Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast.
Speaker 2: This is spoil Me covering Dungeon Crawler Carl chapters six
through twelve. I always sort of debate on whether to
read any of the chapter titles or anything like that,
and it always just kind of gives me like a
warm glow when an author doesn't even bother giving titles
to the chapters. I appreciate it personally. In this section,
we made our first boss and it's like, so horrible.
Speaker 1: It's so much worse.
Speaker 2: In every sense than I was expecting. Welcome to spoil Me.
Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. I don't
see you here in the chat, Michael, but hopefully you
will be able to join us. So, my friends, this
you know, I'm going to jump right to talking about
the boss. Okay, I will go back, I will look
at other things, and we'll talk about stuff in the
beginning of this section, I absolutely will. You know, there's
a plenty of other good stuff. But here's here's something
that I actually kind of had a like one of
those moments where you feel unexpectedly a wash of profound
relief because when we first.
Speaker 1: Meet this boss.
Speaker 2: It's just like the way that this woman her body
is described because she's fat, is really awful. And you guys,
I have talked about this on some other podcasts that
I've done, and we don't completely escape this here, but
there is a real tendency when you are making like
villain characters and you make them fat to have whatever
their magical boss ability is be dependent on something regarding
their mouths or food or throwing up. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's just such a thing.
Speaker 2: There's like video games where the bad guy turns people
into food and then he eats them, then he throws
up bile and that burns you. There's another one where
it's like an obese woman in a like one of
those scooters, you know, and and she throws up on you,
and it's just like, it's just so deeply offensive in
so many ways. So when this villain is introduced, my
very first reaction.
Speaker 1: Was, oh shit, okay, okay, I just gotta I just
gotta get through this.
Speaker 2: And eventually bugs are coming out of her mouth and
it's feeling like we're really on track.
Speaker 1: But then.
Speaker 2: Once you realize that this had been a real person,
that this was being done to her, it humanized everything
so immediately that I took it all back. And I
am sure that there are other people who read this
section and they would have the same hang ups about
how fat people are depicted in media as I do,
and they would not be able to let it go.
They would feel still the same way they did to
begin with. That's totally valid. We all draw the line
in the sand about certain things in different places, and
you know, there's just there's really no right or wrong
way to react despite what a lot of people might think,
as long as you have some awareness surrounding the issue.
I think that's the important part. But I just appreciated that,
like it felt the author was doing this thing, and
then it went it like Jiggs left and it was like, no,
the aliens are doing this gross thing to a fucking
actual human being. And so what starts off as this
really like grim dark humor seeming moment turns into like
an actual scene from a horror movie. It's so awful,
you guys. I Like there's a point later on where
Carl thinks to himself how he couldn't understand anything she said,
and he was glad because he had enough trouble sleeping
at night, and I'm you know, I am sure plenty
of you as well. As you're reading you can tell
what she's saying and it's fucking heart wrenching. So anyway,
I just wanted to get that out of the way.
So let's start with chapter six. As Carl is going
through his you know, all of his lute and whatnot.
The Goblin past thing does indeed do what I was suspecting,
but also it makes you look like you're with the goblins,
which results in you getting more damaged done to you
by creatures who don't like them. Enchanted night Gaunt Cloak
of Stoutness plus four in a constitution resistant to poison
and ice attacks, anti piercing, resistance to all armor. It
also makes you look like a dollar store batman. If
a night Gaunt spies you wearing this, they probably won't
be too happy with you, which is interesting. And then
Troll Skin shirt of Pummeling. The wearer gains plus seven
to the regeneration skill. In addition, all melee based damage
debuffs such as stun, knock back, disarm, and out of
breath are negated. The shirt is also quite stylish. A
lady troll might just want to haul you away for
some one on one time if they see you in this.
So Mordecai tells him for tanking, this is one of
the best undergarments. A level seven regeneration skill means you're
back to full health pretty quickly in as little as
two minutes. That is something that would be in a
platinum or legendary box. So he puts that on. And
the toe ring also, which is uncomfortable, but it's a
enchanted toe ring of the splatter skunk plus three strength
plus three to skill powerful strike.
Speaker 1: So this like the the I was sort of hoping
that the toe.
Speaker 2: Ring would maybe become like make his foot more durable,
and I was a little disappointed that it seems like
his foot is just as prone to being hurt as
it ever would be. I think later he he might
step on glass at some point. So, yeah, wish that
there was something more to that, but what can you do.
So he fiddles around with skills, and as he's doing this,
he hears a voice, Really, Carl, if you're going to
insist on wearing that hideous cloak, you might want to
do yourself the dignity of putting pants on first. I
just can't fathom why Miss Beatrice hired you in the
first place. And it's donut and she can talk. I
really really loved that she doesn't transform into a person,
because I kind of thought that might be what we
were getting.
Speaker 1: It's great that she's still a cat.
Speaker 2: I was hoping that there might be something involving communication,
but I thought maybe it would be mental. I didn't
think that she would speak out loud that everybody would
be able to hear her, but honestly, that would make
for much less interesting TV. So I had to focus
on what they would want to film. And yeah, she
she the stats, you guys, strength eleven, intelligence eleven, constitution
two dexterity eight, charisma twenty five. You should have heard
the snort that I let out when I was listening
to this audiobook and he said charisma twenty five.
Speaker 1: I lost my mind for a second. I had to
pause it. There was just.
Speaker 2: Something like, I genuinely didn't know we could go that high.
He was so low on the scale for everything that
I assumed that this was a out of five metric.
