Carl's Doomsday Scenario, Chapters 8-11

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Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode! 
These chapters are the ones where Carl decides to take a very big risk regarding both his own health and mental state as well as regarding the whims of TV producers. It pays off for now, but how long can he keep this up, and what's happening to Donut???
Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you soon with a new episode! 
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is Spoiled Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book two, Carl's Doomsday Scenario, chapters
eight through eleven. In these chapters, Carl eats worms. Other

(00:31):
things happen, but like, let's be real, we talk about
this book, we're gonna be like that time that Carl
ate worms. Welcome to spoil Me, Welcome to the show everyone.

(01:01):
I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for
commissioning this episode. Yeah. Look, I think that in terms
of storytelling this is valid and works really well and
all of that. But I also would like it registered

(01:22):
with everybody that anytime characters are made to eat something
alive and wriggling, I won't be here for it, and
it will never change. I will never suddenly be like,
you know what, this time it was great. Nope. There
is a point in the Red Rising series where somebody

(01:43):
brings in a bucket full of cockroaches into snake and
it's a hazing ritual and they have to eat them.
And the woman grabs the snake right away and just
bites its head off, and as they are scooping up
handfuls of cockroaches, bros, Like she was smart to grab

(02:06):
that fucking snake. Immediately she knew what she was doing,
because these cockroaches are not it. And you know, when
you're jealous of the snake, that's pretty bad worms. And
then they take over his body and it's all so

(02:26):
horribly uncomfortable, and I really what I liked about this,
And I know I'm jumping ahead, but you know how
I do. I think that's why we're here at this point,
So I'm not apologizing anymore. But the way that it
is described how it feels when they make him talk
is really effective because I feel like so much of
the time, the physical feeling of it is overlooked and

(02:52):
it is just focused on the overall like violation of
a feeling, you know, of like they've taken over and
I can't believe I'm not in control, but it's very
much like they are wrapped around my vocal cords and
this hurts so bad, which I kind of appreciated.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Michael says, why do people feel like making hazing rituals
disgusting and dangerous and or sexual assault instead of fun?
Because the point is how bad do you want it?
It has to be something that isn't fun to do,
because you've got to prove this is how bad I
want to be here. They not only have to eat

(03:32):
those cockroaches, but they also have to each chug an
entire bottle of what amounts to moonshine at the same time.
So there's a lot of vomiting, as you can imagine.
But yeah, so I don't care for it at all.
I don't like it. Let's start with chapter eight, where

(03:57):
we get an update from Brandon, and this was so interesting. First,
just a touch base with the state of the cat tree.
It is assembled. So I thought that shit was going
to hang around her ages and that he wasn't going
to assemble it. But it's done, and I must say,
I'm a little impressed that you took care of that

(04:19):
so quick, buddy. I'm a little bit proud of you. Also,
I could see, after what he said about we don't
risk our lives for our pets, that perhaps he might
feel a bit guilty and be jumping on assembling that
cat tree a little sooner than usual, just because he
feels like he sort of bows or something. But I
don't know that that's true. It's not mentioned. I also

(04:42):
lit the cheap candle for her. It filled the small
rented room with the scent of home. I watched Donut
for a bit, and I could tell what she was doing.
She wasn't really asleep, she was just closing her eyes
and pretending that she was back home in her favorite spot.
This really got me, you guys, there was like just

(05:07):
that closing your eyes and pretending a thing. I think
all of us, at some point in our lives do
this because scent is such a particular you know, it's
so closely linked with memory more than any other sense.
And I know that for me, there are moments where,

(05:29):
like my mother used to burn this particular type of
balsam pine incense when I was a kid, and she
burned it in the winter in general, but on Christmas especially,
and also at Christmas every year she would make this
gorgeous walnut stuffed cinnamon braided bread that she would get

(05:57):
up and put in the oven before anybody else was awake,
so we'd wake up and it would smell like cinnamon
and that balsam incense, which has a very wood smoke
sort of smell, and the combination of those fragrances is
so embedded in my brain and the other. Like a

(06:19):
few Christmases ago, I baked cinnamon rolls and I had
lit the incense, and I just had a moment of like,
oh wow, you know, and if I hadn't already been
awake and busy, I could definitely see myself climbing back
into bed and closing my eyes and pretending that I'm
six years old and just for a second, somebody else

(06:42):
has taken care of all of the cooking and baking
for the holidays, and somebody else is out there getting
me oven started. You know, just let yourself be there
for a moment, and especially, you know, having that sort
of feeling of nostalgia just because you'll never be that
age again is hard enough. But having that sort of

(07:03):
nostalgia because that place is gone and you will never
see earth again in like the same way, that is
a kind of loss that it's impossible for me to
even really understand. So I feel like I'd be doing
this every night. I feel like I would be, you know,

(07:24):
going in very hard for the dissociation treatment myself. So
they go out and they meet Gordo, well they have
met him before, but like I'm saying, meat, because like
this is the real Gordo. Don'ut says, I need my

(07:46):
breakfast and you need to brush me, and he says,
hold your horses, you blow hard. I need to freshen
up a bit. I'll get you fed, don't worry, and
you can brush yourself. Princess, Well, I never Carl do something.
Mordecai teach you the finger breaking trick. Finger breaking. No,

(08:08):
he made me a potion. I told him I didn't
quite feel myself since you two arrived, and he offered
to makes me a draft using a few things behind
my bar, something that allowed me to regain my dignity.
It's not right taking advantage of my kind nature like that.
And Mordecai, as they find out later, that potion apparently

(08:33):
like did kind of bring him back to himself. And
I don't know if he did that on purpose to
make it seem like, yeah, that's what it was for,
or if it accidentally worked or what. But the purpose
of it was actually to knock Gordo out so that
he could go and get the newsletter they get and

