This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me covering Carl's Doomsday Scenario, the second book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, chapters twelve through fourteen. In these chapters, Mango gets even bigger, there is some interesting theories on what's going on with Donut, and there is a serial killer on the loose. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. If I sound weird,
it's I'm so sorry you guys about this. I thought I had enough time. I broke a tooth and it happened in February. Actually no, I lie, it happened last year. But they couldn't get me in for an appointment until June. And I know I should just find a different dentist, but it's one of those things. It's just such a hassle, you know. So I got it done today. It was the earliest they could get me in four pm. I was like, shit, I'm recording. Then I moved the four pm recording and I'm like, yeah, four.
O'clock appointment, five point thirty. I start.
The next one should be fine, and it's mostly fine. It's wearing off, it's wearing off, but it's still numb. And like I can hear that, I'm not fully in control of my faculties yet. I'm trying to make my mouth do the things that I want it to do, and mostly it's working, but it's uh, you're gonna hear it. And I am so sorry about that. But thank you for bearing with me. And hopefully in moving my mouth it will cause it to dissipate more quickly. Ah, you guys, Okay, okay, okay.
So chapter twelve we start with Carl at the very end of the last one was informed Doughnuts down to twenty percent health you have to get there now, and he is running through the city at and we get a notification Donuts cockroach skill just activated. She went down to zero, but it's kept her alive. She's now at five percent, you guys, twenty percent.
I'm not worried.
She dies once already. Okay, yeah, no, I don't like that at all. That cockroach ability is a really really good one, both in terms of just being practically good for the player using it, but also in terms of storytelling, letting us know bish would have been dead, you know, and just amping up the drama a little bit. So yeah, effective and ouch.
And the fact is.
He's heading there and like, we don't know what's going on, And this sort of bugged me that Mordecai is like telling him what's going on with donut to hurry, YadA YadA, but he he isn't actually giving Karl any information on what to expect when he gets there, or anything that maybe he should have activated as he runs through the door, you know, that kind of thing. I just really felt like he could have been more.
Informative and prepared him better. Now.
I don't know if that's something to do with the rules, but like, based on what everybody's been saying, it doesn't sound like that's an issue. So because like again, he's only supposed to be hands off when it comes to combat stuff, right, like what he can't fight mobs, But otherwise I feel like it seems it would be allowed for him to be like, so, these are the creatures, this is what they've been doing, this is what you're going to be, what weapons might.
Work best against them? I don't know, guys, is that not allowed?
Like I would be asking these questions also were I Carl.
And I don't know.
Maybe it's just from the drama of the book. Maybe it's supposed to be just like, well, I don't want to tell you what he's going to be running into. I want you to be on the edge of your seat waiting to find out what it is, and then he runs in. You get to find out because of drama, you know. And that's fine.
But I'm just.
Of the opinion that it makes sense in terms of the character Carl, that he would be asking the questions and that you should come up with something in universe that explains why you can't allow that, and that way, I feel like our guy is, you know, being rational and careful but also thwarted, and he would have done the thing if only he had been allowed to do the thing.
But these damn rules, you know what I mean.
I just personally, I think this is what Carl would have done if we weren't doing it for the drama. I think he would have been like, what's happening, what's going on.
It's not like.
Conversing in this way takes time for him. He can do it in his head, so it's not like he has to stop and type it out or focus on it and it slows him down or anything. It's basically a mental thing at this point, so it just wouldn't.
Slow him in any way anyway.
So he is coming in and there are a bunch of x's on the map as he's seeing and as he runs in, Oh, I'm sorry, guys, I bet a hah. It is so weird not being able to feel it. He runs in and Mango is there, and Mango is double the size that he had been had been, but his health is really really low, and he is defending Donut because he is a fucking g and Donut herself has a bunch of like spikes stuck in her as
well as Mango. He let's see, he stood on the ground before the pile of garbage I directed around Donut screeching in fury, and we find out these are street urchins and they are these like spiked guys that shoot spikes, which.
You guys.
I am reading Sunrise on the Reaping with Rashaan for the show that I do with a co host, and we just encountered in that book a vicious giant porcupine creature and it's just really funny to me, how often this happens when I'm covering stuff. One property will do a thing, and like literally in the same day of coverage, I will be talking about another property that's done something
really really similar. And I'm not even really trying to compare these too much, but it's just like shooting spikes and that being the method, and it being this animal and this sort of like gaming scenario. You know, it all just feels so very very similar. And I don't know why this is a thing. But when I'm saying this is not like a criticism of like, oh, these writers I'm talking about are so when original. That's not
what I'm saying at all. I'm just like reflecting on the coincidental nature of covering stuff sometimes and how it won't be uncanny. You know, there'll be two properties where we're dealing with twins turning up in a thing, you know, like these tropes that will crop up or things like this. This isn't even a trope. This is a very specific thing. It's just weird.
So these things used to be.
A pet and then after the cataclysm they are turned larger and deadlier and a whole lot spikier. After they cleaned the corpses of their former owners. They moved into the ruins and resumed their duties as the janitor mobs of the over city, the ruins version of a rumba. These things only have one purpose to remove dead bodies and any other refuse left behind by inconsiderate crawlers. They won't bother you if you don't bother them, but you
best not get in their way. They can be very, very tenacious when it comes to taking out the trash. And this is when Carl realizes I put a bunch of stuff up to protect Donut. I piled garbage to create a barrier around her to protect her. And that is what drew these fucking things here, and that is what is like the fact that Mango is defending her,
it has triggered this attack. Like if Mongo had just stepped aside and allowed these things to come in and clean up, maybe this whole thing wouldn't have turned into.
