Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book seven, This Inevitable ruin chapter
sixteen through nineteen. In these chapters, somebody sets up somebody
to set up somebody else. It's a lot of machinations
in this bitch. I'm into it. Welcome to spoil Me.
To the show everyone, I am Natasha. Thank you very
much to Michael for commissioning this episode. So this section, y'all,
what a series of like devastating moments. It's wild how
many times I was just like, oh, this is really,
this is this is rough first you know, it says
chapter sixteen through nineteen. But the thing about this book
is that it has been sort of peppered with these
chapters that are more like sort of interstitial moments that
are not really their own chapters. So really we have
first before sixteen, the chapter titled Everlely, and it is
the you know this, this is the I keep wanting
to say flash It's a weird thing though, because it's like, yeah,
technically a flashback, but also kind of it doesn't count
when we're not when that character is already dead and
we're not even like with them anymore or you know
what I'm saying, And I think probably it does. It's
just a weird There's there's a quality to it that
I don't come across in many books, because usually when
we're doing this, it's something that is directly like the
history of the character whose head we're in, or the
history of somebody we are about to meet, which has
happened in this book a couple of times. So it's
sort of a it's hard to say, and I feel
like flashback is fine, but it just doesn't quite feel
right to me, if you get what I mean. So Everly,
it's such a it's such a an series of really
interesting things going on here. It starts with you, Everly hissed,
pointing her leg at one of her two remaining mercenaries.
Watching you try to hold up the ceiling is irritating me.
You're not going to stop it, so don't bother dig
if you must, just don't stand there like that. And
it's too This is the one guy trying and hold
the ceiling up and the other trying to dig into
the ground, because what it turns out is happening is
they are being slowly crushed and they are trying to
find a way out, and she's watching the dwarf who's
attempting to dig, because that's what dwarfs do, am I right,
And watching that he is really trying to hold out hope,
but that it's obviously like beginning to fade every passing moment.
It's just starting to fade away. And we get some
background here. The younger version of herself would be raging
right now, it's not over. She'd say, it's not over
until you're dead. Get down there and dig, damn you.
And by younger everly meant the version of herself from
just before the demons had come to her world. And
this particularly hit me, this like there was a version
of me at one time that would never have accepted this.
I feel like I run into this thought in my
own head so often, and it's not even necessarily really
even true in the simplest sense of it. It's just
that I maybe I feel that there had been a
version of me, and you know, like, and maybe I'm
wrong about that, but what it is is just really
the sense of like I used to be different, and
what has happened to me that I have come to
a point in my life that I just don't believe
in things working out like this anymore, or I don't
believe in that good will prevail, or that I can
do anything, or that there's pride or worth to fighting
to the last breath. There's a certain amount of ego
involved in that, and I feel like when you use
the word ego, it's always sort of heard as like
an inherently bad thing. And I don't think it is
an inherently bad thing, but I do think that it
can be more of a driving force than we like
to admit to our about a lot of stuff in
a way that we should interrogate. And you must fight
until your very last breath. You know, I understand that
feeling like you have making you feel as if you
have more control over the situation as somebody who has
dealt with being in control freak my whole life. But
I don't know. This just sort of hit me. There
comes this point where we get the real specific item
and what happened here. Gordon's Compass of vertical labyrinthement Management
forty nine uses. It was a simple device and it
appeared it was going to be enormously helpful. It showed
the bearer the quickest and safest path through a maze,
but the description specifically stated it wouldn't work in subterranean mazes.
It was clear that compass was meant to be used
to navigate Tower and some of her fellow mantises, which
the fact that this is a mantis is really like
another bit of a I know that this has happened
to them, and that it's not even the same type
of mantis. Nevertheless, they she refuses help, goes on and
sees that her like views or skyrocketing. She wondered what
her mother would have thought. The center was watching her
on a mission to save her fellow mantises. It was
a good, unfamiliar feeling. And she comes to a dead
end and then there is an announcement, never trust your
life to Gordon Waystation outfitters. There's no safe or cheap
path to safety. This dead end was sponsored by Dictum
Waystation Controls Limited. Don't get caught with nowhere to go.
So this is just so hideous, guys, it's so rough. Man.
I hated it so much, the fact that she got
played like this, like there's just not words for how
incredibly grotesque, you know, and every wondered if this would
have happened if she'd allowed some of the others to
go up to the tower with her. Maybe one of
the others had heard of this Gordon Way Station company
and would have figured out the whole thing was a trap.
But she'd insisted on staying alone this whole time. She'd
wanted to work with them, they'd wanted to work with her. Still,
she'd struck out on her own, determined to fight it
all in her own way. And she says to herself,
that's when it happened, wasn't it not now here in
this damn tower. It happened when I abandoned the others
so much earlier than I realized. And what she is
saying is like, that's when it happened. Is the inevitable
ruin of things falling apart and the ogre change changed.
