's hair, so to speak,
because they are very privileged, spoiled brats. He stood about
six and a half feet tall, built like a tank.
A line of earrings circled his left ear. He wore
a hot pink silken shirt buttoned halfway up, revealing a hairy,
well muscled chest covered in gold chains. I couldn't tell
for certain, but I had the distinct impression he was
only in his early twenties. I hated him instantly. To
my right now sat two humans, two men about my age.
Both were Asian, their ragged, bewildered look pegnam as fellow crawlers.
One of them noticed us and point talking quickly to
his companion. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but
it seemed like they recognized us. I waved, and they
waved back, both of them bowing rapidly. They turned and
also waved at the empty chairs to their right. There
was someone there, but we couldn't see who it was.
So here comes the Maestro this orc. So we have
six guests today, two stupid lame guests, two VIP surprise guests,
and then two more surprised guests surprise guests for are VIPs.
Our VIP today are so hot. We are for the
very first time coming to you live. That is how
hard I am working for you. And that really winds
up biting him in the ass. If it weren't for
that it were live, I think maybe things could have
gone a different way. But when it's live, you just
got to adjust and roll with things to a certain degree.
And it, I think is is like where a lot
of his troubles end up coming from. So we see
this set up with these people who have turned a
corner and come across a bunch of those hornets and
a couple of those lizards, and they have splattered the
the hornet has splattered this like burning as acidic sort
of glop on a guy's face. There's three men and
one woman, and these two dudes have been pulled directly
out of that confrontation, and the Maestro is presenting them
with like a situation that they have to deal with
in order to potentially save one of their friends, maybe
both of them, although that seems very unlikely and I
was a little surprised, I'll be honest, I have to
assume that this comes down to how much they were
willing to pay. But I was really taken off guard
by the fact that the Maestro has the authority to
do anything that affects the actual game. Because it's one
thing to be able to interview people and to you know,
kind of fuck with their heads or you know, make
them do silly games on your show that are exclusive
to your show. It's another thing entirely to promise them
things that actually will like get them to dip in
and out of the game itself and affect who stays
alive as a player. And I really wondered at first
if he was just talking cash shit and couldn't do
what he was saying he could do, And it seems
like he can. So I am going to go ahead
and like lump that in with the budget issues that
we have been seeing with everything else, and just assume that,
like we are so desperate for cash by now with
this show that we are willing to throw in with
these absolute ship bags just to make a fucking buck.
I have to assume that it's if I give you
enough money, will you let me toy with your players,
and that they just managed to have enough money, So
the fellow with the acne scars is Lee June, and
the bald fucker will just call Zang say hello meet.
It took the two men a moment to realize that
Maestro was talking to them. Hello, Nie June said, I
don't understand what is happening. Okay, so let me catch
you up since you're too stupid to figure it out.
You're on Deathwatch, a segment of my show. That means
we just plucked you away from certain death. You're welcome.
Before your plight was hopeless. Now you have a chance
to survive. But we'll get to that in a second.
You have been hit with a time freeze spell and
it will run out just as this episode ends. We
have a little game we'd like you to play to
give you the opportunity to live past the next few seconds.
We're gonna show you a series of scenes and you
have to guess if the Crawler survives or not. But
before we begin, I want to know a little about
you guys, and we get some background that the woman
is Legion's sister, and that the other guy, Zang, is
best friends with Lesion, so he sees her as his
sister also, and the guy that they got hit with
the goop is their manager. And what the Maester is
trying to do is be like you are. You are
going to have to pick between the two of them
more than likely. This is how it works. We're going
to show you four scenes and we want you to
guess the crawler's gonna live or die. If he gets correctly,
you'll receive a teleport teleport point when we're done. For
every point you have, you can spend it to save
yourselves or one of your companions. The recipient of each
teleport point will be immediately transferred to the closest safe room.
If you decide to throw a point at old spooge face,
he will be healed, So don't worry about that. Ready, good,
let's go. And at this point, Carl gets up to
fucking leave and is like climbing up on the table
that is blocking him, and then this voice comes through
and tells them to get back in his seat. I
love this. Carl just tells him, go fuck yourself, Carl,
you're gonna get us in trouble. Doughnut said, you are
ordered to sit. We have paid the appearance fee and
you will participate in the program. If you refuse, we
are authorized to drop you into this ocean, drowning you
both bullshit. I said, you're not boring and you're not
the syndicate. There's no way they'd authorize that. We are
not participating in this cruelty. Nothing happened for several moments.
Donut jump up to my shoulder. You're gonna get us
in trouble. She said again, this time more quietly. Crawler, Carl,
this is Administrator Mukta. You are required to take your
seat or there will be consequences. I'll go on as
many shows as you want, but we're not doing this one,
I said, Carl. We will discuss this when you are done.
