“Well-met, stranger!” the caprid said as we entered the studio. “Please, please, sit there in the center of the room! We have provided sitting appliances for your convalescence!”

Despite the creature’s demonic appearance, he had a ridiculously goofy look on his goat face. He was bouncing up and down giddily as I hesitantly approached. He reached out to touch me, like he wanted to shake my hand, but his hand went right through me, giving the illusion he was sticking his hand into the pouch on my costume.

Lexis hadn’t entered with us. She’d said she needed a moment. The woman was literally shaking.

A spotlight appeared, shining down on a pair of chairs on a turntable in the center of the dark room. They were just two regular stools, which would allow me to sit properly with my tail.

I attempted to examine the smiling goat creature, but my interface had stopped working the moment we stepped in here. Still, this wasn’t a zero zone. I hadn’t lost my buffs. And the kangaroo costume was still firmly attached to my skin.

I looked the black goat creature up and down.

I knew there were different kinds of these things, mostly mirroring the various breeds of goats we had here on Earth. But this particular one looked a lot like the same satanic demon goat breed as Harbinger, though not quite as tall. This one had that same goofy yet deadly earnest look as Prepotente on his face, which was an odd combination.

I could also see the shadows of several other goats in a circle around us. They were of all sizes. They murmured amongst themselves.

“Hi!” Donut said, waving from my shoulder. “I must say, I’m glad you speak the same language as us and seem pretty normal like our friend Prepotente. Carl says he went to some press conference once with one of your kind, and it was really weird. What’s your name?”

The goat gasped and smiled at Donut. He reached out in an attempt to pet her. “I am Botis, and I am the magistrate of tonight’s tunnel event. Are you Carl?”

“Am I Carl?” Donut asked incredulously. “I am Princess Donut!”

“A pleasure! Please, sir, you sit at the chairs and we will begin. We are live! We are live!”

“Already?” Donut asked. “And did you call me ‘sir’?”

“Yes, sir. We are live!” he shouted. “You will sit! We have been live since they announced you and your spouse were coming!”

I sighed and moved to the stools. Donut jumped from my shoulder and landed in the adjoining raised stool. She turned to look up at me.

“If they hadn’t turned off our ability to send private messages, this is where I’d say something very not nice,” she grumbled.

I grunted with amusement. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Donut appeared as if she was about to add something caustic, but had thought better of it.

We waited for the host to say something. He didn’t. He just stood there a few feet to our left, looking at us, really staring. We sat there in awkward silence for a good ten to fifteen seconds. The only sounds were the breathing and guttural noises from the circle of goats in shadow.

“Well,” Donut finally said, “it’s certainly a pleasure to be invited on your show. Because you clearly don’t know, my name is GC, BWR⁠—”

“YOU HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH!” Botis suddenly screamed, pointing at us.

Donut yowled and jumped in the air, landing all poofed out.

The turntable under our chairs started to slowly spin, moving clockwise.

“Death! Death! Death!” came the shouts from the other goats all in shadow.

“Carl,” Donut said, turning to me, giving up her attempts to maintain her on-air personality. “What in the Jonestown is happening?”

Individual spotlights started shining on the goats surrounding us, turning on and off, illuminating each of the goats in turn in a counterclockwise motion. The goats were of all shapes, though more than half were the large, dark, evil-looking kind. Each time one was illuminated, it croaked out, “Death,” and pointed at us.

“I feel as if we didn’t get a proper chance to defend ourselves,” Donut muttered.

“Do you wish to appeal the death sentence?” Botis asked, waving his arms, suddenly back to his happy, enthusiastic personality.

“Eh, not really,” I said.

“Yes, we do,” Donut said. “Both of us.”

“Very well! Death has been stayed! Now prepare for judgment!”

The turntable stopped, and we sat facing a single smaller goat with red coloring under a blazing spotlight. This one was about four feet tall and the smallest of the lot. He or she wore dark flowing robes. Their hands twiddled nervously.

The goat spent some time examining both me and Donut. It seemed to be seriously contemplating us. Finally, it said in a female voice, “Either may answer. Do you feel your daily foliage input is sufficient?”

“Fucking what?” I asked.

Donut brightened. “Carl clearly has some issues as evidenced by the sheer number of bathroom breaks he takes. I think it’s the fault of his food boxes. They’re broken.”

The goat nodded as if this was the answer she had been expecting.

“I am honored to remove your death sentence. You are welcome to walk amongst the herd.”

“Uh, thank you?” Donut said.

“Do you have any questions for me?” the goat asked.

“Wait, we can ask you questions?” Donut asked.

“Yes. Thank you for the question.”

The table turned to the next goat, who was one of the satanic ones.

This one just growled and said, “The death judgment stands.”

“Rude,” Donut replied.

The next was another of the big ones, but we were deemed worthy. Or at least Donut was.

