Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl chapters thirty seven through forty one.
In these chapters, somebody pisses on the wall and all
fucking hell breaks loose. You know, just follow instructions. How
hard is it? Don't answer that. Welcome to spoil Me,
Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. Yeah, Michael
says in the chat, fucking Jack. It's unclear to me,
they say later on, he knew, we told him, We
explained it to him, and that's all will and good.
I don't know how like with it Jack really was,
you know what I'm saying. It's hard for me to tell,
because sometimes elderly folks will pretend to be a little
bit less understanding than they really are, just so that
they can kind of do what they want, which I
honestly totally respect. But yeah, it's definitely like, how much
did he understand what you were asking of him? It's unclear.
I don't really know if this is something that can
be even quantified. But the like the mention earlier of well,
I have some dependens, I think is like basically what
she's saying, I had a feeling that wasn't gonna do
the job. Look, there comes a point in all our
lives if we live long enough where stuff just stops
quite working right dodgy plumbing, and you gotta be either like,
you gotta figure out how you're gonna cope. Are you
gonna be in denial and do a bunch of stuff
that's sort of like extra effort to get around acknowledging
this change. Are you going to take medications and whatnot?
Or are you going to just slap on a pair
of depends and be like, this is just the life
that I have now and try and roll with it.
I am not saying that one is better than the other.
For the record, I can really understand fighting against it,
because there is an element of humiliation in there, of shame.
You know. It sucks to feel like, how come I'm
older now? I have to pee every fucking half hour,
like even closer together than that, And sometimes if you
have to go bad enough, you straight up can't hold
it anymore. I can't imagine I am forty years old
and I'm already facing that weird thing where your body's
bluetooth hooks with the bluetooth in your bathroom when you
reach your front door from the car, and so you
aren't even in the front door, but already your body's like,
we're in the bathroom and it's trying to start going
and you're not even in the front door yet. I'm
only forty years old and I already have that, So like,
add on another thirty years. It can't be good. It
cannot get better, It only gets worse. I want to
have some sympathy for him, but it's difficult. It is
really hard, you know. I just really am so angry
because the level of hell that he brings down on everybody,
and like it's not even like he has to suffer
through it. Instead, I think it's Ylanda right that kills him,
and so he has made her commit murder in this
brutal way to try and save everybody else, and then
that didn't even work. That's not even it didn't even
do anything. She shot him, and the elemental has already
been summoned, so it's too late. So it's just he
has just inflicted a level of suffering on everybody. That Ah,
it's hard for me to forgive. That's all I'm saying.
Let's begin at the beginning, though. We start on chapter
thirty seven with all of these grubs pouring into the
safe room, and understandably, Carl is a little puzzled why
they're not just like immediately teleporting away, and I also
was sort of expecting this, and Mordecai has to explain
they don't teleport away until they attack you, and these
grubs basically there's no method of attack. They can't do it,
so nothing happens because they're not like they're just like floppy,
little stuffed animals. At one point, Carl says that I'm
able to pick up a grub and put it in
my lap and nothing happens, because it just doesn't, you know.
And I think the fact that if you left the
door open long enough, and because these grubs don't attack,
that this safe room in quotes could fill with enough
grubs that it could potentially crush you. Is I feel
like that now is no longer a safe room. Maybe
that's just me, maybe that's just where I'm coming from
on this, but I just think that there should probably
be some sort of fine print that they can pull
up a lawsuit for this, and oh my god, Michael
in the chat says, Yolanda is how everyone thinks they
will be when it's time to be heroic. COVID showed
us that most people would be jack. Though, Michael, you
just fucking a whole sermon, a whole sermon. It's so true.
I hate it, and it's true. That just impressed me
so bad. Thanks a lot, Michael. So Carl realizes that
they are like following on their trail. They're coming to
the safe room for them, and he pulls up his
map and sees that there are thousands and they are
all heading in their direction. What the hell is this,
I asked Mordecai. I've never seen anything like this. Not
on the second floor. They're being spawned. Yeah, no shit,
I said. Every floor has a waste disposal system. He continued,
so far you've seen rats and the grubs. The more
dead bodies they eat, the stronger they get. It'll be
something different the next floor down. They're supposed to home
in on corpses if none but are none, if none
are nearby, they'll hunt crawlers. That's what they're doing. These
guys don't attack, but they'll still swarm at you, But
why are there so many of them? It looks like
the system spawning anywhere between one to fifteen of them
when a corpse is created. It usually doesn't do that
unless there aren't any janitor mobs nearby. You killed a
lot of mobs in that last battle, so here they are.
We didn't kill that many. Plus we've been destroying the corpses.
They probably had a couple hundred grubs in that cage
in the boss room. Yeah, there were seven hundred and
fifty of them, all fried. Plus you killed another eighty
five Chloricons between Grinding Away and the Boss battle. Destroying
corpses only keeps them from leveling up. It doesn't stop
them from being generated. You, my friends have been set up.
You've fallen into a trap that is so deeply unfair,
and it makes sense Allegedly they're trying to kill them
as fast as possible. Personally, I kind of feel like
maybe that's not as true as we have been thinking,
or maybe maybe it would be better to say say,
I believe that's what's happening because of what Mordecai said.