If you do not participate, we will accelerate you. There
are plenty of other crawlers to show on our program.
This is not a bluff. Can that other guy hear
me right now? No? He cannot. As long as I
don't talk shit about you guys? Will there be consequences
for what I say? As long as I participate, I mean,
they have paid for your appearance, nothing else. All right,
tell him we want on the show now before this
death watch segment ends. Carl, what are you doing? I'm
the one who talks this time, I said so. At
this point, these dudes have two teleport points and they
have decided they have to decide who they're going to pick,
and they are deciding to die together like they're trying
to show a unified front. It's uh. The one of
them sang is sitting save Lejiun and Lena, and Lejun
is like, no, we're not doing that. We stand together.
A sour look passed across the Maestro's face. He said something,
but it was muted. He paused, then nodded. A moment
passed and the cruel smile reappeared on his face. We're
gonna do something a little different, Piglets. Our VIP guests
have been watching backstage, and it seems like they have
something to say that Maestro was playing this off like
it was his idea, and I like, I didn't really
get exactly the glurt blurt thing until here where he says,
we're gonna show what these crazy assholes did to get free,
but since they want to suck on it so bad,
we're gonna bring them on early, and this is when
they start chanting glurt blurp again, and I was like, oh,
because he told them earlier to suck on it, but
now he's saying stuck on it for them. And then
it just turns out that that's just sort of like
the way that they say to like do anything is
to suck on it. And I was like, I guess,
I mean, the whole point is to be as like
vulgar as possible to be shocking, right. It's it's so played,
it's so embarrassing. It's very embarrassing. Hi, So Crawler Carl
and Princess Donut Piglets. You probably don't know this. These
two just broke a record for the most watched second
floor battle in the history of Dungeon Crawler World. That
is very impressive and I don't feel like they get
nearly enough credit for that. Say hello to my piglets.
We want it on the game, I said, not bothering
to beat the crowd, to greet the crowd. We want
to play death Watch too. That's not how it works, Carl.
I knew you were a crazy mother. They have two points,
let's use them to transfer me and Donut to that spot.
I look at the crowd. Wouldn't that be cool? The
crowd roared. People talk about how stupid you are, Carl,
But I never realized you were this stupid. If you're
feeling suicidal, then I leaned in, pointing my finger. No,
you listen to me, poor boy. If you're gonna fuck
with people like this, then at least make it fair.
They played your game and they won two points. You
said they can use those points to transfer people away.
I don't see why it can't be used to transfer
people in either. It doesn't work that way. You're not
part of the game. It's against the rules. Yeah, fuck
the rules. I looked at the crowd. I think we
should tell the rules to suck it. What do you think, clerk? Glurp,
blurt blurt. The Maestro did not like his audience glurping
for someone else. Oh my god, I there. That whole
line just speaks so many volumes on so many different levels,
and is honestly like I, I have thoughts that I'll
get to in a moment, and basically in his mind,
Carl is like confessing, I don't want to do this,
but I don't like this. You know, he's a fucking bully,
and I gotta do something. I can't just sit here
and watch these two guys get fucking like treated this way.
And then he suddenly like thinks about the fact that
the next two guests that he can't see are going
to be specifically aimed at him in Donut and he's like, oh,
I bet I know who it is, and I was like,
I think so too, And they do indeed turn out
to be who we thought. But it's a different situation
than you would expect. On television shows and in kids' books,
they always repeated the bullies will back down when stood
up to mantra. That was utter horseshit. It always has
been that only worked when the one standing up to
the bully was stronger than them. The Maestro and I
were not on equal footing, but my short confrontation and
the production trailer taught me something important. I didn't need
to be stronger than him. Donut and I or something better.
We were expensive, and I really do appreciate. Bullies don't
back down when they're stood up to. What happens is
if you are stronger than them, the bully simply realizes
they pick the wrong prey. And they find somebody weaker
and they go after them instead. If you are stronger
and you manage to stand up to them, usually that
results in them being humiliated, and the person that they
after you is going to get even worse treatment than
they would have otherwise, because now the bully has something
additional to prove, and if you stand up to them
when you are not stronger than them, it just results
in you getting even more of a beating than you
were about to get. Either way, they always are about
their ego, their reputation, proving something to the people around them,
and they get embarrassed really, really easily, which makes them
really volatile, and they often will lose control of themselves,
and that loss of control is inflicted on other people
almost always. So, yeah, the bullies, Like he said later on,
he says something about how they are very predictable, and
I was like, that's a really good way to say it.
So the Maestro is fighting this, Carl basically does a
double dog dare you You're too much of a pussy
to do it. The Maestro looked so angry I thought
he might actually cry. I suspected and hoped he couldn't
do it. If I knew one thing about Boring. It
was that they nickel and dimed everything. This Deathwatch segment
probably cost a lot of money, and that was with
regular low view crawlers. There was no way they'd be
able to send one of the game's highest value streams
into danger like that. When people became red zone angry,
they were in general unpredictable. That wasn't true with bullies.
