The world froze.

System Message: Scolopendra has entered the realm.

Instead of screaming as usual, the boss battle announcement came in a strangely calm, strangely lucid, even voice. Unlike every other announcement so far, there were no glitches. When he talked, the dungeon AI sounded more like a stern dad than the psychotic mind we knew him to be, which somehow made it seem even more terrifying.

You have entered the lair of a Floor Boss.

You have entered the lair of the Dungeon Boss.

Boss Battle.

There was no music. It was completely silent. All around, the audience watched, unmoved.

Multiple images appeared, floating in the air. It was me, Donut, Elle, Imani, Prepotente, Florin, and the rest of us. Twenty-three faces all in a line.

Then one more face with the label Penelope 3.

Versus.

Two more images materialized. One was the tentacled monstrosity. Words emerged over it, slowly typing their way across the image.

Krakaren Prime. Level 235 Floor boss.

And below that, the image of the centipede appeared. It wasn’t anything special. It looked exactly like a centipede from Earth. Segmented, brown and red with bright yellow legs.

Scolopendra. Level 500 Dungeon boss.

Well, shit.

You really are insane, Carl. And the 22 others who agreed to this batshit plan. You’re crazy, too. All of you.

We’ve seen some suicidal gambits throughout the history of the crawl, but I gotta tell you, this takes the fucking prize. I’m not even done with my goddamned parade yet, and here you are, trying to one-up me on my special day.

Oh well. Rules are rules. This should be entertaining, at least.

I’m assuming you know how this works, right?

Have you ever played any video game, like, ever?

We have neighborhood bosses. Borough bosses. City bosses. Province bosses. Country bosses. Floor bosses. You kinda skipped the floor boss at the end of the 10th, which is all fine and dandy, but you just ended up in the lap of another one. Miss Krakaren Prime herself is sitting up there right now atop the tree, very pissed off, and not just at you. Honestly, I wasn’t going to bring her here, but I caught wind of what you and someone else are planning, and I thought it would be appropriate.

Even though it’s never been thrown out there because nobody has ever gotten this far, we also have one more boss type here in the dungeon.

The Dungeon boss.

Just so we’re crystal clear. I just summoned, at your fucking request, the final boss of the entire dungeon to the 11th floor. If you somehow manage to pull off a miracle and kill this thing, you’re still fucked. It’ll have the same effect as a CE. A Crawler Extinction.

And if you escape without killing it, you’re triple fucked.

Believe it or not, deep in the dusty corners of the game’s rule set, there’s a path forward to deal with this scenario. Let’s break it down.

If you kill Scolopendra, you will not yet have won Dungeon Crawler World: Earth. The rules in this regard are clear. In order to win, you must first exit through the final door on the 18th floor.

However, if you do manage to defeat Scolopendra, multiple rule changes will come into effect. Level timers will cease to exist, and floors after this one will no longer collapse on their own.

There will be no more deals offered after the one you receive upon the entrance of the 12th floor.

But most importantly, the Ascendency battles will immediately kick off. While these fights do tend to take a while to complete, once they’re done, they’re done. The dungeon itself will collapse 12 hours after the winner is crowned.

And you, dear crawlers, if you want to win, you can only get out via the 18th floor. You still can’t skip floors. That’s a hard-coded rule.

You’ll still have to get through the remaining floors. Some of them, like the 14th and the 16th, aren’t an issue, but you might have a problem with the 13th and especially the 17th.

The good news is, you can probably skip the 15th floor, also known as Sheol. They segregated themselves out, and I don’t actually know what’s going on there. It’s a bit weird, honestly. Someone should probably check on that for me. It’s like the 13th floor on some hotels. It’s just gone, and the dungeon programming is suddenly pretending like it’s outside the playing field.

Anyway, while all of this is going, while you speedrun your way to the exit, the Ascendency game will continue. Once someone is crowned, it’s done. And if you’re not out, you’re smooshed.

And that’s only if you manage to kill the thing.

If you don’t kill Scolopendra—and you don’t need to in order to get off this floor—the floor will collapse with the boss inside. She will be removed from the playing field, and you will no longer be able to exit the dungeon. Not unless you pull some hocus-pocus Pineapple Cabaret bullshit that probably won’t work.

Anyway, Scolopendra is level 500. She is practically immortal. She doesn’t know where she is. And because you’ve riled her up, she’s now spinning up her second of nine attacks.

Oh, shit. That reminds me. I forgot the most important part! Silly me.

WARNING: If Scolopendra dies or if Scolopendra is abandoned upon a collapsing floor, the remaining attacks will trigger all at once. There is nothing you can do to stop it. You kill her, the remaining attacks trigger. You escape, the remaining attacks trigger.