So finding out that there's double digits and shit, and
then she's like in the twenties, amazing and Mordecai is like, ah,
now I have to start that tutorial over because she's
like a regular crawler. And she's like, no, no, no,
I heard everything you said to my manservant. So this
is all stuff that I think, like you know, is
very tropy that we have seen before.
Speaker 1: The animal that views.
Speaker 2: The person who cares for it as their servant, and
they think a whole lot of themselves and you guys,
she gets tomb of the Magic Missile and then the
legendary box enchanted crown of the Sepsis Whore. This is
a fleeting item. This is a unique asterisk item in
viuswear with plus five intelligence plus five to the good
first Impression skill. All attacks, including magical have a fifteen
percent chance to inflict the Sepsis d buff warning. And
this is supposed to be something you read before you
put it on, but she saw that it was a
crown and put it on instantly. As I understand personally,
I might also be tempted to do. Placing this crown
upon your head permanently places you within the royal line
of succession for the Blood Sultanate on the ninth floor
of the World Dungeon, removing this item will not remove
this status. Royal members of the Blood Sultanate will be
required to slay the Salt and all other members of
the Royal family before ascending descending to the tenth floor.
You'll only want to wear this if you're a bloodthirsty,
raging psychopath.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: Plus five intelligence, plus five to good first impression and
fifteen to sepsist debuff, and in exchange, that becomes your
new like side quest.
Speaker 1: Is it just mirror? Does that not feel like that
pays off nearly enough to put it on? It's like cool.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Maybe I'm just underestimating what those stat
amplifiers like, how good they really are, But it just
seems to me that item doesn't feel like something I
would see like most people encouraging players to use if
we were in a video game, you know, I feel
like most people would be sort of like, this isn't
why would I ever do this, you know, unless you
were playing one of those like, you know, some people
enjoy doing a game where they're a bad guy and
they just fucking kill everybody. But anyway, Princess Donut has
named your party the Royal Court of Princess Donut. Princess
Donut has changed your title to Royal Bodyguard. Princess Donut
has changed her title to Grand Champion Best in Jungeon.
She have the highest combined stat total, so she's a
designated party leader. As such, she has more control over
the party than you. Don't worry, the titles don't mean anything.
Listen up, kids, She's quite a bit more powerful than
you are right now. So you'll want to stick together
at least until you get to the ninth floor. That
will be a challenge. You can always leave the party.
That crown is on her head, not yours.
Speaker 1: So this is when they.
Speaker 2: Set out, and Mordecai is like a by the way
other training guilds. You're always going to be coming back here.
I'm your guide now, so you know anytime you're just
gonna run into me, you'll lose access to me once
you hit the fourth floor. Good luck out in the
universe once this is over. Mordechai looked at me sadly. Yeah,
good luck to you too. He grasped a jacket and
met my eyes and then whispered, It's not worth it,
no matter what they tell you. Not until floor twelve,
and even then negotiate as much as you can. Remember
that he slammed the door, and my mind reeled. What
did that mean? Was he saying it was better to
die than to take whatever exit they offered on floors
ten and eleven? Did that even matter floor ten? Who
was Mordecai kidding? Three million people had died in this
place in the very first hour. I wasn't expecting to
survive until the next floor opened up. So I really
took this to mean, like the way that Mordechai is
looking at him, and the sadness this moment of having
helped a person, getting to know them just enough to
maybe like them a little bit, and then sending them
out there and knowing full well that you may not
see them again, and this being your job that you
do all the time, probably fucking wears on your soul.
And I don't know exactly how the contract works, the
agreement that he made, but it occurred to me that
I don't really know how time works in this universe
with the aliens involved. And it may be when he said, like,
my world isn't open to me anymore, that it's just
gone because so much time has passed that it's been
like stripped and the planet is essentially not like they're anymore,
or maybe enough time has passed that it's just changed
so fundamentally, you know. But it just really kind of
once I stopped and considered how little I knew about
so many different factors, I realized that, like, this could
be such a terrible deal if you don't look at
the fine print and find out yourself how things work
with the aliens, because you know, they're gonna say a
thing and we're gonna probably take a lot of things
at face value for the way they work for us
as humans from planet.
Speaker 1: Earth, and then if it's not that way, they can
just be like, well, we never said that.
Speaker 2: You just assumed that, which is valid that you know,
it's like making a deal with a fay. So my
concern is like a combination of just these contracts taking
place over much longer periods than I had previously considered,
and also potentially that they are trick contracts that it's
like you almost can't get out of at all once
you've on the papers. But I don't know, it's just
like for me, it really felt in that moment that
he was looking at Carl as they were leaving really
kind of like I just don't know, man, if I'm
going to see you again, and saying like it's.
Speaker 1: Not worth it.
Speaker 2: I think he is sort of showing a little bit
of what's optimism, I guess by being like, I think
you will probably get that far. But I am very,
very eager to find out what it is that Carl
gets offered as he gets further on, because that is
always something that I find really fun when somebody is
tempted with an offer and there really isn't a right
answer to the offer, and it's just about like what
your priorities are versus what theirs are, or if you
have like more anxiety about things going a certain way
than another way, and it can be very fun to
sort of debate what to choose. So I'm really really
interested in that. So they have twenty nine hours before
the television show begins, and Donut is like, we really
need to do something amazing, but the first thing we
need to do is get you pants, and Carl points
out she isn't wearing pants either, and she says, nor
am I wearing a cloak that makes me look like
I want a participation trophy at the Special needs Comic
con Carl, we could just not do the ableism.
Speaker 1: We could just not do it.
Speaker 2: That'd be cool if we just cut that, make that
anything else. You know, you could make it like a
participation trophy in a fifth grade costume contest, you know,
something to indicate. But let's just not That's all I'm saying.