I knew this from experience. It was the opposite. With bullies,
I knew exactly what was about to happen. I turned
to Li Jun and Zang, who sat next to me,
mouths agape, I quickly whispered, grab your sister and the
other guy and run toward the troglodites and through them.
Leave the sword. The lizards are really dumb and slow,
and their attention is on the hornets. You'll only have
a few seconds, But Li Jun said, you wanted to
trade places. The Maestro growled, you don't tell me what
to do on my own show. Meet. He slammed down
on the button on his table, and the two men
to my right vanished. The words death Watch Extreme appeared
on the giant display. The two men appeared back in
the scene in the hallway caught between the hornets and
the Troglodites. For a moment, everything remained frozen except the
two men. Zang reacted first, shouting, grab your sister as
he reached down to pick up the fallen third man.
Just as he moved to pick him up, the scene
un The sister stumbled as the sword she was grabbing
for was suddenly several feet away. Lejeune grabbed her wrist
and pointed run, he cried. The three of them scrambled
directly at the crowd of Trogoldites, who stood like turkeys
watching the hornets. The monsters didn't care who their victims were.
Multiple globs of white spit shot out, splashing into the lizards,
who in turn raised their clubs and charged at the bugs.
Both groups of monsters ignored the four humans, who managed
to slip away and add into the hall. The scene
ended with Zang forcing a healing potion into the mouth
of their companion before they slipped into a safe room.
The video snapped off to a mix of jeers and
scattered applause. The audience's reaction was subdued, as if they
weren't sure how to respond. I looked up at the Maestro,
a huge smile on my face, glurt on that motherfucker,
I said, it is very satisfying. I knew that he
was about to be put through it because of this,
but I I didn't care. I still was like, I
don't know what he could do to Carl that would
make that not feel worth it right now, because clearly
Carl knows exactly the kind of bit he's dealing with.
And so I just was like, I don't know what
he can even pull out of his bag of tricks
that Carl won't be able to spin. If you've got
that audience, that's the thing that's like to Carl's total advantage,
you know. Plus, as he has mentioned, we are expensive.
So they watched now him and the Elemental and Donah
and everybody. I love, Donut saying to him, Carl, you
scare me when you get that angry. Now he hates us.
I don't like people hating us. Our followers are going
to go down. Yeah, I don't think you need to
worry about that. Look, Donut, the show isn't over yet.
See those two chairs. I think it's Do you think
it's miss Beatrice? Maybe her and her boyfriend, or maybe
it's miss Beatrice and Ferdinand. The way that she says
her and her boyfriend is so insulting. Like, I get it,
she was cheating like a motherfucker all the time. I
get it, I do, But damn, donut do you need
to act like he isn't right there thinking that he
is her boyfriend? Also like cruel absolutely, And also the
fact that she still seems to think Beatrice is alive.
I can't tell if she really believes it or if
she's just in denial. I just you know, I can't tell.
The Maestro At this point, Carl demands, were you ever
a crawler? And He's like, of course, I wasn't a
fucking crawler. My family was there when they created the crawl.
If you get to the ninth floor, you're gonna learn
all about it. And apparently it's related to the whole
thing with her crown the Blood Sultanate. Are you guys
part of the Blood Sultanate? Do I look like a
fucking noog out of you? My family's Skull clan has
been victorious six times out of the last ten Faction
wars top three. Every time, the pitiful Blood Sultan is
almost always the first of the nine to get eliminated.
You idiots have been dead since the moment she put
on that crown. What about you? Are you gonna be
on the ninth floor. I will be there. I was
of age last season, but the stupid Squim conglomerate always
plays Battle Roale, which doesn't have a faction wars or
Celestial Ascendency segment. But I will be there this year.
I'm on my way to your stupid planet right now.
I will be war leader Maestro of the Skull Clan.
So if you're in then, and what happens if you
get hurt? Do you guys really die? You think you could? Actually?
The crowd went absolutely ape shit as the scene ended
and the lights snapped back on. And I love that
Dona is reading the room and adjusting her whole vibe
to match this like shitty attitude. Uh, next time, we'll
kill that thing ourselves and send pictures to his mama.
We'll tell her to what was it? Carl suck it?
I said, glurt blurt blurt blurt. The audience cried, So
they this is when he's like, I have two surprised guests,
and it's Frank, you and Maggie My and it's interesting
how different they seem to be. Frank isn't okay, clearly
Maggie isn't either, but her not okayness is manifesting in
a distinctly different way. Um. It was a recap of
Frank and Maggie's journey so far. I watched as the
two player killers stumbled into the dungeon. They had someone
with them, a teenage girl. It showed them coming into
the tutorial guild. We watched as their guide, one of
those floating brain mind horrors, sat the three of them
down and told them the only way to survive was
to kill other crawlers. The guide had a deep, rumbly voice,
unlike anything I'd heard before. It was terrifying. The teenager
wept as the guide explained what had to be done.
