[ 11 ]
IT BLEW WHEN IT HIT THE GROUND.
I’d chucked the dynamite a pretty good distance into the large room, but I was only a few steps away from the door when it went off. Bam! The sudden, resounding concussion sent me flying. I hit the stone floor and bounced, sliding. The wooden door splintered, and a jagged hunk of wood ricocheted off my head. Stinking, billowing smoke poured through the entrance. Blood seeped from a cut deep in my scalp.
My vision flashed red, and I received a DANGER LOW HEALTH warning. But it quickly abated.
Behind me, I could hear the crackling of fire. I groaned, rolling onto my back as my health slowly kicked its way back up. I felt as if I’d been run over
by that goblin bulldozer thing.
Donut appeared above me, looking down.
“Are you dead?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Then you better get up. Let’s go see what we just killed.”
I pulled myself up. Mordecai had said I’d be fully healed in two minutes, but two minutes was a long time when you were in pain. I had over a dozen healing potions now, but I didn’t want to waste one just yet. Not when I didn’t have to.
The room glowed red. I pulled a torch from my inventory. I went to grab my lighter, but a box appeared above the torch, asking if I wanted to activate it. Weird. It was different than the dynamite. I mentally clicked Yes, and the torch lit on its own. A half-hour timer appeared and then faded as the bright, dancing flames engulfed the top half of the stick.
I paused at the entrance, peering inside. The room looked as if it was the interior of a dumpster. Mountains of trash rose to the ceiling. Multiple small fires burned, giving it a pulsating, red glow. I tossed the torch in, and the room lit up further.
I spied multiple bug pieces scattered about. My map populated with about three dozen x’s indicating bug corpses. I didn’t see any movement and red dots. I’d also received a ton of notifications, but they were all in the folder.
“I think we killed them all. Do you see anything?”
“Nope,” Donut said, strolling into the room. She stopped a couple steps in, looking distastefully at her paw. She’d stepped on something that looked like a dirty diaper. “The only thing that smells worse than trash is burning trash. You made a real mess of this place.”
I followed her in. Donut jumped to my shoulder and immediately began licking her paw. I pulled up the notifications as we cautiously moved deeper into the room. The ceiling was higher than out in the hall, almost as tall as the main corridor. Piles of garbage filled the room, stacked at least 15 feet tall. A black garbage bag was ripped open at my feet, and I could see fast food wrappers, soggy Spanish-language magazines, and empty cans within.
Why would they transfer garbage into here?
I stepped gingerly as to not cut my feet, but I already felt as if my feet were changing, becoming less sensitive to the bare ground. Before, I knew this would be pure agony. It was still uncomfortable, but it was getting better.
And it was happening much more quickly than it would have before all this happened.
I’d received several skill upgrades just from that one move. Explosive handling. Dangerous Explosive Handling. Goblin Explosives. In addition, I’d received another Silver Goblin Box for killing more than 10 mobs with an explosive and a Gold Crowd Control Box for killing more than 15 mobs with the same attack. I’d received a huge experience bonus for that, taking me almost up to level six.
I had one more notification, an achievement. I clicked on it.
“Do you hear music?” Donut asked, pausing her cleaning to look up at
the ceiling.
New achievement! Boss Babe.
You have struck a blow against a dungeon boss and caused damage to it. 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
to waste a prize on you.
Shing!
The door, which moments before had been blown to bits, magically reformed itself, locking us in the room. And just to hammer the matter home, silvery, glowing bars of metal appeared, locking it in place one by one with a clink, clink, clink. Three, skull-headed torches appeared, arising from the garbage heaps.
At the far end of the room, something rustled. Something big.
Music started playing, the sound filling the room. It was odd, intense, disjointed. It was like a harp playing with distortion with a heavy beat under it.
The ground rumbled as the announcement came.
Boss Battle!
You have discovered the lair of a Neighborhood Boss!
