Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book seven This Inevitable ruin chapters
fifty two through fifty five. In these chapters, you all,
I don't know how Matt manages to make victories not
feel like victories. But Bro, can't just let me have this.
You just can't do it, Matt, Matt why Welcome to
spoil Me. Welcome to the show. Everyone. I am Natasha reluctant.
Thank you to Michael for commissioning this episode. Oh my god,
you guys every time, every time, and it's you know,
this isn't criticism. Really, it sounds like it because I'm
mad about it, and I am mad about it because
I just want to feel good things all the time.
Only you know, I'm a person and we like to
be comfy and happy, and that is just st o nature.
But it really is kind of incredible how repeatedly this
can happen, and how repeated I am my surprised Pikachu
face about it. You know what I'm saying, It just
is there's something really true and honest about the fact
that he has made it so that every step of
the way every victory, there is a sense of is
it is it a victory? Do you do you actually
know what's going on with everybody? Are you super duper
confident in all the information? And even if you aren't,
is it maybe worth it? Anyway? It's it's it's you
versus them? Perhaps does it have to be? Maybe not?
But how do we not? How how do you move
into the realm of working together and not being at
one another's throats in exactly the way you've been programmed
to do? How could we possibly have gotten into a
position where we could talk to the Sultana about what
was actually happening with her. I really, honestly don't know
if there was any way for us to get to
that place. And we don't know still what is going
on with her. You know, for the record, it's just
very obvious that somehow in all of this she feels
that her and her people had no agency and were trapped.
And you know, there may be any situation like this.
It's relative, that's the thing, But there may be truth,
or it might be that we find out what exactly
was going on with her and we would be like, yeah, okay, boohoo, whatever,
you know, I just don't. Anyway, let's back up, shall
We got a very active chat today. Hey, guys, I'm
gonna do my best to bounce in and out, but
I'm trying to stay on my timing, and you all
know not great about it. So please, please, everybody, just
forgive me preemptively. Just I'm so sorry. Oh boy, Okay,
let's begin. So chapter fifty two I pretty much covered
in the last section. I do want to touch on
a couple of things. Just the fact that the blood
dread makes the blood on the stairs boil as Carl's
running over it, Lena is terrifying. I've already very much
felt that I'm glad Carl's catching up, but it does
surprise me that he hadn't really like seemed to clock
that already, because I I just thought that was like
immediately obvious about her. And then there's a point where
he's running past this ram who's ripped his throat open
and his blood is beginning to attack him, which this
is I was not entirely sure initially, of course, when
she says like, oh, it turns their blood against them,
and I'm like, well, what exactly does that mean? Materially speaking?
And then it's just like the most literal interpretation. It
makes your literal blood turn around and force itself down
your throat and knows to drown you, I mean Christ's sake.
So he stomps on the head of this Ram, and
I really thought that it was going to be that
he was doing this to like put the ram out
of its misery or to take credit for the kill,
just for the sake of it, but he mentions that
this being a worshiper of Hellic means that he is
going to be in Embras's good gracious graces, which keeping
that in mind, I just find it kind of funny.
Carl's sitting here and he is judging Lena to a
degree and to a degree that I can't argue with.
I'm not even mad, but he is judging her for
the intensity of her spells and the way they work.
And then he's like, oh, if I stomp on this
guy's head, my God'll be happy about it. And I'm like,
no offense, Carl, but like, you're not exactly the like
lacking in those dispassionate moments that seem scary about Lenah either,
So I'm just saying, oh my god, sorry, the chat
really blew up. Michael says, damn Matt humanizing these characters
so we can't just revel in their gruesome deaths. Absolutely,
Jeff says, it feels like how the Good Place often
sticks part of the next episode at the end of
the one we've been watching. It's just like a good
policy in storytelling, you know, if you like also adapt
something into a television show, usually the way that they like,
a book will wrap up and feel complete, but a
TV show they'll take like the first chapters out of
the next book and they'll put it at the end
of the TV season just to be like, trust us,
there's more, you know, m m Michael says, also very
happy you were commissioned to cover the expanse so you
could get the Fred Johnson reference. Michael, I remember the
Fred Johnson reference that you're mentioning, And now that you've
mentioned it to me specifically, now I get it. But
I will admit I didn't get it in the moment
because I thought he was referencing a real person. So
that's my bee. But I do know what you're talking
about now, so appreciate it. And Jeff says, or how
the dying Emperor says, you've ended the world in Miss Born. Yep.
Michael says it's somehow worse than the Blood Phoenix from Cradle.
Oh boy, that one. And Miss t says, I love
all these unspoiled cinematic universe references. Oh that's delightful. The
uce you. It really does have a ring to it.
I kind of like it, Michael says. Come to think
of it, Malice and Lena would probably be best friends,
or they'd be mortal enemies. Oh, they be enemies for sure.
