The Butcher's Masquerade, Chapters 46-50

Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Jackie for commissioning this episode. Jackie, if you're out there, was up. Yeah, guys, this is just such a sad section. There are you know, there are things that are lovely, of course also in this section, but man, I was just not ready for how sad and how mixed my feelings about a lot

of this we're going to be as well. That's part of what's so difficult is this feeling of like I don't know how I feel, you know, and I don't mean that in terms of I am unequivocally saddened by Miriam's death, but more what I mean is just the whole way that like Carl handles things is a really I could see it being something that's like kind of divisive, and I'd be interested to hear what you all think, because I would really understand it if somebody were disgusted

with the fact that he uses the ring of eternal suffering or whatever it is, divine suffering. I think, you know, if a person were sort of that's really gross, dude, why would you do that? I would get it. I couldn't even really be mad about it. But there I do have. I must confess such a practical streak to me that in large part the only reaction that I had was much more how everyone else was going to feel about it, and I personally was okay and fine

with it. It just seemed to me kind of a smart move.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe she would be like Carl really, but personally I am somebody who can like I don't want to say that I can be cold blooded because that makes it sound like I have no empathy. But it's more like I will be so focused on, like the practicality and deficiency of something, that it doesn't occur to me the implications of it in someone else's eyes until it's actually brought to my attention very explicitly, and then I'll get it, but it won't.

Oftentimes I'll just be like, well, why wouldn't you though, And I'm very much a sort of person that would feel this way about someone doing this to me. Like if I were about to die and I was able to sense that Carl had marked me, I think I would be like, good, call smart. I know I'm dying. I know that it's like about to all be over. Get something out of it, make use of me, you know. I would just be kind of I don't know, that's just sort of how I roll, and uh yeah, just

really on the fence about it. It's just in terms of the impression that it gives everyone else that's the thing. When you're dealing if it's not like a purely personal situation, do what you need to do. But Carl is in this weird place where the opinions of the public really matter to his overall reputation and well being, and thus it's not like he can just go who cares what

people think? He cares? He has to care what people think his like, A lot of his sponsorship and the support that he gets is based on whether or not folks like him or at the very least believe in him as like a player to be reckoned with. So the image of using her this way is something that needs to be considered. I would hope that people would understand, and I think that considering the way we've heard the

public talk talked about they do. I think that a lot of people would get why he's doing this and they would call this a smart move also, but not everybody. I'm sure you know, not everybody. So ah, just an interesting question, Michael says, Miriam don Dom and Prepotente honestly sound like the most effective team out there until they got screwed by the vampire thing. I wish we got

more of Miriam Dom. She wanted Carl to kill her, so she definitely would have been cool with him marking her, right, Yeah, agreed. I'm surprised that because she was already marked by Prepotente, that there wasn't some kind of like rebound effect due to that. I was sort of thinking that maybe when Carl went to mark her, it would give him a kind of notification and he would be like, oh shit, you know, that is apparently not a problem. So you

know that's interesting. But yeah, I just I this whole situation with the two of them is just so sad guys like.

of like really enjoying their weird dynamic. It was almost, what if we took Carl and Donuts relationship and dialed it up to like an unhealthy sort of codependent level, which I think is a very interesting concept. But uh yeah, personally, I'm just disappointed that, like we didn't actually get to see their skills set at work, because it seemed like it could have been really interesting to watch. But yeah, anyway, so I'm gonna back up again here now and start

from the beginning. But I decided to launch right into my question about this because it's, you know, kind of

the key stone event in this group of chapters. So we start with forty six, where Donut has had to collect a bunch of blood from Mango in order to make this charm animal potion, and it was very interesting to me where I like, I just understand on one hand, where Donah is coming from with feeling really guilty about having to drain blood from him and heal him and do this over and over, and also agreeing with her at the fact that a leader is a lot. She

is not wrong, a leader is a lot. So he says something like she said for the hundredth time, and I was like, because she's right, Carl, because it's a lot. Stop it, you know, like shut up. On the other hand, what they are going to use this for is so useful that and it turns out to be so effective also that I was sort of like, all right, it's time to just like suck it up, Dona and understand that this is like crucial and you're lucky to have access to his blood at all so that you can