But I also feel like when you step back and
look at the overall way that they make money with
this game. Trying to kill Carl and Donut quickly is
actually pretty counterintuitive to what they should be doing. If
you want to make money off of people throwing in
to sponsor certain players, then you need to keep the
most fascinating players around. And I would argue that Donut
and Carl have a lot of viewership, and if you're
trying to take some people out early, try and take
out the people with the lowest number of sponsorships and
viewers and leave the people who are the biggest draw
so that you can keep as many sponsors active as
you can. Now. Granted, I am going off their numbers
and thinking to myself that this means they are very popular,
and it's possible. I don't know the numbers of how
many people out there are watching. I don't know whether
or not it's possible for other players out there to
have like ten times the number of viewers they do,
because at one point, Donut says that she has like
a trillion views. So, like, these are numbers that I
don't understand frankly and can't rent my head around. If
it's true that they are really not doing as well
as other players, I guess it would make sense that
we're trying to get rid of them, But I just
kind of thought they were doing better than it seems
like they must be. If we're already getting rid of them,
you know what I'm saying. But I don't know. So see,
he says, do you know what the limit is? Yeah,
you've already hit it. It's five thousand. Is it like this?
Everywhere across the whole dungeon looks like it. It's to
keep people from camping out in one area for too long.
As long as you keep moving, it shouldn't be an issue.
So he checks in with Brandon and he's like, all right,
don't know, we got to get the hell out of here.
And when they first leave, they initially start trying to
kill the grubs in big groups, and then they start
to realize that these things can't really attack us, So
there's no point in wasting all of our like, because
he's using explosives and stuff, he's using dynamite, he's using
his uh what are they called the jug a bomb?
Jugga boom, jugga boom. Right, So it's possible that if
we just leave them alone, we can wade through them
no problem, except unfortunately it soon becomes clear that just
trying to wade through them is in itself an issue.
You can't exactly do that without smashing them under your feet,
so they wind up killing them without even intending to,
which results. Even like after they destroy the the corpses,
these things are still like munching away at like the
tiny little bits of scrap that are left, so it
winds up not helping or mattering at all. Carl, people
are getting bored with this by followers. Haven't gone up
in five minutes. For Fock's sake, do not. Don't worry.
I'm sure something awful is gonna happen any second. Why
did you have to say that. I saw the wall
of blue dots coming down the hall. It looked as
if it was all of them, so we went jogging
toward them. I stopped and laughed the moment I saw
the parade. They'd built a parade float, That's what it
looked like. They'd taken the wheels from multiple wheelchairs that
no longer had owners, and it fixed them to long
pieces of wood. I had no idea where the wooden
platforms had come from, but I knew Amani and Chris
both were as obsessive about looting everything as I was
using some of the Goblin tools they'd cobbled together the contraption.
Looking more closely, it was more like a train set
or a set of roller coaster cars. There were a
total of thirty nine people being pulled, most of them
sitting up on their own wheelchairs, which sat locked in
place two by two. Those who normally used walkers sat
cross legged on boards, watching wide eyed as they were
pulled along. The giant centipede was ten cars long, and
each section held four people. The individual cars were attached
to one another by a set of glowing metal chains.
The same chain attached Chris and Imani to the rest
of the train. It seemed as if it was one
chain running from Chris through all the cars and back
up to Amani. About three hundred feet long, and apparently
the chain is Immani's. It's a scroll called Yog's Special Chain.
She got it from some gold box. She could pick
any length up to something crazy like a thousand feet.
It's light as a feather, but the chain only lasts
thirty hours. The whole thing was her idea, though Brandon
designed it. He even added ramps so they can get
on and off easily. And this is when there's the
mention of the mind horrors. We went to clear them out.
Yolanda would shoot them from down the hallway, deflating them
before they could hurt us. The boss room was this
abandoned warehouse thing. The boss was a giant blimp. We
took it out pretty easily thanks to Yolanda. That's also
where we got all this wood. Did it come out
of its room? I gave him a quick recap of
what had happened with Kra Karen Christ Dude, our battle
was much easier. It never left its lair. They were
lucky to be alive, but I was glad they'd spent
the time training themselves. So that again feels like evidence
that Carl and Donut are being targeted in a particular way.
And I'm really curious because like, by the end of
this the person that they were put in touch with
to be their pr agent has been taken off their case.
I don't even know how to say it. They have
been put on a time out as like the Vibe,
which we don't know why, and I'm wondering if that
is related to them being targeted the way that they are.
I really don't know what to think about this. So
this is when el mcgibb comes up to him and
she calls him by name, and he's like, hey, he
remembered me. And she's looking at the like kind of
roller coaster style thing that they're being pulled on, and
she says, this reminds me of the Tunnel of Love.
Back in my time, my Berry and I used to
always go to the carnival. We eat the cotton candy
and throw darts at the balloons. We'd go in the
Tunnel of Love. Back then it was a boat. I'd
let him touch my boobs, but only on the outside
of my sweater. I loved my Berry, but he wasn't
the prettiest man to look at. If you were in
the Tunnel of Love with me, I'd have, like you
do more than touch them on the outside of my clothes. Uh.
I said, thank you. I couldn't think of a better response.
The old woman cackled behind her. Yolanda barked with laughter.
You guys, oh god, that's funny. So he has a
moment here of just looking at this woman and realizing
how old she is, everything that she has been through
and all of a sudden, it becomes clear to him
we shouldn't have brought them through this far that actually
saving them like this isn't a kindness at all. It's
just drawing out the inevitable. And it's so hard to
say whether or not I agree with this, because, on
the one hand, a big part of me understands where
he's coming from from a purely practical perspective, and also
like the way that these people are having to live,
it's difficult for me to like feel like they're getting
anything out of this, just having to be dragged from
one place to another, getting attacked over and over again.
