Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book seven chapters twenty eight, twenty nine,
and thirty. In these chapters, everything starts to go to hell.
Oh you guys, this is hard to listen to. And
you know, I've been feeling anxious this whole time, but
this really made me go, yeah, you were right to
be anxious. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone.
I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for
commissioning this episode. Y'all. I really thought too, just to
like point this out, a lot of these books so
far have been around like a number of chapters, so
that I would be maybe about halfway through by now.
Not only am I not quite halfway, but because Michael
readed the breakdown and we are going to be going
a little bit more slowly with it all, there's a
lot more to go. I think it's something like another
like twelve episodes, and so I know that there is
so much more to happen, but we are in such
dire straits that I'm like, what more is there to
be done? Aren't isn't it? Aren't we in crisis? Mode.
Yet this isn't climax, you know what I mean. So
chapter twenty eight we start off with Donut griping about
the fact that now Carl is the party leader, and
she tries to say, like, I'll be able to tick
back up and take it back, and he's like, that's
not how that's gonna work. She tries to say, like
because of my cloak, and he's like, no, the cloak's
an enhancement. It's not going to stay. It's not the same.
We then have this bit with Wrend, who is trying
to I had forgotten to mention the like rhino mercenary
that Rend is set to guard. Rend is explicitly told
do not eat him, but once we rejoin him, he
is trying to eat him, and he does succeed in
eating this creature's boot, which Carl says something about like
we'll try and find a replace, and I was just like,
good luck, because this dude has very specific feet. Granted,
all the creatures around here are very specific, so you know,
and I'm sure there's probably somebody with a weird cobbler skill,
but yeah, so this guy, the way the AI describes
him is it's so sad because basically what he says
is like, this is a dude who was like, you know,
ashamed because he had fucked up a previous assignment and
is had been like making up for it by guarding
Princess Dnadia and was like getting some of his confidence back,
and then you came in and completely spanked him, and
now his confidence is in the toilet again, and I
was just like, Oh, that sucks. His entire squad was
killed during an unfortunate incident at the Desperado Club that
you may or may not have been partially responsible for.
I don't think he was at all responsible for it.
I don't you know, maybe don't have open holes into
the nothing in your casino? How about that? How about that? Anyway,
So his name is Toya Tolm Me and him and
Carl have a conversation about like where he can do
the most good, and Carl gives him the option of,
like you can guard this place, you can go back
to our other spot. And it's like, you know, I
see in your stats that you are able to protect buildings,
and he mentions something about the shield for this place,
and Carl's like, wait, what you had a shi up,
which it's understandable that he is confused by that. But honestly,
the thing that I was like thinking here was very
much that it almost sounds like he's trying to like
fuck with the guy. I know he's not. I understand
this is a real question, but if you're already sensitive
about the fact that you fucked up, this question could
be taken very much as a challenge, you know. And
when he's like, oh, all right, you know what? Because
he says the castle is too big for me, but
Warler Donadia insisted she had me keep a shield going,
and it tired me, so I could only do it
in spurts. I was resting when you arrived, which is
how you got the jump on me. I am shamed. Okay,
change of plans. I'm sending you to shantytown, he nodded solemnly.
I will accept my exile. It's not an exile. We
need your talents and we're stretched thin. Hang on, I
jumped to chat and he talks to Lee June, which
correct me if I'm wrong. But is this the first
time he's talked to Lee June since the eye incident?
I don't I feel like he must have talked to
him sooner, but it's not a moment that we get
to see, and that surprises me. I really thought it
was going to be like if this, if he finally
spoke to Carl, you know, we would be there for it,
and we're just all business. It's a weird moment that
I was sort of waiting for something to be awkward
or odd about it, and nothing is. So Lee June
is like, hey man, so we've got, you know, a
lot to do. We're going as fast as we can,
but we are definitely spread thin, and if you have
some people to send to us, that'd be great. And
Carl says he's gonna send a mercenary and he's like
just one and he's like, yeah, Floren's getting hammered. So
I'm sorry, but we might not be able to spare
anybody else. And then the Gin is like, okay, fair. Also,
somebody has been looking for you, real weirdo. And we
find out that this is Agatha and she is like
a danger now in a way that we hadn't been.
And Zev chimes in here, I've gotten a warning. This
is coming directly from the Syndicate Council Prime Minister Glory himself,
messaged me the Prime Minister, and Carl understandably to me,
is just like, oh another warning. Yeah, come on, guys,
what am I I'm meant to worry about this right now?
Do you see that? They're like there's a one hundred
thousand army coming at us. And as that was like, no, no, no, seriously,
I get that you usually do the I'll just do
what I want, but I need you to hear that
this is different. And he says, okay, but last time
we talked about her, you blithely assured me that she
was nothing to worry about. And now all of a sudden,
she's such a threat that I have to like outright
ignore her if she speaks to me, are you serious?
Like come on? And she says, look, I don't get
what's happening with this either, but I think enough has
been going on to threaten some of the higher ups.
