We appeared in a spacious room with royal blue carpeting that drank the light. A buffet table struggled to bear up under the weight of its spread, and various comfortable bits of furniture were scattered about.

"Whoa," I said, spinning around. The floor shifted under me and I had to put my hands out for balance. "Are we on a boat?"

Carl said nothing and stared at me, eyes wide.

"Katia," Donut said, "You're getting really good at the sculpting thing. Plus I like you better with black hair. It gives you more poise." As she spoke, Carl ducked out of the room through one of two doors.

I touched my face, afraid of what I was going to find. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding when I recognized myself. "This is the real me, Donut."

"Oh," Donut said, cocking her head as she considered my true appearance. "You're from Iceland. I thought everyone from Iceland was blonde? Were you adopted?"

I laughed. "No, Donut, I'm not adopted. Only about half of Iceland is blonde. Actually, my hair is unusual for being black—most everyone who isn't blonde is brunette or redhead. Now, where are we?"

"This is the green room for a TV show! Isn't it cool? You need to try the food, really."

"Well, since you insist," I said with a smile. I explored the contents of the buffet and found that it lived up to the implied hype. I took a pair of deviled eggs and a chocolate strawberry to get started with. Donut was busy munching through a bag of Purrfect Cat Treats.

"Anyway," Donut said around a mouthful of treat, "this is the green room for Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette, one of the biggest TV shows in the galaxy. The host is Odette. She's really cool. She looks like a giant crab-centaur thing with big boobs but she's actually a human wearing a mask and whatever. Oh, and she's got no legs. She's got boobs, but they're not that big. In a few minutes we'll go through that door and onto a sound stage and there will be trillions of people watching! Maybe quadrillions!" She was starting to shake with excitement and her pupils had swallowed her irises.

A cold fist closed around my throat. Trillions of people watching me? Judging me? What was I supposed to say? Would they be able to speak to us? What would they know about me—would they jeer at me for being so far behind?

"Donut," I croaked. "What happens exactly?"

"Oh, it's the best! Odette will ask us questions about our time in the dungeon, the various things we've done. Don't worry, it's easy. All you need to do is be funny and entertaining."

Funny and entertaining? While speaking off the cuff? I had enough trouble giving a lecture to a hall full of freshman university students and that was when I had prepared notes. My doctoral defense had been an absolute nightmare. Literally. I had nightmares about it for two weeks before and after. I still had them once a year or so.

"Anyway, Carl's taking too long," Donut said. She hopped off the table and barged into the bathroom without knocking. "Hurry up, Carl, I gotta wee!"

o-o-o-o

We were left to stew for twenty-five minutes before Lexis, the tall, elfin production assistant for Odette, came to usher us to the couch in the studio. Carl, who had gone down the stairs naked except for his leather jacket, had made himself a barely-adequte loincloth out of toilet paper. I could only think that it was a good thing the studio's bathroom had toilet paper instead of a Japanese-style bidet/blower. Personally, if I had been him I would have wrapped my jacket around my waist but apparently he preferred to keep his torso covered.

Donut's description had not done Odette justice. Her body went beyond 'bizarre' and right into 'disgusting'. Her lower half was a crab two meters across with sharp-tipped legs that never stopped rustling. That part was mostly fine; it gave a twinge to the primal threat-assessment part of my brain, but it was attractive in its own weird and deadly way. Her head—rather, her mask according to Donut—was no better; it looked like the head of a praying mantis with bulging compound eyes and antennae a meter long.

No, it was her human body with the utterly impossible breasts that disturbed me. Her torso was the size of a normal plus-sized human woman, but each breast was literally the size of an adult pig. They slooshed when she moved, jiggling and rippling like water balloons filled with grease. It was beyond anything sane and it made me queasy to look at.

Looking away from her just made everything worse, because the only other thing to look at was the audience.

The studio was gargantuan. Or, at least, it appeared to be. In actuality it was only a half dozen meters across and we were the only ones here, but dungeon magic made it look like an immense concert hall with stadium seating and two mezzanines that hosted an audience tens of thousands strong. People of every species that I'd seen in the dungeon and dozens more besides, all of them losing their minds in excitement to see us.

Rather, to see Carl and Donut. I hadn't been seen yet; I was on the couch but I was being edited out of the feed until it was time to introduce me.

