The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, Chapters 20-23

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Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode! 
These chapters are the ones where we finally get to meet Hekla in person, and despite Carl being very guarded with her, turns out he's not guarded enough. Hekla isn't prepared for what happens next. None of us were.
Thanks so much to you all for listening, and I will see you again soon with a new episode!
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book three, The Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook,
chapters twenty through twenty three. In these chapters, well, Carl

(00:27):
and Donut do some narration for a thing. Pretty much
nothing else interesting happens in these chapters. Kidding, kidding you guys,
so much, so much happens O way yet. Welcome to
spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha.

(01:08):
Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode.
Michael is here in the chat and says this must
be fate to have met so soon again, or just
a schedule because Michael also came to my previous recording,
which was for the Expanse book series. If you're interested
in that guy as you should come and hang out.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, or possibly just a schedule.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Who says the schedule can't be faded though, you know,
maybe Fate's very organized. I don't know, because I am
going to make myself cover things in order because I
know if I start with what happens later, I will

(01:48):
never get back on track.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So I'm going to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
But you have to know how hard this is for me.
So Chapter twenty begins with the production trailer for this
narration thing that Carl and Donut have been signed up for.
There is a mention here about his decision to wear
the ring. Frank gave him as being quote stunningly controversial.

(02:13):
I found it very funny because, like, what the ring
does is something you have to opt into, So it
didn't really occur to me how controversial it would be,
because it gives you benefits that you do not have
to opt into, and of course Carl is going to
want to take advantage of those. Like I'm surprised people
are surprised, you know what I'm saying. If it would

(02:35):
be one thing if the ring did what it does
automatically when you kill things, but it doesn't. You have
to mark people, and that requires a certain intensity that
you really like that that is not accidental. So I
just don't see there being a downside to wearing this

(02:56):
ring for just the perks, and I thought every but
he would sort of agree to that, and I guess
maybe it's just like the symbolism of it. But even so,
we don't have time to be fucking babies about this shit. Man,
It's about like life or death in the dungeons, do

(03:18):
whatever you need to to get a leg up. It's fine,
you know. I don't feel like this violates anything about
Carl's principles.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
So anyway, Hey, he we get a little information about
the fact that Donut is in contact with Sledgie in
her chat and he is keeping an eye on Frank
at the bar, and that there is somebody else talking

(03:50):
to him, and Carl doesn't ask who it is. I
think maybe just because she doesn't mention it, and he
figures if she knew that she would have said. But
later on we do find out it's somebody we know,
and I kind of like wondered if Sledgie just didn't
share with Donut who it was because he didn't realize it.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Would be important to them. You know.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
I don't know what the translation loss is here, But
we find out later on Frank was killed and it
was Chris who was talking to him, And I am
extremely interested in what the fuck caused Chris to go

(04:34):
off like this, because I'm sort of wondering if he
has started to get sort of fundamentalist about playing the
game in a similar vein as like Hekla, where it's
all about practicality and being brutal about like who is
going to help and who's going to hurt And if

(04:54):
you've given up, I'll put you out of your misery
because you're taking up time and space and what's point
of view?

Speaker 2 (05:01):
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Or it could be about helping Carl, but it doesn't
help him.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
It doesn't affect him that Frank.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Is still alive.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
You know.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Maybe maybe Chris is trying to like do something where
he's drawing Maggie on him instead, but I feel like
she would be much more zeroed in on Carl. Whether
you kill Frank or not, it doesn't Her daughter clearly
means more to her than her ex husband.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
So yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
So anyway, we go to the uh the production trailer,
and it's a different setup than he's used to because
he still has access to his inventory, and it's very
fun because it turns out they are underwater, so there
is a different there's like a certain threshold away from

(05:59):
the earth, namely from the surface of the water up
where your inventory stuff doesn't work. But because they're underwater
and the security, as we find out later, is bullshit
due to budget cuts, he can still access his inventory here,
even though normally, if things were functioning as normal, it

(06:22):
seems like they would have installed fail saves here to
make it so he couldn't access his inventory, so he
is able later to loot a ton of stuff from
this room, which I did find genuinely very funny. And
at one point he's like waiting to see if the
robot interrupts him to stop him. But I get the

(06:43):
distinct impression that the robot does not respect the people
in charge and basically is like, if they didn't make
it so that he couldn't access his inventory, they have
nobody to blame but themselves that he can loot every
last thing in this room.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
That's what you get.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Like, there's just a sense to me of this robot
being like, yeah, they should do what you want, you know.
So anyway, Donut is also very excited because them being
underwater and like able to see the ocean floor. There's
all these creatures running around, and she's doing that thing

(07:20):
that cats do when they see like birds and stuff.
It's always so funny to me. I have read somewhere
that that sound they make is supposed to be an
imitation of the birds to draw them to them, and
I really wonder if that works ever, you know, I
don't know. Anyway, there's a mention here about how navies

(07:41):
have a history of keeping cats on board for good luck,
and there's one particular story of Unsinkable Sam, who was
a cat that survived a bunch of ship sinkings. And
she's like, oh, so he was a hero, and he's
like a or he was a bad luck charm because
every boat he was on sync and she's like, yeah,
but he survived it, so fuck him.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
And I see that. So this is so funny that.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
We open up on Carl refusing to read this bullshit,
and it turns out the beginning of the script that
he was given was fine. He didn't know how much
of it was even true, but it was harmless and
it was fine. But then it starts to get into
some very in cell shit and he's like, who the

(08:30):
fuck did you talk to for this?

Speaker 2 (08:33):
This is garbage?

Speaker 1 (08:35):
And it's all about what he's reading is about beauty
pageants in order for it to go with Doughnuts doing
like the pet show thing, and we have this whole
bit about how beauty pageants are for the alpha male
chads to impregnate women, and that the older women, whose

(08:59):
vaginas are so like fucked up from too many sexual partners,
are not admired by anybody, but the betas. It's like,
it's the grossest well they're When it says like known
as roasties, I was like roasties, and then it said
due to their genitals being irrevocably damaged, and I was like,

(09:19):
oh my god, like roastby Oh of course that's what
we're doing. And uh, the roasties were an Asian woman
I didn't recognize and judged Judy. They also had a
video of me eating a roast beef sandwich.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
I swear to God.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
And we find out that basically they used AI to
go through like Earth's Internet, but because the budget is cut,
they had to shut it off before it finished really
filtering through and doing a decent job of.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Like fact checking.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
So it just did the most surface level bullshit job
at assembling this script.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
We can't use.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Surface human consultants. We can't approach the natives until the
crawl is over. And that is so funny because it's
like meant to be a protection, but instead it just
results in this like wild information that's totally inaccurate. And
he has this conversation with A Gray, who is the

(10:26):
producer and the one who created the show, which originally
was apparently like not so trashy, and then he got
purchased and was excited because he thought he was like, oh,
I'm going to be successful, but it resulted in them
taking over control over what he could do with the show,
and so now it's just this trashy you know, like
and he is really angry at the fact that he

(10:49):
feels totally impotent in this role, and he starts yelling
at at Carl about the fact that like.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I don't write the script. I didn't want.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Any of this, Like I don't need you to give
me shit. We don't have control over any of this,
and Carl says, oh, I'm sorry, your rented slave labor
isn't participating like how you wanted. Well, let me look
for some sympathy. Nope, all out and I'll tell you what.