do this. You know, God knows what they would have done if it had been a different animal that they wound up with and not a mongoliensis, which happens to be exactly what they needed. So they are going to make this potion, and Miriam is contacting Carl and being like, hey, ah, I know I keep asking, but like, are you coming seriously are you? Because I'm like, I'm sorry to forget

a little bit. And they're having trouble locating her, and she is sending up sparks to like try and give them a direction, and they are so far away that even when she does that, they can't see her. And finally they start they get to a point where they're like, oh wait, I think I see and then they get attacked and it is the minion of a character who had been an elite that was killed by Miriam and prepotente. Viscount Fog was his name, and you know, the whole

vibe of him is basically Van Helsing. He is a vampire hunter. He apparently got word of the existence of miriam Dom and as soon as he knew that she was out there, was like, bet I'm going to ruin her entire day and made it a mission to go after her specifically. It sucks, you know, like it just

it really does. It sucks. And so I guess that like the people who you know made this elite, they just they had it out for Miriam just on principle of it being a good thing for their personal story that they were writing, which I know that this is something that is sort of an accepted thing that there are going to be like ways in which these elite stories sort of bleed over into what's going on with the Crawl. I don't think I realized that they could

target a crawler in this way. It's it feels like it shouldn't be allowed that he like zero win on somebody like this, because that's programmed in. This is not an accidental thing that's happening. They are making him as a character find out about her, be interested in her, and zero win on her. So it's just a sort of crossing of a line that I just didn't think

we were going to be okay with. And I wonder what it was like for the people who decided on this as a story to turn around and have that main character then be murdered by her, because I would be so pissed. I would have thought I had stumbled across this really great storyline and then she does this and like completely takes out my main character. Oh that sucks. I mean, I love it. I am so delighted on her behalf that she managed to pull this off like

bad ass. But I'm just imagining as a writer that I would probably be pretty fucking irritated. And that's what makes me love it most of all, because they decided that they were going to zero in on her like that, and then they got what they got. Life comes at you fast, you know, like fuck you sorry. Michael says, uh, Miriam dun was a weird goat lady to him. Carl of course, is the crazy cat guy to everyone else.

It's so funny because, like, you know, she was the weird goat lady on more levels though, because she has like how many more eight in her inventory. She's got a lot, so you know, he's got the one cat. It's not quite on equal footing there, But I also am just like but yeah, you know, uh, and then just want to say that do not getting the fireball spell might have been a mistake. Little things like collateral

damage don't seem to matter much to her. Yeah, he tells her that she should use magic missile and not fireball at a certain point. And the theme in these chapters especially this is a thing that happens throughout all of the series, but in these chapters especially, we have him on the sidelines being like, do not wait, don't and then her going ahead and doing the thing while

he is mid sentenced trying to stop her. And this is one where he had just started to say don't use fire fireball in here, and she's just like what use fireball? You know, like, oh my god, I was ready to kill her, but uh yeah. So she burns down like the entire neighborhood, but she does get to

be mayor of it after it's burned down. So so anyway they have to deal with the neighborhood boss Sierra Northropy vampire, and she had been Vicount Fogg's Mount, and now she has turned into a vampire, and you know, one of the things that she and her master hated the most, now she has become one and they take her out. It's actually not as much of a fight as I was expecting it to be, not to say that it's nothing, but it is over faster than I

was expecting, which personally I was okay with. I don't know how y'all feel about it, but you know, I am oftentimes more interested in the interactions of characters than I am about the you know, action packed combat aspect of things. So if we cut this a little shorter so that we can go have more time with miriam Dom and interacting with her, that is one hundred percent trade off that I would prefer to make, you know.