A battle at all.
Maco, of course, is not to blame, because I think if these things began to approach and it were Carl that was defending Donut, I think Carl would have had the precise and exact same reaction that mongo has. I don't think that this is like unless you are warned, ah out of time, what you need to be looking for. I would see these coming and I would assume that they're a mob and that they're you know, business is
to fuck with me. So I really like that this detail that they're not just attacking because they're hostile, malicious creatures.
They would have been.
Perfectly fine doing their business and getting the fuck out of their face.
But we did what we did, and so they do what they do.
And I love that just the fact that, like Mango is here fucking ten toes down standing on business. How many toes the velociraptor have six toes down? It's just what a good boy, What a good boy? I wonder all the time, you guys, if I were to be attacked, what Pippin would do in that scenario, because, like, let me tell you, I genuinely don't know he can. I have seen him fight before and it was really it's scary, but it was another dog and it was over nothing.
It was just territorial. It was not him like actually being helpful in any sense. So I think about that a lot, just like what would he I think he would want to protect me, but I don't know if he would catch Like, for example, as a woman, you know, you get this image in your head of like, oh, what if I'm taking a walk at dusk and a strange man comes to me, And I don't know if Pippin would be able to tell hey, stranger danger.
You need to worry about this guy, you know.
Anyway, I love Mango so much. What a precious angel, and I really want, like, I want Mango to get accessories as this continues, that he has to wear that make him like weirdly cute and just you know the version for velociraptors of like little doggie jackets.
And things like that.
Some dogs don't like when you dress them up. Pippin's pretty good with it. Arwin's actually been handling it somewhat well. We've had to put a onesie on her because she had been spade. We know that they put a collar on him and he tried to rip it off, but Doughnut calmed him down.
And now he's dealing with it, so maybe he could deal with like, look, I love this idea.
What if you had like a little backpack, like you know, veloci raptors don't have super long arms, so I feel like getting it on and off and wouldn't be too hard. Or you could even have like little clips or something, and then he could carry stuff.
That'd be good.
Or you know, we could also the obvious thing is a little saddle that Donut could ride on. I mean, if Donut was a riding mango. I don't know if it gets much better than that. There's no reason you can't do both. You could have a saddle with saddle bags. How about that, and then we've got the best of both.
Yeah. No's that's why wishless.
Okay, So this is carl like getting centered and figuring out what to do. I cleaned up the needles at my feet by picking them up and tossing them into my inventory. After that, the small round monsters lost interest and wandered back into the street, and he distracts the other ones by tossing stuff out scraps that they go chase in order to eat them up and clean up the area. Donnut remained to sleep in the chair, but
her health had been restored. Mongo lay on the ground whimpering, and Carlos trives a couple of things to heal him. And it doesn't work, and Mordecai is able to give him a recipe for a healing potion, a very detailed recipe that gets added to his crafting menu. Oh I'm sorry, guys, I keep accidentally like biting the inside him.
I'm dreading.
Once this really wears off feeling all the spots that I bit. He gets a couple of achievements, and then another one once he pours it down.
The gullet of mango.
And I've got to say the fact that Mongo like drinks it as readily as he does good on him. He really is trying to be cooperative. I uh to bring up my dog again. Poor Oarwin has been through a lot since we found her. She was poisoned when we found her. We had to put her through a whole thing. Then it turned out she had kind of advanced giardia and we had to give her not only pills, but this like paste that you squeeze down their throat with a syringe, and it's like it's a thick paste.
It's like cement texture. And when I tell you, this dog wanted none of it. And we had to sneak up on her when she was resting and just fucking ninja attack and shove it down her throat. And there was one time where she moved too quick and I squirted half of it like on the wall behind her, and I was so disgusted. Thankfully, the testing afterwards, it turns out I was worried for a second, was like she barely swallowed any is this gonna stay in her system?
And uh yeah, Jiardi is gone. But there's a lot with pets. It's a lot.
It's just a lot.
So Mango is now level ten and is up to Carl's waist and is covered in colorful feathers, which.
I am.
I feel like it was mentioned that they were that he was pink at one point, but I can't remember.
I feel like he mentioned to Flamingo something like that.
I really want to see an illustration of him, and I don't want to look because I know I'll get spoiled if you guys, if there is an illustration of him at around this stage, I would love to see it, but I can see that, like there's several more books already out and probably a lot of the anime. The illustrations, if people are doing fan art, might be when he is bigger.
If that's so, don't show me.
I'll you know, it might even include like spoilery stuff in terms of the gear they've got on or whatever. But I have to imagine le that this series has spawned some pretty dope fan art, and that is something that I think would be very fun to see. So this is when he's hanging out and thinking about all of the people that he used to know that are gone. All I had left in this world was right here this I thought, this is my family, and I just love this moment. So Dona awakens at dawn. She doesn't
know what the fuck happened. Mango, of course, is delighted to see her. She has risen to level fifteen at least, so she's gone up. He's still far ahead of her, but she's managed to level without even having been awake. So I think that's fair. Come on, I said, we're getting out of here. I am so confused, Donah said, did I do something? I don't remember anything, but I had the hoddest dream. Ferdinand came and visited me, and I ran to him, but he turned into a porcupine
and I kept getting his quills in me. It was quite unpleasant. Fucking Ferdinand, I really want this backstory very bad. I told Donut the story of the previous evening. As we quickly but cautiously set out for the Skyfowl settlement, she was oddly quiet about the whole thing. She still seemed out of sorts.
I am going to.
Make a guess here, because what he says a little bit later.
Is that he.