(11:23):
I really need this reality check from Carl sometimes, because
I definitely had a moment of like, look, Carl, this
guy's just trying to get a job done.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
There's no need.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
For you to be so And then he says this,
and I'm like, oh right, your slave, lib Yeah, this
is fucked up, Like I you guys, this this this
passivity that is bred in me, and this like respect
for authority and just wanting to.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Do a good job.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
I cannot believe how poisonous it is. It just fucking
doesn't let up. Even as I start to like come
to my senses on certain things, there is still this
like instinctual no, no, I should be nice, I shouldn't
make trouble.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Like it is absolutely gross.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
And it's so frustrating to see it in myself. There
is a moment, and this is a spoiler for the
most recent Hunger Games book, Sunrise on the Reaping, and
so I'm going to spoil you guys on something in it.
But there is a point where Hamige comes across a
couple of game makers who have gone into the arena
itself to do some maintenance and because something happened with

(12:35):
the arena and so they're having to like physically go
into fix a couple of things. And he runs across
them and he is with other people, and those other people,
without even pausing to think about it, instantly attack and
kill those game makers. But Hamig doesn't, and one of
the players is like, Hamig, what the fuck.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
You just fucking stood there.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
You're not even gonna take the And he's just like
realizing how well they're not part of the game and
they're in charge and I shouldn't I'll get in trouble,
and how idiotic it is to have that thought process
when you are in the arena. You're in trouble, friend,
it's over for you.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
What are they gonna do? Kill you? Like you're very
likely gonna.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Die already, it's a done deal. Are you seriously not
gonna kill the people who are helping orchestrate this torture
device that you're like in right now?

Speaker 2 (13:34):
And he sees when he steps back how fucking insane it.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Is, but he realizes that there's still this impulse in
him to do what he's told and I just related
so fucking much. And this is just another instance of
this where I'm just like, thank you Carl for slapping
me upside the head, because I clearly fucking need it
every now.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
And then, you know.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
So Anyway, he decides to read the alternate script about
a video game, which of course he would, and when
it's over, Donut tells him about Sledgie, saying that Frank
is dead, that Chris killed him, and he's just like,
I wonder what the fuck happened? Like Chris just didn't

(14:22):
seem like the type that would do this, so I
guess his personality change must be pretty massive. I sent
a quick note to Immani and Ellie, telling them what
happened and asking if they'd managed to get Chris to talk.
They didn't answer right away. They were likely asleep. I
knew they'd been heading for a safe room. I really
was like, I hope that they are okay, and we

(14:43):
find out later on that they are, but it's a
you know, it was they were in danger for sure
for a minute here.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Oh and I also want to mention.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Like, we don't know what's happened to Agatha and I
keep I've gone back because my husband and I have
been listening to the first book together and I realized
how much of the time while I'm reading this book,
I am mixing up Ellie and Agatha in my head.
I know at times that they're not the same person,

(15:15):
and then there are times where I'm like thinking that
Ellie is Agatha just like with some changes and that's why,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
And I just really need to.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Keep in mind, like Agatha is not on the radar
right now and Ellie is a totally different person. But
I just wanted to acknowledge that, Like there was a
point where I said, this is exactly the behavior I
would expect from Ellie, and I was surprised that Carl
was surprised by how she was behaving at the Desperado Club.
And then I realized, like, oh no, I'm getting her

(15:43):
behavior mixed up with Agatha's behavior, and the way Ellie
is acting now is a little bit more similar to
how Agatha had been acting in the first on the
first floor, and that's what I'm.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Sort of thinking of.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
So anyway, Donus says, I wonder why Chris did that,
but I'm glad he's okay. And then she talks about
doing this script and she was like, this was fun.
I like the interviews better, but I think it's good
for the Princess Posse to get some culture in their
daily donut fix. I am going to call it now.

(16:20):
Her fandom is going to be called the Pussy Posse.
Once she said Princess Posse, I was like, oh no,
because it's just how is that not going to happen?
I am so sorry, It's unavoidable. It's gonna have to
be pussy posse, right, like for those who don't know,

(16:44):
the whole like naming convention comes from these fucking dudes
in Hollywood who were very gross. Look into it if
you want to be very disappointed in men. But yeah,
I just feel like the pussy posse is like going
to be what eventually happens and I don't know. So

(17:06):
he is like about to very seriously start his conversation
with Donut about the player versus player coupons and immediately
Donut cuts them off, and it's just like I got
rid of them. I didn't like it, and I don't
want to talk about it, And honestly that seems fair.
That's all good, Like she already got rid of Cotches,
and I'm glad to hear that, because I was worried
she was holding onto it for Carl, maybe like to

(17:29):
give it to him if something happened. I don't know,
but uh, it does worry me that, like what if
somebody were to find those player coupons and did something,
you know, I hope not. This is when Carl starts
to loot the entire room and he takes some refrigerators,
which he tries to tell her it's just like, oh, yeah,

(17:52):
our ice machines don't work sometimes. But we find out
that actually, for some of the recipes for explosives, they
require a refrigerator, and so that is why he's taken them,
but he can't tell her about that. So yeah, he
starts to even take the couch, but then he gets
a message from Bautista, and he did the thing that

(18:16):
we had heard was a danger where they kill a
cravad and it closes the portal and they are locked
in this place where the only way to get out
is going to the Abyss Portal, which is a fifty
kilometer walk, which fucking sucks. And it turns out Bautista
is one of the people who sold his conductor hat,

(18:39):
so yeah, I just felt for him here. There's so
many of them, he says, over one hundred and fifty
of us don't have our souvenir hats. Ugh.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yikes.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
So Carl tries to give him some advice about how
things work to help them out. I'm sorry if you
guys can hear that, like crunching. By the way, that's
a pip and chewing on a collagen.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Braid over here.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
He's really enjoying himself though, if that makes you feel
better and out of habit, I pulled up one more
screenshot before the portal, I froze. Our personal space, which
had been empty just minutes before, was now full of people.
There were at least thirty of them, all women, as
far as I could tell, of various races, from humans

(19:23):
to fairies to a forearmed lizard. I saw Hecla there
in the back, peering inside the training room while Kotya
pointed at something. I as soon as I heard that
they were in the room. I wish you guys could
have seen how angry I got. And look, look, I'm

(19:45):
not even like really mad at Katya. Katya is working
on very limited information regarding HECLA, and I don't blame
her for waitlisting Hecla's group. It's just I had such
reservations that when we go into the personal space and

(20:09):
she says that she whitelisted all of them, the way
that my stomach dropped, I was.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Just like, oh bitch, what did you do?