Like I'm not trying to say that they themselves have
nothing to offer. I am saying, like, what is it
that the world has to offer them at this point
when they aren't really even quite conscious of what's going on,
you know what I'm saying. So there's also, though an
argument to be made for whether or not you think
it's kind to them isn't really what's at issue here,
That like, you don't get to make that choice for them.
But if you don't and they don't know what's happening,
then who does Because then being given the agency to
make their own choice when they don't have a full
grasp of the situation. Doesn't really feel like total agency
to me in the first place. It's just it's a
difficult question, you know. And this is always going to
come up when it comes to people who are in
questionable control of their own faculties. And I don't think
there's ever like an easy answer or an answer that
applies to everybody. It's possible that there might be people
in this group that it would make more sense to
save than others, like he feels at this point, they
should have made them stay. And this is when Jack
yells out bring that pussy over here about donut, And
just as they are all turning to look at him,
this is when Carl is talking to Brandon, and Brandon says, hey,
thanks for helping us to your own detriment. You're a
good man, Carl says. If we get to the point
where we don't help each other anymore, that's when we
stopped being human. I felt something catch in my throat
and I coughed, zev admin, Carl, that was great. Can
you say that for me again, but this time, don't cough.
I stopped dead. My neck tingled with goosebumps. I knew
we were being watched and followed, but having someone actually
comment in my mind was one of the most unnerving
sensations I'd ever felt. Now, I was a little bit
confused by this because I was assuming from the way
this was written that it was he was like getting
this comment in the same way that he had been
talking on the chat to Donut, which granted, when you
were dealing with a different being that's not in your
party and they're able to comment in your mind, that's
still unnerving. But he's been talking to Brandon as well,
so I feel like this has got to be a
completely different method of talking. Like it almost sounds like
it came through as audio, but that's not the way
that it's written. It's written like it's text. So I'm
not totally sure if I'm getting this right. But and like,
either way, don't get me wrong, he has the right
to feel how he feels about this, and I'm not
mad at him either way. I'm just saying, if he
were going to react this strongly, I would have thought
that it would have come up earlier, or that what
he described as being fucked up about it would seem
really different than the way it's been already with Donut
and Brandon, So he says, no, I'm not going to
say it again. Have you been watching this whole time?
Zev admin, you and my other clients to save the
elderly storyline is playing great with most viewers. That said
about twenty percent things you're wasting time and being stupid
dead weight I think was the term some of them
have used, but most of them understand what you're doing.
Donut is right, However, it's a little dry. Maybe you
can oh shit, Oh fuck Carl, Donut, run run to
the safirm now, no Jack, Jack, no, Yolanda called. I
turned to see Jack Cincinnati Bengal's hat sitting cock eyed
on his head. He'd stood to his full height using
the wheelchair with Missus mcgibbons and Donut as a brace.
His pants were down to his ankles, dick out, pissing
directly on the wall. And I was just like fough,
I just really lost my shit here, Oh, Rob, says
Elle mcgibb equals Elle mcgibbons. Just in case this didn't
come across. It didn't in my first read. The Dungeon
assigns names to crawlers based on their entry tome, which
is why he's Carl and not Carl last name, but
also why Brandon is Brandon on and his brother is
Chris Andrews, which is a fun little touch. Oh, I
see what you're saying, Rob Okay, So thirty eight we
are dealing with this fucking thing that appears. They're only
one hundred feet from the safe room, so there's possible
time for them to get the fuck out of here.
Ylanda blows Jack's brains out. This is this is so sad.
It's I say, blows brains out like it was a gun.
It's an arrow. It's shooting either way whatever. I realized,
I was running, running toward the back of the train.
Behind me, Brandon shouted the safe room was only a
hundred feet away. Chris and Imani were already picking up speed.
The second man on the last car went flying off
the train as it lurched forward. He hit the ground
with a loud, painful crunch, his walker flying over his
head just as the monster appeared, and Carl yells for
Donut to run and sprints towards the thing. I could never.
I just couldn't. I'm not a hero, and that's just
that purple and black smoke kept hissing and spitting from
the wet stain on the wall. The monster coalesced, coming
into existence ten feet behind Yolanda and Randall, just above
the prone form of the now dead Jack. Yolanda hit
the monster with two arrows, and the shafts just shattered
against the smoke. It didn't even form a health bar,
indicating she'd done no damage way soever. The thing was
fifteen feet tall and just as wide, made of fulminating,
sizzling black and purple smoke. It had six legs, each
gleaming with obsidian claws the size of rakes. The claws
seemed to be the only corporeal parts of its body.
The legs were all the same, but the two forward
claws were longer, fingerlike with extra joints. A flickering, horned
skull sat amongst the smoky mass. Its eyes made of
glowing red fire that poured smoke. It was the skull
of some sort of animal, maybe a colossal badger, but
with curved goat like horns. It roared and the ground shook.
Rage Elemental level ninety three, and we get some info
basically telling them so so sorry for your losses that
are about to happen, and for your loss of your
life that's about to happen. But what can you do?
Winsa loose some donut activates her confusing fog, and it
spins toward them, and it takes out Yolanda and Randall,
And there's this very heartbreaking moment where Carl thinks about
how he wishes he had had a mother that was
like Yolanda. There was a warmth about her, something I'd
never felt as a kid. Just being in her presence
imparted a feeling of longing in me, something difficult to describe,
like I wished I could relive my childhood, but this
time I'd of her as my mother and she would
have never ever left me. Oh man, I don't feel
like I've met too many people that I've been like,
it would have been great to have these parents instead
of my parents. Like, you know, my parents had their issues,
but for the most part, I've been pretty satisfied with
them in general. And I just really wonder about this feeling.
