Carl's Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 23-Epilogue

Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. Michael isn't in the chat yet, but hopefully he will be able to join us. And today there is Sarah, fem and Henry are in here with me. So lovely to see you all. I'm actually gonna turn this light off because i feel a little bit over over lit these chapters, so I'm gonna have to kind of go quicker than normal through some of this because this is

actually a really long section. It's about an hour and a half of the audiobook, which is longer than usual. So then and there are it's there are a lot of things that I would like to stop and dig into a bit more. So it's possible that I may have to continue coverage of these chapters into the next section.

We'll have to see. But there is a like when we start off and have picked up just where we left off with Dona killing Burgundy with the magic missile, Carl is first of all thinking about how he needs to improve his skill at getting up and down, jumping or flying needs to be added to the list. So whenever that sort of thing is purposely mentioned, sometimes it's not really a major plot point. It's just something that

he's like tangentially focusing on as he levels up. But sometimes it becomes something, you know, So I've got my eye on that in terms of whether or not he is going to find an item, if the AI is going to explicitly help him, if there's going to be anything in particular that's like, you know, make this Achilles heel for him, I guess. And he sees that Quill's body is right underneath him and is wanting to loot her,

of course, but there is just no time. And then he has this thing sparkling, and he finds a glass case like for glasses, No, no, a glass case that has I think a beanie baby's in it right. The plush creature within was an armored man atop a black horse.

I ap peered at the tag which said Kimaris, I pulled it into my inventory, So, you guys, there is still a possibility that my thing that I was wondering, which is whether or not any of these beanie babies are actually beings that have been turned into beanie babies, might actually come true and be something. So I guess we'll see. I really was like, I was sort of thinking that if she, if it were missus Quill that did this or miss Quill apologies ma'am who did this,

that if she does, the enchantment would relent. But if it hasn't relented, it's possible that's just not how the spell works, or it's possible that it's nothing. So we'll see. And Dona is sort of like, I feel like we pretty much finished the quest. Why isn't it marks finished? And Carl is like, we needed to find out why this is happening, and we actually don't have the whole story.

So then they run into as they're making their way to the next location, the dude who is related to the woman they got the anklet that is the fallen oak inklet, the wooden jewelry that Doughnut hate so much. They run into a man related to her, and also the one who killed the divider, that huge thing that was in the swimming pool that Carl landed on at one point disgustingly. And this dude is in the shape of a tiger, and later on is sort of mentioning

that he regrets taking this form. His name is Daniel Bautista II. His class is Swashbuckler, which is lovely, and he was furry and orange, very furry, very orange. He had the head of a human big cat hybrid with the orange, white and black markings of a Siberian tiger. It's very much giving the creatures from Skyrim whose names I forget. And it turns out that he is the one who had the quest that got fucked up by Miss Quill being killed early, and he's actually really not

that upset about it. So that's good because I had said to you guys that I would be livid, and I really stand by it that I probably would. But like once we meet him, it becomes clear he has fucking bigger issues that he is distracted by and completing this quest is really like not super high on his list of concerns and things that are sort of consuming his spirit right now, which makes sense. He says that her apartment was filled with these beanie babies, over a

thousand of them, and that he took them all. I don't know, guys, these beanie babies. They may be something. It would be so cool if we can create like a little tiny army. Obviously it's not Karl that has them, it's him, but potentially still potentially still, you know. And he's asking all these roundabout questions, clearly wanting to know whether his family is still alive. And Carl has to

say that nobody is left. But they were able to kill the lemurs that were responsible, and he says, yeah, I was with them when this happened, and it was so fast, it was like seconds, and there were five of them. I was with my other cousin and we barely got away. There had only been three bodies, but I remembered thinking at the time there'd been enough blood for more. And he says my cousin died the next day. He'd given up. I had four brothers and sisters, fifteen cousins,

I don't know why I go on. I wish I hadn't chosen this body. I should have remained true to myself. We all die anyway. How can we make it to heaven if God doesn't recognize us? Which is just so sad, Like, you know, I'm not somebody who really believes that that

kind of thing matters, but what do I know? And it's devastating to think that maybe people who really do kind of feel that way or have that fear are walking around without even the comfort of like the afterlife being something that they can hold onto, or is potentially corrupted somehow. Also through all of this, and he says, I owe you a debt, call me if you need me,

and I will come. And he does a fist bump with Carl so that they can have the chat between each other, because that, like physical contact is how you enable that to happen. And Carl hesitates on doing the fist bump, which like I get on one level, but on the other level, I was sort of like, Carl, I really don't think you need to worry about this guy, Like why would you hold back on this at all?

And Donut is observing what you know? I have been kind of taking note of this whole time, which is the way that the game guides vary so much that it really has a massive influence over who winds up successful because of the advice that they are given. One of his sisters or cousins had that been that weird tree thing. It's like their God wanted them to look stupid, and Katchia's game guide won't help her. And remember that

floating brain thing that talked them into murdering people. I think most of these guides don't like their jobs very much, and they take it out on the crawlers, which is what afore it's really I really need everybody to stop pretending that we all start off life from the same place, because the quality of support that you have is critical, and it is impossible for us all to have the

same quality of support. It just doesn't happen. So then Carl starts talking about how nobody really has jobs that they like, and Donna asks him what it is that he would like to do, and he says that he would like to become a forest ranger and that he's like, you know, seen enough of the ocean, and that that sounds so peaceful and Donut says I'd write TV shows. Zev and I are going to start a television writing team and we're gonna make gossip Girl, but with an

intergalactic slant. Zev says, the shows on Earth are better than anything she's ever seen. We can make new ones and bring them to the universe. Maybe if the television shows are good enough, people wouldn't be so interested in watching real life people kill each other. So just knowing, like what both of them would prefer to do is just lovely. I really liked this little moment. You know.