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Like I'm not like I said, I'm not mad at
Kotscha because I get why she did it. I completely
understand her thought process as far as she is concerned,
we're all on the same side. She's thinking the same
way that Donut is right now, and of course she
is because Carl hasn't shared any of his own concerns

(20:40):
with her, and he hasn't shared his concerns with Donut,
which he realizes later is a huge mistake on his
part that he really should have explained what the fears
were with the Heck Club potentially wanting to kill him,
because then maybe Donut wouldn't be so fucking excited to
see Hecla and absolutely gung ho about helping Hecla with

(21:04):
this little quest that she winds up giving them. But Yeah,
this entire thing is just so like, it's very it's
weirdly reckless. And I know that that's like kind of
an extreme word to use for something that should be
so innocuous, but it's part of what frustrates me about

(21:25):
Katscha's like lack of really thinking things through entirely is
that even if you aren't worried about their loyalty, that's
just a lot of people that you've led into your
space and just like.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
There's just for me.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
That's exactly like Michael in the chat says, wait listening
the entire group is just insane to me. I get
Hecla and maybe Eva since she's considered a friend, but
all thirty people, But I guess it isn't like giving
thirty people a house key, since safe rooms have more
rules than a house does. That's part of the thing
is that it's more like you're just giving thirty people

(22:05):
access to like the lobby of your apartment building. So
it's not quite like they all can just like come
in your house exactly, even though it is that they
can come in your house in the game, but they
can't like cause the kind of trouble that they could
in a real home. But nevertheless, it just feels like

(22:29):
on such a huge scale to have let everybody in,
it's just a lot of confusion added into the mix
that didn't need to be there.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
That I think it's.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
A lack of caution on Katchia's part that really does
betray how naive she seems to be in a lot
of ways.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
And I knew that she.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Seemed to be like inexperienced in gaming and that she
had a very like hesitant side to her, and we
wind up seeing later this like confrontation between her and
Eve where Eve is clearly like, has fucking had enough
of Kotcha's dough eyde hay seed act. Where I'm saying

(23:12):
that not because I think of it as that, but
because it's sort of the vibe of Eva.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
It's just.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
You are such an infant, grow the fuck up. And honestly,
I feel like Eva does have a point. She's being
horrendous and she's a bad person obviously, but it's not
dissimilar to my complaints about Katya this whole time. So

(23:44):
I'm not going to try and pretend that Eva wasn't
saying what I was thinking in a much less kind
and compassionate, generous way.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
But it is.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Like, this is a really good example of that kind
of just like there's an openness that sort of did
you think about this at all? You really need to
stop and consider that letting all this people into your
personal space is already to me not a great idea.
But you share this personal space with two other people

(24:17):
and you didn't even ask, and that just to me
seems like just thoughtless. That's a shitty move. You know,
it's like having a party and not telling your roommates
or asking them if they have plans that day or
anything like, you just had all of them in here
to kind of ambush your roommates when they got home.
And it's just to me, like, there's just a lot

(24:40):
about the whole way that she handles this. I was like, hmmm,
I don't like it. So there we find out Hekla
is level thirty three, so she's one level higher than
Karl at this place. The rest of her crew averaged
around twenty five, which was respectable but a little lagging.
And and this is something that will tie in with

(25:03):
a thing I noticed a little bit later, which we
will get into. And then uh, and he thinks to himself.
At level twenty four, Katya was no longer the odd
one out. She'd fit right in, I sighed. And I
kind of liked that because it indicates that Carl was
low key hoping that she wasn't going to go back,

(25:23):
but the fact that she fits in here, he is
certain this means that she's going to leave them for Hekla,
and he's sad about it. So I just liked to
see that he liked Katya. You know, I can take
or leave Katya. I see why he likes her, and
there are parts of her personality that I respect. But
it just feels like you are going to have to

(25:45):
catch up to this really fucking quick, girl, because I'm
starting to lose patience with you. And it looks like
maybe we have caught up by the end of the section,
so we'll see. So this is when Hecklea says, thank you.
I asked you to take care of my girl, and
you did. But you did more than take care of her.

(26:06):
You helped her level and taught her how to protect herself.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
I am in your debt, and.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
No she's not. She doesn't believe this shit at all.
Some people when they say I am in your debt
mean that shit. She is saying it should disarm him,
and it's bullshit. And we will see how this all goes.
So Katcha explains about whitelisting them, and she says something

(26:39):
about there's a switch that allows you to choose at
station sixty, that allows you to choose which of the
twelve homeward bound platforms to get upon. Kitcha said, you'd
come in at train yard ease, so it was easy
to find you from there. Wait, really, I said, this
new information momentarily causing me to forget the potential danger

(26:59):
of this situation. We can use station sixty to get
onto any track. I held up my hand as I
sent a mass message out informing everybody of this information,
and I just wanted to note the significance of the
fact that Hecla knows this but other people do not.
And to me this points to like Hecla is keeping

(27:23):
information under her belt, the way that under her belt,
close to the chest, under her hat. I think under
her hat is what I was thinking in the way
that I had thought Carl might do. And it's just

(27:44):
a little moment of like what are character's priorities are.
It's a very small thing, but it's like pretty significant
to me. I noticed it right away, the fact that
she knew something this important. But it just happens to
come up in conversation here in this way because she's

(28:06):
set any things in motion, you know. So this is
when he notices Eva, who is this short green woman
who is part we find out Naga part Orc and
she has one large skull and three smaller skulls over
her head. Indicating she had killed thirteen people. Katcha had

(28:27):
said she'd only killed one, which suggested those additional twelve
were a recent addition. Looking about, I didn't see any
other skulls over the crew, including over Hecla. This is
the one who does her dirty work.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Also, as we find out later, Ekla has a weapon
that would make it so she doesn't get any skulls
even if she does kill people. So who fucking knows
how many people she's killed, Like, the skulls don't accurately
depict that, as it turns out, and how many other
weapons out.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
There are like this.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
So now the skulls aren't even a real indicator of
how trustworthy a person is in any sense, because in
itself is not trustworthy.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
So that sucks.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
That is that is going to be a real wrench
in the works for the like metrics we had been
using about interacting with different people. So this is when
Dona is like, Carl, maybe we can combine safe rooms
with heckless team, and I was just like, oh my
fucking god, and he has to like tell her, guys,

(29:35):
you need to not do this because we can't just
jump in bed together. And she says Oh my god,
you should date Heckla. The audience would love that. Think
of the views, which is very funny because of how
much I was so sure Hecla wanted Carl. And look,
even with everything that happens here, none of that says
she doesn't want Carl. I'm just you know, she is

(29:57):
very much a woman who, if she wanted him, would
set that au to get shit done.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
So that's fine.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
And this is when Carl asks himself, why have I
never fucking told Donah the truth about everything?