(08:56):
Bopka's and shopkeepers don't have access to the feed, so
they get a physical newsletter to each recapp Once he
passed out, I went into the back so I could
read the brief. I also stole a few items for potions.
I don't have an inventory like you do, so take
this and he hands them over a bunch of herbs
and stuff and he apparently this is not technically against

(09:18):
the rules. They can't engage in direct battle with mobs,
but everything else they want to do as a manager
is fine. The brief is regional and it warned of
a potential major battle event happening in this area today
or tonight. And he's like, it's probably an elite friend.
I need you guys to eat and get the fuck out,

(09:41):
and Carl says okay. And as soon as he says
just okay, I was like, Yeah, this isn't gonna happen.
I was just like, Carl is agreeing to do what
he has told. They are about to leave, and it's
too late already. I said it last episode, and I
I was like, you're in it. I don't know how,

(10:02):
I don't know what she's going to do, but you're
part of it, and there's no backing out. And I
know that we're just getting to see you agree without arguing,
so that we can see you caught up very shortly,
so the update from Brandon. None of the residents can

(10:24):
choose human lest they remain in their current condition, and
there is a lot of pushback. The ones with cognitive
issues have to pick some really weird races in order
to remain viable. I'll tell you all about it later.
I stayed human, Chris and Immani did not. Most of
the residents are still level one, but you would not
believe the loop boxes they got for hitting the third

(10:46):
floor without killing anything or dealing any damage. They are
all getting legendary pacifist boxes, along with a ton of
other ones. It's ridiculous how much magical gear we now have.
Some of these bastards are going to be more powerful
than Immani pretty soon. Anyway, Mistress Tiata says, we're likely
pretty far from you now. I just wanted to thank
you again for your help. I hope we see each

(11:07):
other again. And you, guys, this is so incredibly fascinating
to me. Do you understand how much I want to
see them choosing their races?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Like?

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Do you understand how compelling the process of choosing based
on the cognitive abilities and what you're able to do
right now? Like I desperately want to know what their
options are, what effects those options might have if they

(11:41):
do this. In combination with that, I live for this
kind of shit. I I want to know all of
it really very much, really very very much. And I'm
disappointed that we're not going to be there. I am
hoping that we are going to see them again. I
don't feel like all of them would still be alive

(12:02):
and that we would be hearing from them if we
weren't going to be getting an update, and I mean
an in person this is an update, but like an
in person moment with them to I'm imagining this is
like sort of preparing us for when we meet them
and realizing like, maybe these aren't enemies, even though they

(12:22):
looked like a very weird motley crew of extremely powerful people.
But yeah, this is just really Can you imagine being
older and in an aging body to a point where
you're thinking you're like definitely gonna die because of the
situation that you're in, and then you are given the

(12:45):
opportunity to change race and jump into a brand new,
completely otherworldly body and drop all of the struggle that
you've been having with your regular human body, like the
drive to stay human, as we have heard, is pretty

(13:08):
strong in most people. So I get why there's pushback
on that. But I also you know, I was saying
how it would be difficult for me when I was
making the decision. I don't know what I would choose,
and like, it didn't occur to me that the body
you pick is going to be I'm assuming immaculate to

(13:33):
start with. You know, if you're ninety seven years old,
but you pick a dragon born creature, I'm assuming you
aren't in the shitty ninety seven year old equivalent of
a dragon born body. Now granted, I'm assuming a dragon
born body would be like still in prime shape at
ninety seven, but you get what I'm saying. It never

(13:56):
really entered my mind that if if you start, like,
if you choose to remain human, you're staying in the
human body you have. You're not getting upgraded to like
prime version of human. So if you pick another race,
are you getting the best option for that race, the

(14:18):
best possible model? I would assume, so, right, So you know,
like I said, I was really really struggling with what
would I pick. I now thinking through this aspect of it,
I would definitely not remain human. Like it would be

(14:40):
very hard to get to step away from the body
that I've been in. But I'm at an age at
forty where I'm just starting to really see the like
wear and tear and the effect that it has on
my overall performance anymore. And it's sobering. So to ACTU
be able to pick a different body and start from

(15:03):
like a really good solid state. I mean, I just
don't think that's something I could resist. And like, there
are plenty of races that are close enough to human
that I think I would still feel okay, and it

(15:24):
wouldn't you know, I don't have to do something as
incredibly bonkers as what's her name Lucita Lucia. I don't
need to do something that intense. Obviously, there are going
to be things that are a temptation to do for
the stats, but like, I don't know, this just didn't
enter my mind, and I really I'm just riveted. I

(15:49):
really am. So this is when he uh, and here's
here's my thought here. I think that maybe Carl has
made a little mistake. First, he says, I thought about
telling him about Agatha, but decided I didn't want to
do that. I didn't want to put anything in writing fair,

(16:12):
smart move agree. I also gave him a piece of advice,
the same advice Odette had given us. If they weren't
done yet and somebody had the manager ability, he needed
to talk them into choosing it. Now. I don't know
if he phrases it in the writing as Odette told

(16:37):
us that we should do such and such, or you
need to talk them into it or find a way,
you know. I don't know. It's not we aren't shown
the message from Carl verbatim. We are given the little
summary that he chooses to share with us. So when
I say that, I'm worried he might have made a mistake.

(16:59):
What concerns me is whether or not this message could
be seen by Mordecai, and if he will find out
that he was tricked into this. I genuinely do not
know if that's of concern, but it gave me pause.
I'll just say that. So this is when they take off.

(17:28):
They are heading out of the city. We need to
stay far away from those assholes. Is you have been stunned,
you have been paralyzed, you have been rendered unconscious. Why
do you gotta get killed? You ain't so little as
mice I didn't bounce you hard. And later on he

(17:50):
mentions that that was a quote from of Mice and Men.
I genuinely get my of Mice and Men and Grapes
of Wrath mixed up terribly. But Lenny, is this quote right?

