Light engulfed me for a moment, and then everything but my Octo-Boxers, which essentially amounted to my gloves and my Air Hortons, unequipped. Little wings of light appeared on my ankles, like on the feet of the guy in the FTD florists logo.

  “What in the…?” I shouted. My footsteps felt light, easy, and frictionless, yet I still moved forward at roughly my top speed. In my HUD, a small winged foot symbol with a ten-minute timer appeared.

  Most importantly, I was still running… across the air! Even more amazingly, the rickshaw stayed aloft behind me as if I were still running on land.

  “Neptune’s beard, mate! What’s happening?” Silas’s tentacles constricted around my neck and shoulder.

  “It’s the Mercurian Blessing spell,” Sync replied. “Keep going!”

  Light flashed under my feet with every step. I could only steal furtive glances back—running on air was awesome, but I didn’t want to risk somehow losing my forward momentum by not paying close enough attention. We still had a few miles to go before we’d safely reach the other side.

  Behind us, at least one of the Godfeather cars plummeted off the canyon’s edge, while the others screeched to a stop and continued to fire at us. Several of the bird men spread their back wings and flew out over the canyon after us, firing their guns to try to bring us down.

  Sync kept hurling fireballs back at them, scorching a few more of them into cooked turkeys. Apparently, her cooldown for the fireball spell wasn’t long after all.

  I laughed as I ran over the vast chasm. Pure exhilaration flooded me as I looked down at the river hundreds of feet below and saw World of Orc Rafts floating down it, each with tiny green orcs operating them. Some of them even waved up at us.

  As much as I hated being in the AllVerse, this was kind of amazing.

  “Karjok don’t do heights, mate!” Silas covered one of his eyes, and one of mine, too. “This is solidly number three on my top ten dislikes list!”

  “Silas, I need to see!” I barked, and he moved one tentacle slightly out of the way; the rest continued to squeeze me like he was trying to choke me out. I rasped, “And I need to breathe, too!”

  He gave me some relief, but not enough. “And I need to not fall to my death! We’re all making sacrifices!”

  Step by slippery step, I crossed the gorge, desperately working to reach the opposite edge before the timer ran out.

  Controlling my direction wasn’t easy. Since I had no traction, the rickshaw drifted sideways. I worked to correct it, but then I overcorrected and drifted the other way.

  Our tail end swung back and forth, delaying our crossing, and running the timer dangerously low. Worse yet, as the timer reached its final minute, we also started to sink slowly.

  “C’mon!” I roared.

  We were so close. I pumped my legs harder, faster, and just before the timer ticked down to zero, my foot contacted the edge, and I pulled us onto solid ground. The rickshaw bounced and scraped against the rocks as I hauled it all the way up, but we’d made it.

  I gave a whoop as I stumbled along the sand and rocks, trying to regain my footing. Once I did, Silas shouted a warning.

  “Look out mate!” He jabbed a tentacle forward. “Pokey plant!”

  “What? I—Ahh!”

  | -9 HP |

  | -5 HP |

  | -2 HP |

  Numbers tumbled out of me with each new prick.

  I yelped as I stepped on a cactus and, now without shoes, drove many of its large spines into my feet.

  I stumbled and lost control of the rickshaw, and our whole crew tumbled across the desert rock. Sync flew from her seat, Silas dislodged from my shoulder, and we all dropped in the dirt.

  Yet again, I clocked my head on a rock in a burst of light and pain. Yet again, I received the Bonked debuff, and my HP dropped even lower.

  I slid to a stop, covered in dust, cactus needles, and with a little halo of dancing Karjok around my head.

  I lay there momentarily, feeling a sense of defeat despite our victory—if it could be called that—more of a desperate and temporary escape. We’d just escaped the Godfeathers in spectacular fashion. I’d been shot, blown up, stabbed, smacked by a sentient space octopus more times than I could count, yet I’d survived this long…

  …only to be felled by a cactus.

  It was as though the last twenty-four in-game hours and the heaviness of reality all slammed into me at once, and that cactus had been the conduit that delivered the sensation. I felt… powerless. At the mercy of forces I’d once controlled.

  This is my world. I created it, I reminded myself. I literally own it.

  And it was kicking my asp.

  The hot desert sun beat down on me for an eternity, accompanied by the buzz of cicadas, until a familiar form stepped into my view and blocked out the light.

  I blinked against the contrast, and my breath caught in my throat.

  “M-mom?”

  My mother looked down at me with a warm, tender smile. “Hey, honey, are you okay?”

  Emotion welled up in the recesses of my heart, and I blinked a few times. She shouldn’t be here. She couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.

  I blinked again and realized it was Sync standing over me, her face twisted in confusion.

  “Mom?” she asked with incredulity. “You must’ve hit your head pretty hard. C’mon.”