Speaker 2 (30:10):
And he is honest with.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Himself about how he had secretly thought maybe it would
be better for Donut to be on Heckles's team, but
now that he is looking at what's going on and
clocking some details, he is starting to realize that is
not the case anymore. And he tries to be like,

(30:32):
maybe Eva did like a mercy killing, and almost instantly
is like, nah, look at that bitch, that is not
what happened, Like I could just pH of course that's
not what happened. So also he has to tell Donut
not to let out Mango, and later on Donuts like
Mango would love them, and he's like, yeah, I don't

(30:52):
want him to love them. We need him to be
ready to attack them if that's what we've got to do.
But he doesn't say that to her, but like that's
his reasoning, and then hecla she dances right past. Now
is not the time for such discussions, little donut. But
we wanted to come by and pick up our lost
little lamb, and we wanted to see what a wonderful

(31:14):
job you and Carl have done for her. The fact
that she's calling Katya our lost little lamb. I know,
it's just like a turn of phrase because that's you know,
but I just didn't like it at all.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
It irritated me.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
And so this is when she says, we are also
in a hurry. We have an issue and it involves
some people. I believe, you know, Katya is but one
of our lost lambs. Which again the way that she's
saying this, we also find out later Eva abandoned her intentionally,
so it's not like, oh no, she's gonna that was

(31:48):
like a purposeful leave behind. And I don't know if
the plan had been leave her behind so that we
can have her hook up with Karl, but regardless, it
wasn't accidental. The way that it's been framed up. We
have a small cluster of friends who have collected with
a larger group. They are gathered at station one on

(32:10):
one on the Vermilion Line. There are a thousand at least.
The trains are stopped, they are stuck. Mobs are swarming
and they are fighting them off. They need our help.
We are going to rescue them. And of course she
frames it as I am asking the Royal Court of
Princess Donut to help us do that. So sorry, I

(32:36):
just saw the chat move and I'm realizing there were
a bunch of comments that I missed. Couldna override it
and unlist somebody from having access? I don't know, Sarah,
And that's a good question. Em Han says, I don't
think Heckla wanted to abandon Katchia at all. Eva just
got sick of her and left herself. I think, yeah,
that's true, because Eva says like, that's why I left

(32:56):
you behind. So it doesn't it's not necessar, sarahly that
Hecla was the engineer of it. It felt much more
like Eva was just oh my god, fucking enough, and
Eva being like the second in command. There's we'll find
there's a moment later, hold On, Sarah faim says, I

(33:17):
get the impression leaving her behind was just Eva being
a dick and Heckla finding a way to use.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
It to her advantage.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Afterwards, Okay, well, I want to return to this, but
give me a second to finish this little section. Heckley
explains the situation. Honestly, I don't want to get into
all this because it does not matter to me. All
we need to know is that we are teaming up,
and they're the big idea here. First of all, Hecla
knows about some folks that Carl is connected with and

(33:44):
who are in his chat, which makes Carl really uncomfortable
because she knows enough about him that he starts to
wonder if there are spies, and like it feels like
it's beyond just Katcha telling Hecla stuff, which is maybe possible,
I don't know, But the fact that she knows as
much as she knows and he doesn't, Carl isn't playing

(34:07):
this game the wig Pekla is playing because in his mind,
we're on the same side. We're all crawlers, we are
trying to get through this together, and that is just
not the way that she is approaching it, so her
gathering intel on him makes sense. She sees him as
a rival and the whole thing as a game, and is,

(34:29):
as he sees later, having a good time in the
midst of this, not like complete mayhem. And I think
Carl is going to have to set aside his feelings
about wanting all of the crawlers to get through because
we know that's not going to happen, and start gathering
intel on the other top members, because I think he's

(34:53):
going to start running into this sort of issue more
and more as the pool gets smaller and smaller. So
he says, I had to look at this logically. If
Heckla's plan was to kill or otherwise discredit me and
get Donut to join up with them, so they in
turn had access to Mordecai, they had to do it

(35:15):
without Donut knowing that's what they did or Mordecai, and
the only way to do it would be to make
it look.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Like an accident.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
But how could they possibly do that when literally the
entire universe was watching them at all times. It'd be
easy to hide something from Donut at first, but Heckla
had to know by now, people like Odette existed, information
entered the dungeon like drops through a leaky roof. Whatever
it was, it wouldn't happen right away. Donut worship Hecla,
and once Donut latched onto someone, it was hard to

(35:45):
get her to unlatch. But she didn't know any of
the other newcomers. I'd made a serious mistake by not
talking about this earlier. I would have to start fixing
it now. What's very funny to me is I understand
Carl feeling like he's made a mistake. However, Donut is
the worst liar ever. She is just like she can

(36:07):
use her charisma to trick people, but it's not really
the same as completely lying, especially.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
To other crawlers.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
And I think if he had told her about this earlier,
this whole thing couldn't have worked out, because she wouldn't
have been able to hide her suspicion of Hecla from Hecla.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 (36:24):
So weirdly, I think that Carl's not telling Donut worked
in his favor, considering this entire plan that Hecla wound
up having in place here. So he says, okay, well, help,
just don't get me killed. So you can have donah

(36:46):
all to yourself. Eva's mouth tightened. Hecla laughed, and at
that moment I saw it. It was just a glimmer
in the normally stoic women's facade, but it was there.
She's having fun.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
He likes this.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
She's as crazy as the rest of us. So this
is when they start talking about getting this whole thing
built on the front of the train, the cow catcher,
and he starts to talk about how he could maybe
build something, and Heckla says, well, you've already built what

(37:26):
we need. Hecla turned to Katya, who appeared as if
she was going to vomit. I felt the blood drain
from my face. And Carl engages in a text chat
with Kotya that later Zeb gets real mad about because

(37:49):
they're obviously talking and there's obvious emotion happening, but the
audience can't hear any of it.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
And I love that when she.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Gets on him, he just yells out loud, Go fuck yourself, Zeb,
how's that for talking out loud? Hecla barked with laughter.
Zea sounds like our Loutza. I really did enjoy him
just saying it out loud, so Carl is saying to Katya,
You're not fucking disposable. She's treating you like you're disposable. Dude.

(38:21):
We don't see that, and I'm really sorry if you
think that's how we see you and if I didn't
make you feel welcome, And Katcha is like, this is
my idea.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
I'm the one who.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Came up with it, and I hears me coming back
to the thing we were saying later about Eva or
earlier about Eva, and how Hekla maybe wasn't the one
who dished Caughtya but decided to use it to her advantage.
So we find out a little bit later Eva is

(38:51):
an economics teacher at like at the school that Caughtya
worked at, or was it Katcha that worked there or
I can't remember what roles she even played, but anyway,
that's how she knows Eva, and Hecla was Eva's psychiatrist.

(39:14):
So Katcha was an art teacher. Thank you, sarahim I
totally forgot. So here's the thing, Hecla I am going
to ascribe to her over like, I'm going to give

(39:36):
her some motivations here that are not necessarily true, but
that are supported by some of the evidence that I
am seeing here. Obviously, Hecla being her psychiatrist means she
knows exactly the buttons to push to make Eva do things,

(40:00):
like she's gotten to know her well enough. So it
goes without saying Hecla is being super unethical and manipulating
Eva in order to do her dirty work, which is
just so gross in so many ways. But there's also
this aspect of I think, because of her being a psychiatrist,

(40:24):
Hecla is really good at knowing how to manipulate everybody.
I think she's got a kind of con man instinct
in her, and I think if we had actually seen
the conversation between Hecla and Katya, it wasn't really Kotscha's idea.

