This is an Unspoiled Network podcast.
This is spoil Me covering Dungeon Crawler Carl chapters six through twelve. I always sort of debate on whether to read any of the chapter titles or anything like that, and it always just kind of gives me like a warm glow when an author doesn't even bother giving titles to the chapters. I appreciate it personally. In this section, we made our first boss and it's like, so horrible.
It's so much worse.
In every sense than I was expecting. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. I don't see you here in the chat, Michael, but hopefully you will be able to join us. So, my friends, this you know, I'm going to jump right to talking about the boss. Okay, I will go back, I will look at other things, and we'll talk about stuff in the beginning of this section, I absolutely will. You know, there's
a plenty of other good stuff. But here's here's something that I actually kind of had a like one of those moments where you feel unexpectedly a wash of profound relief because when we first.
Meet this boss.
It's just like the way that this woman her body is described because she's fat, is really awful. And you guys, I have talked about this on some other podcasts that I've done, and we don't completely escape this here, but there is a real tendency when you are making like villain characters and you make them fat to have whatever their magical boss ability is be dependent on something regarding their mouths or food or throwing up. Uh.
It's just such a thing.
There's like video games where the bad guy turns people into food and then he eats them, then he throws up bile and that burns you. There's another one where it's like an obese woman in a like one of those scooters, you know, and and she throws up on you, and it's just like, it's just so deeply offensive in so many ways. So when this villain is introduced, my very first reaction.
Was, oh shit, okay, okay, I just gotta I just gotta get through this.
And eventually bugs are coming out of her mouth and it's feeling like we're really on track.
But then.
Once you realize that this had been a real person, that this was being done to her, it humanized everything so immediately that I took it all back. And I am sure that there are other people who read this section and they would have the same hang ups about how fat people are depicted in media as I do, and they would not be able to let it go. They would feel still the same way they did to
begin with. That's totally valid. We all draw the line in the sand about certain things in different places, and you know, there's just there's really no right or wrong way to react despite what a lot of people might think, as long as you have some awareness surrounding the issue. I think that's the important part. But I just appreciated that, like it felt the author was doing this thing, and then it went it like Jiggs left and it was like, no, the aliens are doing this gross thing to a fucking
actual human being. And so what starts off as this really like grim dark humor seeming moment turns into like an actual scene from a horror movie. It's so awful, you guys. I Like there's a point later on where Carl thinks to himself how he couldn't understand anything she said, and he was glad because he had enough trouble sleeping at night, and I'm you know, I am sure plenty of you as well. As you're reading you can tell
what she's saying and it's fucking heart wrenching. So anyway, I just wanted to get that out of the way. So let's start with chapter six. As Carl is going through his you know, all of his lute and whatnot. The Goblin past thing does indeed do what I was suspecting, but also it makes you look like you're with the goblins, which results in you getting more damaged done to you by creatures who don't like them. Enchanted night Gaunt Cloak of Stoutness plus four in a constitution resistant to poison
and ice attacks, anti piercing, resistance to all armor. It also makes you look like a dollar store batman. If a night Gaunt spies you wearing this, they probably won't be too happy with you, which is interesting. And then Troll Skin shirt of Pummeling. The wearer gains plus seven to the regeneration skill. In addition, all melee based damage debuffs such as stun, knock back, disarm, and out of
breath are negated. The shirt is also quite stylish. A lady troll might just want to haul you away for some one on one time if they see you in this. So Mordecai tells him for tanking, this is one of the best undergarments. A level seven regeneration skill means you're back to full health pretty quickly in as little as two minutes. That is something that would be in a
platinum or legendary box. So he puts that on. And the toe ring also, which is uncomfortable, but it's a enchanted toe ring of the splatter skunk plus three strength plus three to skill powerful strike.
So this like the the I was sort of hoping that the toe.
Ring would maybe become like make his foot more durable, and I was a little disappointed that it seems like his foot is just as prone to being hurt as it ever would be. I think later he he might step on glass at some point. So, yeah, wish that there was something more to that, but what can you do. So he fiddles around with skills, and as he's doing this, he hears a voice, Really, Carl, if you're going to insist on wearing that hideous cloak, you might want to
do yourself the dignity of putting pants on first. I just can't fathom why Miss Beatrice hired you in the first place. And it's donut and she can talk. I really really loved that she doesn't transform into a person, because I kind of thought that might be what we were getting.
It's great that she's still a cat.
I was hoping that there might be something involving communication, but I thought maybe it would be mental. I didn't think that she would speak out loud that everybody would be able to hear her, but honestly, that would make for much less interesting TV. So I had to focus on what they would want to film. And yeah, she she the stats, you guys, strength eleven, intelligence eleven, constitution
two dexterity eight, charisma twenty five. You should have heard the snort that I let out when I was listening to this audiobook and he said charisma twenty five.
I lost my mind for a second. I had to pause it. There was just.
Something like, I genuinely didn't know we could go that high. He was so low on the scale for everything that I assumed that this was a out of five metric. So finding out that there's double digits and shit, and then she's like in the twenties, amazing and Mordecai is like, ah, now I have to start that tutorial over because she's like a regular crawler. And she's like, no, no, no,
I heard everything you said to my manservant. So this is all stuff that I think, like you know, is very tropy that we have seen before.