“Princess Donut, have you given any thought on what three spells you might combine if you were to cast your War Crime spell a second time?”

She stiffened. But then she composed herself. “It’ll depend on the circumstances. Nothing is off the table, but I won’t be able to cast it until the twelfth floor. Carl and I must first get through these next two floors.”

The goat nodded.

“So, is it my turn to ask?”

“Yes,” the goat replied, and we moved to the next.

“Carl,” the next goat asked without preamble. This one had a strange, fat, jowly face and was unlike any of the others. I missed the ability to be able to examine them and get a description. “Are you aware of what Justice Light did at the end of the previous floor?”

I straightened. “I know he made a trap that broke a lot of things in the dungeon, and I know it killed him. And I also know that he was my friend. Can you please explain to me what exactly he did?”

The goat seemed to contemplate for a minute, then nodded.

“It’s quite interesting, and I’m happy to explain. He created a trap that broke the in-game version of the Nothing. This unleashed all of the inhabitants of the Nothing into three different levels of the game. We can only truly see what is happening on the twelfth floor. Some of these creatures are entities that haven’t been seen since the very early days of Dungeon Crawler World. The ones who invaded the twelfth floor appear to be the weakest. We have no vision of what’s happening on the fifteenth, and we only saw brief snippets of the ongoing slaughter and torture within Club Scolopendra. The dread Kyryap is there. As is Krakaren Prime. As this is a parody of our partner, it’s interesting that⁠—”

One of the goats we hadn’t yet spoken with cleared her throat.

“Anyway, thank you for the question, Carl. You have been judged worthy, and you may walk amongst the herd.”

As he was talking, my interface crackled back on. There was no warning. My HUD just booted up. As that happened, I was still looking at the talkative goat with the strange face.

This is Bathin. He is one of the chief engineers of the Plenty Tunnel Project, which opened up the veins of the galaxy.

Huh, I thought, what a strange description.

Orren: Carl. Donut. I am online with Prime Minister Victory. I need you to listen very carefully.

Donut: HI, ORREN! HI, PRIME MINISTER VICTORY!

Orren: I did not realize what was happening until it was too late. You have an amazing opportunity here. The people who are judging you are the leadership of the Plenty. If you are judged worthy, they will answer your questions. I need you to ask them about the integrity of the tunneling system. I will give you the exact question to ask.

Carl: Eat my ass, Orren.

Prime Minister Victory: Carl. I am going to level with you. I think even you will understand the gravity of the situation. The current AI is spread well beyond this solar system. It killed an entire Mantis system, and it just blew up a group of Valtay-leased manufacturing facilities. We do not know how it is feeding itself. We do not know how it is doing any of this. Furthermore, certain mobs from the dungeon have gotten loose. They are appearing in places they shouldn’t. This is more than an emergency. This is the end of life as we know it, and all of our attempts to communicate with the Plenty regarding this emergency have gone unanswered. They control the tunneling system. They are the only ones who can shut it all off. We hope.

Carl: Is that what Quasar was trying to tell me before he got cut off? Gods are getting loose? Is that the entity that’s on the surface with Katia? The goddess Eileithyia?

Orren: Yes, Carl. Though it’s a different god in the kinder facility. A good portion of the unsponsored gods are roaming free. Right now it appears they can only manifest themselves within a relatively short range of the tunnel nodes, and not for long. To make matters worse, it appears the AI has no control over them. They are at cross-purposes. But even that shouldn’t be possible. This is why it is crucial you ask the Plenty leadership the question I have prepared.

While this was happening, we moved to the next goat, who asked who took longer to prepare for battle each day, me or Donut.

Carl: What? The AI has lost control of them?

Orren: You need to understand the AI is specifically programmed to be unable to manually interfere with the minds of gods and goddesses. It’s a hard limitation. It was programmed to keep an insane AI from using the gods to kill everything. We had limited ability to temper that. It’s the same system that allows us to use sponsors to drive gods. But that ability to control non-sponsored gods has been turned off. We normally use this ability quite liberally on the later floors due to the destructiveness of such powerful creatures. It’s a checks-and-balances system that is now broken. And since the AI can’t control them, either, the deities are acting independently.

Donut started yapping about her daily routine, though she was clearly distracted with one ear on this conversation.

Carl: Sure. I’ll ask your question. But let me rephrase it.

Orren: No, Carl. Please. Wait. You have to be careful with the way you say it.

I raised my finger when Donut was done.

Out loud, I said to the goat, “Here’s my question. Does the public know that the gods have escaped from the dungeon? And that the enhancement zones of the current AI have jumped into your tunneling system? Do the people know they’re in danger? Worse danger, perhaps, than us crawlers? Do they know that they need to fucking run?”

Prime Minister Victory: Gods-fucking-damnit, Carl. You just said that on live. And the AI let it go out.

Orren: And now the party really begins.