(40:47):
The best conman make the mark think the whole thing
is their idea. They lay out the facts in such
a fashion that the mark puts the pieces together themselves,
and the con man is like, well, I don't know
if we should do that, and pretends to put up
this like little bit of you know, objection, just enough

(41:10):
to make it really seem like I said, we shouldn't.
You're the one driving this car, you know, I wouldn't
be surprised if we went back and read their interaction
that doesn't exist and saw the way that Katcha was
played into coming to this conclusion and then taking credit

(41:33):
as if she came up with it, when really this
whole thing was like part of the plan. And later
on when we have this uh what is her name self,
there's there's a fairy class crawler and she has like
a heel ability.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
We see her.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Like just backing away from a monster, yelling to Hecla
for help, and we know that in many ways, this
is how Katcha has operated up until meeting with Carl
and starting to like gain more confidence in her own
abilities to fight back. She was very much like a

(42:18):
oh shit, help, you know, and it's obviously what she
enjoyed about being in Hecla's group. So what's weird here
is like it seems basically Heckla's got this like kind
of cult thing going where she has her right hand

(42:39):
who manages to make her Hecla look squeaky clean, but
this right hand is shady as fuck. Hecla also, as
we find out, has weapons that keep her looking squeaky clean.
And then she's got all of these women who are underpowered,
like Carl notes that they're all lagging behind, and I

(43:02):
would be very willing to hazard a guess she's doing
that on purpose. She likes them being dependent on her.
She doesn't want them to have the confidence to handle
things on their own. Nobody should get any ideas. They
shouldn't feel competent. They need to depend on her because

(43:22):
otherwise she's got no barrier between her and the monsters.
And these people are very much fodder to me, like
from the way that she looks at things. And also,
let's not like completely sleep on the fact that Eva
is an economics professor, which you can use economics to
justify a lot of horrific shit. That is like the

(43:44):
kind of subject that sounds innocuous, but actually there is
something like kind of really awful embedded in there a
lot because of like how capitalism is the dominant economic
structure and you are a professor of it. That's not
to say that you necessarily endorse it, but you will
know how shit functions in a very matter of effect

(44:05):
and sometimes brutal way that I could see even bringing
to the game really easily. It would translate so well,
because this whole thing is like an analogy the whole game,
you know, so you have somebody that Hecla like can
position perfectly to be her enforcer and look like this

(44:27):
savior and be like, I will take care of you.
And really she's keeping them kind of weak. She's not
letting them learn how to take care of themselves. And
then by the end of this section, she's dead. And
I don't know what the fuck these bitches are gonna do,
because I don't see them throwing themselves behind Carl as
a leader after how all this went down, and even

(44:48):
if they turn on them, they don't seem to really
have like a game plan. It seems to be we
will do support. Hecla will be the like point of this,
and we will follow up the rear, picking off the
bits and pieces and healing, and that's like our main
job is just to come up behind her and help

(45:13):
with the very last dregs of whatever this this battle is.
So these women, it's like either they're gonna have nobody
to like throw themselves behind, or they'll throw themselves behind
Eva potentially because they know her and she was second
in command and so that feels natural, which uh, I'm

(45:35):
really curious if they'll do that like, how the whole
conversation they are not in the room for, but I
have to imagine is going to be like publicized. They
are on camera, so eventually the daughters will see what
happened here? How many of them will that actually matter to?
You know, I don't know whether or not they're going

(45:58):
to be willing to like set aside the way Eva
behaved because they had to know to some degree the
way Eva was the whole time. So is this gonna
be a deal breaker? Would they not follow Eva due
to this? Will Eva survive? Because there's got to be
hell breaking loose And the first person that Kaya is
gonna try and hit is gonna be Eva because she's

(46:20):
the one that she was aiming for to begin with.
So you know, we'll see, Okay, So Sarahim says, oh yeah,
Heckla totally led Kacha to be the one actually say
the idea out loud. Michael says, yeah, the theory of
free markets are great if you ignore the vast damage
that happens while market's adjust and the fact that consumers
don't have perfect information and aren't rational. Rob says, Eva's

(46:42):
not particularly charismatic, unfortunately for her.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, I'm like.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
It would be kind of cool if everybody threw themselves
behind Katya, but I would see I really don't see
them looking at Katya to be a leader because of
one her basic attitude and two she turned on Hecla,
which if they don't know why she did that, they
can't be down with. So it all depends on how

(47:07):
much information they're going to be operating with and how
much their own dependence on Kotya leads to them being
desperate in one direction or another. So this is super interesting.
I am I'm ahead of myself, but I have been
so restrained up to now that I think I can
be forgiven. So Katya explains about what it is that

(47:31):
she's trying to set up, and she says he because
he says h, she accuses him of being a back
seat dungeon driver. You only don't like the idea because
you didn't come up with it. Ouch, I don't like
it because you're going to fucking die. Kotya, I don't understand.
You used to be scared of fighting just regular mobs. Kotchya,

(47:53):
You're right, you don't understand, Carl. They came back for me.
She brought the entire team to pick me up. That
is more than anyone has ever done for me, which
once you see what's going on, is so devastating, and honestly,
the fact that she brought the entire team. Here's the
moment where it kind of crossed over for me, because

(48:14):
of course I'm in the same headspace up to now
as Carl, where I'm like, this is all a rust
to try and kill Carl, and it is it is,
But in the short term, Kotcha is the target, right
so we don't know that yet. But here's this moment.

(48:36):
He says, Okay, if we do this, Donut and I
will ride in the engineer's card car, and I would
like Kotcha to stay in our team until we're done.
All this transferring around will take too long. I looked
at Kotcha, as long as that's cool with you. To
my surprise, she walked up to me and hugged me
long and tight. Thank you, she whispered in my ear.

(48:57):
I had no idea for what. That's fine, Hecla said
after a moment, though she seemed irritated. You can ride
with me and Eva. She knows how to drive the
subway cars. Hecla's irritation here. I'm not sure what about
this whole plan would have gone better for her if

(49:22):
Katya hadn't been a member of his party anymore. I'm
sure there's something that I'm missing, but her irritation here
for me what I was thinking, and I wasn't on
I wasn't completely correct regarding some motivations, but I was

(49:43):
correct in my concern shifting from Carl to Katya at
this moment. Because her being irritated, I started to wonder,
is Hecla thinking Katya is going to betray her to Carl,

(50:04):
and not even necessarily like in an overt pre planned
I am trying to betray you because I actually, you know,
like not that sort of way, but more as the
relationship between Katya and Carl becomes stronger than Heckla anticipated,

(50:26):
and so now she is beginning to think maybe it's
not worth it to take Katya back because she would
like to. She's is planning on betraying Karl, and she's
worried that like Kotcha isn't going to be on board later.
So this was the thing that made me start to
be like, oh shit, I think maybe she's got it

(50:50):
out for Katya more than Carl at this point, because
Katcha is this sort of weak link between them.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
She thought I'll just.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Plant Kotya and use her and didn't realize that like
she was going to get stronger and get more confidence
and start to actually like Carl, and so this would
wind up becoming a problem. So I was wrong about
what it was that was like driving Hecla here, but

(51:18):
I was right about being more worried for Katcha from
here on out. So they get onto the train, A
lot of them just have to hang on because there's
not room in this little cab. And there's a little
moment here where Donut mentions how he's the only boy

(51:39):
and that he should start a harem, and then well,
you can't start a harem. You couldn't even keep one
woman interested. And these little jokes. I keep wondering because
we don't really get any moment of like sadness or
irritation from Carl when she makes these comments. And I
keep being like that has to bother him, right, Like

(52:00):
has to be annoying to have your cat talk about
what a fucking cook you are, I mean, right, But
we don't really get that at all. So this is
when Dona asks Katchya about why Eva has so many skulls,
and Katcha, it's clear like it kind of bothers her
to see this big change and is like she had one,

(52:22):
and she says she doesn't want to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
And let's see, we didn't stay long at the station.
Madison is there being yelled at by a bunch of
dwarves and there is one that is crying and has
like a puddle of tears, and Heckla just steps over him,
but Carl stops and speaks to him and is like, hey, man,

(52:49):
I know this sucks, but there's only four days till
the level collapses and it'll be over. And the dwarf
says she was never real? Was she my little girl?

