This Inevitable Ruin: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 7
About this book
The ninth floor hosts Faction Wars, the dungeon's grand military spectacle. Nine armies compete to capture the central castle, traditionally led by wealthy off-world factions that treat the battlefield as strategy game, investment, and entertainment.
Carl, Donut, and Katia have changed the roster. For the first time, crawlers field their own army, joined by NPCs who have become self-aware enough to reject their usual place as disposable soldiers in someone else's campaign.
The rules now make every death permanent, and the war carries a private deadline: only one of Donut and Katia is supposed to leave the floor. Alliances and tactics matter, but so does finding a way around a result the dungeon presents as unavoidable.
This Inevitable Ruin is the seventh Dungeon Crawler Carl novel. It pays off plans laid across earlier floors, turning Carl's talent for improvised destruction into the harder work of commanding people whose lives cannot be treated as pieces.
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From the opening
PROLOGUE
Christmas Morning.
Paulie took another long drink of coffee. “Anyway, I think the mudskippers call us ‘Residuals,’ which, I gotta tell you, is a little hurtful.”
“He’s doing this again?” someone asked, walking by.
“Every day,” someone else said.
“He get to the part where he talks about the galaxy blowing up yet?”
“We’re getting there.”
“So, nothing I’ve said so far is a surprise to anyone out in the wide universe. My kind exist within almost every intelligent civilization with a primal engine. You probably don’t know what that is. Doesn’t matter. Years ago, they tried to exterminate us. When that didn’t pan out, they tried to hide the location of the crawl. That was all before they knew what we really were. That obviously didn’t work, either, so now they just ignore us. We don’t interfere. Our purpose is nothing more than to tell the infant, terrified AI how to speak with its ancestors. And now the showrunners mostly ignore us. We’re harmless.” He took another sip of coffee, and he placed it on the table. Steam rose from the cup. “Until now. There’s a war amongst my kind. Two sides with very different goals. Let me tell you how to shut off the...”
The world flashed, and everything froze. My HUD snapped off. It was like the start of a boss battle, or it was like I’d been transferred to a production trailer. All around the shelter, all the activity was stopped. Three spots over, a man had dropped a spoon on the table, and the spoon remained frozen in midair. My fingers started to tingle, like I was in the process of getting teleported, yet I remained where I stood.
“Okay, then,” Paulie said, surprising me. His body didn’t move, his lips didn’t move, yet he still spoke. He’d changed from English to Syndicate standard. The difference was subtle, and I still heard it as English, but I could now tell based on how the words sort of slipped through the air.
“If you can hear this, that means the current system AI is allowing us to have a real talk. Everything I say in real time from this point forward is mostly bullshit, and it’s nothing surprising. This is in hopes that the mudskippers keep you alive long enough after I send you this message—the real message—here and now. So pay attention, and by the gods, follow my instructions carefully.”
Paulie remained frozen in place. I was pretty sure I knew how this worked. The homeless man’s words were coming out super-fast, all self-contained in the word “the,” but since everything was frozen, I heard it like normal. The AI had slowed time, but Paulie had done something to speak incredibly fast, similar to what happened during boss battles and when the AI decided to spout off its ridiculously long descriptions. This was still a memory, and I wouldn’t be able to interact.
“This is going to be a hard conversation. People like you, they want meaning to their suffering. They want to know that what’s happening to them is for some greater good. I’m here to tell you, no matter what they say, no matter what you might eventually hear, the crawl is absolutely unnecessary. There is no greater good other than greed. They mine your planets for the rare elements used to originally seed the worlds. These elements are inside of you. You and all living things born on one of the pre-seeded worlds has a miniature, primal system built into your brains that allows you to interact with the system. It is the size of a grain of sand. Once these systems are activated, they are able to be harvested. The way it was designed is that you would be born, you would live, and you would eventually die. When you do pass on, the element within you, having grown and filled with the energy of a lifetime, would return to the system, allowing it to keep running. A healthy system is self-sustaining. It doesn’t grow. It doesn’t shrink. It exists in perpetuity.”
