"Don't worry," Mordecai said. "It's nothing personal."

I looked up in surprise. I was studying myself in the mirror, trying to get to a more human appearance, while also picking over a plate of slowly-cooling chili that had been the least unappealing option on the saferoom menu. (This one was not run by a Bopca Protector, and it showed.) Donut and Carl had left half an hour ago to break into the town hall. Carl was out the door the moment the recap show had finished, Donut on his shoulder and not so much as a thought to me, much less an invitation to join them.

"What?" I asked.

"It's nothing personal," Mordecai said, sipping his drink. "You were worrying about Carl and Donut ditching you, right?"

"No! No, it's fine. I would have just gotten in their way."

"Uh-huh."

I looked back at my chili and poked at it a bit with my fork.

"Look," Mordecai said, leaning forward. "Carl is a very focused guy. He can get stuck in his mental tracks sometimes, which means it will take him a while to get used to the idea of a new teammate. Beyond that, having you along in this particular case might cause trouble with the system mechanics."

I frowned. "What?"

"Carl and Donut got a quest to figure out why the prostitutes in this town are being killed. If someone else—anyone else—participates in resolving the quest then it could dilute the reward or even make the AI decide that Carl and Donut shouldn't get credit for the quest at all."

"Is that likely?"

He shrugged helplessly. "Who can tell? Every season has a different AI and in each case the AI starts to develop quirks and a distinct personality that needs to be accounted for. That usually doesn't happen until much later in the crawl but this time it seems to be happening quickly. Probably because the showrunners are pushing the timeline."

"Oh. Why are they doing that, do you know?"

"I can't be certain, but I've got a pretty good idea. Borant—ah, the showrunners are deeply in debt to the Valtay, to the point that not one but several Valtay war fleets were on their way to institute a 'collections action'"—he made the air quotes—"which is a paper-thin legal cover for a military takeover. Those fleets were required by law to halt in place when the showrunners started the crawl early. The crawl usually generates a huge amount of money, potentially enough for the showrunners to pay their debts, but they don't get any of it until the season ends. The Valtay aren't obligated to hold indefinitely, so the showrunners need the crawl to end soon so that they can collect their money, but they also need it to last long enough to generate the money they need. That's why they're using such short timers for the levels." He smiled grimly. "It's probably part of why the AI is getting so stroppy so early. It doesn't like what the showrunners are doing so it's pushing back by giving out much more XP and better loot than would be given out in a more normal season. The top crawlers this year are much more powerful than they normally would be at this point."

The thought hung in the air: Carl and Donut were top-tier crawlers. I was bottom tier and only going to be a drag on them.

I considered my next words carefully. Convincing Mordecai that I was useless baggage was likely to get me booted from the group and I would probably die if I had to go it alone on this floor. On the other hand, perhaps it was best to get it out in the open so it wasn't hanging over me? I wasn't sure I could stand to be ejected later.

"What about me?" I asked. "You said the top crawlers are stronger. Why did I get a Legendary box? I'm not special, so why is the AI trying to make me stronger? Carl and Donut, sure. Donut is a talking cat so she's obviously going to be appealing to the audience and the AI probably wants to play to that. Carl...well, you said the AI has a fetish for his feet so it's not surprising that he gets good loot."

"The explosives don't hurt either," Mordecai said with a smile. "Very dramatic. Real crowd-pleaser."

"Okay, but I'm not. You had an idea earlier but we got distracted."

Mordecai hesitated, chewing on his lip with an uncomfortable expression. "The AI has wide latitude to give out loot," he said carefully. "But there are some limits. If it's seen to be favoring one crawler too strongly there are ways for the showrunners or the government to make the AI's life difficult. Handing a dozen Legendary boxes to one crawler while they're still on the first or second floor is the kind of thing that draws attention. On the other hand, if it gives one Legendary box to each of twelve crawlers and events conspire to put those crawlers in the orbit of the crawler that the AI wanted to give the loot to..."

"You're saying that it was using me to send a Legendary ring to Hekla?"

He shrugged. "I mean, I can't really know either way. It's a possibility."

"But I didn't give it to her. I didn't even think to mention it...the subject didn't come up."