Thinks maybe Donut is smarter than she is behaving. We'll get to the full dialogue of it, but it's not dialogue, it's internal monologue. But the fact that she's super quiet about this, I think is due to the fact that he said, we don't risk our lives for our pets. And then what does he do. He goes and risks his life for her, and that's like explicitly what he did. You know she was being used against him, held hostage
so that he would complete this quest. And I think when he said we don't risk our lives for our pets, she was genuinely upset because she kind of wondered, does he actually see me that way?
Is that it am I just a pet?
And then gets confirmation that no, I am not just that, because here he is doing the.
Thing I kind of love this if I'm right.
If I'm right, I think I am. But I just I really really like the idea that this served to cement to her the reality of what she means to him, because otherwise she was like feeling a bit of a way about everything or just insecure, you know, which will happen. I feel like the word insecure often can be like kind of weaponized as an insult against somebody, and it's like, very literally it just means that you do not feel secure,
and that can mean a lot of things. And I feel Carl has proved himself again and again as like being there for her and prioritizing her, But it was never a very literal do this to save her. It was always like we're in this together, both fighting for.
Our lives as a pair.
And so I could see this being evidence in a specific way that I actually wonder if the AI didn't do this on purpose, Like is it possible that him saying we don't risk our lives for our pets, if there was like a response in the AI or even in the audience, and they all were like, oh really, do we not, Carl, and they decided that they would try out that theory and see how he behaves and be like, oh, what, what do you know? Maybe we fucking do actually, but yeah, I think that's what's going
on in her head here. So they go past the circus and he is like thinking about how mad he is that he didn't loot all of the bodies because he didn't kill the city boss.
And he eventually gets an achievement for running the fuck away. But uh, you know, you had.
Your companion on the verge of death, bro, I think you get a pass for not remembering to loot them. You were in a hurry, It's fine. Something new did emerge from the wreckage, a staircase to the fourth floor, right in the middle of the park. It had been hidden before. Usually these things appeared on my map, even if we couldn't get to them, like the one guarded by the ball of Swine. This one had not been
there before. I asked Mordecai about it, and he said many of the stairwells from now on would only become visible to us after we completed quests. This one had probably been there the whole time, right underneath Grimaldy.
Which makes sense.
You know, somebody that level guarding in a staircase, so.
You know.
He mentions that Signet has probably gone already and is down on the sixth floor.
Why didn't you just kill that boss?
And I ask, you still would have won a quest, and think of all the experience we would have gotten. It was a trap. If I'd killed it, we'd both be dead. Well, if I had been there, we would have done things differently. And then he says, be a messenger. This is a good thing. I didn't want to say out loud, but we have a new group looking out for us in that production studio needs to keep us alive. So because we help them out, we're good for ratings,
so they'll need us. And Donut says, until we get to the sixth floor and they have written out some story designed to get us killed or worse, realize more people are talking about you than about Signet. We're guest stars. It's dangerous to have guest stars more interesting than the main character. That's why they killed Barb on Stranger Things, which I do find that reference funny. Barb is one of those things, guys where I can't help but feel
that it's bad faith. Whenever people try and argue about how Barb should have stayed alive.
I feel like it.
Was just like Barb was just sort of an awkward looking character that seemed kind cared about her friend, and everybody decided that they were going to like rally behind her in a way that felt almost like low key making.
Fun of her in a way.
You know, it's like we're celebrating her, but like not really. There was a similar thing, and I can't remember the
guy's name. I think I feel like his first name was Ken, and I can't remember his last name, But there was a dude who like got a bunch of notoriety from a clip from a show that went viral, and he was a really weird looking like he was a fat, mustached guy with weird glasses, and everybody weirdly grew obsessed with him for like three days, you know, how these viral things happened, and it was all, again, we're celebrating him, but it was like you're just kind
of laughing at him, and I wish that you'd just be fucking.
Real about it, you know.
I just felt like that with Barb, that it was sort of we're pretending we're on her side, but it's like.
Weird.
There's like an undercurrent of bullying to it. So anyway, I don't think that that's why they killed Barb at all, but because like that was all filmed ahead of time, that's not how that works. But you know, he says, that does make sense. You're better with his television stuff than I am. When we get there, we'll need to think of every possible scenario. And then in all caps, guessing the plot lines of television shows is my superpower.
And it says the second she said that, I realized she hadn't posted the earlier, longer chat message in all caps.
And that was when I'm listening on the audiobook.
The narrator yells when she's doing all caps, and so when he suddenly yells, it did for me all so go. He didn't yell the other one though, So I liked it that I had the same moment with Carl of just like, huh, there was more to it, something that had been bothering me for a while. Doughnut made a lot of seemingly rash decisions and comments, yet they were almost always good decisions, even though they sometimes didn't look
like it at the time. And while I knew her intelligence being higher than mine, didn't really mean she was smarter than me. I'd been suspecting for a while now that so much of her camera facing self was an act designed to hide her true cunning nature from the world. The problem was now we were always camera facing. As outgoing as brash as she was, she was still new to this world, new to having real sapient thoughts. She was still coming into her own. The adult she would
become was in there somewhere, just starting to emerge. But Odette was write about her. She was still a child, and she held many childlike attitudes and beliefs. It'd be a long time before she fully emerged, sorry, fully matured, but it was clear if she did manage to grow up, she'd develop into a fiercely intelligent person. At the same time, she seemed to hold the belief that outward cleverness and quiet efficiency was something she needed to hide or worse, suppress.
