Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl book seven, chapters seventy seven through
eighty one. In these chapters, we unexpectedly are able to
take out another warlord who just had been doing something
real weird. And then there's another reveal that I feel guys,
I really feel like I'm missing something here. I read
this twice. I don't get it. Welcome to spoil Me,
Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. And
Michael is here in the chat. Thank you very much, Michael.
All Right, we're just gonna start at the beginning because
there is really quite a lot to get through here.
I do want to address the AI calling what Doughnut
had just done a slap chop. I it's of course
it's a slap chop that it didn't even occur to me.
But if you know what those are, you can agree like, essentially, yeah,
that's precisely it. And I honestly, I am surprised at
myself that I didn't draw that conclusion on my own,
because it's so completely a one to one. So we
have poor Hyppocrates who is lamenting that his dick has
been smushed. I don't know if there is a way
of restoring it. I'm going to guess probably not. If
there is, it's probably a whole thing. But he does
say you will pay for this champion of neck a bit,
so that's fun. So now he knows, he knows it's Dona,
and he is holding her personally responsible, and so now
she has an enemy that she has to worry about,
which really really sucks. There is this moment here where
there is blood dripping all over the place, and it
also begins to quote snow. It's actually ash falling from
the eruption, but there is so much blood in the
air that it's mixing together and it looks like it's
just a blood rain coming down. And Carl is looking
around and just thinking to himself, this is hell, This
is hell. And I just couldn't help but think it's
surprising that exact phrasing hadn't come up already, because there's
so many times where you could have felt this, you
know what I'm saying. A notification came regarding a new
demon eviction, but it was abruptly cut off by a
strange notification that I didn't get a chance to read. Okay, Dona,
for her part, is trying really really hard to be okay.
She is obviously shaken, she's obviously actually not okay at all,
but she is determined not to slow everything down because
she is very, very aware We've still got fucking shit
to do, man, And so there's a point where Carl
is telling her it's okay to cry, and she is
just like, no, no, it's not. We're not done, and
she is right about that. Now we get some really
interesting level ups for her, for her and as it
turns out, for Lena also. We'll talk about Lina momentarily,
But first, Doughnut is back at the top of the pile,
so she is now the leader of the party again,
and Mordecai is looking through what she has available and
says that the spells that she has our deity level
and so she probably takes the the prize for most
powerful crawler ever in the Dungeon, which is wild. You know,
I suppose killing thousands of enemies in one fell swoop
is going to do that for you. And she says
she's like going through the different benefits. Long story short,
she picks the muscle Mommy benefit, which also benefits her pet,
and so we see later on that Mango has kind
of gotten swoll. And also her charisma is topping two hundred,
and that gives her wholesale discount, which means everything is
at cost at the store. And Carl himself, as he's
looking at her, is just like, what in the fuck
He himself is at level eighty one, and he's like, yeah, respectable,
that's kind of what I She is at one thirty five.
My god, And this is the one thing that I
think kind of saves her. Carl is, like, I feel like,
because he is less easily swayed by Like I don't
want to even say material things, even though I feel
like it's the best way to say this, but he
really just doesn't get distracted by this stuff. And you know,
Dona is all about the perks and the Bennies and
the accessories and whatever. So the fact that she did
this awful thing is mitigated a little bit in the
moment by the fact that she has all of these
rewards that she can focus on instead. Which this is
not at all to say, Oh, she's not upset because
she got something out of it. It just means that
she has somewhere to focus rather than thinking about how
hideous that was, and that eventually thinking about how hideous
it was will catch up with her, but at the moment,
it's kind of a perfect distraction for her brain, and
it's sort of a blessing in a way for that,
you know. So anyway, she says, I was worried that
they'd give all the credit to Lena, but uh, yeah,
now Mango is boosted by twenty five percent of my
own strength. And she also recommends to Carl that they
keep Mango and rend boxed up a little bit because
there is so much like flesh all over the place
and it's unclear what would be safe for them to
lunch on and would what would not. Then we start
getting the notifications that Lena has maxed out her base stats,
all of them, every single one. And apparently the AI
doesn't know what to do because this has never happened before,
nobody has ever managed it. Uh, we don't have a
plan to deal with this. She can still raise her
stats beyond that with equipment and bonuses and spells, but
I'm going to have to come up with something. Carl
felt a deep, deep chill, but it did not wash
over him, so you know, whin some lose him. There
comes a point later where everybody is trying to find
Lena and she is mia and she ends up like
they tell her or no, they're looking like. Carl gets
in touch with her about who has escaped, but eventually
we find out that she only responded to Shwing. Is
that his name? He says that she would only say
that she is quote hunting, but that was the only
thing that she would say. And everybody is assuming that
it's the dudes that she had marked, which like one
of them does wind up dying purely by accident, weirdly,
so she doesn't have to worry about that one, and
her health takes a hit if those guys aren't dead
after marking them, So, like, I get why it would
be that she's going after them. Okay, however, y'all, I'm
really worried. I am really really worried. I don't think
anybody seems prepared for the eventuality that she's coming after
Carl and Dona, and I am beginning to think that's
what's happening. It may be that she is simply prevented
from coming at them until she kills one of the
guys that she had marked, and that's like the one
thing that's buying them a little bit of time. I
feel certain she is about to be a real problem.