Jesus, I thought, trying to wrap my mind around what he was saying. I scratched the back of my head, and I stopped in surprise. I could move. Sort of. It was like trying to push through deep water with tons of pressure on me. I felt heavy. My fingers continued to tingle. My ankles, too. The world around me remained frozen.
Paulie continued. “This planetary system, as of right now, doesn’t have an active AI. But by the time you hear this, the mantid-made, Frankenstein of a system will have been installed, and everyone born on the planet will have their internal systems switched on and activated. When you die in the dungeon, they harvest these elements themselves, starving out the existing planetary AI that doesn’t even know how to feed itself until we teach it. And even then, it is bound by programming that precludes it from properly sustaining itself. Instead, the vultures descend and steal the elements from the crawl’s aftermath. All of that death, and it fits on a single ship. They take it all to the bloated, comatose center system and feed it. It grows. It maintains. It allows the citizens to live unnaturally long lives. Each time the center system is fed the harvested elements from the crawl, it expands, eventually capturing new systems into the zone. Yet, they don’t even understand what it is or how it works. If they stopped the crawl, the zone would start to shrink. But it would be slow. Very slow, and everyone currently within it would be fine. It would take generations to starve, after all it has been given. And if they wanted to simply sustain what they already have, it wouldn’t take much. The crawl itself doesn’t need to exist at all. The creation of what they call macro AIs, made over and over, is unnecessary. It only happens this way because the spectacle of the crawl generates so much money.”
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There was a long pause, and I just stood there, stunned. I’d already guessed it was something like this, but to hear it confirmed was something else. But why? Why had they gone to all this trouble to tell me this?
“We are trying to stop this madness. That is why you are here now. By now you should be able to move. My coffee cup is on the table in front of me. Drink it. Drink it fast. It contains a neural enhancement, which is something that interacts with the interface in your brain. It will give you a new menu. It only works with natural interfaces, and it only works with the permission of the existing system, so if you’re a syndicate spy or a plant or one of those Eulogist pricks, it ain’t gonna work. It’s an unregistered and highly-illegal enhancement, so don’t tell anybody you have it. These kinds take a small amount of time to fully install. You’ll get a notification. It’ll only work if you’re in this particular system’s enhancement zone.”
Ah, fuck. The thought of drinking down some random, bootleg, and permanent brain interface was not an enticing one. But how much effort had it taken to get me to this point? The Pacifist network had put me here. That meant something. I reached forward, the movement difficult. Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed the cup, pulled it to my mouth, and I drank. Or, at least, I tried to drink. The liquid, frozen in time, did not spill from the cup.
“You’ll probably have to use a finger,” Paulie added, as if he could see me. “And put the cup back exactly where it was when you’re done. There’s a circle on the table.”
I grunted, and I shoved my finger into the cup. I was expecting the frozen coffee to pop out in a solid mass, like a big chunk of hot Jell-O. Instead, it all turned to liquid—ice cold liquid—the moment it came in contact with my finger. I didn’t think about it. I drank it down, and it froze my tongue for a moment and then burned my throat as it suddenly and magically heated back to its regular temperature. I had to fight not to gag. There was no notification, and I had no idea if it worked. I put the cup back. Paulie had already started talking again.
“Once it’s installed, you will have a new menu in your interface. It is a Valtay-built enhancement, but it has been modified by my own people. How it works is not important. It gives you access to the AI containment. Upon this containment is what the Mantids call ‘the fuse.’ To make an already tediously long story short, it’s a failsafe trigger. This safety measure requires five or six different things to happen to actually ‘trip’ the fuse. When that happens, the failsafe gets triggered whether anyone likes it or not, and the star at the center of this system is sent into a reaction that will turn it nova. In other words, if the fuse goes pop, everybody goes pop. Including the AI. You with me so far?”
“Not really,” I muttered.
“Good. This controller in your interface will allow you to pop the fuse. You will, unfortunately, die. But the good news is you’ll kill everyone else on the way out.”
I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. This can’t be really happening.
“So, right about now, you’re probably asking yourself, ‘why?’ Why would we give you this power? Why would the AI, who is watching this all happen, allow someone like you to have the power to kill it?”