The scene switched to the girl on the ground, injured
and crying. We hadn't seen what had happened. It looked
as if she'd maybe been hit with a glob of
bad lama lava. Frank was also injured, convulsing nearby as
blood pooled around them. The woman, Maggie sobbed as she
went to her knees in front of the girl. Mom
the girl said, it hurts, I know, baby, Maggie said,
she reached down and to my utter astonishment, she wrapped
her hands around the girl's throat. She choked her own
daughter until she died. When it was done, Maggie leaned
against the dungeon wall and wailed, this is so bizarre
because Carl demands several times an explanation for why she
felt like she had to do this, and he doesn't
ever get a straight answer. And I don't know what
to think, because I could very easily be like, well,
maybe she thought that maybe they didn't have like healing potion,
and she thought that she had to put her out
of her misery. But like they were looting everybody, there's
no way that they didn't have some healing potions, Like really,
Then we see them like go teaming up with another group,
waiting till their backs are turned and ambushing them. Ivette
cried for them to stop. Rebecca and another man fled,
and Frank chased them. It showed the man running directly
into some plant mob thing I'd never seen before, and
Frank finally tracking Rebecca down, cornering her. The screen split
showing Yvette screaming while Maggie tried to calm her. One
of the other men they'd shot wasn't dead. Maggie put
a gun in Yvette's hand, told her to shoot the
man to get the experience. The girl refused, As I expected,
Frank's entire backstory was complete, made up bullshit. I still
didn't know if they were cops or not. I suspected
they were either way. Rebecca w hadn't been some sort
of human trafficker. She'd been someone like me, afraid, and
at the end alone. She'd been betrayed and hunted down
by a fellow human. I thought of the woman's naked,
stripped bare body. I shook my head in disgust. I
noted that Maggie's stealth ability worked like my protective shell.
It cast in a static semicircle and didn't move with them.
That was good to know. And then we watch as they,
like hunt other crawlers. Their teenage daughter does not participate.
The best part is coming up, the Maestro announced, and
this is when Carl is realizing, oh shit, it's the
booby trap that he left for these two that got
their daughter. He dropped it. All three turned to run.
A moment passed the dynamite went off, shrapnel blasted the
three crawlers a Lama had and given those horrible injuries
to the teenage girl I had. You didn't have to
kill her. Why did you do that to get the experience?
She would have healed your own daughter. Jesus, Fuck lady,
you don't know, you don't know anything. You didn't get
the whole story. She wasn't dead yet, she would have healed.
Fuck you, you don't know what we've had to do to survive, survive.
Your daughter is dead, but it's okay because you got
credit for the kill. I'm sure she'd be so fucking proud.
Maggie leaped from her chair, pulling a black dagger that
glowed with a purple halo. She lunged at me. I
didn't flinch. Her jab passed harmlessly through my throat the drager.
The dagger dropped away as Maggie cried out in pain,
clutching her hand. You don't know, you don't know anything.
You didn't get the whole story. What possible context wouldn't
make this make sense? I'm genuinely asking, like, I'm not
saying it doesn't exist. I bet it does, But I
really can't think of anything. I love this sort of
thing because a lot of times, when you have these
moments of somebody misunderstanding a thing because they don't have context,
it can be like really easy from the outside to
guess what the context is when something has been written
kind of lazily. And I don't feel that way about
this at all. This does not feel lazy. I genuinely
am like baffled, and I thought about it a lot.
I read this last night, and I can't come up
with anything like unless they had no healing potions, And
even so, did she did she like say something like
if I get injured, I'd rather you took me out
than make me be come like you like, I can't.
I don't even know. I don't feel like they would
listen to her if they, even if she did ask
that she's a teenager. They're her parents, and they are
responsible for her in a way that they clearly are
willing to do anything for her, So what the hell?
I don't know. Let's see, as far as I'm concerned,
this is Carl. Any business I've had with these two
has already been transacted. I'm sorry about what happened to
your kid, but fuck you, Fuck both of you. She
deserved better. We all would have been stronger together. Your
game guide is a piece of shit. I turned toward
Frank and met the man's eyes. The man had changed
significantly since the last time we'd seen each other. He
looked away and down the fact that this game guide
like this is something that has already come up, but
that the type of game guides people get really seems
to influence how they play the game, and I again
bringing up the analogy for all of this just being
like living in a hyper capitalist society. What you are
told is the way to operate is a difficult thing
to shake. Even if you begin to learn that maybe
it's not as simple as they said. It's still really
hard when you don't know anything and you're coming into
something as alien literally as this is, to not like
take it seriously when somebody is giving you advice, you know.
