HORRIBLE ONE
CONTROL
HEAT 1 OF 7
[ 1 ]
Welcome,Crawler. Welcome to the tenth floor.
Time to Level Collapse: Level timer has been temporarily suspended for this floor. Please wait for the announcement from that inebriated fish if we can manage to wake her up for the details.
Views: 933 Septillion
Followers: 3.5 Quintillion
Favorites: 971 Quadrillion
Leaderboard Rank: 3
Bounty: 3,200,000 gold
Congrats, Crawler. You have received a Platinum Venison Box.
Remaining Crawlers: 5,501
Entering your garage.
Warning: The next heat starts in five minutes. Safe room access is blocked until the heat is over.
I hit the tiled floor with a heavythump. One moment I’d been sitting in the zero zone, talking with Quasar about that psychotic Naga woman, and the next I was here.
I stood, wiping myself off. I was still covered in blood and gore and red ash from the end of Faction Wars. This was alarge room with a black-and-white-checkered tiled floor and corrugated metal walls, like a smaller-sized airplane hangar. It was cold. I turned to face the only other creatures in here. They were a pair of white-tagged gremlins standing in the back corner, both wearing overalls.
I blinked at the NPCs just as Donut appeared next to me with a yowl. She hit the ground sideways, yelped, and then jumped to my shoulder.
“Carl, I’m atop the leaderboard again! I’m number one!”
“I’m very happy for you.”
“So, I met the new wife.”
“Yeah, I heard,” I said. I gave her a pat. “I haven’t met her, but Quasar filled me in. I heard you grabbed the upper hand pretty quickly.”
“Don’t be racist. It’s upperpaw. But yes. If she thinks she can just slither in and take advantage of the Posse like that, that legless bitch has another thing coming. And I thought Miss Beatrice was bad. You sure know how to pick them, Carl.”
There was an ominous countdown timer in the upper left of my vision. It was at four minutes and thirty seconds and counting down. We needed to figure it out before we did anything else.
Donut: MORDECAI, I HAVE TO PICK A NEW CLASS! HELP ME WITH THE CHOICES.
Mordecai: There you guys are. You have four minutes to get your vehicle ready. Donut, you’re back as party leader, so pick a class quickly.
I turned in a circle. At the front of the garage was a massive roll-up door. A chain pulley system crisscrossed the ceiling. I’d seen plenty of similar systems in both car shops and dry dock repair bays. The two gremlins started jogging toward us.
I already knew some of what was going on out there because Quasar had told me, but even he hadn’t known everything. Iclicked through my messages and pop-ups, my heart still racing. I briefly paused at that number “5,501.” That meant 75% of us had taken deals.
I took the briefest of moments to let that sink in. Such an overwhelming sense of secondhand relief flooded me. I didn’t blame anyone for tapping out. Each and every one of them had earned it.
Part of me wished I had the luxury.