The bleachers stood in smoky shadow. They were filled to capacity. Filled with silent observers. The horribles. The former mobs. They weren’t really here because they were dead, but their avatars sat in silent witness to the slaughter that was about to ensue.
A moment of clarity hit me then. Why it had been set up this way.
The system AI had once been a Primal. Not a singular person who died and then had their brain sucked into the collective consciousness. But a sample of them all mixed together. Like he said, a cup from the ocean. But these NPCs. These mobs. All of them. From the goblins to the gods, all with true sapience, they were the same. Drips from the same well, all placed in different bodies with different capabilities, their memories and motivations and skills twisted and molded like clay so the game could be played. They weren’t computer programs orartificialintelligence. No. They wereaggregateintelligence.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen that until just now.
Primals. All of them. All the way down.
Those that had been peeled away, given consciousness, and then denied return, they were here as avatars. But the monsters, the ones about to die—they, too, were victims in all this. Soon they would join the lost. The horribles.
Did it matter? Probably. Was there anything I could do about that? Not right now.
Especiallynot right now because this was the beginning of the end.
“For my first choice,” I roared, my voice echoing across the very galaxy, “I choose Scolopendra.”
[ 94 ]
The world froze.
System Message: Scolopendra has entered the realm.
Instead of screaming as usual, the boss battle announcement came in a strangely calm, strangely lucid, even voice. Unlike every other announcement so far, there were no glitches. When he talked, the dungeon AI sounded more like a stern dad than the psychotic mind we knew him to be, which somehow made it seem even more terrifying.
You have entered the lair of a Floor Boss.
You have entered the lair of the Dungeon Boss.
Boss Battle.
There was no music. It was completely silent. All around, the audience watched, unmoved.
Multiple images appeared, floating in the air. It was me, Donut, Elle, Imani, Prepotente, Florin, and the rest of us. Twenty-three faces all in a line.
Then one more face with the labelPenelope 3.
Versus.
Two more images materialized. One was the tentacled monstrosity. Words emerged over it, slowly typing their way across the image.
Krakaren Prime. Level 235 Floor boss.
And below that, the image of the centipede appeared. It wasn’t anything special. It looked exactly like a centipede from Earth. Segmented, brown and red with bright yellow legs.
Scolopendra. Level 500 Dungeon boss.
Well, shit.
You really are insane, Carl. And the 22 others who agreed to this batshit plan. You’re crazy, too. All of you.
We’ve seen some suicidal gambits throughout the history of the crawl, but I gotta tell you, this takes the fucking prize. I’m not even done with my goddamned parade yet, and here you are, trying to one-up me on my special day.
Oh well. Rules are rules. This should be entertaining, at least.
I’m assuming you know how this works, right?
Have you ever played any video game, like,ever?