He falls down. There's a flash deep in the back
of his small black eyes. Maybe there's more to it
than this, the ogre said, just as the slow moving
ceiling kissed the side of his face. His body shifted
and he was pushed into the sand. Maybe it's not
inevitable like you say. I swear to God, you guys,
that's just so Matt is very, very interested in community,
and it's a really interesting thing to watch in a
series that feels like it's not going to be about
community at the start. It really it's just Carl with
his cat. That's how we start, and he's alone for
such a while before they even run into other crawlers,
and it just feels like this is about a guy
who's going to do the thing and the way that
he has subverted the expectation on that, and really like
it's not that Carl isn't individually important, because there is
exactly what it is that Surrendel Gore said about. He
is the one who managed to become a warlord. He
is key. We need him to keep going like that
is true, but he is the one that's like creating
a path for everyone else to follow. And if they
weren't there him creating this path wouldn't matter. It has
to be everybody. And I am just extremely down with
this messaging because we are so individualistic in the US,
and it is what is killing us. It is what
is eating the heart out of our populace and what
has poisoned the thought processes of everybody who thinks that
we should all just be figuring it out for ourselves.
It's toxic, it's extremely shortsighted, it's deeply illogical, it's wildly egotistical.
It's just so flawed. And so seeing this like constant
returning to there needs to be people, you need to
accept help, you need to work with people. I just
really appreciate right now, especially where we're at, you know
what I'm saying. So then we go to chapter sixteen,
and this is when Carl and Kachia are about to
undergo this weird thing that's like a drug induced state.
For Katchya it's to treat her addiction to this drug
that she took once that has like really affected her.
And for Carl, it's supposed to possibly help him eject
the being inside him. She Maria. It's two basically two
hits of Glory Bound, but compounded with a subdermal gel
and mixed with a potion called Tough Love, kind of
like that anti alcohol potion I gave to Louis and
Farrah on the fifth floor. Remembering that Louis had been
one of those like kind of hostile drunks. Is really weird.
I just forget and like who he is now, Like
what a change? I started making this on the previous
and it has to sit nice and long before it
gains potency, and we're now in that window. It goes
stale fast, so it's now or never. The dose I'm
giving to you, Karl, I'm also going to combine with
another potion called removal order that way we'll be visiting
the Spider's memories instead of your own, he paused, swallowing hard.
I hope. And the way that this winds up working
actually is Karl and Katcha are holding hands, and so
it kind of changes the way this whole thing works,
which is, you know, this is part of the theming
of just we need other people. And so he is
in her memory and gets to see what went down
with her in a way that I don't think she
has any issue with. She's holding his hand. They are
meant to be like, we're going in to this together,
and I think that him being there is actually kind
of helpful, so she doesn't have to try and explain
after the fact if she ever wanted to. He gets
to see and like, there's something about this to me.
When you're near a divergent, you're often accused of being
too preoccupied with like fairness with over explaining things because
you're afraid of being misunderstood. And I definitely fall into this.
And there are so many instances in my life where
I wish I could just go into a memory and
bring someone with me so they could see what I mean,
so that I don't have to explain what happened, because
there's certain things, especially as a woman, when you deal
with certain types of sexual harassment, trying to expressed to
someone what creeped you out and what felt wrong about
an interaction. When you say it out loud, it sounds
like nothing, and it doesn't feel like enough to even
be sharing. Sometimes, like you're like, what am I even
bringing this up for? But in the moment, it was
unmistakably a threat that was happening and you fucking know it.
But you also recognize that in words, there's no sense
of that coming across. So the moments that I wish
I could go back to and like pull somebody in
and be like, do you see what I mean? You know,
that's like a dream, a fantasy to be like, I
want your take on this, because this is how I feel,
and I can't tell if I'm just bringing my baggage
to it or what. So watch this and let's see,
and like, it's not that he has the chance to
really even interact with her regarding this by the end
of this section that I read, but we know we're
in his head. He witnessed it, and it's just like,
what an asshole about this guy? And I adore the
fact that we have like an impartial observer who is
fully on her side and who can look at her
and be like, girl, you are right. That guy was
a bastard and you got done wrong. And how validating
that would feel, you know? So, uh Rosetta says Carl,
if you're still under when Kaya comes back, I'll induce
the wake up sequence. You should be able to initiate
the ejection yourself. This all turns out to be unnecessary.