And if anybody listening, if you've had this where you've
met somebody and been like, how do you get this
lucky to be this person's child, you know, Like I mean,
that's got to be a feeling that people have, and
it's just really depressing. Imagine being a parent who lets
their kid down so completely. I really wonder what happened
to Carl's mom, because clearly she left him due to
his father's behavior, but the fact that she didn't bring
Karl with her is really awful. Like I don't you know,
there could potentially be some inxsenuating circumstances that would make
it understandable, but they'd have to be pretty extreme for
me to really understand it. It's this is the sort
of thing that I always run up against you guys.
It's like when there's a child involved in a situation
and you leave that child and only protect yourself. I
just genuinely don't know how you live with yourself. And
like I said, there are gonna be situations where this.
Once it's explained to me the extenuating circumstances, I might
be like, well, okay, I get it, but I have
a I don't even want to say a friend. There
is somebody that I know and they they are living
still with their very abusive husband, and the reasons for
not leaving are in a lot of ways to me
purely excuses. This is a sort of situation that can happen.
Some people have got options and they simply do not
take them. Not everybody winds up in a situation where
leaving is an impossibility. They have those options, and they
choose not to take them and to keep staying with
this abusive person. But they have three children with this guy,
and instead of protecting their kids, they themselves hide out
in their bedroom and leave their children out to deal
with their husband. And they have like said things to
me like, well, you know, I've told them when he
yells at them and insults them in stuff, to just
let it roll off their back. And I'm like, I
cannot understand how you can say to your own children
that what their parent tells them they shouldn't take seriously
because it's that horrible. But also expect these kids to
like it's just such a They are protecting themselves and
retreating into their own little world of their separate bedroom
from their husband, and they are leaving their kids out
there with him to fend for themselves. And at that point,
I don't get it. I genuinely don't understand how you
are consumed with guilt every day at leaving your children
to suffer a fate that you don't even want to suffer,
just to protect yourself. Like, it's just I don't get it.
And I remember I was having the conversation with them
because it was very clear that the abuse that was
happening was still like pretty much. They kept trying to
act as if their husband had started to like go
to counseling and he wasn't acting out anymore. But then
they mentioned him like yanking at their son's arm and
leaving bruises on him, and I was like, so he's
definitely still doing it, then he's just managing to not
do it often enough to worry you. But if you're
not in front of your kids and with your children
when it happens, how do you even know? Do you
think they're going to come to you and tattle on him?
If you have already left them alone to deal with him,
Why would they think they should tell you anything because
you're not gonna help, You haven't done anything to protect them.
And you know me, guys, I have a tendency to
get pretty harsh when I decide that I'm not going
to mince words, and she started crying in response to me.
But I had very little sympathy at the time, and
I still kind of don't like it just feels to
me you have your one job if you decide to
be a parent, if you decide to have children, protecting
them is the one main job you have. And if
you keep bringing kids into the world. And when I
was speaking to them, they were pregnant with yet another kid,
a fourth was coming along the way. I do not
understand how you can not take that responsibility really, really seriously.
It's just, you know, I mean, I feel that kind
of protection about my fucking dog, never mind an actual
human child. So Carl's mom, you sound fucked up. I'd
like to know more about your situation. I'd like to
have a bit more context, but from where I'm sitting
right now, not impressed. Girly Rob says, I've got pretty
decent parents, so I haven't wished that that I had
different ones, But I had met some brilliant people who
nevertheless kind of wind up being a second pair of
parents or an adopted grandparent when you're in a friendship,
not for the friend but from the harm reduction for
their kids. Yeah, it was like if things had been
set up slightly different and this person was my friend,
probably I would have tried to like do something like that,
but it was really my husband's friend, and even then
not really his friend. It was somebody that he was
acquainted with that it became pretty clear they were using
him for like emotional support, and he has since pulled
away because he offered them help in a variety of
ways and they simply kept complaining to him and never
actually took advantage of any of the options that he
was offering them from help for help from his end,
and he started to realize, like, they don't actually want
out of this situation. They just want somebody to come
and cry to. And they weren't offering anything like a
shoulder to cry on to Owen. They were just using
him to unload and then ignoring him for like days
at a time, and then popping back up when it
was time to continue to complain. So they are no
longer really a part of my life, although I did
see on Facebook recently that they gave birth finally, and
I just feel so bad for this kid because it's
the situation that they are being brought into is super unfair,
and they just they have a mom who is really
pretty self absorbed, you know, just one of those people
that either can't or won't let themselves fully appreciate what
they're inflicting on people around them. So anyway, when the apocalypse,
when the apocalypse came for Yolanda, she didn't once waiver
in her dedication to her patients. She was quick to laugh,
quick to smile, and even though Yolanda Martinez was just
as terrified as the rest of us, she stood her
ground against a force she couldn't possibly hold back. She
lived her entire life as a hero. She died as
one too. One moment they were there, the next they
were gone. Through the still developing cloud of confusing fog,
the monstrous claws ripped forward, cutting through the nurse and
elderly man as if they weren't even there. Yolanda's body
disintegrated in a red cloud of ribbon like flesh, like
she was a knitted sweater that had been uny all
at once. The monster didn't even break stride. It came
for us despite the fog, and swung a mighty claw
and eventually it does this thing where it flips gravity
upside down, and they wind up slamming into the ceiling,
which is just incredibly unfair. Oh my god. In front
of me, the very last train car flew upward, and
the remaining resident, missus mcgibbons, cried out as she also
slammed up into the top of the hallway, wheelchair, crashing
upon her like she'd been dumped face first down into
a hole. She dies, right, does she? He carries her
and gives her a potion. Does she make it? I
can't remember. I think she must. The potion has to
save her, right, I'm just realizing that things get so
chaotic here that I lost track of what happened to her,
and Carl just barely manages to get in there before
the door closes. And uh, this elemental I had thought
once they're out that it would leave them alone, but
it stays outside the door and just keeps on pounding
on it so that it just kind of becomes background noise.