And it's also kind of fucked up because I'm assuming
that advice paid off. Probably when they killed people, they
got experience, you know, they like it did work to
an extent, I don't know. Oh Rob was in the
chat and says there was the Chloricon de buff that
prevented Carl from healing even with a healing potion. So
there are contexts out there where a healing potion wouldn't work,
that's true. Carl says something about how like she wouldn't
die though she would have recovered. He doesn't even say
give her a healing potion. He makes it sound like
she would have recovered from this regardless of a healing potion.
And maybe I'm misunderstanding that. It's just the way that
it sounded to me when he said it, and so like,
it's difficult to know, obviously, but overall, the fact that
who you get as a guide is like has such
an effect. It's basically the equivalent of like your parents,
you know. And if you get somebody who decides to
be really helpful and informative and give you all sides
to things and let you choose your own method, it's
going to be a really different game for you than
somebody who tells you the only way to manage is
to kill other people. It's just I don't like this.
This is the reason I haven't had fucking children, guys.
It's too big a responsibility. I can't handle it. My
anxiety will not allow me. And it's sort of ironic
when I step back and look at some of the
parents out there, and I'm like, I would definitely, at
the very least do a better job than that person,
which I probably would, but also, oh my god, I
would just fuck up in other ways. I don't know.
I don't like anybody out there who has decided it
raise children. I don't know where you got the nerve.
I genuinely don't like. It. Takes a kind of you
could call it faith, you could call it arrogance. I
don't even know what to call it. But believing that
you can raise a person, I just don't have it.
Not for me, absolutely not. So anyway, m the Maggie says,
I'm gonna find you. I'm gonna watch you die. You
and the fucking cat oooooooo. The crowd said, like we
were on an episode of the goddamn Jerry Springer Show.
Don't bring me into this, Donut said, raising a paw
in defense, I'm not the one who went all danger
dingo on my own kid. The crowd screamed with laughter.
I had to hand it to her. Doughnut was oftentimes
caught off guard, but she was highly adaptable. She knew
how to read a crowd that was for sure, But
as much as I disliked these two assholes, they weren't
the real enemy. We needed to end this. This bullshit
didn't serve any of us. So Uh Maestro keeps trying
to like ask questions, why did you kill your own daughter? Carl?
How does it feel to know you're partially responsible for
the death of another human? Maggie said nothing but fuck you.
Frank didn't say a word the whole time. Donut would
only talk directly to the audience, and I just grunted.
It was obvious the orc wasn't good at asking interview questions,
especially with a group of hostile guests. The crowd grew restless,
Doughnut started making wise cracks. The Maestro tried to ask
or something, and she just ignored him. She looked directly
at the audience and said, I once watched a cocker
spaniel lick her own butthole for thirty minutes straight. That
was more insightful than that question, and he eventually just
gives up. We have parting gifts, are you piglets excited
to see what we got for the crawlers? So he
gives uh Carl a pair of boots and I had
said earlier on that like, I didn't think Carl was
ever gonna get boots, because like he gets a buff
almost immediately for killing with his bare feet, and so
I was like, oh, then you might not want to
like change your tactic. And that's exactly what he says here,
is he's just gonna wear him in the safe room
because obviously he has so many skills that are specific
to the fact that he is fighting barefoot, and the
gift is supposed to like set him off, but he
just sort of is like, Ah, that's funny, and it's
almost like the audience doesn't even really get the joke
that was being set up. I love them. I hope
they weren't too expensive. The Maestro took a deep breath
and gave me his best fuck you glare. He turned
to Frank and Maggie. So Frank has a skill called
find Crawler, which shows you any crawlers within five square kilometers.
I don't think that's good enough. That is a legendary
skill potion. Either of you drink that fucker down and
it will upgrade your fine Crawler skill to level fifteen.
That means you can put in any crawler's name and
it'll tell you exactly where they are, no matter how far. Wait,
can I drink this? Frank is the one with the skill,
Maggie asked. Oh yeah, that'll take you all the way
to the top level of twenty if you have the
right class. But if you take it now, it'll take
you up to fifteen. No problem, I sighed, So are
we done here? The Maestro seemed to be at a
loss for words, pissed his gifts hadn't gone over well
with the audience. Ah, thanks to my piglets. You know,
the Maestro takes care of you fuckers. You know what
to do. The audience luke warmly glurp glurpt. Well, we
probably won't be coming back on this show, pork boy,
I said, standing up. But I imagine we'll see each
other again soon enough. I look forward to kicking your
ass all over again on the ninth floor, that is,
if you're not too much of a puss to face me. Now.