I really don't want it to be true. I do not,
but it feels like surprising to me that nobody at
all is worried about it. After saying too Donut to
her face, it's your fault that he's dead. After saying
to Carl, I'm gonna do this thing to stop anybody
else getting like killed because of your chaos, she clearly
blames them and is now at the highest possible level
you can get if she's planning on fucking handling you,
there really isn't a better time. And what I keep thinking,
and I know, like, look, this is just me being
like a paranoid. Okay, but y'all know that I said
that I was feeling Batista was going to become a problem,
and I gotta be honest. I'm like, is it possible
that he and Lena could like work something out? I
just don't. I don't want it. I don't want that
to be true, but I they are both really seeing
Carl and dona as threats. You know, in Batista's case,
he really thought Carl would take the flower and kill
Kochefort and give it to Donah, which is just such
a wild misunderstanding of who his who Karl is. But
if he's still worried about that, it's possible that he
would be like open to Lena, or if not, if
they were not conspiring them, possibly if she were to
attack them, he would simply not help them. You know,
I just I don't know, man, I'm real worried about this.
I just feel like there's not enough attention being paid
to how upset she is, and everybody is putting it
down to like, oh, she's just focused on tracking down
that one last target, and I feel like it's a
really good excuse. But I don't know if that's all
that's happening. Sorry, Saraphim says, not a health hit. She
can't heal it all. Oh right, Okay, she can't heal
it all. Sarahim says, person exists, Natasha, they're going to
backstab us. That is so deeply unfair, sarahm. These two
people are the only ones that I ever really feel
that about. That's probably not true. If you go back
through the listening, and you could probably find a lot
of times where I thought somebody was going to backstab us.
But I do think that there are two people who
have a problem with them one of them. The thing
with Len it's different because, like she her tragedy has
already happened, her brother is gone. There's no one doing that.
But you can tell yourself you're potentially saving other people
by getting rid of him, because, as she said, she
thinks that he's like a hazard to the other players.
With Batista, he would see it as getting rid of
somebody who is going to possibly backstep Katya. And but
he says he's just not really been like in the
mix the way that he was for a minute. And
that's the part that's got me kind of like eyeballing him.
Is granted, we have had a lot less time to
hang out with everybody in this book, things have been
quite frantic, but it just seems to me that that
indicates like he's purposely pulling away and just not trying
to be around them as much anymore. But yeah, I
am really really hoping I'm wrong, because I don't want
to see that. I don't like seeing people turn against
each other. I get. This is not to say that
like plot wise, if it were to happen, I'd be
mad about it. It's just like my little heart doesn't
want to see it, you know. So let's see. This
is when Carl says there were two notifications we hadn't received.
I looked over, surprised both Victory and Fopsy were gone.
I hadn't seen them leave. And this is when he
realizes that the Tag and Fang were marked but were
not killed, and so they managed to get out of here,
so somehow. So this is when Brittany chimes in, and
you know, I'm very paranoid about the Brittany and the
possessed by an axe thing. Eventually we get a like
look into this, and nobody can sense anything coming off
of Brittany. There has been a mention a few times
of how Brittany has inexplicably gotten closer with all of
the NPCs and has weirdly become some sort of liaison
for Juice Box, for like, between the NPCs and the Crawlers.
And honestly, I did think that that was going to
end up being something and that we would just like
find out what that was later. But I thought it
was going to be something regarding, like, you know, her
getting emotionally attached to somebody, or there being like a
particular aspect of being an NPC that she identified with
because of something in her life before all this happened.
And it's looking more and more like potentially something occurred
to Britney like something happened to Brittany, and that has
changed her in some way, potentially internally and is either
becoming friends with the NPCs due to the fact that
like she is being influenced by something possessing her, or
potentially it could be that she's not even Brittany anymore.
Could it be that she's a shape shifter, like if
she weren't Brittany, if she were a shape shifter, I'm
assuming that the game would know that so we would
get there. I don't know that we can impersonate Crawlers, right,
because that would be like mentioned that she was dead
unless the AI feels like being an asshole, I guess.
But you know, there was the the inspection that I
think both Immani and juice Box did, and it was
weird because what juice Box says is that she can't
feel anything at all when she touches Carl, but that
Britney feels like a regular human, So I like, is
the I can't feel anything at all because of she Maria?
Is that why that's happening? Because that's a weird thing
to say. Anyway, what's going on with Britney Long story
short does not get revealed within these chapters, but she says,
Lena just tore through the castle. She's glowing and she's
not talking to anyone. The remaining warm Age is opened
a portal and disappeared. We don't know where they went, uh,
And he asks her how many got away, and she
says several, including both warlords. There are several unaffiliated outworlders here.
Where did they come from? And he's like, I do
not know the NPC. You still have someone in the
dream Castle and they'll have the throne room captured in
about four hours. We got to go to the Reaver Castle,
rescue Louis and we'll take their throne room. You'll be okay.
As soon as that's done, we'll finish the plan. We
just got to watch out for the remaining warm Ages.
I don't know where they went. And she does not
reply to this, so then we get one of the
most heartwarming like moments in maybe the series honestly in
a way, and it is all of the Crawlers pretending
to Donut that they do not remember being smashed together
in the ball y'all. This is so incredibly incredibly sweet.