"So, everyone ready to see it?" Odette asked. The audience roared.

The lights dimmed and an image appeared in the air above us. An image of Carl and Donut standing in the warehouse opposite a mummified skyfowl with swirling black eyes and smoke rising from his body. Between them hovered a pulsing crystal with sparks of yellowish energy leaping from its surface to crackle around the room. One spark held steady, a continuous lightning bolt stretching from the gem through a hole in the floor. Another, perhaps larger, connected the gem to the skyfowl, causing him to arch his entire body in pain and glow steadily brighter.

"In a world..." said the announcer voice. "A Dungeon World!"

The audience screamed in delight.

"Remex the Grand, the great crawler of the past now enslaved to the will of the evil Miss Quill, is nearing his end! The ritual he has been used to power has been disrupted, and the feedback from the soul crystal will destroy him any moment. There is no hope...unless someone does something crazy!"

The audience started chanting "Ca-ruhl! Ca-ruhl! Ca-ruhl!", whistling and applauding.

In the image, Carl rushed forward and pulled a glass case from his inventory. He maneuvered it carefully around the gem, then dropped it so that it hung in midair, supported by the floating crystal. He retreated to the corner and wrapped himself around Donut in an instinctive effort to protect her from a blast that he must have known he could not protect her from.

"Madness has occurred!" shouted the announcer. "Carl has placed the soul crystal in a Sheol Glass Reaper Case, one of the few things that could contain such a blast even for a few moments! A brilliant maneuver, that Won't. Be. Enough!"

The soul crystal cracked and light gushed out in a wave that flattened against the inside of the case like boiling syrup. The metal frame of the case began to heat up, glowing cherry red, then bright red, then an angry white. The whole thing rattled in place.

Screen-Carl rushed over and grabbed the case, screaming as the flesh of his hands instantly carbonized. Four seconds later the case was gone, vanished into his inventory. Carl collapsed to his knees and his hands healed, the blackened skin flaking away to be replaced by new, unharmed flesh.

"Another brilliant maneuver!" shouted the announcer. "Carl is really on his game today, isn't he folks? He now has a multi-kiloton explosive in his inventory with three microseconds on the clock! How will our favorite mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know crawler capitalize on that?"

The screen shifted, Carl and Donut shrinking to occupy the center quarter while images of other crawlers tiled around the edges, with me at top left. We all froze, looking up in horror as the AI spoke, its voice distinct from the announcer's, and gave us the 'twenty minutes to run' speech.

The floor collapsed around Carl and Donut, dropping them to ground level and leaving them shaken up but not damaged. They got outside the wreckage and the image froze.

"Our heroes have escaped! Or have they? No saferooms, no Desperado club, and only twenty minutes to get to safety! They'll need to run fast and not stop for anything!"

There was a gasp from the audience.

The scene unfroze. All of Carl's clothes promptly disappeared into his inventory except for his non-magical leather jacket. The audience broke up in surprised laughter as he started running, his naked boy-bits bouncing freely.

"What an interesting choice!" the announcer said. "Looks like Carl wants some better air flow, eh folks? Or maybe he just knows what the ladies want!"

Wolf whistles rang out, along with some booing.

The scene showed the run to the stairwell and our subsequent escape with the redundant bits cut out. We saw the momentary fight with the Ruin Flockers, everyone's escape down the stairs, and Carl ordering me to use the detonator. It tracked in on me as I clicked the button, an expression of terror on my face, and then cut to a close-up of Carl looking straight into the camera, fierce and determined, with his lips skinned back from his teeth in an angry scowl. It wasn't the expression he'd been wearing at the time, so they were cutting in other footage.

The image froze and then faded away as the lights came back up.

"It looks like we now have definitive proof that sex tape with the late Maestro was indeed a snick," Odette mused. The audience applauded madly. Donut was lying on her back on her chair, howling with laughter as Carl blushed all the way down his chest.

"We had to strip down!" Carl objected. "The blasts were going to blow up our magical stuff and all my clothes are magical."

"Of course they were, Carl," Donut said, patting his arm with one paw. "We all know that you don't have an exhibitionist bone in your body. Right, folks?" She tipped the audience a wink and everyone laughed uproariously.