It's surprising to me that line is under line so
many times, and yet I guess it's not surprising.
Speaker 1: Sigh.
Speaker 2: So at this point, she's being so pushy and domineering
with him that finally Carl is like, you know what, bye,
good luck, and she's genuinely, I think, like, doesn't even
get what he means. And finally he's like, look, I
think you're probably going to be okay.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot going for you. But if I'm
gonna get killed, then I'll just get it over with.
Speaker 2: Most of the time we put up with the fact
that cats her assholes because we can't hear every fucking.
Speaker 1: Thing you say.
Speaker 2: But I can, and it's not worth it. Thank you, no,
thank you, And she actually apologizes. Have you ever woken
up from a long dream one where you're one thing,
and now that you're awake, it takes you a moment
to realize that's not who you really are. Which personally, yes,
I have the most intense, realistic dreams, and I wake
up disoriented frequently. I do not recommend it. Also, depending
on the dream, it doesn't even feel like you got rest,
because it feels like.
Speaker 1: You were awake all night.
Speaker 2: When I woke up back there, I had all my
memories of all my time being me, of sitting in
that window looking outside, watching television, all the hours, and
the carrier, and then suddenly my mind looked back on
all of it and I understood what had happened. I
am a grand champion, I'm supposed to act a certain way.
But sitting in your lap watching you get fragged over
and over in Call of.
Speaker 1: Duty, I like that too.
Speaker 2: I mean, you really suck at that game, but you
keep playing. I didn't realize it at the time, but
I liked that. So what are you saying that you're
not a crazy, stuck up asshole princess. Oh I am
a princess, Carl, But I'll try not to be too
much of an asshole. And I need you and you
need me. Okay, Look, I'm really scared here. I don't
want to be alone, and I know you and you
don't want to be alone either. I saw you the
other day looking at the map on your computer and
then those apartments on Craigslist. What do you mean, I asked,
but I knew exactly what she meant. There was that
day when the passes were clear. You could have taken
me back to Miss Beatrice's parents, but you didn't want to.
You were looking at apartments, making sure they allowed cats.
You were thinking about catnapping me. I just looked at her.
It's exactly what I had been doing, but I hadn't
even admitted it to myself. When she says there was
that day when the passes were clear, I don't know
what she means by that. I think maybe it was
like the weather had been preventing him. He had been
using the fact that he was snowed in or something
like that. Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: I love this.
Speaker 2: The fact that he was even considering it is delightful.
It wouldn't have worked, by the way. Her dad would
have got me back right away, I sighed, that was
true too. Bee's dad was a lawyer out of Yakima, okay.
Speaker 1: I said, let's keep moving.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because he asks her why didn't why
did she jump out the window when she did, and
they get interrupted. So I think this adds fuel to
my theory that she felt something was wrong and jumped
out there purposely. I feel like we're getting this interruption
because there's a real answer and we don't get to
have it yet. But I'm pretty sure we're going to
find out about something with this later. And there's this
thlumping sound. Two bolts shot out of donuts eyes, one
after the other. They were like laser blasts from a
sci fi movie. I was so surprised that I almost
fell backward. Instead, I just stumbled a little. I remembered
that she had that magic missile spell. I adore that
she fires laser beams from her eyes. Fantastic, perfect, No
notes it does like require a cool down period though,
So there is a point later where she is pressed
and they have to wait for it to recharge.
Speaker 1: So then we get the bad Lama. I cracked up.
Speaker 2: Look, guys, I said before, not all the jokes are
gonna be winners. Writing comedy is hard, but more than not,
they are working for me so far, And I think
I'll tell you what I'm not trying to take anything
from the author at all, but I really do want
to give a lot of the credit to how well
the jokes land, to the audiobook narrator and whoever produced
the audiobook the way that they make it interesting by
changing up the voices of the AI that he is
interacting with the timing of the way the lines are read,
which is crucial. So it's just a really perfect combination
that makes jokes that I think if I just read
this joke, it wouldn't It's not that it wouldn't be funny,
but I just feel like I am getting a lot
more out of this listening than I would just reading it.
It just feels more cinematic because of the way it's produced.
So so I uh, because I'm going to mention this
in the discord as well, but I'm sorry, I can't
remember who it was, but somebody was saying that people
should listen to the audiobook, and another person was saying,
I don't think I would want to sit through hearing
all of the loot drop stuff. That's some of the
best stuff. The audiobook is done in such a way
that those parts are really entertaining, So I feel like
give it a chance and see how you feel about it,
because I could see why you would think that, and
I might also if I hadn't listened before I started
doing the text. And I just think, as much as possible,
I'm just going to do audiobook for this because some
books I have to mix it up a little bit.
I have to go back and forth, and you know,
depending on what the subject matter is, it's easier for
me to absorb in text.
Speaker 1: But this is something that.
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking really really benefits from the sound design
and the narrator. So bad Lama level three. It's a lama,
but it's bad. If he were human, he'd be covered
in prison tattoos and would be hanging out in front
of the circle k hitting on fourteen year old girls.
They might be willing to sell you something. If you
have good stuff to trade, you won't want to get
hit by their spit. And eventually, when they kill the lama,
he drops a bag of trailer park a grade meth.
Speaker 1: Sorry two bags. He doesn't does he add them? Does
he take the math?
Speaker 2: No? Yes he does, because he gets food items and
pharmaceuticals added to his menu. I do enjoy that it's pharmaceuticals.
But yeah, this fight, I mean, the lama isn't impossible.
It's just shocking. I think, you know, I felt bones crunch.
My left hand exploded in pain, and I didn't know
if the crunching bones were in the lama's face, in
my hand or both.
Speaker 1: Probably both.