  She reached down for me. I took her hand, and she helped me sit up. The strange hallucination still shook me, an echo of a memory buried deep within my mind.

  Sync eyed me. “Are you alright? I mean, besides the cactus acupuncture you’ve got going on?”

  I sneered and began plucking the needles out of my limbs and torso. Each one elicited a new prick of pain. “I’m fine. I’m just worn out after all those heroics.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Sync rolled her eyes.

  Silas groaned and writhed on the ground. Dust clung to every part of him, drying him out. “This place is the seventh ring of Hades. Water…”

  | Companion: Silas has received a debuff – Dried Out |

  | He will be unable to heal or offer positive advice until rehydrated. |

  I sighed and scooped up the dusty cephalopod. His eyes were half-closed, and he looked rather pitiful. “I’m sure we can find a lovely city fountain for you to pollute.”

  I placed him on my shoulder, plucked the remaining cactus needles from my feet, and reequipped my shoes and gloves. My ballistic vest was damaged and would need to be repaired or sold. Fortunately, the rickshaw was in good shape, largely thanks to the still-lingering Fjorst’s Fidelity buff, although that timer was coming to an end in less than a half hour.

  I groaned, thinking about the fares I’d need to take on to recover from all these losses.

  “Hey, why did your spell unequip everything except my boxers?” I asked.

  Sync checked her WHIM and shrugged. “It says it’s one of the costs of using it. I had mentioned that earlier.”

  “And these boxers don’t unequip unless I manually do it,” I recalled. I glanced at Silas, who clung to my shoulder like a deflated balloon. “You didn’t happen to get a water spell when you stole the wizard-nerd’s class, did you?”

  Sync shook her head. “No. Just fireball, force blast, and shield. And the Mercurian Blessing, which won’t recharge for another two hours since we just used it. But we’re close to where I need to access the first Data Point.” She looked us up and down. “But if you have any hope of surviving here—I mean any—you’ll need to level up and get better gear, because wow. I can’t do everything for you.”

  “That’s… what I’ve been… telling him,” Silas moaned, then he coughed up dust.

  The last thing I needed was some chick telling me how to live my life. It’s why I’d stayed unashamedly unattached in my personal life for so long.

  …but Sync might’ve been right. If we could only get out of here once we found all of her Data Points, or whatever they were, then I should probably improve myself, if only to better my chances of actually getting out when the time finally came.

  Still, I’d wasted enough of my life playing video games as a kid. My days of pursuing digital greatness were over and done with. I had no intention of becoming “the best to ever play the game” or “the lord of the AllVerse” or whatever.

  That was too far. I’d do what I needed to do to survive, and that was the extent of it.

  I sighed. “I’ve still got the rickshaw. I guess I’ll focus on getting rides. Might get more high-profile clients in this city… I hope. This nickel-and-dime gameplay has gotta stop.”

  I hoped we were nearing the end of this nightmare, and maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that. I had virtually no AllCash, no functional armor, an OP gun with no ammo, a dusty, now less-than-useless space octopus, and only the shredded wisps of my remaining dignity.

  We needed a miracle of some kind. I’ve never been a praying man, but this place might just drive me to it.

  I followed Sync across the dusty plains to the outskirts of the phoenix-shaped city. The place had the near-future polish of Seaboard City but with a desert aesthetic.

  I could definitely vibe with this place. I’d once considered buying a vacation home near Phoenix back in the real world, but that cathartic thought faded in the face of the staggering amount of level-grinding I had in front of me since we weren’t close to escaping the AllVerse.

  At Sync’s recommendation, I took several fares around the city and earned enough AllCash to bring my total up to $596. She and Silas came along for each of the rides, but the NPC and Player fares I took didn’t seem to care. All the while, Sync kept an eye out for any Godfeathers or other hostiles, but since we’d shifted game zones, we seemed to have achieved a small window of peace.

  It didn’t take me long to reach Level 6 thanks to all the shenanigans we’d just gone through, so by the time I finished out my fares for the morning, I was relatively close to hitting Level 7.

  All the while, I searched for some sort of water source where we could help Silas recover. Between fares, I’d purchased a couple large water bottles, one for me and one for Silas, but pouring it all over him didn’t negate his debuff nor change his flaccid demeanor. We’d have to find him somewhere to fully submerge himself, so I kept running fares, and we kept looking.

  “I’d like to be paid back now,” Sync said flatly as I came to a stop and dropped off my last fare, who was a camel-avatar guy with sunglasses and a leather jacket reminiscent of the one in those really old cigarette ads from when my parents had been kids. Why someone would choose that avatar was beyond me, though the camel-in-a-desert angle did sort of make sense.