It's the sort of thing that feels as impossible as it does in real life, where you know, whenever somebody asks you, like, what would you do if you could do anything, most of us it's just simply a pipe dream. It's not going to happen, whether we like to admit it or not. We don't all have the opportunities to

do certain things. But I like to think that perhaps saying this out loud might mean something relevant about it comes up in the crawl somewhere, you know, Oh my god, Kaji, thank you guys in the chair for reminding me that's the name of the cat creatures in Skyrim, so they go to the swordsman depot, and it says I was more worried about the suits of armor than the lich.

If those guys ever woke up, we were fucked. Even though I was the town's magistrate, nobody seemed to acknowledge that fact, which I did think was kind of surprising that, like, even for official, like what's the word I want? For people who are like linked to the government, that it's not affecting them at least it would make sense to me if like the citizens didn't really recognize him, But I would expect for the accompanying. I can't think of

the word. You guys, what would you call this? Like branches? That's not really it, but what I'm saying, like, I would think that it would apply to them, and apparently not. So there would be a let's see the metallic body swirled with a yellow aura, all of it leading to a point in the ceiling. There would be a soul crystal up there. Someday. Mordecai said at night the guards

were in stasis mode and that they were invulnerable. I entertained the notion of locking them in their warehouse and just blowing them all to hell over and over till they died, which would result in an obscene amount of experience. But it looked as if that wasn't going to happen tonight, and I wish he hadn't even mentioned it, because I really love this idea. I would have loved to see that just a group that you can bet on for god knows how long and just rack up the points

like that's incredible. So he is preparing to set off this massive bomb, and there are all these people starting to gather around and watch their progress. As they are

setting this all up. Donut says that she doesn't like the plan, and we have a bit of a flashback sort of here where we have Mordecai explaining to them what lyches are and that the best way to handle them is use the fact that they are huge narcissists who want to share their plans against them somehow, and he does a come a conversation in chat where he says, since the earlier boss you met was a neighborhood boss, I think this is a borough boss, so even if

he's been weakened, you need to come to the fight prepared. Which once we meet this guy, it's just you know they got themselves all hyped up and prepared for nothing. Carl winds up giving Kachia the detonator and she is really uncomfortable with it, and she says, here, Hecla warned me that you were crazy, which later on he is told by Odette Hecla thinks that you're unbalanced and is wanting to take Dona for herself and probably kill you in order to get her. And I know that a

lot of you are going to be like Natasha. You thought she wanted to bang him. You were so wrong. She just was looking at him because he was crazy. And I stand by what I said, and I think she still wants to bang him. And I will not be taking questions at this time, so we'll get there eventually.

So we find out that it is a character named Remix, a bereft minion of miss Quill who has been brought back to life and he has basically been turned into this weird like middleman between life and death where he holds a bunch of power and then it gets leached off of him by miss Quill. But because now she's dead,

that's not going to happen. And I really I don't know if it's just that more power gets poured into him until he just like fractures or exactly what would happen to him and the whole Like I, So, let's see, there's a soul crystal here, which function very similar to

soul gems in Skyrim. It's very funny, guys, because, like I've mentioned before, how little I have, how a little experience I have in gaming, and that the only games that I've really played a lot are like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing, And now I've gotten some hours under my belt playing Stardi Valley, and I really didn't think that was going to come in handy

too much. But like, there is a lot of Skyrim references in this so far, and it may just be this particular level is like particularly Skyrim inspired, and so the next level it won't have as many references potentially, But it just did catch me off guard because I thought that there would be a lot of things that didn't feel familiar at all, and instead I keep going, oh, like Sky, Oh, like Skyrim. Oh, another thing like Skyrim.

So and maybe it's just something that's very easy to reference because it is super popular and you know, people are gonna get it. And I'm certain too that there's lots and lots of references to things that are not anything I've played, and they simply just go over my head because I am not familiar with them, so I would think of them as original ideas when maybe they're not.

But if you guys have anything like that, we run across while I'm covering stuff that you're like, oh, this is like such and such from you know, Soul Caliber or Final Fantasy or something I am interested to know, I would just want to, you know, just a little detail. I think that kind of adds a little flavor to things. I'm sorry. In the chat, Saraham says I didn't have a single thought of Heckla wanting him at the time,

but I totally see it. And Michael's here, Hey, Michael, our zoo says you can think someone's crazy while you also want to bang them. The two things are not mutually exclusive. A men are a zoo. Yes, indeedy that is fine, Michael says, God life would be my easier. I of knowing someone was potentially bad news removed all attraction. That's a word, Michael. Yeah, it's really annoying. I won't say that I'm potentially more attracted because somebody is bad

news exactly. It's not that because they are bad news. It's often like the type of bad news they are. Like if they're a dude who tends to get a little too agro about defending other people, I know that's not a great thing, but I also can't help but be like, this man is very protective and that is extremely attractive, which oftentimes turns into them being real controlling and like. It's not a good thing ultimately, but it can be easily mistaken for something that seems appealing, you know,

Seraphim says, I think it's more. Skyrim is such a major archetype of the genre that all sorts of things that are common to open world RPGs are easy to relate to it, which is fair, Rob sad. Skyrim is such a perfect milange of all its inspirations. It's one of the best games to give you a good example of modern gaming. Okay, okay, that makes sense. Actually, guys, are they doing a new Skyrim anytime soon? Because, like I going back, the story in Skyrim is not good.