Speaker 2: And it the spit that it shoots is lava. The
creature dropped like a sack of hammers. It tried to
cry out, but nothing but gurgling came out.
Speaker 1: You guys, I don't know if I could punch a lama.
I don't know, guys.
Speaker 2: It really depends making some of these baddies animals. That
might be the death of me. That might be where
I die, you know, I don't know. So because Donut
det seventy one percent of the damage, she gets the
first pick of loot. Poor lama. Skin uncooked lama steaks
bag of trailer park grade meth, and he takes the
steaks of the meth. I had a couple new achievements,
one for looting a corpse and one for sharing experience.
I received a pair of Bronze Adventurer boxes. That was
no good, sloppy.
Speaker 1: You can't be.
Speaker 2: Injuring yourself every time you get into a minor tussle.
Minor tussle. We need to be more cautious. We can't
just blindly stumble around. No, we need to level up,
and we need to do it quickly. I'm starting to
think this main road is not the best choice for
traveling or fighting. So eventually they get off of the
main road and there's like sounds that he can hear,
but he never actually runs into anyone, which I think
makes sense because earlier Mordecai tells them that the map
isn't connected to every other place in the world, so
it's not like you can run into somebody who's from
the other hemisphere just if you walk far enough, because
it doesn't work that way. So I'm assuming that because
it was so cold and there were so few people outside,
that is why this place has like such a thin
n number of human beings. But maybe not, maybe just
like more people just opt not to go in at all.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The bathrooms, he eventually figures out every time you open
the door, it's the same bathroom and it doesn't matter,
So that's kind of fun. When Donut opens it, she
finds a litter box, so she runs in there and
we find out, like, let's see, what I really needed
to do was sleep. The toilet thing and the fact
that when she opens it something different is in there
delights me a lot.
Speaker 1: So then we get level two. Rats.
Speaker 2: The cat was definitely making an effort to be less abrasive,
but she was still a cat. She had a reckless
streak and a quick mouth, often making quips before realizing
what she'd said. But she was also showing very cat
like signs of affection too. One time I leaned up
against a wall to rest, and she spent the time
purring and rubbing up against my legs. I looked down
at her, and she returned my gaze.
Speaker 1: What she said. I thought that was adorable.
Speaker 2: So I hit three levels and gained a skill called
foot Soldier and a second one called Smush. Foot Soldier
increased damage I dealt by kicking smush. You, guys, when
I talk about the audiobook narrator, this is this is
not an easy thing to pull off, My friends.
Speaker 1: I'm debating if I even want to attempt it. Smush
skill level three, killing with your feet, your bare, beautiful feet.
I couldn't. I couldn't. It goes on and on.
Speaker 2: I remembered the weird message I'd received before when I
jumped in on the Goblin Engineer. I thought it was
just to throw away joke, like most of the descriptions,
but it seemed the AI or whatever it was, really
did have some sort of foot fetish.
Speaker 1: It was fucking weird. I guess we're not getting you shoes.
Speaker 2: Dona said, yes, we are. It sounds to me like
the computer fancies you or your feet. At least we'll
need to take advantage of that. If a system likes us,
then maybe it'll go easier on us. It makes me uncomfortable,
I said, being eaten by a bugbear makes me uncomfortable. Carl,
So if your boyfriend goggling your tootsies keeps these easy
ps bugs coming at us instead of more of those
lava spinning lamas, then you better buck up, get over
your human male privilege and take one for your princess.
I loved it, like there's so many times where women
are told to just deal with a guy being a
fucking creep, and it was very, very nice to see
a guy you have to deal with that. You know
is you all don't know how much we are trained
to ignore throughout our lives. It's like there's always moments
of why didn't you say something when a guy was
being a fucking creep? But the thing is, if we
said something every time anybody was a creep to us, like,
we would never get anything done. It just like it
starts to just kind of roll off you in a
way that's not healthy because you just expect everybody to
be this way, you know. So that's one of the
nice things. Like even though getting older, gaining weight, and
just like aging in general sucks in many ways, I
miss being cute like I used to be. I will
say that not having a creepy factor like dealing with
that that is really nice.
Speaker 1: It's like such a relief.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm into it, and I think that playing
this angle, they should definitely lean into it, in my opinion.
Speaker 1: So then we go.
Speaker 2: To the first rest area and it's set up to
look like a kind of McDonald's, but instead of red
and yellow, it's white and blue. They had taken a
complete intact fast food restaurant from some random country in
place to here underground. We'd come in through a main
entrance and there's a thing on the wall that says
countdown until the premiere twenty three hours, forty two minutes
remaining crawlers four million, three hundred and twenty two thousand,
three hundred and ninety five. It had been ten million
just a few hours before. As I watched, the number
just kept getting lower and lower. Ooh, sorry, guys, I
had an interruption from a call.
Speaker 1: There, my bad.
Speaker 2: And there's going to be a leaderboard that they can see,
which hadn't really occurred to me. The you know, I've
talked a lot about the alignments with like Hunger Games,
with this, but what is sort of interesting is the
fact that you are going to be able to see
who is ahead in what way. In hunger Games, you
can only tell how people are doing based on whether
they're still alive and whether it seems like they have
enough food, and you just really are kind of guessing.
But you don't necessarily know what they're getting from patrons
or you know, you can assume they had to have
gotten something to get this far, but you never really
here you're going to be working with like more information,
and later on, Mordecai says something about how they'll like
take you out of the game sometimes to interview you,
and that is also something that does not happen in
the Hunger Games, but I really like because this is
a game that goes on a lot longer obviously Hunger Games.