The animal that views.
The person who cares for it as their servant, and they think a whole lot of themselves and you guys, she gets tomb of the Magic Missile and then the legendary box enchanted crown of the Sepsis Whore. This is a fleeting item. This is a unique asterisk item in viuswear with plus five intelligence plus five to the good first Impression skill. All attacks, including magical have a fifteen
percent chance to inflict the Sepsis d buff warning. And this is supposed to be something you read before you put it on, but she saw that it was a crown and put it on instantly. As I understand personally, I might also be tempted to do. Placing this crown upon your head permanently places you within the royal line of succession for the Blood Sultanate on the ninth floor of the World Dungeon, removing this item will not remove
this status. Royal members of the Blood Sultanate will be required to slay the Salt and all other members of the Royal family before ascending descending to the tenth floor. You'll only want to wear this if you're a bloodthirsty, raging psychopath.
So I don't know.
Plus five intelligence, plus five to good first impression and fifteen to sepsist debuff, and in exchange, that becomes your new like side quest.
Is it just mirror? Does that not feel like that pays off nearly enough to put it on? It's like cool.
I don't know, Maybe I'm just underestimating what those stat amplifiers like, how good they really are, But it just seems to me that item doesn't feel like something I would see like most people encouraging players to use if we were in a video game, you know, I feel like most people would be sort of like, this isn't why would I ever do this, you know, unless you were playing one of those like, you know, some people enjoy doing a game where they're a bad guy and
they just fucking kill everybody. But anyway, Princess Donut has named your party the Royal Court of Princess Donut. Princess Donut has changed your title to Royal Bodyguard. Princess Donut has changed her title to Grand Champion Best in Jungeon. She have the highest combined stat total, so she's a designated party leader. As such, she has more control over the party than you. Don't worry, the titles don't mean anything. Listen up, kids, She's quite a bit more powerful than
you are right now. So you'll want to stick together at least until you get to the ninth floor. That will be a challenge. You can always leave the party. That crown is on her head, not yours.
So this is when they.
Set out, and Mordecai is like a by the way other training guilds. You're always going to be coming back here. I'm your guide now, so you know anytime you're just gonna run into me, you'll lose access to me once you hit the fourth floor. Good luck out in the universe once this is over. Mordechai looked at me sadly. Yeah, good luck to you too. He grasped a jacket and met my eyes and then whispered, It's not worth it, no matter what they tell you. Not until floor twelve,
and even then negotiate as much as you can. Remember that he slammed the door, and my mind reeled. What did that mean? Was he saying it was better to die than to take whatever exit they offered on floors ten and eleven? Did that even matter floor ten? Who was Mordecai kidding? Three million people had died in this place in the very first hour. I wasn't expecting to
survive until the next floor opened up. So I really took this to mean, like the way that Mordechai is looking at him, and the sadness this moment of having helped a person, getting to know them just enough to maybe like them a little bit, and then sending them out there and knowing full well that you may not see them again, and this being your job that you do all the time, probably fucking wears on your soul.
And I don't know exactly how the contract works, the agreement that he made, but it occurred to me that I don't really know how time works in this universe with the aliens involved. And it may be when he said, like, my world isn't open to me anymore, that it's just gone because so much time has passed that it's been like stripped and the planet is essentially not like they're anymore, or maybe enough time has passed that it's just changed
so fundamentally, you know. But it just really kind of once I stopped and considered how little I knew about so many different factors, I realized that, like, this could be such a terrible deal if you don't look at the fine print and find out yourself how things work with the aliens, because you know, they're gonna say a thing and we're gonna probably take a lot of things at face value for the way they work for us as humans from planet.
Earth, and then if it's not that way, they can just be like, well, we never said that.
You just assumed that, which is valid that you know, it's like making a deal with a fay. So my concern is like a combination of just these contracts taking place over much longer periods than I had previously considered, and also potentially that they are trick contracts that it's like you almost can't get out of at all once
you've on the papers. But I don't know, it's just like for me, it really felt in that moment that he was looking at Carl as they were leaving really kind of like I just don't know, man, if I'm going to see you again, and saying like it's.
Not worth it.
I think he is sort of showing a little bit of what's optimism, I guess by being like, I think
you will probably get that far. But I am very, very eager to find out what it is that Carl gets offered as he gets further on, because that is always something that I find really fun when somebody is tempted with an offer and there really isn't a right answer to the offer, and it's just about like what your priorities are versus what theirs are, or if you have like more anxiety about things going a certain way than another way, and it can be very fun to
sort of debate what to choose. So I'm really really interested in that. So they have twenty nine hours before the television show begins, and Donut is like, we really need to do something amazing, but the first thing we need to do is get you pants, and Carl points out she isn't wearing pants either, and she says, nor am I wearing a cloak that makes me look like I want a participation trophy at the Special needs Comic con Carl, we could just not do the ableism.
We could just not do it.