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Don't understand?

Speaker 1 (53:02):
And he thinks about Frank Q here, I thought of
my own mother and what she did. This is my
birthday present to you. I'm giving you a chance at life.
I'm sorry it took.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Me so long.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
And we know some shit happened on his birthday where
he was like abandoned somehow, but I can't imagine what
this is. Did she just fucking like drop him off
somewhere and leave him because apparently his father caught up
to him. I don't know what happened, and we still
don't know, and I'm really curious. Both of them had

(53:38):
failed miserably, but this guy had it even worse. He'd
been tricked into believing something that just wasn't real. He
never even had the opportunity to screw it up. And
Carl says to him, one day, this pain you're feeling
right now will matter. And he walks back to Hecla
and she says, you're going to give yourself an ulcer.

(54:01):
Focus on what you can accomplish, not that which is
beyond your control.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
And it's one of.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Those lines that's like a really convincing rationalization of the
fact that you don't have any empathy. It sounds like
really profound advice that is extremely practical, but really what

(54:29):
it is is that you don't feel anything for this
person because you don't see them as a person at all.
And you're telling yourself this is just.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
Me being real focused.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
No, this is something that's wrong with you.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
You're fucked up.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
There's something wrong with you, and you can play it
off however you like, but that's what it is sorry
about it. So anyway, chapter twenty two, this whole like,
I don't want to get too in the weeds with

(55:09):
describing this entire battle and this problem, because it doesn't
matter a lot of this. They start off just discussing
the problem and the design that Katya is using where
she's going to make herself into this like scoop cow
catcher that also has spikes that come out, and obviously

(55:34):
a lot of things that hit the cow catcher won't
die right away, So they have this setup that Pekla
and Dona are both going to be shooting at the
things to kill them, so that Katcha can draw them
into her inventory and clear the space quickly enough that
they don't get weighed down, that her scoop doesn't get
pushed downward and like you know, push on the tracks.

(55:58):
There's also the concern of something getting caught underneath it.
The whole design of this is pretty wild, and they
had to break the front windshield out so that she
could like reach up through it and hold on to
the top so that it's sort of leveraged that's keeping
her in place, and also that's where most of her
like actual physical body is. The metal is the part

(56:19):
they're using is the scoop, and then her parts that
are vital to staying alive are as far away from
all that action as they can manage. So this is
just a hole. This plan is wild, like it really is.
So they head out and let's see, should they kill

(56:45):
a couple things that are like vaporized? Practically they don't
even there's no bodies, there's nothing. And she says that
she got experience and it was like a little beasting,
No big deal. There was a head on my spike,
but I pulled it into my invent Also, blood it
lets me add liquid to my inventory if it's in
my scoop. There's a new tab called gross shit, and

(57:08):
that is super interesting.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
I am so curious about that.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
So she gets a fan box for having the most
new followers in a thirty hour period, I bet, and
Carl thinks, like that's not necessarily a good thing because
people are going to tune in for some wild shit
that will have to kill the crawler, right, But it doesn't.
So this whole thing winds up a lot more gory

(57:36):
than anybody expected. The way that the blood pours in
over like, you know, because of the angle of a cowcatcher. Naturally,
things are directed upward and it goes right into the
fucking where the windshield.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Used to be, and.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Her, uh, what do you call it? Her health drops
really dramatically and he feels the fact that something is
electrifying her. This happens another time as well, and I'm
starting to wonder if this is something that a person

(58:14):
on Hecla's team or Hecla herself is doing takatya. I
don't know, you know, like, it's possible that there was
something jammed underneath her and it was hitting like the
other rail potentially, but it's just her health dropping as
fast as it does, as many times as it does.

(58:34):
It could just be a result of the thing, certainly,
but I don't know. Let's see, I'm trying to find here.
It is the blister Ghoul that they find. This undead
creature is created and unleashed into the dungeon using a
device called a ghoul generator. There are multiple types of
ghuls and generators, but the bad boy that spits out
these suckers is top of the line. For every non

(58:57):
undead mob that dies within this floor. One of the
soul crystal powered ghoul generators will birth a single blister ghoul,
which is fucking bonkers. It's, as he calls it, a
perpetual engine.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
So yikes.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
The chaos of this floor was starting to form into
something a little more cohesive. This wasn't amaze. It was
an almost perpetual engine, and the next day these things
were going to be everywhere. Katcha's health continued to move downwards.
She hadn't once been healed by the so called healer.
Heal God, damn it, I yelled at the fairy, who

(59:39):
remained at the ceiling, looking down at the blister Ghul's corpse.
I kicked it.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
It's dead.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Come on, I'm supposed to wait till she's at twenty
five percent. You will heal her now, and can you
wake her up? The fairy looked at Hecla, who nodded.
The fairy had over two dozen boss kills by her name,
but she acted as if this were her first foray
into action. And as we have seen, you can get

(01:00:05):
credit for boss kills just by being in the fucking room.
That's something that happened with Agatha. She didn't do shit,
she was just there. So it's very likely that this
lady has not had any real action. So Kachi gets
brought up back to consciousness and she said, I'm okay now,

(01:00:31):
but I got shocked really badly, which again we don't
know exactly what is doing that. For the next hour
and a half we zoomed up the tunnel. Hecla tried
talking to Donut, but I kept myself between them. I
tried to strike up a conversation with Eva, but she
just grunted at me. I could tell everybody in the
room was talking to one another via chat. Just a
few minutes before we got there, I received a message

(01:00:52):
from Ellie.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Good news.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
We now know what happens when too many of the
festering ghouls get together. And Mani says, they're trying to
get to forty eight. We found your train sitting at
sixty and ranged downward at the stair while at forty
eight and found it full of festering ghules. We watched
them transform. These worm things come out of them, and

(01:01:17):
then they pull themselves tightly together, making a giant franken monster.
It's too big to leave the room, but it fills
it completely. It's a province, Boss, Carl. We all got
achievements just for discovering it. Thankfully, it let us get
the hell out of there. It's really gross. It makes
a slurping noise when it moves, and it's covered with
mouths that are always screaming. It has completely filled Stop

(01:01:40):
forty eight, and the wrath Gruls are stopping at station
thirty six. Who knows what they're going to do, and
you know, they go over all of this stuff. I'm
not keeping track of what's at each station. I'm just
letting it wash over me so I won't get into
this too much. But there is a little mention of
miss t who is their manager, and that she is
pretty much useless and just gets drunk all day, so

(01:02:03):
they aren't super helpful.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Between that and how.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Mordecai is like completely out of it for another two days,
nobody has any good help right now, and Elle signs
off with stay Frosty, and Donat is like, oh shit,
new catchphrase, awesome. I am loving it. So I am
over time, but I'm just gonna be overtime. It's my

(01:02:29):
last recording of the day, so I can so let's
do this. Katcha is yelling for help, and when he
looks up, he realizes that her own health is only
at ten percent.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
There was a point where he mentions how Donut tried
making a couple of I can't remember if they were
like clockwork or if it was that necromancy spell where
she can bring dead things back to life to on
your behalf, but whatever it is. He says something about
how Hecla accidentally killed them in the confusion, and of

(01:03:08):
course I myself am instantly.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Like, no, she didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
That was on purpose, Like, just there is no way
that's confusion. Let's see I slay my heel scroll tap
topping off Kotya, and then I had to heal myself
with a spell. Where was that fucking fairy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Station coming up?