You know it's meant to be like a few weeks,
and this is based on the timing of things. I
feel like it goes on a couple of months minimum, right,
So the fact that you get pulled out to be
interviewed is really fascinating because like, there's so many ways
that that could be played, both as an author writing
the scene and both as a character being pulled out.
Do you rage at the people who did this to you?
What is it like to see aliens? Do they just
look like characters from the game? Do they look like people?
You know? Are you going to be able to set
aside your anger at what's happened to play to the
crowd and get things or are you going to be
so overwhelmed with disgust that you just come across as
surly and angry.
Speaker 1: Both things can work for you, you know, like.
Speaker 2: There's not just one way to play it, but also
are you going to be treated super well or just
like shuffled in and out when you come out? Do
you get given like a lovely bath and a change
of clothes and bottle of champagne. Or do they grab
you out with a fucking like sheep hook, pull you
out onto stage, blinking under the lights, ask you a
few questions and shove you back out the fucking door again. Like,
there's a lot that I am curious.
Speaker 1: About with this.
Speaker 2: So this is when we meet Bopka, who, unfortunately, it seems,
is not going to be the guy that we meet
we see every time. I am very curious whether or
not he is responsible for how good the food is
or if this is part of the way things are built.
But he asks for the rat little he is a
rat looking little guy, right am, I let's see. No,
he's a dwarf. The rat's Mordecai. But Mordecai Carl asks
him to make something he recommends, which I thought was
taking a real fucking risk.
Speaker 1: I will tell you what. I was just full on like,
what are you doing, dude?
Speaker 2: So imagine my surprise when he gets a lovely vindaloo.
It was really what a relief. And he says his
spice tolerance is four, which I wish. I am such
a whimp when it comes to spices.
Speaker 1: Swear to God.
Speaker 2: So he gives some yogurt too, and there's a mention here. Also,
I just want to say this, Uh Taly knows you
are new here. This dungeon has just opened. It opened
without warning, so Tally is not ready. This is also
what Mordecai said that he wasn't ready, which makes me
wonder if there is a budget problem, Like it just
seems like they're used to things being a lot more organized,
and something seems wrong. So if there's something wrong, that's
something that is exploitable, and I would like more information
on that. I'm wondering if like Mordecai, because obviously they
have to be careful what they say because they are
being filmed. I wonder how much info Mordecai can give
Carl if he starts to find out things. He's got
to be real careful though. If you don't see him
after like level four two, then you.
Speaker 1: Just lose that source. Eh. Eh, it's tough.
Speaker 2: So he has some water that is wonderful, and uh
Donut gets a bell talisman of the slate butterfly. He
is annoyed about the jingling of it because he feels
like that's going to make it impossible to sneak. Those
who are who remember and commemorate the sad tape of
the slate butterfly are given a boon by the fairies
of the world. That story even made me cry. Adds
plus four to the light on your feet skill and
plus one two intelligence. Winged fairies will no longer be
automatically hostile toward you, which is nice because we had
the thing with his goblin stamp that would make fairies angry.
Maybe this will even it out. It's difficult to say
because it's on two different people. He's the one with
the thing, so the fairies might be like super nice
to her and total assholes to him, which would be
pretty funny. So this is when Tally comes out and
he has this vindaloo. I apologize, I do not have lamb.
They took my lamb for a mob in preparation for
the second floor.
Speaker 1: Don't like that.
Speaker 2: Also, your Royal Highness, I have special ordered a fresh
salmon for your meal upon waking. I will have it
properly prepared and diced and garnished for you later. I
love that he calls her your Highness, and Carl's so irritated,
and She's just like whatever, what's not my fault. He
thinks a thing, and he takes a bite, and he says,
it was literally the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
I'd never been a huge Indian food fan, but holy shit,
which personally I don't.
Speaker 1: Get people who don't like Indian food.
Speaker 2: Like, I feel strongly that I could live on it
for the rest of my life and I would probably
never get tired of it.
Speaker 1: I love it so much.
Speaker 2: It's just a it's a pain to prepare, it can
be very expensive eating it out, like, so I don't
have it as often as I would like.
Speaker 1: And it's also very rich, a lot of it, but
mouth's water and just thinking about it. Love it so.
Speaker 2: He and there's a moment where he's I thought the
urge to lick the plate, and I was like, I'm
sure if you just ad asked him, he would just
make you another one, Carl.
Speaker 1: Like, probably you should eat too.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be using a lot of calories in the
coming days. You probably want to, like carbol load get
some protein in there. Like, maybe you should start asking
for like particular nutritional profiles for your meals to optimize
your performance.
Speaker 1: I'm just singing, is.
Speaker 2: It possible for you to ask this guy for some
like gatorades, you know, uh, maybe get a little like
Camelback Water dispenser something. Just thinking out loud here, Oh
my god, I'm so sorry. I'm just seeing Rob was
commenting in the chat, and I like missed a bunch
of them, he says. I'll say this for Dinneman. The
stuff he writes is horrific, but every time he writes
political it generally feels nuanced and reasonably well researched. I
can't remember everything in the series, but there was nothing
that particularly made me go ah man. Turns out this
guy is a secret Wiener from the Secret Wiener is
going in my lexicon.
Speaker 1: That is very useful. It's just very evocative, you know.
Speaker 2: I love it horrific in the sense he's clearly a
horror writer, and this is satire that really points out
the horror of our current zeitgeist. Once you finish the series,
there are videos of Jeff Hayes doing cold reads, and
if I could alternate between Indian and Vietnamese slash tie,
I'd be so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love thie as well, but it really depends because
some places do it very sweet and that is all
Owen has ever had. So he thinks he doesn't like
Thai food. Sorry, he's going by Marshall. Now I'm adjusting
my husband. But yeah, so he thinks he doesn't like
Tay food, and I think if he got good stuff
he would.