So let's see. I forgot the part where he like literally he basically punches it in the gut and then like yanks a hole in its belly, and there comes a point where it's like falling, but it gets suspended and stops, but its guts keep going super gross. And he has to stop Mango from eating her entrails because then he would get infected himself, which would be very, very inconvenient. As Dona so understatedly puts it, She's not wrong. So they get to Miriam and it's just a really

strange scene. And I love the way that this all is structured, because what he has done by giving us these protections against vamporism is made us as readers a little bit paranoid about Miriam dom and whether she is trustworthy or not. And eventually it turns out she is. She is not the person that they were giving them protection against.

you know. And so it just gave a sort of flavor to this whole scene where if Carl had been this paranoid anyway, I wouldn't have been like annoyed with him exactly, but I think I would have been a little bit impatient, and instead I was fully on board. Every single time he stopped donut took a moment sort of like stepped back and looked at the situation. I was mentally urging him to do that already, and I was very relieved that it seemed he was listening to

my mental advice. I'm a real person to a fictional character who is likely communicating with them, so so yeah, I just really was like watching this whole thing unfold, feeling like oh god, oh God, oh God, because it's one of those situations where it's not just that I don't want Miriam to hurt them. I don't want Miriam to be the person who hurts them. Does that make sense, Where it's like it's a whole separate issue of them

actually getting hurt. It's more about the principle of not wanting to believe that she would do that, or for her to betray them or whatever. So the tension was also just coming from that and being like, I just don't want this to be their final interaction, because it very much felt like this was final interaction territory. I did not believe both of them were making it out of this it felt, especially once he mentions that the view counts are going way up and spiking in the

way they are. I'm definitely at that point going like, oh shit, okay, okay, you know, and I was genuinely worried at this point, I really was. I just didn't know about what. So we find out what happened is she and Prepotente were going up against this Viscount Fog, and Prepotente has this like particular ability, and he has a ring that has a opposite day effect and it causes the effect of a spell to bounce back upon

the caster. What they didn't realize was that Viscount Fog had the same ability, and not only did he have it, he had more than one as well. And every time it hits, evidently it makes you more delicate and vulnerable

to damage. So this thing like bounced back and forth between the two of them, and then it resulted in Repotente becoming so damaged that he was basically like what I kept imagining here was like a sand castle where from afar it's looking quite solid, and yet if you touch it just the right way, it'll all begin to crumble and just dissolve away. He is just really, really vulnerable, and by count Fog is dead, we do not have

to worry about him. But yeah, it's it's a she is in a position where if she moves, she will hurt him, and he is she believes, and we find out later that this is correct. He is conscious enough to know what is happening and to be able to process the decisions that she is making, which results in him not holding it against Carl the way I was worried he would. I didn't know, you know what I'm saying, Like there was a moment where I was sort of going, I really hope we don't have to sit here and

watch him blaming them. It wouldn't have been necessarily, like totally out of character. I like, there are all kinds of ways that you could make that work, But to a point, I feel like it could have been really boring, and I'm glad that we're not going there. And it seems like he, by the end of this has come to the same conclusion that Carl has, which we will get to.

at all with that fact. He just doesn't want to see it, and I understand, I really get that attitude, but this scene is so heartbreaking, and it is so similar in terms of the relationship between her and Prepotente as him and Donut. The fact that he isn't seeing this makes me want to fucking kill him. I really want to rip his arms off of him and smack him in the face with his own hands, like how are you this fucking dense? And the way that he is this fucking dense is he doesn't want to know,

he doesn't want to think about it. It's like, literally that simple. He just rather not. That's it. It's just that's it. And fucking weak bro weak sauce like, I honestly disgusted, just disgusted, I tell you what. So what she wants. It turns out she has been made head vampire. Basically, they're in this situation where because she remained a vampire going into the next floor, she was granted a title

queen of Hell. And this means that she is like the progenitor of all of the vampires on this floor, and if something happens to her, everybody who is infected will be cured. They will no longer be vampires if she's taken out. And now that she has begun to hear how much the vampirism has gone rampant, she really feels, quite correctly in my opinion, that her death is worth it to take everybody else out of danger of this.