"Before I show you what happened next," Odette said, "I want to bring out the newest member of the Royal Court of Princess Donut. Everyone say hello to Katia. And welcome back to the show, Mongo!"

A spotlight lanced down on me and I froze. Fortunately, no one was looking at me because Mongo had just stepped out of thin air. He looked around, saw the audience, and squawked at them with a head-down shake of his feathers as if to put them in their place. They loved it, shouting and hooting and hollering and applauding furiously. The dinosaur seemed non-plussed by their reaction and simply curled up on the floor in front of Donut's chair and put one wing over his head to block out the light and noise.

"So, Katia, tell us about yourself," Odette said. "It says here you're from Iceland and you're an art professor."

"Yes." I felt like I should add something to that but I wasn't sure what. All I could see was the audience staring back, more than ten thousand strong and waiting to judge me.

"Great! We saw some of your earlier fights before you met up with the Royal Court. You seem to be adapting well to the dungeon. What was your most memorable moment so far?"

"Um..." What did I say to that? Meeting Carl and Donut? Race selection and becoming a doppelganger? Meeting Hekla and feeling safe? Meeting Gene and feeling unsafe?

"Look at that, folks! So many amazing moments it's hard to pick one. Katia, you traveled with Hekla for the second floor and now you're with Carl and Donut. How does it feel to work with three different top-tier crawlers?"

God, what did I say? I could say that I had felt safer with Hekla and Carl didn't seem to like me very much, but that seemed unwise. I could say that I was lucky?

"Good?" I said, immediately cursing myself.

"Excellent! Well, keep it up and I'm sure you'll keep doing great." She turned back to Carl and Donut. "So, guys. You were only gone for two days, but a lot can happen in two days. Isn't that right?" The audience laughed, but it sounded more nervous than amused. "What do you think happened after you hit that detonator?"

Carl shrugged. "I was hoping for an explosion at the warehouse, but I know the hobgoblin pus is a magical detonator, so I suspect maybe it was fried, and nothing happened."

Odette clapped, her arms having to reach up over those revolting breasts in order to touch. "Smart, smart boy."

The audience had gone completely silent and I felt a chill fist grip my stomach.

"Believe it or not, you're supposed to be dead," Odette said sympathetically. "You're right. Hobgoblin pus is a magical trigger. By all accounts, it should have been rendered inert by the initial precursor burst. And if by chance it hadn't, that second burst, which activated all magical weapons, should have set it off, which would've exploded the dynamite, which would have killed Remex the Grand, triggering that final, cataclysmic explosion."

"But that didn't happen," Carl said.

"No. It did not. The Borant Corporation immediately filed an appeal against the AI's decision to rule the detonator exempt from both of those blasts. Just before you came on today, Borant was overruled by a Syndicate court. In addition, and even more importantly, the court ruled the achievements you received as a result of the explosion are also just, and the rewards must be paid."

Oh god. The rewards must have been significant enough to be a problem, or else Odette wouldn't have mentioned them. Was Borant going to take it out on us?

"Achievements? Rewards?" Donut asked, completely missing the implications.

"But," Odette continued, ignoring the question. "Per Syndicate rules, the host is allowed a single veto each season. This is important. It's almost always used to throw an appeal in their favor on the tenth or deeper floors. It has never been used this early. And Borant was forced to use their free veto on the prize decision, which reversed the ruling. So unfortunately for you guys, you won't be receiving what you should. Still, everybody saw what happened. Everybody saw what you were rewarded. Sadly, you won't be getting it."

That...might actually end up being good for us. If Borant wasn't having to shell out then they shouldn't be as angry.

"What?" Donut said. "I don't understand. What are we not getting?"

"Okay, first let's watch what really happened after Katia pressed that button."

The screen reappeared, this time showing what was clearly a news show. Just like Earth it had a news desk with a very sober-looking host, except this host was not human. He was humanoid and human-sized, although impossibly thin. His body was alabaster white and my recent experience at trying to sculpt flesh allowed me to spot the uncanniness of his skin: It lacked hairs, texture, or pores. He looked like a smooth plastic doll with giant black eyes glimmering with oily sheen. He had a vertical ridge on his head, running from between his eyes up and over. I wasn't sure if it was a natural part of him or some sort of scar.