Speaker 1: But there isn't a place like around here. But agree
on that.
Speaker 2: Vietnamese have only had like a couple things, and I
liked them both. But I'm not enough to feel confident
about it. Okay, so let's see. We need to come
up with a snappy way to kill them. Something exciting
yet cute, something with zest.
Speaker 1: I want on that show.
Speaker 2: Carl, we're not getting on that show. Were you paying attention?
Millions of followers? Loot boxes? We need to get on
that show. Maybe we need a catchphrase. I do really
love that we had to put somebody in here who
gave a shit about the competition aspect of it. Carl
is clearly very fatalistic about it and doesn't really see
himself getting to this point.
Speaker 1: And she has a.
Speaker 2: Totally different experience with like competitive stuff, so it's very
fun to see how completely confident she is. Plus or
charisma stats are insane. So I am really looking forward
to eventually them getting interviewed, hopefully.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: He is able to the rooms that they go into. Thankfully,
there's not the kind of like time crunch yet where
I'm worried about him sleeping through the level closing up,
you know, but I have to assume that is something
that becomes a problem a little bit later. So the
temperature in the rooms is chili, just how he likes it.
And he is able to get a.
Speaker 1: Shower, and.
Speaker 2: I don't think he gets like fresh clothes, right, because
otherwise he would be able to get pants.
Speaker 1: That's not how that works. And he doesn't get.
Speaker 2: To launder the stuff that he was wearing. But let's see,
I'm trying to find the spot. Oh right, okay, showers
with soap and shampoo dispenser's cheap disposable razors.
Speaker 1: I had.
Speaker 2: There were no towels, however, and I had to drip dry,
which I thought was weird. And again, is this because
things didn't Like, there wasn't the warning that they normally
get do they normally have towels, but they just aren't
stocked up with everything yet because it opened without warning.
Like I'm very very curious about this. So he eats
his incredible breakfast. She has salmon patay, and he talks
to Tally about personal spaces in the safe rooms, and
he says, well, it transfer from level to level. Yes,
it will, and from safe space to safe space. Also,
it's best to buy all the accessories as soon as
you can. Some of the items only upgrade when it
goes down a level. So if you wait several levels
before you purchase a crafting table, it won't get as
strong as one purchased earlier, which is uh. I can't help,
but wonder that's not part of like the tutorial in
the guild. Carl found that out because he asked the
right question, And I wonder how many people aren't going
to ask the right questions and thus don't know about
these little advantages, you know what I mean, Like just
the kinds of things that if somebody doesn't really give
a shit about their job, maybe they just don't tell you,
and then you wind up with shitty equipment later because
you weren't warned about these things. So let's see Scatterer
brood Guardian level four cockroaches that had been baptized in
rage and monster energy drinks, and.
Speaker 1: He like the whole fight with them.
Speaker 2: I am going to jump right past the way that
these bugs explode.
Speaker 1: It's horrible.
Speaker 2: We ended up killing a dozen more of the level
four US before we reached the door. Every once in
a while the scatterer would get inflicted with sepsis, and
when that happened, it would turn and try to run off,
would usually collapse and die after It took about thirty steps.
Both Dona and I were level five when we got
to the door. So the door says no entrar, don't enter,
or then the Centro de Salouth, which is by order
of the health department or health center. And I thought
that this was going to be like, maybe the door
isn't relevant. Maybe they just did this because this is
what it said on a door and they grabbed a
random door. But it seemed because like earlier, he's talking
about the bathrooms and they all have signs on them
from different countries. Some say men or women on them,
but obviously they aren't gender specific because he can use
any one of them. So I was thinking maybe this
like it's looking freeky, but it's not free hey, you know.
Speaker 1: And he sends in.
Speaker 2: Donut to check things out, and she says that she
can see a bunch of cockroaches and something that she
can't tell what it is. It smells like that bag
you take with you on those days. That other guy
comes over to the apartment and he's like, are you
fucking serious? Just finding out that his girlfriend didn't just
start doing shit when she went on this cruise or
whatever it was, which makes me kind of think she
might be alive, but that she had been fucking around
before that, And this is how he finds out.
Speaker 1: That is very embarrassing. That is so humiliating.
Speaker 2: I felt like an idiot. I also suddenly felt very reckless.
The Goblin dynamite, This stuff is especially volatile. It's so
volatile you probably don't even need to light the stick
to set it off. It's so volatile even loud noises
might set it off. Keep it in your inventory until
you're ready to use it. Be gentle and don't squeeze
too hard, or else you might get the The AI
didn't speak for a good two seconds. Boom, the AI
shouted that last word in my head, and I almost
pissed myself. You are a fucking asshole, I whispered up
at the air. So he lights it. He throws it.
I prayed it wouldn't blow when it hit the ground.
Chapter eleven. It blew when it hit the ground. My
vision flashed and I received a danger low health warning,
but it quickly abated. How much would it suck if
he didn't have those buffs and he just killed himself
right here with his own thing, that would be I mean,
at least he's not being filmed. I guess at this
point that's the one thing. Ahem. So they go in there,
and you know, there's all of these dead buff and
it's feeling like maybe we dealt with everything with this dynamite.
Maybe it's fine, but there's a lot of garbage. There's
piles of it that are stacked. There's a smell to everything,
and I'm not getting what's happening here. I'm curious if
anybody reading was starting to sense what we were doing.
But finally.
Speaker 1: They hear music.
Speaker 2: New achievement, Boss, Babe, you've struck a blow against a
dungeon boss and cause damage. Here's a fun fact. For
crawlers who make it through the tutorial, this achievement is
by far most often the last achievement they ever receive.
Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: Reward.
Speaker 2: Let's wait a few minutes before we decide on whether
or not a whether or not to waste a prize
on you. The door opens and a woman comes out.
You have discovered the layer of a neighborhood boss. The
AI was louder than usual. He sounded like the announcer
at a monster truck rally.
Speaker 1: Doughnut wants out.
Speaker 2: But it turns out that almost you can almost never,
like just leave a boss fight. I don't know if
they can with this one, but it's usually not possible.
So a woman appeared, reaching into the air, screaming as
she rocketed up like she'd been shot out of a cannon.
A human woman about thirty five, enormously fat. She wore
a filthy and ripped T shirt and no bra, and
her skin was covered in open sores and scabs. A
blue pair of sweatpants with the word Pink along the
leg appeared to be stretched to their limits. Her black
hair clung to her head in clumps, like me.
Speaker 1: She wore no shoes.
Speaker 2: She was also fifteen feet tall. And they all freeze
and they get dungeon Crawler Carl Donut versus the Hoarder
Level seven neighborhood boss.
Speaker 1: God, this is awful.
Speaker 2: Half of the woman's face was burned to hell. She
had a health bar over her head and it was
already three quarters gone. I cheated the boss fight, killing
her minions and hurting her before it even began. I
you noodul. This means, please help me. I don't know
what's happening. I have a stomach ache. I don't know
where I am. Please, I'm scared.
Speaker 1: You guys, this is so sad. This was like it
was just it was horrible. It maybe like just reading
that makes me so sad. I hate this.
Speaker 2: And he says, I like we should help her, and
Donut says, yeah, that'll be a no. And eventually she
starts throwing up more of these bugs and that's what
she's saying, like, I have a stomach ache. This they
did this to her. They put bugs in her stomach.
That's actually happening. That is not a fun graphic. That's
clearly been done to a person, which is the grossest thing.
And I just can't imagine not knowing what's going on,
and you start vomiting bugs, like, oh my god. Okay,
the woman was scared, disoriented, and she obviously didn't want
to be here, but she was also vomiting killer cockroaches.
Speaker 1: Our only real choice was to take.
Speaker 2: Her out, and honestly, I wanted to find an alternative
for a moment, but then I was like, there's nothing
good coming for this woman if they did this to her,
like get get her dead. It's a favor at this
point after everything they have done. So oh god, I'm sorry, guys.
I keep getting these calls and I do not I
can't answer them obviously, and I usually don't get calls
because I have do not disturb set. So he comes
up behind her and eventually he manages to get like
a chain around her throat, and Dona is very afraid
of actually fighting. She only wants to use her missiles
because that's a ranged attack, but she doesn't want to
get up in there because and like, honestly, I feel.
Speaker 1: Like she had pretty low.
Speaker 2: Stats in terms of like her own durability. But he
is just like, can you please even pretend to make
an effort? You know, the horder lay on her back,
her health bar was all but empty. LUCIENTO if mala persona,
I'm sorry if I was a bad person. No Kiia
Jsse and Fermara. I didn't want my daughter to be sick.
No kio l n el inferno. I didn't want to
be in the fire. And vime a Jesus, please bring
me to Jesus or send me to Jesus.
Speaker 1: Send me to Jesus.
Speaker 2: She's basically saying, kill me. And I don't know that
I didn't want my daughter to get sick. I maybe
they were threatening her daughter, this is what Maybe that
was the deal that she agreed to, like be this
character so that they wouldn't hurt her.
Speaker 1: Kid, which U uh yikes.
Speaker 2: Talking about her getting sick and also the fire, it
feels like there's a lot of horrible things, like choices
that people have to make. I'm wondering if this is
maybe some of the deals on the like later levels,
play a certain character, and if you survive and win,
you get out. You know, if you're a boss that
somebody can't beat, you win your way out. But you
really reach a point where it's like, how much do
I believe they would even honor that agreement? I don't really,
there's nothing for me to base that trust in, you know.
So twelve, it's after this is over and they're talking
to Mordecai about the whole thing, and he explains about
the bosses and you know, just in general how they work,
which is pretty typical. And finally, Carl says, the one
we fought was obviously a person from our world. Is
it always going to.
Speaker 1: Be like that?
Speaker 2: No, this was interesting. Mordecai didn't answer for several moments,
like he was trying hard to think of a proper response,
which feels to me like he's not allowed to say
certain things. No, not always, he said, finally, there will
be a lot of recycling from previous iterations of the game.
Some will be human stock, but most won't be or
even human from this world, or they will be human,
but it won't be as obvious.
Speaker 1: And I just want to.
Speaker 2: Know what the hell he wasn't saying, because it just
felt like he was parsing his words quite a bit there,
and that no, not always is doing a lot of work,
and I want to know what the fun that was about.
So Donut is not pleased that they get a bronze
level boss box. She feels like this is not good enough.
And let's see, there's torches, pet biscuits, and she finds
a spell book and immediately applies it and then gets
angry once she realizes that it's kind of a shitty spell.
Now I say shitty because that's what she thinks. I
personally think this is a good spell. Mordecai laughs and
is like, you really do need to read shit before.
Speaker 1: You use them.
Speaker 2: But this is a useful spell. It's called torch. It
makes a curl of light follow you around. The more
she uses it, the more powerful it'll become.
Speaker 1: Which I played.
Speaker 2: I played Starry Valley for the first time in November
when I got really sick with COVID and I could
do basically nothing else. And I have never played a
game where if you didn't have a light source, you
just couldn't see the screen. But it was pretty like
because I had never played, and I wasn't looking at
tutorials or anything, it took me a little while to
figure out that you could make a torch and like
carry it or put it down somewhere. So y'all don't
know how frustrated I was at first. I couldn't see shit.