She's just like, yeah, no, we don't need to continue down this road because it's only going to get worse. More and more people are going to get infected. It's going to just begin to spin wildly out of control until everybody's a vampire. I am stopping this ride here, and I just, you know, I admire that. I don't know that she'd necessarily kill herself were she not already in the position to die like this, you know. So I'm not trying to say that it's like this totally

self act, but it is in a way. She's like kind of finding the silver lining where I'm going to die, and like or more accurately, the only way to save Prepotente is with my death. I know he doesn't want me to die, and he would try and prevent me, but my death will result in such a net good and if I don't die, he won't get the d buff taken off him that causes him it's left to fester, that causes him to be unable to take like a health potion. So in total, the advantages to my death

outweigh the advantages to me finding a way to survive. Again, extremely practical and to a degree, you've got to be. So what she wants is for Carl to kill her, and Carl is straight up like, look, I'm not going to do that. However, I don't disagree with your overall reasoning. So I will sit with you as the sun comes up and be with you until you die. I will sit here and keep you company in your last moments

so that you don't have to be alone. But I'm absolutely not going to take it upon myself to like end your life, which I think is fair, you know, I think that's a reasonable balance. And he feels like she knows who he is enough that she probably predicted that this is how he would behave and it's why she got in touch with him, because she knew that he was, you know, going to be that he was

going to have integrity about it. And she wants him to protect Prepatente, which, like my understanding of her wanting him to do that was that she's expecting them to take Prepatente into their party, and I thought it was surprising later when Donna asks him, like, is he going

to stay with us? And Carl immediately his reaction is like fuck no. I was sort of like, oh, I mean, I don't necessarily think he should take Prepotente, but I had thought that was sort of the understanding, And it winds up being a bit of a moot point because Prepatente, it seems, is very very much like not interested in

being part of their crew himself. It seems like he is once all is said and done, he's like on the war path and I'm going to go fuck some people's days right up, so stay out of my way while I go take care of that. And there's not even a moment of him inquiring about being part of their party or you know, wanting that. It's just fully I'm on my own now. And I guess that makes sense.

I mean, it would probably be difficult even if you know rationally that certain people are not like responsible for her death, it might be difficult to like really be okay being around them all the time. I don't know, I don't know, but uh, suffice to say, once she is dead, she they just allow the sun to come

up on her. Prepotente is released from this thing. And because she gave the spell to like wake him up to Donut, she had a cool ability where she could unlearn a spell and make it into a spell book and then give the spell book to somebody else so that they had the spell, which I think is really really neat. But uh, that is what Donut does to bring him back out of this like state of being frozen and Prepotente is so devastated, and it just like he is in such a state of grief that it's

simply he has checked out. By the time we move on to other parts of what's going on. There's he just feels like I have a death wish now because I know what this was. So let's talk about that, because it's it's an interesting question. But there's been this whole thing with how the Plenty were very invested in

Prepotente because of him. He is not really the same race, but it's like he's kind of close and so they feel like invested in him somehow, and what he and Carl seem to agree on, even though they don't say it out loud because he can't really show his hand that he's aware of this, but essentially it seems that the Plenty likely were somehow responsible for Miriam getting taken out because they wanted Prepatente to be on his own.

So these people that he had been like going on their weird talk show and stuff and like feeling like, oh, hey, there's some there's a race out there that I relate to that under stands they are not on his side in any of the senses that he maybe thought they were. I'm not really sure to what extent he really believed that or hoped that, But all this to say that it was not. He is not considering it an accidental,

unfortunate event that she is now dead. He is very much seeing this as like they wanted this end result. This is where we were heading, and it is a really grim place to be in terms of like believing that you are all alone because she has been taken from you, she has died, but also believing that you are all alone because the people that you thought were maybe supporting you weren't in the way that you expected. They do not care about your emotional wellbeing, your relationships,

your mental health. They care only about you as like a representative on their behalf, and thus you're a tool. You're not a full person to them. So the way that he sort of goes off into the sunset to be like I am going to go handle absolutely everybody who is remotely related to her death. There's a real sense from that of like, and I'm not coming out again,

you know, Carl. He says something to Carl about like or die in the attempt, and he says this as if I think one of the things that he says is he's telling Carl, this is like I don't expect you to understand, and then he says that, and Carl is like, why would you think I wouldn't understand that? Just of course I do. Like this is kind of

also my whole thing, you know. So I'm really curious if we're going to get any more of prepotente or if we're going to just hear about what's going on with him as he goes on this like death wish sort of journey. Part of me like wants to actually see it and get to kind of feel like I'm partaking of his victory and revenge. Another part of me is like, there is no way that's going to actually be satisfying. It's probably for the best if I don't