I really cannot say how like, because Carl at one
point is as everybody is assuring Donut that not only
did it not hurt, but her doing that took them
out of a situation that was hurting, so she is
a hero who rescued them all. And Carl is like
listening to them say nobody remembers it, like, you know,
and he's thinking, I don't really know about that. The
way he phrases it is like everyone is claiming they
had no memory for it of it, And I was
like claiming, well, if everybody is saying it, and I
really when he phrased it that way, I was like, well,
maybe they just don't. Maybe that's what happened. And as
soon as I thought, well, maybe they really don't, my
immediate next thought was, since when has the AI ever
spent anybody suffering? Like, There's never been a moment where
somebody has been made unconscious so that they don't go
through the horror of whatever it like. It was just
an instant me going, oh, come on, sweetie, you're not
that stupid, but I won't lie. I still was sort
of hoping maybe it was true. And it's not until
later that he asks Florin and Floren just is like, listen,
as far as she is concerned, we don't remember anything
of it, but please don't let her do that to
us again. Oh my god, y'all, I am, I am.
So this is just like that moment of evidence that
like the humanity is still there in everyone that y'all
care enough about her mental well being to message privately
and organize so that you all have the same story
that you can tell her and make sure that she
never ever feels a moment of guilt about it. I mean,
that is just it's so kind, you know, and it's
so careful and thoughtful, and it's exactly what she needs. Frankly,
there are so many times in books and in real
life fiction and nonfiction where people lie and I'm just like,
why are you doing this? You have to know that
the truth is going to come out eventually. And then
there's like occasionally times where I'm like Wow. I don't
know if I would have been prepared to lie, but
now that I'm watching a character do it, I realize
this is actually the right call. Normally, I'm very much
on the side of tell the truth because it's going
to come out, and this is a time where I'm like,
maybe it won't, though maybe it won't. If it comes out,
it'll have to be a third party who's being an asshole,
like an adjudicator or the AI itself, And I'm really
even then, even if it did come out, Donut would
know that her friends cared about her enough to lie
and coordinate the lie so that she wouldn't have to
feel bad, which still is worth a lot even if
she found out, you know. So I just I don't
think there's really a downside here. And I just thought
this was so sweet. I loved it so much. So
we then go into the next seventy eight. We stood
before the absolutely wrecked castle of Samaru, who built it
as a capstone against further intrusion towards the gods, and
we have a Kuma suddenly messaging Karl and he wants
Carl to kill Agatha, and he is like, if you
do that, we're square right now, we're enemies, but we
won't be if you take care of her, because she
wants all of us dead. And he doesn't explain any
of it. He's just like, trust me, bro, which isn't
really a great argument, and I could understand if Karl
just does not believe him. But it was interesting to
me because it seems like the AI has grown somewhat
protective of Agatha from the way it was talking about
her before, and Akuma wanting her dead indicates to me
that maybe these warlords are not warm ages, are not
as linked with the AI's desires and agenda as I
had thought. I am wondering if maybe or maybe they are,
and the AI has realized that like Agatha was full
of shit or something, you know. I don't know, but
this is an interesting development also throughout this exchange, because
it's a Kuma who has DMed Donut and Carl and uh,
what's this face? Tag? Donah is like getting very obsessed
with the fact that she wants to change her name
back to Warlord Donut because she keeps showing up as
the Champion of Neck a bit and I just found
that this particular part of it very funny. That she's
just trying to get somebody to tell her how to
change it back. And finally Tag is just like, dude, okay,
it's in the fucking you know this menu, go here,
which is extremely relatable. So barreness Victory is just like, uh,
they all took of we don't know where Akuma is
and they have just like withdrawn, so they're not under
our authority. And there's also a mention of from Warlord
to Kuma, we were just here to test the potions
we gathered and to find the Scavenger's daughter, and she
is with us now. And so Carl of course is like, Mordecai,
the fuck us up with the Scavenger's daughter, because I
thought that was just like a thing for my little
old patch, which I was surprised to hear he thought
that because everything in this fucking dungeon has a story,
like somebody is very obsessed with lore, and Mordecai essentially
tells Carl it's a long story and it's not going
to matter what that story is unless you win this shit.
So I'll tell you if you get through this focus.
So let's see. Uh oh right, I forgot about Flora
laughing about Lucy and being like, ah yeah, classic Luciamar
with setting two traps. There's something about the way that
Flora sees her as like a misbehaving child that is
so delightful. After the way that he was set on
killing her, He's just done such an about face. I
think that what I like about Flora in this respect
is just how utterly dependent on the facts he has
his opinion of somebody is, which I really respect because
you would think that would be a thing, and it isn't.
With a lot of people, they develop an impression of
somebody and regardless of the evidence they begin to gather
to the contrary, they never really change their opinion of
that person because they just feel how they feel, and
they don't really know how to like work with new
information and adjust. And it's really tough because like that
at all. So Florin is obviously somebody who's super reasonable,
and I don't know, I feel like we're maybe coming
up on losing him, and I'm really sad about it.
He's just become unexpectedly one of my faves. I think
part of it is also the like fucking Australian accent
that the narrator chooses for him and everything. But so
let's see if Lucia's fate is tied to that kinder
facility where they're keeping all the kids and the pregnant women,
he'll die protecting the girl. He came in with his
pregnant wife, Heidi, and she disappeared. She's up there somewhere
with the rest of the kids. There's a lot of
men and women here who have kids who might be
up there. It's the most important thing one can do,
don't you think, protecting the kids. He looked at me,
eyes intense I smiled sadly. I hope she's not a
psycho now that the dogs are dead. He nodded, Oo, man,
and we then go to uh, let's see justice flight.