(18:12):
When it was read in the audiobook? I thought that
it was the actual person who had stunned them saying that,
And I was sort of like, this sounds familiar, And
then I thought maybe because you know, the whole thing
is supposed to be basically that the human world Earth

(18:33):
got seeded by aliens with all of our like the
content that we now think of as ours wasn't really ours.
It was like put there, you know. So I was
sort of like, is this meant to be a reference
to the fact that that story isn't ours? You know
what I mean? Like that that dialogue got put in

(18:53):
the mouth of a character, and once I see it
written down here, it's clear that was the saying it
to him in his head. And he wakes up and
he calls out for donut and she is not responding,
and he is beginning to freak out. Immediately, No, I

(19:16):
don't want to be alone, And I just that was
like one of those that hits you really hard, because
as a reader, I am confident she's fine, you know,
like I'm coming at this from a she has got
lot armor and is probably not ever going to die

(19:40):
in this series. And I might be wrong about that,
but I feel confident enough that I'll just say it.
But putting myself in Carl's shoes, there is absolutely no
reason why you would assume that she's still alive, you know,
in this universe, Like, why would you think they'd keep

(20:02):
the cat around? I really understood that panic when I
thought about it. From that perspective, the AI seemed to
think I was about to die. It was kind of
a fucked up seemed for the AI to quote, but
it almost felt like it was supposed to be soothing.

(20:22):
Carl Mordecai, I just woke up. I don't know what happened.
I don't know where Donut is. I don't know where
I am. Oh, thank the gods. You tied up in
a cage in a web. I'm on a couch. I'm
not tied up, and I still have all my stuff.
It's dark in here, though I can't see anything. Okay,
I can see Donut is alive. I can't see where
she is, and if she's let's see when I checked

(20:48):
the notifications, and I'd received three achievements, one forgetting stunned,
a second forgetting paralyzed, and a third new achievement. Lazarus,
you have been hit with and survived an offensive spell
that was higher than level fifteen. The fact that you
are not a quivering stain of meat on the dungeon
floor right now is testament to your sheer luck. It's
either that or you're banging the producer reward. You've received

(21:11):
a platinum Lucky Bastard box. And here's signet and she's
got her hand on his thigh, which startles him quite
a bit. And she says, you were leaving, but you

(21:32):
told me that we were going to meet. You promised
that you were going to come back, and you were
running away. I've got donut. She's asleep, and I even
saved the dinosaur. I will let you see her on
the way out, but you are going to participate in
this the way that you promised. I was ready to

(21:53):
just kill you, but I'm gonna give you another chance.
I felt her palm rustle unnaturally as something moved by
just under her skin. You guys, that is the most
unnerving shit I ever heard of my life. It's like,
it's not just that something is under her skin moving around,

(22:15):
which I'm trusting is one of the tattoos, but it's
the fact that, like it's under her palm, which we
have all seen the special effect of something under somebody's skin,
but I feel like it's usually reserved for under the arm,
like the forearm, or maybe even under the face, you know,

(22:40):
someplace near the neck. There is something about it being
under her hand that took it to a different level
for me and made it just And then there's the
fact that it's dark, so he can feel it, but
he can't see it. And even if it weren't dark,
her hand is on him, so if it were on
her palm, he couldn't see it then either. And that
it reminded me of being like in murky water and

(23:04):
you feel something around your ankles, but there's no possible
way to tell what it is. You just are aware
I'm not alone in this water and have to fucking
trust that it's just a carp and not an alligator,
you know. Oh my god, I hate it. I hate
it so much. Oh, Michael says, I want to commission

(23:25):
The Wandering Inn, but I would be worried Natasha wouldn't
enjoy it. It takes like three thousand pages to really
get going. My god, Rob says, I think she'd have
to tough it out the first book, but by the
time you get to the Horns and Rioka, it's pretty engrossing.
My wife's just finished the last audiobook and she's dying
for more. Does feel like it would be of Natasha's Alley,

(23:47):
but it is so long and it'd be tough in
this format. Michael says. Andrea Parsnow is stepping away as
the narrator after books sixteen Jesus, which is devastating. Hope
her successor can step into those massive shoes. I hear
Andrea's voice even when I'm reading the future chapters on
the web. There are also a lot of chapters where

(24:09):
not a lot happens, so I'm not sure how Natasha
would handle that in the fifty pages per episode thing.
But inability to talk isn't really her issues, so I
might be worried about nothing. Thinks that's what I'm good at. Well,
you know, I'm game to try whatever you want to try.
But I also reserve the right to hate it and

(24:32):
sure money, so let me know. So she talks about
the spell that she cast on Donut, being called water lily.
It puts you to sleep and you don't wake up
until I cancel the spell. If I die, she dies too,

(24:52):
which is extremely awful. When she said that, I was
just like, oh fuck. So he goes and sees Donut
and is struck while she is asleep here at how
completely helpless she looks. Mango is wide awake and jumping

(25:13):
around in the cage and freaking out. And he goes
and like sniffs over her and tries to wake her up,
and of course she doesn't move. We can't leave Donut here.
She will remain. No fuck you, I said, reaching to
pick her up. A health bar appeared. The moment I
lifted her, it started quickly falling. Karl, I would return

(25:39):
her immediately to her place. A water lily must not
be removed lest it die. And he puts her down
and it begins to go up again. This in particular,
You know, there are all sorts of properties I have
read or watched where there is a person who is
struck by a sleeping spell given a sleeping, draft, to

(26:00):
drink whatever, and almost always it's possible to move that person.
They get carried along and brought to somebody who can help,
or brought on whatever journey they're on until they can
find somebody who can help. It was there was just
something about the fact that not only is she asleep,