see it, you know. So, I don't know. I'm I'm very sad for him though, Like this was his mom basically, and he the betrayal of these people sort of turning on him, Like this has to really hurt if he was seeing them the way that I'm I'm saying he did. I don't know if I'm even right about that. You know, I may be really really off base, but I just keep thinking about being a creature that's like not really

present otherwise in the dungeon at all. A sentient goat, like the only other one is also in your party, so you're and you're not really even the same species as that one. So it's you're gonna feel quite alone. And then you meet some of these other goat beings and you maybe start to think, hey, look, you know, like here's another one. Cool. I just can't help but believe that you would start to feel like you had allies somehow. So that's the part I keep getting hung

up on. Sorry, I'm seeing all of this chatter and I totally missed it. Sorry, Michael. My guest, given Carl's suspicion, is that the Plenty paid the showrunners to get them to have the Hunter go after Miriam dont Probably you have more faith than me and prepotente, his line of nobody even remotely responsible for her death can exist in this world either makes me think Carlin Donut might be on his list, just much farther down than the more

overtly responsible people. I also think that he is including himself in that list. That's fair, and it did occur to me, but I have this feeling that even if that's true, he is going to be dead long before he can be a threat to them, which might not be true. But it's like, I'm very much sitting here not worried, you know what I'm saying. I have sung Jeff Hayes' praises plenty already, but I wanted to do it again and praise him for really selling the emotion.

For miriam Dom agreed. I think she just wanted Carl and Donut to literally protect pre Pretentie while he was still frozen. She knows Pony can take care of himself, especially with Bianca. Pretty much any other crawler probably would have just killed Pony after miriam Dom died. Yeah, I guess that's true, God, because they are both worth quite a bit of bounty, Carl points out, and he also is like, probably there are a lot of folks watching who think I'm an idiot for not just killing her

since she's gonna die anyway. They don't understand like the principle of it that is driving him here, you know, as well as like killing Prepotente, Like both of them are worth a lot, but you know, they just don't get They don't get Carl if they think that he should do that, they don't. You're not You're not feeling what he's putting down. So I really this just this

whole scene, it was genuinely sad. She's explaining to Carl too before she dies, about like how she had had this career and that she didn't want to go home and work on the farm. She didn't want to do any of this, but she felt like she owed it to her parents, and that gradually there was like a point where she turned a corner and began to like the work and cared about the animals. And that is

such a real thing. You know. A lot of stories the way that they are told, it's somebody goes into something resenting a thing, and then they that resentment festers and it becomes even more bitter and pronounced, and they get to a point where they're like holding so much rage, you know, But that's not always how it works. Sometimes the resentment like begins to soften and you begin to understand a little bit.

and the way that she bonded with these animals. So so anyway, at this point we kind of get interrupted. As Pony is grieving, we have the uh, the approach of all of the lady mangos as we often call them, and Donu has to deliver this charm animal potion, which does work. She manages to do it, and I really appreciate, Like when Carl says, hey, great job, you did it,

She's like, of course I did it. Shut up, Like she's just every time that he has any tone of surprise to his voice, Dona is immediately like, you don't have to sound like that about it, you know that right, Like I can hear the incredulity in your voice. Please don't. I do think that's kind of funny because that's a

fair criticism. But yeah, so she uses this. It works. However, what she wants is for is to have this rule now that key we can't fuck Mango again, and she makes that rule number one, and this other female she tries to get Mango to fuck her, and Kiwi jumps in and stops that one, and Donut reacts to this as if this is Kiwi sticking to the rules, which

is just she's not seeing like this is territoriality. So then the next thing, of course that Kiwi does after stopping that one is she jumps Mango herself and begins to fuck Mango, and Donut is just so horrified and it's just like, wait, wait, no, bad stop it. Oh Donut, you can't. You can't stop nature. You can't stand in nature's way.