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Even cried, I'm going to slow down, not until Kotcha
is healed again. I yelled, where the fuck is Silfa?

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Is she down?

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
She ran, Doughnut said, breathless. She ran away into the apartment. Katya, Carl,
Where am I? Why isn't Eva answering me?

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
Fucking hell?

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
How was her health so low? We'd almost pushed through
the horde and only a few ghules remained on the exterior.
I dodged and swung, punching over and over Donut Carl
Carrol Recklas shot Katya with an invisible arrow. I saw
it with my sunglasses. She did it earlier and I
thought it was a mistake, but she did it again.
It was mixed in with her regular arrows.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
It went into her scoop.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
The arrows are still stuck in her I think she
did it on purpose. Gotcha, disengage, lose your mass now.
The train continued to slow breaks screaming, and Doughnut can
see where the arrows are instructs him to pull them out,
and when he does, he gets to see that it
is a phased, invisible item that will only be discovered

(01:04:34):
if physically touched. It will cast amnesia and suffering bleed,
draining them of health until they are at ten percent.
A second bolt will lower the victim's health to one percent.
Victims who subsequently perish will be listed as dying from
an alternate source. You will not get credit or experience
you will get, nor will you get one of those
nasty skulls by your name. And I was so horrified

(01:04:58):
at the existence of this weapon like that is so
incredibly upsetting. It makes total sense, but fuck, like I
was expecting at this point for her to go after Katcha.
I didn't think it was going to be something that
would have worked so beautifully were it not for donuts sunglasses.

(01:05:22):
And I am wondering if Hecla shared her plan out
loud and Donut got these sunglasses explicitly because the Princess
knew about what this plan was and was like, let
me help her out or not princess? Is it whoever
it was that sent them to Donut, I just like

(01:05:45):
it worked out so beautifully that I was like, was
this on purpose or was it just really lucky?

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
You know? Either way, I'm fine with it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
But it does seem like maybe so uh. Hecla finally
looked up from the gore. The enraged buff blinked a
few times and disappeared.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
She had a wild look to her eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
She focused on the still unconscious Katchia hanging on my arm.
She frowned, and Carl tries to tell Donut, hey.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
We don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Just try and be cool for a minute, and Donut
just screams.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
You've tried to kill Kutch. I kill fucking bitch.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
She blasted a full strength magic missile right into Hecla's face.
Incredible look I get why he wanted to play it
like he did, but I'm so grateful to Donut for
fucking doing this thing. Let's get it all out there, friends,
I'm sick of dancing around it fucking talk about it.

(01:06:48):
So my feet scrambled through the slippery muck and my
back slammed against the train wall. I caught a vicious
slice at the saber with my armored hand. I need
more fucking armor. I kicked up into Eva's stomach and
she rocketed back. Hold Hecla cried, everybody, hold cease. I

(01:07:11):
dropped Katya, but her health had stabilized. Her head remained
above the line of body parts in gore like she
was treading water. She remained unconscious. She'd awaken on her
own in thirty seconds. The fact that she wakes up
and doesn't know what happened, that amnesia part is so
fucked up. Like the fact that you not only can
be attacked and it's untraceable, but you have no memory

(01:07:33):
and so you can't help with the investigation of what
happened to you. Wow, Like this is just so fucking gross. U. Eva,
by the way, has lost a hand, and she doesn't
seem that worried. She says, I have three more hands.
Hecla is the one who did it, and Eva seems

(01:07:55):
to just not hold it against her or be bothered
at all. That's that's that's cult shit, that's bonkers. So
this is when Donut starts yelling about you tried to
kill Kaya used invisible arrows. Hekla heats correcting her and
talking about how they're called bolts. She does this a
little bit later, wild behavior like what a you know,

(01:08:18):
just not addressing the actual substance of the accusation at all.
And this is when Katya sends everybody out and it
just leaves Carl, Donut, Katya, Hecla, and Eva inside. And
Heclas says, I made a mistake. She shrugged as if
it was nothing. I can't take it back, but there's

(01:08:39):
no reason for it to snowball. We can discuss this
after we get out of here. We need to work together,
and Donut screams never, I'll never team up with you, trader.
I used to think you were awesome, Hecla, but you're
just like all the rest. You pretend to be good,
but you're not.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
It was a lie, all a lie.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Why why can't we trust anyone. You told Katcha you
wanted her, you made her feel special and loved, but
you just wanted to use her and trade her in.
And Carl is realizing Dona knew Bee was going to
trade her in. He didn't realize she was aware. I
was wondering if she was aware, because she apparently can

(01:09:23):
read well enough when he's doing research on catnapping her
that she can tell that's what he's trying to do.
So I was like, how is it that she was
unaware that Bee was trying to trade her in? Because
Bee would have to have talked about it right in
front of her. She doesn't know that Donah understands, you know,
and finding out that like she did know, it's such

(01:09:47):
a layer to everything because she has just talked about
how great Miss Beatrice has been, and finding out that
she was aware, how awful that has to have been
for her. And I wonder if she understands how much
Carl was not on board with that plan, because when
he's talking about the argument he had over it with

(01:10:08):
b they were in the car and I'm assuming Donut
wasn't in there unless she was in a cat carrier
and they were coming to or from a show or something.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
I don't know, because.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Apparently they traveled with her a lot. But I don't
know if she is aware that Carl was arguing on
her behalf and did not see this as like something cool.
But the yeah, she says she didn't do anything wrong, Carl,
she did her best. It's not fair and I just
all my heart broke so hard.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
I hated it, and.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Katcha when she wakes up, what's happening? Heckla tried to
murder you. That's what's happening. Donut yell, we don't even
know why. You didn't do anything wrong. Control your fucking animal,
or I will shut her up, Eva growled. I put
my hand on the side of Donut's head in an
attempt to calm her. I'll tell you what, kids, I

(01:10:59):
didn't like the fact that he tries to calm Donnut down.
I really didn't like she isn't attacking anybody. She's literally
just saying what happened?

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Fuck you? Eva.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
I wanted him to be like, she's not my animal,
she's a party member, you know. I wanted him to
like to have her back here, and I didn't like
that he does try to calm her down.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
Even though I understand it, I didn't like it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
I wanted him to be able to mix calming her
down with go fuck yourself, Eva, you know, I just
I didn't like it. And Heckla starts smoking, and for
a moment, Carl was like.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Oh my god, I want a cigarette so bad. But
he knows that he.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Can't, like you know, and Heckla does that. So we're
all adults here. And I hate when people treat things
like this. But you're not allowed to get mad because
that's immature. So many people will treat genuine emotional reaction
to things as if the fact that you are having
emotions in response is you just not having control over yourself.

