Chapter 201

I look a deep breath, and the line of boxes appeared in front of me, moving all the way to the back of the room. The celestial box sat at the end, physically huge. It was in the form of a giant, rotating skull with glowing eyes. My view counter was completely spiked, which was unusual for being in a saferoom.

The line of adventurer boxes started opening, giving me several good healing and mana spells, a bunch of those Phase Through Wall scrolls, Invisibility potions, and tons of junk items.

The quest box from the Tina quest was the same item Donut received, which was a coupon for a free Town Upgrade. That wasn’t something we’d be able to use right now.

The Vengeance of the Daughter quest had said the reward was going to be the ability to loot the High Elf castle, but we’d zapped the place down to the ninth floor, and it had likely landed someplace inconvenient. I’d also received a Gold Quest Box for it as well.

The box opened, and a group of items came out. I recognized what they were immediately.

“Carl, is that what I think it is?” Donut asked with disgust.

“I believe so,” I said as the stick and poke tattoo kit entered my inventory. These were the same items Edgar the tortoise used to place the magical tattoos onto Tsarina Signet.

“Disgusting,” Donut said.

“I agree,” Samantha said. She’d suddenly appeared on the table, watching the boxes open. She had a Mongo feather in her hair for some reason.

The gold pacifist’s box contained a small upgrade patch for my jacket. It was a round peace symbol. Donut made a scoffing comment about the quality.

The gold scab box contained a skill potion that disappeared before I could examine it.

The orgy box gave me another one of the mercenary coupons.

The platinum Here’s-Some-Good-Shit-Because-You’re-Gonna-Need-It-Box also contained the same thing Donut had received. A Cosmic Buff potion. I nodded to Mordecai, who could barely contain his excitement. He wanted to examine it at his table before I used it.

The platinum apostate box, which I’d received for not getting killed by Diwata, contained a ring. A nipple ring.

“Ha!” Donut said triumphantly. “That’s what you get!” She looked up at the ceiling. “Now that his nipples are full, there are other places he’s not pierced yet.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Wait until I receive a legendary spay-your-cat-at-home kit.”

“That’s not funny, Carl. Don’t even make jokes like that.”

I had three boxes left. Here we go.

The legendary boss box for killing Imogen moved before me. Little metal bands around the box slipped and moved, opening with a ridiculous amount of fanfare.

The glowing, leather wrist band fell onto the table with a heavy thump. It disappeared into my inventory.

The legendary Scourge box opened with the same, gaudy fanfare. This one I’d received for killing the most hunters on the previous floor. It contained 20,000 gold, two crafting table upgrade coupons, and a steampunk-style chest that hissed with clockwork gears.

“Weird,” I said. “A box inside a box.”

“It’s a crafting table kit,” Mordecai said. “It’ll contain a bunch of rare supplies for one of your tables.”

“Huh,” I said. That didn’t seem legendary quality to me, especially compared to what Donut had received.

The celestial predator box appeared in front of me. It was in the form of a glowing and sparkling demon skull the size of a barrel. It spun in circles, twisting faster and faster as the top rose off of it. Lights shone out of it. Donut and Samantha oohed and ahhed at the light show. Mongo made a terrified peep and ran to the back of the room.

The skull on the box opened its mouth and made a hissing noise as the whole box exploded into a display of fireflies, which rushed away and disappeared.

All that was left was a patch.

A full-sized backpatch, designed to be placed on the back of my jacket. That was it.

I grabbed it before it could disappear. Donut stepped forward and sniffed at it. She made a face.

“The stitch quality is just divine,” She said. “But the image itself is quite disgusting. Are you really going to put that on your back? And there’s some odd stitching on there that’s transparent. I can’t tell what it shows. You’re going to look like one of those punk rock people. You’re not a punk rock person, Carl. You don’t have the right skull shape for a mohawk.”

“Interesting,” was all Mordecai said.