That'd be cool if we just cut that, make that anything else. You know, you could make it like a participation trophy in a fifth grade costume contest, you know, something to indicate. But let's just not That's all I'm saying. It's surprising to me that line is under line so many times, and yet I guess it's not surprising.
Sigh.
So at this point, she's being so pushy and domineering with him that finally Carl is like, you know what, bye, good luck, and she's genuinely, I think, like, doesn't even get what he means. And finally he's like, look, I think you're probably going to be okay.
You've got a lot going for you. But if I'm gonna get killed, then I'll just get it over with.
Most of the time we put up with the fact that cats her assholes because we can't hear every fucking.
Thing you say.
But I can, and it's not worth it. Thank you, no, thank you, And she actually apologizes. Have you ever woken up from a long dream one where you're one thing, and now that you're awake, it takes you a moment to realize that's not who you really are. Which personally, yes, I have the most intense, realistic dreams, and I wake up disoriented frequently. I do not recommend it. Also, depending on the dream, it doesn't even feel like you got rest, because it feels like.
You were awake all night.
When I woke up back there, I had all my memories of all my time being me, of sitting in that window looking outside, watching television, all the hours, and the carrier, and then suddenly my mind looked back on all of it and I understood what had happened. I am a grand champion, I'm supposed to act a certain way. But sitting in your lap watching you get fragged over and over in Call of.
Duty, I like that too.
I mean, you really suck at that game, but you keep playing. I didn't realize it at the time, but I liked that. So what are you saying that you're not a crazy, stuck up asshole princess. Oh I am a princess, Carl, But I'll try not to be too much of an asshole. And I need you and you need me. Okay, Look, I'm really scared here. I don't want to be alone, and I know you and you don't want to be alone either. I saw you the other day looking at the map on your computer and
then those apartments on Craigslist. What do you mean, I asked, but I knew exactly what she meant. There was that day when the passes were clear. You could have taken me back to Miss Beatrice's parents, but you didn't want to. You were looking at apartments, making sure they allowed cats. You were thinking about catnapping me. I just looked at her. It's exactly what I had been doing, but I hadn't
even admitted it to myself. When she says there was that day when the passes were clear, I don't know what she means by that. I think maybe it was like the weather had been preventing him. He had been using the fact that he was snowed in or something like that. Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, so.
I love this.
The fact that he was even considering it is delightful. It wouldn't have worked, by the way. Her dad would have got me back right away, I sighed, that was true too. Bee's dad was a lawyer out of Yakima, okay.
I said, let's keep moving.
And it's interesting because he asks her why didn't why did she jump out the window when she did, and they get interrupted. So I think this adds fuel to my theory that she felt something was wrong and jumped out there purposely. I feel like we're getting this interruption because there's a real answer and we don't get to have it yet. But I'm pretty sure we're going to find out about something with this later. And there's this thlumping sound. Two bolts shot out of donuts eyes, one
after the other. They were like laser blasts from a sci fi movie. I was so surprised that I almost fell backward. Instead, I just stumbled a little. I remembered that she had that magic missile spell. I adore that she fires laser beams from her eyes. Fantastic, perfect, No notes it does like require a cool down period though, So there is a point later where she is pressed and they have to wait for it to recharge.
So then we get the bad Lama. I cracked up.
Look, guys, I said before, not all the jokes are
gonna be winners. Writing comedy is hard, but more than not, they are working for me so far, And I think I'll tell you what I'm not trying to take anything from the author at all, but I really do want to give a lot of the credit to how well the jokes land, to the audiobook narrator and whoever produced the audiobook the way that they make it interesting by changing up the voices of the AI that he is interacting with the timing of the way the lines are read,
which is crucial. So it's just a really perfect combination that makes jokes that I think if I just read this joke, it wouldn't It's not that it wouldn't be funny, but I just feel like I am getting a lot more out of this listening than I would just reading it. It just feels more cinematic because of the way it's produced.
So so I uh, because I'm going to mention this in the discord as well, but I'm sorry, I can't remember who it was, but somebody was saying that people should listen to the audiobook, and another person was saying, I don't think I would want to sit through hearing all of the loot drop stuff. That's some of the
best stuff. The audiobook is done in such a way that those parts are really entertaining, So I feel like give it a chance and see how you feel about it, because I could see why you would think that, and I might also if I hadn't listened before I started doing the text. And I just think, as much as possible, I'm just going to do audiobook for this because some books I have to mix it up a little bit.
I have to go back and forth, and you know, depending on what the subject matter is, it's easier for me to absorb in text.
But this is something that.
I'm just thinking really really benefits from the sound design and the narrator. So bad Lama level three. It's a lama, but it's bad. If he were human, he'd be covered in prison tattoos and would be hanging out in front of the circle k hitting on fourteen year old girls. They might be willing to sell you something. If you have good stuff to trade, you won't want to get hit by their spit. And eventually, when they kill the lama, he drops a bag of trailer park a grade meth.
Sorry two bags. He doesn't does he add them? Does he take the math?