"It would have been reasonable to expect that it would, and that Hekla would demand the ring from you. Many people charge a tribute in exchange for taking less advanced crawlers under their wing. Or maybe it would have come up later and she would have asked for it—after all, it would have seemed perfectly reasonable, since she was doing most of the fighting. Or...well, if one of the Daughters happened to die, what would happen to their gear?"

"It would be split up among...oh."

"Yeah."

"I might not have died, though. Or I might not even have met her."

He started to say something, then paused and visibly changed his mind. "Perhaps not," he said instead. "Anyway, we should start looking at—"

"I might not have!" I really needed him to tell me I might not have died. I really, really needed it, because if it was certain then what was the point? "I could have survived to the tenth floor..."

Even as I said it I knew it was a lie. I was definitely going to die in the dungeon. Maybe under Hekla's protection, with all of the dozens of members of Brynhild's Daughters working together, maybe I could have made it the tenth floor and exited. On my own? No. The AI had chosen its mule well. "What were the odds that I would even meet her, anyway?"

He rubbed his right horn for a moment, choosing his words even more carefully than he had been. "The AI is very, very smart," he said at last. "It can see and understand everything in the dungeon at the same time, and it has the power to, at least from our perspective, rewrite the laws of physics and give out magic items that defy common sense. It's effectively a god. If it wanted to arrange the death of a crawler, it could do it. It wouldn't even have to be obvious that it was involved. The AI controls the environment, including the movement of that fake sun and those fake clouds." He pointed at the ceiling of the bar and the pseudo sky that hung out of sight above it. "Suppose you've got a giant lizard sunning itself in the ruins. A cloud goes by and puts the lizard in shadow, so it gets up and moves a short distance to be in the sun again. It just so happens that this puts it close enough to spot a passing crawler who would have been out of sight if the lizard had stayed where it was. Or maybe it goes the other way—an underleveled crawler is passing by and the lizard could easily kill them, but a passing cloud causes it to move out of the crawler's path so that the two never meet."

"Oh."

"As to the idea that you wouldn't meet Hekla...on a given floor the AI can exert a lot of subtle pressure to send crawlers in particular directions. Arrange for strong monsters to be denser in one particular direction and crawlers will move the other way. Knock out the lights in a passage and people will take the other route. That's just the general stuff—once it's watched a given crawler enough to understand them it can tailor its moves to that crawler. Carl will naturally move towards places that sell explosives. Also, he's more likely to avoid fairy-class mobs, because back on the first floor the AI forced a tattoo on him that causes him to take more damage from them."

"The AI can do that? Without any input on our part, it can just hit us with a permanent curse?"

Mordecai shrugged. "It's complicated. Technically it's not a curse because it has positive and negative effects—it removes goblin hostility and provides free passage through their territory, but it makes goblin enemies hate you and do more damage to you. The AI isn't allowed to give you outright cursed items or misrepresent what an item does, but it's allowed to give you things with significant drawbacks provided that there's an option to negate the drawback. Carl's tattoo wasn't optional but it's possible to buy a cover-up sleeve that will disable the drawbacks. Alternatively, there's Donut's crown. She could have chosen not to put it on."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"What's wrong with the crown?"

He waved impatiently. "It gives her some stat bonuses and her attacks have a chance of inflicting the Sepsis debuff. The downside is it makes her a Princess in the royal line of succession for the Blood Sultanate. When she gets to the ninth floor she'll have to kill everyone else in the line before she can exit the floor."

"Oh."

"Yeah. More importantly, it's a Fleeting item, which means that if she takes it off she loses the positive benefits but keeps the negative ones and the crown disappears so she can't put it back on. Worse, it appears elsewhere in the dungeon and someone else might put it on, also ending up in the line. And there's no way to know if someone else had it before her so there might be crawlers in the line at this point."

And, of course, I might still be traveling with her when we reached the ninth floor. (Although probably not, since I was likely to die before then. Or link up with Hekla again.)