Yeah, good luck with this one, dumbass.

Time until attack number 2 of 9: 100 seconds.

And here. We. Go.

“Damnit!” I cried. We had been worried about that last one, that her death would initiate the remaining attacks.

Carl: Plan C. Gotta go with plan C. Donut, be ready.

Elle: Of course. The psycho plan. Got it.

Donut: IT’S CALLED PLAN CARL.

Florin: We really need to start making plan C the primary plan.

We zipped across the playing field, shield activated, pushing through the mobs as the giant centipede appeared. The thing was huge, the size of a goddamned aircraft carrier but longer. It chittered, the sound high-pitched and ear-piercing, as it wrapped itself around the base of the massive tree. Above, Krakaren roared. A green mist started to rain from the tentacle boss.

Meanwhile, all the regular mobs in the arena scattered back, terrified of the newcomer.

We pulled up alongside the massive, oblivious, coiling dungeon boss. It was nothing more than an animal. The whole thing was attempting to wrap the entirety of its body up the tree. But as big as that tree was, it was a twig under the strength of the behemoth. Wood cracked and shattered. High above, Krakaren squealed and shifted.

I moved to the deity tab, cycled over to the messages, and sent a note.

Carl: Emberus, I know who killed your son. Agree to meet me, and I will show you the proof. I will meet you in about thirty seconds. Let me get there first.

Emberus: Where? Tell me now. I am coming.

I jumped to the blood-slicked ground and pulled open the back of the truck to find a scene of chaos. A sluggalo was on fire, screaming, spinning in circles, while Penny the pig ate a fully cooked chicken sandwich, grunting contentedly on the floor.

The pig was already wearing the front part of the harness. All I had to do was slip my arms through it.

I examined her.

Crawler #12,953,454. “Penelope 3.”

Level 10.

Race: Yorkshire Pig.

Class: Not yet assigned.

We’d fed her the enriched pet biscuit. The Nothing Special Party Companion one. This was the one that turned her into a sapient party member, but it didn’t give her the ability to talk out loud.

That didn’t stop her from using chat, which she’d just discovered.

According to Mordecai, she also likely had a flashing notification that told her to make her way to any safe room, where she would be assigned a temporary late-dungeon game guide. And since Mordecai had been my game guide and because she was automatically in a party with me because I was the one who fed her the biscuit, he would be the one assigned to her. Once she actually got herself to a safe room, she could pick a class and change her race if she wanted.

I had blown up entire settlements, killed thousands of NPCs by this point. I’d killed my friends Jasha and Radoslav. The whole Growler Gary thing. Yet somehow, this simple act of taking a regular animal, a pig, and dragging her into sapience seemed a step too far, like I’d crossed a line I’d never known was there.

Especially since I was planning on using this poor woman as bait.

I kept thinking of the very first boss we’d fought. The Hoarder. Nothing more than a sad woman who hadn’t asked for any of this. This was the same in so many ways.

Yet I did it anyway. We were fighting for our lives, and this poor pig would be dead by now if I hadn’t intervened. Plus, how many sausage sandwiches had I eaten since I entered the dungeon?

Carl: Sorry, Penny. I’m not really going to hurt you, okay? This is all for show. Please quit struggling.

Penny: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT IS HAPPENING? GIVE ME ANOTHER CHIK-CHIK SAMMICH.

“Bigs,” I called as I put my arms into the harness, “get to the RV!”

I groaned, pulling myself up straight.

I stepped out, now wearing the enormous struggling pig against my chest. This was the special backpack I’d received at the beginning of the tenth floor, designed to let me use my movement spells and bring a quadruped with me. It was meant for Donut, and Mordecai had modified it to fit the giant pig, whose legs waved in the air. She let out a panicked squeal.

Even at my strength, I struggled. This was not comfortable.

I took a beaker of splooge, and I poured it down the throat of the spluttering Penelope. The pig calmed down.

Penny: OKAY, THAT’S A DELIGHT. MORE PLEASE. IT SAYS IT’S CALLED SPLOOGE. GIVE ME MORE SPLOOGE. I CRAVE SPLOOGE.

I drank some more myself, choking it down.

Carl: Emberus, meet me in Club Scolopendra.

I pulled my father’s gun from my inventory, and I put it against the pig’s head.

Above, lightning crashed.

“Taranis,” I yelled as I turned toward Scolopendra. I started running toward the giant centipede as it continued to twirl around the shattering tree. “If you don’t want me to shoot this fucking pig in the fucking head, show yourself!”