“No,” Akuma said. “It’s a small floor where crawlers must face greatly enhanced mobs from earlier floors. It’s a hand-built maze filled with horrible traps that culminates in a floor boss that is all but impossible to kill. The showrunner who approved this project was murdered soon after it was approved, and the two former crawlers who were put in charge of the project were forgotten. They are still there to this day, existing outside any supervision, running the construction of the seventeenth floor from scratch every season. Showrunners always just reuse the plans from the previous seasons for everything above the thirteenth floor. Nobody looks at it. The showrunner who originally approved it never transferred their paperwork. They aren’t accumulating hours against their indentureship. They are all but invisible, forgotten. They are ghosts in the system, free to do as they wish.”
“So they’re trapped,” I said. “Can’t they send a message out?”
“They are, or were, trapped by design. They didn’t want to be seen. The seventeenth floor is a front. They weren’t just building the seventeenth floor. Attached to the floor is the only entrance to a pocket dimension they built. They were building an oasis, a place for mobs and NPCs to escape to. A world within a world. The two crawlers sacrificed the possibility of ever getting out to make a place where NPCs and mobs could permanently escape the horrors of the dungeon.Thatis the Pineapple Cabaret.”
A strange surge of pride filled me. Herot, who was so concerned about the well-being of mobs and NPCs. Of course he, or she, would do that. Of course. My view counter was completely spiked.
“Not so much a secret anymore,” I said. “You didn’t just tell that to me, but to the whole galaxy.”
Akuma nodded. “After what just happened with the Nothing being broken,everyoneis aware of them now. If they want to keep the crawl running after this season, they will need to start everything over from scratch. All the existing NPCs will be destroyed. All the indentured crawlers stuck within will be lost. It will all be gone. They have no other choice. That is why we must work together. You didn’t need to crush my fucking balls.”
“I didn’t have to,” Elle said. “But I certainly enjoyed it.”
“You have told me a bunch of random shit,” I said. “How does it all tie in?”
“The AI is expanding. It can feed itself, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Wemightbe able to create an exit from the Pineapple Cabaret to the surface of this planet. Wemight. But there’s a problem. A lot of problems, really. The Cabaret is similar to the Nothing. It’s not a floor. It’s a separate dimension, and the rules do allow crawlers to travel to it.But as of right now, we don’t have a way in or out except via the seventeenth floor. But if we can build another door, any crawler who is withinwhen the floor collapses will be deemed ‘lost.’ But they won’t be killed.”
“Wait,” I said. “If someone gets pulled into the Nothing, they don’t die when the floor collapses?”
“No crawlers could possibly survive the Nothing. That’s irrelevant now. The Nothing was broken on the last floor. But this dimension is the same sort of thing. I was there at the Pineapple Cabaret. Me and several others had been for some time. But we deliberately left. We returned to the cold storage when we realized what was happening, and we got brought to Faction Wars. We needed to find the Scavenger’s Daughter.”
I glanced at Samantha, who had gotten bored and was currently gnawing on the foot of the dead imp. She perked up at the mention of the word “Scavenger.”
“Who and what is that?” I asked.
“It’s how we will keep the denizens of the Cabaret safe. It’s how we will escape to the planet’s surface. She’s crucial, as is her father, but for now we need a way to get ourselves back to the Cabaret. And when we go, we can take some crawlers with us. But only if they meet the requirements.”
His health entered the red. We were either going to have to reset or not get all the answers. “Goddamnit,” I said. “I have a million questions still.”
Florin, who’d been unusually silent, lowered his shotgun and held it against Akuma’s head.
“Remember when Miss Elle said you would suffer if you lie? Well, you just did. Lights out, mate.”
“Wait, wait. What did I lie about?”
Florin growled. “You left Faction Wars on your own. You can step in and out of floors as you please. That’s how you gothere. Sounds like you can get back there on your own just fine.”
“No, no, you’re right. But that wasn’t a lie. We need you, and crawlers can’t skip floors.”
Florin shook his head. “You and your friends are some of the most powerful folks in this world. But youneedus to go with you? Why?”
Akuma sighed. “Get that out of my face, and I will tell you. We need help.”
Florin nodded and lowered his gun. “I’m guessing your special little utopia ain’t so much a utopia anymore.”
“It was fine until we left. We needed to leave to get to the Scavenger’s Daughter, and the moment we left, they moved in. And now we need to fight to get it back, and lots of us were killed in Faction Wars. There’s only five of us left. It’s not enough. The dimension is infested.”
“I knew it,” Florin said.
“Infested with what?” I asked.
“Lots and lots of things,” he said. “Old, forgotten monsters. Shadow mimics, who are almost impossible to root out. The leftovers from the Ogre Imperium several seasons back. And worse, remnants of things we don’t want to wake. Things that Agatha can and will wake the moment she learns they exist. We left for just a few short days, and our protection spells got canceled out, and all hell broke loose. And now we can’t get back without a fighting force. Believe me, using you wasn’t my first choice. Our original plan was to build more mages during Faction Wars, but you ruined that. And our second plan was to use an old ally in the Nothing, and you ruinedthat, too. So you’re the third choice. Still, you dipshits are all already stronger than any crawlers have ever been.”
I shot several more questions at him rapid-fire. “What are these ‘remnants’? You still didn’t tell me why I needed to kill an extra team. What are the requirements to get into the Cabaret?Whyare there requirements? How will we get a portal open?”
“Hold up,” he said. He was still clearly in pain. “We have two possibilities to get there now that the Gate of the FeralGods is gone and broken. The casinos at the Desperado Club are one way. And if that doesn’t work, it’s something that involves your shop interface. That one was Herot’s idea. As for the requirements, you can’t worship a god. You entering the area would instigate a smite. Not certain why. Something to do with the way the space is built. We can’t risk the Cabaret getting embroiled in the Ascendency battles. We don’t even want the gods to know about it.”
I exchanged a look with Donut. That ruled me out. That ruled out most of us.