"And while the tragic, controversial tale of Remex the Grand finally comes to an end, a new controversy has erupted in Borant's Dungeon Crawler World," the alien news anchor said somberly while looking straight into the camera. "A last-minute decision by a trio of trapped Crawlers ended in an unexpected result. A result with potentially disastrous, real-life consequences for Borant. Watch this."

The screen flashed back to the footage of me activating the detonator, then it cut to show the warehouse detonating. One inset showed hundreds of Swordsmen guards being knocked to the ground. A second inset showed the second floor where Remex had become nothing but a shrieking, pulsing yellow silhouette. He cried out as the dynamite went off, and then the scene cut to the outside as the dust climbed into the sky, blocking out the view of where the warehouse had been.

The newscaster continued. "A controlled blast at the last second, which caused a mass soul crystal release from the fallen Swordsmen, greatly tempered the resulting wild magic explosion, causing it to be much less destructive than originally intended. In the end, thousands of NPC and several dozen Crawler lives were potentially saved by the action."

Carl groaned. "Does that mean we didn't have to go down the stairs?"

"Nope," Odette said. She gestured with one hand, freezing the news anchor footage, and then looked at us with what might have been sympathy. "Do you know how many Celestial prize boxes have been given out in the history of Dungeon Crawler World?"

Donut leaped to her feet. Mongo also jumped up, tail waving in excitement.

"Oh my god, shut up, Odette," Donut said. "Are you saying we're getting screwed out of a Celestial box?" She turned to the audience. "This is an outrage!"

Odette nodded. "The answer is 2,145. That's how many Celestial boxes of any kind have been given out. I myself was the recipient of three. The record to a single Crawler is four. And before this crawl, the most that have ever been given out in a single season is 18. That was a Naga season, long, long ago. You might not be aware of this, but the host company is required to pay taxes to the Syndicate on each and every non-sponsored box given out. They are given a handful of free Celestials each season, but anything above that comes with a pretty hefty bill for the showrunners. And each one is more expensive than the last. That's usually offset by a million other line items that flow into the production. For example, we pay an exorbitant amount to get your butts in that chair."

"As you should," Donut said, her voice still filled with anger. The audience laughed.

"It has been over 250 cycles since the Blood Sultanate of the Naga ran the first Crawl to actually lose money, and they are still recovering from it. They haven't run a season since then. They only have a place in Faction Wars because they purchased a permanent spot early on."

The Blood Sultanate? Those were the ones that we were going to have to kill because of Donut's tiara.

"For just 18 boxes?" Carl said. "That seems over the top."

"That season was cursed for multiple reasons, but we don't need to get into that. Anyway, the game is supposed to be difficult. Legendary boxes are handed out like candy because they're cheap, but Celestial boxes are an order of magnitude better. The prize in a single box can render an underperforming Crawler almost immortal, practically unbeatable until they reach the tenth floor. If they capriciously hand them out, more crawlers will make it to the deeper levels, and the showrunners both drag the season out and earn much more money. So the Syndicate places a heavy premium on such items. And while the AI usually chooses the prizes, the writers running the show are responsible for creating the circumstances in which the boxes are earned. So it's a careful balance."

Interesting. The AI was trying to help us...or maybe it was simply trying to screw Borant. Either answer was to our benefit.

"It's just three boxes," Donut grumbled. "I don't see why they had to waste their stupid veto on keeping me, Carl, and Katia from getting an awesome prize."

Odette cocked her head. "Maybe I should show you the rest of that news report." She waved her hand, and the frozen scene resumed. It cut away from the news anchor to show an Asian, half-elf crawler drag himself into a saferoom. His health was in the red, his right leg was shattered, and he was bleeding profusely from a head wound. The properties above his head said he was Quan Ch, the level 15 Imperial Security Trooper. He was the one who Donut had kicked from the quest chat for calling us assholes.

"He survived," Donut said. "I'm glad. I felt kind of bad about what I did."

"What do you mean?" Carl asked.

"Oh, I blocked him from the chat after he called us assholes," she said. "You can't let people in your chatrooms get out of control, Carl. You need to rule with an iron paw."

I smiled at the phrase. I tended to agree—I'd seen more than one interdepartmental email chain get awfully heated until one of the deans stepped in to calm things down.

