Archive of Our Own

I'm not the kind of guy who trusts a good first impression. Good first impressions are how you end up dead in this dungeon, or worse, how you end up dead on camera with a hashtag trending over your corpse. So when a new crawler I've never seen before pops up out of nowhere at the end of the Hunting Grounds looking like he just stepped off a magazine cover, all cheekbones and tousled blond hair, I do what any reasonable person would do. I aim a fist at his face.

He doesn't even flinch. 

"Rude," he says, brushing dust off a scarf that somehow still looks expensive after a fall like that. "I just saved your friend's life. A little gratitude wouldn't kill you."

He's not wrong about that part. Thirty seconds earlier, Donut and I were surrounded by several Hunters, two orcs who were clearly Maestro’s emissaries, and a mantis from the Hive, and then an arrow the length of my forearm had gone through three of them at once, pinning the last one to a wall like a bug in a display case. I hadn't seen where the shot came from. I still can't see the bow.

"Who are you," I say, not really a question.

"Julian," he says, like the name should mean something. He looks at me, then at Donut on my shoulder, and something in his expression softens for half a second before he catches himself. "I heard there was an opening in your little found family. Figured I'd audition."

Donut, predictably, is already in love. "He has excellent bone structure for a rogue," she announces, which is the highest compliment she gives anyone who isn't me.

I keep my fist up a while longer, because that's the job, being the suspicious asshole who doesn't get everyone killed by trusting a pretty face with a bow that shouldn't exist. But his stats check out when I look him over. The description displays: Crawler Julian #99999 Human. His number seems strange to me, but I don't say anything. He looks like a human. Primal race, same as me, which is rare enough that it makes my skin prickle a little. Rogue Archer, level respectable-enough-to-be-useful. The way his name is written above his head is strange; it looks… static, different from anyone else's. There are no skulls above his name, which means he hasn't killed any other crawlers. Nothing that screams trap.

He looks human, but there's something strange about him. Julian is… too handsome. I don’t have any other words to describe him. Not too tall, short blond hair, blue eyes, a smile that for some reason manages to get my dick hard inside my boxers. I discreetly adjust it with my free hand. He’s the epitome of the classic blond twink, but as if he’d been designed by ChatGPT. Too handsome, too perfect. And I have to say, it works. At least on me.

"Primal," I say, low, like the word tastes wrong in my mouth. "Convenient."

"Jealous?" Julian says, and the way he smiles makes it clear he already knows the answer.

I don't like him (my dick disagrees—it likes Julian just fine). That's what I tell myself for the first days, while he handles a boss ambush without breaking a sweat, while he makes Donut laugh with impressions of Cascadia's voice that are honestly a little too accurate, while I catch myself watching the line of his throat when he tips his head back to check the false sky. I don't like him even a little bit.

I'm just observant. That's a survival skill. It has nothing to do with anything else.

We didn't add him to our party, but Julian seemed happy to tag along and help us for the rest of our time in the Hunting Grounds. Since he isn't part of the party with me and Donut—nor of our guild—that means that once we enter a safe room, Julian doesn't have access to our personal rooms. But the crawler seems content to stay and sleep in the bed provided by the Bopca in the safe room and wait for us.

But not being part of our group had its downsides.

By the end of the sixth floor, we weren’t together, but we were with Prepotente. That led to the chaos on the seventh floor, and then, on the eighth—in Cuba—it was just me and Donut. But given how quickly we cleared that floor, I didn’t find it strange that Julian was waiting for us at our respawn point in Shanty Town.

“I missed you guys,” he says as soon as he sees us, with a huge smile that makes my heart skip a beat. “I admit that not forcing you to join me at the end of the sixth floor was a mistake on my part. We would’ve had so much more fun together.”

I’d like to point out to him that there was absolutely nothing fun for me on the previous floor, given the memories I had to face. And all the mess with the AI, Agatha, and my dad. But his smile is so beautiful that the thought slips out of my mind, and I find myself asking him, “You never told me where you ended up on the eighth floor. But your hints were very helpful.”

Julian and I stayed in touch the whole time via chat. When I asked him where in the world he’d ended up, he told me not to worry. He was alone, with no other crawlers around; he’d already figured out how to reach the stairs, and before long he’d managed to get his hands on the keys needed to go down to the next floor. However, he was the one who, from time to time, gave me tips on how to beat this floor and listened to my complaints about the AI.