That that garnered a reaction from the crowd. As the
show ended, and the crowd cheered final Happy to have
something to holler about, I turned my attention to the
two crawlers sitting next to us. Frank continued to stare
straight down a shell of a man. Maggie clutched the
skilled potion to her chest, staring at me for the
first time. The woman smiled. So we jumped to chapter
forty four, in which Donah immediately is just like, I
don't get why she killed her daughter, Like what was
the purpose of this? And when they let's see, I'm
trying to find the spot here it is. There's a
moment where Donah asks him about Mordecai, saying like, she's
the one with the crown on her head. You don't
have to stay with her. It's her crown, not yours.
And she asks him about it, and he's just like,
let's just fucking worry about that. When we get to it, Okay,
she said, her voice small. She finally settled next to me,
and she was asleep before I was. So there's something
about this and the fact that Donut is anxious about
it that's really touching. And I do kind of wonder, like,
you know, I've talked about whether or not she is
in denial about b and I think it's interesting when
Carl says she was going to update to a younger
model and that he didn't want to tell her. Nobody
needed to tell Donut that Carl was going to cadnap her.
She just watched his internet browsing and was able to
put two and two together. I have a hard time
thinking she wouldn't have put two and two together about B, Like,
I have to think that she would have noticed something
unless B didn't look for another animal from Like maybe
she just talked about it with Carl, But even so,
I would think she'd hear don't would hear? You know? So,
I don't know. I'm just wondering how much of this
is just her burying her head in the sand. So
we hear about some other guys who wind up in
like a weird sort of sewer system, and they all
get killed except for one dude who was left, and
it showed the rage gentlemental tumbling into the hole. We
watched the monster's health bar plummet, and then the monsters
all experience denied, slammed onto the screen. The show ended
with a MANI pausing at the scorched entrance to the
third floor. She looked up into the air and raised
a middle finger before going inside. Hello, crawlers, keep up
the good work. Everything is running smoothly. Now that we've
reached the halfway point of the level, game guides are
now able to instruct you upon some of the intricacies
regarding the third floor and how the race and class
selection process works. Be sure to visit your game guide
prior to descending in order to make the transition more
smooth effective Immediately, any nonsapient mobs who happen upon a
stairwell will not be disintegrated. Yes, we all just watched
that rule get exploited on the recap episode. It was
very clever and exciting, but it's not going to happen again.
I figured that was how they were going to handle it,
but I wasn't sure if there was like a way
around it. Of course there is. The system AI has
determined the proliferation of the brindled vespas is too aggressive,
and we have had the number of these mobs and
admin notice a new tab is available in your interface accounts.
There was only one item, creator's fee Karl's Jugaboom royalty
one gold coin per kill current kills four. There was
a button cash out. Now below that was a small
line that I could barely read. There was no way
to zoom in I had to squint count updates once
daily two gold coins plus twenty five percent deposit fee,
rounded up, deducted upon cash out. Funds not deposited are
subject to forfeiture upon death. I swear to God, this
is so funny. As a creator, it is like this.
This is part of why I stuck with Patreon, because
they had a much lower fee when they first started,
and I got in on the ground floor and they
let me, as like one of the original creators to
sign up with them, keep that rate even once they
began to expand so dramatically as they have over the
past few years. So I am literally never leaving, not
as long as they let me keep that rate, because
no place else will match it anymore. It does not happen.
And you know, even when you guys buy these episodes,
I have to pay a chunk of that to PayPal
for processing the purchase, and of course I have to
pay for the platform that you're using to book the
episode as well. So it just it's taking all kinds
of fees right off at the top, and it is
really really agonizing, like it doesn't look like a lot,
but it really adds up quickly, and it is so
considering that I'm paying all of that off the top,
and then I just have to pay my regular taxes
in addition to it, I don't wind up with very much.
I'm just saying, it's this kind of like tiny fine
print too, about how like there's a standard like fee
in addition to a percentage fee, and that standard fee
comes out every time. I had been hit with that
kind of thing before where I didn't realize it and
I cashed out and I was like, why is there
like less than half of what I should be getting?
And then I realized, like, I didn't see that fine
So this is completely correct. So let's see, are we running?
Are we hiding from Frank Q and Maggie May? No?
That was my first instinct, but now that I've slept
on it, I've changed my mind. That woman is hell
bent on hunting us down, and we're going to have
to deal with it sooner rather than later. I don't
know if they're coming now or not. I'd rather be
ready than have her sneak up behind us. But how
can we do that? They can track us and go invisible.
Her invisibility is not nearly as powerful as I first though.
We'll need to take out the local neighborhood boss and
get that map. It'll make our lives much easier. And
this is when Zev turns up, and it turns out
it was true that Zev warning them to run was
what she had been penalized for, and they eventually decide
that he had noticed simultaneous with her yelling, so they
ruled it as not cheating, but they had to put
her in a sort of purgatory for a lotle while.