Just to be frank, guys, it's just not a compelling story, but the actual aesthetic of the game is so incredibly gorgeous. I am very very frequently playing Skyrim Ambiance YouTube videos where it's just like the music from the game paired with scenes of the fall foliage in deer Haven or whatever the fuck the towns are. Like, can somebody just like make that game look a little bit more modern

and add a story that we care about. That'd be cool, because there's like Elden Ring, which is also gorgeous, but also littered with the most hideous creatures alive. Like they are so ugly. They've made the monsters so repellent that it's hard for me to call that game as beautiful as Skyrim, even though it is when you take just the like landscape or the different sets and you know, but then the monsters are just really hideous, So it's yeah.

And it's also just like I will never play aled In Ring because you can't pause, So just that's absolutely not going to have it for me. Michael says Fallout New Vegas might be worth looking into. I have my husband is obsessed with Fallout, and it's not for me. There's too much rusting technology in it. I like that classic like ruins of Celtic, you know, or churches and

whatnot in Skyrim. But and Rob says, I think reference why I was having an appreciation for dungeons and dragons is probably the other super helpful thing I have, like a general knowledge, not super deep. I've played it a few times. But okay, I gotta get back on track because I have so much to get through here. So guys, this creature, I feel so sorry for him. He says something at one point about the girls that are brought over, and he says, I could see it in their eyes.

Some of them were tenors like me. Don't be undead. They say, don't be undead. So what we're hearing is that literally every single person who made a deal to get out of the game at a certain floor, all of them advise waiting until the next floor because getting

out early isn't worth it. And I think that is also just a metaphor for how every time you think you're going to be somewhere safe and get a deal that works for you, it turns out not actually be true, and you were going to be sacrificing something of yourself

in a way that you could never have predicted. I'm still very curious about Mordecai's whole situation, you know, and this dude, it turns out that he has to tell the story of what happened to get him here, and that nobody has like allowed him to tell it before, but if he gets somebody to let him say it, he will be done with this assignment, which is he doesn't explicitly say that. He just says, all I had to do is tell the story and I would be done.

And that's how I'm taking it. I don't know if it's just like they know that everybody's going to kill this guy the moment that they meet him, and so they gave him an assignment that they knew was going to be particularly difficult for him to fulfill, and out of either spite or just because they want to hold on to him as long as they can, or if

there was something personal going on here or what. So he starts he's like really focused on telling this story but needing to stick to a script, and he talks about Featherfall not liking the guards and how he wanted more control over them. He asked me what must be done, and I said that they must. One must know what they are, how they are animated, how they came to be. Don't ask about that. That's not important. It's a tangent.

We have to avoid tangents. And I'm like dying because I believe you, like I do believe that he is trying really hard to stay on the thing. But also now I want to know Featherfall was short sighted. He had no ambition other than his power over this small town. Skyfowl ruled this world. Did you know that before that demon destroyed it all? I like to think of it as a metaphor. I'm say the primals. No, I can't. That's off script. Sorry, Sorry, this kind of storytelling continues.

I think the audiobook narrator really does a good job of somebody who's trying to piece their thoughts together as he's telling the story. Donut tells Carl our views are skyrocketing. Something's going on, and eventually we find out that this guy is like an old player that was quite famous, and so people are tuning in because their story is overlapping with somebody who's already notorious. And let's see, after

I passed, Featherfall approached my wife, miss Quill. But I don't know why they added the miss He asked her to help him cast the spell. Wait, so miss Quill knew you'd be ripped from death and turned into this And she was okay with that. Oh, yes, she's not really. No, I can't say that. I was assuming that this was going to be. She's not really my wife, Like we didn't actually like each other. We were made into a couple for the game, you know, like this is That's

what I'm assuming. She also knew Featherfall was making a grave error by casting the spell too close to the amplifier. The roof is the antenna. The soul crystal store is the power. She'd been planning it all along. I was damned the moment I became her husband, I was now a capacitor. She pretended as if the magistrate was still alive and took up the duties of running the settlement, and Mordecay tunes in and is like, you guys got to wrap this up because time's starting to run out.

And this is when he says about the women that she first he gets into. She tricked all of the elves by pretending to be an angel. She never liked getting her hands dirty, so she used avatars for intimidation corpse removal. My avatars one looked like my son, my boy lost in time, but they couldn't move from here, and I was wondering, here, is it his son really like his son before this game and that's what it looks like. Or is it his son in the story? Yeah?

Here it is. They were like me a tenor don't get undead? They told us, don't get undead, it's not worth it. Wait ignore that, Yeah, don't ignore that. Why did she bring the women? For two reasons? My wife had grand plans, but she needed help that couldn't be accomplished by the city elves. The crafts, who are easy to control, easy to make the act of generating them creates a powerful spike of soul power, adding to my energy. And since the materials come from out of town, no

one would notice she was collecting them. My position here allows me to leach off the souls flowing into the crystal. My wife knew this, but even she couldn't predict the sheer amount of energy. Your wife was building an army. She was granddaughter of the royal family, going to reclaim it all. And then what does that mean? She was preparing the final war. It's a three part spell, heirloom magic.