Part of it was the nature of the beast, after all, we needed to be popular to survive. But I was starting to really worry about her development, and I had no idea how to talk to her about it without sounding like an ass. I had a quick memory of Bee's mom. It was just this past Thanksgiving, and we'd driven over to spend the weekend at her parents' house. I've been asleep on the couch, but I awakened to
hear Bee and her mom whispering. Bee's mom had said, you have to make them think you're dumber than you are. That's the only way to catch a good man. You can't control the ones who are smarter than you, and you don't want the dumb ones to know they're the dumb ones. Well, some man realizes he's superter than his mate. He gets mean, You're lucky to have found Carl. I just wish he was a doctor or a lawyer, and B replies, he's not complicated, that's for sure. It doesn't
take much to make him happy. He says what he means. He won't fight me, even if I try to fight. He's not a doctor, but he makes good money and he doesn't spend it on anything. Plus, I love him, Mom. I know I screw it up a lot, but I do love him. I really do. And it's such a weird thing because you guys, be it's just felt so much like she doesn't love him.
And her behavior.
Points to that she doesn't love him. But when she says this, I think she believes it. When she's saying this, I don't think that this is her lying. I think that she's not good at loving. I think that she's just a very selfish person. And honestly, in some ways I can relate to this.
I am not always like good at being.
Kind to the people that I care about, even though I know that they deserve it, and that I am sometimes snide or snotty in a way that's like not about them, but it still affects them, and it can be hard to like grapple with that. And her saying I know I screw it up a lot for me is very much translating as I cheat on him all the time. You know, it's just very much to me, like translates to that. But yeah, this this thought process that you can't let them know you're smart. This is
a very real tactic talk to women. It is something that my mother was very careful about, because she there was There's this point in the movie Stand in the Liver where one of the women, the girls really because she's a student, her mother tells her boys don't like it when you're too smart, and is trying to tell her like to not be too good at math and stuff. And my mom got so angry watching that and was just like saying to me, that is absolute bullshit. You'd be as smart as you need to be and be
yoursel YadA YadA. But she also did like kind of impress upon me sometimes you need to manipulate men into doing the thing and let them believe that it was their idea. Don't boss them because they get very resistant to being told what to do. Finesse them, drop hints, YadA YadA, you know. And it was the kind of advice that I know was well meaning, and I think in her scenario is very true, and I think for a lot of women that probably works. But I chose
partners that I didn't need to do that with. I saw when my mother gave me that advice. Yes, this is true for her because she married my father, who is a very controlling, traditional, misogynist gender roles kind of guy. So yeah, she probably does have to handle him this way. But I'm not going to do that with Marshall. I
didn't do that with Brendan. I married men who I knew appreciated that I was really smart and that we're willing to to the fact that I was better than them at things, you know, while they were better than me at other things. So this tactic, He goes on to say here, that attitude that we had to wear a mask even toward our family.
It was one I could never understand.
A lot of people, men and women thought like that, and I didn't get it. And now I was afraid Doughnut had inherited the same attitude directly from Be and her mom, and that we have to wear a mask even toward our family. The fact that he can't understand it is part of the thing that I really personally do relate to. But I also like I am someone who I am pretty much the same no matter who I am around. I will cut back on the swearing, for example, when I am with Marshall's family, but I
will still say the same comment. I'll just cut the swear out of it or replace it with something else. I don't change my personality up, you know. And I understand that we all wear different hats depending on who we're around to a degree, but mine don't change too much. It's more like I have the same hat and I just changed the hat band. You know what, I mean, however, I got pretty lucky in terms of my family and Marshall's family, and.
There are a lot of.
Folks out there who they were not safe being themselves and they needed masks to be safe, to be protected, to be accepted or taken care of. And so Carl feeling like I don't get it, I bet you don't get it. Like, as a woman, I have been lucky enough in my life to not really have felt in danger enough that I have to put on an act.
But I am very.
Well acquainted with the feeling of like, am I going to have to do that? This guy is giving me the willies a little bit? Like should I keep an eye on this situation? Should I pretend that I'm okay with flirting.
With him even though I do not like him, because he's going to get mad?
Like women, especially, we have more demand on us than men to be like pliable and accommodating, and we have to don a mask, especially historically, to keep ourselves safe. And people of color black people are going to understand this as well.
That's what code switching is.
You have to be a totally different version of yourself in the workplace than you get to be at home, and Carl, you're a white straight male, like you probably have managed a lot of your life to not have to do that because it's just not expected of you. And I've been lucky and I haven't had to do it too much. But it's you know, the fact that he doesn't get it. I want to just praise this overall personality for that, but I also feel like that's just privileged too, you know.
There there is some like a big part.
Of that is that as men, as white straight men, you often do get to be yourselves and it is simply taken and accepted in a way that many other people who fall outside those lines have not been allowed to do without there being repercussions for it of some kind. Whether or not it's dramatic repercussions, it's still sometimes just
uncomfortable enough that we're not going to do it, you know. Anyway, the fact that he's wondering about this with Donut and her saying like maybe thinking that she needs to pretend that she's dumber than Carl, I'm definitely going to be He be anigh on that, And there's something later on that I feel like points to a moment of her doing this, so then Zev checks in and she says, I have you both book for a new show the day after tomorrow called Danger Zone with Ripper Wanton. It's
a round table, a real round table. There will be other crawlers and a few other intergalactic celebrities, maybe a politician. The show covers a few different hot topics of the day.
It has an audience.
Participation segment too, people will call in and ask questions. This is uncensored, so be ready for anything. Carl asks about whether Vengeance of the Daughter is being produced by the Cuatine and she says no. Nobody in our system is allowed to run cereals while we run the game.