No? Yes he does, because he gets food items and pharmaceuticals added to his menu. I do enjoy that it's pharmaceuticals. But yeah, this fight, I mean, the lama isn't impossible. It's just shocking. I think, you know, I felt bones crunch. My left hand exploded in pain, and I didn't know if the crunching bones were in the lama's face, in my hand or both.
Probably both.
And it the spit that it shoots is lava. The creature dropped like a sack of hammers. It tried to cry out, but nothing but gurgling came out.
You guys, I don't know if I could punch a lama. I don't know, guys.
It really depends making some of these baddies animals. That might be the death of me. That might be where I die, you know, I don't know. So because Donut det seventy one percent of the damage, she gets the first pick of loot. Poor lama. Skin uncooked lama steaks bag of trailer park grade meth, and he takes the steaks of the meth. I had a couple new achievements, one for looting a corpse and one for sharing experience. I received a pair of Bronze Adventurer boxes. That was no good, sloppy.
You can't be.
Injuring yourself every time you get into a minor tussle. Minor tussle. We need to be more cautious. We can't just blindly stumble around. No, we need to level up, and we need to do it quickly. I'm starting to think this main road is not the best choice for
traveling or fighting. So eventually they get off of the main road and there's like sounds that he can hear, but he never actually runs into anyone, which I think makes sense because earlier Mordecai tells them that the map isn't connected to every other place in the world, so it's not like you can run into somebody who's from the other hemisphere just if you walk far enough, because
it doesn't work that way. So I'm assuming that because it was so cold and there were so few people outside, that is why this place has like such a thin n number of human beings. But maybe not, maybe just like more people just opt not to go in at all.
I don't know.
The bathrooms, he eventually figures out every time you open the door, it's the same bathroom and it doesn't matter, So that's kind of fun. When Donut opens it, she finds a litter box, so she runs in there and we find out, like, let's see, what I really needed to do was sleep. The toilet thing and the fact that when she opens it something different is in there delights me a lot.
So then we get level two. Rats.
The cat was definitely making an effort to be less abrasive, but she was still a cat. She had a reckless streak and a quick mouth, often making quips before realizing what she'd said. But she was also showing very cat like signs of affection too. One time I leaned up against a wall to rest, and she spent the time purring and rubbing up against my legs. I looked down at her, and she returned my gaze.
What she said. I thought that was adorable.
So I hit three levels and gained a skill called foot Soldier and a second one called Smush. Foot Soldier increased damage I dealt by kicking smush. You, guys, when I talk about the audiobook narrator, this is this is not an easy thing to pull off, My friends.
I'm debating if I even want to attempt it. Smush skill level three, killing with your feet, your bare, beautiful feet. I couldn't. I couldn't. It goes on and on.
I remembered the weird message I'd received before when I jumped in on the Goblin Engineer. I thought it was just to throw away joke, like most of the descriptions, but it seemed the AI or whatever it was, really did have some sort of foot fetish.
It was fucking weird. I guess we're not getting you shoes.
Dona said, yes, we are. It sounds to me like the computer fancies you or your feet. At least we'll need to take advantage of that. If a system likes us, then maybe it'll go easier on us. It makes me uncomfortable, I said, being eaten by a bugbear makes me uncomfortable. Carl, So if your boyfriend goggling your tootsies keeps these easy ps bugs coming at us instead of more of those lava spinning lamas, then you better buck up, get over your human male privilege and take one for your princess.
I loved it, like there's so many times where women are told to just deal with a guy being a fucking creep, and it was very, very nice to see a guy you have to deal with that. You know is you all don't know how much we are trained to ignore throughout our lives. It's like there's always moments of why didn't you say something when a guy was being a fucking creep? But the thing is, if we said something every time anybody was a creep to us, like,
we would never get anything done. It just like it starts to just kind of roll off you in a way that's not healthy because you just expect everybody to be this way, you know. So that's one of the nice things. Like even though getting older, gaining weight, and just like aging in general sucks in many ways, I miss being cute like I used to be. I will say that not having a creepy factor like dealing with that that is really nice.
It's like such a relief.
So yeah, I'm into it, and I think that playing this angle, they should definitely lean into it, in my opinion.
So then we go.
To the first rest area and it's set up to look like a kind of McDonald's, but instead of red and yellow, it's white and blue. They had taken a complete intact fast food restaurant from some random country in place to here underground. We'd come in through a main entrance and there's a thing on the wall that says countdown until the premiere twenty three hours, forty two minutes remaining crawlers four million, three hundred and twenty two thousand,
three hundred and ninety five. It had been ten million just a few hours before. As I watched, the number just kept getting lower and lower. Ooh, sorry, guys, I had an interruption from a call.
There, my bad.
And there's going to be a leaderboard that they can see, which hadn't really occurred to me. The you know, I've talked a lot about the alignments with like Hunger Games, with this, but what is sort of interesting is the fact that you are going to be able to see who is ahead in what way. In hunger Games, you can only tell how people are doing based on whether they're still alive and whether it seems like they have enough food, and you just really are kind of guessing.
But you don't necessarily know what they're getting from patrons or you know, you can assume they had to have gotten something to get this far, but you never really here you're going to be working with like more information, and later on, Mordecai says something about how they'll like take you out of the game sometimes to interview you, and that is also something that does not happen in the Hunger Games, but I really like because this is a game that goes on a lot longer obviously Hunger Games.