And I think that you've like this is a key element.
You've got torches, which are clearly usable items. You're gonna
run out of those potentially, but if she just has
light with her, that is very helpful. So yeah, you've
gained a skill level iron punched level three and he
gets Tomb of Wisp armor, more dynamite, gunpowder, scroll of
confusing fog, enchanted spike, kneepads, potion of iron skin, and
the wisp arm sounds really cool. So it lasts five
minutes plus one minute per level of spell. Five minute
cool down costs five manuta. Surrounds your body with tendrils
of light. While ineffective against physical attacks, this spell negates
seventy five percent of incoming damage from magic based attacks.
That's a lot like you almost never see those kinds
of numbers.
Speaker 1: When I say almost never.
Speaker 2: What I am basing a lot of this on is
playing Skyrim, and I know that there are so many
other games out there. I've played a few, but Skyrim
was probably like the RPG I played the longest, and
so I'm comparing a lot of this to that. And
you know, the kneepads adds ten percent damage, reflect cancels
all momentum a.
Speaker 1: Tax, which is kind of fun.
Speaker 2: And I'm trying to find the confusing file here it
is filled the room with the myths that could only
the mobs could see. And the iron skin potion raised
my physical armor by one hundred percent for five minutes, which, like, granted,
five minutes isn't a super long time, but one hundred
percent for five minutes, I mean that could save your
life a few times.
Speaker 1: In a row. Like, that's really really good.
Speaker 2: So even though Donah sniffed and put her nose up
at the level of box, all things considered, they've done
pretty fucking well. At this point, Dona asks Mordecai, is
there were Worst Dressed award for the Dungeon And this
is when he talks about they might take you out
to do interviews, like when they win boss fights. Sometimes
that's when they pull people out. It's a commentator program.
The show is almost as popular as the official program,
though they'll never let you watch this one.
Speaker 1: And this made me.
Speaker 2: Think of like like the Watching Dead. For those who
were around for the original Walking Dead airing, they had
a show that would air directly after that, hosted by
now canceled Chris Hardwick. And it was wild to me
how popular it was considering how nothing it was. But
it's just that it had the cast on for interviews,
and it was always so funny because they'd basically just
like repeat summaries of what it just happened in the
previous episode. It was the most pointless shit. So I
think it's going to be different because it's like sounding
much more like a Joan Rivers, like red carpet commentary
sort of thing, where maybe there's some snarkiness happening or
good Morning America type, you know. But I really do
look forward to them getting on one of those at
some point because I'm so curious how Karl is going
to respond versus Donut. Also, Donut calls like, is like,
we need to get on there, and he says it's
not how it works, and I'm not your agent, and
she says, no, no you're not. Miss Beatrice is my agent,
and once we reunite with her, she'll make sure I
get on that show. But she's halfway around the world.
I figure we'll have to wait until the fifth or
sixth floor before the dungeon shrinks enough for us to
find her. I really hope we don't have to wait
much longer than that. I exchanged a look with Mordecai Sure,
I said, finally, now let's get back out there.
Speaker 1: And clearly they look at each other because.
Speaker 2: They are both definitely assuming that Beatrice is likely dead.
If she's not, that she will be, so this perfect
trust that Donut has that Beatrice is still alive. I'm
not sure how much Donut really understands what happened. Like
she was there, but I don't know how much she
really absorbed, and it doesn't seem like they've really had
time to talk about that very much. He clearly doesn't
want to, like warn her that Beatrice is likely dead,
And there's almost a part of me that's like, maybe
her and Beatrice have some sort of like connection and
she can tell that she's still alive. Maybe Beatrice is
still alive and there's something in her that knows that.
And it's sort of a funny thing because like, I
like the idea of eventually meeting Beatrice after having only
heard shit about her, because I'm super curious. You know,
it might be the sort of thing where she is
just as shitty as she sounds secondhand when you only
hear about the bad things she did. It might be
something where you're like, nah, she's cool as fuck. I
kind of get why you liked her. Actually it might
be the sort of thing where you like find out
what was going on in their relationship and you're like, dude, no,
wonder she cheated on you? What an asshole? Like?
Speaker 1: Who knows?
Speaker 2: But I feel like her still being alive is kind
of more interesting, so I'm down. But also if she
is not still alive, that's also fine. I'm you know,
I'm not married to and I'm just saying, sometimes just
doing the more interesting thing, even though might be more
complicated or difficult, maybe.
Speaker 1: You should still do it. So Okay.
Speaker 2: That is the end of chapter twelve, and I am
really really enjoying this so far. Once again, encourage everybody
to check out the audiobook if you haven't already. Thank
you so much to Michael for commissioning this one. Really
really appreciate it. And thank you Rob for keeping me
company in the chat. It's always nice to feel like
there's somebody here with me, you know. I've done a
few almost all of my recordings at least one person,
but sometimes there's nobody, and it's really remarkable how different
my energy is when there's nobody there.
Speaker 1: I just feel like, does.
Speaker 2: This even matter that I'm talking? Who's going to listen?
To this, you know, even though I know people will
listen to the recording later. So I appreciate you being here.
Oh sorry, he says, don't read this. Oh he's giving
me advice on Vietnamese food. Ha ha, my pleasure. I look
forward to hearing more. Yes, five thirty Central time, Remember sir,
just put that in your old planners. Tuesdays and Thursdays.
All right, everybody, thank you again for joining me, and
until next time, to the Loo, motherfuckers. That was an
Unspoiled Network podcast