Crawler # 6,120,893. “Alexa V. Gemenetzis”

Level 13.

Race: Rev-Up Pageant Princess

Class: Loli Idol

Strength: 9 + 0

Dexterity: 10 + 8

Constitution: 10 + 0

Intelligence: 12 + 0

Charisma: 18 + 0

Alexa was surprisingly weak, at least stat-wise. I already noticed that she hadn’t been that powerful during our fights, but I hadn’t grasped how far behind she was in raw stats. It made sense that a child would have lower starting stats, but when those stacked with no items and a low level things got dire.

When she said she spread her stats out evenly, she meant that very literally. She had been level 9 when she went down the Stairs, so she had 27 points to distribute at the time. Five points in each, and one more in Strength and Constitution because those were low. If it weren’t for her race and class giving her mostly Charisma, that stat would probably still be around 10 as well.

And then came the items, or the lack thereof. The pants, shoes and rapier of the Quickling that we gave her granted her the extra 8 Dexterity, but she had no other gear stats yet.

Fighting the Krutnik today gained her four more levels, so she’d get 12 more points to increase her Charisma to 30. 20 and 30 were starter thresholds which would show massive increases in her effectiveness according to Livia, so Alexa would be able to use her powers better and with shorter cooldowns tomorrow.

Plus, we all got several loot boxes, meaning that she would probably get some properly fitting gear to equip, instead of the hand-me-downs and the literal hand-knitted doll-clothes she wore now.

Livia explained to us what Alexa could do with her build. She was a bard support class, meaning that her combat utility as intended was to be far away from the actual fighting. She would have to sing and dance, buffing her party members with stats based upon the song and her charisma.

It was already clear that Alexa wasn’t going to do that, even Livia wasn’t trying to change her mind seeing how this would only have the opposite effect. But she would probably still be singing, because it was one of her biggest traits. Livia lobbied hard to teach Alexa some popular Syndicate pop songs to sing, but after some prying she reluctantly revealed that any song would work and that Alexa’s powers worked with Earth songs if she really wanted to.

Her race didn’t seem that great. It granted Alexa her little body and flight, which would’ve been useful for the cowardly back-liner that she was supposed to be, and the Manager skill. It also improved her diplomacy skills for pleading, riding on the theme of children begging their parents for stuff. She would get a new theme-appropriate skill every floor with Star Struck being this floor’s gift, and she unlocked a special skill called ‘Dress-up’.

When she put on a full outfit, Dress-Up would pick a related skill and grant her between one and three levels in it. She hadn’t gotten one before because we didn’t have a shirt to finish her Quickling outfit, but Livia was hoping that she’d collect a ton of different cute outfits to wear soon enough.

Her Loli Idol class was better. It granted her two Pathfinder abilities called Crowd Seeker and Exit the Stage. It also gave her the Pump-Up Performer skill which increased the effectiveness of all songs and dances she performed by 10% per level and allowed her to train this skill to level 20.

Crowd Seeker allowed Alexa to know where the largest concentration of neutral NPCs was within a 10km range. Exit the Stage started working during the last 12 hours of a floor, pointing her towards the nearest Stairway excluding the ones guarded by Bosses.

But Livia was the most enthusiastic about her other two abilities and the class’s real selling point: Shiny Transformation and Summon Wotagei.

Shiny Transformation gave Alexa a new tab in her Inventory called Outfits, which automatically showed all of her complete outfits. She could quick-slot any outfit instead of having to equip the separate gear pieces individually, and she could do so using a literal Sailor Moon transformation instead of having to undress and don them manually. Great synergy with Dress-Up.

Alexa didn’t have do a routine for the transformation to work, she only had to not fight or use any spells for the duration, but Livia strongly urged her to develop a choreographed dance to perform during the transformation. For once Alexa didn’t refuse her demand-like suggestions. Instead, she excitedly claimed that she was totally going to come up with a new dance for each and every outfit.

The rest of us were more interested in the unique skill that required her to have both a suitable class and race to unlock it at all. Alexa hadn’t looked at that while choosing, but the AI recommended the Loli Idol as her first class for this very skill. As Zartas never told Alexa that there were more than three options to choose from, she picked it more by happenstance than foresight.

Summon Wotagei was an ability that she could use once every 30 hours, randomly summoning a favourite for every 100 million followers. She was still 70 million fans shy of the requirements, but Livia insisted that with her help this would change before the end of the floor.