So once Kachia is under, she's on her own. If
we wake her up early, it could be fatal. But
she's not on her own. As we see, Doughnut remained
in the guild in her bathroom, taking shower after shower
in a fruitless attempt to get the stench out of her,
and Mango RND was with them, apparently a big fan
of the shower, which I think is very funny for
some reason, and she Maria is like whispering to him,
trying to tell him not to do this and that
they're both going to die if he does this. He
actually slaps himself in the head at one point to
get her to shut up. So there's this bit where
it says that she confesses, like, my worst memory is
also my best memory, which I don't really understand how
this works, but I guess it's getting to be with
Annie at all. It's just life to be like that,
doesn't it. You know, a potion of somnoalin embrace. This
won't remove your worries or your bad dreams for more
than a moment, but it will ease them long enough
to let you sleep. Sometimes this is all we can
hope for. And I love when they take a sip
and she goes, oh wow, this stuff is great. Oh girl,
she do gotta have it. And as they're going under,
Mordecai says, I don't have the fancy bed you guys have.
It's what I use sometimes sometimes. Rosetta asked, what do
you know about it? Mordecai asked her, I saw a
story about you the other way or the other day.
Her what and we are out of there before we
get to actually see that whole thing unfold, and Mordecai
has got to be pissed. So somebody try to say,
separate them, no touching you two, it will confuse the dream.
But it's too late. It seems like the fact that
they touched the way they did was enough. Ah I
briefly touched the minds of others nearby, and Moni, who
was terrified, Mordecai equally weary, but also sad Rosetta, who
just seemed so very tired yet filled with a deep
familiar rage, Edgar, who was worried. These were just flashes,
like my hand running through a flame. The moment only
lasted micro seconds, yet I saw deeper and longer than
I should I shouldn't be seeing this. Katcha was the
one I truly crashed against, and while it was still short,
the glimpses I felt of her lasted longer told me more.
She too was afraid, afraid that she was a burden, ashamed,
ashamed that we were all doing this for her, and
angry too, angry at herself, angry at the wor angry
at me. Why would she be angry? With me. I
quickly started to recede, and eventually it's her and she's saying,
it's not that I'm angry with you. I'm just mad
that you let people hurt you. You meet someone, you
start to care for them, and then it becomes and
she gets interrupted by the notification, and I'm really wondering
how this sentence was going to end, because it's almost
like you meet someone, you start to care for them,
and then it becomes clear that they just like, have
been mistreated for so long that they don't know what
being treated well is, or that they have the same
kinds of baggage that you have, or I don't know,
I don't know, but angry and mad that you let
people hurt you. I'm wondering if this is about his past,
or if it's about what has happened since she's been
part of the party, or what I blinked and I
woke up. The Scavenger's daughter has been fed unleash her wrath,
and y'all, I was so confused. I was just like, wait,
hold on, wait, hold on, wait, hold on. I was
just like, did I I went and looked, I'm like, no,
right chapter and he's looking around and he gets a
quest failed bedlam Bride, and I'm like, oh shit, is
she Maria like dead? And he's trying to find Katya,
and we get him remembering the memory that he was
in Annie, the little baby girl fan are the cancer diagnosis,
after all those hoops, all she'd overcome, they'd caught it early,
she'd be okay, but despite that, it had come with
a terrible price. I understood finally Kotcha's addictions. Fannar had
told them. I didn't understand why she'd been cleaned for
so long. And then a one two punch. I thought
of the social worker coming to pick me up from
the interrogation room. Come on now, she'd said, come on now.
A minor setback, But to Kachia it had been everything,
a shattering. It was almost by dungeon standers. All of
this was almost nothing. So he wakes up, there's blood everywhere.
He's in a room and there's a goblin trying to
pull a trigger on him, and goblin gets frozen up
and I'm looking at this and I'm just like because
my initial instinct was to think, oh, something went really
wrong with the potion. And he has hurt members of
his party. But then it's like, obviously we don't have
any goblins in the party, so right there, we have
an issue with that hypothesis, the fact that the goblin
is called naughty and kept from being able to fire
on Carl, but Carl was apparently able to just like
brutally murder a bunch of people, or she Maria was.
I was like, how does that make sense? I'm just
completely lost, right, so, a new gravelly voice. It's being
ruled an AI action, not an attack. The ceasefire has
new rules against teammates fighting one another or monsters. You
could have fought back against the unaffiliated NPC while he
was under control of that thing, but you waited too long.
Now that he's no longer possessed, you can't touch him
while the ceasefire is an effect. The AI is claiming
he had a notification over his head while he was vulnerable.
And the person speaking is Panford, who's an adjutant for
the Democratic sortion a dreadnought. And there is this caterpillar
creature named Commander Stockade, who is not reacting well to
this news, to say the least. And what we quickly
begin to put together is the fact that this is
the fact that these guys were cheating and the cheating
backfired on them quite spectacularly, and they are outraged at
the way it went left because they hadn't seen coming
that particular way. But they were fine with the fact that,
like potentially all of Carl's team could have died if
things had gone a certain way, you know, just the
usual like rules for me, but not for the sort
of thing and the fact that the AI is like
instituting a particular effect they seem surprised by in a
way that surprised me a little bit, where I was
just like, have you guys been here this whole time?