My sleeveless jacket was called the Enchanted Anarchist’s Battle Rattle. Before I even examined the patch itself, I knew this was a good prize, no matter what it was. I received +1 to all my stat points for each patch I affixed to my jacket. I had five total: the earth symbol, the arrows, the bomb symbol, the anti-vampire goat patch, and the new peace symbol one. Affixing a full-sized back patch to the jacket would double the stat point boost benefit.

The celestial patch was a thick, black piece of fabric embroidered with a white pile of skulls from various creatures, rising up into a pyramid. I rubbed my hand across it, and the entire fabric was covered in clear stitching, almost like it was sewn with fiberoptic wire.

The Scavenger’s Daughter.

Upgrade Patch. Back Patch.

This is a divine item.

This is a unique item.

This is a fleeting item.

You may only affix one back patch at a time.

This patch depicts a pile of scary skulls, all stacked up nice and neat. I wonder if there’s a story there?

If this upgrade patch is affixed to an eligible garment, it will imbue the following upgrades:

(Hidden until it is affixed and then worn.)

Warning: Upgrade patches are fleeting items. You may remove them, but they will be destroyed in the process.

Warning #2! This is a divine item. This means it gains differing abilities, buffs, and possibly debuffs depending on your proximity to certain deities and demons. It makes for new and exciting combinations!

“What the hell, man?” I muttered.

I’d have to install it to figure out what it actually did. As I slid the patch over to Mordecai, along with the cosmic buff potion, I received a new achievement.

New Achievement! Fashion of the Gods!

You’ve received a divine item! This is an item that might’ve once been worn by a god. Or sneezed on by a god. Or used to wipe a god’s booty, etc. You get the point.

Divine items behave differently than normal ones. They usually hide what they do until you equip it. The good news is, these upgrades are usually great and plentiful. They also gain new and exciting powers when one is in the presence of divinity.

The bad news is, certain deities may inflict nasty debuffs on you instead. And there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Don’t worry, we programmed out the head exploding debuff this season. That one was caused by Yarilo. At least I think we programmed it out. Actually, I don’t remember.

Reward: You now have something new to be anxious about.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Divine items are the best items,” Mordecai said. “Don’t worry about the potential debuffs until the next floor.”

“It really is ghastly,” Donut said.

“I like it,” Samantha said. “It’s something Louis would wear on a date.”

“What?” I asked as I pulled out my new items.

The upgrade potion was for plus three to my Find Traps skill, which moved it to 13. I would see pretty much any trap in the dungeon unless it was placed and deliberately hidden by a trapmaster. That was good.

I pulled out the group of items for the tattoo kit. It was a long, sharp needle. Some ink. A few stick things. A thing that looked like a piece of sanding paper. I had no idea how any of this worked.

Enchanted Prison Tattoo Kit.

So, you’re doing time. Hey, I’m not one to judge.

You wonder, how did I get here? How did I mess my life up so much? You figure, now is the day I’m going to turn everything around. Now is the day I’m going to make certain I get on the right path. I’m gonna get out of here and get a job and make my family proud. Let me commemorate this important occasion by letting SkullFuck from the next cell come over and etch a poorly-drawn dragon on the side of my face.

This kit allows an artist to create a tattoo of their choosing upon the skin of a willing or unwilling target. Tattoo artistry is a skill that can imbue all sorts of magical buffs and upgrades. Or it can just make certain that your next mugshot goes viral. It all comes down to the talent of the artist.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.

“Well, I certainly hope it’s not give yourself another disgusting tattoo,” Donut said. She paused. “Hey, the dungeon stole my joke! I said the viral thing when you got one of your other tattoos!”

I grunted. “They say the sincerest form of flattery is when someone copies you.”

Donut scoffed. “No, Carl. That’s just something thieves say to make themselves feel better about stealing other people’s stuff. The sincerest form of flattery is when people cry when they meet you. Or when they give you money.”

I put it away for now.

I picked up the peace symbol patch. It was small and round, almost identical in size to my earth patch. It was just black with a white, screen-printed peace symbol on it.

Upgrade Patch. Small.

This patch depicts a peace symbol. Ahh, isn’t that cute?