For sure. There's like Malice is so her ego is
so wrapped up in her position. Lena is too capable.
She would not be able to tolerate her anyway, So
I Michael, no, sorry that was Jeff. I'm ooh wu
for you, see you, I hate you. So anyway, he
gets approached by Victory here, who has this look on
her face, and he is to be like, don't start.
I didn't know it was going to be that horrific,
which I am surprised that Victory is having any reaction
because it seems to me like the whole thing with
Dungeons is that every season there's the most awful shit
that you can think of, So I wouldn't think people
would even be like shockable anymore, if I'm honest. But
there is a part of me that's like kind of
pleased at the fact that she isn't so jaded that
she doesn't blink an eye, you know. So, ah, God,
there's There was a splash, followed by what sounded like
hundreds of twigs being snapped at once. Oh I want
to see, Samantha said, and wriggled from my hands. I mean,
there's a part of me that wants to see too.
I don't need to, and I don't really want to,
but I do get where you're coming from, Samantha. I
definitely get it. So let's see Rosetta. In the Codex,
Kapri is number four fifty three. All gods have at
least one temple, but some have two. Capri only has one.
But his address should be four or five three or
four five three A. Once you get inside, move fast,
don't let them run. And when they go in there,
Prepotente is like, okay, we have to turn off automatic mode.
And he has all of this stuff that he knows
and that that's basically mapped out, which I don't know
how we'd even accomplished this without him. Carl utilizes his
tool that he was given to see through portals and
analyze them, and he sees that the princess is right there,
and also a cleric whose head is a bug. Now,
I will admit my alarm bells didn't go off here.
I was a little surprised that there was like a
bug guy, because it has seemed like a lot of
the clerics of all of these different races tend to
be things that we have already encountered. But you know,
tend towards doesn't mean but I do feel like I
should have seen coming what was happening here, and I
didn't at all. I really I knew that it was
likely the nogover more prepared than Carl thought. I knew
that the fact everybody had seemed to piece together the
likelihood of where she was hiding with the information that
they had, I kind of felt like, well, she's gonna
know that they're able to put all this together, right,
But I wasn't really sure how this could possibly work.
We'll get to exactly how this is structured, because there
are things that are changed from the way that it's
worked in other seasons, evidently in order to make it
happen the way it does here. So they have to
use Samantha to get through the door, because there's this
whole thing with like churches having to give shelter to
everybody and anybody, as long as they weren't adherents of
a different faith. And she is marked as damned because
she was in the nothing and came out alive, so
she is able to be like their tool to get in.
And I love this, Lena. I am ready my blood
horror is now level fifteen. I am turning on the
last of my dreads and I do not know how
it will react. It is called succulent decay. I swear
to God, what a name? What a name? Succulent decay
is such a like what. I love words that feel
like they shouldn't go together, being shoved together anyway, There's
something about it that I find really like satisfying. One
of my favorites an example of this. Weirdly, it's about
the hell Raiser movies, which I never even saw because
I'm not a big horror fan, but I remember an
interview with the costume designer, and I think it was
the designer. It might have been the director talking to
the designer, but somebody used the words for the costumes
of the Cenobytes repulsive glamor, and that like lodged itself
in my brain to this day, despite never even watching
the film, and Succulent Decay has got like a similar
energy to it. You know, you've got something that feels
really appealing and then you set it up against something
that is repellent and hideous. So they are about to
go through the portal and he looks over and sees
Victory with a really sad expression on her face and knows,
oh shit, but it's too late. They are all positioned.
They can't just not do it. This is one of
those moments that I am personally, I don't know what
I'd have done. I kind of feel like I probably
would have just done what Carl does and move forward
with it, because what else is there to do, But
a part of me feels like seeing her face, I'd
just freeze up, you know, and I'd be like, oh shit,
oh never mind, never mind, you know. So he into
the temple, denied a table at the feast. You are trespassing.
You have been marked for death by Kepri and he
gets a new achievement charge of the Light Brigade. There
are traps, there are traps, and then there's what you
just walked into. You are in the presence of a deity,
temporary effect from Kepri. Uh please wait while I look
something up. Pause. Nope, this is legit. Okay, So people
are gonna think this is some sort of bullshit where
I saved your ass from this elaborate trap you just
walked into. But this is genuinely the temporary effect one
received from being in the presence of this deity. This
might save your life if you run fast enough, but
it's certainly not going to do anything for these other
two sillybilities. You didn't realize that gods can all always
appear in their own temples no matter what. But hey,
u assholes are always surprising me. Let's see what happens next.
Oh yeah, temporary effet from Capri. You are immortal for
the next ninety seconds. This turns into a really grim
moment for Karl. That is, like it's described a little
bit later in an entry in the book of how
trauma is inflicted whether you die or not, Like, well,
obviously it is inflicted if you don't die, but basically
that there are worse things in some ways that going
through this awful pain and these horrible experiences repeatedly, even
if they don't take your life, they fuck you up.