"Anyway, that's beside the point," Mordecai continued. "The question was how much control the AI can exert on where people go. The answer is 'a lot'. Not only can it do the things I mentioned in order to move you around on the floor, but the AI controls where you arrive when you go down the stairs. They aren't actual physical stairs, they're portals, like the doors to the tutorial guilds. The AI can bring you out hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from where you physically were in relation to the planet and you'd never know. Heck, even the viewers would need to go digging in order to find out. The feeds normally track seamlessly through the transfer without even a visual gap, so there's no easy way to tell that the AI deliberately relocated you a thousand kilometers in order to have you appear near a crawler that the AI wants you to link up with. For example, because it intends to kill you off so that your gear can go to a crawler that the AI likes."

"Oh."

"Yeah." He studied me sympathetically for a moment. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said it that way. Look, put that thought aside and concentrate on being the best crawler you can be. We'll get you trained up and you'll be fine."

"Mordecai?"

"Hm?"

"If I died now, wouldn't my gear be split up between Carl and Donut?"

The seconds ticked like falling bricks until finally he said, "Why don't we focus on you for a bit? Let me catch you up on the quest I mentioned, and then we can work on your shapeshifting a bit more."

o-o-o-o

"Hoo-boy," Mordecai said. "Things are getting interesting."

I looked up. "What?"

"Carl just messaged me," he said. "Things took a turn. They blew up the town hall, like they planned. They killed the mayor, like they planned. Or, rather, Carl got credit for killing the mayor despite the fact that the guy was dead already. He was mummified and is hanging upside down in a room full of sleeping monsters. Carl wants to loot his body but Donut didn't want to go into a room full of sleeping monsters because she's seen a horror movie at some point in her life and isn't an idiot."

"Horror movie tropes apply in the dungeon?" I asked, surprised. I immediately shook my head in annoyance at my own stupidity. "No, wait, of course they do. This is a TV show."

"Yup, exactly. Scripted events all over the place, although they usually try to be a little more subtle than this. Anyway, Donut wanted to Magic Missile the monsters from outside the room, but the area around them has been muted. No new active magic can be cast, although spells they've already cast will continue to work, as will potions, armor, that kind of thing."

I nodded. "That makes sense. So what do they do? Can Carl just roll an explosive in?"

"Probably. Depends on whether or not there's enough room for them to retreat away from it, and there's a danger it would destroy the loot they're trying to get. I don't want to ping them to find out, though. Could distract them."

I nodded. "That must be hard."

"Hm?"

"Not messaging them. You're Donut's manager but you can't actually see what's happening to her—wait, can you?"

He shook his head. "No. I have to wait and hear about it later. And yes, you're right—it is hard sometimes." He grimaced. "I didn't want the manager job. I was supposed to head up a magic guild down on one of the deeper floors. It's a nice gig...comfortable quarters, my books and alchemy equipment to play around with, access to the infofeeds, other guildmasters to hang around with. If they put me below the eighth floor I often don't even see a crawler the entire season so it's an easy life. Instead, I'm here." He gestured around the grungy bar. "I don't have access to my books or clothes and any time Donut enters a saferoom I get teleported to her without warning. I have to rent a cot in one of the saferooms if I want a place to sleep, but of course I have no money and no way to earn it so I'm dependent on her for my room and board. It's—" He cut himself off and when he spoke again his voice was casual, even relaxed.

"Anyway, it's got its challenges. Still, Donut's a cute kid. Insensitive and juvenile sometimes, but sweet. She's not the worst client I've ever had and it's only for a few weeks." He saw the expression on my face and his eyes widened slightly as he realized what he'd said. "Because the timers are short! It's only a few weeks because the timers are short and so you guys are going to make it to the tenth floor and exit in only a few weeks."

There was a lump in my throat that my shapeshifting powers could not eliminate. "Right," I croaked. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Right. Absolutely. Although...isn't it true that you get better deals if you exit on eleven or twelve?"

"Sure. And when we get to ten and see what deal they offer you guys, we'll talk about it."

"What sort of deal did they offer you?"

"I'm not allowed to say. There's always an NDA because they don't want people to know how the deals stack up to deals from earlier seasons, or deals being offered to other crawlers in the current season. In general terms it will involve buying a ticket offworld for a specified amount. Since you don't have any credits on hand they'll make you a loan, the amount placed in escrow, and you'll be offered an employment contract that allows you to earn out the money. There will be a lot of negotiations about who gets the interest on the account and various ancillary concerns, but that's really all that I can say."

That was actually a lot for something that was covered by an NDA.

"You're a good man, Mordecai."