(01:12:16):
And it's such garbage. And her saying this this way
tracks completely. I thought you for sure you were gonna
try and kill me. But Kotya, why Kotya? I still
huge was looking back and forth between us. Eva she asked,

(01:12:38):
it's nothing. Go outside, Kotcha. The others are waiting for you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Don't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
Don'nut said, they tried to hurt you. Kotya, you can
stay with us. We'll get out of here, okay. We
won't ever abandon you. And we won't be filthy liars either.
Can we just take this down a notch? Kitya said,
for God's sake, I don't know what's happening. Why don't
I remember? Because Heckla shut you with a gary arrow
that was going to kill you. Bolts donut, it was

(01:13:04):
a bolt. No, you were both shooting. You hit me
with a magic missile donut. You were aiming at the ghouls,
and I remember it was an accident. That's okay. We
don't have time for this. Come on, Eva, we need
to hurry. No, wait, please, we can't damn it. Kotcha,
quit being stupid. Come with us.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
You're always fucking like this. Just do what I say.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
I'm just trying to figure this out. Hekla, you hurt
me on purpose? Why did I do something you were
always saying you felt useless? Gotcha, you were being useful.
We weren't really going to kill you. We just wanted
Carl's famous temper to flare. Now shut the hell up
and come.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
I What you used me for?

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
What?

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Oh? Gotcha for?

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
What? What Fedar left me for one of his students.
What they're not going to let me adopt? Why me
for Fuck's sake, catcha open your goddamn eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Quit being so naive.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
Look where we are, Look at what we need to
do to survive. This is why I left you behind
on the third floor. This is why you're such a
damn fuck up. This is why nobody likes you, because
you're so damn confused all the fucking time. Now, for
once in your pitiful life, do the right thing and

(01:14:35):
get away from those two. Oo Oh, fuck me, Eva.
You can't just say all that and then be like
you shouldn't be with those guys. I don't know if

(01:14:59):
you understand to hand what diplomacy is or persuasion.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
I think maybe she's just.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Used to Katcha being so easily cowed that handling her
in this way has worked in the past, and so
she's just like, I'm just gonna fucking let it rip.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
But yeah, she misjudged that shit bad.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
So then we get a description of Kitschia's ability named rush.
I was a little irritated that this ability hadn't been
brought up earlier, because.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Then it wouldn't all have to have been.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Front loaded right here the way that it is. I
think this could have been done more elegantly. However, it's fine.
Kittius screamed something incomprehensible, and she activated Rush. She was

(01:16:04):
aiming at her former friend Eva, she missed her by inches. Instead,
she inadvertently became the first crawler on this season of
Dungeon Crawler World to kill one of the top ten
and claim a bounty. In this case, it was Hecla,
the Amazonian Shield Maiden, the current number two in the game,

(01:16:24):
whom she splattered against the interior wall of the train,
thus earning herself a bounty of five hundred thousand gold.
And in that moment, just before all hell broke loose
all over again, I finally noticed Kachia's level. She'd been
level twenty four when she'd formed herself into a cowcatcher
at the front of the train. When she fell back

(01:16:45):
from the wall, skull forming over her head a special
golden skull, I saw that she was now level thirty seven. Incredible. Sorry,
I think this is mostly just Carl trying to diffuse
the whole situation before someone does something and make it
worse than these cramped confines. I totally agree, Seraphim. I

(01:17:07):
get why he's doing it, but I didn't like it.
She could have said that to pre Possecacia says Robin, Yeah,
I think that's true. Saraphim says, even knows what those are.
I yell at people and they do what I say
because they are all weak willed morons.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
What those are?

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
I don't get. I get what you're saying, Serpham. I
think that something got missed there on the just a
TYPEO or something Rush came up on the last floor.
Oh I don't remember it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
Then I either take back that it needed to be
explained the way that it was or it had like
I either that or I wish that whatever whenever it
was brought up earlier, it made more of an impression.
I just feel like interrupting this moment with this like

(01:18:02):
couple paragraphs of information about Rush. I get what he
was doing, but I just don't think it works super well.
So either way, I really love this moment, both because
frankly I get her going after Eva, but I think

(01:18:24):
killing Kotcha is.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
Like long term a better solution to things.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
It's like, short term, it's gonna make things worse, but
long term, I think it simplifies everything. And secondly, Eva
was so unprepared and thought she could treat Kutya any
type of way. And now Kutya is thirty seven, and
go ahead and try and fuck with her. Now Eva,
do it, do it. Let's see it, Let's see you try.

(01:18:57):
Go ahead, do it. Just for for science, just had
a curiosity. I absolutely love this, and you guys don't understand.
I listened to this section twice. The absolute agony it
was for me to stop. I have never, for the record, ever.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
Overread on purpose.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
There have been some times where I have gone into
like the first few sentences of a chapter beyond what
I was supposed to read unintentionally because I didn't have
like the timer on my audiobook going or whatever. But
I have never been like, I'm supposed to stop here,
but I gotta keep. I've never done it. But this
is like a time where I have been very tempted.

(01:19:44):
I didn't even read so much as the next sentence,
but I had a real moment of wrestling with myself
because I want it. And it's so funny because when
I first saw how long this section is, because it's
like an hour and forty minutes on the audiobook total
something like that, it's like quite long. I was sort
of like ooh, this might be too long for one section.

(01:20:06):
But then I understood why Michael set it up this way,
because the arc of the story and also a lot
of its actions, so I don't have to talk about
every bit of it. And then by the end of it,
I was like, this was too short. This was too short.
So oh, Rob says, oh man, it's a good next
sentence too, All right, I'm doing it. Hecla's body peeled

(01:20:29):
off the wall and collapsed into a heap system message,
A champion has fallen, a bounty has been claimed. The
door to the train flew open, and the two mages
and Healer burst in. More of the daughters crowded in
behind them, screaming and crying. Amazing. They don't come into attack,

(01:20:54):
they're screaming and crying.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
Embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
Your leader has just been laid out and you're just crying.
Get it together, bitches, what are you doing? Ah?

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
Disgusted.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Anyway, I'm sure the fight will be coming momentarily. Okay,
so sorry, Uh. Rob says it's so good. On the reread,
Michael says it was Matt doing the previously on thing
TV shows do that spoiler character's reappearance. I don't remember
what you're talking about. Saraphim says. I liked it because

(01:21:34):
the way it was described, it served as a little
quick pause to things, to give the readers time to
anticipate what was about to happen. I see that maybe
it's just like just a style thing, you know. I
feel like I would have liked this to just fucking
do it, but I can see why you'd like that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
So all right, I'm so overtime.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
Oh my god, I really can't be doing this again.
I got to start being more. I can do it
because we don't have a recording after this, but I'm
gonna have to start getting a little bit more ruthless
with myself because I cannot be doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
But I had to. I had to for this section.
I had to. So y'all forgive me.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
Thank you again for coming everybody, Thank you to Michael
for commissioning this, and until next time to the lou motherfuckers.

(01:22:51):
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.