She has prepared something that will reclaim the Overcity for the Skyfowl, and so she needed the army to protect her while she cast it. That is correct, before, during, and after, and La Crosseu would be her lieutenants. But she had enough power. She'd already started. What would have happened if she'd completed the casting. Oh, it's a glorious spell. She'd done the first, was going to do the second tonight,

thousands of manipoints. Once completed, the beast she unleashed would sweep across the over City and slaughter all but those whose essence she had protected that she'd added to the spell, which is the Skyfowl and the chickadees and everyone else would perish. Which I just really want to remind you guys, this is a silver box level quest and this bitch was about to annihilate everybody on this floor. That's insanity. So this is marking them for completion with the quest.

And at first they're like, hey, we did it, and Remis didn't even have to die. And then he starts being like, well, guys, no offense. But this isn't over and new quest the fools who broke the glass. This is a group quest. All crawlers currently within the forty five square kilometer blast radius will receive this quest. A while back, a certain NPC started casting a very powerful spell, and when they are planned, they grow like trees. Shit is about to go down. You may have noticed every

sky foul and chickadae MPC has fallen. Ill. It's not your fault that you happen to be within the forty five kilometers. That's just the way it is. Sucks to be you. There's going to be an explosion. The epicenter is marked on your map. Every crowler within the designated blast area is fucked. This is an event quest. If you do not wish to participate in this quest, you will have sixty seconds from the end of this message

to get yourselves into a safe room. After that, all access to safe rooms within the quest zone will be shut off until the event quest is concluded. All NPCs who remain indoors safe room or not will remain safe. All mobs and neighborhood level boss monsters within the blast radio subjects of both physical and magical explosions will be killed. All participants who survive will receive a platinum Quest box.

The explosion is coming in seven minutes run. So this sucks, And of course what it eventually comes down to is Carl and Donut deciding we started this shit and we have a responsibility to find a way to undo it if we can, and Carl is realizing, like, either way this was going to happen, because they also had a

quest for Bautista to kill miss Quill. So it's like, even though it's our fault, it's happening now this way, This event would have happened either way, and that I hadn't thought of, and it really made me so mad. It's it just makes me so mad. So they get added to a group quest chat which is like eighty people and immediately are called fucking assholes, and we find out later that Doughnut blocked that guy, which is extremely

funny to me. Carl says, Mordecai, the sole gem is the epicenter, not remis if oh no, Mordecai is saying to Carl is saying to Mordecai, if I break the gem, will that canceled the explosion, And he's like, I don't think it might even cause it to trigger early. Let's see, I'm trying to find the spot. We should try to save the others. It's the right thing to do. This is Donut you returned. Welcome to the End of Days.

I pulled miss Quill's Beanie Baby from my inventory. Kimaris the stuffed horse riding soldier was the very top item when I sorted my current inventory. Forged in the Fires of Shiel, this mysterious fifteenth level of the World Dungeon. These protective, expensive artifacts are built and sold by traveling spider reaper minions. When you absolutely positively want to keep something safe, put it in this box. It will protect

against most, but not all, forms of abuse. Every time you open this case, there is a one point five percent chance you will be blasted with the shield fire spell. And he's thinking about how the system apparently got his attention on purpose on this case. It was not accidental that he found it. Everything is orchestrated, and that it is you know, able to draw his attention to things that are relevant, as playing any actual video game would do.

I held the case in my hands, approached the pulsing gem, closed the case around the floating gem, and tried to pull it into my inventory and it just says, yeah, nice try, asshole, and he's like, yeah, he hadn't really expected it to work, but he was hoping. And let's see, you always pretend like I'm the stubborn one. But once your mind is made up, Carl, it's impossible to change it. There's nothing to be sorry for. And Remix is saying, I'm coming son, any minute now, I'm coming. I missed

you so much. I'm coming, And I think that is his real, actual son, And I'm assuming he's talking about afterlife, you know, but I don't know, maybe not. And he and Donna have this moment of real like heart to heart because they believe, I'm sorry if you can hear my dog that they are going to die, and she says, Carl, I'm not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she's dead. I know I wrap myself around her. We've both closed our eyes and braced for the end.

I was which just so like saddened by this, y'all. It was so sad, like I love getting to hear for sure that she does know, because it just didn't like I believed her being in denial and I believed her leaning into a certain character. I'm wondering if she started off thinking that Bee was still alive, and then gradually as she grew and became more aware, she realized that b was probably dead, or if it was something that she knew right away. I don't know. Oh my god,

you guys, I'm sorry. I don't know why he brought her inside right now. So the case, which has fallen to the ground, there is light streaming from it. The explosion had been completely silent. Lance like rays burst from the glass, one of them streaming directly into Remix's chest, who is now on the floor screaming and convulsing. The case itself glowed red hot. Uh, my eyes focused on the status explosion imminent in the two seconds before I grabbed it. My fingers burned as I pulled it into

my inventory. And he is able to do so even though it burns his hands because the explosion has technically happened already. And here is where we get the title of the book. Newest item Carl's Doomsday scenario unstable custom, explosive effect and explosion large enough to rattle the teeth of a god. Yeah, that might be handy. What do

you think, guys, what do you think? Created by a man who murders babies and steals rare collectibles from his elders, this device is powerful enough to level an entire city in all the suburbs around it. It is created by combining a mass of the overloaded soul crystal and a shield glass reaper case warning this item can no longer be stabilized, which very interesting to see how that gets used. I hope that it's not too soon, because I feel