Put your game faces on ladies and gentlemen! Aaaand Here. We. Go!
The AI was louder than usual. He sounded like an announcer at a Monster Truck rally. Normally, I was only really hearing this stuff in my head. This time it was through an actual loudspeaker. It echoed, shaking the walls and the piles of garbage.
“Carl! Carl, I don’t like this! Take me from here immediately!” Donut cried. She jumped from my shoulder and started scratching at the door, which would not open. “Carl, open the door this instant!”
I pushed myself against the back wall, waiting for the monster to emerge.
“Donut, get ready!” I cried. “Just start pumping it with magic missiles.
Use your mana potions to refill yourself!”
Donut turned and panic-fired a missile, which bounced ineffectively
against the sifting garbage pile.
“Wait until we see what it is first!”
The garbage exploded upward in a geyser of scorched trash bags. Bug parts and paper and food wrappers rained. A woman appeared, reaching into the air, screaming as she rocketed up like she’d been shot out of a cannon.
She landed with a heavy crash twenty meters in front of us.
Donut and I looked at one another.
This was a human woman, about 35 years old, 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 15 feet tall.
She spied us cowering, and she screamed again.
Everything stopped the moment she screamed.
She froze, I froze, and Donut Froze. The only thing that kept moving was
my mind, which raced.
What the actual… A mugshot-style shot of my face in a round frame appeared floating in front of me, my name and level written under it. A second image of Donut
appeared next to mine.
A huge Versus splattered into the air.
The Hoarder!
Level 7 Neighborhood Boss!
Trapped in her pile of rubbish, abandoned by society, the war inside her head has seeped out of her mind and infected both her body and her surroundings. Now nothing more than a garbage troll, the Hoarder is a horrific reminder of what can happen to those who fall out of the light!
Protected by her minions, she’ll do anything to keep her precious stockpile safe!
The woman’s title—The Hoarder—appeared in a stylized, metallic font with blood splattered around it. It was straight out of a fighting videogame.
The moment the description ended, we could all move again. The giantess finished her scream and took a few steps toward us, garbage cascading around her with each step.
Half of the woman’s face was burned to hell. She had a health bar over her head, and it was already 3/4's gone. I’d cheated the boss fight, killing her minions and hurting her before it even began.
“Ayúdame por favor,” the woman cried, reaching for us. Her voice was deep, beefy. Scared. The giant woman sounded terrified. “No se que esta pasando. Me duele el estómago. No se donde estoy. Por favor, tengo miedo.”
“Shit, I think she’s a person,” I said. “Like she was in her house when it happened, and they turned her into this thing. We should help her.”
“Yeah, that’ll be a no,” Donut said. She shot a magic missile at the woman, who staggered as it exploded against her chest. The tattered remains of the woman's filthy t-shirt burned away, revealing pendulous, stretch-
marked breasts that fell over a sagging, equally marred stomach. Her health barely nudged.
“Ayúdame!” the monster woman cried again. She made a gagging noise, and when she opened her mouth, a pair of level two Scatterers came out and charged at us, hissing.
“This is really disgusting,” Donut said. She shot another missile at the
woman, her third.
“Take a mana potion,” I cried.
I punted a cockroach and then stomped the second. A bag of garbage softened the blow, and it didn’t die. I stomped again. I cried out as a jagged hunk of metal tore my foot. The Scatterer hissed. Fuck this. I reached down and ripped its head right off the body. It came off with a pop, sending me flying backward. I hit the ground.
My hand grabbed something. I thought at first it was a bicycle chain. No, a leash. A metal, chain-linked leash. The kind people used for really scary dogs. I snatched it up, pulling. It was still attached to the mummified remains of a large dog. It yanked out of the garbage like a monster leaping at me.
Jesus Christ. I unhooked it and pulled myself to my feet.
“Okay,” I said, looping the chain in my hand. The woman was scared, disoriented, and she obviously didn’t want to be here. But she was also vomiting killer cockroaches at us. Our only real choice was to take her out.
