Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book seven This Inevitable ruin chapters
sixty nine Nice through seventy two. In these chapters, Mango
is in mortal danger for far longer than I personally
find acceptable. And I don't know he's okay. He's okay.
I keep telling myself he's okay, but I'm starting to wonder, like,
is he.
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 1: He really? Does Matt Deniman know he's off limits? Does he?
Speaker 2: Welcome to spoil Me, Welcome.
Speaker 1: To the show, everyone, I am Natasha. Thank you very
much to Michael for commissioning this episode. Ye'all, we have
got some revelations in these chapters that we don't get
fully explained, some in like when it comes to like
Lucia mar But I mean, I know all of that's important.
I should theorize about it, but like, I'm just so
distracted by Mongo. I really had a moment where I
sort of thought it might be possible for Matt Denneman
to kill Mongo. Now I don't like thinking it, I
don't even like saying it, but it's the sort of
thing that I think we can all agree, killing Donah
is absolutely off the table. Right, Like, as an author,
there are certain things that you can do that are shocking,
that are going to win you some credit and accolades
as being a ballsy writer who takes risks. But then
there are things that you can do that will alienate
people and make them set down the book and never
pick it up again. And killing Donuh would absolutely be
one of those things. I think that Mango would also
be on that list. I think because of exactly what
Carl says, which is this will be the thing that
breaks her. But honestly, I don't know, maybe that's going
to be the point. We don't have to kill a
character to destroy a character either, you know. So my
thought of like this will be the thing that breaks her,
I immediately think, Okay, well, then if she's broken, what
does she do? And like don'nut's gotten pretty powerful, she
could function it up, she really could, and she would
still be alive. She would still not be touched in
the forbidden manner of you can't kill this character or
we riot, but she wouldn't be the same ever again.
And that is something that's a really I don't want
to see it. I'll just say that it's I can't
imagine what would happen if she died with Carl. I
feel like, probably as much as everyone loves don't, a
certain priority is probably placed on keeping her alive for
the sake of keeping Carl from completely losing his shit
as well, you know. So anyway, I'm getting caught up
in this part of things.
Speaker 2: But it's just.
Speaker 1: There's also forever the question of is what I think
off limits actually a thing? I could be so off
base here with what Matt Dineman would consider out of
the question. I don't think, I am, I don't think.
I don't think. But this is also very much wishful thinking,
and I will definitely admit that. So Michael says, who
knew that the ugly, cute little chicken thing would have
become so lovable? Listen, anything that it becomes like a pet,
it's just going to be possible for it to be
lovable almost every time. There are exceptions, but like mostly
it doesn't even have to be that cute, and it
still manages it. I say this as my dog is
barking probably at an Amazon delivery driver right now. Oh boy. Anyway,
so let's back it up and start at the beginning.
Oh that's nice, I grumbled, seeing the report that the
lava abatement had been interrupted by the bear witness spell.
I'm not certain what the original plan had been to
stop the literal river of lava pouring into Loroccos, but
whatever it was, it hadn't worked. A slow moving glob
of molten rock was just about to enter Shantytown, headed
straight for the giant hole in the ground. I could
just hear Ellie right now bitching about how it had
been a bone headed plan. And by the end of
this section that is still moving. It's quite slow, so
slow that Doughnut is kind of like shocked by it.
I don't know if that's being influenced by anything that
they're not aware of, if like part of the plan
to stop it has at least slowed it, But it's
this weird sort of background threat that's just really slowly
inching along. So there are so many things that happen
so close together here that I'm going to really do
my best to try and get them in the right order.
It's there's just one thing will happen, and a spell
will be cast that will change that, but then another
spell will be cast that will like weaponize the first
spell and it's just all kind of I can't talk
about them out of order and it makes sense. But
you guys, I'm assuming have read the book if you're
listening to me talk about it, So if I fuck
it up, hopefully y'all will still be able to like
follow along with me. It appearedly Not had simply left
her her Synergy tower and no one knew where she was,
which we find out later that she is installing her
brother's eye, which I knew what that meant, but apparently
Carl doesn't like really stop to think about because when
he sees her and she's all fucked up, he's like,
holy shit. And I was like, yeah, dude, Like how
else did you think she was going to get to
install it? I think it's a combo of like not
wanting to waste a really valuable item, wanting to hold
onto something that was her brother's wanting to make use of,
you know, any advantage that we have. All of the above.
Donut and Ferdinand were going back and forth because Ferdinand
wasn't able to get back into the Desperado Club and
was now being chased through the city. Juice Box was
missing as well, who'd been deep in Loroccos at the
time of the attack, was also running for her life.
It still wasn't clear what exactly was chasing them. I
thought there had only been a handful of these war
Mage guys. The new rule set basically said it was
every team for themselves. If we won, all the NPCs
would die and vice versa. That was going to be
a huge problem, but for right now, we needed to
focus on getting those assholes out of the castle and
not to let Juice Box and Ferdinand die in the meantime.