The fan was an actual Syndicate citizen, given an avatar that allowed them to be in the dungeon for an hour. They didn’t die when they were killed, or feel excruciating pain when they got wounded. They wouldn’t be that strong and their level would be equal to Alexa’s skill level which was currently 1, but Livia said that combat wasn’t the intent of the skill. Far from it, and most fans would likely refuse to risk their hour with their idol being cut short because of them dying.

Livia said that the skill would level up by some unknown metric best described as ‘how intense the idol’s popularity is’ rather than by spamming its use, and she only managed to get it up to level 5 herself during her own crawl. But the skill was more a publicity stunt granting hour-long shows and fan-meeting sessions, rather than to be used in battle.

Still, considering the ludicrous number of followers that the most popular crawlers had, I could see this skill being utterly broken once Alexa truly got popular.

With Alexa’s build and potential clarified, we turned to our other new member.

Crawler # 2,782,119. “Miho Nichiki”

Level 14.

Race: Human Hippy Cultist

Class: Druidshifter

Strength: 10 + 0

Dexterity: 10 + 2

Constitution: 12 + 4

Intelligence: 20 + 0

Charisma: 11 + 0

“So…” Miho almost withdrew into herself when we all looked at her and expected her to give an impromptu presentation to sell her skills and worth. “I’m a druidshifter, and a hippy cultist. And, uhm…

“Let me start at the beginning. Hello, my name is Miho Nichiki! I’m 47 years old, from Hefei and I’m… I used to be married with one child.”

“You’re 47!?” Ben said. “I know that Asian people can be blessed with eternal youth, but damn! You look like you’re in your early twenties!”

“Thank you for the… compliment?” Miho said. “But no, I used to look older. By picking a human race that wasn’t the base human species, I kept my real appearance but lost about twenty years. It wasn’t why I picked this race, but it’s a nice bonus!”

Miho smiled nervously, trying to look confident and social but failing spectacular. Still, the blush and awkwardness were very cute, she could work that to her favour.

“My race is the Hippy Cultist, as you can see. Of- Of course you already know that! But what it’s about… It’s… Uhm…” Miho struggled. As someone who had to speak in front of class before, I could relate. “I’m sorry, I’m actually not that used to talking to strangers any more after I got married. And that was two decades ago…

“My race is essentially about being like this hermit in the woods believing weird abstract stuff, and being a smoking freedom hipster kind of person. N-Not that I smoke a lot of weed! That’s just part of the description, though I also get some additional bonuses for using natural drugs now…

“Ignore that. The race is a lot about being self-dependent and good at foraging and stuff. I get experience gain bonuses for finding, growing and using all kinds of herbs and surviving in the woods. And for making homeopathic substances. Not sure if that’s going to be very good, but I got it.”

“It doesn’t look that good, to be honest.” Thomas said, looking through the racial description that she sent us in the chat. “Human races probably aren’t that amazing, so this might be average. But you don’t get any skills or increase the level cap for them, you just train slightly faster for a few skills you have to get yourself. And not to be a downer, but it sounds like a rather niche field.”

Miho deflated, and I quickly stepped in to raise her spirits again. “D- Don’t worry! You’re in a big party now, so a niche crafting build can work! We’ve got a lot of herbs and stuff, so you could probably work for days with the ingredients we can give you and level up in no time! You’ll be a valued member of the community, like Danny and Selma!”

“Well, maybe. I dunno.” Miho said, not really cheered up. “Chun and Xin told me to pick this race at the time, and I didn’t have that many options. I was only level 10 when we got to the third floor, and I didn’t get that many Achievements and skills as the guys that did most of the fighting.

“But my class is better! I’m a druid, which means that I can cast nature spells and some healing spells too! Well, I can once I actually get any healing spells, right now I only have Thorn Whip and Bloom. I can calm animal mobs that otherwise always remain hostile towards us, sometimes, maybe. But my specific druid subclass allows me to shapeshift into the animals that I eat raw!”

“I didn’t really did anything impressive on the first two floors, but one Achievement I got was for eating one of those rats from the first floor without cooking it first.” She reluctantly explained. “Xin insisted that the Safe Zones were ‘obvious traps’ to kill us, and that we should only enter the Tutorial Guild that the announcement mentioned. We had no food on us when we entered the dungeon, and it took almost two days before we found one of those Guilds. I was really hungry, so I…”

“Wait, I didn’t actually have to tell you guys that!” Miho realised, and immediately lowered her head blushing profusely. “Forget what I said! I mean, or don’t, you already know it now… But that’s how I got this class, which is good because the other options I had didn’t really look that special.”

