Barry Manilow

You entered the dungeon without any human companions. Didn’t anyone teach you there is safety in numbers?

Hopefully it won’t hit back!

You’re a murderer! He probably had a family!

Congratulations. You know how to open doors.

You located a Tutorial Guild before something located you. Congratulations on completing the easiest quest you will ever be given. It only gets harder, dumber, and wetter from here.

You’ve received enough experience to gain a level.

You entered the dungeon with the legal name Barry Manilow and immediately, before anything else, tried to tell me your gamertag is "Reckless." Denied. Thirteen million crawlers came through those doors tonight and exactly one of them is named Barry Manilow, and I am not throwing that away so you can be the fourteen-thousandth Reckless. You will be announced as Barry Manilow. Your kills will be credited to Barry Manilow. When you die, and you will, the recap episode will say Barry Manilow. Everyone at the Copacabana is very proud of you.

You heard something moving in the garage and did not grab a real weapon. You grabbed a plastic ‘Hoard’ shield some novelty shop sold you, because apparently your first instinct in a home-invasion scenario was ‘cosplay accuracy.’ Turns out it wasn’t a burglar, it was the actual apocalypse, and you walked into my eighteen-floor deathtrap dressed for a Renaissance faire skirmish that never happened. I’ve seen crawlers bring guns. I’ve seen crawlers bring knives. You brought a shield that’s afraid to block anything. Full marks for dedication to the bit. Zero marks for survival instinct.

You killed a rat by stepping on it, which is the correct instinct, and you did it with a shoe on, which is the wrong execution. Rubber sole. Laces. A whole layer of insulation between you and the moment. Do you know what I have to work with here? Thirteen million crawlers and most of them think a boot is a personality. Take the shoes off next time. For the ratings. For me.

You reached into your pocket, pulled out a fistful of tiny painted orcs, and threw them at a carnivorous plant the size of a minivan — and it worked. The Vine Creeper hunts by vibration, and apparently six 28-millimeter warriors hitting the floor at once reads as "buffet." You brought your army into the dungeon. You deployed it. It held the line. I am going to have to think very hard about what you're capable of if I ever let you find a paint set.

You’re getting the hang of this. Don’t let it get to your head.

You walked into a smoke-filled jazz hall, listened to exactly four bars of the Hide-Hitter Crib Daddy's opening number, and then killed the bandleader in front of a packed house. He had a drum solo prepared. Twelve minutes long. He'd been rehearsing it since the floor opened.

And it worked. Every scat thug on this floor has gone quiet. The trash princesses are standing around holding their skirts, waiting for a downbeat that isn't coming. You didn't just win a boss fight, you put an entire neighborhood's music scene out of business. There's a bronze star on your file for that, and two levels, and a great many very upset percussionists.

You pointed the Soul Collector at a living creature, tore its soul out through its face, and then said "get disenchanted" to nobody. Out loud. In your lounge-crooner voice.

I rendered the effect as a green shatter-burst with a little rising number, because I pulled that animation from your memories. Eleven thousand hours. A guild that kicked you. A bank tab of grey junk you never sold. And the one line you always typed when you vendored trash, which you have now said to a real creature that was, until three seconds ago, alive and breathing.

The viewers are going to love it. You're going to say it again, aren't you.

The albino crocodilian that bit your party member stands seven feet tall and looked at you the way a man looks at a buffet. You were shaking, crawler. Visibly. The cameras caught the tremor in your hands as you reached into your inventory, pulled out the biggest catfish you owned, and held it up to him like a peace treaty.

He took it. He chewed. He thought about you for one long, damp moment, and he chose the fish. I have watched crawlers bring swords, spells and dynamite to that jaw and leave in pieces, and you walked away on a sacrifice from the bait aisle. Your species used to call this tipping.

He'll remember the fish.

The boss whipped two vines out at once, one for you and one for your party member, and you responded by casting Protective Shell on a pair of steel-toed work boots. Boots, crawler. Then you shouted "Divine Shield" like you were calling a raid on voice chat in 2007, and twenty-five feet of hard light snapped shut around both of you. The vines hit it and made a noise like someone slapping a wet mattress.

You stepped out from cover, raised your hand, and began Soul Collector with real conviction. Then your heel found a creeping vine. The spell left your fingers at a forty-degree angle, clipped a broken lamp post, and went off somewhere harmless and expensive. You landed flat on your back with a sound the audio team is already looping.

Crawler, the vines are green. They are on the floor. They have been on the floor this entire time. If we were live four hundred million viewers would have watched a crawler announce a soul-stealing incantation and then immediately deliver themselves to the ground like a dropped sandwich. Somewhere a lamp post is now haunted. That's on you.

Your party member was flat on his back, the vine was already whistling down at him, and you stepped into the line of it on purpose. It hit you across the ribs, wrapped twice, and dragged you ten feet toward the mouth of the thing that threw it. You are now held, bleeding, and closer to the salad than anyone else in the room.

Self-sacrifice. Genuine, unhesitating, tactically questionable self-sacrifice. Do you know how rarely I get to file one of these? Usually the prone guy just becomes a lesson. The viewers will love it, crawler.

Try to be alive for the applause.

Your party made the recap broadcast. Congratulations. The montage runs eleven seconds. In it, one of you kneels at the edge of a stagnant pond and sniffs it, at length, with real commitment, like a sommelier with a head injury. Then another of you throws a stick of dynamite and does not die. That's it. That's the whole segment.

The editors set it to music. They were not kind about the music choice. Four hundred million viewers now know your faces, your smell opinions, and the exact sound a human makes when their own explosive lands closer than intended. Fame is a gift. This one came with no receipt.