Buzz off, dirty hippie. Go be smelly somewhere else. The Grateful Dead sucked anyway. And so does Phish.

If this upgrade patch is affixed to an eligible garment, it will imbue the following upgrades:

Neutral mobs are less likely to fall into aggro.

+10% to Dexterity.

+10% skill in playing the bongos.

Warning: Upgrade patches are fleeting items. You may remove them, but they will be destroyed in the process.

“That was unnecessarily rude,” I said.

“I don’t like Phish, either,” Donut said. “Angel the cocker spaniel’s owner was always listening to them and smoking weed. It made Angel even more paranoid, and let me tell you, that was the last thing that dog needed.”

Donut continued to talk about the dog as I picked up the large, steampunk chest. The thing was ridiculously heavy. I hesitantly lifted the lid and peered inside. The description came in a different voice, like a television commercial.

Doctor Ratchet’s Automaton Build-It Kit!

This kit contains enough items to create over fifteen automatons! Fun for the whole family! From personal servants to flame-throwing sentinel droids, this kit has a little of everything. The only limit is your imagination. And your insurance policy.

It then listed off dozens of parts. I recognized several of them as things I needed for some of the recipes in that instructional book I’d stolen from the production facility.

“Excellent,” I said.

The next item was an forearm bracer. This one was black and short and covered with little buckles. I already had two. The one that formed my Grull gauntlet, and the one on my left arm formed a buckler shield that supposedly disarmed opponents 1.5% of the time, but I’d never gotten it to work. I’d gotten that one from Katia. If I wanted to equip this new one, I’d have to ditch one of those two.

Enchanted Right Back Atcha Personal Shield.

You ever meet one of those dudes who is always super quick to take offense to everything? You gotta walk on eggshells around him. Has some job where he wears a shirt and tie even though he looks like he just woke up in an alley somewhere.

He’s always saying, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He hits on anything with a pulse. He wants people to call him T-Bone or Bulldog or something. He dies of a heart attack in his mid-forties.

You get my drift.

Well, this little auto buckler is the armor version of that. This auto-deploying, overly-enthusiastic, small-sized buckler has a chance to catch both physical and magic bolt attacks and toss them right back at the caster.

It’s not perfect, but who the hell are you to judge?

Equipping this small buckler imbues the following effects:

Catch physical attacks (Success percentage based off user’s dexterity)

Catch magical bolt attacks (Success percentage based off user’s intelligence.)

All stopped attacks have a 75% chance to reflect back to attacker.

All successfully reflected attacks have a 25% chance to double in power.

Attacks must be caught with the buckler in order to work.

“That’s much better than your existing shield, and the bracer matches your other one better,” Mordecai said.

“Agreed,” I said as I pulled the Enchanted Auto Buckler of the Peach Pit off my left arm. I’d toss it onto our growing pile of weapons and armor for our faction wars team.

I picked up the small nipple ring. It was a silver ring with an eyeball hanging from it. I tried not to sigh out loud. Donut was correct. It served me right for making fun of her own ring. I’d gotten this one from the platinum apostate box.

Enchanted Nipple Ring of the Defiler

This may only be equipped on a crawler who has been Marked for death by a god.

Hey, that’s you!

All nipple rings must be manually affixed the first time they are equipped.

Wearing this ring imbues the following effects:

Instantly know the religious affiliation of all nearby mobs and crawlers.

Allows the destruction of church shrines without further ill effects from deities.

+25% damage against all clerics.

The ability to cast Black Nimbus once an hour.

Li Na could do all of these things already. I already knew what this spell was going to say when I pulled it up.

Black Nimbus.

Type: Involuntary Abjuration

Cost: Item Based

Duration: Instantaneous casting. Affected target will suffer the effects of this spell for (30 + [Caster’s Intelligence+Constitution] – [Target’s Intelligence/2]) Seconds.

Cooldown: Once Every Hour

Target: Single target.

Effect: Has the same effect as wearing a shirt for the band Cattle Decapitation to church. Instantly removes target from the blessing of their deity and all associated buffs and effects. Will make it so target is unable to physically enter church or temple while the spell is in effect. Higher levels of this spell increase the possibility of forcing a smite upon the target.

