If this happens, however, you willnotget your old vehicle or mount back.
Also, from now on, the team that wins is given a key. That key will open a single garage of a defeated team. Within, you may find additional supplies to upgrade your vehicle or mount along with other items, possibly. And in some cases, you may find an entire vehicle or mount. If you do find a second vehicle or mount, you can add it and expand your garage, and you may choose which to use for the next race. And yes, you may switch vehicles during pit stops.
And finally, this race you will see other heats racing alongside you on the same track. For this particular heat, containment stealing isn’t active. Take what you will from that statement.
Okay, everyone, good luck. The race starts in ten minutes. Your GPS or saddle units will have your maps now. See you at the finish line.
The whole vehicle buzzed, and a bubble appeared around us, barely visible except when it occasionally caught the light, like a real bubble. It spread about a meter in every direction outside the truck.
“Carl, did you understand all of that?” Donut asked.
“Yeah. We’ll need to stock up on more of those breathing potions Mordecai made.”
We had the back door open to keep an eye on all the approaching teams. I turned in my seat, craning my neck to see all the teams as they approached.
The tumbleweed of team Sparkles pulled up, sporting a pair of massive metallic exhaust ports that were new. Lucienne was driving this time. The little bug-eyed rodent creature was shouting something, but it wasn’t directed at us. I wasn’t sure it was directed at anyone.
The Lady Dominators pulled up next. I couldn’t tell what sort of upgrade they’d picked, but as usual, Corky remained passed out in the back.
Next up came One Fine Pig’s large APV, parking on the far-left edge of the track.
“Now that’s just offensive,” Donut muttered as I laughed.
These guys had come in last place, and it was clear how the audience vote had gone. The truck’s military desert tan painting had been replaced with a vehicle wrap. It featured an anime-style pair of Tigrans each kissing the backside of a fat pig, all covered with little heart symbols everywhere.
I laughed, but my humor went away upon seeing who our newest opponent was. I groaned. My heart sank. “Goddamnit.”
It was a pair of crawlers on a mount. They also had a dwarf mercenary with a crossbow behind them in a little basket. The mount was a heavily armored six-legged thing that looked like a wildebeest mixed with a triceratops. Little sparks flew with each step. It also wore a giant double saddle that was covered with spikes that glowed with enchantment.
Bruna the Slaughter Gnu.
This is the biological mount of Team Flamengo for the purpose of the tenth floor. As such, it is protected from most spells that would normally affect mounts.
Slaughter Gnus are six-legged beasts of burden that historically were used as war mounts by a race of creatures called Scads, or the Rascals by some. Scads are like orc-goblin things and are pretty rare nowadays, though that’s because after they stopped killing each other on battlefields, they upgraded to killing each other with nuclear holocaust before their postapocalyptic world got absorbed into the Syndicate.
ANYWAY, Slaughter Gnus are remarkably hardy, deceptively quick dumbasses. They have the ability toscale vertical surfaces with the alacrity of a horny mountain goat. Their hide is especially tough, making them perfect mounts for this floor.
And sitting on the back of the mount was Osvaldo. The small red-haired crawler was now level 72. He glared at us angrily as he approached the starting block. His race was something called a Curupira. He still looked mostly human, though I was pretty sure that red was not his natural hair color, and I wasn’t certain if his small frame was how large he’d been as a human, as he was barely five feet tall. There was something weird going on with his feet, too, but they were hidden by his large boots.
He was not driving Bruna. Another crawler, a level 63 human Strongman named Filipe L was holding the reins. I’d seen this guy quite a few times but had never spoken with or really examined him. This one was about my height and was all muscle. He looked huge next to Osvaldo.
I took a breath. This was not good. We had plans we were working on to hopefully save as many people as we could, but we were going to run out of time. It was going to be us or them.
Even though Osvaldo had been on and off the top charts, I’d only had limited dealings with him. He was a prick, but I only talked to him when terrible stuff was happening. I knew he was from Brazil, and I knew his now-devastated team had all focused early on only putting points into a single stat. For Osvaldo, it had been dexterity. For this Filipe guy, it was clearly strength.
That had served them well early on, but in recent floors, their entire team had been whittled down. They’d chosen to hide and not fight during Faction Wars, a fact that did not sit well with Donut. Or Elle. Especially not Elle.
Not that it had helped them. By the end, everyone had to fight whether they liked it or not.
Osvaldo had once had a pet stone hawk named Gimli. The bird had died at the end of the Butcher’s Masquerade, killed byPrepotente or, more likely, Bianca when they all started fighting over who got to loot the corpse of Queen Imogen.
The item Osvaldo had looted was the memorial crystal of Apito, whose existence was a big mystery because, supposedly, Apito wasn’t dead. That same memorial crystal was now in Prepotente’s hands. I didn’t know the details, but he’d been able to steal the artifact from Osvaldo during the chaos at the end of Faction Wars.
It seemed all three of us—me, Prepotente, and Osvaldo—had quests related to the crystal.
Also, Osvaldo worshipped a god or goddess named Tupa. I’d never heard of that one. Filipe also worshipped the same one.
The realization that these guys did worship a deity was devastating. That meant they wouldn’t be able to go to the Pineapple Cabaret if we ever found a way to open the door. Which also meant we were now stuck with them.