(26:21):
not only is she tethered in life to signet, but
that she has to stay in this location particularly that
felt so limiting that I was just like, this really
fucking blows. And he tells Mango, you have to stay
here and protect her. Do you understand me? And it

(26:44):
seems like he does, I think. So he checks in
with zeb here and is like, I need you to help.
I explained what I wanted her to do. She told
me it was impossible. I told her to try anyway,
And I had a suspicion that it was going to

(27:04):
be something about talking to the producers and writers of
the show, which is what it ends up being. So
let's see, why are we doing this? Why do you
attack the circus every day? And she says, I'm the
only one that wasn't altered by that poisonous cloud. And
Grimaldi got the worst of it and he's like I thought,

(27:26):
you loved him, and she's like I do. And he
saved me when I was a child and raised me.
And then eventually, as I got to be older, I
started to see him as more than a father, and
I was like, ew, I hate it. You have to
understand how horrible it was. The cataclysm Scolependra's poison cloud
was a nine tier attack. It attacked you in nine

(27:49):
different ways. The lucky ones simply died, the others were transformed,
all in different ways. Grimaldi was more than just the owner.
He was also the circus's ring leader. We were nearing
the end of a show and the cataclysm came. He
stood in the middle of the center ring. The others
were all out there taking their bow. He transformed into

(28:09):
the vine. All the others in the tent, no matter
how they transformed, were soon infected with the mold covered parasites.
This put them under Grimaldi's control. They do as he says,
and if they die, the spores returned to the vine
and they are reborn the next day. So why did
you survive and the others didn't? She didn't answer my question.

(28:30):
Last night I cast my spell expecting you to perish tonight,
I am putting my faith in you. So the fact
that he asks why didn't you get caught up in
it too? And she doesn't answer, I have to assume
is because the writers don't want her to ask that question,
because that leads to answers that they don't want, they're

(28:53):
not ready for yet. So she tells him the whole
point of me capturing Heather was because she would kill
who I was going to use as a sacrifice. But
I think that tonight you will be able to kill her,
and we get the most horrific description you guys. She

(29:20):
appeared to have once been a black bear. She wore
a tattered pink clown hat and a pleated clown rough
around her neck, both of which appeared to be physically
attached to her body. She had no skin on her face,
Her two front paws had been transformed to white worms,
like her claws had been replaced with mobs. Even in sleep,

(29:42):
they moved and undulated. But most absurd of all was
the bear's two back legs, which had a pair of
roller skates attached to them. She also wore a pink tutuo.
I really can't the way that I felt sick like

(30:02):
the whole. I really appreciate the fact that Carl is
just as horrified and like gut sick about this as
I am. And we get the you know, description of
her somewhere in their deep, deep down as a spark

(30:23):
of the old Heather, the beloved Bear had moments of
lucidity as she runs down her terrified prey. In those
brief moments, she thinks, good, I've always hated all u
assholes anyway. Which, Yeah, anytime that you've got like animals
that are trained for the circus, I always get my
hackles raised because, like, it's perfectly possible that animal was

(30:47):
treated well when it was trained. But most people are
lazy and they want immediate results and they want to
make money, and they will be really awful, and sometimes
they will not think that they're being awful, which is
also a difficult part where you're watching and you're like,
this is clearly mistreatment and the person's like, what what

(31:08):
do you mean? So her just wanting to kill human beings?
After that fair he gets in touch with Mordecai about
this and he's like, look, the females are really they're
more dangerous. Use your shell as much as you can.

(31:29):
Don't let her hug you. I don't know about the
worm clause or what the fuck that is. And the worms,
as he begins to face up against her begin to
get longer and longer, and then spread to the ground.
I caught glints of actual bear claws at the end

(31:51):
of the pause. I sense the forward movement before I
saw it. I'd only looked over my shoulder for a second,
but the bear had had the distance between us. And
eventually there's this point where the worms touch his skin.
I felt them start to burrow into my body. Yes, yes,

(32:14):
this is new flesh, primal flesh, delicious, flesh, strong, he
is Do we taste this? He will feed our clowns well.
The clowns hunger primal. They are ravenous, and now they
know of your flavor. Uh no, okay, denied. Mm hmm,

(32:45):
thumbs down. And this invasion begins to like It freaks
him so bad. It's felt like someone had taken their
dirty fingers, sunk them directly into the meat of my
brain and dragged I would die before I let that

(33:07):
happen again. Which you actually step into doing that voluntarily, buddy,
But that's for later. Long story short, he decides that
he's going to use this, this weapon that came in

(33:32):
the Lucky Bastard box, and it either turns into a
level fifteen fireball, which will kill Heather, or it will
splatter her with strawberry custard, which will heal her. It
hits and it's custard, but instead of healing her back
to her possessed worm form, instead it heals her back

(33:59):
to the way she looked before being possessed, and the
roller skates fell off the bear's feet as she struggled,
so did the hat. The skin on the bear's face formed.
She remained on all fours like a normal bear. Her
tattered black fur held a silver sheen, especially evident around

(34:20):
her muzzle. By healing it, I'd killed the worms. The
bear let out a howl. Mournful and afraid. She sat
down and lowered herself painfully to the ground. The last
of the boiling custard sizzled away. The bear looked at me,
all of the fight out of her. This was Heather,
the real Heather, free of the parasites that had been

(34:42):
controlling her. She looked at me with her newly formed
eyes ended. Those bitter eyes said, I should never have
lived this long. She made a quick, pained whimper and
her eyes closed. I really like how this there makes
practically every victory feel like it isn't one at all.

