the gate of the feral gods

Chapter 1.
Phase one of four. The gnomes.
Time to Level Collapse: 15 Days.
Views: 1.43 Quintillion
Followers: 7 Quadrillion
Favorites: 2.4 Quadrillion
Leaderboard rank: 3
Bounty: 800,000 gold
Welcome, Crawler, to the fifth floor. “The Bubbles.”
Sponsorship bidding initiated on Crawler #4,122. Bidding ends in 45 hours.
Remaining Crawlers: 178,887
Entering Bubble #543 out of 1172. Air Quadrant.
New Achievement! The Quarry Sees Another Spring.
You managed to enter a stairwell while listed in the current top 10. You’re a survivor. A scrapper. And just as the buck’s antlers grow another point as they mature, you too, have grown as both a crawler and as a prize.
Reward: You have received a Gold Venison Box! Don’t get too excited. It’s just money. In addition, all bounties against you now and in the future will have a (x2) modifier attached.
Hey, at least the prize for surviving the floor goes up, too.
“What the shit?” I said, seeing the notification. Nobody had warned me our bounties would double. Mordecai hadn’t mentioned it, nor had I seen it listed in the cookbook. I wondered if that was a new thing. Those fuckers.
I coughed, regretting I’d said anything out loud. I spit the sand from my mouth.
Tens of thousands of crawlers hadn’t made it past the last few hours of the fourth floor. I felt my fist clench and unclench as we trudged forward, leaning into the wind.
Donut mewled with irritation from my shoulder. Hot wind blasted against us, and every time I breathed, my mouth and nose started to fill with sand. We needed masks. We could only talk using chat.
We’d stepped from the warehouse onto the fifth floor just a few minutes after the fourth level collapsed. I felt the standard rumble in the ground while we were still in the warehouse, but it was much more distant than usual.
Donut: I NEED TO PICK A NEW CLASS! I REALLY WISH THEY GAVE ME MORE TIME. THE CHOICES ARE ALL DIFFERENT.
Carl: Mordecai. Help Donut choose. We’re in an air zone.
Mordecai: There you are. By the gods, did Odette make you clean her house first before she let you go? I’m already here and have been gathering intel. Come to the town that’s hunched up against the northwest curve. The walls block the sand storms. Locals say the storms only last an hour or two each day. Apparently there’s only two towns in the area. Donut, read me your choices.
Donut quickly read off some of the class choices. None of them had a flying ability. Many sounded more interesting and exotic than usual, like Nine Tails and Demigod Attendant, though there were a few in there that had to be a joke. Like Vape Shop Counter Jockey. Mordecai asked rapid-fire questions. He zoomed in on two choices.
Mordecai: The class choices keep getting better. We still need to keep your Constitution up. You just lost ten points from losing your Football Hooligan. There’s one that’ll replace it and more. Glass Cannon normally forbids you from adding to your constitution upon level-up, but it comes with a plus fifteen constitution base, and it’ll also greatly increase your training speed on all spells. It does not increase your intelligence, but it lowers the cost of all spells, which is almost the same thing. Your Magic Missile will be much stronger, and it’s already pretty strong. You can’t train constitution anyway, so it’s a good choice, especially if we grind on your magic. But if you don’t actually obtain some of those benefits, it could be a waste of a class.
Donut’s Character Actor benefit went up in power each time she descended a floor, but it still came with a risk. She didn’t always obtain all of the chosen class’s benefits, and once she picked, it was set for the floor.