How have you not spotted the way that the AI
has been behaving. You should have realized that this shit
was like gonna not work out as tidily as you think.
And it's a whole so this takes a while to
sort of unravel. I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit
because it's a lot of Carl like hearing them argue,
and really we get much of this repeated later and
explained a little bit more fully. So I'm gonna go
over to the moment where Victory shows up, and I
love Victory is feeling pretty happy about this situation. And
we hear that she told Mordecai what happened, and he
started cracking up. Let's see, I'm trying to find this
bit here. Oh right, We get the details on she
Maria as well. I had no idea what had happened,
how I got here. I remembered the dream. The spider,
not she Maria, but a different one, A male she
Maria had also entered, mocking me, telling me I'd be sorry.
But then she saw the other spider and she changed.
She burst into a rage. She killed him, her own husband.
She devoured him while she sobbed. She disappeared and reappeared
a few moments later. She curled into a ball right
there in the hospital in Iceland. But then it got fuzzy.
The husband had returned, hadn't he I have her now?
He said, she's good and trapped. You can always set
her free if you must, but do not unless all
is lost. So she's trapped in like an eggshell, is
the way he says it later, that he can break it,
but only once, and either she can take over his
body or she can expel herself. But if he lets
her out, it's a real gamble. What she's going to pick.
There's an official field ruling education and Panford said. We
all sat in a new room. There was a bag
of literal earth catfood sitting on the counter, abandoned and
leaning against the wall. The large bag was closed with
a little plastic clip. It was some generic, cheap kind
of cat food that Donut would never touch. I am
so curious about this. I couldn't take my eyes off it,
and I had an overwhelming urge to try to steal it.
When he gets that kind of like instinctual reaction, I
trust it, and I am dying to know what the
deal is with this fucking cat food. I don't know
what to think. If the cat food itself is valuable,
if there's something in the bag that isn't catfood and
that's what he's like sensing, or if there's something hidden
in the cat food itself, or I don't know, but
I really want to know. I'm excited, Stockade. Our plan
was both simple and brilliant. Using the Warlord Chat, you
offered peace terms to Warlord's Carl and Dona. With those terms,
you requested a face to face parlay, and then you
extended an invite directly to Carl using your level fifteen
summon ally spell. You extended this invitation after Carl quaffed
the sleep potion and just as he was taking the
medicine to treat his demonic infestation. Since Carl was still
technically conscious, the request was delivered to his interface. You
knew that while most command and request inquiries are disabled
in certain unconscious states, properly delivered warlord inquiries remained persistent,
and we're getting like a replay of it as he's
explaining all of this. You knew that while Carl was incapacitated,
the plan for them was to allow Si Maria to
take over Carl's consciousness during the dream sequence. While in
that state, the entity would have no ability to control
Karl or inter with any of his systems, such as
casting spells, sending messages, or interacting with his inventory. However,
because of your brilliantly timed request, the entity controlling Carl
could and indeed did, accept invitation to parlay. Are we
agreed on those facts? So far? Agreed? Op The adjutant
for Madness said, this was supposed to be a game.
This is bullshit. We're fighting for our lives you're pretending
like nothing has happened. You're complicit in all of this.
Luke is gone. He was real, Like, it's just insane.
It's just insane how they can say right in front
of his fucking face, I don't think that you're real.
He's not talking about an NPC, he's talking about crawlers.
It's just you know, fuck. So let's see, the entity
is a special Reaper spider Minion merchant. You knew the
spider would jump at the ability to escape, which is
exactly what would have happened if things had gone as
you anticipated. So then we get an information from Mordecai
about what summon ally is. At its most basic, it
summons an ally, but it's not meant as an offensive spell.
It puts control in the hands of the summoned and
not the summoner. You have to be in each other's
chat systems warlord chatwork. Second, the summon the summoned is
given the choice to accept. Third, the summoned cannot be
teleported into a wall or anything like that. You were
teleported into the castle, but you appeared as a non
corporeal avatar. It was the system compensating for your unconscious state.
This is actually intended to stop people from using the
spell to remove friends from deadly situations, but in your case,
it saved you. You remained in that state until you
started to wake up. I thought I'd killed you. It
took some time to figure out what was going on.
They wanted to at best ruin your treatment. At worst,
they thought it would simply kill you or act like
teleporting and demon possessed shell. Remember what happened on the
last floor, they thought would happen here. They wanted to
kill us using that crazy spider, So he goes on.