(35:06):
It's not a win. It's very sad and awful. And
it says without the worms and mold, her body was
breaking down fast and her health bar is lowering because
she's like aging in catch up time. He forms a

(35:29):
fist and smashes in her head with two punches. I
finished her off by pressing my foot against her skull
and crushing her skull caved in easily. He gets winner
some achievements. He's gone to level fifteen. But it's just
all so awful. It really does not feel like a victory,

(35:52):
you know. And the blood goes to Signet because she
was the sacrifice. Carl when talking to Mordecai, is like,
for sure she wanted me to die, and that she'd
cast that sacrifice spell on me again. She probably did,
Like I said, the system lets some fudge with reality

(36:14):
when you're dealing with the leads, which is why we
stay away from them. I thought that was interesting. The
idea that she is claiming Heather is the sacrifice does
she believe that when she says it, do the writers
just make her say that, Like, I don't. I wonder
how much she even gets to how much is she

(36:34):
lying and how much is she just being played because
she's a character, you know. And he is looking into
a way to break the water Lily curse. But there's
like specific ingredients he needs that he has to travel
to get, so he lootes her. There's a map upgrade,

(37:01):
and he begins to see a bunch of other red
dots gathering around. Signet appeared. Wow, I said, taking in
the sight. She's got her summoned minions with her. The
smallest of the monsters, a floating head thing, was about
ten feet tall. And what he starts to realize is

(37:24):
that all of the creatures that are her tattoos are
two dimensional and is sort of like, I don't know
if these things are really going to be able to
do anything. They look like paper, you know. And all
I could think was, like, Carl, it's very clear that
this bitch is nobody to fuck with. Do you really

(37:44):
think that her guys can't fight? Get real? Come on now, please,
Blood and Ink elemental summoned minion of Serena's signet level fifty.
Their potential realizes heavily on too many factors to list here,
kind of like humans. If you have to guess, odds

(38:06):
are good. The one you're looking at right now is
probably hot garbage. Oh god, So let's see. I'm trying
to jump ahead. Oh right, follow, or you get smash.

(38:26):
The middle head said, you can talk. I can smash too.
I do enjoy that they can talk. I have to
assume it's going to be only in like little fragmentary
sort of speech like that, but it's very fun. So
she tells him, I think you freed Heather, like she
was stuck in this loop and I, you know, getting

(38:51):
to see her released from this. Thank you. And she says,
we usually push through the defenders, and this is the
strongest we've been in a while. It's the final defense
I need help with. And the spell Mordecai describes as

(39:14):
ink marauder, and he gives a description of it. I
don't see the producers allowing her to blow that wad
early and blow that wad this early in the story,
assuming that is her most powerful spell. So I'm going
to jump into because you know, I've only got like

(39:35):
twenty minutes left, and there's kind of a there's kind
of a lot here that we get into. Mordecai says,
I know the recipe now. It's just satchtowed extract mix
mixed with a standard healing potion. I should have known.
Negates all niad sleep effects and curses. Simple. Do you

(39:56):
have that stuff? Not in this town, but it's common
enough I can buy in an alchemical market in a
medium or large town. So I'm assuming that Carl just
does not believe that Signet is going to be able
to I think that it's like he's trying to just
have a backup plan in case he dies, that Doughnut

(40:19):
will at least still have a chance. But I think
more than anything, he is just suspecting that, like Signet
will keep her word about bringing Donut back. Maybe I
was just surprised that he was trying to find another
way to save her when I was like, you were
told how to save her, do that, you know? And
then I was sort of like, Natasha, you are very

(40:40):
confident because you are reading a book and this is
the main character, and you're like, yeah, you'll do it
because you're the main character. But he doesn't know that.
He doesn't know he's in a book. So Zev then
gets in touch The producer didn't want to speak with me.
He's waiting to see how this plays out. My boss
made me run your request past the syndicate AI referee,

(41:03):
and it said they'll only allow this under very strict circumstances.
I can't and they can't give you any help whatsoever,
Believe it or not, though this isn't the first time
this sort of thing has happened. In fact, later Zev
stay tuned, I'll need you in a bit. I was like, ah, look,
you are busy. I completely appreciate that, but also I
really wanted to know what she was about to say,

(41:25):
very very badly. So they get into the tent and
there is a mist around them, and Signet says, damn.
I'd hoped that we would be able to overcome the
protection this time. This is where our fight usually ends.

(41:48):
There's magic here protecting the exterior. I've been banished, so
I can't go in. My minions can't go in. The
outside is impenetrable, but not the interior. If we break
down the tents, the spell will disperse and we can
finish this some of these clowns will carry big top tickets.
Find one and brandish it. It will allow you to
go inside. The tickets are magical. They will promise you

(42:10):
safe passage within the tent as long as you don't
enter one of the three rings. You need to go
in there and collapse the tent. There are three poles.
You must break each one in turn. I take it
these poles are in the middle of the rings. What
about the vine also in the ring, the center ring.

(42:31):
This setup was designed to be completed by a group
of at least three crawlers, not a solo player. There
was no feasible way I could do this, not with
a straight up fight. So he's already got a big
top ticket in his inventory and he's like, all right,
here we go. He goes in and it's just a

(42:55):
you know, the I don't want to say typical because
I always feel like that word sounds insulting in a
way that I don't really intend. But you know, like
the spooky circus thing has been done, the decrepit, fucked
up circus thing. We've seen this sort of thing before,
So that's what we're getting, except that there's the added

(43:17):
vine aspect. With everything being corrupted by this mind control
worm vine thing, and he's walking inside and thinking about
how much he hates clowns, holds the ticket out in
front of him, and he wore a brightly colored but

(43:38):
filthy pink and blue gown with a dirty white ruffle
around his neck. Clammy the clown level nine, and he
was a tumbler. Kids always love the fat clowns. They're jolly,
they're happy, they make you laugh, and that he doesn't

