Speaker 1: This is an unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book four Gate of the Feral Gods,
chapters eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. In this episode, I get
to talk about how to properly cook a fish. She's dead.
I hated her so much and she's dead and I'm
so happy. Ugh, there's other stuff that happens too, but like,
come on, welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone.
I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for
commissioning this episode. Oh, Michael's in the chat says, shout
out to Jackie for booking the next book. Sadly, my
break from book means crappy UI is over and over
is over and now I have to endure the pain
to commission book six. I I book dot means crappy UI.
I'm sorry, Michael, I'm not following. I don't know if
there was a typo in there or something. But I
also thank you Jackie for commissioning the next book. But uh,
I am you know. I know that I'm going to
catch up and that it's going to be a wait. Now,
this is the thing that happens even when something has
been out for a while and has built up enough
books that I am getting into it after it's really
gotten its legs under it, inevitably I catch up, you know.
And this is going on with also the Bastian series,
which I really really enjoy, and the author had thought
he was going to have the next book out in July,
and now it's looking like it won't be till October.
And due to that weight, there was like, you know,
a delay with the commissioning, so I probably won't get
to start talking about it until January, which means I
will have almost gone a year between the last book.
In this book, Oh, Michael says, refer to the website
you use. Sadly, my break from book Got Me's Crappy
UI is over and now I have to inture okay,
got you? Yeah, I understand. It's one of those services
that you wouldn't think what I need is particularly specialized.
But I had to try eight different booking sites before
I found one that did what this one does, and
it was really annoying because I didn't always get that
it didn't work the way I needed until the mistake
was already in place. And then a huge headache to undo.
So that is why I have stayed with them. Many
of these things that I have to do with my
line of work rely on services that are not so reliable,
for example crowdcast, but we gotta do what we gotta do.
So Chapter eighteen begins with a note from Crawler Cooley,
and he is clearly intending to stage some sort of
attack on this interview that he is about to go on,
and it's broken up in part where at first he's
talking about how this view of my beautiful planet from
this ship will be my last view, and then later
on we get an update where it turns out that
the people he intended to harm weren't even actually physically there,
which is part of the reveal of Carl's plan. Part
of it is us finding out exactly how he was
able to ensure that Luita was there in the room
with him and not just a projection. So Carl, I
have some things cooking on my sapper's table. Let me
take care of them really quickly before you transfer us.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, after that entry from Cooley and Carl saying this,
it did have me thinking that he was planning something,
but I wasn't fully getting it, and I was misunderstanding
in my suspicions, the intent behind doing certain things. So
he's got some smoke bombs that are like infusing in stuff.
One of them it doesn't work out, and the other
he gets hobgoblin disco ball Uh produces heavy, multi hued
billows of smoke that are both photosensitive and frequency responsive.
In case you don't know what that means, just set
one off and find out. The smoke will conceal all
movement within and the plumes will bounce to the beat,
which is rad as hell, like I really really really
want to see this. Unlike a regular smoke curtain, the
caster of this tossable is not immune to its effects.
In other words, you'll be just as blind as the monsters.
So you don't want to be dropping this thing at
your feet unless you find yourself to be the most
handsome dude at the orgy. And he puts the donut
robot on his sapper's table and it knocks the what
do you call it, the little smoke thing down onto
the floor and causes it to go off. Now what
I was sort of thinking here was that he was
using the smoke as a means of concealing something that
he was doing. But it turns out it's more than that.
It's also the residue of the smoke on the robot
means that it can't be put on camera and thus
has to stay in the room with Loita later on.
So I liked it. It wasn't as simple as what
I was thinking. That there was like more going on
even and this guy's pretty colors robot, Donut said. I
felt the head turn around to face me in the
complete multi hued smokestorm. The voice went down and octave.
This is what we all see in the end. I'm
always here for you, Carl and you guys. This robot
occasionally lapsing into very unsettling statements is very funny. The
fact that she says pretty colors had me very arrested
for a moment, because, like, between this and her response
to some other things said around her later, I was
realizing this toy is a lot more interactive than previously.
She just used to say shit, you know, and now
she's actually formulating responses like AI, which is certainly more
fun because it's like specifically mostly within the framework of
what Donut would say. But you know, the way that
the voice actor is delivering these I had to say
this narrator. I actually accidentally ran across him on my
Facebook feed. I don't remember. It was a short video
of I think an early recording of him in Book two.
Maybe whatever it was I heard, I had heard before,
and it was fascinating to see him because he's on
camera and he's this Asian guy with like very little
expression on his face, busting out these lines and these
jumps between different voices. And there was something about how
dead pan he was while delivering these jokes that I
found really funny. It was just it was remarkable, It
really is. It's like the kind of thing that a
part of me. If I were to do something different,
I think I might try and get into voice acting
or you know, audiobook narration, because like, I'm pretty good
at doing the live audio for the show that I do.
Occasionally I stumble on my words, you know, as anybody
would who isn't really trained. But I think it would
be pretty fun to get into the voice thing. So anyway,
Loita transfers them to the little station, which I think
it was a submarine this time. Again right, this was
a nice middle quality trailer, but it was a submarine,
not a boat like the last time. Right, despite being
under the surface, this trailer was set up similar to
Odet's production trailer, with a green room and a doorway
to the studio. In fact, I realized this was the
exact same model, though the green room on this one
had a different layout and included a large picture window
that looked about the dark ocean. No snacks, Doughnut grumbled.
So this is when Carl sort of means over her
and is looking out the window. I felt the water
from her rebreather splash against my leg, and I'm thinking,
if this were some other situation, I would be suspecting
him of like pickpocketing her right now, or of planting
something on her. But I knew that really couldn't be
the case here unless it was something from like his
sapper's table or you know. And even that, I was like,
can he detonate that sort of thing remotely when it's
like on her person? Would that even work? So I
know something's up, but I'm not getting it. And he
asks about whether the trailers go into space or are
they all offloaded to offloaded to a large transport, and
she asks how that's his concern, and he's like, hey,
I don't know if you remember, but people tried to
assassinate us when we were on another show, So yeah,
I'm a bit concerned about security. She says, you know,
for such a famous crawler, you sure are a coward,
which the absolute gull. Just the trailer is shielded once
you arrive, nobody comes in or goes out until the
program is over again. You are safer here than you
are in the dungeon, I hope, so, I said, don't forget.