like completely under this misapprehension. So there's also a moment where she has she being Miriam Dom she has unloaded all of her inventory because she is assuming that when she dies, she's going to dissolve because she's a vampire and so it will not be possible to loot her body, which it turns out she's right about. And she begins just like emptying her inventory onto the ground around her, and they promise her that she's going to get that

they will give Prepotente all of the stuff. But Carl does sneak a couple of potions for himself, thinking that nobody sees him, and it turns out that Prepotente does see him, and so later when he's saying to Carl, like, let's see here it is. Do you have any fine healing potions? I only have two. I had about fifty of them. Yeah, a few. Do you need one? How's your stomach? Give them to me. I need at least five more. I have all the other required ingredients. Give

them to you. Consider it payment for the size of potions you stole from my mother. Ouch. And he says, tell me what's on the paper, and I will. And he says it's a potion recipe for a herbicide fine healing mixed with blessed water and a weed killer. But it will only work if it's applied using my new magical canister. It has to be turned to a very

fine mist. So he gives them and he sends a note to Mordecai as well and is like, I might be able to find a way to turn this into a bomb or something, which later on Carl does do, but it's like via the recipe from his cookbook, and he has to find a way to cover for it, and basically the best he can do is I'm just really good at this, which is like not enough, sir

at all, not even like a little bit. There was just something about how like sloppy he's getting with it, especially after having been accused of cheating, Like I don't really think there's anything that he can do about it. He's got to do what he has to do, and he can only really worry so much about everybody else's reaction.

So I don't think i'd have done anything differently, But I will say that I found it very funny how cavalier he is getting about it, because to a degree, I don't really know how they could prove he's cheating. Even at this point, even Mordecai is beginning to get suspicious and be kind of like, wait a minute, how did you do that that fast? You were only in there for like five minutes and you figured this out. So it's not just his enemies being haters looking for

how this is possible. Mordecai himself is out here being like, hold up, this isn't this doesn't make any sense. I don't know how much more he can keep this up, you know, Like I'm really a little worried if there is a way. The only thing I can imagine is

if somebody kills him and loots his corpse. There's probably other ways to force somebody to drop everything in their inventory, but I don't know what that would be, And I really i'm not sure, like if they did force him, would the book even come out or does it have protection against that happening, Because it's possible it does, I don't, you know, it's got other things that sort of circumvent the system that would ordinarily make it show up, So I don't really know if it would happen that way,

but anyhow, just something I'm curious about. So this is when we get the the announcement of the like huge mission that everybody is getting. I'm trying to find the exact description from the AI about it, but here it is the creeping Apocalypse. This is a world quest. All crawlers and all hunters currently active on the sixth floor

will receive this quest. You may not opt out. And the AI calls out Karl for using the Ring of Divine suffering while Miriam dies and makes it sound like him and Doughnut just you know, coldheartedly stood by and let her die. And then it says some of the forest monsters infected with vamporism have spent the past few nights on a killing spree. Another vampire are now cursed. Alisaurus by the name of Big Tina, unfortunately, has expended a lot of effort on building an army of undead

monstrosities using the leftovers. These newly created monsters are not vampires, and they were not cured when Miriam died. These mindless freaks were left all alone, not under control from any entity. Some are nothing more than many grinders also known as shrillings, also known as shambling perserkers. We've seen these before on some of the train station. They can get pretty big and annoying, but not something you need to worry about anyway.

Some of the other have become something else and short of a god, they are the most powerful monsters who have ever set foot on a sixth floor in dungeon crawler world history. I like to call them odious creepers. They tend to be slow during the day when it's dark. They gave the ability to combine with both shamblers and other creepers and get even stronger, and they can get fast very fast. They can replicate themselves too, if they have the parts. There are currently fifty in the forest,

plus another few thousand shambling berserkers of various sizes. For fun, we have randomized their location, and for extra fun, we have marked the location of each creeper on the map. For you wall kill all the odious creepers before the sun sets. For every you kill, you will receive plus five to random stat for every five plus five additional levels. That's insane. That's insane. The crawler or hunter who kills

the most will get an additional prize. Only the person who does the most damage gets credit for the kill. If you don't kill all of them before the sun sets, bad stuff will happen, and I mean every single one, and by bad stuff I mean something completely badshit, and not just to the crawlers, but the hunters too, So all of you cowards sitting on your ass and Zacha need to get to work. So Mordecai gets in touch and he is like, I think I know what these are going to be, and they are going to be

so deadly. I don't even have words to express how dangerous and how much you need to not be involved in any of this. You have got to get out of there, and they will be able to like not only rip people apart, but in doing that use their body parts that they have just ripped off to make