like it's handy for much later in the game. This is the thing, though, like if you play and you know what I'm talking about, where you hold onto the really good stuff and then by the end of the game you realize that you never used it because you kept thinking there was probably a tougher boss that you would need it for, and so duh, don't fall into that trap either, Carl. That's what I'm so I'm saying, And poor Remix is still convulsing, and we get another

update about how ay you're not dead. That's the good news. The bad news there's still an explosion coming, a bigger bang, but the area of effect will be similar what you just felt is called a precursor burst. The one you just felt temporarily removed the magical properties of all your equipped gear. This will culminate with a burst of pure wild magic, much more potent than the magically infused chemical explosion from which you guys were just spared. Less physical

damage to the environment, more face melting. I prefer this if we're being honest. Have you ever put a marshmallow in a microwave? Imagine your head as a marshmallow. It'll be kind of like that. You now have twenty minutes to save yourselves, which sounds worse, but they have more time, so you know that's something. And the emp like burst for Remix had deactivated all of the swordsman guards, causing the armor to fall to the ground like junk, which is very handy. He pulls a bunch of stuff into

his inventory. Of course, Remix is still on the second floor and starting to make this weird sound. Mordecai advises them to take off everything that they are wearing that is magical, and they have a back and forth argument over whether or not Donut should take off that crown, because if she does, it will be given to somebody else, which will make another person that she will potentially have

to kill once they get to the tenth floor. Eventually it's taken away the option by being accidentally destroyed while they flee, and I wonder if it is really accidental. I don't know, Guys, There's just something about this that kind of makes me feel like maybe they got a little bit of a helping hand there. It just feels really really convenient, and not in a I think the

storyteller is cheating kind of way. I think that maybe the AI is like attempting to give them a little bit of an assist And I don't know if that's anything. I don't know. So Carl, of course, because literally everything he's wearing is magical, has to strip totally naked, and once he starts like warning other people, they come across

and they're just like, hey, why are you nude? And when he is in the interview later and they have to watch the footage of him running barrassed, he can't help but just be like, oh God, this is embarrassing, which, yeah, yeah, you wouldn't feel that way. Plus Odette has to say something about like, oh, well, I guess it really was a snick because your dick is not nearly as big as it was in that little video, and I was like, rude. So they're fleeing, and let's say, I'm trying to find

the spot here. I'm not taking it off. That dude blew up Tonah. Are we sure it's there? One of them, a shark headed creature, called it's there. I can see it on my map already. They're looking for the entry to the next floor. Let's see. It disappeared before I could remove it. The second pulse had apparently activated all magical weapons. This third one had destroyed any still equipped armor. The fourth pulse ripped through the party just as we

pulled up to the small, decrepit building. Chaos tore through the group. A lightning bolt ripped through the party, glancing off a human who tumbled and hit the ground, almost dead. Another person simply teleported away. Kachia's whole body glowed and she leaped forward, clipping me in the process and throwing me down. She ran directly into the wall and blasted through it like the Kool Aid man. I bounced off the floor, crying out, Donut hissed and leaped away. I

felt my arm break in that moment. Kitchia slammed into me, but it was healed by the time I finished rolling, and he has been poisoned, but Donut has the immunity to that and he has his cloak. So for me and Dona, it was a healing potion and then a man of potion. We both ingested the second potion before the potion timer ended, inflicting us both with poison sickness. I knew Katya had an active spell called rush, something she could only do once a day, and that's what

had happened to her. So it takes a little while. It eventually passes and nobody has killed been killed, but there is that guy who was teleported away and they don't know what has happened to him. I love the dude that he helps like bring back to consciousness, who's like, hey, get your dick out of my face. So they all start to go down the stairs and he checks on Mordecai, who is safe, and he says, I'm going to sit here and twittle my thumbs for three days and you

guys won't notice a time difference. And he says all of the guards only have a single life point. It's too bad you're not here, because if you killed as many as you could get so much experience. Again, I wish you hadn't said it. It just makes me yearn not to worry, though, because they wind up getting a ton of experience. A little bit later, I thought of everyone we'd met on this floor. I thought of Signet, the half Naiad, the dwarf woman, quit, the possum face pharmacist,

the three of us turned toward the stairwell. So he gets to let's see it, says mind the gap. We had one hundred seconds left. Gotcha pull out that detonator. It has a ten second delay. Wait until the timer's about fifteen seconds and push it. Then we'll go in before it goes off. Why won't that make the bomb go off faster? Yes, but only by a couple seconds. If people aren't safe by now, they're already dead. I doubt it's going to work, since the detonators are magical,

they probably got ruined in that first burst. But if it I set the dynamite, I let Donuts smush a few of the detonator. If we get any experience for it, we share in the spoils. And I love Carl Donut saying to Carl, you probably should have put on your pants before we could go somewhere that you can't access your inventory, because we're going right onto Odette's show, aren't we.

Then we start with the epilogue, and the epilogue, we are on Odett's show and all of this is done, but they, because they were in this weird stasis, don't know what happened while they were out of the picture for a bit. All four of us, Me, Donut, Mango, and Kacia had gone through the door and immediately appeared in the green room. There was a slight, odd pop in my brain, similar to the one I'd experienced the first time I entered the dungeon. But that was it.