The newscast continued. "As a result of surviving the event quest, all Crawlers in the initial blast zone were promised a Platinum Quest Box. But as you're about to see, the survivors received something a little better than that."

Quan Ch pulled up his achievements.

New achievement! Bandit!

Screw Hadji. Hadji was a little bitch anyway. You have completed a quest, but it was completed in a way unusual enough to trigger the Bandit Achievement! Unlike the real Bandit, who is usually instrumental in helping Jonny Quest complete his tasks, you didn't actually do anything to deserve this prize. But that's okay because you're still getting it. This is one of the rare achievements that can be rewarded more than once.

Reward: Your Platinum Quest box has been upgraded two times to a Celestial Quest Box!

The loot box shimmered into existence with a fanfare of angelic voices, looking like the Ark of the Covenant done all in ivory and gold. Quan's expression was awed as he carefully opened it and drew forth a robe of shimmering colors that gave off a a soft white aura. Quan put it on and immediately floated off the ground. Wispy magical wings grew from his back and his left hand glowed blue.

The newscaster continued. "An incredible total of 83 Celestial boxes were awarded as a result of the quest getting a rare double upgrade. Borant immediately appealed, but not before that one box was opened, thus putting Borant on the hook for that one. The Syndicate court has convened an emergency session to determine if the beleaguered company will have to pay for the remaining 82 boxes. If so, it is certain there will be no financial recovery for the once-mighty Borant system."

"So that jerk got a free box for our hard work!" Donut cried. "Are you kidding me? And we don't get anything? Are we still getting a Platinum box?"

"I'm afraid not," Odette said. "Their veto negated all prizes. Nobody is receiving a loot box from that quest except that one crawler. That same night, they issued a patch that disabled both the Hadji and Bandit upgrade achievements."

Carl laughed and we all swiveled to stare at him.

"It's not funny, Carl," Donut said furiously. Her entire body shook with rage.

"Why is that so amusing to you, Carl?" Odette asked.

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter what we do. How hard we work. We keep getting screwed. Losing out sucks, but I've come to expect it. All that matters is getting stronger, getting more experience. We messed that up by getting involved in quests when we should be grinding. We're not going to make that mistake again. From now on, it's all about progression and training."

Odette replied, "You probably didn't miss out on as much experience as you think. That magical burst was muted, but it was still big. You may not have received prizes or experience from the quest, but you still got credit for the actual explosion. Because you technically caused it, your team received a handful of experience for every mob that it killed, including all those swordsmen guards."

She waved her hand, and our stats and level appeared over our heads. The audience gasped, and then broke out into applause.

Carl was now level 27, having gone up six levels. Donut had gotten seven, taking her from from 19 to 26.

I had gone up twelve.

I gaped at the shimmering 'Level 21' hanging over my head. I was no longer useless. In one moment I had caught up with where I should have been and vaulted ahead. Completely unearned power had been rained down upon me by the hand of a generous providence. Was it the AI, keeping me alive until it could maneuver me back to Hekla so that I could deliver the ring?

Odette turned to the audience. "As I promised you guys at the start of the show, I have exclusive, breaking news to share. The fourth floor will be opening up in less than an hour, but I have received a tentative draft of the leaderboard. Would you like to see it?"

"Yes! Yes we would," Donut said. She was hopping up and down, anger forgotten and her mature persona banished in favor of childhood glee. The audience loved it, roaring their approval.

Odette raised an ebony-skinned finger in warning. "So, bear in mind, this won't be official until the next recap episode, and as you all know, things can change quickly in the dungeon, so this might shift. But I can reveal this is the current working copy. Nobody knows the exact formula for the leaderboard. It's a mix of views, favorites, level, and money earned. But the list usually matches pretty well with the most popular players in the game. So are you ready?"

"Carl," Donut said, shaking with excitement. "We're going to be on it. I just know it!"

Odette waved her hand, and the top-10 list appeared.

Current Leaderboard.