You're in here with us too. Her eyes widened, but
it was quick. She finally noticed the dust covered robot
donut under my arm. She let out a little gasp
of despair. Oh you idiot, what did you do to
the product sample? So she gets in touch with them
via messenger and finds out that they have another one
and it's fine, but she is very, very cranky about this.
Read the script. If you can't think of anything to say,
do not be negative. This is not live, so don't
think you're going to go changing the universe with your
bravado today. Anything stupid you say will be edited out
and we'll all be stuck in this can for longer.
I'll be watching the taping from in here. Do not
make me get up and go in there. I swear
to the gods, you will not be happy if I
have to go in there. So this leads to Carl
straight up saying, why are you so angry all the time, Loyda,
And she said, she answers him, You, your cat, your people,
your ugly culture. This is a cancer upon the bloom,
and we should not be doing this. We should not
be celebrating your culture, spreading your filth so the fry
may see celebrating. You're exterminating us and profiting on our ashes.
If it were up to me, we'd simply exterminate you
and nothing else. You're filthy, you're dry, You're a rot
upon the bloom. Donut swished her tail. You probably shouldn't
have become a pr agent, if that's how you really feel, Darling. Honestly,
I can't help but feel you don't have our best
interest at heart. This is why we worked so much
better with Zev. She understood how to exploit our star
power that seemed to have struck a nerve Zev. What
you've done to Zev is the exact reason you are
so dangerous. She is young, she is impressionable. She is
the future of the Kuatine, the bloom. Her generation is
enraptured by the newest, shiniest thing. They do not trust
in the concept of system, strength, of true unity, of
the great consensus. Do you know what we had to
do just to bring Zev back into the fold? Unspeakable
things to her mother and her aunt's. It was only
then did she take the badge. We need to do
this to a whole generation now because of you, because
of your filthy culture. Well, if you had, you know,
just left us alone, you wouldn't have to worry about
she interrupted, pointing directly at Donut, who looked stricken. Your culture,
your non unifying, defeatist, dry, multi organ diversified attempt at
culture is a deadly contagion, and it must be treated
as such. After this crawl, after every single one of
you drivermen is dead, the boring system will close its borders,
and only then will the reawakening occur. Only then will
we be free of this rot. This is bonkers, and
Donut just says it. It's just like this bitch crazy, huh.
It's really upsetting to hear her say we had to
do unspeakable things to her mother and aunt, because if
she says that they are unspeakable, it must be really bad,
it must be real, real bad, poor fucking zeb And
like I assumed that it was going to be something
like this. Honestly, the writing was very much on the wall,
like from before Zev even left, and the way that
she was talking about certain things, and the depression that
had clearly kind of come over her. But it's actually
being said now, and poor fucking Zev and the whole like,
as Carl points out, nobody asked you to come here.
All of this wouldn't even have been in your in,
you know. But they are evidently a conquering people who
feel compelled to exterminate and also evidently are broke as fuck,
like she's talking about, you know, eventually, once we do this,
the boring system will close its borders. And I can't
help but think, like, probably not. This is the thing
about the way that a lot of bigotry works is
that the flames are fanned of that bigotry simply for profit.
Sharing increases, simply for money, and the people encouraging it,
it's not even like they believe any of it. They
just know there's a profit to be made from this,
and so they exploit that and it works, and then
the people who believe all of this is in service
to our eventual supremacy are genuinely surprised Pikachu face when
that's not what they get. And it would be funny
if it weren't so sad and so predictable, you know.
But I can't help but think she's a fundamentalist, and
they feed into this, but it's not really what it
is about. I think it's just purely we're doing this
to make money. But will tell these psychos whatever we
need to tell them about how it's ultimately good for
like the supremacy of our people, as long as that
gets them to show up to work on time and
not call out and do overtime, you know. So they
go into their thing, and this is when we get
the update from Cooley. I have secreted bugbear paste in
my boots. I will detonate them while I am in orbit.
If this skill works, my blast shield should protect me
from the explosion. But if I blow the ship, it
won't matter. Think of me, brothers. It is little, but
it is all I have. And to find out that
he did this and it didn't even result in doing
It's really that's the way so much rebellion goes. You know,
there are a lot of statements made that nobody ever
hears that really don't do much. But sometimes you got
to do shit for your own self, even if it
isn't accomplishing a greater purpose necessarily. The hosts of vera
lux New Toys showcase were a pair of tall, giant
eyed alien soothers, the forsothed a man named Gravo and
a woman named Lyddy. I was beginning to realize these
soother guys were one of the most common types of
aliens in the universe, and they are wearing Gravo's dressed
like a cowboy with a sheriff thing on him. Lyddy
is dressed like a superhero. It's just very much like
if you were just trying to do the most generic
appeal to kids kind of look that you could do.
It's almost like we've got Buzz and Woody, but like,
obviously if Buzz weren't an astronaut and were just a
superhero type. It's got that same energy though, and the room,
you know, the whole way that this is set up
is a little different because they usually there's a studio
audience element and that's not happening here. The toys would
supposedly appear on the table and we were supposed to
discuss how awesome they were. And Carl is like, do
you guys really think that this is the approach for
selling these toys? And they're just like, yes, we do.
