The gods were gone. The monsters were dead.

The horribles in the stands remained, watching. Then, as one, they all stood, still silent, still watching. Fog rose, and in moments, they, too, were gone.

The Scavenger’s Daughter has closed her eyes. The benefit fades, and she weeps.

W-W-W-Winner!

Well, sort of. Neither of the bosses are dead. That’s a little disappointing.

But you won. Congrats. This is a little iffy considering what just happened, but I’m gonna call it because I can. You are now free to exit the dungeon.

The door on the 18th floor is now open. Good luck getting there.

By the way: Don’t forget the warning. You know, that big red flashing warning from before? Just because Scolopendra is “defeated,” it doesn’t mean you’re safe from the remaining attacks. Killing her, even in this state, will institute the final attacks. Abandoning her on this or any floor now counts as killing her.

Yeah. Good luck.

Time to Level Collapse: 30 minutes.

System Message: From now on, all level collapse timers past the 11th floor are suspended until a winner is declared in the Ascendency battles. When this happens, dungeon-closure procedures will commence.

Every exit is an entrance. A terrible, ominous feeling washed over me.

Imani: Prepotente is injured! So is Jurgen!

Rosetta: Tipid, too, is terribly injured. He has lost both of his legs in the crash.

Prepotente: I will recover. Tend to Jurgen. I was electrocuted, but I am now fine. The deity stole my memorial crystal! The thief pulled it right off my neck! I have filed a formal complaint with the Epicure!

Jurgen: I am okay. Just a little fried. You’re lucky that god didn’t pull your head off.

I pulled myself up, my head spinning.

If Prepotente had lost that crystal, we had also lost our protection from Scolopendra’s attacks. Even as a level 1 nymph, the rules were clear. We couldn’t let her die. We couldn’t leave her here or have Mongo eat her. She would have to go into a pet carrier and stay there.

A line of portals appeared against one side of the arena. Stairwells.

Lucia Mar was there holding Florin, who was still unconscious. She stood right in front of the stairwell.

But then, peeking out from behind her legs, was another person. It . . . it was a child. A girl, maybe five years old. She was too far away to examine. She held on to the side of Lucia’s leg.

“Wait, what?” I asked. Was I hallucinating? What the hell was this?

“Hey!” I shouted. “Stop!” But she didn’t stop, and the three of them stepped into the portal.

Carl: What the hell was that? Did anybody see that! Lucia had another person with her!

Imani: I didn’t see it. Maybe it was a summon spell. She was on her hands and knees vomiting earlier, and I was going to go to her, but I got distracted by Tipid’s injuries.

Elle: I didn’t see, either. But did I see Samantha go away with that electric guy?

Carl: She did.

I shot a message to Florin. He wouldn’t answer until I landed on the next floor.

The Big Shot Chicken truck still spun in circles, but as I watched, it slowed, turned, and pulled up next to us. The thing was so smashed up, I was surprised it was still running. There were about ten sluggalos still inside. That was all that was left. The whole thing stank like fire. Bigs leaned out the window. “We done killing?”

“For right now. We have about thirty minutes before floor collapse. Gather all the survivors and get back to the safe room. Just go back the way we came. Don’t stop for anything.”

“Sure thing, Daddy-o, but what about the trucks and mounts?”

I sighed. “The big animal mounts should fit in the pet stables. I don’t know about the garage, but I think we’ll lose them. Make sure Hedy and the other gremlins are in the safe rooms. We should be able to keep them. Same with any engineers if there are any in the garages. Tell them to pull the GPS units and bring them into the safe rooms.”

Bigs lowered her head.

“We lost Hedy.”

“Ahh, hell,” I said. “What happened?”

Bigs indicated with her head hatchet. I turned to see the smoking remains of the ice-cream truck broken against the wall. Next to it was the crumpled Tundra. Jamal was flopping about, trying to pick up his smashed leg pieces with his mouth.

I sighed. “Gather everyone you can and get out of here. If the trucks can’t drive, leave them.”

Across the way, Jurgen was sitting up, rubbing his head while Imani tended to him. Elle and Bodi were sitting on the ground next to them, also looking dazed.

I took stock of the death and destruction. I had missed much of what had happened in the last minute. The Abrams tank was a smoking wreck, and Sarah the hexcrafter was spread like jelly over the playing field. The three guys within equally smooshed. It appeared the tank had been hit with a Krakaren tentacle. That left only Makana from the Destruction float alive.

We had nineteen crawlers left. Twenty if you counted Penny, which I did not. We would, supposedly, get to talk to our lawyers again in a minute. It would be the last time deals were offered.

I laughed. What a joke. Even if they offered us straight freedom, then what? We couldn’t leave.

The tattoos on the back of my hands no longer glowed. The sun shapes remained, but they now were raised, angry scars. When I examined them, they both had the same description with no further explanation.

Mark of the Damned.

So much had happened. But it seemed as if I had more questions than ever.

I turned to examine the large, quivering pile of goo that would soon be another pet. Luckily, I’d kept an extra pet carrier for just this reason. I went into my inventory and sighed. I’d spent hours and hours setting up my organization system, but it was all a mess. It would take hours to sort it, even using the auto filters.

As I shifted, I stepped on something in the dirt. Just sitting there half-buried was an amber-hued glowing crystal. I reached down to pick it up.

Memorial Crystal. Emberus.

I took it into my inventory. But then I noticed something odd.

“Huh?” I asked.

