“It’s a go,” I said.
I could feel it. A wave of relief swept over everyone. It was like a dark curtain had been pulled away from everything. Tran clasped his hands together and bowed deeply.
This was a ridiculous, probably-not-going-to-work plan. But that was okay. It wassomething, and that’s what we’d been missing.
Ever since the previous floor, several crawlers had been complaining that the Cleaner Bot upgrade was no longer available in the personal space shop due to “overwhelming demand.”
We’d just figured it was because of Faction Wars, with all the warlords buying them up. That was part of it. As it stood, the cleaner bot that Architect Houston the viceroy had had in hissurgical theater—the white one I’d looted—was an old model. It was literally the last available one in the store.
That was because Herot had a standing order to purchase every cleaner bot that showed up.
Menerva was apparently on the seventeenth floor in charge of the NPCs who were building and occupying the Backstage Death Maze. This was where the AI had plucked Growler Gary from when he’d used his body as an avatar. It was also why Gary’s level had been so elevated. They were training, getting stronger and stronger in preparation for the impossible eventuality that crawlers would make it that far.
This whole seventeenth floor was just something built into the dungeon, invisible to the showrunners who were just happy to have a box ticked. It had been going like this for hundreds and hundreds of seasons, completely ignored.
Herot, however, was not backstage. He was trapped on the other side of the portal. He was in the Pineapple Cabaret itself, the secret dimension they’d built to hide the NPCs and keep them safe. He had limited powers to control that world, but hedidhave a shop interface.
Honestly, I didn’t know how all this worked when the AI could literally create stuff with a virtual snap of his fingers, but we’d seen these sorts of artificial shortages before, like with the food after the flooding of Larracos.
That Cabaret place was currently overrun. Akuma had been a little... fuzzy... on who the bad guys were. He mentioned something called the Ogre Imperium, which was a long-forgotten plotline that had gotten binned because the ogres were made too intelligent and they had immediately figured out that they were trapped in a dungeon. And there was a shadow mimic infestation, which was just as bad. But there was something more, too.
The war mages wanted our help to clear the place out.
We had two options. The casino plan and the cleaner bot plan. It sounded like the casino plan was a bust, so we were going with the cleaner bot option. This plan was complicated, but Rosetta and Mordecai had been on it since we first heard the idea, and they were now semi-confident it was feasible. Butonlyif Akuma was telling the truth about Herot.
Li Na was dying of poison. HerLeft to Festerdebuff would not go away, and in fact, it would get worse because one’s health automatically topped up when they moved to the next floor. That would stop if she managed to get to the Pineapple Cabaret.
However, the war mages also claimed there was a possible exit from the Pineapple Cabaret to the Earth’s surface. That would, in theory, cure herLeft to Fester. Maybe.
There was so much here left to chance. So much built on faith, and if Akuma hadn’t dropped that name Herot... if Eris hadn’t said it might work, I wouldn’t have believed any of it.
If we did this now with Li Na, like now-now before the next race even started, we’d have a good idea if it would work before we tried it with several crawlers at once, which we’d have to do after this fifth heat.
We just needed to talk Li Na into going along with it.
[ 56 ]
Elle,Zhang, and Tran pulled back from the table. Zhang grabbed his target cape and pulled it back on, standing straight and tall and with purpose. They were going to go back to the safe room and attempt to communicate with Na and tell her the new plan.
“Good luck,” I whispered to Elle.
“Yeah, you, too,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Donut, who was currently forcing the fleshmancer to brush her. We’d just transferred mercenary ownership over to our guild. The strange human appeared to be enjoying himself while Linus watched. The soother alien was gently patting Donut’s chain mail crupper, which caused it to jingle. Even though the tourist was half-corporeal, he was really here. He started running his long fingers over her tail.
“I’m touching her, I’m touching her,” he said.
Elle raised her voice. “You, Linus. Stay here. If I catch word you do or say anything perverted, I’ll have someone in the outside world break your creepy little fingers. You understand?”
“Such a fuzzy little pussy,” he said, stroking Donut’s tail. “You smell so good. Elle doesn’t let me sniff her.” He leaned down and whispered something to Donut. Then he took his triple-segmented index finger and stuck it in his mouth and started sucking on it.
Donut turned. “Excuseme? What did you just say?”
“All right, never mind,” Elle said. “Linus, you’re coming with us.”
“Oh goody,” the alien said, jumping up.
“Carl, you need to get ready!” Donut cried. The sunglasses appeared on her face. “What do you think, Grigori? With or without sunglasses?”
“With,” the fleshmancer said, speaking for the first time.