According to the peeling phase rules, if Juice Box and
Ferdinand both fell, we wouldn't automatically lose. The war Mages
would still have to hold the castle for six hours,
but all the existing NPCs on Team Retribution would just
drop dead. And if that happened, there was no way
we'd get to that castle, which I think is probably
exactly true. I just don't see how we manage it
without them. I just don't. I don't see it. So
this is what I keep running up against mentally, is like,
how do we get around this rule? And I don't
know other than conscription, And I'm not sure if like,
the way that that works apparently doesn't seem to be
applicable if they are already, Like, you can conscript people
that are not on a team at all, from what
I understand, but you cannot conscript away people who have
pledged to a team already. I may be wrong about that,
and there may be ways around it. If there's ways
around it, we don't know about them. But that is
the only thing that I can think is to like
eventually manage to get everybody onto the one team, and
that I just don't know how you pull off. So
then we get the mention of zaragovs from Donut, and
when she mentions these immediately Mordecai is like, oh god,
those are generated, which means that the fucking warm mages
are behind it. They built a generator. You have to
find it and take it out. And it turns out
the generators are so hot, they're even hotter than the
lava that's coming at them. So she has to use
her sunglasses that detect heat to try and track it down,
which eventually she is able to pinpoint the spot, but
she is in a position such that she cannot make
a shot with the magic missile, and just blow the
thing up. It's it just you know, she does not
have the angle for it. And this is this is
something that later Carl just sads to do something about
the method. Effective perhaps certainly, but also alienating also perhaps. Yes,
let's see, hitting the towers all won't work. They're covered
in protections. If she tries, I think they'll activate on
their own early, which is correct. So they're holding off
on attacking the towers. We were going to have to scatter,
but if I could rally enough crawlers, we could come
back here and shortcut through the safe room to Lorocos
and assist there in the fight against the warm mages.
And then he looks at the time and realizes like, oh,
there is so not enough time for me to pull
all of this off, Like I don't know what I'm
gonna do now. This like shit, shit, we were in
fucking trouble. We have had Carl be worried before, but
there was something about this that felt different because he
is seeing way ahead of the fact the thing that
I just thought to do can't happen. There's no way.
First this in the moment as it's unfolding before you
being like, oh that didn't work, or oh, on the fly,
we have to switch to a new plan. There's something
about being this far out from your goal and already
being like, oh, that's there's no fucking way. So he
gets in touch with Victory and he's like, can you
tell me what the fuck is up with the warm
Ages because I don't understand how Agatha is in the mix.
I was told not to talk to her, and I
also would think that the warm Mages would be on
the side of the NPC, so why are they fighting them?
And she pops up and actually manages to keep up
with Carl, even though he has his crazy like speed
boosting on. Their motivations are unclear, even to me. They
clearly did not anticipate Agatha would be named as co
war lord and the other leader, Akuma, does not like her.
The system is going all in with them. They were
just assigned an adjutant, Dingboo, the Grixist who was the
Orc adjutant. He's the only one who would do it.
He's in Lorocos with the warm Ages right now, trying
to unravel what is going on. The castle is still submerged.
The warm Ages apparently can breathe underwater. Dang Boo cannot
and Carlos's way, Agatha is co war lord and she's like,
yet you can see it listed right now. It's the
same thing as with Juice Box, where she's an NPC
so she can't be given access, so he had to
give her. Ferdinand, same thing with a Kuma. He's you know,
from the Dungeon and not like he is an NPC.
I hesitate to say that because it's like, he definitely
is an NPC. But there's also something so different when
they are spontaneously born of reactions in the Dungeon versus
created characters that it's like they feel like completely different species,
you know what I'm saying. All we know is that
they're fighting against the NPCs and trying to kill all
of you as quickly as possible. And he this is
when he's it's like, what the fuck is up with
Agatha being chosen though, because I wasn't even supposed to
talk to her and that was like an order from
the actual Prime Minister. And this is when Donuts makes
the announcement that she's about to break up the ball
because it's close enough. Let's see, Donut's plan had kept
him from getting crushed to death, but this seemed hardly better.
The roar was like that of a crowd at a
football game or concert. Nobody inside the ball was in
the chat, so maybe they weren't truly conscious. Plus I
knew from experience that when these things broke apart, all
the individuals were mostly fine. Still, those screams were terrible
to hear, and this just made me think of Nope.
For those who have not watched it, it is a
horror movie by Jordan Peele, and there is a point
where there is something that's like passing by and you
can hear all this screaming coming out of it, and
it's just this very unnerving like moment. Not one of
his best, but pretty effective film, full of full of
weird surprises. So this is when Victory says, I know
this should probably be obvious, but what exactly is Donut's
plan right now? She hasn't told me. You're not going
to question her, No, I trust her. That was so heartwarming.
It's so heartwarming, and I actually think there's a lot
of things that wind up happening that are you know,
that serve to basically put a fly in the ointment
of her plan. So it does not work out the
way we want, but it does seem like it would
have worked had things not turned left the way they do.
So then we have the other adjutant for the dream
showing up FOPSI former Prime Minister. The creature said nothing
and scuttled off to the side. But the moment I
saw him, I had a sudden revelation that should have
been obvious. Epitome Tag had fled into the forest. He
was outside when the witness spell had been cast, meaning
the warlord for the dream was in the ball somewhere too, which,
oh boy. Interesting. So then we have two things that
just shoot up out of the darkness, and Donut is like, ah,
whatever that is, that's not me. But there are four
that came from inside Laracos, two moving toward Karl, one
moving toward Hypocrates, and another moving west. I think it's
heading toward where Louis is. Another light, this one burning
black and purple, shot across the darkness and intercepted the
two meteors it hit one, continued its momentum and hit
the second, which angled off. This was followed by what
looked like a magical explosion. In that moment, the sky
was lit. I saw that other third light was Bianca,
who appeared to have been injured in the blast. She
opened her mouth and what might have been a howl
if I could hear, pivoted in the night sky, and
then plummeted out of sight, leaving a streak of sizzling
purple smoke in the air. As Bianca crashed, the remaining
meteor that had been knocked off course did a loop
de loop and then slammed directly into the ball. I
couldn't tell what it was. Nothing seemed to happen. So
this is when Donut casts you are not done yet.