Carl was teleported to the ballroom after she Maria accepted
the invite. However, they intended for him to fully teleport
to the location and leave she Maria at the base
for the princess posse. The spider would have slaughtered the
entire room. What happened instead was that Karl was only
partially teleported here, thwarting the plan. Let's say I'm trying
to jump ahead, guys, cause there's lots of like chit
chat across about it, but I'm trying to get to
like the basics of it. There was additional corruption in
the procedure when call Crawler's Katcha and Karl touched hands
during the start of the process. The consciousness jumping like
that is still a mystery, OPI said, it's fascinating and
it shouldn't have happened, and I'm really interested that there's
something we can use that for. I don't know what
it would be, but hmm interesting. Uh. This is when
he is watching the feed that they're scrolling through and
he realizes they actually have footage of the dream itself
and is really upset at the fact that they are
able to observe something that is so deeply personal. So
he and Katya are literally attached to one another as
they enter this building, and she sees a man walking
out of the hospital and says, what are you doing here?
Telling them the truth? The man said, pushing past her.
On the screen, the words came out garbled, but I
could hear it. I could hear the panic in Kotcha's voice.
His name was Fannar. He was a fellow professor and
they were originally going to adopt together. He'd slept with
a student and she'd reported him. Nothing had come of
it other than the ruination of Kotcha's life. Matt Denneman,
thank you for that. That's what happens, and anybody talking
about cancel culture is a joke. Bad things do not
happen to men who abuse women. It's just so incredibly
rare for there to be any actual consequence. The worst
that can happen has been, like, I'm boycotting things that
you're in or that you do. But they're not dropped
by networks, by publishers, they're not made to make restitution
in any way. And almost always the woman suffers the
brunt of the rage of the people online who like
the man, or friends that the man manages to mobilize
who are in power. And it is simply clockwork. And
you can point to a million examples of this, and
people will still say, why didn't she say anything? Why
didn't anybody report it? We have pages and pages from
the Epstein files, and tell me what has fucking happened?
What show me anything? Ebstein being dead is even up
for debate. There's a lot of theory that he was
smuggled out and his death was faked. Sure, why not
When you've got more money than God and this kind
of dirt, I have no doubt you could basically make
miracles happen. Sure you know, like this entire she reported him,
nothing happened except that it ruined her life. Is so correct.
I cannot overstate it enough. It's like a whole that
one sentence. It just kind of was a gut punch
because it's just in summary, always the end of the story,
that's always it. And we just love to act like
men are being persecuted, and it's like, nothing happens to you, though,
what do you even mean? Ugh, the scene jumped. I
can take a cat, I can take a test, Kotya
pleaded to the faceless woman. I haven't touched anything in
ten years. It was so long ago. It's not just
that you're sick and you've been hiding it. With Annie's
medical needs and with so little time left, we don't
feel he had no right, Katya shouted. She screamed the words,
and she swept everything off the woman's desk. He had
no right, she'd said in unison with the ghost on
the screen. The now version of Katya also had a
crow on her shoulder, her card that she'd brought from
the previous floor, a crow with the skull of an infant.
The crow's name was also Annie. I didn't know what
that meant, but it seemed important. This is like that
fucking pokemon that has his mom's skull on his head,
like this is devastating. What what fuck? We were in
a hospital room, Kitya standing at a crib, holding the
baby the best she could. It was difficult with all
the wires and diodes that attached to the nine month
old who just started standing on her own in the crib,
so trying to parse this. Kotya was sick with Annie's
medical needs and with so little time left. I had
assumed that meant that Annie was dying, but I'm wondering
if it's with so little time left before the adoption,
and that they're saying that Annie is going to be
too much for Katya to take care of because she
is about to start undergoing her own treatment. And Annie
is going to need somebody who is fully capable, alert
and healthy because she's going to just require intense care.
And they're basically saying, you're not going to be up
for it, and you should have told us. I think
that's what's happening. So she wasn't able to adopt this
baby because this dude threw her under the bus about
her drug use and about her illness, which is so
incredibly disgusting as a response to her outing him sleeping
with a student. Is it's just like it's just so
incredibly gross and like, look, I'm not even like trying
to take cotscious side about adopting a child when she's
hiding things like this. I really don't know what the
state is that she's in, but it just is it's
just such a completely different moral situation. You know. Sorry,
Michael says, did the AI use Annie's body to make
the crow? And I that like that did occur to
me if I recall correctly. Katscha is already finished with
her treatment. She had presumably gotten addicted to some painkillers
or something similar during her cancer treatment, but she had
eventually overcome them. Oh interesting, but they're saying you're sick
and you've been hiding it, so it seems like this
is still something she's dealing with. If she hasn't touched
a drug in ten years and the drugs came after
the treatment, saying you're sick doesn't really make sense. I
don't know, it doesn't matter in the end. It's just,
you know, the spider comes in and then PONSI her husband.
I just knew everything about him. Memories that were starting
to flow back into me diluted and washed away into
the stream. Worry not my children, the male spider had said.
As we watched, he transformed into a large, dark skinned
human wearing simple pants and a vest. His accent was
like that of Asahano's worry. Not only then did the
scene fade, returning me on the floor of the ballroom,
still translucent and flickering weird like I'm assuming he is.
