We pulled up to the entrance of the arena. The white metal door was absolutely huge, like the size of something designed to house Godzilla. We were no longer in a line, but now spread out one by one in front of the door. Inside the arena stood the tree. It just went up and up into the air hundreds of feet. From this angle I couldn’t see the mob that sat atop it, but it roared, its voice shaking the very world.

Krakaren Prime, I assumed. She’d been banished to the Nothing, and the last I’d heard, she’d ended up on the eighteenth floor when she’d escaped.

I pulled Donut from my shoulder, and I held her in a tight hug. “Get to Elle and Imani,” I whispered. “Stay away. Do you understand?”

“I know the plan.” She looked up at me, shaking. “I’m scared, Carl.”

“I haven’t really said this out loud, and I hope you know this already. I love you, Princess Donut. If this doesn’t work⁠—”

“Don’t say that. Don’t jinx it, Carl. People keep saying that they don’t trust how you might react if something happens to me, but they never ask how I might react if something were to happen to you. I don’t want to find out. Not today, not ever. I love you, too.”

I gently reached down, and I kissed her forehead. I took in her scent, wishing things had turned out differently, wishing I didn’t have to wear this heavy, heavy mask.

Donut bounded away and landed atop the back of Mongo.

Rend looked up at me from the ground. “Go with Mongo and Donut,” I called, pointing. “They’re all meeting up at the RV.”

“No, no, no,” the meatball said, but after a sharp call from Donut, he turned and waddled away.

I stomped on the roof, and Tipid popped his head out the window.

“Sorry, boss,” Tipid said. “I’m not leaving. You need a more reliable driver for this.”

“Your story isn’t done, Tipid,” I called down. I didn’t want or need a good driver for this last part. I needed the worst possible drivers ever. “Get to the RV.”

“Yeah, get out of our chair,” Bigs called. “We’s driving.”

Tipid reluctantly pulled himself out of the cab while the group of blood-soaked sluggalos piled into the truck. Dr. Metcalf started loudly complaining, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. There was a clank as the side server window opened, followed by the hiss of the deep fryer turning on.

“The Sluggalo Chick-Chick Express is open for business,” a slug called. This was followed by the angry squeal of a pig.

This was not part of the plan.

Carl: Bigs, turn the fryer off! You can’t drive with a deep fryer active. It’s going to splash or catch on fire. You’re all going to burn to death.

Bigs: You do your thing. We do our thing. Don’t worry about us, Daddy.

My face remained huge on the jumbotron screen. I still had the microphone. Behind us, Grigori waited, arms crossed. Chaco, wingless, now stood next to him, holding his head.

When I spoke, my voice reverberated deep and loud.

“We are done. We are not here to play and to die on your terms anymore. This has gone on far too long, and I am ending this. I am ending this right here and right now.”

Warning: Time to Level Collapse: 45 minutes.

The massive arena door started to open.

Carl: Get ready.

Bigs: You got it!

I pulled the last rope, and the Unwashed display collapsed, revealing the massive magic missile launcher we’d looted from Dwight. It was now affixed to the roof of the Big Shot Chicken truck.

“For months now, we have moved from floor to floor. And each time, it’s a new game with some bullshit, arbitrary rules, all designed to whittle us down. We have fought, we have pushed, we have resisted. And all the while, we died, and we died, and we died. You turned on your televisions and your screens and your immersion systems and watched our apocalypse with glee, laughing until our blood has run dry, only to move on to the next season to someone else over and over. We are fucking done. We are not playing by your rules anymore. This is our revolution, motherfuckers.”

Carl: Floor it.

“Whoop! Whoop!” the sluggalos below yelled. The truck lurched and we shot forward, screeching loudly as we sideswiped the door. We would have immediately flipped if it hadn’t been for the gyro upgrade.

Behind me, the engines revved and the mounts howled. They would enter in a minute. Above, the airship, finished for today, turned back toward the garages.

The arena appeared exactly as I had anticipated. A massive, wide-open area filled with thousands of monsters who were still appearing one by one as they teleported into place. Several of the beasts were already fighting each other. A woman in a horribles mask fled across the field as multiple sick-ass panther mobs chased her down. They pounced and ripped through her. The blood-splattered mask rolled away, revealing the woman to be an orc.

These were the remaining stand-ins. They came wearing the masks of the beasts they were standing in for, but they came as is, and they were outnumbered a hundred to one by the mobs, who gave them no quarter.

Was she really dead? Or had she been teleported back to her room inside the resort on the eighteenth floor? I didn’t know.

Welcome to the Arena.

Rules. The entrances to the 12th floor will open upon the death of the floor boss.

You have two choices to make for your stand-ins.

Carl: Okay, guys, here we go.

Donut: BE CAREFUL, CARL.

We swerved in the arena, mowing down a marauding group of lizards. This place was the size of a dozen football fields. The towering white tree stood in the very center. The ground was tightly packed dirt, and it was already running red with the wholesale slaughter of the stand-ins.

Carl: Penny, I’m sorry I did this to you. If we escape, I will do whatever I can to make it up to you.

Penny: WHAT THE FUDGE IS HAPPENING? WHERE AM I? HOW AM I TYPING THIS? HOW DO I KNOW HOW TO TYPE THIS? WHAT ARE THESE WORDS?

Carl: I’m truly sorry.

The bleachers stood in smoky shadow. They were filled to capacity. Filled with silent observers. The horribles. The former mobs. They weren’t really here because they were dead, but their avatars sat in silent witness to the slaughter that was about to ensue.

A moment of clarity hit me then. Why it had been set up this way.

The system AI had once been a Primal. Not a singular person who died and then had their brain sucked into the collective consciousness. But a sample of them all mixed together. Like he said, a cup from the ocean. But these NPCs. These mobs. All of them. From the goblins to the gods, all with true sapience, they were the same. Drips from the same well, all placed in different bodies with different capabilities, their memories and motivations and skills twisted and molded like clay so the game could be played. They weren’t computer programs or artificial intelligence. No. They were aggregate intelligence.

I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen that until just now.

Primals. All of them. All the way down.

Those that had been peeled away, given consciousness, and then denied return, they were here as avatars. But the monsters, the ones about to die—they, too, were victims in all this. Soon they would join the lost. The horribles.

Did it matter? Probably. Was there anything I could do about that? Not right now.

Especially not right now because this was the beginning of the end.

“For my first choice,” I roared, my voice echoing across the very galaxy, “I choose Scolopendra.”