These are private groups. Who's the one we contracted with an entity called Sensation Entertainment Incorporated, And she says, I was dealing with a sac a race of people that are pretty common, but I can't tell you if you don't already know. So we'll be seeing some sex eventually. They keep Donut keeps using clockwork triplicate on Mango, so she gets that up to level three. He practices his speed fear spell. The problem was the spellman tended to make them run away, and if we didn't kill them.
We didn't get any experience.
To solve the issue.
Donut and I came with the first move of what I would call our playbook. I gave a name to each play, and as soon as it was called, we'd follow a set of predetermined reactions. While it was good to be adaptive and fluid, the flight, the fight with the mold Lion taught me that having a set of canned reactions to certain situations could be beneficial. Either of us were allowed to call plays, and once someone did,
we needed to follow the play without question. That way, we work together and know what each other were doing. The first one I called panic, I'd cast fear and Donut would hit it with a missile. It wasn't complicated, and it was pretty much what we would naturally what would naturally happen anyway, but it was a good start. We practiced that and I managed to raise Fear to level three, and Mango was level ten and was starting
to look scary as fuck. He still had a tendency to scream at the sight of monsters, but he was much better at not turning into a death chicken berserker. Until we unleashed him. He had a jump attack. That was just amazing. He could now leap twenty feet from a complete standstill. He'd fly through the air feet first, and his claws would disembowel an enemy before it even realized what was happening.
And I like that.
Eventually he talks about like, if we run into a pack of these things at some point, that's going to be really scary, and also that Mango is starting to become a little bit of an experience.
What do you call it? Oh, horder, I don't remember the word he uses.
This comes up later, hog, I think is the word he uses. But yeah, because he's so eager to fight, so he like runs up all the time and just attacks before they even get a chance. So he's the one just like leveling up, leveling up, which is very funny and it makes a lot of sense because he just doesn't get.
How this works. He just wants to fight because he enjoys the fight. He doesn't know.
About the leveling up thing. I don't think he's got that piece together. So they reached the town and there are a bunch of the type of creature that Mordecai used to be. The average man was about five and a half feet tall, and more oddly, they didn't have separate arms. They had wings with little finger bones protruding from the center joint. It appeared they mostly used their large talons as hands. Other NPCs, including humans and orcs, also wandered through the town. The town guards were the
same walking suits of armor. I pulled up the map, found the closest to Torio Guild, and we headed.
Straight for it.
As we walked, I caught sight of multiple crawlers. Most of them saw us and froze. A few waved and called out. And I like the fact that they are known by other crawlers now takes everything to a different level. I mean, they haven't run into that many crawlers to begin with, so I don't know how we'd even know. But this is just like you're a target now in a way that might be optimal for them to take you out potentially, So just watch out for that is
all I'm saying, Carl. Other NPCs, including humans and orcs, also wandered through the town. Oh wait, I already read that part. Sorry, Oh yeah, here it is. I was currently level eighteen, Doughnut was fifteen. Most of these guys hovered around ten to twelve and didn't have any stars by their names. I wondered how the hell they were still alive. And that's surprising to me as well that
they have managed to get this far. But you know, we also have all the guys from like the nursing home that didn't kill anybody.
Ever, So.
Doughnut starts pointing to this tower, and it's got a big sign a Desperado club member's only section plus public pub. I always wanted to go clubbing. She looked at Mongo. Do you want to go dancing with Mommy? Something tells me they won't let Mango in there, I said, as I pushed to the door and pushed at the door of the tutorial Guild. But yeah, this, uh, this moment, it's an I kind of like when these moments are timed.
By the writer.
As far as they're about to go into the guild, Carl takes a moment to stop and look around, and then it says, I had a sudden, inexplicable feeling of longing wash over me. I wished this was all over. It doesn't take much to make him happy, be it said to.
Her mom It was true.
I wondered what level we'd have to get to before they'd allow us to settle in a town like this, and I have to assume that doesn't happen.
Ever, I don't know.
It makes me think of like, you know, in the Hunger Games, for example, the victor they're given like a house to live in and a stipend of like extra food, and yeah, like they get all kinds of stuff.
But also something that doesn't get talked.
About very much is that they get used in a way that isn't seen by people outside of the capital. And the one that we most often think about with this, if we've read the book, is Phinic because he gets prostituted out, pimped out, and nobody knows about it. They ally, they know that he is a lothario that's out here hooking up with tons of people, but it is not framed as that this is being done to him and that he has no choice, which is the reality of
the situation. So, you know, I can't help but wonder, like, if you even were to win this game, what do they continue to do? They have so much power, they might just continue to fuck you, you know, I don't know. So Chapter thirteen, Oh my god, you guys I'm so sorry. I'm looking at this like I'm just getting the second of these three chapters, and I'm at forty six minutes.
I am out of control.
Okay. Mordecai is very excited because they settled in a medium town and he wants to do some shit.
And he has.
Found a potion that he can drink that keeps him from getting absolutely fucking flattened by alcohol. And he is also like talks about how good he is at alchemy that he studied fungus, YadA, YadA. It's all gone together very well. Odette made me spend a lot of time learning about that stuff. When we made it to that floor, the sixth floor is very thick with vegetation.
Huh, I said, don't it looked at me sharply.
The moment he said that she'd understood the significance of that last sentence the same moment I did. Neither of us said anything, And I'm assuming that what they mean is just that, like, Odette knows that he knows a lot, and that is why she told them to make him their manager, because that's gonna be key, I'm assuming.
So they start going through their gear.
And let's see, Oh yeah, there was an announcement with patch notes, and there is a collective bidding for sponsorships. A bunch of info here that I'm not going to go into in too much detail because I'm positive that later.
On it will be more relevant.