You know it's meant to be like a few weeks, and this is based on the timing of things. I feel like it goes on a couple of months minimum, right, So the fact that you get pulled out to be interviewed is really fascinating because like, there's so many ways that that could be played, both as an author writing the scene and both as a character being pulled out. Do you rage at the people who did this to you? What is it like to see aliens? Do they just
look like characters from the game? Do they look like people? You know? Are you going to be able to set aside your anger at what's happened to play to the crowd and get things or are you going to be so overwhelmed with disgust that you just come across as surly and angry.
Both things can work for you, you know, like.
There's not just one way to play it, but also are you going to be treated super well or just like shuffled in and out when you come out? Do you get given like a lovely bath and a change of clothes and bottle of champagne. Or do they grab you out with a fucking like sheep hook, pull you out onto stage, blinking under the lights, ask you a few questions and shove you back out the fucking door again. Like, there's a lot that I am curious.
About with this.
So this is when we meet Bopka, who, unfortunately, it seems, is not going to be the guy that we meet we see every time. I am very curious whether or not he is responsible for how good the food is or if this is part of the way things are built. But he asks for the rat little he is a rat looking little guy, right am, I let's see. No, he's a dwarf. The rat's Mordecai. But Mordecai Carl asks him to make something he recommends, which I thought was taking a real fucking risk.
I will tell you what. I was just full on like, what are you doing, dude?
So imagine my surprise when he gets a lovely vindaloo. It was really what a relief. And he says his spice tolerance is four, which I wish. I am such a whimp when it comes to spices.
Swear to God.
So he gives some yogurt too, and there's a mention here. Also, I just want to say this, Uh Taly knows you are new here. This dungeon has just opened. It opened without warning, so Tally is not ready. This is also what Mordecai said that he wasn't ready, which makes me wonder if there is a budget problem, Like it just seems like they're used to things being a lot more organized,
and something seems wrong. So if there's something wrong, that's something that is exploitable, and I would like more information on that. I'm wondering if like Mordecai, because obviously they have to be careful what they say because they are being filmed. I wonder how much info Mordecai can give Carl if he starts to find out things. He's got to be real careful though. If you don't see him after like level four two, then you.
Just lose that source. Eh. Eh, it's tough.
So he has some water that is wonderful, and uh Donut gets a bell talisman of the slate butterfly. He is annoyed about the jingling of it because he feels like that's going to make it impossible to sneak. Those who are who remember and commemorate the sad tape of the slate butterfly are given a boon by the fairies of the world. That story even made me cry. Adds plus four to the light on your feet skill and
plus one two intelligence. Winged fairies will no longer be automatically hostile toward you, which is nice because we had the thing with his goblin stamp that would make fairies angry. Maybe this will even it out. It's difficult to say because it's on two different people. He's the one with the thing, so the fairies might be like super nice to her and total assholes to him, which would be pretty funny. So this is when Tally comes out and he has this vindaloo. I apologize, I do not have lamb.
They took my lamb for a mob in preparation for the second floor.
Don't like that.
Also, your Royal Highness, I have special ordered a fresh salmon for your meal upon waking. I will have it properly prepared and diced and garnished for you later. I love that he calls her your Highness, and Carl's so irritated, and She's just like whatever, what's not my fault. He thinks a thing, and he takes a bite, and he says, it was literally the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. I'd never been a huge Indian food fan, but holy shit, which personally I don't.
Get people who don't like Indian food.
Like, I feel strongly that I could live on it for the rest of my life and I would probably never get tired of it.
I love it so much.
It's just a it's a pain to prepare, it can be very expensive eating it out, like, so I don't have it as often as I would like.
And it's also very rich, a lot of it, but mouth's water and just thinking about it. Love it so.
He and there's a moment where he's I thought the urge to lick the plate, and I was like, I'm sure if you just ad asked him, he would just make you another one, Carl.
Like, probably you should eat too.
You're gonna be using a lot of calories in the coming days. You probably want to, like carbol load get some protein in there. Like, maybe you should start asking for like particular nutritional profiles for your meals to optimize your performance.
I'm just singing, is.
It possible for you to ask this guy for some like gatorades, you know, uh, maybe get a little like Camelback Water dispenser something. Just thinking out loud here, Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I'm just seeing Rob was commenting in the chat, and I like missed a bunch of them, he says. I'll say this for Dinneman. The stuff he writes is horrific, but every time he writes
political it generally feels nuanced and reasonably well researched. I can't remember everything in the series, but there was nothing that particularly made me go ah man. Turns out this guy is a secret Wiener from the Secret Wiener is going in my lexicon.
That is very useful. It's just very evocative, you know.
I love it horrific in the sense he's clearly a horror writer, and this is satire that really points out the horror of our current zeitgeist. Once you finish the series, there are videos of Jeff Hayes doing cold reads, and if I could alternate between Indian and Vietnamese slash tie, I'd be so good.
Yeah.