(44:00):
do any of that, but is happy in jolly when
he's eating you. So he holds up the ticket, gets
Clammy to back up. As a kid, one of my
earliest memories is going to the circus with my mom
on my fourth birthday. She temporarily left my dad and
run away to her parents' house all the way down

(44:20):
the middle of nowhere southern Texas, dragging me along. It
was during that time she'd taken me to the circus.
It hadn't been one of the major traveling circuses like
Ringling Brothers, but a small ghetto one. Anyone who has
ever lived in the America Southwest knows exactly what I'm
talking about. Even little kid me had registered that this
was a low rent version of the real deal. They'd

(44:42):
had clowns and acrobats, plus a bunch of other weird attractions,
like guys on motorcycles riding around the inside of a sphere,
and women juggling chainsaws. They had also had animals. I
remember camels and dancing poodles, and a clown who walked
around with a small monkey on his shoulder. They had
an elephants or giraffes, but the the main attraction had
been a crusty old tiger who'd sat in the middle

(45:02):
of the ring while a woman in a leotard twirled
firesticks around it. Most of these memories came back to
me years later from photos. I'd found the shoe box
with those pictures more than a decade later, hidden under
my parents' bed. This was after another birthday of mine,
the one when I was left alone in the world.
The box had been my mother's, her secret, filled to

(45:25):
the brim with photographs and ticket stubs and a deflated balloon.
The items were only of that time, the few weeks
of our lives when she'd run away. You guys, this
got to me so bad. I am not trying to

(45:45):
say that my father was like Carl's father. But my
father married my mother when she was sixteen years old
and he was twenty eight, So right there, I think
you can see the power dynamic was very off, and

(46:08):
when I was little it was he was extremely controlling.
He came from a very misogynist upbringing, and the expectation
was that my mom keep house and stay home and
live to serve him. And in the early years of

(46:28):
their marriage, they didn't even have a phone, never mind
a car, so my mom was completely cut off from
the entire world. Combined with the fact that my father
was a coke dealer so he had very questionable friends,
she was really lonely and isolated. And it wasn't until

(46:54):
I was older that I really began to look back
at some of the outings that I had with my mom,
and I began to realize she was squirreling money away.
She was like expected to give him her whole paycheck,
but she had opened a bank account secretly, and she

(47:15):
was having some of each of her paychecks siphoned into
that account. Because my dad was so controlling about money,
and so there were times where we would go out
and do things and I was told not to tell
him about it afterward, and I didn't. I was a
very careful kid in that way. I think I understood
the danger of it, you know. And like I said,

(47:38):
my dad wasn't like Carl. He wasn't a bully, and
he didn't hit me. He broke down a bathroom door
when I was eighteen, and that one was really scary
trying to get to me. But that was the really
bad time, and otherwise there was no hitting. It was
just always the threat that he might hit that was

(48:01):
held over our heads kind of, you know. But he
had grown up in an abusive household, and I think
he was trying very hard not to do that. But
this concept of a woman desperately attempting to find and
hold on to joy and it always having to be

(48:25):
a secret and something that she does against the wishes
of her husband is just a really really familiar thing
for me, and it just struck a chord, like you know,
it just it's one of those that you look back
on once you're older, and you can't help but lament

(48:48):
how many things could have been done differently that might
have kept everybody from being so unhappy. And if my
dad had been different and if my mom had been
different if either of them had made different choices, if
my mother's parents hadn't allowed her to get married at sixteen.
You know, like they're just.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
It's a.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
It's complicated, and he's thinking. Back on the smell, it
was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was the scent
of peanuts and cotton, candy and roasting corn and hay
and animal musk and cheap plastic toys all rolled into one.
But it was more than that. My four year old
mind couldn't possibly register it at the time, but it
was the sense of happiness, of joy, of being a kid,

(49:38):
of not being afraid. Over the years, I'd catch similar
sense in places such as the country fair, county fair, sorry,
or carnivals, or whenever I visited a place with livestock.
But this was a different, oddly specific aroma that had
been indelibly imprinted on me as a four year old,
a I'd sometimes remember as the path I could have taken,

(50:00):
the world I could have lived had my dad not
found us and taken us back. It was a scent
I'd been chasing all of my adult life. It's funny
how this happens. Sometimes we associate smells with memories, and
when that memory is triggered, we're momentarily pulled away no
matter the current circumstances. That's exactly what happened here. As

(50:21):
I stepped into the most fucked up circus in the
history of the universe, I was surrounded by bedlam, by
unorganized chaos and clutter, by one what the fuck after another,
and that smell just came out of nowhere, smacking me
like a goddamn baseball bat and making me think of
my fourth birthday party, when I had been with my

(50:42):
mom and visited the circus, and I'd laughed and clapped
and dropped my hot dog onto the dirty bleacher before
picking it up and eating it, even though it tasted
like dirt. My mom had cried, had been crying, and
up until that very moment when the smell hit me
for the second time, I'd always thought she'd been crying
about the Tama hot dog. And it made me mad,

(51:05):
so fucking mad. I had so little of my mom,
so little memory I could call my own. It was
one of the few things this fucking place couldn't possibly
take from me. Yet that was exactly what had just happened,
and it was so unexpected so violent, so final, that
I no longer cared about the stupid plan or of

(51:26):
trying to save my life. I just wanted to tear
it all down. And then it gets interesting. But you
don't want to hear about any of this shit, do you.
It's not important, Not when we were weeks past the
Earth's expiration date, not when I was standing there like
an idiot as I watched a unicycling woman clown roll

(51:46):
past me while greedily devouring what looked like a goblin leg,
and I was just like, no, I really do want
to hear about the shit. This is exactly what I want.
I want way more about the details of your life
before you got here. It is important, This is it.
This is the whole thing. I was like, completely like, no,
Carl wrong, incorrect, And I found it interesting. The idea

(52:10):
that he's angry at this place for yanking this memory out.
It didn't occur to me, because again, it's hard to
put yourself in his place in such a bonker situation.
But something that is one of the most beautiful, joyful

(52:31):
moments of your life and a very very like tiny
handful of your mom and a place like this manages
to pull it out of you. It is obscene. So yeah, no,
I get it. And it made me think of, you know,

(52:54):
earlier we had donut with this candle, and it just
is interesting how much scent and memory were a theme
in these chapters. So he's looking around trying to get oriented,
and he finally spots the vine, which he had thought

(53:17):
was like part of the tent, and when he turns
and sees what it is, he's just like, how did
I just fucking not even see this thing? Because it
looks more like a shrub And it goes all the
way to the ceiling and swallows up the whole center pole,
and he's like, as he's standing there, an achievement pops up.