You know, he handles her and trustes her up, but
I don't know if he has something to do with
like anything in Katcha's dream. So after some time, the
Shi Maria consciousness was also pulled into conscious dreamscape. Meanwhile,
the parties at both ends scrambled to find a way
to turn Carl's incapacitation to their advantage. Stockade plan on
casting a spell to force Carl to completely form on
your side, but you paused because you once again received
outside information about how the Princess Posse team was planning
to react. You once again needed to time your reaction
to just the correct moment. Meanwhile, members of the Crawler
team became aware of exactly what was happening, and they
formed a plan to defend Carl, and the caterpillar just yells,
so they're cheating. Also, they also have someone watching from
the outside, which is this Zood is not smart, Like
they could have figured out what was happening, not with
outside help, but with Doughnut having gotten the invitation as well,
they could have begun to put tune two together. I
feel now, is it possible they're getting outside help? Sure,
but I don't know who it would be. I have
to toss somehow, someone communicating with Rosetta. I don't know
how else this would really work. But yeah, So then
we get a message from Prepatente. I am near the
southern border with the Naga, surveying your defenses, and there
is a great amount of enemy movement. They are attempting
to be surreptitious, but Bianca and I are observing them
from high above, and essentially they're behaving like the ceasefire
is about to end any second, which is really weird
because that isn't true. What's going on. Let's see once
the festivities begin, I have a specific score to settle
with the lead producer of the Blood hunter program, and
after that is complete, only then will I come to
your aid and join in your military if you're still alive.
So chapter nineteen, as they are continuing to debate exactly
what happened, Victory is the one who she chimes in here. Finally,
when you tried to expel the Shi Maria presence, Stockade
was using an outside the dungeon partner to watch the procedure.
He timed it precisely because he's an idiot. It only
half worked, and the system split you into because you
were into places. Both sides then attempted to fully drag
you into their presence. But at this point Mordecai became
aware and knew he was being watched and formulated as subterfuge.
I'm going to pull him out, Mordecai said on the screen.
I'm going to use a shock wave salve, but I
got to adjust it to work on a non corporeal form,
and it says well Mordecai brewed this. Stockade prepared a
counter move to fully drag Karl into the ballroom. If
the spell and the salve were applied simultaneously, Karl would
have likely died, his soul being ripped in two they
can literally affect his soul. That's insane. But Mordecai, aware
that he was being illegally observed, was actually creating a
different potion, not a wake up salve, but something to
violently expel the she Maria presence. How would they know
if they weren't also observing us? Oh right, I forgot
about fucking juice Box. Obviously, if they weren't cheating, how
would they know, Paanford ask asked in Stockade, It's like,
oh my god, there's a fucking spy. And honestly, if
they had just figured it out, it would have been
amazing for him to be very paranoid that there's a spy,
and there may be wasn't. But we get information from
juice Box later that she has had to like kind
of out a couple people who were on the inside
by in order to save Carl, which worth it for sure,
But uh, you know, nobody wants to burn up assets.
I definitely understand that. Let see the scene change showing
Mordecai applying the salve to my translucent chest. I buckled
as if in pain. At the same time Stockade cackled
with laughter as he cast his spell. The cackling stopped
a few moments later, the split screen turned to a
full view of the ballroom, with me on the floor, convulsing,
fully corporeal, And then just like that, I turned. There
was no moment of transformation, There was a blink, and
then I was she Maria. I have always loved you.
She Maria roared, her voice muffled. Her jaws were still unhinged.
She was still in the midst of swallowing the human
version of her husband in the dream we'd watched devour
the man all all screaming that she loved him and
would never hurt him. That got me. This is the
thing that people don't understand someone so would never hurt
them they love them. If you think that love and
harm are mutually exclusive, you are out of your mind. Like,
what do you mean? Oh my god, I didn't kill
you a ponsi, Maria screamed, I would never kill you.
She skewered a goblin through the chest and picked him
up with her arm. She shrieked at the goblin, I
would never hurt him. How dare you? How dare you?
She ripped the goblin into yikes. Oh, she didn't look
nearly as trapped as a PONSI said still, I now
had control of the eye on my chest. I could
feel it there, clenched closed. In the dream, she'd returned
before before I had awakened. We left her in the
room with Annie, and he's telling Katcha, it's okay, it's
just a memory, it's not real, which I think is
likely true. But I can see the potential where maybe
he's wrong about something. I just don't know what. And
then we see the eye contact. She opens her eye
and the caterpillar makes eye contact, and the goblins do
and begin to kill one another or themselves, and then
suddenly she like falls and rolls onto her back. Blink,
there's Carl covered in blood. A silhouette of the spider remained,
made of the blood that had been coating her body,
and it fell over me like I had had a
bucket dumped on my head, which is a wild image.