I love thie as well, but it really depends because some places do it very sweet and that is all Owen has ever had. So he thinks he doesn't like Thai food. Sorry, he's going by Marshall. Now I'm adjusting my husband. But yeah, so he thinks he doesn't like Tay food, and I think if he got good stuff he would.
But there isn't a place like around here. But agree on that.
Vietnamese have only had like a couple things, and I liked them both. But I'm not enough to feel confident about it. Okay, so let's see. We need to come up with a snappy way to kill them. Something exciting yet cute, something with zest.
I want on that show.
Carl, we're not getting on that show. Were you paying attention? Millions of followers? Loot boxes? We need to get on that show. Maybe we need a catchphrase. I do really love that we had to put somebody in here who gave a shit about the competition aspect of it. Carl is clearly very fatalistic about it and doesn't really see himself getting to this point.
And she has a.
Totally different experience with like competitive stuff, so it's very fun to see how completely confident she is. Plus or charisma stats are insane. So I am really looking forward to eventually them getting interviewed, hopefully.
So.
He is able to the rooms that they go into. Thankfully, there's not the kind of like time crunch yet where I'm worried about him sleeping through the level closing up, you know, but I have to assume that is something that becomes a problem a little bit later. So the temperature in the rooms is chili, just how he likes it. And he is able to get a.
Shower, and.
I don't think he gets like fresh clothes, right, because otherwise he would be able to get pants.
That's not how that works. And he doesn't get.
To launder the stuff that he was wearing. But let's see, I'm trying to find the spot. Oh right, okay, showers with soap and shampoo dispenser's cheap disposable razors.
I had.
There were no towels, however, and I had to drip dry, which I thought was weird. And again, is this because things didn't Like, there wasn't the warning that they normally get do they normally have towels, but they just aren't stocked up with everything yet because it opened without warning. Like I'm very very curious about this. So he eats his incredible breakfast. She has salmon patay, and he talks to Tally about personal spaces in the safe rooms, and
he says, well, it transfer from level to level. Yes, it will, and from safe space to safe space. Also, it's best to buy all the accessories as soon as you can. Some of the items only upgrade when it goes down a level. So if you wait several levels before you purchase a crafting table, it won't get as strong as one purchased earlier, which is uh. I can't help, but wonder that's not part of like the tutorial in
the guild. Carl found that out because he asked the right question, And I wonder how many people aren't going to ask the right questions and thus don't know about these little advantages, you know what I mean, Like just the kinds of things that if somebody doesn't really give a shit about their job, maybe they just don't tell you, and then you wind up with shitty equipment later because
you weren't warned about these things. So let's see Scatterer brood Guardian level four cockroaches that had been baptized in rage and monster energy drinks, and.
He like the whole fight with them.
I am going to jump right past the way that these bugs explode.
It's horrible.
We ended up killing a dozen more of the level four US before we reached the door. Every once in a while the scatterer would get inflicted with sepsis, and when that happened, it would turn and try to run off, would usually collapse and die after It took about thirty steps. Both Dona and I were level five when we got to the door. So the door says no entrar, don't enter, or then the Centro de Salouth, which is by order
of the health department or health center. And I thought that this was going to be like, maybe the door isn't relevant. Maybe they just did this because this is what it said on a door and they grabbed a random door. But it seemed because like earlier, he's talking about the bathrooms and they all have signs on them from different countries. Some say men or women on them, but obviously they aren't gender specific because he can use
any one of them. So I was thinking maybe this like it's looking freeky, but it's not free hey, you know.
And he sends in.
Donut to check things out, and she says that she can see a bunch of cockroaches and something that she can't tell what it is. It smells like that bag you take with you on those days. That other guy comes over to the apartment and he's like, are you
fucking serious? Just finding out that his girlfriend didn't just start doing shit when she went on this cruise or whatever it was, which makes me kind of think she might be alive, but that she had been fucking around before that, And this is how he finds out.
That is very embarrassing. That is so humiliating.
I felt like an idiot. I also suddenly felt very reckless. The Goblin dynamite, This stuff is especially volatile. It's so volatile you probably don't even need to light the stick to set it off. It's so volatile even loud noises might set it off. Keep it in your inventory until you're ready to use it. Be gentle and don't squeeze too hard, or else you might get the The AI didn't speak for a good two seconds. Boom, the AI shouted that last word in my head, and I almost
pissed myself. You are a fucking asshole, I whispered up at the air. So he lights it. He throws it. I prayed it wouldn't blow when it hit the ground. Chapter eleven. It blew when it hit the ground. My vision flashed and I received a danger low health warning, but it quickly abated. How much would it suck if he didn't have those buffs and he just killed himself right here with his own thing, that would be I mean, at least he's not being filmed. I guess at this
point that's the one thing. Ahem. So they go in there, and you know, there's all of these dead buff and it's feeling like maybe we dealt with everything with this dynamite. Maybe it's fine, but there's a lot of garbage. There's piles of it that are stacked. There's a smell to everything, and I'm not getting what's happening here. I'm curious if anybody reading was starting to sense what we were doing. But finally.
They hear music.