And Katya apparently has never been on one of these shows before, because she is taken aback by the fact that it's they are on a boat and is just sort of overwhelmed by the whole thing. She later on is not great with the interview part and just sort of does like single word answers and is clearly petrified. And also she has turned into a woman with black hair, mid thirties, pale with light, wide set eyes that sat at an odd angle in her face, and donuts like,

oh shit, you look great. You're getting really good at the sculpting thing. And then when Katya checks, she's like, oh, this is actually what I look like, which it would be really awful if Katchya was like unattractive and Doughnut was like, oh, honey, you really need to change up your face. And that turned out how to be. Katya's already looked like, I'm glad that we don't have any moment like that. I already had enough with the fact that Doughnut kept calling that goblin woman ugly with in

her hearing. So let's see, carl are you okay? I'll be fine, I said. I gave her head a quick pat. It was strange without her tiara, which, yeah, that's something that I wonder about because like in a game, when you put on all different types of armor and whatnot, depending on the viewpoint that you use, you don't necessarily like see yourself in the game. But I like to play from a third person perspective. If it's first person,

I get real motion sick. So I do tend to have like that view where you can see yourself a little bit. And it is odd if you've been playing a long time with particular items, and then you finally get a really good upgrade and you change it out and you're just like, oh, who is that? What is that weird thing on my shoulders? Oh right, that's the like epaulets of my new armor. Soh stye, oh right.

He has to make a loincloth for himself of toilet paper just to cover himself up because he's not being given anything to cover with, which is really I feel like we could have gotten a pair of shorts for

God's sake, I mean, Lord of Mercy. So Odette is like, what do you think happened after the detonator and Carl says, well, I was hoping there'd be an explosion and we get a bunch of XP but probably nothing happened, and the audience is acting really weird, and he's sort of realizing there's a lot of tension here, like what's going on?

Why is everybody behaving as if they're almost nervous? Something serious must have happened, And she says it should have been rendered inert, and if by chance it hadn't, that second burst should have set it off. But that didn't happen, No, it did not. The Burrent Corporation immediately filed an appeal against the AI's decision to rule the Detonator exempt from both of those blasts. Just before you came on today,

Borrant was overruled by a syndicate court. In addition, and even more importantly, the court ruled the achievements you received as a result are also just, and the rewards must be paid. But person to get rules. The host has allowed a single veto each season, and she's like, normally they save this for later floors because those are the things that are way more valuable and will cost them

more money. But it was quite serious this early in the game, and they've had to do it already, so you aren't going to get what you should have gotten, but everybody else got to see what you're rewards would have been. Donut is furious. Donut is like me, it's the presence. That's what we're here for, right We want our stuff. And so I am in full agreement with her. While the tragic controversial tale of Remix the Grand finally comes to an end, a new controversy has erupted in

Boring's Dungeon Crawler world. A last minute decision by a trio of trapped Crawlers ended in an unexpected result, a result with potentially disastrous real life consequences for Borent, and we get to see the warehouse exploding. All the guards tumbled to the ground. The view switches to the second floor to remis in the two seconds before that final explosion. The light disappeared. He cried out in pained just as

he was overwhelmed the blast from the dynamite. A controlled blast at the last second, which caused a mass soul crystal release from the fallen swordsman, greatly tempered the resulting wild magic explosion, causing it to be much less destructive than originally intended. In the end, thousands of NPCs and several dozen crawler lives were potentially saved by this action. And Adette is like, do you know how many celestial boxes have gone out over the history of the world

two thousand, one hundred and forty five. The record for a single crawler is for I got three. The most per season is eighteen, which was a long time ago. And the host company has to pay tax on every non sponsored box that's given out. They're given a handful of free celestial boxes, but anything over that there's a big tax on and each is more expensive than the last.

That's usually offset by a million other line items. But it has been two hundred and fifty cycles since the Blood Sultanate of the Naga ran the first crawl to actually lose money, and they are still recovering from it. They haven't run a season since then. They only have a place in Faction Wars because they purchased a permanent spot early on, So the game is supposed to be difficult. Legendary boxes are handed out like candy, but celestial ones

are an order of magnitude better. The prize in a single box can render an underperforming crawler almost immortal, practically unbeatable until they reach the tenth floor. If they capriciously hand them out, more crawlers will make it to the deeper levels and the showrunners can drag the season out

and earn much more money. So the syndicate place is a premium on them, and the AI normally chooses the prizes, but the writers who run the show are responsible for creating the circumstances, so we try to do that to keep it in balance. And Doughnuts like, it's just three boxes, why did they veto that? And Odet's like, let's go back to the news report, and we get to see one of these dudes, the one that was blocked from the chat, who has survived and getting a celestial box.

He gets, let's see new achievement, Bandit. You've completed a quest, but it was completed in a way unusual enough to trigger the Bandit achievement, Unlike the real Bandit, who is usually instrumental in helping Johnny Quest complete his tasks. You didn't actually do anything to receive this prize, but that's okay because you're still getting it. This is one of the rare achievements that can be rewarded more than once.