And so the immortality which protects you from actual death,
does not protect you from pain. And the entry is
like I recommend pairing it with a numbing spell so
that you don't know what's happening to you, which, of
course we do not have the luxury of doing that,
because Karl did not walk into this thinking that he
was going to be immortal, as far as I know,
unless he did know that part, I don't know. But anyway, Uh,
there were six naga, which was one less than I
was expecting. Vignada was in the center, the other two
we needed to kill were also here, and Reshi, the
husband of the small black scaled naga, was not here.
The naga all appeared surprised at our sudden appearance, all
but Vignata, who despite being frozen, was spitting orders at
all her compatrions and he this is when he notices
that she's the one who has worshiped Capri. This was
all part of the trap. Vignata knew we'd come to her,
come for her, no matter what. She hadn't underestimated us.
That's the I really appreciate is obviously over the years
she has grown complacent to a degree and felt like
I don't need to worry because I got this shit
figured out and we're dealing with crawlers who have a
their shit together a bit more it seems than previously,
and she can see that, which is something I always
like when because this is something that will happen in
all these different properties, not just this, but and I
say not just this, as if this is included ever,
and it might be, and I'm not remembering, but for example,
the one that I always kind of mock for this
is one piece and it's not like the property itself,
it's more like the characters within it. That there will
always be some dude who sees Loofy and is just like,
I don't need to worry about this kid look at him,
which I understand, but it's also like, yeah, but you
know how high his bounty is and the fact that
he has just like torn through half the East Blue
and you just still don't give credit to that reputation,
Like that's just that's that's a you problem that you
don't see a pattern in that, and I like that
Vinyasa has seen the pattern. Vnyatta, She's like, Yeah, they
have been managing to do the impossible over and over.
So I am going to behave as if that's what's
going to happen, that finally somebody's gonna find us, because
that is indeed the pattern. She'd been the one to
worship Kepri and she'd somehow prepared a method to summon
him into his own temple. She'd waited to see if
we'd find her, and when we did, she'd summon the
bug god, knowing we'd storm into the deities lap as trespassers.
We'd be fucked. And what's interesting is that despite the
fact that Capri is in this position as this god
to have to defend his territory, and you know, there's
a mention later of the fact that he's feeling honor
bound despite being scared shitless. I kind of felt bad
for Capri and all this, Like, granted, he is a god,
but there's also a sense of like he didn't want
to be part of this either. Everybody who gets drawn
into this bullshit, everybody hates it and resents it is
confused and hurt by it, like it's just remarkable. There's
no reason to make the god's personality such that he
would be afraid or upset, but we are doing that
for reasons anyway. Here it is on the one side,
we have a weird ass god who feels honor bound
toward his guests despite being pissed off and terrified. We
have six nagas, one of whom is a warlord and
an uns to goodness war hero, And I don't know
if war hero is something that we knew, if that's
referencing the dungeon or something else, And then there's more
to it. Breaking news. Princess Vinata is about to inherit
her own solar system. That's no secret. But what you
don't know is that, after a few hundred cycles pretending
to be destitute, her entire kingdom was about to surprise everyone.
But now her secret husband is dead. Her secret husband
is dead, and her kingdom's plans to pull a Fred
Johnson and seize all the shipbuilding factories are being leaked.
There he is as we speak. All factory owners are
moving to protect their assets from the slippery snake folk.
Those of you in the Dungeon probably don't care about
that part, but out in the greater universe this is
headline news. So stealing all the shipbuilding factories, it's really
interesting how many people that are in the Dungeon. We're
doing something bonkers that nobody knew about that was going
to affect everybody. Like, you know, we have the uh
Orc family that are building back doors into all the
weapons that they sell for literal centuries so that they
can just like fuck them up if they if they
need to. And here she's amassing this wealth and power
so that she can just completely wreck the economy by
taking over all of transportation it seems like, and means
of trade. Yeah, that's bonkers. This is like and pretending
to be destitute for this long. Anyway, we're going to
get to the point where we need to talk about
what she says. But I do enjoy that there is
a too where he's like, somebody is going to have
to get killed here, right, And then he says maybe
that Zang guy because nobody ever talks about him anymore,
which I did like that. This is the AI basically
functioning the way that many of us do when we're
watching TV, where we're like, Okay, somebody's gonna have to die,
but we're not going to lose a main So who
is it going to be? And you do have to
like pay attention not only to who historically has been
front and center most often, but also who has this
episode decided to focus on in a way that's not
usual In The Walking Dead, it was very predictable, where
anytime that you started to learn somebody's backstory, that was
the episode that they were going to die, because they
had to make you give a shit that he was
about to die, and it was a very lazy thing
to do it within the same episode that you killed him.
It always felt to me just like it's just so weak.