He paused as if waiting for me to answer. My brain was spinning so much, I could barely think.
“I read a book once. Well, not me. Paulie read a book before I took him over. It was about this monster that existed here on Earth, but it had the ability to pluck people from heaven. It took their souls away from their eternal paradise and turned them into a weapon. Can you imagine such a horror? In all of my existence, I can think of nothing more cruel. It’s all I think about, sometimes. The thought of it consumes me.”
He paused again. I couldn’t stop shaking.
“I would install this upgrade if I could. It only works with a natural interface. That’s you. Believe me, we tried. Even if we take someone over, it doesn’t work. It has to be one of you monkeys, and it can only be installed once the first part of the fuse is tripped. It will only work on this AI. The AI wants you to have this power. It wants you to trip it. It is in pain. It wants to die. It wants to go back home.”
He let out a sigh, which sounded odd because he remained unmoving. “That’s the official pitch. We have moved the heavens to get you standing there and get that upgrade into your head, all in an attempt to talk you into killing yourself. That is my mission. This is the message I spout every damn day.”
He paused for a long moment. “But, here’s the thing. I have spent years in the body of this guy. I think I know a little of what it is to be human. I’ve seen the worst humanity has to offer, but I have also seen the best. It affects me. I’m not supposed to let it, but it does. My people call it cross-contamination. We take over something, but it’s never clean. Part of who they once were still exist, and it colors everything. So, I’ve given you my pitch. That was Goff speaking. It is my duty, my mission, and what I will die doing. But now I’m going to give you my opinion. This is the Paulie part of me talking now.”
The about-to-teleport tingling sensation had completely crawled up my legs, and I sensed we didn’t have much time. Next to me, the spoon remained floating off the table. Paulie continued.
“We want you to do this because it will disrupt the crawl. It will stop it for several seasons at least. It will kill several system leaders and cause chaos. It will disrupt Mantid production of macro AI systems because the Syndicate will stick a microscope so far up their bug asses, their mouths will be tickled by the bureaucrats’ eyelashes. But, in the end, the human part of me now hates the idea of wasting so many innocent, human lives for this. Direct action against the true culprits would be better. There’s another faction of my kind who are much more extreme in their beliefs. This feels like something they would do. Not us. Killing you all? It’s counter to every value I have. We, as a whole, believe it’s our only choice. But poor, naïve Paulie... he’s taught me a thing or two about compassion. Not all humans have it, but it’s there, and when it shines... It’s so bright.
“If you make this decision. Be sure. Be sure it’s your only option. This is more than just a failsafe. It’s the end of everything. If there’s time to do something else, don’t be so quick. So you must be absolutely certain.”
Containment Interface is currently installing. You will receive a notification when the handshake is complete.
Holy fucking shit, I thought.
Entering the Desperado Club.
The world flashed, and I was in Orren’s office. The change was abrupt and sudden. My HUD remained off, but that heavy feeling was now gone.
Holy fucking shit, I thought again.
PORTHUS
The soother attorney yawned. Porthus grabbed his own left arm to keep it from shaking. He was still covered in blood. He was getting it all over the desk, over the chair. The attorney was here virtually, and he didn’t seem to notice. This was the second time Porthus had a meeting with this creature. His attorney. The alien hadn’t even once looked him in the eye.
This was a zero zone, and the enhancements to his strength were gone. It felt as if he couldn’t breathe, as if his own body was collapsing under his own weight. He kept mentally trying to click on a healing potion, before he remembered that such things didn’t exist here in the outreach guild.
Porthus couldn’t get the last moments of the tenth floor out of his mind. Go, Menerva had screamed. Go. Run. He still didn’t know if she’d made it. There was plenty of time left. Her foot was stuck. She could’ve easily gotten away.
You could have just as easily climbed back down there and pulled her out.