All the x's on the map started to blink, and
we get the announcement that she committed another atrocity. I
hope she isn't forced to cast a third says the AI.
So obviously that is going to be something. I don't
know if we knew that, but we do now. Victory
muttered something about the system wide message subsystem degrading. I'm
wondering if that is what the voice kind of going
back and forth between different versions of itself, because I
mentioned before that it's not actually noticeable in the text,
there's nothing to highlight it, but that the narrator is
definitely jumping back and forth a lot between a sort
of more impersonal sounding like Alexa style voice and the
very nasal edge lured AI voice, And I'm thinking that's
probably what it is. I don't know though, what that
means overall. Saying it's degrading almost makes it sound as
if it's just going to completely stop functioning. But that
might not be what she means. It may be that
the AI is trying to like gain control of it somehow.
I thought it already had, but maybe there's limitations there
that it can break. I don't know. And this is
when we get like the ripping of the flesh off everybody,
and Carl is just like revolted by the mere sound
of it and is going to himself. Well at least
I can't see it, Thank God for that. So they
all these like fleshers start to fly through the air
and land on the outside of the ball. You guys,
the fleshers flapped onto the ball and started crawling around
the outside, skittering like manta rays across the ocean floor.
I watched horrified as most of the dark shapes disappeared,
slipping their way inside the ball. Pushing themselves into the
crevices and cracks. They would be seeking those marked as enemies,
which would be the Dream Soldiers and those from the Reavers,
but those enemies were still invulnerable. What would happen? How
long would the fleshers last? I am so curious about this.
I really don't even have a theory, you know, I
don't know. So this is when Donut says, I'm gonna
start hitting the ball with missiles to break it apart,
and shortly they all tell her, like, don't do that
after all. But at the moment, we are, you know,
gearing up for this. The entire ball shuddered as the
fleshers continued to move around the surface. The sight of
them filled me with a deep primal revulsion. Primal, you say,
another magic hit the ball? At this rate, it was
going to take five minutes for him to kill the thing,
for her to kill the thing. We didn't have time.
So he was about to toss when something shoots out
of it and we just see this like woman and
she's screaming and like trying to crawl toward them. And
instantly my thought was like, this is the influencer, isn't it.
I bet this is her, and we eventually do get
confirmation from Victory once we're able to see her better
that she is. Her name is Namy. Let's see, I'm
trying to find it here it is. Carl asks Dona
if she casts laundry day, which once he says this,
I'm like, oh, that would make sense, but she says
that she didn't, so you know, at this point, I'm
still very certain that that's the influencer, and I'm like, well, then,
how could this possibly happen? She winds up getting jumped
by fleshers, which Carl, like dong asks should.
Speaker 2: We help her?
Speaker 1: And he says, no, wait until it kills her, and
then I'll take it out, which I really like the
fact that she evidently had herself made to look like, uh,
what's her face? I was sort of glad that he
wasn't gonna have to save her and see her as
a like I knew he likely wouldn't anyway, she's an enemy,
she's coming in here for fun, you know, but it
would have just added a weird element to the whole thing.
So yeah, she uh as as He's trying to figure
out while like watching her dissolve, what could have caused
her to like no longer be in the armor. He
realizes that there is a war mage in the ball.
That's what that meteor thing had been. Instead of a teleport,
they'd cast some long range jump spell. There had been two,
but Bianca had killed one and caused.
Speaker 2: Its head to explode.
Speaker 1: The thing had smacked into the ball and had what
managed to dig its way to Eris just to free her.
What was their purpose? There were two gods here and
two of the warm Ages had come. They'd also fired
toward the other two gods. So what were they doing?
And he realizes that they are trying it. It's like
a comminated because he's puzzling it out, and Victory and
FOPSI are standing here talking about what could possibly be
going on, and it seems like Victory and FOPSI are
understanding it sooner than Carl, but they don't explain to
him what it is. They just start theorizing that it
has to be a potion, because there's no way that
they warm Ages could have gotten the spell up high
enough this quickly. And FOPSI, who is like is somehow
able to find this app says they traded the gate
of the Pharaoh gods with a minion at the midnight
market in exchange for five of the potions. So there
are hell kissed potions here that can conscript gods. So
this fucking sucks. First of all, they traded away the
gate of the pharaoh gods. Now this is both good
news and bad news. One, it's of course bad news
because they got something super valuable, these fucking potions, and
it's bad news because our friends are even further away
from having it. However, it's good news because you can
simply go trade something super valuable to get it back. Now,
obviously the value of the thing would have to be
such the I can't even imagine what you would trade,
perhaps that thing that's in that crystal case that he
still has yet to you know, get the value of.
But at the very least, you like, it's possible that
they could simply hide it from you to in a
way that you could never find it. So potentially this
is like easier. You might not even have to fully
defeat them to get it. I don't know. I'm sure
that most folks would say killing them to get it
would be easier than finding an item to trade for it,
which is probably true. I don't know, depending on like
the urgency of it. Somebody could also just be willing
to like kill the storekeeper to take it back, you know,
I don't know. So they conscripted your reel, O. This
is like Samantha lets Carl know this. She had apparently
been going to use your Reela to rescue Louis, and
this is fucking up her plans. So she tells him
this without really seeming to know what a big deal
it is that she just described a god getting conscripted. Period.