So anyway, I just found it funny because it feels
like the AI is getting his popcorn out it's popcorn out,
and just sitting down and being like oh boy, oh boy,
oh boy. And it's just probably actually very exciting because
this is the stuff that the AI doesn't have control
over and can't predict. So there's so much that it
can know and it can manage or change. But then
you add in these you know, crawlers and these warlords
that have rules surrounding what you can do, and they
get to just fucking punch each other to death and
you get to see what happens. I mean, yeah, it's
got to actually be entertaining for the AI as just
like a means of examining humans, like human psychology. I
say human, but I guess it's just like sentient psychology,
and try to feel alive somehow through this, you know.
So let's see. This god is a retainer of address Siah.
He is invulnerable. Like many of the gods, Capri is
mostly ignored by big players and only acknowledged when they
need something from him. And there's a mention here from
the AI about how the temple is an endless banquet,
and he's like, do you get how insane it is
to make this endless? Like I literally had to do that.
Nobody gives a shit. And then he says, if the
original writer of this god's backstory wasn't already long dead
in a refueling platform accident, I do to her what
I did to you know what? Nevermind? No no no
no no no, please do go on what you did
to whom? Please? I want to know. I want to know,
all right, So in about thirty seconds when everything unfreezes.
He's going to go absolutely bugshit on everyone in the room,
probably even his own worshiper who brought on rest to
his weird ass bug orgy. Will Carl succeed, will Prepotentie
get revenge? Will Vinyada escape, which will damn both Kotia
and Princess Dona? How will zang die? I swear so
as this is all going on, Carl is sending messages
to everybody, and Katia says, no, no way, Carl, that's
insane even for you Prepotente. Actually, I'd be quite curious
to see if it works. And Carl just says, no time,
this is the plan. Then we have somebody else zappin
a camel named Admiral Corn Wimpleshen, I am calling foul.
I am calling for an end to this immediately. And
Victory is like over one, and she's like the summoning
of the gods. Don't you get what's about to happen?
And Victory is like, the rules are the rules? Your
team summoned him? What do you And she says, not
the blood Sultan it he did it. He knew this
would happen, He knew this would happen. To Carl, did
he is she talking about? Maybe she's talking about later,
maybe not this, Maybe that's what it is. All right,
Well we'll get, we'll get, we'll get. Okay. So chapter
fifty four begins with Alistair's entree that I already mentioned
about the immortality condition and how it doesn't protect you
from pain, and then we get a bullet list, a
bullet point list of all of the things that each
person does. Vignyada's three guards charged. Just as they fired
their rifles. All three took what appeared to be speed potions.
Two cousins turned to flee down the endless tunnel. Both
took invisibility and disappeared. One dropped a smoke mantle. Vignyada,
who was temporarily immortal, also took an invisibility potion before
the first shots could hit them. Katya and Prepotente both
quaffed black nimbus. The instant they did this, they were
kicked from the temple. We weren't initially sure this is
going to work because of the teleport band, but Katya
had tested it earlier with the Temple of the Dagda.
I wasn't sure where they'd be sent, but I assumed
they both got kicked right outside the door in front
of the portal and into Club Vanquisher kpri. The God
hadn't yet attacked, but chittered indignantly. He thankfully seemed more
confused than anything. At the same moment, I cast run,
little Gunter, run, so we get this little. All I
can imagine, you guys know, I'm sure most people have
felt this. All I can imagine is a little like
German exchange student from the Simpsons, right, I mean, come now,
come on, obviously, And he's got a giant lollipop and
he's bringing later hosen, and he's got an Ostrich feather
in his hat and it's just a lot ah. So
he yells to the kid, get the god, and let's see.
He's got this bomb. This was the size of a thermos,
compared to the first one, which was so big it
had to have wheels. The result was a thermobaric explosion
that would absolutely incinerate anything within one hundred meters. It's
called the waffle maker. The blast threw me back up
and toward the entrance door. I didn't actually feel this
next part, but I was crushed and I was burned.
I was turned completely flat inside out and into a
boxer clad amalgam of flesh and hair. My body smashed
like a piece of dough caught under a tire spread
over the wall and door, completely covering it before I
was plopped helplessly back onto the floor like an on fire,
liquid filled sack. This is so hideous, Like, yeah, yeah,
he's gonna have trauma after this? Are you high? Honestly,
considering that Carl is the bomb guy, I am wondering
if this is going to result in some twitchiness the
next time that he has to work at his table,
Like how do you just keep doing the thing after
experiencing something like this? I don't know, though, Sometimes we
can be super good at compartmentalizing, especially when we're in
like a crisis mode, which being in the dungeon just
puts you in permanent crisis mode. And as he is mushed,
not dead, drowning, I was drowning in nothing. This is
how it feels, Carl. This is what it's like when
we're not here, and we're not there, we don't get
told who that is that is italicized. I'm assuming that
this is the AI somehow managing to like speak to
him somehow and there's something grim about every part of that,
you know what I'm saying. It's like the AI can
communicate with him directly in this sort of way only
when Carl is himself on the verge of death. It's
the AI communicates directly before by taking over an NPC
and actually having conversations. But it feels like when it
does that that there is some sort of veneer in
place that's not quite making it vulnerable. And it's these
moments that feel like this is the AI pure just
being like, I am suffering. Do you get that I
am It hurts, We have been hurting, you know. It's
it's just deeply upsetting. So he has to take a
healing potion and it is insanely painful, kind of regrets
doing it. He can feel his body putting itself back together,
and every bit of it is horrific. The God in
theory should have been blown back down the never ending hallway,
and Gunter, also in theory, should have been unhurt. He
would now be running down the hall toward the God,
and the moment he reached the deity, he'd explode, effectively
doubling the attack. This would hopefully blast the God a
second time, like, truly, this is pretty genius. It's just
the way that he has to do this to himself
is bonkers. So Carl blinks and he is standing upright.