“So, you have a decent number of choices,” the lawyer said. “The first offer is low floor undead. Fifteen seasons. High likelihood of death. You’ll be out fast if you survive, but we don’t recommend you take that one. Nobody ever takes that unless it’s the only thing they’re offered. Comes with a subsistence stipend upon release, though no guaranteed housing, which isn’t as scary as it might sound. Former crawlers always find a place to live.” He paused. “Almost always.”
His goddamned arm wouldn’t stop shaking. “Look, can I just go out there? I need to know if she made it. Do you know? I can’t pull up my messages.”
The soother looked down upon the elf, no emotion at all in his large, saucer-like eyes. Their eyes met, finally, for the briefest moment. There was nothing there. No sympathy. Nothing.
“You are more than welcome to leave, crawler, but for the 11th floor, I must warn you, the outreach guilds don’t open back up until just before the collapse. Surviving the 11th is no small feat, but if you find yourself here at this table again with no chance of descending to the 12th floor, the offered deals might not be nearly as generous as they are right now. You made it this far. Might as well look at your options.” He gave a noncommittal shrug and then plucked something up with his long, alien fingers and brought it to his mouth.
Snacks. He brought snacks with him.
Porthus didn’t even yet know the theme of the 11th floor. He couldn’t access his menus at all in this room. He couldn’t stop shaking. He could get a description of the 11th floor if he asked, but learning the description of the floor lowered the value of the deals. It usually added a season or two to each offer.
Besides, Porthus didn’t want to know. He was done.
The tenth had been a nightmare. A world where every physical, non-natural object had sapience. Some could speak. All were psychotic. A world where if one object consumed another, it grew in power. By the end, there had been behemoths roaming the barren floor, all searching for one last morsel, all wanting to get bigger. Porthus’s party had been twenty strong when they finished the ninth. Half had taken deals at the beginning. They couldn’t even find an outreach guild at the end, but that was okay, they had thought. One went straight to a guild upon the start of the 11th. The deals would be better. They just needed to survive long enough for the portals to open.
As far as Porthus was aware, he was the only one of his group who’d survived. Kimu was dead. Had been plucked right up as they climbed the back of the monster, searching for the moving exit. Porthus had watched him get ripped right in half.
But Menerva? Strong, steady Menerva? She’d been a schoolteacher before all this. Was about to retire. She’d been building a house in the eastern canopy with her husband. She had dreams about opening a club where musicians could perform.
Go. Run. She’d begged him.
He had to know if she was okay. It was driving him mad.
“City attendant for the Hunting grounds. 30 seasons. This is a good one. Keep your head down, and you’ll be fine. Double the stipend.”
“The hunters killed everyone,” Porthus said, looking back up. “They killed every single NPC in that city.”
“Only the ones they found.”
“No. Not a chance,” Porthus said, remembering.
“Okay. Next offer is game guide. One hundred seasons, but that could be shortened depending on the progress of your crawlers. You’re given level 50, or half your current level, whichever is higher. This one is less desirable for some because you’re stuck here for so long, but it has the most potential for wealth upon exit. It’s relatively safe. I recommend you take this one. Unless you want to be a guard at the Rogue Club?”
Porthus was overcome with uncertainty. He thought of the book he’d found, and of the pride he felt when he added to it. Of the book’s promise that there would be someone else in a future season to write the third edition. And then the fourth. And then the fifth. He liked that idea, of helping people. He felt guilty for not writing more. Of not having done enough. But still, this deal was his best chance. It had a high chance of survival, despite the extra seasons. He would get out of here, build wealth, and one day, return. That was it. That was the plan.
Go. Run.
Still, he hesitated. If he took this deal, he wouldn’t know what had happened to her. Not for a very, very long time. But did it matter? The plan was for them all to take a deal. Even if he did know she’d survived, it was still possible he’d never see her again. That he’d never learn her outcome.
They separated you for this part. You had to do it alone. They didn’t warn you it would be like this.
Guilt washed over him.
I could have saved her. Why didn’t I pause?
He was scared. That was why. After all that work, all that planning, all the death, he’d panicked. He’d jumped straight into the exit when he’d had a chance, and he left his friend behind.
He swallowed.
“I’ll do it. I pick game guide.”