He is really upset because he needs the gate and
nobody is fucking listening to him. And I found this
very funny because at one point he's like, don't you
guys fucking understand? And I think it's Tippid who's like, no, no,
we don't, because you won't fucking tell us anything. And
I did think that was kind of funny, just being like, bruh,
of course we don't understand. You don't want us to, evidently,
but whatever it is that's happened, it like, Carl decides,
and I love this so much. He decides, I don't
get to control everything. Some things aren't my business. And
if this man who has been through all the same
shit more, even if he has a plan that he
thinks he can pull off, even if it isn't for
the good of everyone in the way a plan I
would ideally come up with might be, even if it
is just about getting personal revenge. Doesn't he have a
fucking right to do that after everything he's been put through.
So he asks Carl where the gate is, and Carl
has a moment of like should I tell him, and
finally is like, okay, here it is, and gives him
full information. And it is wild because Justice Light is like,
all right, I'll have it shortly, and indeed does have
it shortly. It's within this same section that he reports back,
got it, and I'm just like, shit, she's an ambassador
from the in game version of the Apothecary. Thank you, Carl,
I will have it shortly. So I just really like
that Carl being willing to respect the journey other people
are having and going through and to relinquish control here
and there even though he has the urge to like
manage absolutely everything, which I definitely understand that impulse. I
am like this as well. But anyway, so there's also
the mention of Big Tina and the Ballerina Dinosaur had
single handedly taken out a fire lance tower and protected
dozens of crawlers from getting burned alive. Her magical ever
repairing feather boa was black and scorched, and it turns
out that she's like too big for the safe rooms now,
so she's just gonna have to be out here. But
you know, so I had all my reservations about her
being a child, and it just seems like whatever moral
debate is irrelevant at this point because it's simply it
is what it is, and she's going to do what
she do. So let's see. Oh right, this is when
Prepotente shows up and says, I found Lena's in the
woods seeking those who got away. She appears to have
new hunting skills along with the ability to fly. Well,
don't love that. Now. My hope is because he says
at the end of this conversation that he's going to
go and join her. I'm sort of hopeful that maybe
he if he does, like begin to put you and
two together that she's coming after Carl and Donut might
stand in her way. But I also like I want him, like,
if there's anybody, if there's anybody who's going to be
able to slow her down, it would be him. He
is so high level, he is so intelligent and knows
how to play this, you know, But I also feel
like it would result in his death, and I really
would hate that. So we get a quest update about
the memorial crystal. Retrieve it from Crawler Oswaldo's hands. Oh,
and now is in possession of Crawler Prepotente. Retrieve it
before he cracks the secrets and gives them to the epicure.
This with like Prepotente getting the crystal, I thought was
going to be something that like we would hear about
when it happened, But evidently not. Karl doesn't know at
all what went down. Let's see, Donna appeared and she
oh right, this is when they begin with the uh
rescue Louis thing. So this whole thing is so odd.
I'm trying to figure out exactly where I should start.
We drove mostly in silence, knowing that all of the
remaining mercenaries of the Reavers were dead. Was oddly disconcerting,
and the planes didn't just feel abandoned, they felt haunted.
We had about two hours left before the team at
the remains of the dream Castle would capture the Throne room. There.
Tran and the one hundred Second were there now surrounding
the place to make certain nothing happened. The moment their
timer ended, Epitome Tag would in theory drop dead. Florin,
boomer Body, Brittany, and Rosetta had all stayed behind helping
the others clear out the damage caused by the lava.
Ferdinand had also stayed behind. He was currently directing the
repair of the nest tower. Dona had several new spells
that came with her Oak Fell class. This is another
thing that I'm kind of wondering about, guys, because I
think that come from that anklet, and if I recall correctly,
like I know it's from her casting that the atrocity
spell three times, right, But there was the anklet as well,
So I feel like that influenced exactly how this went.
And I believe that anklet came off of one of
Batista's relatives and it wasn't like they killed the person.
It's simply that they found a body and looted the body,
but they never told Batista that they looted it, and
they never wanted him to like know that they had
stuff of his families. Now, it is certainly possible that
he understands the way that people get looted, but there's
also the possibility that he doesn't believe them because he
seems to think the worst of them. So I'm concerned
that maybe the Oakfell thing is going to be part
of what makes him feel more certain about coming up
against them. I don't know. I don't know, guys, but
it's just something that occurred to me because the fact
that they didn't tell him at the time, there was
like a little seed of worry that was planted for me,
and it feels like that's kind of coming back now.
I had forgotten about it, and because I'm already worried
about him that otherwise, I don't think that I would
even really mention this, you know, But it's that I
already have the concerns that I have, so okay, I'm
trying to find a little It's likely a side effect
of some posturing that's currently happening on the twelfth floor.
The fact that she was also named Champion means it
was something that was set in motion by Neck a
bit and Rosetta says the champion system isn't something that's
normally used at all. They use it in Battle Royale
and Land War, but not Dungeon Crawler World Body was
a champion of some god or another during his season.
Being a god's champion comes with additional benefits and some issues,
which it turns out that she can be forced to
do a thing or suffer a smite, which is crazy
and Carl is really upset about it. The spells Don't
received with her new class were equally bewildering, and they're
very druid, like Rai's Forests caused trees and plants over
a one kilometer area per level of spell to sprout.