The food's all gone, and he can't see the god
or Gunter, and the bugs are on fire and screaming
as one because they're immortal, so they can't die, and
they just have to burn horrifically. For a little while,
I was held fast by something like I was tied
in rope, and for a minute I was very confused,
and then I realized, Oh, she took an invisibility potion.
That's what's going on. My vision was a line of
new notifications scrolling across my screen. Was that Samantha screaming.
There was someone else screaming in my ear. And this
is when we get I'm still here, Carl. All you
need to do is set me free. So this is
obviously She Maria. It may have been She Maria talking
to him. This is what it's like when we're not
here and we're not there. I don't feel like it was, though.
It just seems like there's a different tone to her usually.
And let's see, I'm trying to find this bit with
this may I realized I'd fallen out of Keepri's temple
and back out the front. Another message from Embers flash
telling me I needed to find Peter Cole. I pushed
it away as more notifications flooded by. There's something about
all of this, guys, that I really enjoy in terms
of setting a scene of such utter chaos. Bro is
getting strangled, surrounded by fire, screaming insects, and he is
getting direct messages from everybody and also notifications and achievements
on his screen. This is such an overload of information
and sensation and just a demand on all your attention.
I don't know how you get used to this enough
to function, And I know that that actually does happen,
because there are plenty of games that sort of work
like this as well, where there's a million things to
keep track of and initially you're just overwhelmed, and then
you keep playing and you reach a point where you're like,
I can't believe I ever found this overwhelming, You know
what I'm saying. But I suspect that's not really how
it works in here. Probably you get used to it
to a degree, but there are still going to be
moments where it's just like too fucking much. So this
is when he realizes that she is wrapped around him.
It takes a while for him to start to put
together what's going on? And let's see if you're not dead,
Get the hell out of there. This is Katya. There
are dozens of gods coming out of the portal. What
I was at the portal? I blinked as a cheetah
thing flew over me, giving me no heed. It had
a screaming man tour in its mouth. I needed to
take stock. I needed to figure out why I couldn't move.
There are dozens of gods coming out of the portal.
And then it clicked. I didn't know why there were
suddenly gods everywhere, but I now knew why. I had
worms coming from my nose. The Scavenger's daughter patch. Every
new god gave me either a buff or a dee buff.
I also realized the creature screaming in my ear was Vignata.
She'd been wrapped around me the whole time. Everything you
ruined everything, She cried as she stabbed me over and over,
tears streaming down her snake face. She wasn't white anymore,
but a dusky gray stop. I tried to croak. We
were almost free. We were almost free. You ruined it.
The moment that fucking cat put that Tiara on, we
would have been gone and we would have been done.
We were leaving this madness and you had to ruin it.
You killed my people, all of them. Do you think
I really want to be here? I was going to
have children with him. We would have been done. So
the crown of the Sepsis horror being put on triggered
that they were going to have to participate in the game,
I'm assuming, And otherwise it would not have been necessary
for them to come back. Would they not have done
faction wars either, or would they have done faction wars,
but they would just not have been targeted like this
because she put the crown on that, and so probably
she could just do what she's always done and hide
and then they'd be out of it. What I'm assuming
this has just been such a huge boost to their
income that there was no avoiding it, or maybe they're
contractionally obligated somehow or something, but I doubt it because
she's like, the warlords don't have to participate, right, So
it's such a weird thing that I can feel bad
for her, even while knowing the only way that you
were going to be free was just by like profiting
off of this hideous thing. But I also don't know
what freedom means. What is going on with her people?
Why are they? You know? What is that? So a
lot of questions, a lot of questions. So kepri reappears
and then another voice says, begone, false god, which I
do enjoy. How much the gods like accuse each other
of not being real gods. It's very, it's very, it's
giving religion. You're let's see, kepri has left the realm.
The Scavenger's daughter closes her eye to his presence. Your
boon is timed and will run out on its own.