Considering Stockade and now Donadia, everybody is growing a bit
more tense. And the Prime Minister was very urgent with
this message, so and says, we'll try to intercede if
she approaches, but if we're not successful, you need to
just ignore her. The AI supposedly removed all its protections
of the residuals, and they're all pretty much dead except
this one. It seems to have a soft spot for her,
kind of like it has for you. And this was
interesting to me. The fact that the AI likes her
for some reason. I wonder why, you know, the AI
like the Aiking Carl is also interesting because I feel
like we all just sort of put it down to
the foot fetish thing, and I just that's not it. It
can't it just can't quite be it. I don't believe it,
and I do not believe that the AI is into
Agatha's feet. I would be willing to bet she has
neary shown her feet once in this dungeon, you know
what I mean. I'm just really interested in what all
causes the AI to be like, you know what, I'm
going to give this person, specifically a break, you know,
so sorry, Michael says it has the same soft spot
for her as it has for Carl. Her trip to
the floor could not have been easy. Yeah, when we
were in her POV, she says something about how like
usually residuals don't get past for four if it was
like a really early floor. Uh. Sarah Fis is pretty
sure Agatha has been her who's been talking to the
AI about what's really going on, and Tony's just trying
to and hire Tony. She's told me much. Perhaps, yeah,
maybe it is her, which would be It would be
so interesting because like when we're in Agatha's POV, her
goal is to end everything. I don't know if she
has any awareness of what Carl's button was that he
was given by Paulie. I am certain that if he
told her that she had like disabled that and had
no access anymore, she would be pretty pissed. But I'm
not even sure if she's aware, because it seemed like
she was not from the same team as Polly, and
her assumption was that the opposing team doesn't have the
same objectives that her team has, and hers seems to
be basically like just complete annihilation of beings, you know.
So yeah, I don't know, I don't know. He also
asked about Luciamar, who evidently is simply not responding to
messages anymore, and then Zev says, do you know one
of her dogs ate Mukta back when she still had
two dogs. It was horrible. Mukta was an ass and
a party member, but nobody deserved that. I can still
hear the screaming. I laughed out loud. The fact that
zeb is relaying something that she finds traumatizing and Carl
literally laughs in her face is disturbing, genuinely, And I
understand his position here. I understand that, yes, we might
like Zev at this point, and we might see that
Zev is also a victim in her own way, but
she is still part of this system and so he
doesn't have the same sympathy, and that is completely fair.
But I still did get a bit of a chill
off of I laughed out loud, like I, you know,
especially considering that, like Zev has watched family members get
tortured to death as we have eluded, so she's got
some trauma anyway, and watching that happen had to have
been triggering as fuck. But uh, I'm sure Carl is
just like, I've seen a whole lot worse than that
every fucking day, So crime a river and that is
totally fair. I'm just I'm just saying. So he mentioned
something about like I don't have time for that roundtable,
by the way, and she's like, it's not optional. So
I don't know what to tell you, and he just
says whatever, so he lets it go, but you know
it's gonna happen. And he is thinking about Agatha for
a while, just like, what does it mean that she's
looking for him? What could it be that she? Like?
What kind of threat could she actually pose? That they're
so concerned about me contacting her at all? And let's
say I'm trying to find uh I didn't know what
their true goal was, the why of it all, and
why and how the two types of residuals were different.
Nobody seems to know the blind spot was so so dangerous.
The fact the leader of the entire syndicate was sticking
his nose into this was telling something had changed since
the end of the previous floor regarding their understanding of
the residuals of And he then starts naming the syndicates
two different residual types, the Apothecary, the go people from
the Plenty, the Open Intellect Pacifist Network, those crazy weirdo nebulaars.
How even Odette and those were just the parties I
knew about. They all wanted something different. It was like
trying to solve a blank puzzle while half the pieces
were missing. And some of the pieces that were there
were decoys, which is a very good metaphor that I
think is quite effective as a descriptor. And of course
he has to put this aside for a moment. Warning,
A throne room you own is currently occupied by Madness
enemy forces. If you don't return to claim this throne
in six hours, this castle and the associated land will
be ceded to the Madness. So let's see. I sent
the mercenary for the Dream out and told him to
start walking back to his territory. This wasn't some grand
Machiavellian plan. I didn't know what was going to happen
after we left. There was no way we could defend
land that wasn't attached to our main force, not yet.
If we let the viceroys take it, they'd own three
sections of land. I didn't carry either way, but I imagined
none of the other members of the block would be
huge fans of letting that happen, and by making the
Madness mercenary sit in there, it would at least force
the other leaders to make a decision. So yeah, cause
I was like surprised that he just didn't seem to
have very much urgency when he got this notification and
in this I was like, oh, okay, so he's having
them try and like stretch themselves a little bit. I
had the impression none of these leaders liked each other
very much, so hopefully this would sew a little discord.