If they managed to control one of the two gods
in there, especially Eiris, they could just end us all
with a swipe. I took a fine healing potion ball
and I tossed it into the battle formation with my chistera.
The potion arched through the air and disappeared As it
crashed against the wall of flesh. The giant thing commenced healing.
I started to slowly back away dong rend back to
the safe room. Now Lena chimes in here, and she says,
I was selling my brother's eye into myself. I also
managed to stop the maids from getting to Hyppocrates. I'm
not strong enough yet to stop the god on my own.
He paused because of the deflector towers, but he'll soon
push past them to Dona. I suggest you run. I
sent a private message to Lena telling her to grab
that potion off the corpse of the warm Age, but
to be careful with it. She didn't reply. Later on,
she does bring him the potion, but she is by
no means like she's never been friendly, so I should
note when she isn't friendly, it's not even really much
of a change from her overall personality. But she does
say something like I'm going to try and rescue everybody
from your chaos, and the way she says that to
me is giving I blame you. I don't necessarily think
that she is going to turn on Carl anytime soon,
because I think that she has enough dispassion to know
they all need to be working together here. But I
think if there comes a point where she thinks she
can survive without being part of the team, taking Carl
out would be on her list, and I am not
looking forward to that because her spells are scary as fuck, Like,
I do not want Carl to be on the receiving
end of any of that shit. It is up setting.
So let's see Carl says, I'm trying to keep our
friends safe for as long as possible. He's talking to Donut.
If the war Mages are trying to kill us, that
God is going to kill them on their behalf. New
plan keep the ball intact for as long as possible,
so set its direction and leave everyone who is free
of that ball. Listened to Rosetta's orders, get to Larroccos.
The two adjutants were completely ignoring me, and in a
rapid back and forth conversation, POPSI the Tripods guttled forward.
At first, I thought her motivations were curious, but I
do believe I understand them now in light of the
news that the AI is rapidly spreading an influence, I
suspect the residual in control of the war Mage team
isn't just trying to win Faction wars and zero out
the Crawlers. She's trying to stop the ascendency game as
soon as possible as well. And Victory says, but why
they're usually trying to talk the AI into joining their
religion or whatever they do. What's her purpose? Fopsi says,
It's unclear, but this season isn't normal. Once the ascendancy
is considered finished assuming there are no crawlers left. It
automatically triggers the systems shut down and hibernation sequence. That's
a hard coded limitation which allows elemental reclamation before it's
woken back up. Now that the AI is spreading, this
is a possible alternative to the failsafe. All of this
makes sense if the residual now believes the local AI
is a threat to the eulogist, which we've heard mention
of the eulogist. I don't think that we know what
the eulogist is.
Speaker 2: And the.
Speaker 1: Like the fact that the AI might be a threat
to the eulogist. I had thought the eulogist was like
a sort of figure of relig religion, you know. But
it seems like this is an actual being that can
be harmed somehow. Maybe another AI, maybe something else. Oh,
Saraphim says, we do know. It's the dormant AI that
runs the center systems. Okay. Michael says, I feel pretty
bad for Nammy. Actually, yeah, she was participating in something horrifying,
but it was a culturally accepted thing for her, and
I doubt she was doing anything actively horrible. Well, I
guess I only felt kind of bad for her. Sarahim says,
the very very slight to be fair on the influencer
is she was only here for Faction Wars, which has
almost nothing to do with the Crawlers or the Ascendancy,
not Faction Wars. Yeah, the one thing that I am
really like that keeps me from feeling as sorry for
her is the fact that she got plastic surgery to
fully look like a dead crawler, which is just like
so creepy to me. It's just really hard to sympathize
with somebody that doesn't see what like see that as
this fucked up thing to do when that person died
due to this game. I'm sure that it could be
reframed as like honoring heckless somehow, But you know, anyway,
Michael says, there's no way Leen now wouldn't have grabbed
the potion herself. Oh, I knew she'd grab it, but
the fact that she was going to give it to him,
Like I kind of wondered if she didn't answer him
because she was gonna take it and then just keep it,
you know what I'm saying. But yeah, I think that
she's just engaged in this now in a way that's like,
for the moment, this is what she needs to do.
Saraphim says, Lena has always had a kind of a
you are a fucking idiot vibe toward Carl from the
first moment they met, but she does also seem to
fully agree with him that they are in this together.
You know, I never got that you are a fucking idiot.
I got the sort of like bored of everybody vibe,
But I don't remember that from her. But I may
just not be remembering by the sound of it. Even
that is something common to do, part of the system,
trying to make sure the crawlers aren't seen as people.
Oh you mean, like getting the surgery. It's yeah, it's
normal to do, but I think it's gross and despicable,
so I will definitely judge her for it regardless. That's
the thing for me that's kind of like crossing the
line into yeah, I don't think I feel sorry for you.
So we get a flesher level one, which is described
as having used to be a human named Derek Riley.
Derek was already dead when the skin was removed, though
I suspect he would be happy to know all that
moisturizing while still alive as much appreciated by the monster.
His skin has become, which is something, It's really something.