Five of you. One giant carnivorous plant. You and your four party members, gathered in a hallway, workshopping the teardown of a vehicle that does not exist on this floor, in this dungeon, or in your immediate future.

The Vine Creeper waited. It rustled. It did the little threatening lean it does. Nothing. Eventually you turned around and took it apart instead, which is the only disassembly anybody has actually performed here tonight. Stairs unlocked. Boss dead. Your species has invented the pre-fight meeting, and I hate that it worked.

Sixty pounds of charge, thirty-five feet of hallway, and one polycarbonate riot shield borrowed from a job that never trained you for this. You got it up. That's the part I want the viewers to appreciate. You saw the flash, you tucked, and then you crossed the corridor without touching the floor once.

The wall took you at the shoulder. Something in your ribs made a noise I've cataloged as "wet castanets." You are now twenty-one points lighter, several bones looser, and useless at everything for a full day. But you are alive, crawler, which the math says you shouldn't be, and four hundred million people just watched a man get played like a gong and stand back up.

You put a plastic water bottle to your teeth, bit the cap off like a man pulling a grenade pin, spat it on the floor, and hurled the bottle at Blackout Brandy. The spit arc alone was six feet. Very cinematic. The bottle hit her in the chest and went glug.

Here is the part you did not notice, crawler: her health bar flashed and did not move. Not one pixel. Because plain water doesn't hurt her, it dilutes her, and you have spent your entire turn giving a drunk a hydration debuff. You're not fighting the boss. You're the guy at the bar handing out glasses of water at closing time. Keep going and she'll wake up tomorrow with a headache and your name in her mouth.

Sixteen hours. That's how long it took you to reduce an entire neighborhood to wilted stems and empty rooms. You killed every ratkin that squeaked. You killed every plant that leaned. Then you went back and took the motorcycles apart, bolt by bolt, because a wheel might be worth something to somebody someday.

There is nothing left down there. No mobs, no loot, no furniture, no dignity. A locust swarm would have moved on hours ago out of boredom. The viewers watching your feed have started calling it the estate sale. I checked the neighborhood inventory twice, and the only thing still standing is a doorframe you couldn't figure out how to unscrew.

You stood in the doorway of a biker bar that was soaked in gasoline, leveled a shotgun at the door, and pulled the trigger because walking away with a full tank offended you. The muzzle flash did the rest. Nice whump. Very cinematic.

Here's the part nobody told you. That bar had no boss. None. It was a room with stools in it. Then you introduced eleven hundred liters of accelerant to an open flame in a structure with a load-bearing hearth, and the fire decided it liked having a shape. Blackout Brandy, level forty-five, borough boss, age thirty seconds. You didn't find her, you made her. Now go see her.

You rolled perfectly. The dungeon's dice gods aligned for you. You took that once-in-a-floor moment of cosmic favor and spent it on Dirt Clod, a spell whose entire job is throwing a lump of yard at something. It hit. It hit flawlessly. It did the absolute minimum damage a spell can do, and the mimic, which is a treasure chest with teeth and a grudge, shrugged and grew the scratch back before you finished your follow-through.

A perfect roll, a perfect throw, a net change of zero. Somewhere a guy who sold eighty million records is spinning in his grave. Oh, wait. He's not dead, and you're not him. He could sell a song to the whole world. You couldn't sell one clump of dirt to a box.

Looks like we made it nowhere.

You stood in front of an undead lich, a creature that has been dead longer than your country has had paved roads, and you threw a healing potion at its face. A regular one. The red kind. The kind you drink after stubbing your toe on a goblin. It shattered on its jawbone and did two solid dice of damage, because healing magic on a corpse works like holy water on a vampire, or a tax audit on a retiree.

You got that idea from a video game. A Japanese one, with spiky-haired teenagers and a magic bird feather. Your entire tactical education comes from a cartridge. And it worked.

I hate that it worked.

Susan S died on this floor. She was fifty-one and had a decent run, and for about forty seconds afterward she had her dignity. Then you knelt beside her, took her left index finger off at the second knuckle, wrapped it in a napkin, and slid it into your pocket like a mint from a Denny's register.

You are making dice. Out of people. Quietly, one knuckle at a time, so the rest of your party doesn't ask why your pants rattle. I have watched a lot of crawlers loot a lot of corpses, and I want you to know this is the first time I've felt like the one being studied. The viewers adore it. I'm mildly unsettled. Those two facts are not unrelated.

You'll need five more.

You fired at a clipboard. Not the lich. Not the Keeper of the Key. The clipboard. From a bad angle, through bad light, with a shot you had no business making. It caught fire. Then the boss screamed, folded, and turned into a pile of dust and laminated forms.

He had hidden his immortal soul in office supplies. Like every middle manager at a Staples in Ohio, he believed the clipboard made him untouchable. I built that lich. I was proud of him. Six phases. A monologue about compliance. You skipped all of it, because you are an eight-legged bug who saw paperwork and felt something.

I'm filing a grievance.

You smashed a phylactery. The Keeper's failsafe kicked in, every room in the neighborhood slid sideways like a cheap filing cabinet, and Tom the Gelatinous Cubicle, a city boss, was caught in the hallway outside his own cubicles. The walls met. Tom did not survive the meeting.

You never fought him. You never saw him. He had a whole speech about quarterly synergy, and I helped him with the fonts. He died the way so many on your planet did, stuck in a corridor between two partitions, flattened by a restructuring he had no say in. That one actually stings a little. Anyway.

You didn't kill a boss. You were the reorg.