I looked at Donut ready too down, who are we
getting next? And he says, it's a blob hunting season,
So we jumped to twenty nine. Toyotomi can't fit in
the party planner, so we had them grab their transport
and head straight to the border with Shantytown. There were
five similar vehicles minus the armour plating parked behind the castle,
and we had them take them all. We had the
mercenaries head northwest toward the border of Shantytown. There they
would enter the city and move into Posse territory by
bypassing the Naga territory altogether. There were a handful of
guard outposts between here and there, containing NPC guards and
mercenaries that were now on our team, and we'd had
the pick, we'd have them picked up along the way.
I worried about the integrity of Shantytown. We had a
full battalion parked, but the town was shaped like a
literal doughnut that could be attacked from just about any
angle if and when the attack came, it would likely
be from several places at once, which it never occurred
to me what a disadvantage the doughnut shape was in
that sense. But yeah, stopping and think about it, I'm like, ooh,
that is that is really tough. Like if it's round,
that's bad enough because you can just be surrounded. But
now you can be surrounded and they can come at
you from inside, which I don't know, man, maybe we
got to figure out a way for this whole thing
to be a different shape. Is there a way to
do that? Like, can we use Katcha's abilities to like
construct things to make some sort of barrier in the
middle that will be difficult to get through. I'm not
it might just not even be worth a trouble, you know.
I don't know, but you know, it's Uh. It was
just an interesting point that he made, and I was
just like, I've never even thought about it like that.
None of the enemy had bothered attacking the town just yet,
likely because they figured it wasn't necessary. Entering shantytown would
open themselves up to getting attacked by Lorocos defense system
without a way to fight back as long as we
were still in the game. Plus, the town's rules were different,
which this is interesting. There's no throne room. They could
only take it by killing me the moment we were defeated.
Lorocos would open up if the block truce remained in effect,
and they could just raise the entire town like they
usually did. Still, the town was a nice, juicy target
that bordered every slice of the pie. That was the
reason that I was sort of like, maybe we should
put the energy into like blocking out the middle somehow,
you know, But like, ah, it all depends, and there's
gonna be angles that I haven't thought of, of course.
So this is when they enter their personal space, and
Doughnut is like, should we use this entrance for a
sneak attack? And I love that. She's like, we can
call it the bamboozle, which is such a good name,
and uh, He's like, the thing is that it's a
double edged sword if we do that. But they find
a way to block it, we have no way back in,
which really sucks for us. And we have a reminder
here about the blood bar because it surprised me again
that like Doughnut doesn't get any credit for that kill
because Mango's her pet, so I just thought there would
be some but evidently not. She's only allowed a half
hour in there, and Carl goes in. The first thing,
of course, that he wants to do is step across
his like resting matt thing and clean off the cleaner
Bot give an angry beep at all the mud and
blood we were trailing on the floor. Cleaner Bot. Look,
I had sympathy for you initially, but you literally have
one job. And normally I don't like that phrase because
people will say it when it's just not true. But
for you, it is true. You literally have one job. Now,
is there something cleaner Bot wants that we could give
it to sweeten the deal? I'd be willing to tip.
What is it you want, cleaner Bot? What? What is
a treat for a vacuum a little roomba? What is
what is something that he would like? I'll play the game,
you know, but I don't want to hear from you.
They just the fact that they are covered in blood
indicate something went very wrong for them or very right,
but either way, it was trauma. So just keep it
to yourself. There's also the mention when he picks up
Rent to put him in like the cleaning thing, that
he is super heavy and that he won't be able
to lift him soon, which considering how strong Carl is, like,
you know, he has all of these different things that
have caused him to have this unnatural strength. If he
can't lift Rend, who is only up to his knee,
bro is made of like cement or something, you know
what I'm saying, Like damn, So I love the description
of him in the cleaning like booth looking at Carls
so mournfully out the glass. There are some dogs who
love to get baths, and I'm still trying to figure
out if there's a way to like trick my dogs
into liking it, but so far I haven't found the
trick of it. I think part of it is that
my one of my dogs, Pippin, he doesn't like like
machine sounds and noises, and so when we turn the
shower on, I think the noise of it just kind
of freezes him out. But it is weird because both
he and Aarwin love water, so that's not the issue. Anyway,
He's going through a bunch of messages and is just
kind of overwhelmed at how many notifications he's getting. This
is something that also has me concerned. You know, it
would be really really easy to overlook something when there
are so many things to keep track of. And I
wish that there were some kind of enhancement that he
could get to his ability to multitask, like the focus
thing later but permanent, you know, because I could see
this being the weak spot. And there comes a point
later where he's talking to somebody and it's mentioned that
that person's eyes are blinking in such a way that
they are clearly like composing a message, but they're also
talking to Dona as they do that. I don't know
if any of y'all has ever tried to, like, say
one thing while typing another thing. It is not easy,
and the fact that this person is capable of that
is kind of bonkers. And I definitely got preoccupied with
thinking about just like, how are they doing that? And
is this a function of just getting used to two
different communication methods and it just, you know, a thing
that seems super hard to me. You just learn to
adapt or you fucking die. And so they've adapted, or
is it because of the way that their bodies have
been changed being in the dungeon for the messaging system
to work. Can they split their attention like that? Like
really interested? So there's some mention here. Boomer was salty
about us not pushing to take the Naga castle, and
I didn't blame him. That would have been the safest
and smartest play, especially considering the additional NPCs we'd potentially gain.