So Carl takes off. We go into seventy. I burst
into the safe room. I had to wait for the
others to pile in behind me. And this is when
he comes across Mordecai reading Anne of Green Gables to Ruby,
and he has a sudden insight that this is like
the same thing as when Katcha held Annie, that she
knew that she was never going to see her again.
And that's the vibe coming off of Mordecai right now,
is that he thinks it's over and that Doughnut's gonna die,
and thus he will be done, and he will, you know,
be outside the dungeon shortly, and we get the repeat
of the quote, when big things happen on such a
large scale, it's easy to forget some time that these
big things are also happening to the little things in
the world. And yeah, it is a good line. So
let's say I'm trying to make sure because like there
are some there are things that I can mention, but
that don't feel so important right now in light of
how much time I have left, so I'm trying to
zero in on only what I feel is like, really
really relevant. I could see multiple heights on all the
lower rings of Loroccos despite the billowing smoke. The monsters
were all tall, strangely fat obsidian creatures. The tower next
to this one hummed ominously. I spared a quick glance
which held a countdown timer over it. City Defense Tower
number two, Red jeweled. This is an automatic tower. You
may not examine This tower's defenses. Fires a level five
fire lance at a target within range, and it has
been upgraded a bunch of times to fire ten times
a second, which is a bonkers Then he gets the
notification that he is in the presence of a deity Rpocrates,
and he gets the temporary pied Piper skillet level fifteen.
Donut tries to say it's fine, he can't see me.
I'm in a ghoolie suit, and Carl has to be like,
you are literally on the tallest tower in Moroccos and
you are firing magic missiles. Of course he can fucking
see you, which Rosette is like, yeah, Donut, I'm with
Karl on this one. You need to get the fuck out.
This is when donuts like uh Urillo is also coming,
And this is when Lenas chimes in. Hrpocrates hasn't entered
the shanty town because he's been stopped by a pair
of changelings in the form of ogre Basilica guards. It
appears the ogres with golden skin have the ability to
stop the gods from passing a threshold, and it also
appears gods are not willing to attack them. They are
standing firm. So that's very helpful because I kind of
thought that the ogres were imbued with a kind of
skill that would make it so that they could stop
the gods. But it seems like the fact that they
just look like these guards mean that the god is
not going to challenge them. If the god finds out
that they're changelings, I'm assuming that is going out the window.
But for right now, so we have the fucking dwarves,
the Samara dwarves getting shot by these freaking orange rays
that are coming from I think the towers. Another Samari
hacked at the mom oh No from a zorgoth. Sorry
sorry sorry, my bad shouted and pressed the attack, hacking
at the fallen creatures who disappeared in a burst of
black oil when they died. The oil, when exposed to fire,
seemed to burn but quickly. And this is when we
get the Zaragoth description, which I did find funny. I
decided to rename them Zaragoths because the name is much
more appropriate. It's the sort of name a weird, socially
stunted kid whose name is Stan Junior or some bullshit,
would bestow upon himself, all the while posting memes with
skulls and motorcycles and guns on the Internet, with phrases
like betray me and I'll become your worst nightmare and
yours in the spelt. The sort of kid who threatens
his mom and his friends are around, but still needs
a babysitter. He brags about how he's gonna get rich
because of crypto, but can't pass basic algebra. He's banned
on roadblocks. You get the idea. And I don't know why, guys,
but that he's banned on roadblocks. Like most of this,
I was just nodding along, like yep, that sounds right.
But when he says he's banned on roadblocks, I did
a little like out loud. While I was listening to
this one, and they basically are like, they're fairly simple
to take down, but they can't should not be underestimated,
and they smell really, really bad. So this is when
Donut says, if you're gonna make a movie, better hurry.
In two minutes that Lava is falling over the edge
and then wait, I think I can see the antenna thing,
but like I said, she can't shoot it. Carl is
telling her to get the fuck out of there, and
shortly we find out that she can't, that she's locked
into that nest by a spell. This is when Carl
comes across Juice Box, who is flipping out looking for Louis.
And this is when Carl realizes that she actually loves Louie,
which I can't remember if I had decided that or not.
I think I had. I think there was something about
her body language where I was like, I think this
is real, actually, but I wasn't sure. And it appears
now that she is. And you know, we knew that
Louis wasn't really feeling the same way about her based
on his behavior, but I'm wondering if that moment he
had of seeing himself with her that had him so
shaken up has done something to change that for him.
I'm not really sure why it would or how that
would happen, but I'm just wondering about it. Let's see,
he tries to get in contact with Louis and he
can't get a message back, but he does see that
he's still alive and he is listed as paralyzed and bound.
When he says somebody is trying to rescue him, juice
Box says it's not Samantha, is it? And he says uh,
And she sends a message immediately to Samantha, I have
a form that is a flesh man. So return my
husband to me in one piece, and I swear I
will make certain you have anybody you desire throwing a
hall past night with Louis and you have a deal, which, like,
can you imagine if she had just gone ahead with it,
he would have burned his dick off. Juice Box then says, interestingly,
I know who you are, who you really are. I
also know you've lost your mind and don't understand. I
will help you just get him back, and I will
do anything for you. So that's something I am very
very curious. It'd be crazy if she was Scolopendra. So
let's see. Then we get all the messages from the mercenaries.
Someone's trying to get in the tower. We are stopping her,
and Doughnut saying that she can't leave the tower. And
then it's a crawler, a woman with a dog. This
message is from a deceased mercenary. We need backup, backup.