Nam quest box has been upgraded two times to a celestial box, and he gets this robe that makes him float and glow, and I'm like, I really hope that he feels that he owes Carl and Donut for this, because if he comes at them, I'm gonna feel a way about it. Then we get the rest of the newscast. An incredible total of eighty three celestial boxes were rewarded as a result of the Quest getting a rare double upgrade. Borrant immediately appealed, but not before that one box was opened,

thus putting Borrant on the hook for that one. The Syndicate court has convened an emergency session to determine if the beleaguered company will have to pay for the remaining eighty two boxes. If so, it is certain there will be no financial recovery for the once mighty Borrent system. And Donut, of course, is mostly focused on the fact that this guy got a Platin Celestial box and they

aren't getting one. They're veto negated all prizes. Nobody is receiving a loop box from that quest except that one crawler. And the same night they issued a patch that disabled both the Hodgie and Bandit upgrade achievements. And here Carl just starts laughing, and he says, it doesn't matter what we do, how hard we work, we keep getting screwed. Losing out sucks, but I've come to expect it. All

that matters is getting stronger, getting more experienced. We mess that up getting involved in quests, and we should be grinding. We're not going to make that mistake again. And I'm just like Carl, I don't know that you get any control over that, really, sweetie. I have no doubt even saying out loud that you're not going to fuck around with quests anymore is probably inviting you being put into

situations with more quests. I respect what he's saying and I understand, but I think that he is opening himself up here in a bad way. And Odette is like, you still actually got a bunch of XP. You didn't get the rewards, but you get credit and they get

to see their stats. Donut's gone up seven levels, He's gone up six levels, and Kachya has leaped twelve levels from nine to twenty one, which I'm particularly pleased for Kacya and Odette says, I have exclusive news the fourth floor will be opening up in less than an hour. But I've received a tentative draft of the leaderboard, and Carl is number six on the leaderboard, and Donut is seven, Lucy Amar is one, and Hecla is two, and later on Odette is like, y'all should be much higher up

on that list. If we're being real, they are definitely like cutting you off at the knees in order to keep you from getting some more support. I'm imagining like Born is going to be zeroed in on Carl at this time it's going to be a fight against the AI who the AI is programmed by somebody, so it's not necessarily that like, oh, he's tricked the AI into liking him. It feels like somebody is sabotaging the show and using the AI as a means to do it.

And I mean, I'm really curious because like, even if that's true, we're not necessarily going to be rooting for whoever is sabotaging the show, you know what I'm saying, Like the urge to side with whoever is trying to fuck things up for boring is very strong. But if it's anything like things are in the real world, every corporation is a monster and it doesn't matter which one's in charge, all are going to exploit you. And that's

just it. So of course Donah is super excited about the fact that they are going that they're in the top ten. She doesn't miss a chance to also call Lucy Mr Awful, which I'm like, girl, you just really want this beef, don't you. I Mean, she acts like she doesn't, but clearly she kind of does. And he recognizes some of the names, which I appreciated being reminded because I didn't remember them. Florin is a crocodile headed dude. Miriam was the goat lady if ETCHI he doesn't know.

Lee June is the Chinese guy from Maestro show that he'd helped saved, which was I'm very delighted to hear he's doing so well. And then Donah is like, oh my god, Missus mcgibbons at Lark Adult Care Community is on the list. She was only level thirteen, having started as a love and the fact that she is on this she is l mcgibb Frost Maiden Blizzard Mancer at number ten. Very interested. Blizzard answer is just an awesome

name too. So tomorrow we'll have an engineer from Boring on to discuss the ins and outs of this new exciting level. I don't know yet what it is, but rumor has it we'll see something that's never been attempted before, and we'll also have a pair of Crawler special guests. They're not on the top ten list, but these up and comers are quickly becoming new favorites. Here's a hint. They're twins. I don't know if we've been given a look at the twins before. It's ringing a very faint bell,

but I don't know if that's imaginary. I feel like we did get a mention of twins at one point, but honestly don't recall really, So let me get the few minutes with Odette speaking to them after the show, and she doesn't take off her mask and stuff because she has another show she's going to be on in a few minutes. But uh, I love when Donut asks you just watch Mordecai all day, and she says, yes, I do as much as I can. Be careful with

that gauntlet. It has the power to summon the war god Groll if you use it against any of his celebrants, and they'll start appearing on this floor. King Rust has spent a lot of money on a deity sponsorship. The Skull Empire doesn't usually purchase those, so it might be an attempt to get at you. And let's see, Katcha, can you follow me? I need to show you the

return procedures. Donut, you can assist if you'd like. So they take off and it's just him left with Odette, and this is when she tells him about Hekla, and she is very practical as she puts it and cunning and doesn't have your sense of justice. She's become obsessed with the idea of getting Donut to join her gang, and he says, she seems great, but I don't think we'd work well together. And I was like, Carl, Hatch up, bro, she doesn't need you. It's about taking Donut from you

and you having no choice in it. Like, it's just so almost frustrating how innocent he is about this when she proposes it, I immediately understood what she was saying is that Hekla is going to try to kill you, but it takes him so long for her to bring him around to seeing that's what she's saying. I don't believe Katch is in on it and she likes you, I can tell. And she explains, I bought your rights for interviews for the entire season super cheap, like for

less than what it costs for one interview with you. Now, if you die and Doughnut joins Brunehild's daughters, my contract is avoided and you're like my highest rated guests, so I really want you to stay alive because I could get big money when you guys come onto my show and then He asks about the numbers on the leaderboard and how much like what they signify, and she says, that's just how much money the other crawlers get if they kill you, and she says it in this like,

don't worry about it kind of way, and I was just like, how are you acting as if that's nothing? Like I didn't know that there was a bounty, that this was even a thing. Was anybody gonna tell them? Who knew about this? I don't like the fact that Mordecai ever mentions it either is sort of wild to me. I do not get why this has never come up. And you know, of course, it's going to depend on the crawler, whether or not they particularly are the type

to take advantage of that sort of opportunity. I as a crawler would not be like, oh, here's that guy is bounty so much, I'm going to try and kill him. I would be like, one, I'm certain I can't take that person, but two, I don't want to kill another human being. That's not what I like how I want

to live through this game. But then you've got people out there like Frank and Maggie, and if they are able to set something up to take somebody down, set a trap you know who knows, and I'm assuming that it would also result in the bounty being split amongst everybody who participated in the trap. So maybe it becomes you need enough people for somebody super powerful that the bounty doesn't wind up being really worth it. But I don't know that combined with XP might tempt some people.