themselves even stronger. They come up out of the ground, they have like ranged weapons, They can wrap you up in vines, they can shoot darts, like you know all of this, and Carl's starting to be like, we can't let everybody else do it, and he's like, I don't know if anything I have will work on them. And things this big usually require a full application, So we're talking in aerosol delivery is going to be a problem

with only half a day. They want you to kill these things the old fashioned way, and the prize is a little too good, which means it's too dangerous. And then Kotsha chimes in and she says I think some of these are going to be as high as level one point fifty and maybe more before they turn into the plant things, which is bonkers insane. So uh, they wind up like at the safe room putting together a plan, but it's sort of the way that they have to

create an aerosol. This is the thing that like Karl winds up having to sort of lie about in terms of how he managed to come up with this and figure it all out. And also it's like the vibe is still I don't know that this is going to work. We think it's likely to work, and it turns out that Louis has this ability because of him is what is the class that he has. It's like exterminator, I think.

So he has an ability called tent the house, which is basically exactly kind of what they need where he can create an aerosolized assault within a given area and if he's flying on that house, he can hit an even bigger area. So like that's ideal, but it's like a little too ideal where I am very much sitting here like okay, so how is this going to go

horribly wrong? It has to the you know, ough God, So I'm trying to find the moment when they're actually at the because I'm jumping back and forth so much as I talk about everything that I am having to swipe back and forth between chapters on my kindle here, Oh right, and I forgot about the fact that prepotente he drops the ring of Divine and Suffering on the ground, and in that moment, fucking Carl looks at it and has a second of like, oh shit, how do I

get it? And I was like, oh, Carl, Like the fact that he's using it at all is just not great. The fact that he is considering using two I'm so sorry. Something terrible has to be like a side effect of using two, Right, There's got to be something that, like setting aside the kind of cold bloodedness that it inspires in you, there's got to be something else. I don't know. Maybe I'm giving things too much credit. Maybe it is

supposed to like be sheer psychological effect. I don't know, but it was extra really upsetting to me how quickly he like resolved on the fact that he was going to take that ring, that he was looking at it fully intending. I really got goosebumps over it a little bit.

somebody and they could come and get it. And so how I am going to sidestep that is, I'm going to fucking eat it and make it so that nobody can take it, which I think is like a very reasonable idea. I think it's a smart approach because it's not him using it, but it's also not him leaving it somewhere for somebody else to get a hold of.

I do not know whether or not it can be looted from his body if he swallows it and is killed with it in his stomach, because if it works the way I think, I believe that wouldn't be possible that they couldn't loot it, which is genius, Like this is him low key taking it out of play as effectively as he can given the circumstances a very smart move if that, If it's what I think, because it just feels to me he wouldn't want to keep using it it resultsed in Miriam's death, Like the way that

he would see it inevitably would be like this ring is responsible for killing her, and it wouldn't be necessarily quite true or fair, but I would be hard pressed to make a good argument against it, really, like I can't help but kind of agree. So of course he doesn't want to keep using it, but you also don't want to be responsible for somebody else getting a hold of it and going fucking nuts on this floor with it,

you know. And he saw the way that Carl used like stole her the potions when he claimed that Prepotentie was going to get all of them. And I am assuming Prepotente heard the AI say Carl used his own ring of divine suffering when Miriam died. I feel Prepotente is aware of how Carl's mind works and is just cutting it off at the pass right here and being like,

you know what, no, you're not getting this. And I respect that, and I think it is a really smart choice, not just for keeping everybody else away from the ring, but also he's kind of doing Carl a favor, even if that's not his intention, because Carl like the way in which Carl is so susceptible to this rings ability its convenience. I don't even really know how to describe it. It's extremely worrying from the outside to me, you know, like I really hate seeing this, so yeah, I sort

of love that move. I feel like this is prepotente really outthinking Carl in just like a moment of inspiration, and I was sort of on the sidelines, like rooting for him a bit, you know, just being like because as soon as he started to drop it, I instantly was like, oh, oh no, what is this gonna be now, Like Carl's gonna have two and I'm just so glad that's not how it's gonna work out. Let's see. Uh.