I didn't care for now. The retreating enemy forces were
scattered through Naga territory, and without a spy in their midst,
I wasn't sure how they were handling it. I could
see the positions of the new troops, and the system
allowed us to give them orders. Tran was handling that.
I don't want to read like because there's there's a
lot here about where everybody is positioned, et cetera, et cetera,
And as usual, there are times where I feel like
it's not interesting for me to recount that, so I'm
going to skip over some of this. I reveled in
the rare moment of silence. I thought about what happened
when we confronted Di Nadia. I'd seen my father and
myself at that moment. You're scaring me Doughnut had said,
I still needed to process it. I never got the chance. Yeah,
this is this is the thing, you know, he's being
he's being overwhelmed. I hate this for him, I really
really do. Donut. Did you open your nineteen fourteen box yet?
I got a spell book called war Crime. It's bleeding
and crying and it's disgusting. Can you imagine you guys?
Oh my god. I the fact that Carl doesn't even
like check for his again, what is it that you got?
It might be super useful. I would be opening my
shit like as soon as I could, you know. But uh,
he's just he's got a lot on his mind here.
So this is when Florin comes in and is like,
all right, they're really pulling out the big, big guns
at this point, very literally, this is them throwing everything
they've got. Have Louis drop what he has to protect
our retreat, but you should reroute the one zero sixths
to the castle. And this was followed by literally hundreds
of trap notifications, meaning they were already rushing past our
first line of trenches and then home base anti air battery.
A silent alarm is triggered home Base Anti air Battery
has been destroyed, and then Tippett is saying enemy in
the base, enemy in the base, and Carl is just like, wait,
what the fuck is going on? And he's like, it's
got to be sabotaged, right, Like how did they get
past the centuries? It had to be somebody that was
already on the inside. So Donut finds the door. It's
actually one of the rock guys. What is it, bomo
a door for the safe room from the Reaver team.
They're doing what we were going to do. They're sneak
attacking us using the safe room door the bamboozle. They're
in the castle. So what car Garl realizes is that
they purchased a doggy door upgrade and if you have
one of those, you can go literally you can use
it to connect to anywhere that you've already been. And
if they had ever been in the bait shop, which
they would have been, that they can get right inside.
And he's wondering how long the door's been there, which
is a good question because like, I'm assuming it just appeared,
but there's no reason to think that, And if it's
been there, they could have been coming in and fucking
with shit. The whole time, which is what I think
might have been going on with the worms, but it's
it's not entirely clear how exactly that got started, So
that's my assumption, but we don't know yet. And this
is when he sees somebody named reed Gun when he
uses ping, who is labeled as dead but who is
moving around, and he is outside an area where there's
blue dots, and then they all turned to x's around him,
and Carl is just like, how could he be dead
but still standing? And he comes to the conclusion brain
worms really quickly. I'll be honest, y'all, I fully thought
this was going to turn out to be a necromancy spell.
I don't think that we've really seen much in the
way of like crawlers having necromancy. We've seen abilities and
individual spells, but necromancy is like a crawler skill. Isn't
something I feel we've run across before, if I'm not mistaken.
So as much as I was sort of like, we've
never seen that, it's a like I thought, maybe okay,
somebody has it that we didn't realize, you know, and
not that this is a crawler obviously, but that maybe
there was I don't think that reanimation would be considered
an offensive spell necessarily. It depends, I'm sure, on like
some of the parameters around it. So that's what I
was thinking, was that this was just somebody undead and
being controlled like a puppet. And when he said brain worms,
I was like, oh, because he went in a totally
different direction with the thought process, and he turns out
to be right quite shortly. But uh yeah, I definitely
was not on the right wavelength for this at all.
You know, Sorry, I'm just like, there's a bunch of chats.
Saraphim says, Donut has her second chance spell, but pretty
sure the map labels undead as monster slash NPCs, not players.
Oh maybe, uh and yeah, like her second chance spell.
That's sort of what I meant when I was saying, like,
we've seen there be like individual spells that can do
certain things, but we've never seen a necromancer like a class,
you know what I mean, somebody who specializes in that.