We have done a lot of research about it, and
they find out that this is a commercial that's going
to air in gas stations. Basically like the equivalent of that,
which the fact that we live in a world now
where like you can't pump gas without getting ads. Of
course it depends. There are plenty of older gas stations
that don't have this feature, but if you go to
like bigger chains, a lot of them are equipped with
screens and they feed you all kinds of ads while
you're pumping your gas. And if you've got air pods in,
it's fine, like you can just ignore it. But it's
just it's so ubiquitous that you get ads pumped into
your fucking eyeballs every chance they can get. And Lyddy
is a fan of donuts, so they talk about that
a little bit and the fact that Donah is one
of only two favorites she uh favorites her and of
course LUCIMR because everybody has favorited LUCIMR, which honestly kind
of makes sense because she's just so unpredictable. I feel
like I would have to know what she's going to
do next, you know. Sorry, robson the chat fascist governments
making poor financial decisions, color me shocked, sarahim says, I
get the impression Loita is the average Bloom Party member.
They do seem to be just that committed to being
fascist assholes. There's a reason their government is on the
brink of financial collapse and had to rush out this crawl.
The thing is that the average member doesn't necessarily represent
what the ultimate goal of a party is. Do you
see what I'm saying? Like, the average person can believe
in what she does, but that's in service to something else.
So I don't think that the ultimate goal they're feeding
their average member is like the thing at all. But
I'm also just deeply suspicious of everybody at this point
in life. So whatever Rob says, but also coolly inspired
Carl two and then, as for why are alex is
spending all this money on something that seems unlikely to
ever make enough profit to be worth it. My thought.
My thought was they are just using it as a
means to funnel money to warrant indirectly. Any money they
make on the toys is just a nice bonus. Which
this is also where my mind was, was like, this
is a money laundering thing. It's all just so odd
the way that it's set up. It felt very much
like what is this really? You know, it's a front
for something. Rob says that the ads on at gas
stations are not a thing in Canada, but I saw
the ads when we went to as to Arizona pre
COVID and that was very culture shocking. Yeah, it's not awesome,
So let's see. Uh. Research indicates children prefer to have
a trusted adult speak down to their level and present
them with the best possible options. And like Carl has
to be like, Okay, you know what, I think he's
completely wrong, But why am I gonna argue with this guy?
Let them do what the fuck they want? And I
understand this impulse very much. And sometimes you've just got
to pick your fucking battles. So then we get another
note from Crawler Coolie. I have failed. I have blown
the ship. My skill indeed protected me, but the force
field has prevented it from fully breaking. The admins only
appeared to be with me. They were hollows. I was
fooled today and I am ashamed. Brothers. The gravity has failed,
the temperature is dropping, and it's getting difficult to breathe.
I do not think they can remove me while the
force field remains. But I see my planet, my beloved Corux.
It shines and it warms me in this cold. I
pray one day someone will avenge her for I cannot.
And uh yeah, just really heartbreaking. So then we go
to the ad copy and it's very stilted and weird.
There is a mango doll that bites the donut doll
on the nose, which is fantastic, and they ask Carl
what his favorite feature is, and there's a paragraph that
he's supposed to read, but instead he's like, oh, I
was able to train the donut doll to do some tricks,
and the dude is clearly like about to be cut. Dude,
follow the fucking script, but instead Lyddy is like, no,
he's bringing up something that might be you know, appeal
to folks, So let's do that. And he says, she
says the weirdest shit. But if I tell her to sit,
she sits. If I tell her to follow, she follows.
She's much more compliant than the real donut. It's what
we all want, isn't it compliance? What's your parent company
called again, Veritin Linkage? Isn't that their thing? Stop rolling?
Gravo said. He turned on me. I don't know where
you heard that, but that's absolutely not true. Varitin is
our parent company, yes, but we operate independently from them.
I shrugged. It's not what I heard. Someone said, your
parent company advocates for slavery. People are saying there are
really trackers hidden in the toys. Carl, what are you doing?
Donna asked, just stick with the script, Okay, don't be
an imbecile. There's nothing you can say that I'll make
it onto air, so why bother nothing I can say?
And here the dungeons is another story, though, isn't it.
What are you trying to say? You're trying to shake
us down for a loop box? Is this a joke?
I had no idea if Veralux Toys had any sort
of sinister motives. With all this, Mordecai seemed to think
it was a money laundering operation or something. Honestly, I
didn't care. This was dangerous, stupidly dangerous. I was gambling.
All of this was about to be forgotten. I just
needed Loita to get up off that damn couch. The
lights flickered, the two soothers disappeared, the floor shook, the
studio went black, then filled with red lights. A terrible
creaking noise filled the chamber, and of course Carl has
to be like, oh, what's happening? You know, I bolted
for the green room door. It irised open as I approached.
Smoke poured out through the hole, and he sees that
there's a huge crack in the window and that it
hasn't ruptured yet, but it's like perhaps about too. The
blue force field was the only thing keeping the water out,
and he's thinking to himself, oh my god, that you know,
he's thinking, thank God, and then no, thank Coolly for
the information. The crumpled form of the dungeon admin had
been blown across the room and smashed against the wall.
Donut rushed to her. The small couwatine was missing her
left arm and both of her bottom legs. Her rebreather
miraculously still worked. Her entire fish body was blackened. She
looked as if she'd been flash fried in a pot
of oil. But she wasn't dead. I felt my heart quicken.
She couldn't just teleport away. They had to first lower
the shield. But if they lowered the shield, the window
would break and Donut and I would die instantly. Barrent
had to make a choice. I realized they could probably
heal her in seconds, but only if she teleported away,
save a low level admin or save their two highest
grossing crawlers. I looked down at the injured woman and smiled.
You you did this, Loita panted, What do you mean
it was an accident. The robot blew up. You're the
one who made them put that self destructed sequence in it.
I was in the other room. I have no idea
how it blew You saw how buggy that damn thing was.
You won't win. The bloom will prevail. You will be forgotten.
No one likes melodrama, Loita I said, as the Kuatine died.
I am so pleased that he used that line on her.
I know that's what set him off in the first place.
So getting to throw that in her face, it's beautiful.