(53:43):
You can't fight city Hall, but you can sure die trying.
You have discovered a city boss. Just an FYI is
of at this moment, not a single crawler has faced
a city boss and survived reward. A lot of people
are probably gonna watch you die. That's a better prize
than most of us get. And he's thinking to himself, like,

(54:05):
you can do this. You've got a fucking plan, ring
Master Grimaldy pastiferous Vine. This is an elite level eighty
five city Boss, and we get the story about Grimaldi
and his family being so important to him and how

(54:27):
he is using his power to keep his family safe
and alive. And after the description ended, nothing changed. Nobody
moved to attack. The vine didn't move at all. He
comes across an ogre called a Pallen the Mighty, and

(54:52):
he's supposed to be scooping ice cream, but he holds
out an ice cream cone filled with worms, and Carl
like when he says, like I try not to be sick,
I walk away. All I could think ice was, oh boy,

(55:13):
oh no, he's gonna eat these fucking worms. Like I
just knew as soon as they showed up. I was
just like, he's gonna fucking do it, or somebody's gonna
make him do it. Either way, he's eating that cone.
It's happening. I just you know immediately it. Yeah, so

(55:36):
Chekhov's worms, And what we find out is that the
pactiferous line thing is, first of all, it's a trope
that Mordecai doesn't think much of, and they're easy to
kill if you know the trick, and they like to
drink blood, and basically, you drink poison, you let it

(55:59):
drink your blood and it poisons itself, but it does
take something like twenty minutes for it to die. And
if you drink the antidote and it drinks more of
your blood, it doesn't die. So you've got to find
a way to like poison it, revive yourself, but be

(56:21):
out of its reach so that it can't heal itself.
And let's see, I'm trying to find does it kill
all the other mobs depends. Some immediately go insane, some
drop dead, some don't realize anything is changed. So you
poison yourself, dribble some blood on it, and it's dead.

(56:45):
It won't know, but if it suspects, you need to
be careful, or it can save itself. If you've given
yourself an antidote and you give the plan an equal
amount of the same blood, it will cure it. You
can't just pour an antidote potion on there. It has
to be the same blood, so be careful. If it
knows you poisoned it, it'll try to get monsters to
bleed you. So he has to lower the guard that

(57:09):
he has against poisoning by taking off the cloak that
he is wearing. And so when he drinks the poison,
It's like, has a really immediate, awful effect that he
was not prepared for, really, and he pours it onto

(57:30):
the vine the blood, and then sits and waits and
gets in touch with Zev and she says, oh, my
god's Karl, the net is going crazy. Only a few
people understand what you just did, but word is getting out.
Your numbers are going up and up. It's amazing, both

(57:51):
of these dramas playing out at the same time. He
responds with Zev, are you listening? And guys, when I
tell you that in that moment, I was like, you
need to ask her what she means by both sir,
the way that I zeroed in on her saying that,
and he just didn't seem to care. It is so
funny how in the moment I will be obsessed with

(58:13):
a weird detail that really just probably it's smarter that
Carl doesn't get distracted this easily and immediately is like,
are you listening to me? Zeb, I have a thing
I'm doing here, Please help. He's focused, but my ADHD
brain was like, what does she mean and immediately started
to veer off on this other whole thing, which, h yeah,

(58:36):
so this is when he basically talks to the producers
of Vengeance of the Daughter and just like I am
going to hold your whole shit hostage if I let
this thing die and Grimaldi dies and everything goes to hell,

(58:59):
assuming that that is like your plan, and that you
have set this shit up, that that poll the third
pole is going to fall and maybe even break on
its own, because you don't need all three broken. You
just want singing it to get in. And that's my purpose,

(59:21):
is that I die on behalf of her getting to
where she needs to go. But I think you should
listen to my proposal. You can't help me because that's
against the rules, and that's fine. But if we happen
to be on your show and make it to the

(59:42):
sixth floor, you know we are bringing your ratings way up.
I think you could look at your numbers right now
and see how high they are. We will sign an
exclusive agreement to only complete elite themed quests on the
sixth floor that are directly associated with Vengeance of the Daughter.