New achievement, Boss, Babe, you've struck a blow against a dungeon boss and cause damage. Here's a fun fact. For crawlers who make it through the tutorial, this achievement is by far most often the last achievement they ever receive. Isn't that interesting?
Reward.
Let's wait a few minutes before we decide on whether or not a whether or not to waste a prize on you. The door opens and a woman comes out. You have discovered the layer of a neighborhood boss. The AI was louder than usual. He sounded like the announcer at a monster truck rally.
Doughnut wants out.
But it turns out that almost you can almost never, like just leave a boss fight. I don't know if they can with this one, but it's usually not possible. So a woman appeared, reaching into the air, screaming as she rocketed up like she'd been shot out of a cannon. A human woman about thirty five, enormously fat. She wore a filthy and ripped T shirt and no bra, and her skin was covered in open sores and scabs. A blue pair of sweatpants with the word Pink along the
leg appeared to be stretched to their limits. Her black hair clung to her head in clumps, like me.
She wore no shoes.
She was also fifteen feet tall. And they all freeze and they get dungeon Crawler Carl Donut versus the Hoarder Level seven neighborhood boss.
God, this is awful.
Half of the woman's face was burned to hell. She had a health bar over her head and it was already three quarters gone. I cheated the boss fight, killing her minions and hurting her before it even began. I you noodul. This means, please help me. I don't know what's happening. I have a stomach ache. I don't know where I am. Please, I'm scared.
You guys, this is so sad. This was like it was just it was horrible. It maybe like just reading that makes me so sad. I hate this.
And he says, I like we should help her, and Donut says, yeah, that'll be a no. And eventually she starts throwing up more of these bugs and that's what she's saying, like, I have a stomach ache. This they did this to her. They put bugs in her stomach. That's actually happening. That is not a fun graphic. That's clearly been done to a person, which is the grossest thing. And I just can't imagine not knowing what's going on,
and you start vomiting bugs, like, oh my god. Okay, the woman was scared, disoriented, and she obviously didn't want to be here, but she was also vomiting killer cockroaches.
Our only real choice was to take.
Her out, and honestly, I wanted to find an alternative for a moment, but then I was like, there's nothing good coming for this woman if they did this to her, like get get her dead. It's a favor at this point after everything they have done. So oh god, I'm sorry, guys. I keep getting these calls and I do not I can't answer them obviously, and I usually don't get calls
because I have do not disturb set. So he comes up behind her and eventually he manages to get like a chain around her throat, and Dona is very afraid of actually fighting. She only wants to use her missiles because that's a ranged attack, but she doesn't want to get up in there because and like, honestly, I feel.
Like she had pretty low.
Stats in terms of like her own durability. But he is just like, can you please even pretend to make an effort? You know, the horder lay on her back, her health bar was all but empty. LUCIENTO if mala persona, I'm sorry if I was a bad person. No Kiia Jsse and Fermara. I didn't want my daughter to be sick. No kio l n el inferno. I didn't want to be in the fire. And vime a Jesus, please bring me to Jesus or send me to Jesus.
Send me to Jesus.
She's basically saying, kill me. And I don't know that I didn't want my daughter to get sick. I maybe they were threatening her daughter, this is what Maybe that was the deal that she agreed to, like be this character so that they wouldn't hurt her.
Kid, which U uh yikes.
Talking about her getting sick and also the fire, it feels like there's a lot of horrible things, like choices that people have to make. I'm wondering if this is maybe some of the deals on the like later levels, play a certain character, and if you survive and win, you get out. You know, if you're a boss that somebody can't beat, you win your way out. But you really reach a point where it's like, how much do
I believe they would even honor that agreement? I don't really, there's nothing for me to base that trust in, you know. So twelve, it's after this is over and they're talking to Mordecai about the whole thing, and he explains about the bosses and you know, just in general how they work, which is pretty typical. And finally, Carl says, the one we fought was obviously a person from our world. Is it always going to.
Be like that?
No, this was interesting. Mordecai didn't answer for several moments, like he was trying hard to think of a proper response, which feels to me like he's not allowed to say certain things. No, not always, he said, finally, there will be a lot of recycling from previous iterations of the game. Some will be human stock, but most won't be or even human from this world, or they will be human, but it won't be as obvious.
And I just want to.
Know what the hell he wasn't saying, because it just felt like he was parsing his words quite a bit there, and that no, not always is doing a lot of work, and I want to know what the fun that was about. So Donut is not pleased that they get a bronze level boss box. She feels like this is not good enough. And let's see, there's torches, pet biscuits, and she finds a spell book and immediately applies it and then gets angry once she realizes that it's kind of a shitty spell.
Now I say shitty because that's what she thinks. I personally think this is a good spell. Mordecai laughs and is like, you really do need to read shit before.
You use them.
But this is a useful spell. It's called torch. It makes a curl of light follow you around. The more she uses it, the more powerful it'll become.
Which I played.