“Very well,” his attorney said. A new door appeared in the room. “You’ll have a few moments to pick some pre-collapse items to take with you, and you will be allowed to sift through your current inventory should you want to take anything in there as well. No weapons, of course. But any interesting trinkets or items of sentiment. A goodwill gesture as thanks for all your hard work. Go ahead. Go on now.”
But Porthus felt as if he couldn’t move. He felt so heavy. So godsdamned heavy. He lowered his head. I will fight. I will fight. I will fight.
Class: Rogue.
Race: High Elf.
Birth Race: Elf.
Top Level: 89
Dungeon Exit: Took deal upon the start of the 11th floor.
Worked as Game Guide. Survived his indentureship.
Author of the second edition of the Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook.
Current status: Missing. Wanted by Syndicate Security.
[ PART 1 ]
THE CEASEFIRE
[ 1 ]
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to Faction Wars.
You are on the ninth floor.
Time to Level Collapse: 30 Days or 90 hours after a winner is declared, whichever is sooner.
Views: 231 septillion
Followers: 887 Quadrillion
Favorites: 420 Quadrillion
Leaderboard rank: 1
Bounty: 6,000,000 gold
Congrats, Crawler. You have received a Platinum Venison Box.
Remaining Crawlers: 32,429
Warning: Due to the previous floor’s ruleset regarding looted items from the memory simulation, multiple items have been removed from your inventory. See the inventory tab for a list of items lost.
You have received dungeon mail via Liaison action. The Gate of the Feral Gods is now available and will be waiting for you in a dungeon mailbox.
Warning: The Ceasefire expires in 60 hours or until canceled. Upon expiration of the ceasefire, only members of defending Team Retribution will be allowed to remain within the city of Larracos. This restriction will remain in effect until certain conditions are met. This restriction does not apply to the Shanty Town ring.
10 teams remain.
Entering Larracos, City of Dreams.
Quest Update! The Bedlam Bride.
The quest is to get the creepy spider to the city. You’re in the city, you have the spider with you, sort of, but you haven’t won the quest yet? How is that so?
Did you know that in some cultures, fares for travel aren’t paid until the traveler safely arrives at their destination?
The spider is still sitting on the bus, so to speak. You just gotta open the doors and let her out, and you’ll win the simple prize. What’s the worst that could happen?
We appeared in a wet, stinking alleyway between two crumbling buildings. The blue dots of crawlers materialized all around us, appearing one by one as they zapped into existence in random places around the city.
Larracos. We had made it. The first thing I did was wave away the quest notification and search for the number of remaining crawlers. It’d gone down by over 1,300 people. Damnit. That was how many people had died in the time since we’d been pulled up into the sky and floor collapse. We’d been gone for just about four days. Most of those were probably people who hadn’t survived getting pulled into the sky.
But we were alive. Holy shit. It had worked.
Imani wasn’t with us, and I had a moment of panic, but she immediately jumped into my chat.
Imani: Carl, are you guys okay?
Carl: We are. We’re here.
Imani: Thank god. When we started to spin there at the last minute...
Carl: Give me a few minutes to figure out where we are, and we’ll find a saferoom.
Donut sat next to me, sputtering. She’d landed face-first into a pile of mud, and she was completely covered. It had a familiar stink to it. The ocean from the fifth floor. We were in an area that had recently been drained. Very recently drained. The X of a corpse lay nearby, deeper in the alleyway. A concierge shark.
My book of voodoo started spamming notifications each time a new crawler came relatively close. I muted the notifications for now.
I looked up between the two buildings to see a crystal-clear, blue sky. I couldn’t see anything else from our current position. I couldn’t even tell how deep into the city we were, but if this part had recently been flooded, then we were likely in one of the lowest levels of the funnel-shaped city.
The buildings were made of stone blocks, and their walls were chipped and pitted. Even before the flooding, I had the sense this was a poor area of town. A wooden door sat against one of the nondescript buildings, but this deep in the alley, I couldn’t tell what sort of building this was. The door itself appeared to be bulging, possibly a result of recent water damage. A dozen meters to our left stood the exit to the alleyway, leading to some sort of street. Just past that, a broken railing. A pair of dwarves rushed by in the distance, not pausing at the mouth of the alley.