It's a wonderful little moment. Note added by Crawler Carl Coolly.
I know you can't read this, but I want you
and every future reader to know I use the information
from your passage to help plan the first step. If
it wasn't for your words, I wouldn't have had the
confidence or knowledge to act what I did today. I
did for you and for a little girl named Bonnie.
My only regret is that my first step was a
small one, and I don't know yet if I'll survive
long enough to take a second. But if I do
manage that second step, please forgive me. What I do
from here on out is solely for me and my people.
As long as I am alive, I will do everything
I can to make them burn. They will not fucking
break me. So then we go to chapter nineteen and
the repair subs fix the damage and tell port Dona
and Carl away, but they wind up at the Desperado
Club instead of going to their personal space like he
was expecting, and later on we find out that they
are There's like a time lapse that they're not feeling
at this point, and five days go by in the
game that they are not feeling those five days whatsoever.
This is something that keeps unnerving me. You know, we
know that they can do this because they also had
this with Mordecai, where by the time he reappears like
ten days later, he's still fucking mid sentence with what
he was saying when he got teleported away for a moment,
so he didn't feel that time lost at all either.
And it's just really eerie, you know. It just makes
me think of like Rip van Winkle and how how
long can they do this for how much time can
they make you miss? It's just like, really it's creepy.
There was a part of me that kind of thought, Mordecai,
they can do this too, because of like the function
he plays in the dungeon and finding out that this
can be done to anybody, it seems like is just
it's very scary. I don't like it. The desk was
the paper covered desk was occupied by a tall man.
The shadowy figure wore a dark cloak with a hood
which supernaturally obscured his face. Grim reaper like his hands,
the only flesh I could see were a dark, dark purple,
almost black. It was a small office with slat walls
and the same tiled floor as the rest of the
Desperado Club or in syndicate liaison. So he has them
sit down and he says, I don't work for BORN.
I am independent, retained by the syndicate. You would not
normally meet me or one of my colleagues, but under
certain extreme circumstances. And he says, I am a non
AI fact finder, not quite a sheriff, not quite an attorney,
not quite a judge. If the syndicate sees something that
requires more information, they will ask both the Kuatine and
AI for reports on what happened. Sometimes those reports contradict
each other. Sometimes those reports are inconclusive. In such cases,
a liaison such as myself investigates and if the facts
warrant it, I recommend what should be done about it.
And this is very much reminding me. Previous to this recording,
I was doing the Vorkosigen saga, and Miles in that
series has a job as an Imperial auditor, and it's
kind of giving that same vibe for me as just
somebody kind of outside of all of the workings to
do independent investigations and whatnot. And Carl, as this is
like all being explained, is feeling a little bit guilty
because he knows that Dona is probably freaking out and
she didn't know anything about what it was he was planning,
so she's just wrapped up in all of this and
it wasn't intentional. But you know, he also wouldn't take
it back because of course he wouldn't, Like, I don't
blame him for that at all. So this dude says,
do you know how many times people have tried to
assassinate admins? And Carl just says probably a lot, And
he says, yeah, more than we'd like to admit, and
a lot of been successful. Two seasons ago, a crocodilian
managed to snap the head off his outreach associate. He
shouldered the admin into the hallway and literally bit the
man's head off, and instead of teleporting him away into
the crawler disposal unit, the idiot Fourton admins sent two
of their own security agents to subdue the crawler and
also got themselves killed before the AI finally intervened. Three
admins at once, which were the only admins killed by
crawlers that season that wasn't the record, but three is
still a lot. I'd like you to guess how many
have died this season so far due to your fellows, zero,
I said, the man grunted an amusement, Not including this
most recent death of Admin Louta. The number for this
season currently stands at fifteen. Lucia Marr has killed two
three if you count her first game guide, which we
do not. The rest were all one off attacks. Genuinely
intrigued and more than a little proud of my fellow humans. Guys, fifteen,
this is genuine pride in my voice. Good for you,
the way they've been keeping it quiet. I mean, who
would they tell? Obviously they're keeping it quiet, you know,
but I love finding out that this is happening. I'm
not even sure it was wise of this man to
tell Carl so much, you know, I feel like it's
just sort of encouraging him, if anything. But I don't know.
Maybe I don't know, I don't know. Fifteen is already
considered a disaster. Do you know why that number is
so high? And you know, Carl says what we're all thinking,
which is because they don't want to spend any fucking money,
and he says, yeah, that's basically it. Every one of
those fifteen deaths, and in fact, every single ADMIN murder
until this very moment, have all got one thing in common.
We know exactly how the crawler pulled it off, but you,
we don't know how you did it. And Carl's like,
it was an accident, and Dona is going, oh my god,
he thinks you did this on purpose, and dude, it's like, no, no, no,
it was an accident. We know what killed her. We
can't figure out how you set it up because the
explosion shouldn't have been as powerful as it was. And
he leads Carl to be like, why do you think
it was so powerful? I had the cat on my table.
She was watching me decant those infusions. He slapped the
desk and pointed at me like I'd just given him
the answer to an equation. The sudden and unexpected sound
was like a thunderclap. I tried not to flinch, and
I hated myself for flinching anyway. I'm sorry, guys. If
you can hear my dogs are do a little bit
of a running around out there. They're so adorable it's
hard to be mad. So, Yes, the Sapper thing actually
affected this, which is just so interesting to me because
I wouldn't expect the game stuff to affect real life
objects that are made for sale outside of the world,
you know what I'm saying. So I just really was
caught off guard by that even being a factor. And
then I love this guys, Donna, Oh my god, he
does believe we did it on purpose. If Karl was
gonna purposely kill Louda, he would have shoved a stick
of dynamite and her gills and kicked her in the head.
Carl is very good at killing things, and he can
be very clever about it sometimes, but he doesn't do
Secret Asian Man style murders. Agent what it's Secret Agent Man,
not Secret Asian Man. Are you sure? Yes, I'm sure.