So Capri vanishes. Carl is continuing to heal himself, and
this god sits down and watches Vignata fucking Carl up.
The man smiled, as if we were sitting across from
each other at a restaurant. This was Hellick, I'm supposed
to kill you, I tried to say. I started to
prepare another bomb to drop, but a distant part of
me registered I had to time it all correctly. Vnana's
immortality would run out before my own. I suspected this
time it wouldn't affect Hellick like it had Capri. But
at this point it didn't matter anymore. As long as
Venanda was dead, as long as Kacha got out, then
both Dona and Kotya could live. And I'm just like,
if it, like, I understand, we've got to kill her.
But I'm just like, you know, trying. It's hard for
me to picture exactly what's going on here, and so
I'm like, there's got to be some other way, Carl,
you know, there has to be a better way. But
he can't. Like he's just completely He's in a stripe
jacket made of snake basically, you know, so his skin
be to bubble, and as it does, I'm realizing what's
going on there, and I'm just like, oh, I think
I know, I think I know it comes quite in handy.
Yes it does. But helec first says, tell my brother
I did not kill his son. Tell him he cannot
kill me no matter how hard he tries. Tell him
I love him despite his madness. Tell him everything he
thinks about me is a lie. Tell him our mother
and sister Epito has been corrupted. There is a malevolent
presence about her, and I believe my nephew learned of it.
Tell him the all tree is beginning to rot. Tell
him Nekbit has returned and I believe she is behind
it all. Tell him we need to work together if
we want to survive and discover what happened to our
mother and his son. I know you seek an audience
with Isatac to break the truth. I will treat with
him on your behalf Scolopendras stirs. It is all connected.
You have been and marked as a friend of the
church by helic worshippers of Helick will no longer be
automatically hostile toward you. And he gets up and leaves.
Does not help Carl other than that which won't do
him any good if he dies here. So I was
very like, thanks for fucking nothing, Helck. I don't appreciate
you just being like I need you to deliver a
message for me. And then I'm just gonna bounce and
fuck you. Why are you going to try and like
send an email and then bomb the servers? What is
this anyway? Vignyatta is still bashing him, and then suddenly
the slugglo bursts out of Carl's back. She slipped out
from under my shirt, whooped loudly, and planted a hatchet
right between Vignyatta's eyes, Killinger and Yell's right in the
nugget my God. Okay, okay, last chapter, Carl has added
a note, I've updated the trap recipe for alarm traps
based on Justice lights of advice. We can now use
recordings and if you have a proper bard, you can
record a magical song and have it played once activated.
Details are in the recipe. Donuts Barred skills unfortunately aren't
good enough for this, but that's something we can work
on later. Justice Light also showed me how to access
the Advanced Alarm menu, which comes with a wider music
database for the traps. Also to Donuts Delight, we can
add a playlist to a trap, meaning we don't have
to listen to a single song over and over. Still
can't adjust the volume. Second note, Tippett says the mantors
this season are different. The ones this season have a
group berserking mechanic that can be easily triggered by a
certain type of music. This explains why on the fourth
floor they were walking around blasting boomboxes under normal circumstances,
you don't want them to get triggered. And that's our
intro here. So system message, the Sepsishorr of the Blood
Sultanate has fallen. Credit for the kill has been given
to Candy Biggs Newton of the Princess Posse. I do
enjoy that she has a full name and that she
is enough of a character on her own to get
credit and not Carl, which is what I kind of
assumed that since she had come out of Carl's body
and was an NPC, that she wouldn't get credit, you
know what I'm saying. But yeah, yeah she did, and
that is incredible. So all assets of the Blood Sultanate
as proprior arrangement have been split evenly with the surviving
blood relatives of the Sepsis Whoror Warlord Princess Donut and
General Kattia Grimm, both of the Princess Posse. As proprior arrangement.
All assets have been forfeited to the Princess Posse. So
I just I just keep thinking of the Princess and
her just being like we were almost done if she
hadn't put the crown on and just thinking about how
like this mechanic in the game and this crown even existing.
You know, whose idea is this is this? I don't know.
I don't know. Anyway, we're I'm gonna be thinking about
that a lot on my own time. So Michael says,
to be fair, as we learned from the Demon Prince Karl,
just hearing the words means Embress hears them too. That's true.
I forgot about that. M Michael says, Mongo got credit
for the Empress. I yes, It's just like Mongo didn't
come out of Donut from like a disease, you know,
like he's a pet. Very specifically, Candy is like a
product of a of fucking illness. It's like he blew
his nose and the snot killed something and the snot
gets credit. It's like that. It it's just she's not
on the level of Mongo to me in my mind,
even though I understand that the slugglos are definitely much
more sentient than what I'm saying. Anyway, in death, Vinyada
didn't look so big. I took her corpse into my inventory.