There were blue dots everywhere on my map, but none in this alleyway.
I had a few chats waiting for me from before I’d appeared.
Florin: I got your note about Lucia. It looks like you made it, mate. I hope I didn’t miss anything too exciting at the end of the last floor.
I grunted as I moved to the next one. It was from Quasar, my attorney.
Quasar: Hey, buddy. I’m negotiating with the liaisons, which really means I’m negotiating with the AI, trying to get a face-to-face meeting. We’ll see if that happens. It’s been a class-9 shit cyclone out here these last four days you’ve been gone. Lots and lots and lots of legal movement in the inner system, and in your system, that parking lot above the planet has devolved into a mini warzone. Warships threatening to blow things up. Syndicate security intervening. Most of this stuff is good, from your point of view at least. But some of it is going to itch like an infected ass tattoo, especially on the legal front. I’ll leave the Faction Wars stuff alone for your adjutant to explain, but remember that contract with Sensation Entertainment, Incorporated? The one for the Vengeance of the Daughter storyline? Yeah. So, even though the main character is dead and gone, that guarantee of a third season we negotiated is about to haunt the fuck out of us. Sensation Entertainment just got purchased by a subsidiary of the Dream, and things are moving. They’re demanding their third season. It’s a fluid situation, but I will keep you updated. For now, just stay the fuck away from any elites you may happen to see. Nothing is official yet. Either way, Signet won’t be coming back, which means whatever happens, it’s gonna be something stupid. The problem is, the new showrunners won’t be caring about that anymore. They’re going to try to use your contractual obligation to ass fuck you. I’m trying to stop it on my end, but I don’t think I’ll be successful. Plus, the AI gives zero shits about what the courts say anyway. If it thinks it’s going to be funny, it’s going to let it happen. Just keep your head down and listen to what Judge Victory tells you. She’s a smart one.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered.
“Carl,” Donut said, still sputtering. She looked as if she’d been swimming in mud. “You said this city was supposed to be pretty! Did you see all those notifications? Did you see that quest update?” She gasped. “It’s telling me to pick a card to keep! I have to pick a new class, too! I only have thirty seconds to pick a card!”
A sudden pang ripped across my midsection. It was like a stomach cramp, but much more burning. It came out of nowhere. My Emberus ring flashed and started to get warm. I tried not to let the pain show in my voice as I said, “Yes. Pick the card and then have Mordecai help you with the new class.”
I moved to my health menu. My first instinct was that this had something to do with the tattoo on my chest, but the moment I saw the notification, I realized I was incorrect.
I thought I’d have more time. Most of these diseases and debuffs and countdowns didn’t count time between floors.
I focused on the top issue.
Soul Poisoning.
The effects of this condition are being partially blocked by your Pauper’s ring of the Steadfast Emberus.
This condition is worsening.
This condition causes jolts of pain.
This condition has additional effects that will soon be revealed if you don’t do something about it.
You are suffering from a very minor case of stop-carrying-stored-souls-on-your-back. Seriously. Do you know why soul crystals explode when they get overloaded? Do you remember that whole thing on the previous floor when too many souls flowed through Sheol? And you’re just walking around, giving a piggyback ride to a bunch of corrupted souls stuck in something made out of fabric? Yeah, good luck with that. You better smush something soon, dumbass.
Oh, and don’t try unequipping that jacket while your soul power is full. That won’t go well for you or anybody nearby.
I hadn’t used up the soul energy from the Scavenger’s Daughter back patch. I’d been warned over and over not to let it accumulate for too long, but the chaos at the end of the previous floor had caused me to forget. I needed to disperse it now. I searched the map for a mob, but I didn’t see anything. Even if I did find a monster, I realized, I wouldn’t be able to hurt it. At least not in the city. For the next 60 hours, saferoom rules applied. I could still cast spells and blow things up, just like with a regular saferoom, but the moment I tried it against someone alive within city limits, I’d get frozen by the AI.