How does Secret Asian Man make sense? Yes? I suppose
that does make more sense. This tickled me so much
because back in my youth I worked as a grocery
stocker for Whole Foods for a while and I had
a coworker there who was Asian Japanese tattoos all over
his neck, and the radio would play Secret Agent Man
that song and he would sing it as Secret Asian
Man when he would sing along to it. So I
hear it as secret Asian Man every time I hear
it now due to that, and this just felt like
a little bit of like, you know, I just it
got me in a kind of inside joke sort of way.
So when he was with Miss Beatrice, his definition of
subtle was pulling his boxers down, saying me so horny,
No offense, Carl, What I never did that? Oh right?
That was Brad, wasn't it? Anyway? You get my point.
The way that she just casually drops in all of
the fucking dudes that Bee was cheating on him with
is insane and she needs to chill um so orin.
We have surveillance from the MECHS unit in this trailer,
but that is it. Since you weren't in the room,
the footage isn't nearly as holistic as we like, but
what happened is clear. Luyda jumped down off the couch,
the toy jumped down to follow, and a few seconds
later it exploded, killing her and almost killing you two
as well. The panel on the back of its head
dislodged when it jumped, which activated the creature's self destruct sequence.
And set off the explosion due to the interface lockout.
Because of Admin Luyda's presence, neither of you received a
self destruct warning. And then Carl brings up that thing
was made out of some shitty plastic. It's not my
fucking fault, and he's like, Okay, first of all, it's
not plastic. It's made out of tamper proof polymer designed
to fail under certain circumstances. And let's see, I'm saying
the residue dust left behind by the disco ball smoke
curtain started to slowly eat away at the panel. That
process was greatly enhanced when you place the toy within
range of Admin Louda's rebreather apparatus. The moisture caused the
remaining dust to run across the panel and along the edges.
Then you engineered a situation that would cause the admin
to get up off the couch, and I love that.
Carl internally is like, wow, this went way better than
I expected due to a bunch of shit I wasn't
even aware of. It's like, this guy is overestimating Carl
in a way that I can't decide if this is
beneficial to Carl or not. And he's trying to get
them to basically sign a plea deal. If you just
admit you did it, you can just go back into
the dungeon and it'll be fine. And Carl is like,
if you really thought I did it and you could
prove it, you wouldn't want me to sign anything. You
just fucking killed me. And this is so interesting. You're
obviously getting information from an outside source. We know it
wasn't Agatha or any of her helpers. None are in
your bubble. We don't believe it was Odette, either.
Speaker 2: Agatha or any of her helpers. What what are her helpers?
Speaker 1: What is that? Hmm? I am really you know something's
been up with Agatha. She was an alien to begin
with or something. I don't know. I am so curious.
Tell us who your source is and how they communicate
with you, and you will be returned to the dungeon
with no penalties, and you will be given a legendary
box that will contain an item that will all but
guarantee your survival until the ninth floor. And this is
when we get Carl just being like I had no
idea about that reaction, YadA YadA, And it is funny,
like I kind of wanted Carl to point out to
this guy, you're giving me credit for knowing that this
thing would eat away at the panel when I thought
it was just plastic, Like, how would I have even
known that it did what you claim when Earth doesn't
have a a product like this, you know. So anyway,
he breaks the little tab off of the thing that
holds the battery in place, just so that it becomes
really like delicate and it pops out all the time.
So when I'd leaned into tap on the glass and
ask Loyda if the trailer could go into space, thus
confirming Lloyda was really there thanks to the moisture, I'd
attempted to get my nail in place, but it'd slipped out.
I'd had to lean in a second time to get
it right. I leaned over the couch and I'd made
the move with my left hand, pressing the robot toy
against my chest. In the end, it'd been simple. I
held the panel in place as I pulled my hand away.
When I placed the toy on the couch next to
the admined, I'd pulled away with enough force to dislodge
my fingernail, which held the panel precariously in place. I'd
practically crapped myself when Robot Doughnut had turned its head
to say some creepy shit to Loyda, but the little
panel had held it wasn't visibly loose. So yeah, this
whole thing, it's like a really genius idea anyway, But
it's funny because they're just giving him a lot of
credit that he doesn't deserve. I'm not signing anything because
I have nothing to give up, nobody to rat out.
And believe me, I'd love to get a free legendary box,
but I have nothing to give you in exchange. This
was an accident, but you're obviously not an idiot, so
I won't lie to you. I wish I had thought
of this. I wish I had outside help, because if
I did and thought I could have gotten away with it,
I would have done it without hesitation. But I wouldn't
have wasted the opportunity on some low level bitch like Loyda.
And who would you have used it on? Then I
didn't answer. There were only so many lines I could cross.
There was so much I wanted to say. I thought
of Brandon, of Yolanda, everybody else in the world, they'd
all died and nobody cared yet someone like Louda died
and we had to go through all of this For
reference to anybody listening to this in the future. It
is currently September sixteenth of twenty twenty five. A couple
of days ago, Charlie Kirk was shot through the throat
while he was literally mid sentence about to talk shit
about gang violence, which we all know is dog whistle racism.
And when I say we all know, I mean anybody
with any knowledge on the way dog whistle politics works knows.
And the same day there was a school shooting and
I never found out about that school shooting until like
next day because Charlie Kirk's murder was made out initially
to be the work of left wing terrorists, and then
a fucking course, it turned out to be some right
wing nut job who was pissed that Charlie Kirk wasn't
as right wing as he wished he were, and it
was part of this weird ongoing feud thing. And you know, guys,
there's a lot of people out there who are in
the unfortunate position of either having said that they aren't
sorry he died, and then getting fired from their jobs
for having put that out on social media somewhere, or
who feel that way but can't actually put it out
there due to being worried about being let go. I
am not in that position. I work for myself and
I can say what I want. And all up and
down my feed were people who were saying, basically like,
after the way that man lived, for him to die
this way is like some serious irony. And then in
the comments, somebody would come in and be like, I
can't believe you're acting like he deserved this, and that
person would reply with I'm not saying he deserved it.