That this thing is right there, making this situation into
one where they have to leave and face it, which
they would all instantly die. So what are they supposed
to fucking do? And this we student what appeared to
be a dusty no way they passed the health inspection
Chicken restaurant, Big shot Chicken. The sign read, I'd never
heard of it, Bob cut protectors stood behind the counter,
looking distastefully at the large cur How about you keep
your judgmental expressions to yourself, buddy, how about that? I
will say I was very relieved at the very least
that they wound up in a room where obviously there
is like full service food and everything, because considering the
number of safe rooms that they've wound up in where
it turned out that it was like a fucking piece
of toast, like we see later. If they had wound
up stuck in there for like several hours, that would
have been even worse. So if you're gonna be stuck
in a room with a rage elemental on the outside
threatening to get in at any moment, at the very least,
let's have a little bit fucking fried chicken, you know
what I'm saying. And everybody is just like fucking crying injured.
They've been sort of thrown into the room. Understandably, Donut
had saved several wheelchairs, but there was no way we
had enough. Now, Fucking Jack he knew. We explained it
to him. Zev's message echoed in my head. This was
a mistake helping these people. All we are doing is
hindering our own training and delaying there in inevitable deaths.
It would have been kinder to have left them on
the first floor rather than subject them to this terror.
This point is when I believe that he's right. The
problem is this rage elemental isn't the norm right now?
You know, like what happened is because Jack decided to
do something and they're penalizing you. But you couldn't have
known this would happen. So I don't fully agree. I
get why you're feeling that way now, and I guess
when the people who have created the game are this
fucking capricious in how they decide they're going to handle things,
maybe at like a big picture, you're right, but I
can't help but feel like this is a really specific
situation and I'm not sure I feel that way. This
is all right, missus. Mcgibbons says, thank you, you saved me.
Jack was always an ass. Poor Yolanda, she was such
a good kid, and Brandle dumb as a pigeon that one.
But he deserved better than that. At least it was quick,
so I'm glad because you know, her slamming into the
ceiling when you're that old, like even if you have
a healing potion. I'm not really sure exactly where this
game draws the line sometimes, so glad to see that
she is okay. So the recap episode started with a
close up shot of Jack's purple veined and uncircumcised dick
huge on the screen. The headline screamed, trapped meadow Lark
and the Royal Court of Princess Donut in peril. Wow,
Donut said, yours isn't nearly that big or oily looking,
and it doesn't have that hat thing. If looks could
kill the glare IMMANI shot at the cat would have
ripped her into I get it, in Moni, But Donut
doesn't know what's happening, you know what I mean? Oh God,
I uh, I really feel like this decision to zero
in on his cock. It makes a lot of sense
considering that this group of people doesn't see like lewdness
in body parts the way that we do. But it
is very funny considering how they don't want anybody pissing
or shitting in the hallways that they would like zoom
in on it when it's happening, because allegedly you don't
want it because people don't like to see it. But
of course, now that it's done in such a way
that there's like a massive splashy fight afterwards, now seeing
it is no big deal, it's fine. Oh okay, it's
just the grossness of this, just on the level that
we feel it's just so much more intense than that
because of the fact that it's being used as entertainment
when all of this resulted in a bunch of people
dying horrible death. And so today it's March eighteenth, twenty
twenty five. Sunrise on the Reaping came out today. It
is the next Hunger Games book. It focuses on Hamich
Abernathy's story, prequel to the original trilogy. I started listening
to the audio book, and I will say I'm not
super into it as of yet, but there are a
couple parts that I've really enjoyed. And I'm going to
do a mild spoiler's here, but there is a part
where something happens during the Reaping that causes a bit
of kerfuffle, and we don't get the footage we normally
would when names are read and afterward somebody has to
come up to the families and be like, hey, can
you can you act right now? As if they've just
had their name red and gasp for us and they
make this family. They won't let them say goodbye to
their loved one, their child that's been reaped until they
get a satisfactory take of their horror and shock at
the reaping name being chosen, and they make them go
through it like several times. And it's just the grossest,
most hideous thing. And that kind of felt like it
was in the same territory. So I eased back into
the chair and took a bite of fried chicken. A
part of me registered the food was downright delicious, but
I could barely taste it. That's a real shame, guys,
fried chicken. Just let me just let me take a moment.
Fried chicken. I don't know what wonderful person in the
fog of history figured out how to heat up fat
and fry things. I would they should have many statues.
They should their name should be known, and whomever it
was that came up with fried chicken, I mean, especially
once we start to get into the territory of recipes
akin to Popeyes fried chicken, which is the superior fast
food fried chicken, and nobody will ever change my mind
ever in the history of the world. Money isn't enough.