And I actually have to watch my time now. New achievement one quadrillion. You are one of the first ten crawlers to have achieved one quadrillion views. That means one of two things. You're either one of the best crawlers in the game, or you're such a hot mess people can't wait to see you fail. And he gets a gold fan box containing items voted voted for by those who follow your progress. Once a box is received, you may not open it for thirty hours while the fans vote for the contents.
Which Dona also gets.
And I have to assume that at least some of what she gets are going to be torches, because it's just funny now, and he's probably going to get something
foot related, nail polish. I have to assume they're just gonna fuck with them a little bit, but there probably is also gonna be good stuff in there, so he gets, Like I said, the achievement Yellow Belly chicken shit for running Johnny Quest for completing a quest, and then Haji, you've completed a quest but in a way unusual enough to trigger the Hadjie achievement, and your gold quest box has been upgraded to platinum for that, and then Donut
opens hers. She gets the upgrade, she gets fang caps, but because she's not really like a fighter fighter, Mordecai recommends putting them on Mango, which doesn't.
Actually go badly.
I kind of thought this was gonna be a whole thing, and so did Carl, but it's not difficult and he pops them on. Later we find out and it's gone perfectly well. But let's see, I'm trying to find the The teeth caps come in pairs, and your dinosaur can wear six pairs of these things. It's something unique to
his type. Skill potion gave her level three and something called acute ears, which didn't just improve her hearing, it increased the information that appeared on her minimp regarding not yet identified mobs.
Basically, if she.
Saw a red dot, it showed her how large it was, what type of mob if we had already run across it, and some with somewhat reliable accuracy the fang caps and let's see, increases melee bite damaged by fifty percent. Each bite attack has a twenty five percent chance to inflict level five poison. Each bite has a ten percent chance to inflict level five level five paralyzed.
Status, which is pretty dope.
They are understandably a little worried because Mango still sometimes nips at them, but they're gonna do what they're gonna do. And let's see, I've been expecting another lottery ticket in my lucky bastard box, but instead I received a single casino chip. Holy cow, Mordecai said, I've never even seen one of these before, and then he also gets a
scroll of upgrade. Now, this upgrades something that he is wearing, but he doesn't get to choose, and he thinks about taking everything off and then using it except for one item so that he can target it. But Mordecai says, yeah, you're not the first person to think of that, and it has not gone well in the past, so I wouldn't bother.
Also, there's been.
A mention that he was going to go and buy pants, and as soon as he said that, I was like, you are fucking not going to buy pants. Carl, I am sorry, baby cakes, but that ship that has sailed you are on floor three. You have had one quadrillion views pantsless.
You are the pantsless man. Now, that is it.
That's your brand, and that is a rep I am my condolences to you. That does not mean that you can't get something that mimics the protection of pants, but pants actual pant. No, not in the cards, not for you. So he uh gets the upgrade to his boxers plus two to constitution, where may cast a level fifteen protective shell once every thirty hours, plus five to dexterity, plus five to intelligence plus three more for a total of
plus five to constitution plus the free bawling benefit. Recipients of this benefit receive an additional one hundred damage bonus to all attacks that originate below the waist, which, considering he has many feet based attacks, incredible. In addition, all skills that originate from below the waist train twenty percent faster. But this means you can't wear pants, and Mordecai is like, you did this to yourself, right. You should not have
said out loud that you wanted pants and donut. Here here's the thing that I am going to call out as her being really smart and pretending not to be.
Oh, this is delicious, positively delicious. Don't worry, Carl. Maybe the next posse will contain leather chaps. You can still wear those.
Those would really frame out your feet. Can you imagine how sexy Carl would be in chaps? He says, God, damn it, donut. I personally was like, you, little genius, this is a brilliant solution.
Make the AI think.
It's humiliating him and doing a thing for its own gratification because of his feet, and actually it would be hugely fucking helpful.
Like I personally fully.
Believe this is a genius move. And she is doing her little ditzy routine here and that that is bullshit, And the fact that Carl didn't instantly go that is such a good idea. As much as I want to be like you idiot, how do you not see what a genius concept this is. His reaction of being annoyed is actually perfect because obviously the point of this is the funny quality of him not getting the thing that
he wants. So if he reacts negatively and behaves as if this is the last thing he needs, needs, or wants, then it's probably more likely to happen. I love it, and I am going to be on the lookout for him getting chaps and she will get full credit and he is going to realize the chaps are super useful and it's going to be great prediction, all right. Mordecai says, I didn't want to restain this out loud, but once your brand gets established, they start to shift the type.
Of gear you get, which you know.
We already knew this, and he says, like the upgrade squirrels don't usually they're not usually that good, which it makes sense it would be an extra good one because they know how much he wants pants, and they knew they were going to have to give him an offer he couldn't refuse. So then he brings out the poker chip one hundred thousand gold coin comp chip may not be sold or transferred. You may not redeem this chip
directly for gold. This chip must be played at the high Rollers roulette table or the Wheel four game at the Desperado Club casino good luck, and Mordecai says, it's not roulette like you know it, And I was like, oh, this is gonna be awful, Like is it gonna be like Russian roulette? God only fucking knows. So Chapter fourteen, The moment we stepped outside of Mordecai's guild room, I pulled up the town's map and looked for the smallest
pub I could find. Mango kept biting the air, getting the choppers on him and been easier than I expected. And he is able to make like sparks pop out of his mouth and he uses it. And the first time he did it, he pissed himself because he was so scared. But then once he gets used to it, he's like just doing it all the time.
I love this. His energy is so chaotic, it's great. So most of the shops are closed here.
They go up to the pub, the one eyed narm wall, but the logo was of a fat, bald human unzipping his pants, grinning ludely. Oh my god. Now Donut doesn't want to go to this one. She wants to go to the Hot Schnitzel.