I'm just saying you reap what you sew kind of thing.
And I'm like, no, he did deserve it. He absolutely
deserved it. Like I will not stutter, my friends, Louta
isn't out here holding a gun to anybody's head or
swinging a knife or any such thing. She has a
very non violent job, but nobody questions that she's part
of this hideous system that wants to annihilate entire group
of people. And Charlie Kirk was also doing this. He
was also espousing the same kind of bigoted rhetoric about
white erasure, and that black people with certain jobs were
clearly not qualified and had been given that job out
of some sort of DEI bullshit, and that trans people
should be quote taking care of back like they did
in the fifties and sixties unquote. He is literally saying
they should be murdered, and folks have the goal to
call him nonviolent because he didn't personally pick up a
weapon and shoot anybody. Are you seven years old? What
is fucking wrong with you? It doesn't get more violent
than building your entire platform that reaches there's millions of
people and having your entire life revolve around speaking jobs
where you share this kind of sick rhetoric. That's all violence.
That's all it is. That's the job, and the idea
that folks aren't making that connection is wilful. This is
not stupidity. This is on purpose. We are choosing to
separate physical violence from the violence of rhetoric when I
would argue what he was doing is in many ways
worse because he can hide behind that. The fact that
he didn't personally wield a weapon while mobilizing a huge
group of people, and folks like him are why Trump
got elected and why many folks being radicalized, but we
act as a country like it's not accomplishing anything, and
it's truly bizarre. It's the weirdest. And the folks who
were so sure it was a leftist who killed him,
We're all talking about how he had the right to
his opinions, but then a person says, I'm not sorry
he's dead, which is an opinion. And those same folks
arguing about how he has the right to his free
speech are reporting that Facebook post to get this person fired.
Do we get free speech or do we not? You know,
like the right is decrying political violence with his assassination,
But yesterday my governor Greg Abbott pardoned a man who
drove over a protester at a Black Lives Matter rally
after sending texts to his friends about how he was
going down there to quote kill looters. This dude murdered
somebody for political reasons and was pardoned by the governor.
He was dishonorably discharged when he got arrested, and they're
trying to even reinstate him as being honorably discharged. Do
we support political violence or don't we? So I know
that there are a lot of liberals out there who
are like, well, I don't agree with him, but I
don't think we should resort to these measures. Yes we should,
Yes we should. I am so sorry, but some people
make the world worse and more dangerous. That's just fucking facts,
and it's not pretty. I don't like it, but I
think the world's better without a minute, and I am
not going to stutter when I say it. You can
clip this and cut it and put it wherever you want.
I will stand by this until my dying breath. So yeah,
good for you. Carl kill Louda. You can't root for
this in this fiction and not see how somebody like
Charlie Kirk deserved to die. He did, He fucking did,
and that's that on that So now their bodyguards are
here to pick them up. It's very fun because he
doesn't sign shit, and this guy can't make him, and
there's just not anything that they can really do except
keep an eye on him. I have no choice but
to recommend that the Syndicate closed the matter. However, you
should know we have implemented a punitive measure onto Barrent
for the remainder of this floor, as this wasn't an
isolated incident. No crawlers will be allowed to be teleported
away by third parties until the next floor opens. Yes,
that means your next appearance on Odet's show has been canceled.
She's already filed an appeal. And this is when Carl
starts to be like, filed an appeal, all of this
has had It's been like ten seconds, and he's starting
to realize, oh wait, it's longer than that. And he's
also wondering how Lucy mr had killed two admins and
gotten away with it. Why wasn't she dead? Prediction they
did something to her and that's why she's acting so
bananas that her acting out overtly got some kind of
weird punishment that fucks with her perception or I don't
know what. I don't know what they can do, but
it seems to me something specific about her behavior is
linked to a punishment. So that's my guess, And let's
see whomever it is that's helping you. They're not doing
it for your benefit. If the Kuatine hadn't intervened on
your behalf, this would have gone much differently. What do
you mean how did they intervene? Certain crawlers are simply
too valuable to just throw away off screen, no matter
how recalcitrant they are. Ultimately it's their call. And even
though I can't find legal cause to place Administrator Lloyda's
death upon you, if it were up to me, i'd
have you removed anyway. We discussed this in council and
it was decided that my personal recommend be ignored for
now the month. Skippers aren't known for their ability to
recognize threats. If the rumors are correct and we do
take over after the next floor, I hope my own
people will be much more willing to listen to my
personal assessment. How long have we been away. It's only
been five days. You're lucky it wasn't longer. You still
have five days left to finish your bubble. Your partner,
Katia has gotten into some interesting adventures while you've been gone.
She's back on the top ten list above you. Actually,
you two are about to slip off, so you probably
want to get back to work. And Carl, this is
the first time he really shows emotion and is just
like motherfucker Orin looked up then, and the man's hood slipped.
The swirling black coalesced and I realized it was actually
a face shaped bowl of liquid made to look like
swirling darkness within that liquid, a tiny glimpse of light.
Mordecai had described what they looked like to me, so
I recognized what was in the liquid, A worm of
Valtae worm. Yeah, interesting, interesting, interesting, Okay, okay, Valta, I
see you. So they come back, and Mordecai is clearly
he is a distray and thought that they probably were
going to not be returning, And Doughnut has to share
the whole story. Katcha actually did go on her Sidekicks show.