Fried chicken is one of the best things out there.
And I can't have it more than like once a
month because it's just so bad for you. Like it's
difficult to quantify how bad it is for you on
how many different levels. But oh my god, and the
fact that he is somewhere where he has amazing fried
chicken and he isn't even tasting it. Give it to me, Carl,
hand it over. Let the reader appreciate what you seem
uneyable to appreciate. Right now, I'll do right by you, okay. Anyway,
he has come up with a plan to deal with
this rage elemental, but they do have to ditch everybody
in order to pull this off. Zev disappeared off the
chat after the skirmish in the hallway. Oh that's why
Zev's been given a time out, huh for yelling for
them to run. If they hadn't had gotten that heads up,
probably they would have died. I bet that's what it is.
I didn't even think of that until this second oh god, Zef.
She did her best. She did her fucking best. She
probably saved their lives. She might have saved a couple
lives here, you know, like dah, sorry, Zev. A wave
of grubs descended upon us. I didn't know what was
gonna happen once they reached the hall with a rage elemental.
I was hoping, perhaps they distract the creature, cause it
to wander off. I suspected we wouldn't get that lucky,
but I had hope. And he gets an achievement for
surviving reverse gravity and achievement for surviving a mob more
than seventy five levels above your own. A platinum lucky
bastard box is what he gets. It was a lottery
scratch off ticket. The tickets themselves were different. Doughnuts was
red and green and had a small graphic of a
troll like creature throwing gold coins in the air. It
was called Dungeon Gold Rush Rush. She had six spots
to scratch off. She immediately moved to scratch it, but
received an error message telling her she couldn't use the
ticket in a safe room. I made her hand it
over so I could read the description. And it turns
out that you get different effects when you scratch it off,
and you can scratch it off more than once, so
it's not like scratch off a certain number and like
if they're all diamonds, you win so much money. It's
like you can only choose one spot to scratch and
get a different effect, and then there's a cool down
for an hour, and then you can scratch another one
and you can go through every single one of them.
It revealed twenty different symbols. Most of the results were good,
like MOB drops five thousand coins, or damage against MOB
is doubled, but a few offered MOB splits in two
or MOB is invulnerable for thirty seconds. Yeah, don't use this,
I said, not until we talk about it some The
last thing we need is you scratching off a symbol
that'll quadruple the next MOB strength. Or I can scratch
off a symbol and I'll get five thousand coins. Karl,
why must you all miss be so pessimistic? And honestly,
a lot of the time I do kind of have
donut energy a little bit more. But considering that we
now have gotten to know how the AI isn't randomized
and that they will do things to screw you not anymore.
I can't have that attitude anymore. They're doing what is
necessary for things to be the funniest or most entertaining
they can. Why would they help you? It's just not
likely to me, you know. And he has five scratch
spots fireball or custard. Scratch off a spot in the
midst of battle, and this zany ticket casts a spell
at the closest red tagged mob. Each spot has a
fifty to fifty chance. Will it cast a level fifteen fireball?
Will it cast a glob of delicious healing strawberry custard?
Who knows? Either way? The results will be a hoot
thirty minute cool down between scratches, Donut demands custard, so
they're working on that. And then we get the show
and we check in with the African Warriors, who don't
have like Ammo anymore, so they're just using their AK
forty seven's as clubs. Lucia Mahr has four player killer
skulls by her name, but they don't show exactly how
she got them, and he realizes that her ro Wilers
still count as pets, while Donut doesn't. I am interested
in whether she's going to eventually get something that leads
to them transforming from pets to crawlers themselves, and if
that will change anything. I kept thinking about like this
girl with her dogs as well, and how awful it
would be to be down here with Pippin like worried
about his welfare, you know. And there are certain games
where you can get a pet, like Fallout, where you
get a dog, and from what I understand, in the
first version of the game, it was possible for your
dog to die, but everybody hated that feature so much
that they changed it so that the dog couldn't die.
And that's pretty much the energy, you know. I just
I don't think I would be able to keep myself
from trying to save Pippin and keep him from harm
to the point that he wouldn't really be a weapon.
But I don't know if I'd be able to help
that all the time. Because Pippin he has been a
very good boy for the most part, and he is
we have learned how to handle his anxiety, but he
can get vicious and it's really scary. He would fight
with his brother Sam before we found Sam a home,
and then we started bringing him to the dog park
and he was great until he turned about one and
a half, and then he started to get really unpleasant
at times, not always, it was infrequent enough that it
was difficult for us to really like anticipate it. But
finally he got into such a bad fight and wouldn't
let go of this other dog. Luckily, the dog wound
up fine. There wasn't even any blood, he didn't break
the skin. I don't know how they were going as
hard as they were, and neither of them drew blood
on the other. But I never brought him to the
dog park again. This was months ago. Now. Now when
we go to the park, what I'm talking about is
we're going hiking around like a couple of like artificial
ponds that we have in our town. But I think
about this and like how he'd react, And I feel
like he could be pretty terrifying if he really, like
decided to, But I don't know how much he'd be
able to tell who to attack and who not, Like,
there are dogs that are trained to be your weapon,
and he's not that, you know, so I just think
that would be Like, it sounds like it's clearly an
advantage for her, and these dogs sound ideal for this situation,
but I don't think Peppen will work out too well.
