Chapter 48 of 78 · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Chapter 48 — The Creeping Apocalypse

Book: The Butcher's Masquerade · Part: The Unhinged Child · Previous: Chapter 47 — My beautiful boy · Next: Chapter 49 — Kiwi · Floor: Floor 6 — The Hunting Grounds · Series: the series

Opening

» Time to level collapse: Six days, fifteen hours.

Summary

Six days, fifteen hours. 'A champion has fallen.' Miriam dumped her inventory before dust: potions, items, plants, forty potions of Size Up (Carl takes two out of Pony's sight), and a pair of orange traffic-cone hats she said Donut could have. A number 50 slams into Carl's interface under the timer. A world quest, The Creeping Apocalypse, for every crawler and hunter: Miriam's death cured thousands, but Big Tina's undead army was never vampire and is not cured — Shambling Berserkers by the thousand ('I'm looking at you, Nihit Kumar who's about two seconds from getting… Oh, that's a shame. Gross') and fifty Odious Creepers, the strongest monsters ever on a sixth floor short of a god, slow by day, combining and replicating by night, their positions randomised and marked on every map; kill all fifty before sunset for +5 to a random stat each and +5 levels per five, most-damage credit only, or 'something completely batshit' happens to crawlers and hunters alike. (And: 'Someone should probably ask Carl why he suddenly has three new points to his intelligence stat. Suspicious!') Mordecai: glamoured fragments taken over by an Odious Blossom, vine-controlling, dart-shooting, part-ripping; an aerosol might kill them but there is no time; the reward is too good, 'It's going to be a slaughter.' Katia's arithmetic: level 150 before the plant. Donut: the AI says 'I' more than it used to. Carl to the frozen goat: 'She would want you to be strong […] don't kill these new monsters.' Donut casts Get Out of Jail. Prepotente wakes, pulls off the ring, drops it, picks it up and swallows it whole, then screams at the ash with no sound left — 'She was going to play piano for me like she used to. She was going to sing me my special song.' Donut lands on his shoulder and butts his horn: 'You just sit here and have a good cry.' Kiwi slinks into the clearing. 'It appears I've just received an emergency benefactor box from my sponsor.'

Characters

• Prepotente — Wakes, eats his ring, screams silently; a box from his sponsor.
• Carl — Takes two Size Ups; 'three new points to his intelligence stat'; 'I knew exactly how that felt.'
• Princess Donut — A traffic-cone hat; gentleness on a goat's shoulder; notices the AI's 'I'.
• Miriam Dom — A pile of ash washed away by rain; everything she owned left on the ground.
• Mordecai — Odious Blossoms; 'Stay away from them.'
• Katia Grim — Level 150 before the plant; Eva's group has one in their midst.
• Kiwi — Enters the clearing, head low.
• Big Tina — Cured; her army is not.
• Nihit — Not him: the AI mocks a crawler, Nihit Kumar, about to die to a Shambling Berserker.

Locations

• The Selva — Fifty markers on every map.

Motifs

• Quests — A world quest nobody may opt out of; a number 50 on the interface.
• The vampire outbreak — Cured by a death; the leftovers become Odious Creepers.
• The Ring of Divine Suffering — Swallowed whole.
• The System AI — 'I like to call them Odious Creepers'; says 'I' more than before.
• The Plenty — An emergency box for their goat.