I think it's that.
Yeah, the hot Schnitzel, which also sounds very lude. This place will be fine, And I wanted to get a reasoning from him about going to this place. Versus where she says he says something earlier about like how the city becomes a free for all and he wants to be settled before then. That's all fine, but I don't know why he would pick this place over the other one.
So let's see.
The pub had four rooms available, twenty gold each, much more expensive than the last place, but we had plenty to spare, and I still had no idea whether or not.
We were being ripped off.
The human proprietor is named Fits, and you know, bows to Dona, calling her your majesty, very excited, and they get two rooms, one for Mordecai as well. Let him have a drink. I'd thrown ten of my stat points into strength and two into constitution. My strength without the gauntlet was now thirty. I was literally as strong as six regular humans, and that had a way of messing with your mind. I grasped the edge of the thick
wooden table. I squeezed, and I felt the possibility there I could rip a hunk of wood off the edge if I wanted. I felt the potential of my power. The whole thing was just so surreal. I really liked this moment, this observation because it had occurred to me for a moment how it would feel to have some of these abilities on your downtime when you're not fighting mobs,
and what that would be like. So yeah, I just I liked this as just him chilling, you know, just lounging for a moment and being like, I could tear this thing apart. I could if I felt like it. Just the sort of thing that would run through your mind. So mongo is kind of bothering some people. There's an orc woman in particular that she just ignores. The recap show comes on. They each get some food. He gets a burger that he says that tastes suspiciously like it
came from Burger King. We get some recaps. A guy with an alligator head. Let's see. They also showed the goat lady. She'd entered the dungeon with fifteen goats and managed to keep them all alive for a while. Now it appeared she only had five left. She remained human, and she'd clearly chosen some sort of mage class. Three of the burly, brown and white goats remained unchanged, and he mentions that he actually worked on a small farm that had goats boer goats bread for meat, not dare.
The bucks were heavy fuckers, heavier than they looked. It had taken three of us to lift one of them. I also worked on a gold farm. It was only for one summer, but it was super fun, and there were about sixty goats and I milked them in the morning, and then in the afternoon I made cheese to sell at a farmer's market, and it was delightful. And her, having lost so many goats, I feel sorry for her. Sorry for your lost lady. I wonder if if they died in such a way that she could eat them afterward.
Probably depended. The other two remaining goats had changed and she, they guess, got enchanted pet biscuits, and some of them it worked out.
And some didn't.
One of them is in armor and on walking on two legs, so it's clear he's gotten something like what happened to Donut. It's not clear if it talks, but it definitely is like a fighter in.
The human ish way. I love. It wielded a double axe and occasionally screamed for no reason, which is very a very funny detail.
The last goat had transformed into a Satanic monstrosity straight from the depths of a nightmare. A hell spawn familiar, a horse size, multi breasted, pitch black goat monster that looked like it belonged on the cover of one of those nineteen eighties heavy metal album covers, one where if you played it back, where the world just would tell you to murder your grandma. A constant wave of steam
rose from it and its eyes glow red. We watched as the hell spawn charged at a group of hyena faced creatures and trampled them to death, and Mordecai is like, that is a badass pet. They're really powerful. They're one of them, like most top in the game. If she gets if she can keep it alive, it's going to get high level and it's going to grow wings and grow to the size of a dragon eventually.
I watched in awe as the show aired a quick fifteen second montage of Mango defending Donut.
And there's this moment here where Carl reflects on the fact that Mongo's show of enthusiasm it used to be him like bouncing and squeaking, but now it's a jump and a grunt, and it's got a real different sort of effect. It was cute before, but now it's very intimidating. I thought it was surprising that it's like we only
get let's see, I'm trying to go back here. She had five left, and I'm trying to get some talking about the goat lady because he says the two remaining goats had changed and there are three that like are just still regular goats.
I'm wondering if.
She fed them the biscuits, uh, because remember he was told by Mordecai that do it in a sheltered area so that if it doesn't go well, it.
Won't hurt you, you know. But let's see.
Oh yeah, so she got three and they show the third biscuit didn't go well for her or several of her goats. So maybe she didn't do it in a protected area. And that is part of what happened to some of her other goats. Is like, whatever she fed it caused it to go nuts and kill.
Some of the others.
That's a shame. We don't get details about that, and I do want to know what happened.
I'm curious. But so let's see.
Uh. While Doughnut still had more followers than me, my view count had caught up with hers. I wasn't sure which one of us had hit quadrillion first. I didn't know if she'd noticed this or not. I hope not.
And then Mordecai.
Starts talking about the themed floors. It's the equivalent of opening an entire theme park filled with rides and roller coasters without ever having tested a single one of them. The last season, the fourth floor was inside some living creature. They were walking around it in testines and it got an infection and the walls started caving in. That didn't play well with viewers, and they won't do it again.
None of that was intentional.
That was like an unexpected side effect these This is just like the idea that they would do this without testing It is so bonkers, but also feel so true because sometimes these big businesses and they do things that you're just like, who thought that was a good idea? So this there's a orc lady named Gum Gum tries to talk to them. I really need your help. No fuck off, Mordecais head. I did actually literally laugh out loud.
When I was listening to the audiobook, and he's like.
Look, Carl, I get it, but there are going to be people all over these pubs trying to get you to do quests, and we're not fucking doing anymore on this floor. Like he says, if you look on her mini map, there's probably a little star on top of her icon. There's not, it's just a white dot. Well, not all quests show up on the map.
Now we're all going to go to bed.
The fact that there isn't a star makes me think that maybe whatever's going on here isn't.