“Distract her,” I said. I ran around one of the big piles of garbage, one of the ones holding the skull torches. Thwump. Donut fired a missile.
“Hurry up!” Donut cried. “More cockroaches are coming!” The cat yowled. I saw her sail into the air, using her jump ability to land atop the pile I was running around. “Carl, this is not acceptable!”
I rounded the corner, coming at the massive woman from just behind her.
Another magic missile bounced off her chest. She staggered as two more Scatterers emerged from her mouth. She made this awful noise as they emerged, the sound of twenty people vomiting all at once. These were level four bugs, the larger brood guardians.
“I can’t drink another potion yet,” Donut cried. “It won’t let me! I can’t fire another missile for a minute!”
Shit. I didn’t think about what I did next. I rushed up the pile of garbage behind the woman. My feet screamed as I stepped on what felt like broken glass. I looped the metal leash through the handle. I ran, and I jumped onto her back, slipping the loop over her throat. I slid off of her wet, greasy body,
grasping the end of the leash with all of my strength as it pulled taut around her.
She gurgled and started thrashing about wildly. She stumbled backward, falling toward me. I scrambled to my feet, pulling. Her hands moved to her throat as she crashed down, splattering one of the Scatterers. Several other bugs filled the chamber now. Unable to easily get to Donut, they turned
toward me while I pulled and pulled.
“You’re doing it!” Donut cried.
“A little help here!” The bugs made an angry chittering noise as they descended on me. The poor woman gurgled and thrashed. Her health moved
downward, slowly but steadily.
“My missiles aren’t ready yet!”
A level four hissed and jumped at me. I kicked at it, and it scattered back.
It lunged again and snapped, taking a bite of my leg. I screamed.
“Use your fucking claws,” I cried.
“She’s almost dead. You can kill them when you kill her!”
“Goddamnit Donut,” I cried as a second cockroach bit me.
I stumbled forward suddenly, landing between the two Scatterers.
The chain had broken. I stared stupidly at the remains wrapped in my right hand. Fuck.
Thwump. Donut fired a magic missile. It must have let her drink another potion. A cockroach hissed and died. Thwump Thwump. The last two went into the woman. She still wasn’t dead.
With the chain still wrapped around my hand, I scrabbled up and punched the head of the closest of the brood guardians. Its face exploded, showering me with gore. A notification appeared and minimized itself. I turned as the second jumped at me. I fell onto my back as it hit my chest, mouth thrashing at my neck, its barbed legs scrabbling. I ripped at the creature, and one of its legs came right off like I was pulling it from an overcooked chicken. It squealed in pain as I pushed it off me. I leaped at it, pummeling its back with my chain-covered fist. It shrieked and died. My knuckles ached. I need brass
knuckles. Real ones.
I whirled around.
The Hoarder lay on her back. Her health bar was all but empty. Steam rose off of her. The broken half of the leash remained around her neck. I had to finish her off now before she puked more bugs. I scrambled toward her.
The woman’s eyes met mine as I raised my fist.
“Lo siento si fui una mala persona,” she said. She closed her eyes as tears streamed down the non-burned side of her face. The woman only had one, misshapen tooth in her mouth. “No quería que mi hija se enfermara. No quiero estar en el infierno. Por favor. Por favor envíame a Jesús.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I punched her right in the nose. I felt it give underneath my fist, almost like it was an aluminum can wrapped in clay. It crumpled and crunched deep inside. I punched again. And again. My fist burned in pain, and I took my own damage with each blow.
A minute later, and she was dead.
Once again, the world froze.
And the winner is, The Royal Court of Princess Donut!
Our two mugshots filled my vision with Winner! stenciled over it.
The remaining cockroaches all dropped dead. The door burst into shards.
The music stopped. I leaned up against the stinking woman’s dead body, and I tried not to vomit bacon and eggs all over myself.