I guess they added the band as my show was
being taped. Zev told me about the band just before
I teleported back down here. So Zev is back as
our pr agent again, which Donut is excited about. And
I'm really curious because you know, having people tortured to
force you into something, it can certainly break your brain
and make you terrified, but it won't convince necessarily. So
I'm curious exactly what Zev's going to be like when
there isn't somebody like Loyda around to restrain her. I
also want to mention now that we've gotten to know Loyda,
thinking back to her being Hecla's PR agent. What a
terrifying combination, you know, Like, I'm not absolving Hecla of
the way she operated, because clearly that was a personality
thing and that's part of who she was. But she
was clearly being encouraged. I'm sure to be as completely
like cold as she was. It says that Zeb's a
temporary PR agent, but I don't know. Maybe maybe temporary
will last a while. I don't know. I don't know.
So let's see. She was now in the last quadrant
and was in the personal space via a pub down there.
She was also now level forty one, three higher than
the last time I'd seen her, and she didn't know
what had happened. She had to have everybody like explain
to her. If you hadn't, if you hadn't left the
controller with Lewis, we never would have been able to
fly the thing. I've spent the last five days killing
scorpion men and arguing with Gwen. We could really use
your help down here. Lewis and Firos are on the
way back to pick you up. They've turned into quite
the pilots. Once you get your asses down here, I'll
catch you up and uh, Mordecai. Next thing, you know,
the lawyers will be here. Everything gets complicated once the
lawyers get here and we find out Chris and Maggie
are still trapped. It's let's see a goddamn syndicate liaison.
Just let you walk right out of there. Yeah, he
didn't even say anything about this. I held Lloyd To's
rebreather up in the air. I'd looted it off the
dead Kuatine's body, you guys, that's honestly next level. He
couldn't put it in his inventory, so it was just
shoved into his boxers. I mean, insane. I love it
so much. Now that we're going to be going underwater,
potentially this could be really useful. I don't know, you know,
I don't know, but Mordecai just gouged me be hanging down.
So we go then into chapter twenty and I'm running
a long on time here, so I'm going to do
my best. I may have to continue some of my
coverage of this into the next episode, but uh yeah,
this the fun thing about this. Carl and Donut being
gone has sort of given everyone else room to breathe,
And it's not like the two of them. I don't
think we're a dampening influence. I think they were actually
inspirational to people. But there is something about having a
person who's super capable and higher level around all the
time that I'm sure can make you feel like you
have something to fall back on. And once these two
are taken out of the equation, everybody, you know, they
don't know that these two are actual going to come
back for sure. They just got to fucking manage their
shit and it they're managing it, like, you know, not perfectly,
but they're stepping up to for fear of us is
level thirty now when he had been twenty two at
the beginning of this floor. And let's see, did Kaya
tell you about how she stuck the house into her inventory?
A lot has happened. It was Lewis's idea. We had
the thing floating just off the ground. Katya did that
weird thing she does when she puts the backpack on
and it worked. Then that same night, after the recap,
they patched it and the whole damn contraption just popped
out of her inventory, floating over our heads. It almost
smushed all of us. We were all in a pub
called cuttlefish Point and it pretty much blew up the tavern.
That Pazuzu guy that runs it was pissed, and Pazusu
is the name of a demon in the beginning of
the Uh what do you call it? Oh, my god,
the one where the exorcist. I think that's the name
of the demon that possesses her. I was just it
was funny to me. We all had to jump on
the thing and fly Away thought he was going to
sting us for sure. It was pretty intense. Then Lewis
peeded over the edge on the guy while he was
still screaming up at us, and it pretty much got
us banned from town. Oh my god, y'all, that is
a lot. I thought Gwen was gonna rip his schlong off.
Katya had to stop her from kicking his ass, but
she was laughing too, and that made Gwen even more mad.
And later on we meet Gwen and we get a
description from Katya that is interesting, So we will get there.
Langley has a couple of his guys on it, keeping
it clear of sand. It's gonna be tough starting tomorrow
once the Red equinox. They're building something to protect it,
and Karl had forgotten about that whole like weather patterns thing,
so he's like, ah, shit, this is going to be
a whole problem. So this is when Lewis says, all right,
we got to get moving. Let's see. Do you feel
out of the loop? Donut whispered, I feel out of
the loop. Part of me was proud that Katya had
just rolled with us going missing. She'd gotten a lot done.
She'd managed to get the whole house down to the
land quadrant, and she'd figured out how to breach the
magical door that guarded the front of the land Quadrant castle,
all without us. Fear Us told me that they would
have finished with the castle already if Zev hadn't asked
Katya to wait for us. At the same time, part
of me stung at the notion she could do this
without me. It was stupid, selfish, and it was more
than a little narcissistic to think without me and Donut,
Katcha and the others were absolutely screwed. But that feeling
was there, and I was simultaneously relieved. It was that
I'd been wrong and horrified i'd been thinking it in
the first place. I still didn't know if we'd get
there in time, but Katsche and the other's actions while
we were away proved I wasn't as indispensable as I thought,
and in the end I realized it was a necessary feeling.
And then we get a flashback from his dad screaming
at him, you'll die in a gutter without me. You
need me. You think you're just gonna be fine. What
will you do, you disrespectful little shit. You will break
after just one day and then you'll die. That's what
you'll do, just like your fucking bitch of a mother.
This guy's a real piece of work, I swear, Carl,
how did you wind up being as good a dude
as you are? Like? How though? How I really like
this whole thing with Carl reckoning with the fact that
he isn't indispensable. It's not. It's something that I think
a lot of us like get into this weird space,
especially when we're at shitty jobs, where we tell ourselves like,
this whole place would fall apart if it weren't for us,
and it really is. It's like a way for us
to cope with the garbage situation we're in, and it
makes us feel like we've got some power and like,
don't get me wrong, upon occasion, when a person leaves
a certain job, it is a disaster in their wake
because they did way more than anybody knew. But mostly
people are fine. Mostly. You can tell yourself, this place
would fall apart without me, and they could replace you
tomorrow and almost nobody would even notice. And it's always like,
you know, finding out a place is continued on without you.
It can be sort of like quelling. And I think
he's got a good attitude about realizing it's a mixed
feeling he's having. In response, I think it's mature. So
one of Lucimar's Rottwiler's had somehow accidentally killed a group
of crawlers after a battle. The event had caused Lucia
to undergo some sort of psychotic break one worse than usual.