So I don't know if that's even a thing or
if it's more like a crawler was Most crawlers would
not have the stomach to use necromancy. When it's like
probably I'm going to have to reanimate dead friends, you know,
fellow crawlers. I don't know. It seems like it'd be
very useful, but you'd have to have a particular practicality
about you that somebody, somebody like Westerface could have eva,
you know, a viciousness where you don't care. But and
depending on how good you are at it, it would
be terrifying in a case like this, where you could
just reanimate so many of the enemy and have them
turn from the inside. So when I was thinking that
it was an undead thing, I was really really worried
in a different way. Then it turns out I needed
to be, because what I was thinking about was stale,
how many people could they turn? How many dead are
there now that they can use? And instead, what we
need to worry about is how the valve Tae can
take anybody and or like override their regular body functions
so that they do things that ordinarily that body wouldn't
be capable of, and they can jump from one body
to another fairly easily. If they don't care about the
body they are in, they will beat the shit out
of that thing, doing what needs doing, and then bail,
you know, so by no means, am I trying to
say this is less scary, but it's different. And I
just was fully going down a certain track and I
was glad that it gets cleared up within sentences of me,
like coming to that conclusion, you know, so sorry. The
seraphim says, I could also see someone like lee Na
being fine with it. She's terrifyingly practical. Yeah, that could
that could work. Rob says, oh please, an aspiring necromancer
must have excellent elocution and a spirit of nobility, and
like me, Pisces. This is a wandering in reference for
those who are not aware. Pisces, what what? What a
great guy? I enjoy him. Pain in the ass, but
kind of a pain in the ass in a way
I can appreciate. So Carl, coming to this conclusion, begins
to send out the messages to everybody about about like
this person is listed as dead, but they are like,
go handle this, and he is seeing another one that's
coming in a human crawler and bucket boy, the young
crocodilian medic dragged between them, a former crawler, a yank
screaming in pain. I cross red friends. The names of
all three with the casualty list, the one on the left.
He was a crawler. He was a level fifty eight
human named Charles Andrew. He was also a class called
an Armored Mage. He was listed as dead and I
just you know, they don't know what's going on here.
So all I could think for a second was that Carl.
You know, we've had that moment of like Louis being
afraid of him and saying, you get wilder and wilder
looking around the eyes, and I'm just waiting for you
to fucking snap and kill everybody. And all I could
think in this moment is like, is everybody gonna assume
it's finally happened because Carl just launches himself at this
guy and beats him to death, and like he's already dead, so,
you know, but the worm comes out, It's quite quickly
apparent what Carl's doing and why. But for a moment,
I was just like, oh no, it could very easily
be taken out of context and he would look like
he has really gone off the deep end entirely, It's
finally happened, you know. So the worm comes out, he
stomps on it, and achievement flashed, but I waved it away.
I always want to know what the achievements are. I
am not mad that we're not dealing with it right now.
I totally write call, but I want to know. I
really do. So, yeah, he lets everybody know, like you
need to start cross referencing everybody around you with the
casualty list and double check whether or not they are
still actually alive. Rend at this point, tries to eat
the guy and Carl says, no, we don't eat our own.
And I really don't know if it would have harmed
Rend to eat a body that had been brought back
with a valet tape, where I'm like, I don't it
doesn't count as undead, I don't think. But there could
be like a you know, there's a gray area there.
I don't know. So anyway, an ominous message appeared on
my local feed fall back defend the castle, Defend the castle,
defend to the death again. Is this the AI? Is
this the AI like giving instruction here? I'm just it
just appears. It just appears, you know, this is my question.
It's like not coming from anywhere specifically, it's not labeled
like warning. It doesn't have the tone that I'm used to.
So this is when he says unleash Tina, and chapter
thirty starts. In the heat of it, one learns who
they really are, what they really want, their greatest fears,
but worse, much worse, oftentimes, one also faces their greater
greatest desires. Bear for me, they are the same, and
it is my devastation. Stab stab stab. Priestly, I just
want to say that it's not your greatest desire, it's
just the greatest desire that was forced upon you now
that you are in this like hellish situation. Please do
not believe that this is really who you are. But
I know it's like too late for that, so I'm
so sorry. Rob is giving an important waffle update in
the chat right now. We're talking about waffles before we started.
If you would like to know participate in these waffle conversations,
you should come to the lives and you could really
get in on some interesting tater tap waffle chat, et cetera.
So we are trying to pull it together here at
the start of chapter three, but they have definitely been
caught off guard. We knew that everybody hadn't had as
much time as we wanted to get things ready, and
even as much time as they were supposed to get
wasn't going to be enough. But this all is adding
another wrench into the works. Let's see, our most crucial
platoon of Home Defenders, the Beefy Boys, sof were half dead.
This was the squad which consisted of mages whose sole
purpose was to make certain all the wallbuffs and bass
shields were always topped off, which fucking sucks. And one
of the people who's been like ganked, that was his specialty.
And there's a mention here about like all of the
buffs and the shields and everything, but that pulse guns
can still do damage. They can still, you know, get
through a lot of this stuff. And Doctor Bones is like,
I can't wait for that fucking magic to turn back on.
And I'm like, yeah, dude, it's been like what a day.
It hasn't been a full day, and already I'm just
like this sucks. Oh my god, how are we even
going to get there? Honestly, it's as much as I
am so delighted at all of these outside folks coming in,
it still doesn't seem like enough at all, not even remotely.