I had a dart sticking out of my leg. I hadn’t felt it, and I couldn’t feel it now. I didn’t know when I’d received it or how. I gently pulled it out.

Tracking Tag.

The Kyryap has claimed you.

Fucked = you.

“The shit?” I asked.

I quickly jumped into my debuffs to see if there was anything there.

There was something new, but it had to do with my Emberus ring, not this, and it was something I’d have to deal with later.

Hopefully, this Kyryap thing would be dead in the floor collapse.

Penny snuffled around. She looked up at me.

Penny: IT SAYS I HAVE TO GO TO A SAFE ROOM TO GET A CLASS.

I went to a knee and patted the pig on the back.

“Listen, Penny. We’re about to go through that portal. I was just talking to my game guide, and he said you’ll probably be offered a deal of sorts, but because you’re something called ‘dungeon born,’ it’ll be a different sort of deal. You need to decide what you want to do, but I think you should take it.”

Penny: I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

“I know, and I’m so sorry I did this to you.”

I pulled some splooge from my inventory, poured it into a bowl, and dropped it in front of her.

Penny: I LOVE IT WHEN YOU SPLOOGE ME, CARL.

Donut was sitting next to me, looking dazed, watching the pig eat. She wasn’t making any of her usual sarcastic remarks. I sent her a party request, and she accepted it without a word.

Across the arena, everyone who wasn’t a crawler was now leaving, going back to the safe room. We’d wait until they were safely inside.

Minutes passed as we sat in silence, just existing, waiting.

Prepotente: Carl, I must say, I am quite surprised that worked out. What did that thieving god say to you before he pulled Krakaren from the arena? We wanted him to kill her, not take her. We have lost out on any possible floor boss prize. At least we have paused the Scolopendra attacks. Be careful putting her into a pet carrier.

Carl: I will. I think Krakaren has something to do with Apito. So does Samantha. And he took the memorial crystal because it contains all her memories and spells.

Prepotente: It was charging up with the Scolopendra attacks, and it was our protection. We need to get it back.

Carl: Don’t worry. Their invulnerability runs out after this floor. I’ll see what we can do.

Prepotente: The gods are all level 250. We are strong, but we are not nearly as strong as them. Even the strongest amongst us is no match one-on-one.

Carl: That’s why we’re not going to face them one-on-one.

You have sent a party request to Prepotente.

You have sent a party request to Imani C.

I kept sending them until every last one of us was all in a single party.

Carl: We do this together.

I sat heavily in the dirt. I picked up one of the blood-splattered masks. It was of a fanged rabbit.

Horribles mask. As worn by the late Gershwin Banks, CFO of Dictum Waystation Controls, LTD.

I thought of the days to come, of the impossible task before us.

The NPCs. The mobs. The gods. The demons in Sheol. The others, whoever they were, though I was pretty sure I knew.

Lucia. We had to keep her alive.

This next floor was going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

I watched Donut just sitting there, quivering, rubbing her paw on the dirt. She, too, was examining a mask on the ground as Mongo licked at it. Rend sat on my side, also licking at a bloody horribles mask. Penny stood beside them, licking at the remains of an elf politician who’d been wearing the mask.

I grunted with amusement.

“Eat the rich,” I said.

Rend looked at me, tongue lolling out.

“Yum,” he said.

Determination filled me. Despite what I’d just said, I knew what I had to do. I had to stay on the twelfth floor. I had to keep anyone from “winning” the Ascendency until everyone left in the dungeon got out.

Across the way, the pulsing goo of Scolopendra thrummed. At any moment, a new creature would come out. According to the pet biscuit description, she would be a regular pet transformed back to level 1. We would stick her in the pet carrier and keep her in our inventory where she couldn’t harm anyone else.

Turning her into a pet made her the ultimate weapon. If I had her in my inventory and I was killed, she would die, which would initiate the final attacks. A true fail-safe. It would be our key to surviving this next floor, and it would be the key to stalling until everybody got out.

I knew our odds were still ridiculously slim, but I had hope. So much hope, and it had been such a long time I’d felt anything like this.

We can do this. We can live. We can get free.

We can fucking win.

I reached over and rubbed Donut’s head. She looked up at me, quivering. The others were already approaching the garage. We had ten minutes left before level collapse.

“It’s okay,” I said, rubbing her. “It’s okay.”

“Carl?” Donut said. “Uh, okay, so we have a problem. Don’t get mad.”

“I won’t ever get mad at you. What do you mean?”

“So, with the inventory. It was happening so fast, I made a mistake. Like, a really, really bad one.”

Across from us the gelatin coalesced, and then it just sort of drained away, revealing a shape.

Mongo growled.

A human-sized centipede appeared.

A new member has joined your party!

Sexy Scolopendra. Level 1.

Crawler #12,953,456.

The level 1 crawler looked up at me.

She wasn’t a pet.

She’d been transformed into something akin to Commander Stockade from the Lemig team. The warlord who’d smashed his face to the floor until he died. But instead of a caterpillar, she still looked like a horrifying centipede, only with a humanlike face with strangely giant lips. She had no arms. Twin yellow antennae twitched on her head. She had a red bow on one of the feelers.

“What the ever-loving fuck?” I asked, jumping back.

Donut had given me the wrong pet biscuit.

“Hi, Carl,” Scolopendra said, her voice soft and sultry. She fell to the ground, skittered forward, then stood, wrapping herself around me, squeezing tight until we were face-to-face.

“We better go through the portal before the level collapses,” she said. She reached over with an antenna and touched my nose.

“Boop,” she said.