If I recall correctly, this is Michael in the chat. Sorry, guys, the book disappears and the owner loses access to it entirely if he ever reveals its existence. That one, I know. I presume the same would apply if the crawler is killed and someone's looting the inventory, or if the book is otherwise forcibly removed from his inventory and discovered. So you're saying that, like, if somebody forcibly removed his inventory, that the book would likely just disappear and he would

never have access to it. That's like really scary also, because it's not just that somebody is forcing you to drop all your stuff. If the book weren't simply taken away, there is still the hope that per perhaps they won't recognize the value of the book and so it's you know, out of your inventory. But they're going through your stuff and they just see this book and they're like, ugh, just a recipe book whatever, and they just chuck it

aside and you can maybe still get it back. But if they shove it out of your inventory and that results in it being taken away from you permanently, that that's just like a real heartbreaker. I would be so bombed. I wonder if that's really how it works. But yeah, anyway, so sorry, guys, I'm getting I'm all over the place here a little bit. I love when they go and ask Mordecai is his eating the ring going to do anything? Is it gonna result in his stomach being turned to lava?

I think that's what doughnut asks is just specifically like will it turn his belly the lava or something? And I love Mordechai just being like, I don't fucking know everybody is doing such weird shit anymore that I can't keep up. I don't know what's happening. And then later he's giving advice and he's like, of course, nobody fucking

listens to me anymore, so whatever, I guess. And I just really enjoyed his being like frustrated and throwing his hands in the air and just being like having he for a while was like the respected sage who knew all. And now it's sort of like, well we should probably ask Mordecai, but then we should probably just go ahead and do whatever the fuck we intended to do anyway. So yeah, I just found that kind of funny. It's uh, I I am enjoying seeing Mordecai run across things that

he is not familiar with either. There's something kind of weirdly satisfying about that. It's just a I feel like he had when we start the series. There's a sense coming off of him of hopelessness and boredom and this routine that he has fallen into that's just like really

depressing and like SAPs his enjoyment of life. And even though it's not like a good reason, I can't help but feel like being thrown for a loop over and over is at least getting him re engaged in his life in a way that I enjoy seeing, if that

makes sense. So I don't know, maybe I'm overstating it, but it just there was there's something about the attitude that he had to start off with that It's not like he's less cynical now exactly, but it's more that he feels like he cares and is invested now in a way that it was like he was afraid to allow himself to do before. I don't know, So yeah,

I'm sort of happy for him. But there's also the sense of, like, once you let yourself open up again, you are it's possible to be very, very hurt again. So I do worry about him in regard to all this. So as they're like figuring out how they're going to handle some of these things, they get messages about when an odious creeper has fallen, and there are ten that have been taken down and eight went down to crawlers, one to a hunter, and out of the eight that

went to crawlers, three went to Prepotente. So he is out there doing the work man, and I'm trying to see Uncle Morty's installon Kill an Undead Repellent Extra Strength Edition is the name of the potion. Based on what Purpotente said and what he received. I took an existing read killer designed to take out an odious bloom, and added multiple anti undead boosts, similar to the Holy Grenade. Each jug has enough to kill two or three of them, maybe four if you're conservative. Do not get close. That

spell of yours has a decent range. Only apply it at maximum distance. This stuff is very flammable, despite my best efforts, and if you catch it on fire before it can get absorbed, it's not going to work. And we find out also that like the way that Carl has made them made it possible to like shoot canisters of it, they no longer count as explosives, which means that like the little bonus he gets to chucking them is gone, so he has to be a lot more careful.

And as they're talking about, Eva kills one of the creepers, and then there's another one that falls without being mentioned who's taken it down? And as Carl had mentioned earlier, if nobody is given credit, it's likely that either the creeper like took itself out somehow or an NPC killed it.

So by the time we begin the next chapter for next time, there will be thirty eight remaining and they only have a few hours before you know, sunset begins and then we're going to have a problem, so hoping that we can really get some work done before that happens. I'm over time, so I've got to wrap up. But thank you guys again so much for hanging out with me and listening and coming to lives if you do.

Thank you again Jackie for commissioning this one. Appreciates you very very much, And until next time, to lou motherfuckers.