She had that one turn. She had one that turned
water into salt water. She received a spell called gather
ye Vermin. It would draw all mammals within ten kilometers
under a certain size to her locale, which she thinks
is the Ai just trying to find a bunch of squishy,
furry things for Carl to step on. Eventually, which certainly
may be possible. There comes a moment with the Pied
Piper skill where she's talking about starting a band. The
most intriguing spell was called Map the All Tree, which
was said to only work on the deeper floors. All
the other spells took at least one hundred man of
points to cast, this one only cost a single point,
and the description simply said, provides a map of the
All Tree and all the nodes. This spell only works
on the twelfth and deeper floors. And I am just
really wondering about the fact that we saw Lee June
for a split second and the All Tree. I'm wondering
if the All Tree is basically like them coming as
close as people who don't understand what they're dealing with
might come to, like actually creating a central nervous system
for the AI. It's like the Tree is the afterlife
or baseline, I don't even know what to call it,
you know, like one of those from where we come
then we return. And unclear why Carl would see Lee
June and not other people who died. But I don't
know if other people necessarily wanted to speak to Carl
as they were dying or not. Or if something has
changed as we've gotten to these deeper floors where it
has opened up a possibility that wasn't open before. But
it is something that's like kind of in the background
on in my mind. It's not really super important to
me right now, so I'm not focused on it, but
I do think it's compelling, and I'm also wondering, is
it possible for Lee June to talk his sister down.
It doesn't seem like it's the sort of thing where
he's just like around and can come back out and appear.
I get the impression it was sort of like I
was able to stop and say something on my way
into the central system, you know, and have returned to
it now, because as we know, there's that element that
they each have that's linked to the main computer, so
to speak. So perhaps something like that, I don't know.
I don't know. So of all the war lords, Warlord
Fang was the one we knew the least about. I
knew he was ninety nine percent cybernetic, and that he
could change shape kind of like a terminator style changeling,
and that he and Tag were both probably the two
richest of all the war lords who'd come to fight
faction wars. I also that if he did die, it
wouldn't be a huge deal for the Reavers. They had
a physical chunk of his brain locked up somewhere called
the initial, and every year they peeled microscopic parts off
it to build new citizens. If Fang died, they'd just
scrape another piece off the brain thing, drop it in
a vat to grow for a year or two, slap
a bunch of cybernetic parts on it, and call it good,
which is really really weird. So then we get to
this conversation about Louis and he talks about he had
said that CoP's wife was right just as he was
falling into enemy territory, and we didn't know what he meant.
And Kacia says something happened when he was a kid.
A police officer was shot and died protecting him when
he was young, and at the funeral for the cop,
her husband said something very cruel to Louis which had
stuck with him. Oh it was a female off certain
the husband said something to Louie. I was putting it
as it was a male officer, and the wife said
something to Louie. My bad. So this like I'm dying
to know what she said, but it's probably, you know,
just like you were not worth saving, and the fact
that she is dead and you're alive just proves that
there's no justice in the world, you know, I am.
I really appreciated Donut piping up here and being like,
don't tell said stories about his past. Don't you know
how this works, which is exactly correct, because I started
to get a little twitchy at the fact that Katya
was telling the story. I was like, this is classic
Walking Dead behavior. Now it's not really because we've gotten
to know Louis and so it's not really the same thing.
But The Walking Dead was so guilty of this, where
you would know nothing about somebody, and then as soon
as they decided to tell you anything, you knew that
shit was about to not matter because they were gonna
be dead. So let's see. The front of the castle
was completely broken away and on the side, adding to
the plastic toy play set illusion, giving us a cross
section view of the front. The interior was a strange sight,
the very front part, which was a large featureless room,
which in turn led off to dozens of honeycomb shaped hallways.
None of the pathways were big enough for me to
walk upright in, and they were stacked up to the ceiling,
which was about three or four stories high. Each honeycomb
was big enough for me to maybe walk in hunched over,
and Juice Box said, this is how it's been and
that the hallways move, but there are a few that
are static. We have infiltrated this castle a few times,
but we lost the asset who was most familiar. The
system is confusing, but it knows where you're headed and
it creates a single passageway there for you, which is
fucking banas man. That is super creepy. So let's see.
This is when the drake appears. Calliope cybernetic bleached Drake
level one thirty. I love the fact that fucking Dona
is like, oh it's only one thirty. It really doesn't
seem fair to take down a pet that's so low level.
Doughnut fucking never change. I love it so much. Kacia
messages Carl privately, just like, how is she doing? Because
on the outside she seems like she's really handling things
pretty well, And he says, I think I underestimated her
and that she actually is handling things pretty well. It's
not just a show. I think that she doesn't want
to worry you, Carl, but I hope if she is struggling,
that she actually lets him see that at some point,
and that this isn't something that she's just gonna try
and maintain this like farce for the rest you know
what I'm saying. So oh right, And this is when
we have the new adjutant, Tart, which there's a whole
thing about Tart's name and it's sounding like a stripper,
but it turns out that he is a gentleman, as
it turns out. And let's see, uh, Victory and Drick
were both on his right, but the antlered alien turned
and whispered something over his left shoulder, and we can't
see anybody. There's clearly somebody there, but we don't know.
I'm I'm really curious about this. If that's like, is
it the AI? Is this related? There's another guy who's
always talking to somebody who isn't there. I don't know,
but Donut says, I can kind of see an outline
when I changed to power view. It's that weird alien
who looks like a basketball on Stilt's fopsy. That's right,
that's right, So we detect quite easily where Louis is
and Juice Box is going to go in and retrieve him.
Uh and she has turned into a misraith I think
hunter wraith, that's right, and is quite freakish looking right now.