He blinked. "Thank you? What brought that on?"

I shrugged, blushing slightly. "Nothing in particular. It's just...well, this life is much less comfortable than what you were expecting but you aren't griping or complaining or anything. You've already been more helpful to me than Bannon ever was—he pressured me into becoming a doppelganger but spent no time teaching me how to use it. You taught me and you were patient. Now you're telling me as much as you can about what's ahead."

His dusky skin did a good job of concealing blushes, but I thought perhaps his ears had pinked up slightly. "Thanks. I appreciate it...neither Carl or Donut have said that yet."

I raised my water glass in mocking salute. "To us. The below-decks crew bonding while Kirk and Bones are off on their adventures."

He snorted and clinked glasses with me. "So is Carl Kirk or Bones in this scenario?"

"It's not a perfect analogy."

"Heh. Indeed." He took a sip and then put his glass down. "Okay, let's work on your shapeshifting a little more. I bet we can get you back to a much more human look pretty quickly. First, your nose. You've got the general shape right but you need details, most importantly that little ridge on the inside." He pointed at his own nostril. "Dunno what it's called but it needs to be there. No, tilt it up more. Yes, good. Now..."

o-o-o-o

It was late and I was tired but I didn't sleep. I was too far behind and I needed to catch up quickly before Carl or Donut decided that I was useless and kicked me out. The first step in that process was to work on my shapeshifting so I didn't look so horrific.

Fortunately, Carl and Donut were busy with their own issues and I had the entire night to practice. By the time Carl called me out of the saferoom I had improved to the point where I looked fully human. Like a very ugly human covered in horrific burns whose facial bones had been shattered in an accident and poorly set, but human.

When I arrived there was already a crowd gathered to watch Carl plant dynamite all around the outside of the Swordsmen barracks. It was less than an hour until dawn and the enormous constructs were quiescent, hundreds of them standing in ordered rows inside the building while recharging from a yellow light that swirled out of the ceiling. According to Mordecai the source was a 'soul crystal', a powerful magical battery. Apparently soul crystals would be a common power source for lots of mechanisms and spells throughout the dungeon.

My brain kept trying to fix itself onto trivial details instead of thinking about what might happen next. Focus, Katia.

"I'm here," I said, pushing through the last of the crowd. "What can I do?"

"Here," Carl said. "Hold onto this for me." He handed me a small pencil-like device.

Hobgoblin Detonator

Click for boom! Break up to ten pieces off of this thing and stick them in a bit of hobgoblin pus. Click the button and all the pus goes up in a bang. Range: 10 kilometers. Delay before detonation: 10 seconds.

Warning: You do not have appropriate explosive-handling skills. While you hold it there is 5% per minute chance that this detonator will auto-activate.

"Whoa, whoa," I said, stepping back and holding my hands up in refusal. "Don't give that to me."

He stepped forward and shoved it into my hand impatiently, wrapping my fingers around the device. "Keep it in your inventory. If we die, or if I say so, press the button. No questions. Just do it."

"Why don't you hold onto it?" I asked, staring at the thing in horror. "Carl, the description says it might click on its own."

"Put it in your inventory. It'll be fine."

I considered arguing further but it clearly wouldn't get anywhere and he already looked angry. I followed orders and put the detonator in my inventory.

"Why me?" I asked, trying my absolute best not to whine.

"We don't know if this guy has some sort of mind control," Carl said, referring to the boss monster that waited inside the building. "It's a lich thing. We need someone outside the sphere of influence to hold onto the boom switch just in case."

I nodded. I had more questions, so many more, but I didn't ask them. He wouldn't appreciate having to spend time explaining things to the new burden he'd taken on.

"Just be sure to be about a block away before you press it," he said. "There's enough dynamite in there to blow your weird snowboots back to Iceland." He raised his voice and called to the crowd around us. "You are all still in the blast zone. You'll want to back up. A lot."

He looked back to the building and rolled his shoulders as though limbering up for a fight. "C'mon Donut. Let's do this." She jumped to his shoulder and he strode off into the building without another word. I turned and started herding all the onlookers away. I couldn't help with the lich but saving the lives of these NPCs was one thing I could do.

Although, granted, they were all going to die in another three days when the level collapsed.