All of this was just the initial attack. They were
softening us up for the main force which was hauling
ass toward us from the north. They'd simply bypassed Floren
and the one oh ones fallback position. The enemy hadn't
had left enough troops to occupy our main forces, but
the bulk of them would be on us in about
half an hour. So he gets in touch with Louis
and he's like, we got to we finished the inside repair,
but we have to get outside to manually fix it.
And the door to the hangar is on top of
the castle, which is super dangerous to go up there,
so this is not something that they're going to be
able to fix anytime soon. And I just remind her,
Like he is getting in touch with Louis, then he's
talking to Tippet, then he's giving orders to bucket Boy,
and it's like boom boom, boom boom, a million things
happening at the same time, and Dona is using her
ability to see through like invisibility to tell them where
to aim, which is hugely helpful. But it's not, as
Carl puts it, They are just keeping us busy, that's
all it is. This isn't even like, you know, it
feels for us like we're fighting for our lives and
we are. But this isn't even like the bad part yet.
And he had said unleashed Tina at the end of
the last chapter, and I'm waiting and it still hasn't.
She's still not there. And then we get Rosetta. I
need backup. I need edifice explosion suppressed and suppression inside
the castle. They got to Lonnie, who do we got?
I don't care if it's not your specialty. To the
safe room exit, And there's a dude named Hue who
takes off, And then there's a crawler who attempts to
leave and he gets got attempting to go and help Rosetta.
And she is the one who tells him about Wannie,
and she's like, he's systematically turning off the interior protections.
He's got a fucking warm in his head. I just
hate this for him. I know they volunteered to come
back in. I knew that this was going like that
these people were going to die, a lot of them,
and that they knew that. But it still just sucks,
after everything to still die in here. I hate it.
I hate it so much. And let's see, I'm trying
to find the the here it is Lonnie knew about
just justice light and our last line of defense. We
had to get him and fast. I don't know if
I'm supposed to know what that means, but I don't.
If I'm not, that's fine, And even if i am,
maybe don't tell me. I don't know, but I just
wanted to point out, like I don't know if I'm
supposed to get what he's reading or or what he's
reading what he's saying here Sarah and says, Rafo, what
is it? What does that again? Read? And find out? Right? Okay? Yeah,
Michael says it sucks so bad for the ones that
died before they could even fire a shot at the enemy,
and they came in willing to lose their lives for
the chance to strike a blow against someone responsible for
this hell hole, and they never got it exactly, Like
everything just hasn't gone according to I'm sure the image
in their heads that made this worth it to them
to do to risk, and probably even if they had
known this was how it would go, they would still
have come. But it's just it's not fair. It's just
simply not fair. So this is when Donut is He
says something about how the compromise. Mages are what we
need to focus on. And Donut says, I could have
told you that you can smuggle them anywhere, and they
can crawl in your ear, kill you, and take you
over in just a few seconds. It's absolutely disgusting, but
they're quite good allies. When they're on your side. You
can fit like five of them in your mouth at once.
Which I know that she is referencing a thing that
she had done, but I don't remember how it went.
I feel like at one point somebody described Doughnut getting
a scritch on the chin. That was like not a scritch,
forgive me. It was like one of those things where
I saw the comment way after it had been left
and meant to like address it on the show, and
then completely forgot all about it, and I this just
reminded me of it. And I can't even recall exactly
what it was that is meant to have happened, but
this is clearly pointing to that. And ooh, Michael says,
they're all dungeons fibers, so they probably didn't have any
illusions about what was going to happen, but it still
makes my heart hurt for them. Exactly. Rob says, I
can't remember it, and proceeds to remember it pretty much exactly,
but I don't remember exactly why she was bringing them inside.
Like I remember, it was to get it away from
get the show away from uh oh my god, b
what's the bee guys? So for the Valletite to take it.
But I don't remember Borrent, thank you everybody, But I
don't remember exactly how she got in touch with him
or set this up or anything. So that's what I mean,
is more like the uh background information and exactly how
this worked. Ooh, Rob says, and I think it was
because the Bloom is going after zev if I recall correctly,
and doubtless you're probably right. I didn't remember that part specifically,
but uh, Borrent is the company. The fish Nazi party
was the Bloom, right. So let's see a moment later,
splashtwe in doctor Bones high fives. They took out an
invisible MRK. I just love Doctor Bones out here high fiving,
just to mention. And we have a bit of back
and forth here of Doughnut chatting with all of the
people down here in the trench, especially Splashtone about their
personal lives and Splash Stone, it turns out is married
to Snail Trail, which is something that I will never
say again in my life. And it's very fun because
it's sort of like a light moment and Carl tries
to be like, can we focus please, and I'm just like, Carl,
I don't know if you even met like the folks
who work like this, but trust me when I say,
you can absolutely chit chat while focused as fuck. It's
not a problem. And obviously it is the way that
like Doughnut copes and from the way that Splashy is reacting,
he copes like this also. And then we find out
pretty shortly that this is all part of a buff
that Imani was giving everybody to get them so that
they were focused. And it's like makes you kind of
manic acting, you know, And she says something about how
like it doesn't seem to be affecting you, maybe because
of your mind focus. But then later she's like, oh, no,
it is affecting you. It's just all internal with Carl,
not chatty at all. Now, what he's focusing on here
is he we sends a message back, I'm sorry, Carl,
it's too dangerous. She will stay here and that's final.