Terrified she turned herself into a hunter wraith. It's not
going to be a clean getaway. There's something that happens
when that particular wraith touches people, but that's more an
issue for Juice Box than Louie. Those are Floor ten
and eleven monsters, but it'll probably work. Does Louis have
any teleports in his inventory? He does, Juice Box has to. Also,
he couldn't use the teleports before because the teleport ban
had gotten re enacted by Eris just before he crashed,
but all the officers had them in their inventory. He
also had a ton of no disassembles and waffle makers,
so we have like them all kind of watching and waiting.
It's a weird moment as they're seeing like the hallways
reconfigure themselves and just how weird this whole thing is.
And as they're waiting, we get a message from Florin
who tells them Kiwi is now in labor, there comes
a point where Kiwi is actually crowning. I have been
really wondering what the hell Kiwi is going to give
birth to, because Kiwi is back in bear form, and
if it were, you know, going to be like a
reptile birth, I was assuming it would be eggs. But
he says that she's crowning, which makes me think that
it is just like an actual, you know, like mammal
or mammalish kind of creature. Maybe that those kinds of
rules don't even apply at all within the dungeon. Who knows,
but just explaining how my brain works. And uh, I
really enjoy the fact that when Dona informs Mango that
he's going to be a daddy, he does not seem
excited or interested at all in any way. So we'll
see about how this all goes. But yeah, and let's
see trying to jump ahead here, ju justsbox finds him.
She says there's a complication, but not anything I can't
deal with, and when asked, she does not answer. We
have fucking Jemal, guys. I must talk about Jamal simply
because the audiobook narrator goes so hard with Jamal's voice.
I can't just not talk about him, but also it
does not seem like he's relevant. But also he really
makes an impression, so I can't just like leave him
out of the narrative, you know what I'm saying. Jamal
is very excited with his new legs, and it's tragic
because later on those legs get fucked and he is
so upset, and he makes it everyone's problem. There are
just people like this out there, you know. I really
really try not to be like this, but I reserve
the right on my own podcast. But there are times
where you run into folks who do not know how
to simply be in a shitty mood. If they are
in a shitty mood, they must make everyone else also
be in a shitty mood. And it's just, you know,
like they they do not know how to cope, and
it's so tough being around people like that. My mother
can be like that, real bad sometimes and just bring
down the vibe of an entire room like a fucking
black hole. And Jamal is just I really appreciated how
patient with him Doughnut is. At one point when he
does like a literal pirouet in mid air or something,
and she says like how graceful he is, but later
on when he's crying, she is just like, would you
shut the fuck up, dude, And I was like, Amen's sister.
So then we get the message from Samantha about how
there are robot dogs going crazy and asks as if
you know they're just going that's the way that dogs do.
They'll just try and like bite you and stuff a
little bit. But then she drops the fact that there's
a part of them that explodes, and it turns out
they are hunter seekers. They have to put their shields
up and fucking flee because these things are a lot
closer than they realized since they are automatons, so there's
no dots on the map indicating how close they are.
The shark moved across the honeycomb and fired in a
different hole than another. The site reminded me of a
wasp invading a bee colony, and explosion echoed in the
distant part of the castle. Jamal fired again, then again,
but now too many were coming, and the sentry dogs
started to emerge from different holes along the giant wall.
I examined one before he was nailed in the head
with a doughnut fired magic missile, which causes it to
literally evaporate because her spell has gotten that fucking strong,
and Jamal says, some are different, but there are big
ones coming. At the same moment, one of the larger
dogs emerged from the top center hole and jumped into
the room. This one was the size of a goddamn lion,
and the back half of the dog had a massive
glowing bomb notification over it. Before I could fully examine him,
the dog turned it to a ball of ice and
started skidding over the floor, completely frozen from an Elley spell.
I picked up the block of ice, lifting it in
my arms. It burned, but to my relief, it allowed
me to pull it all into my inventory before the
dog could explode. And he yells to everybody to fall back.
At one point, just says, fucking run um. Carl says,
juice box Louis has no disassembles in his inventory, drop
them and leave. They'll kill the robots. Tell me when
you're free, and she says, give me five seconds, and
then it all happens, and there's this massive fucking explosion.
Rend had stopped next to me and had rolled onto
his side, so his eyes met mine. A huge smile
on his face with his tongue lolling. He giggled. When
he saw me looking at him, he made a noise
that sounded like fun. Yo, is Rend learning how to talk?
Is that what's happening? I am here for it. Mango
can very decidedly communicate despite not being able to talk.
But if Rend is able to actually talk, that's fun.
So the whole thing fucking explodes. I rolled and I
rolled and I spun, feeling my skin burned, my bones break,
and all I could think was, these bombs are much
smaller than I thought. Thank God, that was probably one
of the mini nukes. I love that he has a
moment of like, wow, that's a weird thing to be thinking.
This isn't normal. I can't believe that I'm reacting like this. Yeah,
every now and then, when shit gets normalized, you have
those moments of clarity where you step back and you're
just like, oh shit. I've been kind of having that
with this administration. To be honest, in the year twenty
twenty six, they're like horrific news that comes out and
I'm just like, yeah, I bet, you know, like, because
I can't what am I supposed to do? You know
what I'm saying. So fucking Calliape. She'd created a type
of shield I hadn't seen before. This is Imani Gonk,
who stayed back with the now wrecked transport, was on
her side, but her health was okay. Biggs was atop
the fallen Gonk. Doughnut was clucking over. Mongo Ren was fine.