This message is from a deceased crawler. Bomo will stop her. Now,
this message is from a deceased mercenary. And I know
that it's just editorializing on the part of the audiobook narrator,
but he says the line after Bomo with a lot
more heaviness, like, yeah, we like this guy. And I
really was sort of for a moment, I was like, wait,
but he's not really really dead, right, I don't think
he is, but I was still super sad. And then
later on we get the reminder from Carl that yeah,
he will be regenerated on I think the tenth floor.
I think he says this floor, or maybe just the
next one. I don't remember, but anyway, so this chapter
seventy one begins with Carl mentioning how he has been
acting on instinct so much to save his life and
the lives of the people around him, that he has
really kind of given himself up to it, and usually
it works out. But sometimes there are things he does
that have consequences that don't even register for him until
he has already done something that can't be taken back.
So this was how I found myself floating in mid
air above Lorocco's on my way up to save Donut,
mere seconds after I received the final messages from Toyo,
Tomi and Bomo. I didn't think I moved. I ran,
pushing past juice Box and the smrow dwarfs, punching his
Zaragov out of the way. As I reached the railing
hold the final levitation potion I had in my inventory
and drank it just as a dozen of arms, just
dozens of arms, reached for me. I shot straight up
in the air, pushing the dangerousest fuck spell to the limit.
The apex of the spell actually brought me up and
out of Loracos, but I was still stuck in the
middle of the funnel, with a good hundred meters from
me to the edge of shantytown. My original plan was
to carefully aim and then toss the massive payload waffle
maker bombs on the theater housing the generator. Instead, I
just took the entire contents of one of my inventory folders,
a folder titled shit Just Hit, and I dropped it
all at once in the general direction of the Piccadilly.
The payload included about twenty waffle makers, two not disassembles,
a pair of the anti personnel cheese cutters, approximately five
hundred impact hoblobbers, and more sticks of dynamite than I
can cowt. I dropped them all all at once and
then activated walk on air and made a mad dash
for the lip of the city, hoping my speed would
get me there before the skill would run out. You guys,
I'm real, real nervous about this. Like, he obviously fucks
things up for everybody, so that's its own issue. But
also he's like just used up his arsenal, like not
his whole thing, obviously, it's it's only one inventory folder.
I'm sure he's got other stuff, but it is a
huge amount that I don't know we can afford to
just be using up right now. It was right about
this moment that I realized my bone headed idea was
about to have some seriously negative consequences for everyone in
the area. Plus the walk on air skill runs out
and he just like winds up crashing and has to climb.
Your attack has activated the city defense system notification followed
by a ten second timer. I didn't care Donut was alone,
and I would do whatever it took to get to her,
whatever it took. So he's rushing over to her as
Donut is saying, Lucille is in the tower, She's coming
up the stairs, and he's just like, I know I
am coming, as he gets locked on by one of
the towers, which is using an eggs orble, and that
means it will keep shooting at him until it's destroyed
or he's destroyed. Delay her any way you can. She
can't teleport, so she has to go up the stairs.
We prepared for this. Remember Donkey Kong, do, donkey Kong.
I'm going to come up behind her. Don't stop rolling
the barrels when I get there, And later on we
actually hear Lucia yelling about stop throwing barrels, which that
being what donkey Kong is is funny. All the manned
Synergy towers had similar rules to the castles in that
there had to be a path to the main room,
but that didn't mean we couldn't make the path dangerous
as fuck. When Doughnut hit a switch and activated Donkey Kong,
the stairs disappeared, turning into a ramp. Barrels of various
types would start rolling down the hall. Across the way,
I finally caught sight of Hypocrates for the first time.
The deity towered over everything. He was slim, younger looking
than I expected, and other than the fact he was
a goddamned kaiju, he looked mostly like a regular human.
The god's entrance into town was blocked by a pair
of ogres. As I watched, the bad's attention moved away
from the ogres in the tower to the massive ball
of flesh barreling toward him, and he it's in touch
with everybody, and Mordecai is the one who responds about
finding a way out of the trapnet on the tower.
If Lucia cast it, I don't know if there's a
way to easily dispel it without a dispel magical snares,
scroll or spell. And then Britney chimes in, Holy shit,
Carl Juice Boxes pissed at you. You dropped the monsters
but activated the towers. We had to retreat back into
the college. I ignored this. I sent a message to
Lena demanding to know where she was. She didn't answer.
I bet she didn't. And like the thing with Lena
is that I am sure when it comes up, we
will find out that she could have completely fucked everybody
in order to try and save her brother, and she
didn't do it, but Carl did to try and save Donut.
And I am not saying that it means she's like
a better person, and but it does mean potentially, if
I'm right about that, that she is in certain ways
more trustworthy than Carl. And I'm wondering if this is
going to cause a rift regarding the faith that people
have in him.
Speaker 2: I fucking hope not.
Speaker 1: Man, So sorry, I just got to the part where
Donah is yelling the barrels are making her madder. I'm
glad we did the collapsible stairs. So this is when
Carl summons rent, which will get him out of Lacos
and will also potentially fuck up some towers. So he
does the Hio silver and he sends a note to Donah,
and then he runs into Ferdinand and he has to
like convinces Ferdinand that Donut wants him to still be alive,
at least by virtue of the fact that he is
a regular regular and not an NPC, and so she
values him as simply being somebody from the Before times,
which does seem to like help. He is clearly terrified,
and Carl mentions that he's skin and bone, so he
has been having a not great time. And also Carl
says that he cowered under my touch, which there's something
about that that I feel really sad about. He says,
Juice Box hates me. She's meaner than Bill. I didn't
know who Bill was, nor did I care at the moment,
And I'm assuming that this is somebody from the Before
times who was really shitty to Ferdinand. And I'm sort
of wondering now, like maybe Ferdinand is somebody that's salvagable.