(01:00:03):
I'm told new programs such as yours rarely receive anything
like this. Most fail right out of the gate. You
probably went out of your way to place the circus
near me and donut in the hopes we'd stumble upon it. Now,
imagine the ratings if we continue to participate in the storyline.
And he's like, if you don't agree, I'll heal this

(01:00:28):
vine and I will just chill and do fucking nothing,
and your eager viewers will watch me do fuck all
and just talk out loud about what I think might
be going to happen on the show, and that's it,
and everybody is going to be real pissed. And he

(01:00:50):
says it'll be Heraldo and al Capone's vault all over again.
I have no idea what this is like. Obviously, Haraaldo
got a hold of access to Capone's vault. It was

(01:01:11):
a big build up, and maybe they opened it and
there was fucking nothing in it. That's the best I
can come up with. But the idea that they would
like be unaware of what's in the vault and hype
it up is so hilarious to me, Like nobody decided
to check first, Nobody decided to make sure it was

(01:01:33):
anything bonkers. They would never today like that would just
it would just not happen that way. Maybe on a TikTok,
but on like a fucking syndicated TV show, like absolutely never.
Oh my god, Michael Haralda had a special where he

(01:01:53):
was opening Copone's fault and yes, there was nothing inside.
I absolutely cannot I would crumble to Dust. I would
absolutely fucking die. Oh my god, Michael. It was like
an hour of him awkwardly trying to fill airspace while

(01:02:13):
going from empty area to empty area. Oh my god,
they opened it at the beginning of the episode. Honey,
that is not how you do things, oh my god.
Like what you do with something like that is just
in case there's nothing good, You get like a Capone

(01:02:36):
scholar in the place to encase there is stuff for
them to inform you what each thing is or the
significance of it. And if you don't, then you can
talk through with them why it's empty, what possibly could
have happened, who could have emptied it, go through the
theories like you need some Oh my god, that is
just reorganizing anyway. I'm so sorry, I'm overtime and I'm

(01:02:59):
like not even quite at the end here. So long
story short, they agree, like basically, if you can get
your ass out of this, They're not really agreeing, but
they're like agreeing tentatively, and he's like, that doesn't sound
good enough. I feel like I really need something on paper,
and she's like, no, it's official, and he's like, h okay, okay, fine.

(01:03:25):
So he heals the Boss. He uses the Wisp Barmer
spell book and we get the description of it again.
The spell negates seventy five percent of incoming damage from
magic based attacks, provides temporary immunity to mind control effects.
Higher skill levels increase both effectiveness and duration. And this

(01:03:51):
is what he dawns before he eats the worm cone.
I love it. I met eyes with the Ogre who
just looked at me even he seemed shocked. I've just
done that, which is very funny. So he has the
worms speaking in his head as he runs to go

(01:04:15):
and talk to Signet. Well, first to Grimaldi. My bad.
He's talking to Grimaldi as he's making his way and
he says he's thinking to himself, this is what it's
like to go crazy, to lose control. No, Grimaldi answered, no, son,

(01:04:37):
this is nothing like that. And there was something about
that thought that like was sobering for a moment. I
was just suddenly like ugh. So he goes out there
Signet can tell immediately that he is possessed and thinks like,
oh God, who did this to you? And he's like, look,

(01:04:58):
I took I have a spell well so that I
can get you to talk to Grimaldy, And he's like,
I know you want to kill me, but you need
to have a couple minutes of conversation. You keep attacking
because you love this place and you're trying to free them,
and Grimaldy, his brain is a jumble. I can only imagine, Grimaldy,

(01:05:21):
what you were going through when this thing happened. But
everybody was taken except Signet because you protected her, And
now you're trying to murder each other even though you
want the same thing to protect your family. The worms
in my throat surged into my mouth. The sensation was
like I was suddenly vomiting. She hurts the family, she

(01:05:46):
has turned her back. I croaked, fucking hell. They'd physically
forced me to say it. I felt blood start to
drool down the side of my mouth. My throat felt
as if I'd swallowed razors. Don't do that, I gasped,
Holy shit, just think it and I'll say it out loud.

(01:06:07):
Ooh horrible. So he tries to plead with Grimaldy. You
saw my memories, and that bear was grateful. Every time
they kill somebody and eat somebody, their soul is dying.
This whole thing is hopelessness. And you used to be kind.

(01:06:30):
The whole thing here was that you wanted to bring joy,
and you're damning the people that you wanted to protect
and love the most. And she is supposed to be
down in the hunting grounds taking care of her fucking business,
but she can't leave until this is done, and you
can fix this for her. I have unbanished you, my love,

(01:06:53):
I growled. I slammed the potion, and then I fell
to my knees and started vomiting and never ending stre
of dead and dying worms onto the ground. Oh my god,
what's worse, the eating or the vomiting of them? The eating?
The eating's gotta be worse. So she tells him Doughnut

(01:07:18):
will awaken when the sun rises, and goes into the tent.
I lost something today, But if this story with the
circus had a relatively happy ending, I knew I'd gained
something as well. I suddenly remembered something else about that
day at the circus with my mom One of the
items we'd taken home from the show had been a

(01:07:39):
pair of little sapling trees with the roots wrapped in nets.
That was something this circus always did. They gave little
trees to all the kids. My mom and I had
planted those trees in my grandparents' backyard. Years later, long
after my grandparents had died, I'd looked up that house
on the internet and I found the satellite images of
the backyard. The trees were still there. They'd grown huge.

(01:08:02):
All it takes is a little seed, my mom had
said that day as we planted the trees, Just little
seeds here and there, and soon enough you have a forest.
And I felt a slight pang that I'd missed out
on my chance to so local a city boss. But
I was also certain I wouldn't have survived the experience,

(01:08:23):
which I was like, Yeah, I'm glad that it wasn't. Hey,
everybody's died up until now, but you, Carl, you're going
to be the first one to be. I was just
waiting for it to kind of be that moment, and
I was very relieved that it wasn't, even though I
wouldn't have been mad about it, But it's just so
played out, you know. So he gets a quest completed

(01:08:46):
and he is at level eighteen and he keeps throwing
up worms, and then he thinks about Zev saying, both
of these dramas playing out, and Mordecai donuts health just
dropped below twenty percent. Go go now. And I had

(01:09:08):
to stop reading because you guys are very mean and terrible.
So I hope you're happy. I hope you're enjoying yourselves,
you sick fucks. Ah, alright, everybody, I'm over time. I've

(01:09:29):
got to go, but I appreciate you all very very much,
and I hope that you all will be here at
the next episode.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Until then, to the LU motherfuckers.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.