Entering your safe room.

Warning: Blood Bar is now in effect. You start with a full bar, but you are now on a timer. You may only spend 10 hours in the safe room. You may refill the Blood Bar by killing things.

“Holy shit, Mordecai,” I said upon seeing the creature floating in the middle of the safe room holding a steaming cup of tea.

“My goodness,” Donut said, looking the grim reaper character up and down. “This is quite unsettling. It’s like what would happen if Orren ever discovered Depeche Mode.”

Mordecai floated about a foot off the ground. He towered over me. He was a grim-reaper-style monster, but with really long arms, reminding me of the clowns from the third floor. He had desiccated undead-like hands. His dark canvaslike robes floated lazily in the air. Like Orren, his black hood covered his head, and I couldn’t see anything inside except the occasional hint of a reflection.

I could see now why he’d asked Rend to stay behind. One of Rend’s weaknesses was something called “Reaper Gaze.” I examined him.

Mordecai. Level 50. Moon Reaper.

Manager of Princess Donut.

From a dark, terrifying corner of Sheol, Moon Reapers are one of several different types of janitor mobs that occupy the 15th floor. They sometimes break free and wander other floors, devouring everything in their path and causing absolute chaos wherever they go. While they have a corporeal form, they are basically spirit creatures. Even the princes of hell fear these strange solitary beings.

Don’t remove their hoods. Don’t provoke them. They are not hostile unless attacked. Their gaze attack can come in many forms. That includes inflicting the dreaded Jaunt sickness, one of the most insidious attacks in Dungeon Crawler World. It is a condition where the inflicted is trapped in time. They have their full faculties, but they perceive each second as if it is the length of 30 years.

“I’m actually not a Moon Reaper, but a—” Before he finished, he thrust forward, causing me to jump. His black hood fell back, revealing not a skull, but an enormous eyeball. A flaming eyeball. His cup of tea fell and shattered.

“Death awaits you at every turn,” Mordecai croaked with a deep, heavy voice filled with grit, different from the already scary voice he had just been using. “The shadows reach even now for a porous soul such as yours. It is unquenchable, this thirst. You are reached for by both sides. Who will entwine you? The tree or the abyss?”

“What the shit?” I asked as Donut yowled and jumped to my shoulder.

He turned to Donut, raising a skeletal hand. I took a step back, but my back hit the door. “And you. The edges are more clear, yet still uncertain. A sacrifice might save you, in the end. It might. It will be the darkest decision ever made. How many lives? How many souls? The veil is made of gossamer, and when it is done, their gaze, their rage will be eternal. You should remember that, Oak Fell Champion of Nekhebit.”

“I’m sorry, but I really need to wee right now, and I would much rather do it in the powder room than upon Carl’s shoulder, so can you please go back to normal?”

Mordecai coughed. He floated back. “Oh damn, did I drop my tea again? Sorry about that.” He quickly pulled his hood up, but there were still a few flames on the eyeball head, and the hood itself caught on fire. He reached up and casually patted the fire out.

“Uh, Mordecai,” I said, “what the hell was that?”

Mordecai fuzzed and reappeared. He flashed and became the Canadian version of himself from the previous floor, just for a second. He appeared like that as he floated a good two feet off the floor, and he let out a yelp. He glitched again on the way down, and when he hit the floor, he turned into a scraggly black-and-white cat, which caused Donut to hiss. He hissed back at her, but his mouth opened huge, and then he flipped to an otter shape, then to a massive slug, before he jolted back to the reaper shape. He fuzzed for a second but settled on the reaper.

“Godsdamn this form. It’s not natural. It’s an impossible combo, and that’s why it’s glitching.”

The cleaner bot was already at work, quietly cleaning up the tea. The room stank like smoke.

I spied Splash Zone and Rosetta standing there, peeking out of the training room. Samantha was there, too, on the ground with Bigs right next to her. I knew Tipid was in the training room, too, but he was probably asleep. Mordecai said he spent most of his time curled on the floor, sleeping.

“Mordecai, darling,” Donut said, “are you aware of what just happened?”

“Aw, shit. Did I do it again?”

I grunted. “We lost you for a second. You were spouting some Nostradamus bullshit. It was like the same sort of creepy shit robot Donut would say.”

“Oh, damn,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. That’s something Moon Reapers do. It’ll only happen once for each of you.” He paused. “It doesn’t make sense. I’m not really a Moon Reaper. I’m a shadow mimic. Mimics only take on the shape of the creature. Changelings can get some of the powers, though. That’s why it’s glitching, I think.”

“A shadow mimic?” I asked. “What the hell is that? How is that different than a regular mimic?”