Maybe he just had some really bad experiences, and if
we just, you know, like give him a chance to
be part of things, he could actually be helpful. He's
at the very least helpful here due to being so
frightened that it makes Carl feel braver by comparison, like
he is so frightened, but he's doing it anyway that
he's sort of like inspo, you know. Let's see, I
spared a quick sad glance for Toyotomi, Bomo and the
defending Mages, all of whom were cleaved right in half
with a spell. And this is when he meets up
with Lena. She gives him the potion. She gouged her
own eye and replaced it with lee jiun celestial quality eye.
She dropped the potion in front of me and I
had to dive to catch it with two hands. The large,
warm bottle was in the shape of a demonic head
with no eyes and multiple tentacles coming off. It really
horrible sounding thing. This works like a regular potion of conscription,
but it has been hell kissed. It will work against
pretty much any non affiliated entities, regardless of their protections,
including most deities most It was brewed in the dark
recesses of the Nothing by krak Karen Prime, who is
said to yearn for domination, which is why she'd been
banished there in the first place. She prepares for a
war she considers inevitable. There's an irony that the Indungeon
version of Kerkeren has supplied these potions to the warm ages.
Then again, now that this potion has found its way
to your hands, maybe it's not so ironic after all,
and she says, I used June's scroll of June's Scroll
of potion duplication on it. I am going to use
the original now on Hippocrates, and then I will save
zang Eli, Katchia and the others before they to fall
victim to your chaos. She turned and left. Wait. I called,
if the level of discrepancy is too high, it's dangerous
for you. The warm age blew up. She did not. Wait.
I have a feeling that she knows this, and that
her level is so high that it's probably going to
be okay for her. But maybe she also just doesn't
fucking care. I don't know, so stop doing that. Came
to Sea's voice. Give me your dinosaur and I will leave.
It's justice. I seek nothing more. Throwing barrels at Gus.
You're ruining my revenge. I cannot with that. You are
ruining my revenge is just delightful. What a funny fucking line.
Donut says. I hit her with the sleep potion barrel
and it didn't work. She's crawling upside down on the
ceiling of the stairwell, waiting for her dog, who keeps
sliding away from her. She has him on some sort
of invisible leash. She blocks explosion too, which the fact
that she's like on the ceiling is so creepy. It's
just very much, you know, it's giving exorcists a little bit. Uh.
She threw the dog, but Lucia got hit and she's
tumbling down. Watch out, Carl, And just a moment later
she appeared, and also Donut has summoned Raoul who getting
him back? What we get Travis Baldry's voice acting, and
he is clearly having such a good fucking time. You
dare challenge my master, You dare challenge Daddy Carl. The
heavens laugh at your temerity. Churl, oh, churl. That's a
fucking line that does not get used enough. Look at
Daddy Carl. You will cow tow or you will suffer
such a death that her ancestors will weep until the
very end of days. And he says something about kissing
his beautiful alabaster feet at some point I'm trying to
find the line, but yeah. He eventually snaps through her shield,
but Lucia is yelling like stop, please, I don't want
to play anymore, please, And she's like acting in such
a way that Carl does not, after all, want to
see her die. So he uses the conscription potion on her.
And here it is, now you shook his his famed
alabaster feet and beg for forgiveness. There it is, Oh God,
Raoul Donut needs help. Go Without another word, he scurried
away back up the ramp. So because she's conscripted, he
can give her orders and it works. So he tells
her that she has to undo rubber or any other
spell to hurt them, and then her face changes and
he thinks to himself, like, I knew it. She'd been
faking it. She'd been trying to fool me. It was
a trick. And I'm like, Carl, you know that's not it.
You know that's not true. You know fucking Florine has
told him already. There's just a lot of moments where
we know something, and Carl behaves as if he doesn't.
And this is not the first time that's happened, or
the first time that I'm like, you should know, even
if you don't, you should have put the pieces together here.
But eventually he puts on the ring of Divine Suffering
and is ready to fucking kill her, and he tells her,
you need to call your dog off, and she says,
do you think I have control over Gus that he
listens to me. You're kiddy and her dinosaur are dead
and they don't even know it yet. You are too
call him anyway, Gus, Gus, come, okay, good now, turn
off the net you have over the tower. I can't.
It was a scroll and it's not on the tower.
It's on donut. She's bound to the room she's in.
She'll she will explode if she tries to teleport, it
will run out soon. Harpocrates has been successfully conscripted. Harpocrates
level two hundred and fifty is now a member of
the Princess Posse, and Lena is still at full health.
So somehow she managed to do this fucking thing. Remarkable.
Let's see. This is when he smells the like childlike
perfume that she's wearing and he tells her, I don't
have any player killer skulls. I was really hoping i'd
never get one. But that's the thing with scars, we
rarely get to choose them. I still don't understand what's
going on with you? Floren thinks it's important to keep
you alive because there's something going on in the head
of yours, and he things a bunch of kids are
trapped in there. Maybe there are I don't know. I
don't understand. And this is when her demeanor changes back
and she says, my name is Dia. Lucia is with Alexandro,
and Alexandro is only here when the dogs are close.