Nobody said anything, Miho’s embarrassment being infectious. Eventually Alexa decided to be the one to end her purgatory of awkward silence. “So, what animals can you turn into?”

“Oh, well…” Miho shook up, trying to gather her thoughts and formulate an answer to the question. “It has to be an animal of beastfolk, I cannot turn into eldritch monsters or other humanoids. So I could become a bear or a bearman, but not a demon bear.

“But you meant the specific animals I can become, of course! Those are, uhm… I can turn into a rat, a weird hedgehog the size of a football and a tiny flesh-eating pig-thing. Those aren’t very useful, though. We didn’t know that I was going to get this class, so we unfortunately didn’t put any Vespa or other creatures in our inventory unless we thought they might be valuable. I was lucky we pocketed any at all! My three best forms are the Ribkit, the Mandibran and the Krutnik.

“The Ribkit is that frog you saw me as when we first met. They’re just a frog person, not that special in combat. I was lucky that Xin pocketed one to hide the body during a stealth mission, and never took it out again. They have a sticky tongue that can lash out for about three metres, and adhesive fingertips. I cannot stick to walls, but my fingers hold for about a second so I can wall-jump this way.

“The Mandibran is the snake that you guys saw before. It’s my only naturally sentient option without an intelligence cap, which is super annoying because I need a lot of intelligence for my human form spellcasting. We faced these snakes on the second floor, and they are quite a challenge. They seem fairly easy, but once you look in their eyes they can charm you.

“I can’t charm anyone instantly like them, because I need to train all my skills manually. That actually makes this class not that good at all, unless I focus on specific beasts. I get a bunch of natural skills for the beast I become, and they disappear once I revert back. But most start at level one.

“But- But I’m not completely useless! The skills level really fast in the beginning, faster even than normal! And I’m pretty sure that overlapping skills carry over, because my skill levels as a Krutnik Reaver were higher in the skills that I already trained as a Krutnik Leaver.

“But as I told you guys before; I have to eat the animal raw to get a new form. And I’m expected to eat everything. Even the fur and bones. It’s disgusting, and being able to swallow the creature whole in my Mandibran form only makes it slightly easier. I get the new form if I eat anything at all, but my starting skills are better if I eat a bit of every part of the creature. So a hair, a tooth, a bone, a piece of the liver, some brain matter, and so on. The more boxes I check, the more innate skills I unlock and the higher they are. I pretty much have to eat the whole creature most of the time, or it will take me hours before I can even walk in that form.

“My animal forms retain my mental stats except for those annoying caps, but I gain new physical stats based upon the creature. So there’s not much point in getting a lot of strength, dexterity or constitution for my real form, those would just go away.”

“That will change once your Wildshape skill reaches level 5.” Livia remarked. “Once you manage that, you’ll add 20% of your physical stats to your beast body.”

“Really? Thank you, that would be nice!” Miho politely nodded to Livia.

“Wait! Wait!” Ben had a realisation. “Does this mean that you can turn into the Excavator!?”

“Well… I indeed unlocked it, but I cannot transform into that form yet.” Miho said. “It’s greyed out, similar to a few other forms I have.”

“Your size and power are restricted to a metric mostly decided by your class level multiplied by your skill level.” Livia explained. “The latter is more important, but the former allows you to unlock stuff over time even if you don’t focus on the skill. Small creatures are available right from the start unless they pack a lot of power in their tiny frame, so finding small mobs with a powerful trick or niche is a good beginner strategy for your class. The massive creatures like that Excavator won’t be available to you until at least the eight floor, even if you focus a lot on training your skills.”

“Right, I see!” Miho nodded, once again bowing in thanks as if Livia unlocked new powers for her instead of just explaining things she would’ve figured out herself soon enough. “Fortunately there seems to be some leeway on the forms, because I never ate a Young Krutnik Reaver but it unlocked after I ate a Juvenile one!”

“Hm? Guess they added that since I last followed a druid, five seasons ago you still had to find and eat the other forms of a creature with multiple age stages in order to unlock them all.” Livia said.“Then again, the crawlers of that season were more inclined to eat raw flesh, so they might have nerfed the class that season.”

“Guess I’m lucky there!” Miho smiled.

“Does she have to be involved in the battle to unlock new beasts, or just eat them?” Thomas asked.

“Eating. Vulture druids following other crawlers for scraps is a lame but viable strategy.” Livia answered.

“Well, in that case…” I said, browsing through my inventory.