So oh, I'm sorry, I'm just seeing all the chat. Anything that's bound to be entertaining is bound to happen, and our zoos in the chat saying how is that an assist? It doesn't matter how she lost the crown. The effects for floor nine are permanent, but doesn't the crown dissolving not make another person who has the crown? I was thinking about that as the assist, where it's like not going to create another person that she winds up having to kill later because it hasn't been handed

on to anybody else. Michael says, imagine if somebody who's going to have a Hollywood moment where they make it with a second left on the clock and Katya hit the button five seconds early and stunning. He also said she was stunning. Oh does he say that Katya is stunning. I didn't remember that. I'm sorry, guys, I thought that he just said that. She was like, I'm going back to that moment here to do. I didn't answer her. I only stared she had changed to a stunning, short

haired woman. Yes, you're right, you're right, you're right. I totally miss that. Oh she's hot. I love this. Rob says, I was going to say, if you're listening to the audiobook only, there might not be the warning that's included in the book about how the next book is spatially confusing. That's purposeful, and don't try to figure it out if you want to enjoy things. Okay, noted, Thank you. Rob. Saraphim says, I don't think anyone is messing with the

AI the way everyone's acting. I take it as the AI is its own entity and doing its own thing. Mordecai has a habit of not talking about things till they matter in the present, except for plants, although I guess that he did wait until it mattered in the present, but then once he got going, he really went off. Why overwhelm them with stuff that may not ever matter. The crown would always dissolve if she took it off it,

only it just responds elsewhere randomly. Oh so it does. Well, it's still spawned somewhere despite it being I was thinking that like it was gone gone, but it didn't. Oh that's so annoying. All right, Well, Sarahim says, given the AI defaults to quote whatever is the most entertaining unquote, it is totally going to give it out again. Yeah, that's likely. I thought that that was something. I'm disappointed now.

Oh well, the fact that they didn't get those platinum boxes I or not platinum, the celestial boxes, and they didn't even get the boxes that they would have earned any way, Like it's one thing to counter the celestial boxes, let them have the fucking platinum was at least, you know, like it just doesn't what this reminds me of, And this is sort of what I was talking about regarding wanting to get deeper into a bunch of things. But I'm not gonna have time because this section was honestly

a little bit too long for one episode. But it reminded me of do you guys remember a little while back when there were a bunch of guys on Reddit who figured out how to play the stock for I think it was game stop and they were doing I don't remember if it was a short sale or what, but they figured out something that was like a not technically illegal, but like border unethical way of jacking the stock up when a bunch of other people had been

going to buy and then sell. So they were sort of screwing over a bunch of investment bros In doing this, and while earning themselves some money in the process. And it was one of the few times that we have gotten to see regular people utilizing the absolute scam that is the stock market to fuck over rich people and also get something themselves out of it. And I don't remember if their earnings were frozen, but I do remember

at the very minimum what they were doing. There was a lock put on the website they were using, which I think was like robin Hood or some sort of online trading site, and a lot of the people who had been doing it their accounts were removed things like that, and it was just like one of those moments of like, oh, I get it. So everybody who has all of this power and money can basically do whatever the fuck, but if the little guys figure out how to game the system,

that's been gaming them forever, God fucking forbid. And it was just such a perfect example of this kind of thing, where like we were managing to do something without technically breaking any rules and then you guys just decided to move the goal post some retcon that it really is against the rules actually, and like make it so that none of this is possible again. And it was infuriating. Like it was a couple of years ago now, but I remember following it with great excitement at the time.

Michael says, they saw that the stock was shorted for more shares than were available, so they bought the hell out of it, and the short sellers couldn't buy stock to cancel out their short sales. That's it, thank you, Michael. So yeah, it's just like the idea too that oh well they had to pay taxes on a thing, and they didn't foresee this, and that the AI for some reason didn't trigger what it should have for things to

go off. It just I don't know if the AI is like because everybody is more overpowered at this point in the game than they really should be. Mordecai was talking about that, and I'm wondering if like finding a way to give everybody a celestial box is part of trying to give them as much power as they can can get. I'm very curious about all of this. I guess we'll see. But yeah, I'm gonna be starting the next book. Is it next episode? Guys? Let me look

at this little schedule here. Yeah, Thursday, I'll be starting the Dungeon Anarchist Cookbook. So how many books are there guys? And is the series completed? I can't remember. I know I've asked this before. I really do have to wrap up because I am over time, but I'm proud of myself that I managed to cover everything in that hour. So thank you guys again for hanging out with me. Appreciate all of you very very much. Thank you Michael

for commissioning this. And until next time to the Loom motherfuckers. That was an Unspoiled Network podcast