Like I just picture like somehow managing to close an
umbrella so quickly that the water doesn't fall at the
same rate the umbrella closes, you know what I mean,
Like that kind of thing, Opie says. Another oddity, Mordechai's
potion only worked temporarily it should have permanently severed the bond,
but in the end the spider was pulled back into Carl,
which if it had permanently severed the bond, but Carl
did become corporeal, she would have killed him in that room,
So I don't I think Mordechai knew that and made
the potion less intense somehow, unless it was an accident,
but the screen disappeared with a flash. We believe stock
Hayden Houston both conspired to use the secured messaging system
to speak with someone upon the eighteenth floor who was
relaying real time info via a third party participating in
the celestial ascendency, and he says, we have identified the
party as nurse Yugoslav of the madness. I planted a
fake grin and turned to Architect Houston, your mom. Your
mom is here in the dungeon. I can't wait to
meet her. And later on he is very unhappy about
this little threat, Houston's presence here in the castle and
the possible collusion by a family member who is not
bound by any such rules as circumstantial evidence. Quite damning
circumstantial evidence, but I don't feel it's enough to officially
charge him unless you want to confess. Do you wish
to confess? Architect Houston, the masked creature made no moves
and said nothing, So Victory is like, yeah, well we
all know he's guilty, but he was clever about it.
There's no evidence, So I'm going to say not culpable.
Because the other two adjutants are in agreement, I do
not need to render a ruling. This minor quorum finds
the Madness and Princess Posse not guilty of wrongdoing. The
leader of the Democratic Soortion has admitted to has admitted
guilt to illegal information gathering Warlord Message. Sir Ferdinand of
Team Retribution has proposed an emergency action item because then
Alien cuts on the other floors of being little bitches
and cheating. We propose that nobody in the dungeon, including
those pricks partying it up in that centipedees asshole, be
allowed to watch any outside feeds for the remainder of
this little game, which I had thought was already like
part of the way this worked that you couldn't watch
outside feeds. I feel like there's something about this that's
like specific in a way that I'm not getting, so
feel free to help me out with that one. So meanwhile,
Stockade is getting worse and worse grieving for this guy Luke.
And it's sort of interesting because it's like the way
that she Maria was flipping out about somebody that she
allegedly cared about and hurt. I'm wondering if it was
like if it's affecting Stockade because of the emotional aspect
a little bit more. You know, I received a new
message directly in the warlord chat. If you ever mentioned
my mother out loud ever again, you and that animal
companion of yours will spend the last thousand years of
your existence upon the amplification table in my surgical theater.
This is a promise, Warlord Carl. I'll fuck off, Architect Houston.
You are in mortal danger at this very moment and
you don't even realize it. I do hope you escape
so we can extend our play. But gracious pet owners
accept the gifts their animals drop at their doorsteps, Warlord Carl,
What the fuck does that even mean? I don't know.
Gracious pet owners accept the gifts their animals drop at
their doorsteps. It's like she Maria his pet, is that
what he's saying that like she or is he calling
Stockade his pet? Maybe? I don't know. I don't know.
Let's see, I'm just trying to uh make sure that
I'm fitting in everything, because there's a whole, obviously big
moment that happens here. Stockade is continuing to beat his
head against the floor and nobody is actually able to
stop him from doing this, and because it's a quorum,
they can't let his guards in either. Let's see, if
we stay for much longer, we'll have to deal with
a new education Panford. Victory said, let's end this now.
Wait what happens when this is done? How do I
get back? Because the ceasefire is in effective because of
the nature of your transport, You'll be teleported back to
your base. Shit, okay, I said, quickly end it. And
I was like, hold on, why. What it is is
that we're we're Stockford able to Stockade. I'm conflating Panford
and Stockade. We're Stockade dead. Before they ended this, Carl
would be fucking stuck here. And he realizes this a
second before Victory realizes, and she's just like, yeah, yeah,
finish it, finish it, finish it. So he does there's
a pang and victory immediately. It's like I'm transporting Carl back,
teleporting in twenty seconds. Twenty seconds. It's quite a long time, actually,
when you're dealing with what they're about to deal with.
Stockade dies. System message, Commander's stockade of the Democratic Sortion
has fallen. Credit for the kill has been ruled as
a psychosic induced suicide. System message. The Democratic Sortion has
been defeated. As this defeat was voluntary, the closest ally
castle or roler to their headquarters will receive all their assets.
System message. All assets of the Limit Sortion have been
awarded to the Madness. There was a pause. I felt
a tingle of pre teleportation. System message. Due to ceasefire
Rule three sub Section six of the Ceasefire Addendum, the
voluntary withdrawal of a combatant squad has engaged. Accelerating acceleration
Scenario two. The ceasefire will be shortened by twenty three
point three three hours. System message. The ceasefire has ended.