Warning! You probably don’t want to cast this on members of the same religion more than two or three times in a row.

“Hmm,” Mordecai said. “Lots of divinity-themed items. That’s never good. But you all got good stuff. Carl, get that patch on the jacket and see what it does.”

“I’m already on it,” I said as I pulled off my jacket.

~

“Really, Carl,” Donut said as I leaned over the table. She sat on my shoulder and made little noises of disapproval each time I stuck the needle into the jacket. “You might as well have Bomo or Samantha sew this on. Or maybe we can blindfold Mordecai and get him drunk and have him do it. It’s not that difficult. Your stitching is just abysmal! No, no, no! The angle of entry is crucial!”

“You know what,” I said through gritted teeth, “Why don’t you go check on your social media board while I do this? See what the Princess Posse is saying about our faction wars team.”

She gasped and bounded off. Samantha and Mongo both rushed after her. I watched their dots move off on my map. As I did, I realized there was the white dot with a green cross of a hired mercenary on the local map. An extra dot.

“Mordecai,” I asked. “Who the hell is in your room?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said sheepishly. “I was gonna tell you about that. With my upgraded quarters, I was able to hire a room attendant. She has her own space off to the side of my quarters. It’s not important.”

“Who is it? Did you like hire a hooker or something?”

“No,” he said, sounding offended. “Don’t even say that. Of course not. It’s nothing like that. Concentrate on your sewing. It is possible to ruin the item, so you do need to be careful.”

I grunted. I placed the peace symbol on the bottom of the jacket next to the bomb symbol. I was pretty sure it didn’t matter what order these were affixed, but I wanted to be double certain that the back patch effect caught all four of the regular patches, so I did the small one first.

I flipped over the jacket and smoothed out the divine patch. It hummed with potential energy. I waded through my messages as I sewed. Donut was already in the message groups, live narrating some of the posts she’d received on the intergalactic internet. She was in the middle of telling everyone that there was a new fan group dedicated to Elle, which was comprised of mostly males. Apparently the whole old-lady-turned-into-a-dominatrix-fairy trope was a thing. Elle was not impressed.

Florin received another shotgun upgrade. I wasn’t clear exactly what it was, but he was pretty stoked about it. He wouldn’t answer any other questions about his situation. Just that he was in Ecuador, and that he was in contact with Lucia Mar.

Katia had received an item that allowed her to move really fast. Neither Louis nor Britney—who were both on Katia’s team—had opened their boxes yet. Both were still broken up about the death of Firas.

Katia: I’m worried about Britney. The burn on her face still hasn’t healed, and she hasn’t stopped crying. She’s just sitting there, clutching onto Louis.

Carl: Maybe have Imani talk to her. She’s pretty good with that stuff.

Katia: Yeah, I already asked her to come over. We’ll see if it helps.

Donut: WE BETTER KEEP AN EYE ON HER. I KNOW A VILLAIN ORIGIN STORY WHEN I SEE ONE.

Li Na had received some robe upgrade that basically made it so she could fly.

Tran, who was also on Katia’s team, was also in a terrible state. He had lost his legs in the final moments of the last floor. Daniel Bautista was with him, helping him deal with it. Katia said Tran was more upset about the loss of his friend Gwendolyn Duet, whom he’d been with since early on. I sent him a note asking if he was okay, but he didn’t respond. Katia said he’d opened his boxes and had received a floating wheelchair in his pacifist box. It was the same sort of thing Odette used to zip around when she was in her human form.

I was starting to get a little worried about all this great gear. Mordecai thought it was in response to the rising difficulty. But just how more difficult was it going to get? We needed to get out there and find out. So far, not too many people had started venturing out.

“Hey, Mordecai,” I said as I rounded the last corner on the patch. I was using a thick, white thread and spacing the stitches the best I could. “Do you think Samantha’s presence will have an effect on my jacket?”

“Doubtful,” he said. “She’s only half formed, and she’s not a true deity anyway. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.”