They'd shown the strange crawlers sitting alone in a room sobbing,
which was the first real emotion they'd ever portrayed other
than rage and pure insanity. Flora in the shotgun Crocodile
Guy had finally emerged into a quadrant to find everybody
else in the entire bubble was already dead. That first
of all, I want to say that considering that they
can bring people's like relatives back that were killed in
the thing, I can't help but wonder if they like
brought She mentioned her father in one of the videos,
and like, is one of the dogs her relative turned
into a pet? Did they do that to fuck with her?
And that might make part of I don't know. I mean,
it could certainly cause you to go into a psychotic
break that one of your creatures killed everybody just because.
But I could also see it being extra upsetting if
it's like this is a person to me still, but
they're not. They're changed, and it's like, as much as
I'm hanging onto something, it's not real, you know. I
don't know, guys, my brain is going all over the
place in terms of possibilities with her Flora. Finding out
everybody is dead is truly awful. It's all on him,
like yikes. He'd only managed to clear one castle so far,
and the general consensus was that he was screwed. The
Goat Squad was almost done with their bubble, but Miriam
Don the Shepherd Lady, was hit with some curse that
ended up changing her into a vampire. Apparently she was
a vegan before this. And the assholes thought to be
hilarious to do that to her. Look, I don't think
veganism is a great way to live for a number
of reasons, but it's not my fucking business. I don't
get why people get so like, you know, just get
over it, Jesus. So I'm at eight minutes over time,
and there's still like a substantial amount left in this chapter.
So uugh, let's see. Okay, we have the meeting with Gwen.
We'd exchanged fist pumps when Donut was collecting all the
now worthless engineer hats. The woman was about forty five
years old and solid, and she is First Nations, and
he can see that she is somebody who has done
some real physical labor and has muscle on her and
is a person who probably got into bar fights, and
just is a type that he knows really well, race
human class, boring old fighter. Sorry, we can't whine and
dine you first, bomber boy, but we need to get
trucking on this bullshit your friend is making us do.
The storm that's about to hit is the last one
before the weather change, and we don't know if that's
going to fuck us over or not. We can only
do Kacha's electric door thing during the sandstorm. Let's see
you a friend of yours are going to go in
there and try and kill the mage for us, just us. Oh,
she didn't tell you the deal, did she? Why does
that not surprise me? So? Donut I like her? She
reminds me of a miniature sized Hekla, Carl, Yeah, because
that turned out great, Katya. She's an amazing fighter. She's
fast too. Her class trades fighting skills for no magic
spells whatsoever. I watched her use that spear to pierce
a pozuzu in the back, vault over him and use
the momentum to throw his body at another monster. The
problem is she's a real bitch. She is like Hecla
in some ways, though instead of scheming in her head,
she just says it out loud the moment she thinks
of it, And if she doesn't like you, she will
tell you, and then, just to make sure you were
paying attention, she'll say it again, but in a different way.
At least, Hackla pretended to be supportive, Carl. I was
actually surprised when Firas said you two were always fighting.
I thought you could get along with everybody, Kotcha, I
made a promise to myself not that long ago. I
wasn't going to take any shit anymore. When Gwen makes
up her mind about something, it's impossible to change her mind,
and then she becomes a bully about it. I don't
like that, donut. That makes her sound more like Carl
than hecla. He's not a bully, though, Kotya agreed. Carl
doesn't insult you when you have a different idea. Carl,
She's exactly the type of person who would survive here.
So what's the deal with the castle? Katya? Okay, So
here's the problem. We've discovered. There are two ways to
take it easy and hard. Gwen wants to do the
easy way, but if we do it her way, I
think we're going to lose our chance of getting the
winding box from the mage. Honestly, I'd also much rather
do it her way too, but Zev has been unusually
insistent that we wait for you too. That is interesting
to me. The idea that like Zev is trying to
influence what's happening in there, I'm sure would not be
approved of by Luita. And it's just showing for me
that there's still some of zev in there, hopefully. Let's see.
Most of this information is from a drunk scorpion guy.
This he turned himself into a sand elemental. That's how
he managed to get that one part he has. He's
all mixed in with the sand. Now there's a magical
door to get into the castle, but you can dig
behind it. At first I thought it was a poor
but it's not. After they've reached the last wall, Gwen's
team found a secret drainage panel against the side. If
they turn it, it will release all the water inside the
necropolis and shoot it back out into the ocean through
the main drainage tunnel, which is what the sand castle
is built around. We wouldn't even need to get through
the magical doorway. It'll just destroy the sand castle like
we were hitting it with a water hose. Easy though
apparently it would only half drain the necropolis because the
water is still being pumped in, and so if we
blow it out the water hose, blow it out with
the water hose. Plan we take the castle, but the
mage guy gets turned to mud and we never find
the winding box. What's the hard way? You see those
two towers on either side of the sand castle. At
the base of each was a coiled up electrical line
with clips at the end. If you attach the line
to the tower and then to the door, when the
sandstorm hits, lightning hits the towers and they act like
lightning rods. They electrify the doorway and a glass hallway
appears if you examine it while it opens. The message
says it only opens once per sandstorm. But the door
closes really fast. There'll only be enough time for a
few of us to enter. I made a deal with
Gwen that we would do it. She thinks we're idiots
for trying it this way when there's an easier solution,
and I'm going to stop here. But suffice to say,
the door gets opened, it works, and they go through.
I am very interested in seeing what happens from there.
So I have to wrap though, because I just wasn't
able to get through at all. Apologies. I know that
probably I shouldn't have talked about Charlie Kirk for as
long as I did, but you know what, I just
needed to get it out, kids, I just needed to
say it. I just had to. So sorry, not sorry,
appreciate you all so much and until next time to
the loom motherfuckers that was an unspoiled network past