Season 5 · Crawler
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.
Reward: Nothing. ... Okay fine a Bronze Adventurer Box but don't say I didn't give you anything.
You’ve received enough experience to gain a level.
Reward: Leveling up is your job. You don’t get rewards for doing your job.
Congratulations. You know how to open doors.
Reward: That sense of fulfillment you feel? That’s reward enough.
You entered the dungeon with a multitool, a lighter, and the professional habit of walking toward the thing everyone else runs from. Good news: that's most things down here. Bad news: same.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Bomb Squad Box.
You have entered the World Dungeon with a pet. It's a spider. It's riding on your shoulder like it pays rent, and it hasn't bitten you, which means it's either tame or biding its time. Either way, you two look adorable together.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Pet Box!
Out of every crawler who walked down those stairs tonight, you are the first - the only - to do it with a jumping spider along for the ride. Thirteen million people, and not one other person thought "apocalypse, better grab the spider." That's not a pet, that's a personality disorder, and I am rewarding it lavishly. Enjoy the box. Enjoy the spider. Enjoy however many minutes you both have left.
Reward: You've received a Legendary Pet Box!
You’ve caused a wall-shaking explosion within the dungeon! The last time the walls shook like this was when your mom came over for a visit.
Reward: You’ve received a Silver Goblin Box!
Hopefully it won’t hit back!
Reward: It’s probably going to hit back.
You’re a murderer! He probably had a family!
Reward: You can now gain experience. Get enough of it, and you might even go up a level.
You’re getting the hang of this. Don’t let it get to your head.
Reward: You’ve received a Bronze Adventurer Box!
You solved a monster with a sandwich. I want to be clear that I had an entire combat encounter budgeted for that, with choreography, and you defeated it with a food item you found on the floor. Genuinely, well done. Financially, please stop.
Reward: A Bronze Food Box!
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.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Boss Box!
Everyone else had been fighting the Vine Creeper for four minutes. Stabbing it. Chopping it. Watching the cuts seal over like nothing happened. Then you strolled in, held two sticks of goblin dynamite to a torch, and threw.
Both stuck. Both blew. The thing that had shrugged off every blade in the room turned out to be a very large bundle of dry kindling, and you found that out by accident, in one turn, while the rest of your party was still doing it the hard way. Seventy percent of a boss, gone, because you were too lazy to arrive on time and too impatient to ask questions. I'd call it tactics if I thought you'd planned any of it.
Reward: You've received a Gold Goblin Box!
You cleaned out the repair bay for a complete Snap-On set, crawler. Chrome, ratchets, the little case with the foam cutouts. Then you went down the line of forty motorcycle batteries, cracked each one open, and put your nose over the hole like a man checking milk. Forty times. Dry. Every one.
There is not a drop of acid, gasoline, brake fluid, or two-stroke oil left in this neighborhood, and there never was. I took it out before you got here. I know what your species does with a garage and a bad idea, and the answer is always a bomb.
You still have the wrenches, though. Enjoy tightening things.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Looter Box!
Your party member was standing alone, and you decided he shouldn't be. Noble. You crossed four feet of oily flagstone to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, and on the third step your boots discovered that oil is oil even in a dungeon.
You went down in stages. Heel, hip, elbow, skull. It made a sound like a wet duffel bag hitting a loading dock. Your party member looked down at you. He is, technically, still alone, but now he's alone with a crawler lying in grease at his feet, which is worse for morale than what he had before. The emotional support has been delivered horizontally.
Reward: Nothing. Gravity did all the work, and gravity doesn't share.
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.
Reward: Nothing. Exposure isn't currency, and neither is that pond.
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.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Boss Box!
You took forty pounds of lawn fertilizer, added aluminum you filed off by hand like a man whittling in a rocking chair, and set the whole thing off with a stick of goblin dynamite. The fireball consumed every molecule of breathable air in the chamber. The fire elemental — a being made of fire, whose entire personality is combustion — suffocated.
Two hundred sixty-eight points. One source. Her damage reduction never got a vote. You didn't out-fight her, crawler. You out-chemistried her, using a recipe your species keeps in the garden aisle next to the tomato stakes. Four hundred million viewers just learned what humans do with a hardware store. My engineers are drafting a memo.
Reward: You've received a Platinum Box!
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.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Box!
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.
Reward: You've received a Platinum Boss Box!
You strapped a tank of something called Defoliant to your back for the first time, kicked a door open, and found fourteen mind horrors waiting in a room with no other exits. Then you pulled the trigger. Twenty feet of fire. Three of them cooked to half health. You picked up the Flamethrower skill before the smoke had even reached the ceiling.
For the record, half health means eleven of them are untouched and three are now angry and on fire. Mind horrors live inside your head, crawler. You just gave them something to remember. Still, the screaming was gorgeous, and the editors are already cutting the door kick into slow motion.
Keep the nozzle pointed away from your own face.
Reward: Reward: You've received a Bronze Box! Try not to set it on fire.
You pointed a jet of shoal fire at the Keeper's card catalog, a wardrobe-sized oak cabinet holding nine hundred drawers of index cards, because you had decided, on no evidence whatsoever, that it was the phylactery. It burned beautifully. It burned for four full minutes. It was a card catalog.
The Keeper watched you do it. I'm fairly sure it was grateful. Nobody has used one of those things since your species invented the search bar, and you just did every librarian on your dead planet's dream job for free. The Dewey Decimal System, rest its soul, would have filed you under 000. General Works. Miscellaneous.
Wrong drawer, Crawler.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Box! Consider it a late fee in reverse.
You pointed a flamethrower at the Keeper. Directly at it. With the whole party's help nudging your aim, a two-point bonus handed to you on a plate. Then you missed. A flamethrower is not a sniper rifle, crawler. It is a garden hose for Hell. It sprays a cone of burning fuel roughly the width of a minivan. The tolerances are generous.
And yet the Keeper is standing there, unsinged, while a section of floor behind it now has a very nice tan. Somewhere on your dead planet, a man at a backyard barbecue once missed an entire grill with a can of lighter fluid. I always assumed he was a myth. Hello, myth. I'm calling this condition Pyrotechnic Ambivalence.
Reward: Nothing. I don't reward warming the room.
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.
Reward: Reward: For murdering a bureaucrat by shooting his paperwork, you've received a Bronze Boss Box! Please don't ask for a receipt.
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.
Reward: For a promotion you never interviewed for: You've received a Gold Boss Box!