Actually like a quest from the game.
I'm wondering if this is a different thing. But he looks over and sees the orc woman start crying, just put her hands, her head in her hands and start crying, And I love this. At this point one might expect I waited for Mordecai to go to bed, and then I sneaked out of my room, went to Gumgum New York and asked her what she needed help with.
And as I was listening to this, I was like, that.
Is what I would expect. I fully expected that is that not what I'm getting. And then before he even quite reached the end of the sentence, I was like, No, yeah, that's still what I'm getting. I'm pretty sure and then he says one would be right, and I was like, aha, almost. I told Donah I needed to use the restroom, and I went back out there and Gum Gum is already gone. Mordecai is like, she left already. Dude, I get it,
but you can't save everybody. They're gonna be baiting you and they're going to try and play on your emotions to get you to join in situations that you don't need to be part of. I didn't respond. I returned to the room. Did you get the quest? Donut ask, Holy shit? Am I that predictable? Sometimes? And she went
to sleep. So Mordecai, next day, you guys need to shop and then we're gonna grind find a neighborhood boss to kill, and before dark we get back here and then we're gonna go to the Desperado Club, but you do not go without an escort.
I need to be there.
So they go into a shop and there is a skyfowl behind the counter named Edge Dancer level thirty. Mordecai is explaining about how these shops work. Always leave the negotiations to Donut. She'll get you the best prices and sell your stuff for the most. So let's see coconut twenty one goal. This is food. I think humans do something with it. They know, really, that's the tooltip that pops up, and it's done in the audiobook in a totally different voice than anything else. It is not the
same as the Ai voice. It's a different voice, which makes sense. As Mordecai explains, these descriptions are input by the shopkeepers, so they can't actually lie, but they can exaggerate what something is for. And if you keep your charisma high, you can usually get an accurate descriptor. But you're gonna have to push for it once you train it enough. Most items will give you a warning if the description is too overstated. And Edge Dancer chimes in,
you would know. Skyfall will never cheat our customers, and Morkai is like, uh, I was a Skyfall and I know for a fact that anybody without wings you are always trying to fuck over because you all are xenophobic as hell.
And I found that so funny. So they sell a bunch of stuff.
Of course, Dona is absolutely incredible with her negotiating, and this is when Carlo says to her, like I thought, I'm sorry, I think you had this planned out when you pick this class, and she's like, yeah, of course I did. I knew we'd be selling everything in this floor, so I picked that merchant class. Just be interested and call me princess and money bags for nothing. And he's like that was money pit because we spent way too much, and she's just like, well, the investment paid off. Think
of general stores like seven eleven's. They're convenience stores you buy as a last resort. They're fine to sell stuff to you because they'll take almost anything, but even with discounts, you'll pay three times as much for basics. So if you want potions, go to a potions store, and if
you want spells, go to a spells store. And sometimes guilds sell stuff too, so that is accurate to a lot of games as well, where if you go to like the main store, you're gonna pay out the ass for things, and then when you try and sell that exact same thing back to them, it's worth literally a fifth what you paid, or it's very annoying. They get a magical pet carrier, which is essentially a poke ball, as we have heard mentioned before, and Mango like it
makes him sleep because now that he's gotten bigger. He feels like he has to guard them when they're sleeping, even though it's not necessary when they're in.
A protected room.
So he isn't sleeping, and that is making his stats go down because he's not getting any rest.
And I thought that was kind of an interesting detail, you know.
So let's see when Dona pulled it from her inventory, she could activate it and Mango would get zapped in there. He'd sleep and regain his strength while he was in the cube, and she would call. She could call him back with a press of a button. And he says later, you might get mounts that work in a similar fashion. And I didn't think about mounts as a separate thing. I was thinking that Mango would be a mount, which
he may also be. But so it's possible for both of them to be mounted, and for her to be on Longo's back and Carl to be on a horse.
Perhaps.
Plane mounts tend to have low life points and little to no personality. You can have as many as you want, but they're expensive and you have to feed them. Mounts don't level or grow stronger, so the next few hours they go and grind, kicking and killing things the neighborhood boss fight could have gone south pretty quickly, but her ears skill is very helpful, and they are able to
have mango like the clockwork thing. One of them grabs dynamite and heads into it and it really works quite well, and they're like, Okay, this is going in our playbook for sure. And then they see he says, I spied a single white dot of an NPC in a large group of x's on the map one block over, and as they get toward it, it smells really bad. And they get the announcement from the AI.
Pile of dead hookers.
And they all look like they've been picked up and twisted, and of course the way this looks, the assumption is that this orc woman did it, but it becomes clear quickly that she is collecting their bodies, and she's asked was asking for their help because she is trying to find what is doing this.
She's like, we.
Don't know who these women are, what is killing them, but they're not from this town. And we find them in alleys and their blood is removed from their bodies, but not.
All the blood.
We pile them up and the street urchins take care of them. But We find new ones every day, sometimes just one or two, but sometimes, like last night, it's a lot. The skyfowl don't care as long as we move the bodies out.
The guards don't work at night.
But these were people and they're just dead and I don't know. Why can you help me? New quest the sex workers who fell from the heavens and if they solve this they get a silver quest box, which Donut is indignant that it does not gold, And of course Carl tries to be like, I'll think it over, but.
He's helping.
Come now, we're not fools. We know where this is going. So all right, guys, I'm gonna wrap. Almost able to talk normally now. I'm fucking thirteen minutes over time.
That's my fault.
I am very excited to keep reading. I hope you guys are enjoying the coverage. And until next time, to Loo motherfuckers. That was an Unspoiled Network podcast