She's just a child. You just ordered the Gnome and
the changeling children to stay out of the battle. So
why is Tina different? Now? Look, I'll be honest, y'all.
When Carl called leash Tina, I was like, really because
I really kind of thought she was going to get
the same protections in exactly the way that Kiwi is saying.
And of course, why is Tina any different? Well, you know,
she's a velociraptor. That's how she's different. So I get that,
but I don't really, like I have been having mixed
feelings about keeping the kids out of this fight the
whole time. And oh, everybody is saying she's a t rex.
I completely forgot. I completely forgot she's an actual t rex.
Uh yeah, Like, why is she any different? Is so disingenuous?
Come now, come now, Kiwi. However, Carl is like really
having a moment of like struggle internally about this. He
feels like she has a point, and maybe the fact
that they need Tina so bad and they're you know,
trying to use her in this way makes it worse,
not better. And then he says, I thought of Asher
of his mother hugging him after she'd poisoned our father,
and he starts to write, Kiwi, she'll be fine. We
buffed her. She will all die if she doesn't come out.
And then I realized survival had more than one meaning,
more than one meaning which I definitely respect this point
of view, I really get it. And just as he's
about to send a different message about like we'd have
to push out without her, Donut just yells, get Tina
out here right now, My goodness, what's taking so long.
Don't make me send Mango in there to drag her out.
Do it now, And before Kiwi could even answer, someone
to my left shouted duck as the giant doors behind
us flew open all the way. So this is such
a I this is the shame of the fact that
we have just been in the heat so quickly that
we haven't had conversations. But like Donut has had no
problem with the children being involved. You know, she was
also the one that was like fine with Bonnie coming
on board the party planner as a scout and Louis
as well, and she was saying, you know, she's hundreds
of years old, it's fine, and Carl's hang up here.
It's like I can't decide about it. I can't decide
if it's like understandably, if it's him clinging to an
ideal that is just not reasonable right now, or if
this ideal is like the whole point and why doesn't
Doonut have that same struggle? And I think that maybe
this will be a bit of a break between them,
not like a break in their friendship, but him and
Donut have been on the same page with a lot
of big decisions and a lot of the approach to things.
They have had arguments about details, but in the end
they both seem to feel similarly on a lot and
I am wondering if this is going to turn into
a bit of an issue that Donut is much more
willing to sacrifice children than Karl is and where that's
coming from. Exactly why is she? Because like I'm framing
it as why is she prepared to sacrifice children? Making
it sound as if we're just putting the children on
a fucking guillotine. But they are in PCs, and that
is not meant to be Oh, they're just NPCs, But
what I mean is because of that, they are much
older than they look, and I feel like maybe they
get to have some agency in all this. Maybe treating
them like children is unfair to them because you just,
you know, leave them as sitting ducks and they don't
what happens to them in the end anyway, if other
people die and they get if our side loses, then
they die anyway. So is it more kind to let
them participate in something that is so awful but make
their own choice, or is it more fairer to protect
them and treat them like actual children. I don't know,
because I don't I haven't spoken to these NPCs enough
to be able to tell what's going on in their
head and how they feel about certain things. And uh, yeah,
I don't know. Rob says, Apart from the significant moral issue,
part of the reason why we prosecute and have war
crimes is that it makes our enemies less likely to
resort to similar or more likely to surrender than fight
to the death. Given that the other side doesn't really
have children in the equation, it's somewhat asymmetrical, which is
a real albatross around the crawler's necks. Yeah, and it's
just like the lack of clarity around are like how
much like children are these quote children? Really is a
particular spot to me that I keep getting hung up
on because if they are remembering previous crawls, if they
are sort of awakened enough to really understand what's happening,
and that previous experience is compounding in their minds in
the way that experience adds up to more agency as
a person. That's what age is, right, It's that you
have lived through enough and your brain has developed to
a certain point and you can start to make you
can start to make choices with like more of a
comprehensive understanding what the consequences of those choices will be.
And it's just really tough to say here. I really
don't know. I like, honestly, if I'm being real with
you guys, practically speaking, of course, let the kids fight
if we're just going to be practical. But I don't
want to just be practical with this. I actually really
do want to think about the ethics of it. And
I kind of think that I come down on donut
side anyway. I think that it is like as NPCs,
there's just a whole different thing going on with them,
and treating them as you would regular human children isn't
accurate likely, you know, like, I just think it's probably
not really what they're like, and I think maybe this
a lot of this is coming from Carl's own baggage,
having to like see and experience horrible shit as when
he was very young, and he's just trying to keep
that from happening to other kids, which is totally admirable.
But they aren't normal, you know, They're just it's a
very special specific case here, So I don't know. I
kind of flip flap back and forth, but I feel
like I come down on Donut side mostly, not entirely.