  “What? C’mon. I just started making money, and you ride around on the Bi—” I almost said “the Big Shaw” but caught myself. “—the rickshaw for free. That’s gotta be paying off some of the debt.”

  Instead of Sync answering, I received a notification:

  | Loan Repayment request from Player: Sync |

  | $500 AllCash is due within the hour, or interest will be charged. |

  | Pay now? |

  “What? Interest? Seriously?” I grumbled. “You can do that in here?”

  [The AllVerse’s transactional system not only includes lessons on business and financial acumen but also serves to protect Players from fraud with world-class, industry-leading safety features.

  Gifts and loans to fellow Players are subject to an array of terms and conditions, all of which may be accessed at any time.]

  [Would you like a tutorial on the functionality ofAllCash gifts, loans, payments, and interest?]

  I hated to admit that I completely agreed with that feature. I remembered a recommendation from the Independent Literacy Foundation, a real-life charity, that we should consider including game elements to teach financial literacy in the AllVerse.

  I had agreed based on my own life experience—that gamers were stupid and tended to blow way too much of their time and money on meaningless garbage like in-game purchases and cash.

  Don’t get me wrong—I absolutely wanted to take these morons’ money, but I also remembered how my life had been growing up, how real-life money was hard to come by at times because my parents had spent their paychecks on meaningless digital content. It had made for some sparse nights around the dinner table and more than our fair share of tense family moments.

  So I’d allowed the financial literacy content in the AllVerse as a strategic counterbalance; that way no one could accuse me of solely profiting off these idiots without offering an alternative or a way out.

  I just hated that all of it was being used against me at the moment.

  I sighed, told Lucretia “no,” and paid Sync back with my hard-earned AllCash.

  She flashed her puckish smile. “Thanks, boss.”

  I opened the character menu and allocated all my new stat points to Luck, because something had to give here. It brought my Luck stat up from 11 to 14.

  Even before I opened my Skill Tree, I knew exactly what skills I wanted to unlock.

  | Dodge Roll |

  | Enables Players to jump, dodge, and evade sideways, longways, slantways, and any other way you can imagine! Activation of this skill initiates a 0.45-second window of invulnerability.

  This skill has a three-second cooldown to prevent Players from spamming the ability. |

  While perusing my rickshaw-specific skills, I saw two available at Level 10: a hang-gliding upgrade and an amphibious upgrade. Two hours ago, I would’ve considered them useless, but they’d be at the top of my list once I reached Level 10.

  For now, I put another point into Durability, bringing the rickshaw from Tier 1 to Tier 2, increasing the rig’s max HP. Though the Fjorst’s Fidelity buff from Hephrostus the blacksmith had expired, the added Durability and the jump to Tier 2 had essentially replaced it permanently.

  While running my next fare, I absently began whistling a tune to myself. Silas glanced at me through his malaise, and I stopped abruptly when I realized I was whistling the action theme he’d sung while we raced through the night forest.

  Dang it… it’s catchy, though. Like a horrid ad jingle.

  On the way to the Data Point, we passed huge blocks of the city that would disassemble themselves and then reassemble into new buildings. At first I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but upon closer scrutiny, I noticed a lot of dudes running around, frantically building condos and high-rises.

  At the same time, I saw some pretty fine-looking women watching them from a poolside with fruity girl drinks in their hands—the ones that admittedly tasted great but had way too many grams of sugar to justify consuming them. Something was going on there, but we weren’t close enough to any of them yet for me to get a scan.

  More importantly, Silas needed help, and that pool might just fit the bill.

  “Hold up.” I put the rickshaw in my inventory and walked over to the pool with my Karjok companion in my arms. His eight tentacles dangled and swayed as we walked.

  As we approached, one of the women by the poolside waved her arm at a dude building the condos. “No, no, Reggie. That spot has no sunrise view. Be a dear, and try again.”

  The exhausted-looking city-builder nodded eagerly. “Of course, Trisha!”

  Silas muttered something, but I ignored him.

  As I neared the pool, I noticed a lot more of the city-builder guys running around at the ladies’ behest. “What sort of foolery is this?”

  “Mate, did you… hear me?” Silas wheezed.

  I didn’t, but I doubted it mattered. “Huh? Yeah, it’s fine.”

  “Are… are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Alright, pal, here you go.” I dropped him in the pool.

  He splashed in, and the rest of the dust washed off him, but he crested the water’s surface screaming. “Aaahh! What the flounder, mate? You said it was fine! You lied!”

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  break--Royal Road. They call us the Critical Hitters.

  In the desolate desert of the North American Sector, the government harvests the Soul Energy of siblings Eos and Maxima in secret.

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  A grizzled ex-mech pilot is drawn back into the Everwar, a decades-long conflict raging across Jupiter’s moonscape.

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  Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.