I'd be so worried about him. I would probably wind
up dead trying to save him, and he'd wind up
dead anyway. So they also show Carl's jug a boom
that gets shown up with like the rest and everything,
which Carl really seemed to take it for granted that
nobody was going to use this and that he wasn't
going to make any money off it. But I think
this is going to wind up being something for him
that he has underestimated. And the show ends and Chris
just says he really did have a weird looking dick,
and IMMANI just starts crying and laughing and hanging on
to him. So then they get a heads up, Hello crawlers,
short message today. If you've watched the recap, you can
see our penalties regarding the bathrooms have been a rousing success.
They will remain in place for the remainder of this floor,
but after this floor they will be removed. The satan
little Hedgehogs mob have been removed and replaced to a
deeper floor. Apologies to all those effected. We've had a
few complaints about the proliferation of the grub mobs. This
is not a bug and is by design. Finally, due
to the abundance of crawlers camping in safe rooms, we've
been forced to make a difficult decision. From now on,
all safe rooms and safe areas will close one hour
prior to floor collapse. Any crawler who is in a
designated safe area will be teleported just outside that area
at one hour prior, which sucks, but we also had
wanted to put everybody in stasis on their way to
the next floor. So I kind of felt like this
wasn't actually that big a deal. As long as you
find a staircase, you're able to handle it, you know, granted,
as long as you find a staircase. So they take
a moment because they hear everything like has quieted down,
and he sees that the Elemental has gone down the
hallway and is following the grubs. It was over in
less than a minute. The thousands of red dots were
just gone. The description stated the Elemental dissipated after it
claimed six hundred and sixty six souls. I was hoping
the grubs counted toward that number. They didn't. The elemental
return thrashing and smashing trying to get back in. So
this is when we shift over to him building this
contraption Mother of all bombs, and it's very funny because
they put so much time into this until eventually Immani
is like, why don't we just open the door, because
again these things attack and they will be teleported out.
So they decide to give it a try. It's thrown back,
but it's so fast that even though it goes aways,
it's able to come back to them really really quickly,
and Imani is like, let's just keep testing it and
see if it does this, like, maybe it will go
further and further away. Way. This time it came from
another hallway down, but it appeared to have still been
teleported out into the main hallway. Each time the elemental
took anywhere from seventy five to one hundred and twenty
seconds to return. It was clear the monster was unintelligent,
nothing more than the single minded embodiment of rage. We
eventually closed the door, not wanting to create any more
grub corpses. So it was a very good idea, but yeah,
it's too fast and too like, there's no way to
outsmart something that doesn't use its intelligence. Do you know
what I'm saying? He mentioned something about Chris says like
he wants to call it bomb chicken because this name
isn't really right, And later on don'na it's like, I
think I like that better too, And she says at
this point about how she hit one trillion. So I'm
running out of time here and I am just going
to kind of like skim over the way that this
whole thing works. But suffice to say, the way that
they handle this rage elemental, it's a combination of using
a bunch of bombs that are loaded onto this thing
in such a way that they will be able to
in sequence explode on this thing and start to get
its health down. But also they are going to lure
it toward one of these stairways and they put down
a bunch of oil so that it slides and cannot
stop itself from going down the stairs, which results in
its being killed. And they don't get credit for it
because they didn't kill They just utilized the hallway against them,
which is very interesting because we know because of talking
to that troll woman, the Shamanka, that this is what happens.
You try and go down the hall or down the
stairs and you die. I am curious whether or not
we're gonna run into this thing again and we're gonna
find out that isn't what happens. That you don't die,
that's just the story that's happened. She says that she
has seen it herself, but maybe she thought she saw
that and that's not what was really happening. I also
kind of wonder if they're going to do something where
now that doesn't happen because they managed to utilize it
to kill a creature, and maybe the game runners are
not going to look kindly on that, and they're going
to feel like, we have to find a different way
to utilize these stairways so that creatures don't go down
the stairs to the next level, but also isn't as
easy to access by the crawlers themselves to use as
a weapon. I don't know. So let's see. I'm trying
to get to the spot here where they reached this point,
because there it's like this this middle chapter here is
really completely about all of the action of getting this
thing set up, and I just, you know, I think
that I adequately described it. I don't feel like I
need to get any more into the details of it here,
so I'm just going to move on to chapter forty one. Oh,
Michael says, I didn't think the bombs were meant to
really hurt it at all. It was just meant to
knock it back, to delay it from being able to
catch up to them. Fair that's true, because like, it
doesn't matter how low they get a health bar. If
it goes down the stairs, it's gone anyway. So you're right,
that wouldn't really even matter. So he says, with the
unfortunate destruction of the Chopper, our travel options were now limited.
I had enough crap in my massive inventory to probably
build another one, but I didn't know what I was
doing with the boiler part. Hopefully we could find another
set of goblins to help us, or better, yeah, find
something more reliable. About forty minutes after we killed the Elemental,
the tattered remains of Metal Lark entered the chamber. There
were thirty six left, piled into three separate shopping cart
like contraptions. Chris and Amani pushed the two larger people buckets,
as Brandon called them, and Brandon Mencher mentions all those
chrysalis out there just you know something fun to look
forward to. I said my goodbyes to Chris and Amani.
I found Dona on the lap of Missus mcgibbons, purring away, Barry,
where are we? We're in the dungeon, Missus mcgibbons. It's me, Carl.
You're going down to the next floor the dungeon like
a sex thing. I don't know if I'm ever going
to see you again, I said, kneeling down. She sat
in the people bucket, looking about, eyes wide. I wanted
to say goodbye. She reached up and touched my cheek.
