Carl: What happens if not everybody finishes the race?
Prepotente: While I don’t know for certain quite yet, I strongly believe that the pool of opponents for each heat is set in stone. That means if only one opponent falls during the current heat, then that will be fine. However, if two or more fall during the heat, there won’t be enough for the next race. As a result, they will have to mix and match with other groups that are missing a full heat.
I felt cold, and the moment he said it, I knew he was right.
For this first race, all eight of our opponents were NPCs.
Carl: Goddamnit. I think you’re right.
Prepotente: Quite. If you kill more than one opponent, then it’s possible the next heat will have an opponent team consisting of fellow crawlers. By the end, I fear there will be multiple crawler-versus-crawler races, possibly races where all the opponents are crawler teams.
Elle: Well, that’s just fucking peachy.
Imani: We can avoid this if we keep all our opponents alive. Avoid killing those you’re racing against.
Zhang: Shit. Guys . . . Na already?—
“Carl, watch out!” Donut called.
Just inside the mouth of the cave, the minivan was on its side, flaming, blocking the road. A bugbear was crawling away from the wreckage as another one of the vehicles—a bus-sizedladybug—squealed in pain as it was dragged off the road by the biggest manatee I’d ever seen. One of the riders of the bug ran away from the scene, screaming.
I couldn’t tell what manner of creature the bug rider was because the rider was on fire. But it didn’t matter because a second later, the house-sized manatee crunched down on the bug, killing it, and the on-fire creature had a notification appear over it for just a second before it exploded much the same way Waldrip Chris the gremlin had.
[ 4 ]
The Trauco Tripletshave been eliminated due to the expiration of their mount. Eight teams remain in the current heat.
Our truck skidded as I leaned on the brakes. The sound of spilling pots and pans rattled. The truck stopped just short of the crashed, on-fire minivan. A second bugbear appeared as I hit reverse and backed up a little, shouting and pointing at the manatee that continued to munch happily on the giant ladybug.
Prepotente’s warning was still echoing in my head. The van was on its side, and it was on fire. But the bugbears, two of them at least, were still alive, fighting to save it. One of them was using what looked like a blanket to put out the fire in the engine compartment.
“We can’t lose another team. We gotta get that fire out,” I called, jumping out of the truck. “Leave Mongo inside! Mongo, don’t let anyone in. Donut, what do you got for the fire? I’ll deal with the manatee!”
“Do I look like someone designed to put out fires!” Donut yelled as she jumped heavily to my shoulder. The heat from the fire washed over us. “Goodness, Carl. Why don’tyouput out the fire?” She gasped as she looked up at the manatee. The massivecreature loomed over us. “As the number one crawler at level 135, I’ll take out whatever the heck this thing is. Goodness, it smells just awful.”
The enormously fat creature rose out of the water like a dolphin doing a trick, only this was clearly in defiance of physics. Its flippers waved. White liquid oozed down the manatee’s giant face.
Miss Talulah. Level 90 Screeching Death Manatee.
This is a special guest creature for the 10th and 11th floors.
You’re probably going to find this hard to believe, but not only are these things sort of real, but that name they have—Screeching Death Manatees—is theactualname of record for this particular species. They were regular manatees, not unlike theTrichechus manatusmost people from your world know and love. These guys were added to a former Land War world undergoing reparative terraforming when the company in charge of the project suddenly went bankrupt. The orcish owner had a bad run at sports betting, which resulted in his entire company and family all getting tossed into an indentureship program.
It took a whole generation before the vultures—in this case, the Operatic Bankers’ Federation—picking apart the orc’s assets thought to actually check up on all the not-yet-finished terraforming projects to see what was what. One of those worlds was found to have an uplift satellite program that was malfunctioning and running amok.
This satellite was not an intelligence like myself, mind you. This was a passionless, non-sapient artificial intelligence system that had its chubby finger pressedhard on the fast-forward-evolution button. Honestly, it was a godsdamned nightmare.
Anyway, yadda, yadda, yadda, a planet filled with nightmare monsters was born. The Operatic reclamation team, run by a group of guys collectively named Otto Banking Unit 3 (remember that name), originally decided it was best to just poison the whole planet and start over, but an economic-feasibility study came up with an interesting idea. This is a planet filled with nightmare biological creatures. Why let the mantids have a monopoly on theme parks? Why not turn it into a horror-themed safari planet?
The planet was renamed “Red Terror Place of Family Adventure.”
And that’s where the name “Screeching Death Manatees” comes from. Pretty much everything on the planet was given a name like that, at least according to those dweeb slimes. The raccoons are Doom Crier Beasts. The cockatiels are called Fuck-Off Cockatiels.
This place is still open to this day.
Also of note is that a third of Otto Banking Unit, Otto himself, is currently a registered guest of Club Scolopendra.
Anyway, these manatee things have been changed slightly to reflect their given names. They’re a real danger to any passing vehicle or mount, but both of you guys are so OP at this point that Miss Talulah is hardly a threat.