“We’ll see,” I said as I affixed the last stitch. The Scavenger’s Daughter patch glowed for a moment, indicating it had been properly installed. I released a breath I didn’t know I had been holding onto. I pulled the jacket on. I immediately felt my strength increase. A new bar appeared in my interface, directly below my mana. It was in the same place the blood bar had been on the previous floor, and it looked similar. The bar was empty, and it was labeled Soul Essence.

You have equipped a divine item.

There are no deities in the area.

The Scavenger’s Daughter Patch has gained the following upgrades:

All patch stat point benefits are now doubled.

In addition:

Plus 25 points to Dexterity.

Plus 25 points to Strength.

You will receive a notification every time a deity enters the area.

The Climb benefit.

The Soul Reaper benefit.

The Mysterious Bone Key benefit.

This patch will imbue additional, varying benefits when it is in the presence of divine entities.

“Huh,” I said as I explored the three benefits.

“So, what’d you get?” Mordecai asked.

“Climb, Soul Reaper, and Mysterious Bone Key.”

Mordecai blinked at me with his single eye.

“Oh, shit. Soul Reaper?” he asked, his voice full of wonder.

“That’s what it says. Is that good?”

He nodded. “Oh, it’s good all right. But you gotta be careful with it. It can be more dangerous than that berserking spell Donut got. Read the description for yourself. I dunno what that last one does.”

I only knew what the first one did.

Climb.

You can climb stuff better. Ya-hoo. What an exciting benefit. I guess that makes you a monkey.

I grunted and clicked the next one.

Soul Reaper.

Yeah, baby. Now we’re talking.

For every creature you kill with a melee attack, the Scavenger’s Daughter patch is charged with the essence of the fallen. Once fully charged, you may transfer this energy to a single melee attack, which will completely drain all the essence. This attack will have varying effects depending on the nature of the essence stored.

The associated essence bar is now visible in your interface. The total amount of soul essence you may store increases each time your essence bar is topped off and then drained. In other words, the more stuff you kill, the stronger you get.

Warning: you know how asbestos is really bad for you? Like, it doesn’t hurt you immediately, but it builds up in your lungs and eventually screws you over? Actually, you know what? Just ignore this warning. Forget I said anything. Carrying corrupted essence around on your back builds character. You already have a ring that’s doing much worse to you anyway.

“Just make sure you drain the essence bar each time it fills up, and you’ll be fine,” Mordecai said. “That skill is ridiculously powerful. Just don’t store the stuff for too long. I once saw a crawler kill a group of gorgons and fill her essence reserve with their souls, and then she turned around and killed a country boss with a single attack. It turned the whole thing to stone and then shattered. Now read me that last benefit. I don’t know what it is.”

Mysterious Bone Key

This benefit may only be used once for obvious reasons.

Creates a one-time-use key to open a lock. Any lock. Any lock in the dungeon.

WARNING!: (Notice how I used ALL CAPS for the warning?) Using this benefit will destroy both the patch and the item it is attached to. That means the jacket and all those ugly little patches inexpertly sewn to it.

Uh, it also uses a bone from the user’s body to create the key. The more difficult the lock, the bigger the bone it uses. It might just be a finger. Or your clavicle. Or your femur. No biggie.

This bone will not grow back. So make sure it’s a lock you really, really want to open.

“Uh,” I said after reading it to Mordecai. “We’re gonna mark that as a last resort item.”

“That item is really, really good,” Mordecai said. “But it’s going to be hard to use. It’s not as straightforward as Quan’s celestial robe. That happens. This has the potential to be much better. It just won’t be easy.”

“It never is.”

Donut: THIS IS AN OUTRAGE.

I sighed.

Carl: What is it this time?

“This is an outrage!” Donut repeated as she burst from her room. She jumped onto the table. “Carl, do something.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Our flag! They were talking about it online, and I forgot that each squad gets a bunch of flags to stick into the bad guys on this floor. We don’t get to design the flag. They do it for us! Look at this!”

The small flag appeared and landed on the counter.

I started to laugh.