My name is Diya. We are in the dark. You
need to wait until the dog is close, and Lucia
will be back. Wait until she is back, pleads, and
then he gets the notification you are in the presence
of another deity. She says something like, we are in
the dark, and it's so cold. Sometimes we can hear
them talk. We can hear them whispering. It's like there's
a river running through our room, and if we touch
it it hurts. They say such sad things. When the
dog wanders off, Lucia fades and one of us takes
over and we can see again. We take turns. Sometimes
it's day and we can see the light. So I
have no idea what the fuck is going on here,
But I'll tell you what kids, And this is so funny.
Michael in the chat says, it's a damn good thing
that Mark didn't finish for me. That's exactly what I
was gonna say when he marks her. I really like
my stomach dropped because I didn't want him to kill her,
and I also knew that it would affect his health,
and I was like, I don't think she's gonna die here.
So what happens to Carl? He is able to cancel it,
but I really didn't realize that there was going to
be time enough for him to do that, So I
thought he was about to be truly fucked, and I
am concerned about that in the future. I feel like
that's got to be something that winds up happening. So
this is when your relo shows up and the AI says,
the Scavenger's daughter fills with new power temporary effect from
your relo. Please wait, Oh shit, we hadn't fixed that one.
It's not exactly fair for either of you, a bit
anti climactic. Let me fix it real fast. I am
wondering what that was was. Were they both just gonna
drop dead? Like I don't know what would happen here?
So this is when Mango runs down the stairs with
the clockworks and she can't leave the room and Donah
is freaking the fuck out. Carl says to Lucia, I
want you to remove every stable magical item and artifact
and pile it on the floor. And wait here, I
don't know what that means. I don't know how to play.
I paused, surprised. The very fact she wasn't immediately complying
suggested she really didn't know what that meant. And if
she didn't know, yeah, yeah, this is a weird thing.
So this is when we have the horrible attack that
almost kills Mango, and you guys, I don't even really
want to talk about it. I just don't even want
to talk about it. Let's see, I'm trying to find
the bit because he Harpocrates has the Ball of People
in his hand and he's holding it by Mitus's dick
that was sticking out of it and is swinging it
like a flail, which is just really something. Her proprates
had under orders over his head, and he was ranked
legionnaire in the White Dragons. He was under the direct
control of Lena, who was having him fight the god
of Lust, who was a member of the war Mage team.
He too had under orders. Metus was still a free agent,
and it was unclear if the Chaos goddess Heiress, who
remained completely encased in the ball, had managed to get
recruited by the warm Mages or not. So we have
this whole fucking horrifying attack as Mongo gets like quilled
and it, guys, I just don't even want to talk
about it, I really do. I'm just gonna move on.
My shoulder was in the middle of my chest. I've
been folded in half, I cried in agony as I
rolled away, still in sight of the tower. Yeah, he
lunges a little bit too far to one side, and
the whole thing with like being hit by this ball
of air. I spun and landed, tumbling into the indentation
caused by the God's foot. So then he calls Rend
to him again. I watched, as if in slow motion,
as Ren started rolling toward me. He'd gotten bigger, much bigger.
I swear to God, rend.
Speaker 2: I, what a.
Speaker 1: Weird little guy, what a weird little creature. As he
was magically pulled in my direction, he activated the only
skill he had, wrecking ball, the special attack increased his
mass and speed, and it did exactly what the name implied.
The back half of Gustavo three, the second of Luciamar's
two Rottweiler's, exploded in a red mist as Rend rushed
right up to me, stopping inches from my face. Good boy,
I gasped at Rend. I downed a healing potion. What
Rend grunted as the tower's bolt slammed right into me,
right into him. He barely moved, but he did giggle.
That is crazy. I am wondering if he bites a flesher,
does that count as undad flesh? Would that hurt him?
I just really hope he doesn't. I really just don't.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: So we have Lucia crying, talking to Mango and pouring
a health potion on him, and she is saying, you
did it, you did it. But even as I watched,
something changed in the girl's posture. She stood to her
full height. A blast whip to write past her, missing
her head by inches, and she didn't flinch. You should
have killed us both when there was still a connection,
the girl said to me. Now it's too late. Now
that eulogist has another ally in the dungeon, and now,
you can't kill me, not unless you want all the
children of earth to die. She shook her head and
walked off. What what, how does what? I don't even
have a theory, guys, I do not. The only thing
that I can imagine is that it has something to
do with that orphanage in India, that there was something
going on there, and I don't know even like what
that could be. I really have no theories, and I'm
over time, so I do have to wrap. Yeah, this
whole thing with Lucia is so weird and I am
going to be on tenter hooks to find out. I
can't wait. I'm glad that Carl didn't kill her because
I really want to know what the fuck you know?
But her saying you should have killed us both when
there is still a connection, I don't understand that, because,
like I know that Dya is that her name. She
said something about like you need to kill them while
they're connected, and I thought she said like if the
dog were close enough, which I thought he was. I
thought that he was close enough that that all you know?
But I don't know, maybe not. I guess I don't
really get what even was supposed to happen there. All right,
I have to wrap. Thank you guys again for hanging
out with me. I appreciate you all very very much.
Thank you Michael for commissioning this episode. Having a lot
of fun, and until next time to the Loo, motherfuckers.
That was an unspoiled network podcast.