Batista's fur was black and scorched, but he was already
getting to his feet. Tippetts sat on the ground holding
his head. Everyone seemed okay, everyone but Jamal, who was
flopping on the ground, his legs having been absolutely wrecked
by the initial No disassemble in coming, Holger shouted. I
looked up in time to see Calliope, the bleached drake,
spiral out of the sky, screaming. She landed to our left,
and she exploded, showering us with blood. Warlord Fang of
the Reavers has fallen. Credit for the kill has been
given to Well, it's a complicated one. We'll give it
to Warlord Carl for detonating the bomb that was dropped
by a Wraith possessed crawler. Louis Santiago too, who was
under control of Warlord Juice Box of team retribution. That
is complicated. My God. By this point, I guess it
doesn't matter. But we're giving fifty one percent experience to Karl,
one percent to Louis, and forty percent to Juice Box.
The rest is going to the now deceased Fang for
hiding in the worst possible place, which was inside the dragon.
The reavers have been defeated, all assets have been awarded
to the Princess Polse. Yeah, so that's done. Surprise, surprise,
And this is when Juice Box shows up and says
he was hiding inside the Dragon the same way Epitome
Tag is hiding inside of my husband. I was afraid
my possessing him would kill him, but it worked. They
were doing surgery. He was cut open. His heart has
been replaced, his lungs have been replaced. It looked like
they were getting ready to replace his brain, but we
got to him in time. I had to heal him,
but when I did, it didn't regrow his heart or lungs.
He was hooked up to a machine that was keeping
him alive. When I touched him, I sensed the presence.
It's there in the new lungs and heart. I can
feel the form I can take, and it's wrong. I
don't stand the new heart and new lungs are mechanical,
but they both have a little biological material as well.
Those pieces. It's not Louis, it's the pieces of tag.
It's elf. But if I didn't already have this kind
of my library, I'm not sure if I'd be able
to store the image or not. It's confusing, So that's weird.
And Imani says, I'm going to cast something to wake
him up, and Juice Box is like, yeah, not yet,
Let's keep him asleep because we need to like figure
out what the fuck is happening here first, which I
think is fair. This is when Samantha, who had been
shot out of the place after the explosion, finally lands
and she had wanted them to keep one of the
dogs alive for her to have as a pet. Sorry
about it, Samantha, but evidently that shit that's dead, so
are bad. So then we go into the final chapter
and let's see, I'm sorry, there's the whole thing with
Jamal like crying about not having his legs. Mordecai says,
we think we figured out what happened during the war
crime spell Fang escaped because he's basically just a tiny
amount of biological material, So he basically turned into a
fly and escaped. Donuts thinks that maybe laundry day could
have worked on him, and she is going to try
on the next robot that she encounters, which is very interesting.
Tag is like more of a mystery. It sounds like
they were replacing his vital organs in the moment they
replaced the brain, TAG would have been able to actually
take control. Donut says, but the elf guy wasn't a
robot like Warlord Fang was. Juice Box says, some of
the goo for his new heart and lungs is actually him.
How did he survive? And Donut says, why didn't they
stop working when Carl's No Disassemble went off? Carl says,
the transport broke from the nuke, not the No Dissemble.
Louis is pretty shielded. Uh, pretty shielded, as he says,
which Donut like, because I was like, what does he
mean by that? Donut says, you mean he was saved
because he is chunky. Uh, I didn't know that that
was helpful, noted. I guess I'd be fine. This is
just like Miss Beatrice's father with his pacemaker. Remember when
he got mad when you microwaved a sauceage sandwich near him.
Her mother said it was a murder attempt. Guys, I'll
be honest, I didn't know that this was the thing
that if you have a pacemaker you can't be near
certain devices that it would interfere. That is so odd.
So Epitome Tag, who is still in the chat, is
telling them like, I control his organs and if you
try to remove me, I will just completely kill him.
We can make a deal. My mother's on the eighteenth floor,
and U Donut is just like, if we lose, then
we're all dead. So how the fuck are we supposed
to make a deal. Let's see, Carl, before the dungeons started,
did you ever actually touch tag juice box? No, we
just blew him up a lot. He was always in
that flagroom so we could never get to him. And
this is when Carl says, oh, holy shit, Epitome Tag
of the Dream is a And then the AI freezes everything.
But it turns out it's not everything, because when Carl
comes out of the freeze, it's only him that was frozen,
and it looks like he's given information that the other
players are not given. It's a really weird moment. Emergency
ejection sequence has been overridden. Man, even I wasn't expecting that. Okay,
hang on a second, I'm a little pissed here. Prime
Minister Glory himself just attempted to assassinate you using a
little known but apparently still active control panel that allows
the syndicate to override certain show runner controlled aspects of
the game. It didn't work. And not only did it
not work, but now I'm irritated. Obviously, this isn't the
first time this has happened to you, Carl. In fact,
there's probably a few of these attempts on your life
that you don't even know about. But this is the
first time someone has attempt did it by trying to
trick me? I is this related to epitome Tag, because
I don't understand how this was trying to go around?
Is so suffice to say, uh it, Like Carl tells everybody,
Epitome Tag is a cyborg. He's the same thing as Fang. Now,
I don't understand why this was secret. I don't understand
why this is like a the equivalent of an assassination
attempt was it supposed to be that, like, we're going
to take over Louis's body and then use him to
kill Carl. Was that the assumption here he would have
to have at least some biological form, but he'd transferred
most of his brain to the reavernet that would work.