System message. All unaffiliated crawlers have been teleported from Moroccos.
Warlord message Phase one combat rules have engaged. You may
freely enter enemy territory via designated corridors. No offensive magic
may be used during this first ramp up phase. No
combatants may cast teleport based spells across from me. Architect
Houston jumped to his feet and his robes flung back,
revealing a horrific bug like body in six arms, two
of which were holding a rifle, which he brought to
bear upon my chest. He fired as I dove out
of the way. I landed heavily against the counter. I
grabbed the bag of cat food just as I dropped
an impact hoblobber onto the ground. I love that he
prioritizes getting the cat food. It's just such an insane move.
But like I'm glad because I want to know what
the fuck? And he teleports to the Princess Posse camp
and like just barely, just barely, the fact that it's
twenty seconds. I can't help but wonder, did the AI
really stretch out all of those system messages to like
fill time before they were able to move, And that
way there was only like one chance for him to
try and shoot Carl before Carl got transported away. Like
I don't know, I don't know, but essentially what's made
clear Architect Houston set Stockade up knowing that this thing
wasn't going to work. I believe he knew that Carl
was going to wind up here and that this would
end the ceasefire. I believe that there was going to
be like something, unless it's just a like happenstance, because
I don't know how you guarantee. She Maria opens her
eye and that Stocky kills himself. But it feels to
me like he did somehow put this together. Otherwise, how
would he be so ready? You know what I'm saying? Anyway,
it's uh, I should have dropped a bigger bomb. I
thought I'd gone with my hot list. He'd plan this.
Either that or he'd known what was happening to stock
Kayden had compensated accordingly, which is certainly possible. What the fuck,
let's see what are you sitting around for? The lead one,
asked the slugglows. He was a level fifty five named
Jason Manning. Fucks. He had dreadlocks shaped like little mourning stars.
He waved his head back and forth. The tiny weapons
spun in a circle. Ain't you heard? We got a
war on Everyone is moving to one of the two
fronts now, quit your bleeding and get out there. The
slug whooped loudly and left the room, trailing orange slime
as his compatriots followed. A moment later, an explosion echoed
as a non magical rock detonated against our shield system.
Message weapons free weapons Free faction Wars have officially begun,
and that is the end of the chapter. Yeah, so
pretty dope, terrifying, really clever. I am always a fan
of when the villains are as clever as the good guys,
and the way that they shook out and the fact
that architect Houston understood the timing of it all and
was like figuring it out while Carl was as well.
I just it's like simultaneously I love it and I
hate it. You know, I want my villain to be
clever and not just powerful and able to influence absolutely everything,
but also like smart, But also I don't want them
to be smart. I hate this, you know what I'm saying.
So like the ramp up ending or starting early. Also
like I was already so anxious about how little time
we had to get so much done, and I am
assuming whatever like soldiers they weren't able to get from
the crawlers are now susceptible to conscription right, which fucking sucks.
I don't know if there's something that we can use
to count or that, if there's like a spell or
a potion or what. But like, uh, we just had
so many things that we wanted to finish before we
reached this stage that we are not going to get
to do now, and that as somebody who like really
takes comfort in plans, bums me out. So yeah, sorry,
Jeff says, this is all much too confusing. I feel
you on that, Jeff. I actually like mostly followed, but
I get what you're saying. Michael says, I didn't know
zomp was an actual color before. Apparently it is a
teal green color. Why did that come up? Michael? Zomp
was in the book with the train. I can't remember
the name now which one it was, but uh, all
the lines were named after colors, So yeah, we had
like found that out at during that book. Sarah m says,
I don't think it was. He knew as much as
he had plans for ever, every eventuality he could think
of might be. Yeah, I gotta say that. On each
subsequent read through, the Caterpillar's death gets a little harder
to read the caterpillar was screaming about Luke's zomp hued thighs. Okay,
I did not remember that, but it is funny that
they're referencing a color that I had never heard of
until these books, and then we're bringing it back up again,
like why not? Yeah, so I'm really worried. I'm very relieved.
The next session section is titled Christmas Morning, y'all? When
is he going to open the fucking Christmas present? When
is Zach? I want? Please? When are we gonna find
out what happened at Christmas? Is this? It? Is? This? It?
Because like we're in a different POV. We're not in
Carl's POV as I'm seeing with just the opening sentence.
So now I don't know, but we'll see anyway. Okay,
I gotta wrap up. Oh man, I pushed my third
recording to tomorrow because I had a migraine this morning
and I was sort of like I might be fine though,
and I'm finishing my second recording and I am drained.
Good thing I did it, I think, But yeah, thank
you guys so much for coming hanging out with me.
Definitely going to be reading the next section immediately. I'm
so curious and looking forward to coming back Thursday. So
until then, to Loo motherfuckers. That was an unspoiled network.