We should have had children, Berry. I wish I hadn't
talked you into working so hard. I grasped her hand.
It's okay, it's going to be okay. I remembered my
mom saying the same thing to me the day she'd left.
It had been a lie then, and it was a
lie now. I think I've had too much to drink
or I'm having another one of those acid flashbacks. This
cat keeps talking to me. I smiled. Goodbye, Missus mcgibbons.
I love her. I know that she's going to have
to die at some point, and I'm not looking forward
to it. What a bummer, so they have to take off,
and they run into coalbalds which apparently look a lot
like chihuahua's and they are riding danger dingoes and I
love Donut just being like dogs riding on dogs. This
is a literal nightmare I have had, Oh my god,
which is very funny to me. The monster snarl and
bark was deeper, more terrifying than that of its rider.
The dingo on top of me shuddered, then fell over dead,
stinking blood and gore washed over me. As I pushed
it off, Donut landed deftly next to me and started
licking her paw. That was pretty slick. You're getting a
lot better at that. I think I have a bonus
to damage against the canine creatures. That reminds me. I
said something weird earlier, and I forgot to tell you
about it. It was a new tab that said racial benefits,
but it was only there for a second and disappeared.
That is weird, I said instinctively. I pulled up my
own menu and I didn't have anything like that. It
would be really fucked up if this turned out to
be a thing that was like racist in a very
like human earth kind of way. I have no idea
if that's anything that this author is interested in even touching,
so I kind of hope not. But also for entertainment,
I could see them being like, eh, whatever, nothing's off limits. No,
we're just ofvended. So anyway, this is when they get
the Mano toast. Mano toast. This is toast. It refills
your manna. That's it, nothing more. Fuck you. Well that
was unnecessary, I muttered. I gave my peace to Donut,
who tucked them both away into her inventory. So this
is the spot where there is like a shower and
a drinking fountain in a couple of beds. We don't
have one of those protectors here making us a nice
fried chicken, unfortunately. And this is when they get the
contact from Mukta. Your outreach associate has been put in
a time out. She will return to you tomorrow. And
she I'm saying, Mukta is she? But I actually don't
know that. But Mukta is telling them there is a
new show that they are going on called Dungeon Crawl
Tactics or no, that was what they had been gonna
go on. They are going to be going on this
other thing. Which Mucta doesn't tell them the name of
They find it out later from the robot that they
are being managed by, which we'll get there. The front
of my jacket was still covered in dingo gore. I
moved to the bathroom to clean myself off as best
I could, And they don't get the option to refuse
to do this. They have to go on. So apparently
either Zev was lying or Zev was willing to like
work with them in a way that Mukta is clearly not.
And we get new achievement, grease monkey, he gets a
silver mechanics box and new achievement. You call that a trap.
A mob has been injured because of something you purposely
left lying around the dungeon. From scattered legos to spiked pits,
to buckets of flesh devouring skinner ants to dimensional rifts
that instantly boil all the blood in one's body. The
art of trap making has a celebrated and storied history
in the annals of dungeon crawler world. So if you're
going to do it, you better do it right. Whatever
it was that gave you this achievement, it was probably
something stupid. This will help you make the next trap
more exciting. Remember, if you don't make it titillating, we
will reward. You've received a gold Sappers box. And he's
wondering what caused this achieve and he's thinking that it
must be like dropping the chain, or maybe it's the
oil slick. I feel like the oil slick can't count
if they didn't get the achievement from like killing the creature,
because they didn't actually kill it. The oil slick didn't
damage it, It just carried it towards the stairs, So
I don't feel like that could be it. My first thought, honestly,
was that it was like the bomb that he had
left on that rat for Frank and Maggie defined but
they're not a mob. It says specifically a trap you
left killed a mob, so I don't know. He gets
a Gorgon marital aid, which looks like a spatula. It's
just infusing joints or creating varying degrees of plasticity in
otherwise rigid materials without affecting material strength, and then proximity
trigger using a Sappers table. The highly valuable proximity trigger
may be attached to any non static trap allows for
the establishment of activation conditions including countdowns, mob type triggers,
et cetera. I don't even understand that. I don't even know, like,
I don't know what that means. I'll be honest with
you guys. So I'm just gonna sort of like not
worry about it until it comes up and I'm sure
it will be explained a little bit more thoroughly then.
So this is when they get transferred and they aren't
even in like a decent green room. They're not being
given like little treats. The place is shitty. The vibe
is that this is a very low rent sort of place.
MES fifty five appears. You're in a rental trailer owned
and operated by Senegal Production Systems Unlimited. This trailer is
used by multiple tunnel productions related to the craw. These
facilities have been leased by the program death Watch Extreme
Dungeon Mayhem. Sit in the provided chairs and keep your
limbs to your side while the table generates. The hollow
will commence in sixty seconds. What's the host name? Don'tut
ask the maestro. Her previous previously emotionless voice hinted an
air of distaste. Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem. That's the
stupidest name I've ever heard. Yeah, wait until you see
the show, Max fifty five said before rising up into
the ceiling. And that's the end of the chapter. I
am really really curious. It feels like they are going
they are getting penalized, so I have to assume this
is not gonna be good. I feel like this is
not gonna be the fun little chit chat that we
had at the last one. Is it's gonna be It's
gonna be bad. So I'm over time as usual. I've
got to wrap up. But thank you guys again so
much for hanging out with me. I appreciate you all.
Thank you to Michael for commissioning this one, and until
next time to the loom motherfuckers. That was an Unspoiled
Network podcast.