Lucia Mar – Lajabless – Black Inquisitor General – Level 29 – 1,000,000 Hekla – Amazonian – Shield Maiden – Level 28 – 500,000 Prepotente – Caprid – Forsaken Aerialist – Level 27 – 400,000 Florin – Crocodilian – Shotgun Messenger – Level 24 – 300,000 Miriam Dom – Human – Shepherd – Level 27 – 200,000 Carl – Primal – Compensated Anarchist – Level 27 – 100,000 Donut – Cat – Former Child Actor – Level 26 – 100,000 Ifechi – Human – Physicker – Level 18 – 100,000 Li Jun – Human – Street Monk – Level 25 – 100,000 Elle McGib – Frost Maiden – Blizzardmancer – Level 13 – 100,000

Donut squealed with delight. "Carl, we're in the top ten! And Hekla is number two!" She turned to the audience. "I love her. She demonstrates such dignity. Such grace. Plus I can't believe that ugly Lucia Mar is number one. Isn't she just awful?"

The audience laughed.

"Who is Prepotente?" Carl asked, skimming down the list with his eyes.

"Carl, is that who I think it is?" Donut asked, pointing at the final name.

He nodded, but said nothing. I quickly smothered the feeling of annoyance at being left out.

"That's our show, folks!" Odette said. "Tomorrow we will have an engineer from Borant on to discuss the ins and outs of this new, exciting level. I don't yet know what it is, but rumor has it we'll see something that's never been attempted before. We'll also have a pair of crawler special guests. They're not on the top ten list, but these up-and-comers are quickly becoming new favorites. Here's a hint: they're twins!" The crowd roared.

The audience faded away. "I really need to talk to you guys, but I only have a few minutes," Odette said. "I'm going on my own interview in five, on a different program. We'll be live-commenting on the opening of the floor. I'm going to get flak for not asking you about the assassination attempt, but Borant said it was off-limits. And Mordecai has reiterated that point several times."

"Do you just, like, watch him all day?" Donut asked.

"I do. As much as I can. This next floor is going to be especially dangerous." She looked at Carl. "Be careful with that gauntlet. It has the power to summon the war god Grull if you use it against any of his worshipers. They'll start appearing on this floor. And King Rust has apparently just spent a lot of money on a deity sponsorship. The Skull Empire doesn't usually purchase those, so it might be an attempt to get to you. I don't know which god they've sponsored, but if I was still a gambler, I'd bet on Grull."

Gauntlet?

"Can the god get to us if I don't accidentally summon him?" Carl asked.

"Probably not. Not on this floor. Ask Mordecai how that all works." She paused. "He has a lot of experience in the subject, unfortunately."

Lexis entered the room. "Katia, dear," the production assistant said. "Can you follow me, please? I need to show you the return procedures. Donut, you can assist if you'd like."

"Uh, sure," I said. I got up and nodded awkwardly to Odette, then followed the elf-like woman out of the room so that Odette could talk to Carl behind my back.

"Bye Odette!" Donut said as she and Mongo followed me.

Lexis led us back into the green room, then turned to face us. "This production trailer is shared, so we need to vacate after the show ends. We usually have a few minutes grace period, during which you're welcome to help yourself to the buffet or use the bathroom. You'll be transported when you're ready or once our time runs out, whichever comes first. If time runs out then you'll be transported even if you're on the loo, so it's good to go before the show if you can."

She gestured to the buffet table. "Please do help yourself. We try to tailor the buffet to our guests' preferences, so if there are things you would prefer or disprefer, feel free to let me know and we'll try to have it for next time."

"It was lovely, Lexis," Donut said with a gracious wave of her paw. "The treats were delicious, and I'm sure Katia enjoyed her food as well. Didn't you, Katia?"

"What? Oh. Yes. Thank you, it was very good."

I couldn't help but stare around the room, wondering how the teleportation worked. There were no mechanisms that I could see. Also, things had felt completely stable in the studio but now the room was rocking again, revealing that we were on a boat riding the slow rise and fall of the ocean.

Carl came through the door looking grim.

"What's wrong, Carl?" Donut asked.

"Tell you later. Lexis, any chance you can turn our inventories back on before you send us home? I'd like to get my clothes on before we appear in the middle of a nest of orcs."

"I'm sorry, no. Don't worry, you will arrive in a safe area where you will have several minutes to orient yourself before encountering any threats."

He grimaced. "Don't suppose you can put us in a saferoom?"

She shook her elfin head. "I'm sorry."

"Fine. Let's do this."

The world became static and suddenly we were somewhere else.