I played Starry Valley for the first time in November when I got really sick with COVID and I could do basically nothing else. And I have never played a game where if you didn't have a light source, you just couldn't see the screen. But it was pretty like because I had never played, and I wasn't looking at tutorials or anything, it took me a little while to figure out that you could make a torch and like carry it or put it down somewhere. So y'all don't
know how frustrated I was at first. I couldn't see shit. And I think that you've like this is a key element. You've got torches, which are clearly usable items. You're gonna run out of those potentially, but if she just has light with her, that is very helpful. So yeah, you've gained a skill level iron punched level three and he gets Tomb of Wisp armor, more dynamite, gunpowder, scroll of confusing fog, enchanted spike, kneepads, potion of iron skin, and
the wisp arm sounds really cool. So it lasts five minutes plus one minute per level of spell. Five minute cool down costs five manuta. Surrounds your body with tendrils of light. While ineffective against physical attacks, this spell negates seventy five percent of incoming damage from magic based attacks. That's a lot like you almost never see those kinds of numbers.
When I say almost never.
What I am basing a lot of this on is playing Skyrim, and I know that there are so many other games out there. I've played a few, but Skyrim was probably like the RPG I played the longest, and so I'm comparing a lot of this to that. And you know, the kneepads adds ten percent damage, reflect cancels all momentum a.
Tax, which is kind of fun.
And I'm trying to find the confusing file here it is filled the room with the myths that could only the mobs could see. And the iron skin potion raised my physical armor by one hundred percent for five minutes, which, like, granted, five minutes isn't a super long time, but one hundred percent for five minutes, I mean that could save your life a few times.
In a row. Like, that's really really good.
So even though Donah sniffed and put her nose up at the level of box, all things considered, they've done pretty fucking well. At this point, Dona asks Mordecai, is there were Worst Dressed award for the Dungeon And this is when he talks about they might take you out to do interviews, like when they win boss fights. Sometimes that's when they pull people out. It's a commentator program. The show is almost as popular as the official program, though they'll never let you watch this one.
And this made me.
Think of like like the Watching Dead. For those who were around for the original Walking Dead airing, they had a show that would air directly after that, hosted by now canceled Chris Hardwick. And it was wild to me how popular it was considering how nothing it was. But it's just that it had the cast on for interviews, and it was always so funny because they'd basically just like repeat summaries of what it just happened in the
previous episode. It was the most pointless shit. So I think it's going to be different because it's like sounding much more like a Joan Rivers, like red carpet commentary sort of thing, where maybe there's some snarkiness happening or good Morning America type, you know. But I really do look forward to them getting on one of those at some point because I'm so curious how Karl is going
to respond versus Donut. Also, Donut calls like, is like, we need to get on there, and he says it's not how it works, and I'm not your agent, and she says, no, no you're not. Miss Beatrice is my agent, and once we reunite with her, she'll make sure I get on that show. But she's halfway around the world. I figure we'll have to wait until the fifth or sixth floor before the dungeon shrinks enough for us to find her. I really hope we don't have to wait
much longer than that. I exchanged a look with Mordecai Sure, I said, finally, now let's get back out there.
And clearly they look at each other because.
They are both definitely assuming that Beatrice is likely dead. If she's not, that she will be, so this perfect trust that Donut has that Beatrice is still alive. I'm not sure how much Donut really understands what happened. Like she was there, but I don't know how much she really absorbed, and it doesn't seem like they've really had
time to talk about that very much. He clearly doesn't want to, like warn her that Beatrice is likely dead, And there's almost a part of me that's like, maybe her and Beatrice have some sort of like connection and she can tell that she's still alive. Maybe Beatrice is still alive and there's something in her that knows that. And it's sort of a funny thing because like, I like the idea of eventually meeting Beatrice after having only
heard shit about her, because I'm super curious. You know, it might be the sort of thing where she is just as shitty as she sounds secondhand when you only hear about the bad things she did. It might be something where you're like, nah, she's cool as fuck. I kind of get why you liked her. Actually it might be the sort of thing where you like find out what was going on in their relationship and you're like, dude, no, wonder she cheated on you? What an asshole? Like?
Who knows?
But I feel like her still being alive is kind of more interesting, so I'm down. But also if she is not still alive, that's also fine. I'm you know, I'm not married to and I'm just saying, sometimes just doing the more interesting thing, even though might be more complicated or difficult, maybe.
You should still do it. So Okay.
That is the end of chapter twelve, and I am really really enjoying this so far. Once again, encourage everybody to check out the audiobook if you haven't already. Thank you so much to Michael for commissioning this one. Really really appreciate it. And thank you Rob for keeping me company in the chat. It's always nice to feel like
there's somebody here with me, you know. I've done a few almost all of my recordings at least one person, but sometimes there's nobody, and it's really remarkable how different my energy is when there's nobody there.
I just feel like, does.
This even matter that I'm talking? Who's going to listen? To this, you know, even though I know people will listen to the recording later. So I appreciate you being here. Oh sorry, he says, don't read this. Oh he's giving me advice on Vietnamese food. Ha ha, my pleasure. I look forward to hearing more. Yes, five thirty Central time, Remember sir, just put that in your old planners. Tuesdays and Thursdays. All right, everybody, thank you again for joining me, and
until next time, to the Loo, motherfuckers. That was an Unspoiled Network podcast