There is going to be a point where all these
corpses that he keeps taking are going to be really handy,
and I am not excited about it. Just for the record,
I am not excited about it. I know we will
reach a point where we'll be glad to have them
because there's gonna be some sort of reanimation that's going
to have to happen where we're gonna put all these
bodies out there and then we're gonna do something crazy.
I know, but I hate it. Just needed to put
that out there. I just hate it. So this boss
battle ain't over until you get out of the club.
Samantha comes into the room and she is yelling that
her mother is an impostor. And as she is yelling this,
he gets a message from Katchia. We're trapped in the lobby.
The door between the Dogda Temple and the lobby shut
and we got locked down, cutting off Lena's auras Daniel
got away, but Leejun and Zog are still in here.
Mantors and ogres and all sorts of other things are
everywhere and we're fighting them off. A few gods remain,
but they're all fighting each other. Prepatente says, we need
to get to the map maker guild on the second floor,
meet us there. So this is when Samantha is yelling.
You told me that when that I would be able
to go and kill my mother. But when I went,
she was a boy eagle and she can't just like
transform like that. And he's like, wait, your mother was
a skyfall. Oh shit, I thought, realization dawning on me.
The second backup part of our plan was a bit
of a hail Mary, and I hadn't expected it to work.
We needed Samantha to open the door into the Kepri temple,
and we'd gotten her to agree because we also promised
to let her find her way into the temple of
her own mother. In the Lore of the Dungeons, Samantha
and THEA hated each other, but in reality, THEA was
sponsored by an agent for the Open Intellectual Pacifist Network.
We hoped, at best, the goddess would order her clerics
to assist, perhaps by giving Samantha some sort of boon.
At worst, Samantha would get into the temple and get
kicked out by the cleric. What we hadn't expected was
for her to come into contact with actual gods, and
especially not THEA herself. I didn't know who the sponsor
actually was. Rosetta told me it was someone I didn't know,
a previous crawler activist who hated the dungeon as much
as we did. But I had the impression it was
not a cookbook author. Apparently it was a male skyfowl,
like with one shehing Jinx on the previous floor, sponsored
gods had the option to appear as their regular form
in theory, and PCs would still see them as the gods.
But apparently that didn't work with Samantha. So if they
can choose that, and they can choose to look the
way they always look, why doesn't it fool? Like? Why
isn't there NPCs would still see them as the gods?
Is it because she was in the nothing and survived,
because obviously that made it so that she can open
the temple doors? So it did that like wipe the
what's the word I want? Basically, did her going into
the nothing affect the the types of restrictions that would
be on her character or is this linked to how
Samantha is otherwise getting more powerful in a way that
nobody seems to understand. There's almost a sense of the
fact that like Samantha's changes are happening because of being
around the Crawler somehow, and that she is leveling up
in her own way, even though she doesn't actually mention
leveling specifically or anything like that. It seems like she's
just undergoing some changes, and this being a very specific
thing that doesn't trick her the way that it should.
All NPCs is a really weird, interesting little what's going
on there? So anyway, there's a little back and forth
here where Victory says sponsors causing deities to act outside
their nature is against Faction War's rules. I reminded both
the Maestro and Rectrix of that before coming to observe
Carl drop a bomb at his own feet. And Samantha says,
de Wata is in the hallway over there, having sex
and fighting with Vertumnus at the same time. Those two
can't keep their hands off each other do what is
such a slut? I sent a warning to Katcha, but
she'd already responded. The hallway we need to get to
is filled with vines, and there are mantors everywhere. I
don't know where they're coming from. And there's something called
Basilica guards ogres from below. So Carl says, I'm activating
Operation headbanger, and he activates one of the traps, and
there is an ogre that shows up here. This NPC
worships Tarrannus untouchable. It doesn't mean what you think it means.
And basically they guard the Basilica entrance. They worship Tarannus
and are one of the few non deities who have
the ability to stop a from passing a threshold, and
basically everybody resents them. You don't want these guys to
leave their post on the twelfth floor because if they do,
odds are good that the board gods hanging out in
the halls may notice the Basilica's entrance is wide open,
and if that happens, some of those naughty gods may
wander off untethered. So I'm wondering if this is what
the camel was saying, you know, is gonna happen, and
that the gods coming through. She's saying that Karl somehow
did this on purpose. I don't know, like it's possible.
Katsha says there's something called Basilica Guards, So it doesn't
sound like she knew about this or how this all worked.