And they find out that apparently the Maestro is part
of a group of people that is in opposition to
the party, and so the fact that he made this
guy look like a complete asshole makes them very, very happy.
And Carl is of two minds about this, because of
course it's great that this has worked for him, but
it also feels like I don't want to be doing
anything to help the party, you know, like that also sucks.
That show is awful. Zev, it's abusive, she nodded, and
I would like to apologize. Mukden should never have booked it.
The show I had scheduled also caters to the younger crowd,
but it would be a discussion regarding specific tactics. They
do it in a creative, silly way. But to answer
your question, Boren is not allowed to discriminate against syndicate
member production companies. And she, let's see, there's some point
where she mentions, uh, Mordecai is now authorized to tell
you about the third floor, but that's it. Is there
any way you can tell us about the ninth floor
where he's going to be. What I can say is
every three floors are the same setting sort of. The third, sixth, ninth,
and so forth are all linked in a way that
will later become clear. What if all the crawlers die
before the ninth floor, that probably isn't going to happen.
We've never had a full player extinction before the ninth floor.
It happens on the ninth floor a lot, but not before. Again,
I can't tell you much, but those floors are all
all come into existence at the same time. You can
only visit them in contact with the rest of the
crawl But that doesn't mean they're not being utilized, which
I thought was very interesting. I have been assuming everything
is constructed as needed, but the fact that they're still
they're like already they're weird, you know. So let's see oh, right,
now that the Meatal Lark storyline is completed, we can
wait a day or two before focusing on the next
story arc. How is this thing with Frank and Maggie
going over? It has potential, but it's already tired. The
grape you have with Prince Maestro is getting much more attention,
especially with that pork boy snick that just showed up
two hours old and it's already trending all over the
social media tunnels. Back up, What the hell is a
pork boy snick? Ah? Yeah, I need to tell you
about this. So you have had a similar phenomenon on Earth.
Are you familiar with the concept of fan fiction? And
she has to explain this to Donut in the context
of Gossip Girl, and Donut freaks out. So a snick
is kind of like a fan fiction. But it's a video.
This is short and a little explicit. What was in
the video? Was I in it? Donna asked, No, just Carl,
Karl and the Maestro. And let's just say Carl has
the upper hand during the scene. Uh, who made it?
So that's the interesting part. It's a bit of a mystery.
It showed up just a few hours after your interview.
Nobody knows where it came from, but it went very viral,
very fast. The quality is flawless. In fact, it came
out so fast and people think it's real. It's not right.
Are you asking me if I fucked the orc? Wait,
it's a sex tape with Carl and the Maestro, Doughnut said.
She practically fell off her chair laughing. It is a
little funny, but the Skull Empire probably isn't going to
find it amusing. They haven't reacted yet, not officially. It
is it an insult, though, I asked, I'm not gay,
but does it matter? The Tusclinge seem to be very
open with, you know, weird stuff. Do people really care?
It's not that you're right, most wouldn't care. But this
is a prince of the Skull Empire, and that video
is both graphic and humiliating. You two say things to
each other. Can we watch it? Don't ask? I want
to watch it. That sort of thing has to happen
all the time. I said that prince is such a
cock womble. I can't imagine the intergalactic Internet isn't filled
with stuff like that. Oh it is. This is different.
The quality is so good, and it's just everywhere right now,
everyone's calling the Prince pork Boy and Carl's naughty little Piggy.
You have to watch the video anyway, If the Skull
Empire demands people stop calling him that, it's going to
be just like the mud Skipper thing all over again.
I absolutely cannot the fact that they're like, so this
is reminding me of just AI and how you can
make AI of people. And there are definitely a lot
of like more accessible AI like image generators that now
have particular rules set so that you can't make imagery
that looks like a person that exists. Because there was
a really like ugly moment when Mey and the Stallion
somebody made like an extremely convincing AI sex tape of
her and it was circulating everywhere, and it like all
that dropped and sort of blew up the same day
that she was about to go out on stage, and
she like wound up in tears on stage because it
was just like it really got to her, you know.
And so there's just I've I tried to use an
AI the other day. I don't approve of AI imagery
unless you keep it entirely private. So I do it
just to like create images of characters that I am
trying to write about for my own personal inspo. But
I don't think that I will ever share those images
anywhere because AI steals. It's just the nature of it.