But that's a wild theory. He's one of the most
famous CEOs in the galaxy and that's a big secret
to keep. Uh. Worms can't inhabit biomechanical organs, only biological brains.
So I don't know how exactly is it is it
supposed to be that they were tricking the AI by
did the AI not know that Tag was a cyborg either?
How would that have been hidden from Tag or from
the AI? Sorry, I'm just sorry. Michael just in the
chat said, I'm starting to question how useful Samantha is
as a scout. And then we aren't fat, We're better
adapted to survive tough circumstances. I mean that is literally true.
So yes, Saraphim says, Carl was about to say something
the Prime Minister really didn't want out that two of
the biggest factions in the galaxy were working together like this.
The AI's issue was the PM trying to use an
override no one knew about. Okay, so the Prime Minister
is trying to do something outside of this thing with
Louie and Tag to try and take Carl out somehow,
and that is a completely separate issue from Louie being
essentially possessed, even though it's like mechanical. Okay, I'm sorry, guys,
I just found this really confusing, and like I said,
I read this part three times, I think, and every
single time I found myself getting caught up in the
same places and being like, I don't understand what this is,
and I don't understand epitome Tag being a cyborg needing
to be a secret. Why would that be secret? And
why is this such a big deal. Apparently everybody thought
that they were elves, But what's the U and Saraphim
is saying the two biggest factions working together. Does the
fact that he's a cyborg mean that they were definitely
working together? I guess the fact that he was like
getting the operation that would imply that, like, yeah, they
figure this out together. I was just thinking that he
went there after everybody was killed and there was nobody
to stop him from going in there, but I guess
that hadn't happened yet. Michael says it was basically a
kill button he could hit to kill any crawler he
wanted at any time outside of the rules slash dangers
of the dungeon. How was that tricking the AI exactly?
Because that's what the AI says about, like the fact
that it was tricked and I'm sorry, I'm just trying
to go back. Uh just tended to assassinate you, blah
blah blah. It didn't work, and I'm irritated. Yeah, this
is the first time someone has attempted to kill you
by trying to trick me. So is it just that
it existed, that's the trickery. John says, we don't know.
Seraphim says it had nothing to do with the dungeon.
It was about out of dungeon politics. Huh okay, ah,
I don't know. I don't know, guys. This just this
feels really confusing to me. I'm sorry. I feel like
maybe I'm just looking like an idiot, but I feel
like this moment should have I feel like it was
meant to hit really hard and it just didn't because
I was so confused and Frankly, y'all's explanations, while they
make some sense, are still it's still not really clarifying
everything for me. So I don't know if this is
just a me problem or what. There's things that sometimes
I think when somebody is binging work better because they
are not stopping to try and parse everything that a
sentence means, so you don't get caught up the way
that I do when I'm covering things this way. And
I know that this happened with Fucking the Witcher. When
I was covering those books, there were so many things
that I was just like, hold on what, and the
person commissioning them at the time, Melanie was saying that
like she often lets parts of the books just kind
of wash over her and she doesn't try to figure
them out. But that's like the point of what I do,
And so it didn't work very well. I just and
it's possible that this is supposed to be super confusing,
that maybe we're supposed to not fully get all the
implications of this, And if so, cool again, it would
work better probably if I were just like going straight
through the book and not covering it the way that
I am, So that might be just like kind of
fucking up the overall effect of this, you know. Jeff
says it confuses me too. John says, I think it
just shows how out of control the AI is. Michael
says vibe reading baby, John says failsafes don't work, back
doors are ineffective, and Jeff says, if they have a
kill switch for every person, surely that couldn't have been
implanted until the crawl started. Maybe that's the trick AI
is talking about. I don't I don't even know why
it couldn't have been implanted until the Carl started. I
don't know why that is true. Why couldn't it I
don't like, look this, This to me indicates that this
is no clearer to anyone really in like so that
is comforting in a way that I don't feel like, Okay,
I'm a total idiot, you know. So anyway, when Carl
like comes out of this moment, everybody else is like,
did you feel that? Stutter? But they didn't completely get
all the announcements that the AI got, and Zev says
Carl that ejection requests didn't come from US. Several warships
in Orbit have just started firing on several other ships.
These aren't just potshots but full on missile barrages and
maser blasts. We just got to notice from the Syndicate
Council telling us to initiate headquarters self destry, followed by
a message from the Valte telling us not to comply.
Obviously we're not complying. Say what you were going to say, quick,
get it out there. And he yells out that he's
a cyborg. Uh, and Mordecai is in the chat being like, mmmm,
that actually would kind of make sense. And this is
when Florence says that Kiwi's crowning. Justice comes in and says,
we got the gate. Donut says, this is insane. This
is just like the Treasure of Serena Madre episode of
Gossip Girl, and Mordecai says, in what way? And she
says everything is happening at once. Mordecai really makes me
want to go back and rewatch Gossip Girl and just
kind of wanna you know what I'm saying. All Right,
I'm way over time. I really have to wrap up,
but uh, I am just I'm hoping that like whatever
I read for the next chapter will help. So I
think it's going to you know, shake itself out eventually.
Apologies if you're listening to this and getting frustrated that
the host is very stupid, but you know, bear with
me and maybe I'll be less stupid next time. Until
next time to lou motherfuckers. That was an unspoiled network podcast.