It's not I feel like I could be argued either
way if it were compelling enough, but uh. Sarah Fim says,
I'd sigh mostly but Donuts so long as the kid
wants to fight and isn't being forced. Rob says, interestingly,
I'd side with Carl. Henry says Donut's a child, so
she sees no problem with other kids fighting like she does.
Saraphim says, give said kids a job that lets them
help while keeping them as far from the front line
as plausible. It's just tina as well a fucking t rex.
Rob says, the NPCs are facing a genocide, so I
wouldn't begrudge them fighting, but also I don't think I
could order them slash use them as soldiers willingly. That's
the thing, is like, it's not just I will let
you fight. He is saying, unleash Tina like she's a weapon,
which she is, but it is very dehumanizing. She's not human,
but she's a person. But you know, I don't know,
I I don't know. And it's interesting as well that
when Donut is just like, get her out here, she
shows up immediately, and it doesn't seem that Kiwi is
trying to argue with Donut at all. She's just trying
to argue with Carl. Later, Donut says something about the
fact that we need to talk to everybody about the
fact that they're not like just obeying our orders right away,
and hm, god, it's just Donuts really on a track here.
It's interesting to see her begin to be like, no,
we have to be organized, and you guys have to
fucking listen. I shouldn't have to repeat myself. I mean,
I don't think that's unfair. You're a warlord and we're
in war, and yet I was just like, damn, Donut,
you know, so Tina comes out and literally just like
chomps on this invisible spot that causes a guy to
explode because he had been setting up some sort of gun.
He was invisible again, and this is when Donut jumps on.
Mom goes back. She uses her headset and she lands
on the says landing atop the front of the castle
behind us, just above the door, and she shot. She shouts, God, Comrades,
there are over one hundred bad guys on the other
side of that building. They think they can just drop
out of the sky and land in our base. Some
of them are warmheads who killed our friends. Are we
going to let that stand? I don't think so. We
got to kill them, and we gotta do it fast.
Alpha Squad card reserves to the roof. Everyone else with
cards saved them for the main four. Let's show these
cheese sticks what the Princess Posse does to trespassers. Tina
sick em all around me. Cheers rose as everyone jumped
to their feet and started to shout. I exchanged a
look with Amani, who was staring at Donut open mouthed. Comrades,
She's been hanging out with Rosetta too much. The warnl
lored thing suits her. Imani said she sounded a little sad.
I felt it too. Tina finally noticed the mass of
enemies at the bottom of the hill, who had started
to panic fire their weapons at her. One of the
shields on her fizzled out, then another, The giant Alisaurus
waved her wand indignantly let out a howl, and she
surged down the hill, her pink tutu flapping in the wind.
For the posse, Donut roared and as one we charged.
So yeah, I just don't know. Look, if Tina dies,
which is certainly possible, I'll be interested to see donuts
reaction to that. I don't know. I really this is
such an odd question, and it's just a it's a
much more loaded question than it would be in a
real Earth war with Earth regular children, you know, where
it's very simply absolutely the funck not. But you know,
there's also going to be times where it's like, if
one person could sneak through this pipe and set this trap,
we could solve this entire problem. But the pipe is
too big for an adult, you know, Like, there's a
lot of horrible scenarios that I can think of that
would make it seem like we have no choice. And
that's the question, is like, you always have a choice,
it's just one of the choices is shitty. That's not
the same. Is it not existing? But where is Carl's obligation?
How much does he need to like maintain his belief
in the humanity of the NPCs and prioritize that above dissolve, Like,
what's the word I want? I was about to say dissolve,
but that's not the word I want. How much does
he prioritize that above potentially losing what is worth sacrificing.
It's more than about the kids, It's about a precedent.
You know. I just can't decide how I feel about it, guys,
I really can't. I don't know anyway, I you, guys.
I'm like, I just know we're gonna be seeing some
deaths of people that I like. I'm really thinking that. Like,
Emani's on the chocoling block, and it's been such a
weird journey with her where I have never disliked her
or anything, but she has been so standoffish for so
long that I feel like I'm just starting to get
to know her and growing to really like her. And
of course, like her abilities are so helpful and I
really don't want to say goodbye to her. It could
be Ellie. We haven't seen her a lot. It feels
like she's kind of been out in the mix a
lot more. I won't even consider Donut. I don't think
Matt didn't him in would do it. I honestly, this
is one of those things where it's like, if he
killed Carl, what a choice that would be? Can you
imagine like if he actually I'm not talking about like, oh,
a near death now, I'm talking about like dead and
the series ends without Carl kind of rad Actually, however,
I just there's no way doning. It's simply not an option.
I just don't see it. And I don't mean this
as like I would never tolerate it. I mean, as
an author, it's suicide, right like you just can't it's
not no anyway. All Right, I gotta wrap up. Thank
you guys again for coming, Appreciate you, and until next
time to the lum motherfuckers. That was an unspoiled Network
past