“There are three basic types of shapeshifters in the dungeon. Changelings, doppelgangers, and mimics. Most other shapeshifters are variations of one of those three. Shadow mimics are generally pretty evil, highly intelligent mimics that can copy the shape of anything nearby. The thing is, shadow mimics and changelings are mortal enemies. It makes changelings violently ill just to touch one, while shadow mimics think changelings are delicious.”

Donut let out a harrumph. “Well, as long as you’re done being weird and you don’t go back to a tuxedo cat, then I suppose it’s okay. I can see you as an American shorthair, yes. But certainly not with tuxedo coloring. You don’t have the audacity to try to pull that off.”

Rosetta hesitantly approached. She was giving Mordecai a wary glance. Samantha had retreated back into the training room.

“We should probably keep you sequestered from the others for this floor,” Rosetta said to Mordecai. She looked at me. “It seems he does that ‘glitching’ each time a different race gets near him for the first time. When Bigs wandered in, I was afraid we’d lost him totally.”

“He told me I was going to drown in fire,” Bigs the sluggalette said, slithering into the room. She swung her head hatchet around a few times. “If this mothafacko wasn’t on the don’t-chop list, he’d be getting the kneecap treatment. And I didn’t hear what he said to Samantha, but he made her cry.”

“Listen,” Mordecai said. “Nobody give too much stock to anything I might spout. There’s no such thing as predicting the future here. It’s always vague bullshit that can be twisted to fit whatever happens. If someone could accurately predict things like that, it would . . . well, it would change everything. This stuff is designed to be scary, not true.”

Bigs grunted. “You told Splash Zone he was gonna die screaming while his family watched.”

“Yeah, man,” Splash Zone said, “you really freaked me out.”

I was about to ask more, but we were interrupted. Donut let out an excited gasp but then hissed. I turned to see her atop the mailbox in the corner of the room with the little door open. A spell book scurried out, trailing slime. It rushed across the room like an escaped rat. It scampered into the kitchen and started banging against the cabinets.

“Look, look, another hat! And there’s a hat for Mongo. And one for Rend, too!”

“Catch that book!” Mordecai shouted. “They can break if they injure themselves!”

The cleaner bot let out an angry shrill and rushed to the kitchen. It swooped down, picked up the book, brought it to me, and dropped it in my arms.

“Gah,” I said as the book spewed slime down the front of my shirt.

“What is it? What is it?” Donut demanded, hopping over to me.

The book wriggled, and it was covered in little legs. It was oozing a clear liquid all over my arms.

“What the hell?” I said, holding it out. I examined it. “It’s a spell book called Oozy Form.”

“Uzi form?” Donut asked, brightening. “Like Uzi Jesus? I get a gun!”

“Not ‘Uzi,’” I said. “‘Oozy.’ With an ‘O.’ Like slimy. You can turn into a slime.” The spell book spooged more slime onto me. It made a little groan.

Donut scoffed. “Well, that’s disappointing. Why would I want that?”

“It’s a great spell,” Mordecai said. “It’s a special edition, so it’ll train faster, too. You can do all sorts of things with it. You can slip between cracks. Turn into a puddle on the floor. It’s great as a defensive and camouflage spell. But it’s kinda like Phase, too. Just make sure you’re someplace safe when it runs out. At level 15, you can stay in the form indefinitely, but before then, be careful.”

“That is absolutely disgusting, and I am never going to use it,” Donut said.

I put the wriggling book on the kitchen counter. It shook, trying to crawl away. It continued to spew thick, clear liquid all over the place. Mordecai swooped in with a vial and took some.

“This is a good one,” I said, holding the book down. “You don’t have to use it a lot, but it’ll be good for an emergency. Read it before you give the cleaner bot a heart attack.”

The cleaner bot gave a shrill beep.

Donut jumped to the table and gave the ooze a suspicious sniff. “My Smoke Form spell that comes with my Assassin of Sekhmet class is better. It’s a Phase-style spell. Why don’t you take it?”

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Mordecai said. “Carl, your Gloom Wraith Phase is an attack and forces you in a direction, so it’s not useful as a travel spell. If you take this, both you and Donut can equally slip through and around obstacles.”

“Really?” I asked. “Wait, what else do you have that’s new, Donut?”

“Oh, it’s just fantastic. I got all sorts of goodies. It buffs all those weird create-tree and summon-vermin spells I got from that Oak Fell thing, and it also comes with that Smoke Form spell, and I got my first aura! It’s called Healer’s Grasp. If you’re near me, you get healed! I don’t know why an assassin might need to heal people, but that’s what I got. I’m like a mini Imani! And don’t forget I also have two celestial boxes to open, and that’s before I look at some of my new achievements, so I must insist we get this moving.”

The book made a strange squealing noise and more goo squirted out. The cleaner bot continued to complain.

“Sorry,” I said. I grasped the book in both hands, and I applied it, learning Oozy Form. “Okay, okay. That’s done.”