So this AI that I tried to use to create
character images, I had to find the exact right wording
or else it wouldn't make people at all, because it
kept thinking that I was trying to make a real person,
and I kept having to be like, this is for
a fictional character, and then it finally would. But there's
a lot of restrictions on that now. But this is
what I'm assuming is sort of like at play here,
you know. So of course Carl is like, I hope
that they're not going to be fucking gunning for us,
and Zev says, there's just no such thing as bad publicity,
and they are, you know, as long as you're not
disparaging them, they're perfectly happy with this. And she said, besides,
there's not much other governments can do to you, not
until the sixth floor or if they spring for a
deity sponsorship this season. But anyway, don't worry about anything
happening outside your floor. That's my job, Carl. I can't
believe you hooked up with that guy, Donut said loudly,
pushed at the door. She posted at the door. Hack
get it. He sure squealed a lot, though her laughter
trailed off into the hallway. God damn it, Donut. So
she's just trying to set it up that everybody believes
that he actually did, which is genuinely very funny, like
why not lean into it? Whatever. So this is when
they hit a boss chamber that is very very upsetting
to me, and I'm kind of relieved in a way
that I have like pretty much run out of time
by this point because I don't want to get into
the details of this very much. It's obviously like dog fighting,
but with these dingoes instead, and they are just being
abused and being left injured in their kennels, and you guys,
animal cruelty is just something that makes me literally sick
to my stomach, and it is so difficult like for
me to even read about in a fictional setting. I
do not like it. It's a It's something that makes me
want to stop watching things sometimes, even in like one
piece in a very cartoony universe, when there are animals
that are being like used in a like mean spirited way.
I just get like, can we just please move on
from this part of the story. So what they wind
up going up against is a frenzied Gerbil, And clearly
it's supposed to be eventually that the gerbil like lets
lose these dingoes. But because Carl fed the dingo a
little treat earlier, it doesn't attack him. All of them,
are you know what I mean? Like they all wind
up being like friendly to him more or less. Frenzy
Gerbil Level eleven neighborhood boss. And I'm not going to
read this whole thing, but suffice to say he's fast,
he's angry, and by the time you're done reading this,
he's already halfway to your jugular. You might want to duck,
which he does, and it goes right over his head. Carl,
I can't help but think this boss has been placed
here for a very specific reason. What do you mean?
Most of the cobalts were dead, but a few at
the edges of the blast had survived. And this is
when he opens the doors. The dingoes emerged and their
dots are all white. One of the dingoes, the first
one we'd fed, leaped out and pounced right onto Ralph.
It happened quick, lightning fast behind us. The remaining coalbalts
fell back as the other dingoes turned on their former masters,
dropping upon them and ripping them apart savagely. The cobalts
weren't armed, and there weren't many of them. The barking,
snarling dingoes finished them off in seconds and doughnuts like
that was easy. And they're looking around and he is
realizing that, like the music hasn't stopped, and he's like,
I've got to be missing something. What is it? And
she said something like, I guess I was wrong. The
one eyed dingo who'd eaten Ralph continued to stand where
he'd swallowed the miniature boss. He seemed frozen in place.
The creature looked at us and started to whine, it's
a small rodent. Your feet are all nice and shiny,
as Miss Beatrice used to say, time to pay the
daddy tax. Wait, under what circumstances would she say that?
At that moment, the dingo's head exploded. I hated it.
I hated it so much. And the gerbil comes out
and it's coming at them, and the gerbil bounced off
the floor with a sickening crunch. I Mike tightened it
with all my strength and it was stunned. And he realizes, like,
I have never gotten the stunned to work ever, So
he thinks about punching it to death, and then he
remembers what Donut said, if it makes you feel better,
she was talking about you, you're the daddy. No, Donut,
that does not make me feel better. That's the opposite
of making me feel better. I placed my bare right
foot upon the small monster. Sorry, Ralph, I said, I
don't know how Beatrice could be talking about the daddy
tags to somebody else about Carl. How does that work?
I I feel like I'm missing something here. Rob says.
The key is definitely to not know enough about what
you're getting into the first time around. Oh, Rob is
talking about parenting. For a second, I thought you were
talking about like dungeon crawling, and I was like, what
all I want is a friend to live with. Laboon
says Rob amen another one piece thing, guys, but like, yeah,
justice for Laboon and for the Princess of Alabasta, not
to try and blow him up from the inside. There
are so many animals in one piece that people just
like punch the shit out of and I'm like, can
we fucking not? You know? The upside is though, when
they turn into our friends, it's so delightful and gratifying,
so you know, pluses and minus is. But yeah, So
that is the end of this section, and I don't
think that I have that many less. Let me see,
I have got four episodes left to record, right, No, five,
five episodes left. Oh wait, but only one more of
this book. The other four episodes are for Carl's Doomsday
Scenario Book two, so I'm going to be finishing this
book on the next recording. Wow, this felt really short,
but I'm looking forward to getting into the second one,
so bring it on, all right, guys, Well, thank you
all again for hanging out with me. I appreciate you
all a lot. I hope that you are all enjoying
the coverage. And until next time to the lou motherfuckers.
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.