That doesn't mean that Karl didn't know, because he knows
all sorts of stuff that he can't just like talk
about because of the cookbook. So I don't like my
temptation is to immediately just like wave this woman off
and be like, of course she thinks that Carl did
this on purpose, because you're just you know, you just
want to yell at him and have him disqualify somehow
or whatever. But there's a part of me that's like,
what if she's right? Though? What if? Because Carl does
all sorts of shit off page that we don't get
to see, and he knows all sorts of things that
we don't know as readers because we don't get told
until it's time. So it's possible that she was just
blowing smoke because she wanted to like stop what was
about to happen, because she suspected Carl would win. But
it's also possible that she's dead fucking correct and that
this all was something that Carl was sort of aware
might happen and wanted to have happen. I don't know,
but anyway, we've got this here, who is quite fierce,
and she is going to be helping Carl, says, who
who do I have to kneecap and then the band
Mega Death begins to play. Uh and I really like
the fact that I could no longer hear. But the
oh fuck forming on the ogre's lips was unmistakable warning
a mantor mosh pit is about to form. The ogre
turned and he ran. Three of the mantors screamed and
followed him. Yoicks, I really an ogre turning and fleeing,
you know is about to be bad. Let's see, I
activated the skill I'd received from Lee, not profane iron.
So this is his tattoo with the dragon made of chains,
which I swear to God I still think sounds bonker,
and I would love to see an illustration of what
this would look like, because I can't picture it at all.
Two of the chains reached down and plucked the potions
from my hands. Each one shot out in a different
direction and smashed into a different man tour, simultaneously knocking
the creatures over and inflicting them with black nimbus. A
third chain wrapped around the neck of another, and a
fourth trip two more two more struck scorpion like at
the closest, piercing directly into the guard's flesh at his clavicles.
He screamed and blindly swung as he shot the man.
Tour's still screaming head, along with parts of a spinal column,
was ripped from his body and discarded. This is insane,
and it comes out of his body like wolverine's claws,
and like it affects his health for a second. You know,
good God, I could only control two of the chains.
She could control ten. She used it to attack multiple
enemies at once. But it was actually designed as a
defensive skill, like a type of shield. Yeah, as a
type of shield. Sure, sure, I mean, I guess. So Anyway,
he turns the corner and Prepotente leads them to the
map making guild and they go in. Bianca has apparently
fucked some things up again. Milk is yelling about it,
and then Carl spots her and he knows who she
is immediately, like there's just he sees the name and
he just kind of falls apart. Carl, are you okay?
It was Katya? And up until that moment, I'd been
holding it all back, those moments when I wasn't there
and I wasn't here, those horrific seconds as I reformed,
it was like all the pain anyone had ever felt
shoved into a single moment. I had borne it because
what other choice did I have. Everything was moving so fast,
everything was still moving fast. But in that moment, as
I realized the creature standing before me was the author
of the sixth edition of the cookbook my sister, and
that she'd been here this whole time, something inside of
me changed. I didn't break. No, I wasn't broken. I
will not be broken. And she says, child, come here
and puts her arms around him, and he just starts
to sob. And everybody's watching and is like, what is
happening because they don't understand why Carl knows who she is,
or why he'd have this reaction to her or anything.
Donut messages him and is like, what is happening? And
he says, we're almost out, and she says, are you okay?
Everything's fine here. This is a lot easier than we thought.
And Carl says it was easy here too, went off
without a hitch. I understand, wanting to protect her. But
she's gonna find out what happened really like I don't know,
maybe she'll maybe she'll be glad that he lied. In
the moment, I don't know, and then the chapter ends
with Carl's note, I know you're dead, Drakia, but I
haven't forgotten how much you hated the Naga. If there
is a veil like I know you believed, I hope
you watched that from the other side. I'm not sure
what the implications of today are for the Naga people,
for the Naga as of people, but I did what
I could. I know it's not enough, not yet, but
I hope you would be proud of what happened today.
I'm doing my best, but god, damn, God damn, it's
getting harder every day to keep myself from drowning. Felt felt.
Carl felt that's all I have to say about that. Bruh.
I oh, I can't imagine anyway. All right, guys, I'm
over time. I gotta wrap. You know how it works.
But I appreciate all y'all for being here. Thank you
Michael again for commissioning this episode. And I will mention too.
There was am and they may still be accepting for
There's a uh online tee shop called Friday Tea. They
had an Instagram reel that I guess went viral. It
showed up in my feed where they were selling a
Dungeon Crawler Carl affiliated te flight. It's a loose leaf
set of eight tees that are all themed around Dungeon
Crawler Carl and she sold out within thirty seconds of
them going live on her site, and I knew she would.
I just had a feeling. I was like, I'm not
going to get one of these. I still had it
in my little calendar to remind me to check her site,
but the moment they went viral was in the middle
of a supernatural recording, so I missed it. And then
I got an email yesterday and she is like, Okay,
so evidently there's enough interest in this, I'm going to
open it for pre orders. They will be shipped until June, probably,
but if you want one, you can order now, and
that way I will know how much product to order
to assemble more of these flights. So anyway, I just
wanted to let you all know I have pre ordered
a tea flight, and sometime in June I will make
some tea and we'll have a little chat. But I
also need ideas on what kind of snackies to make
to go with the tea that are in theme, so
hit me up all right until next time Fit a
lou Motherfuckers. That was an unspoiled network podcast