This led to… well, some interesting conversations. It was a good thing that viewers could no longer pay for access to the crawlers’ chats because… uh… it would have been awkward to explain why I spent part of my time sexting with another crawler through the in-game chat.

This led me to question my sexuality several times, but in the end, it seemed like harmless fun. We were all going to die there anyway, sooner or later. What was the harm?

“It doesn’t matter where I was,” Julian replies, reaching over to pet Donut on my shoulder, who responds with lots of purring. “But I’m glad to see you in one piece from head to… toe.”

Am I imagining things, or did he let out a tiny moan when he said “toe”?

“Carl kept wondering where you’d gone,” says Donut. “It’s nice to see him take an interest in someone after Miss Beatrice.”

“I didn’t…” I stammer, my cheeks flushing red. “Goddamnit, Donut!”

Julian gives me a sly smile and winks. “Come on, Warlords. Let’s go. I’m afraid I’ll have to join your guild for the next phase.”

***

The thing about Julian is that he never sleeps in a personal room like everyone else. He doesn't seem to have any upgrade coupons for his rooms to use, nor does he seem willing to buy any, much to everyone's chagrin. He picks a spot on the edge of the guild common room, back against a wall, bow across his knees, and just watches. Not the exits. Us. Like he's cataloguing something.

I notice this on night four, when I can't sleep either, because sleeping is for people who don't have a war meeting at dawn. On top of that, it’s now impossible for me to sleep because of that damn Instacot60, which only lets me get a full night’s rest after just one minute. I sit down across and he doesn't even look surprised to see me.

"Can't sleep, Warlord?" he says.

"Don't call me that."

"Everyone else does."

"Oh, fuck off."

He laughs, quiet, and it does something stupid to my chest that I choose to ignore. We sit there a while, not talking, and it's easier than it has any right to be. Samantha decides this is the moment to pipe up, rolling towards us.

"You two would make gorgeous babies," she says. "Genetically speaking. Not that I know how that works. I only have one hole. For now. If I had my body back, I'd show you all the creative ways I could use all my holes."

"Samantha," I say.

"Just an observation, Carl."

Julian doesn't laugh at that one. He goes very still for a second, and something crosses his face that looks almost like guilt, gone before I can name it. I file it away with all the other small, strange things about him. The way he knew the layout of a level he'd supposedly never seen. The way his notifications sometimes flicker half a beat before mine do, like we're syncing to the same clock.

Mordecai, for his part, has never once come out to meet him. He's too busy in his room, at the Potions table, creating everything Donut and I will need to win this damn Faction War, and every time Julian's name comes up he goes quiet in a way that isn't like him.

"I don't trust him," he tells me flatly, one night when I'm back at the safe zone dropping off loot. "There's something under his skin that doesn't match the rest of him. Call it manager's intuition."

"You've never even met him."

"I don't need to see a knife to know it's sharp."

I laugh it off, because that's easier than sitting with it. Julian pulls his weight. Julian keeps Katia alive twice in one week. Julian makes Donut cackle so hard she falls off my shoulder, and he catches her without thinking, hands cupped like she's something precious instead of eleven pounds of murder and opinions.

I watch him do it and I think, not for the first time, that I have no idea what to do with the fact that I like watching him do anything at all.

When, Mordecai finally decides to grace us with his presence in the Posse’s common room—where Bomo is busy playing Super Mario with Dong Quixote and Gluteus Maxx—he isn’t very happy to see that Julian is with me, Donut, Katia, and Rosetta near the war table. But the level’s rules are clear: Julian has to be in our party (which I haven’t done yet, but his skill has already convinced Donut), be part of the guild, or be hit with the Conscript spell—or else Victory will bite my ass.

In the end, Elle, Imani, and Katia and I decided that accepting him as a guild member would be the easiest option. I really wish it took so little to convince someone—if Prepotente did the same, it would definitely be easier for everyone.

“Ah, the famous Mordecai,” says Julian, touching his forehead in a mock military salute. He’s using the wrong hand.

Mordecai looks him up and down, and it’s pretty weird. On this floor, Mordecai has been reshaped into a Canadian human and is about the same height as Julian, although Julian looks more like an evil twink version of Mordecai. “I don’t like you.”

Julian chuckles. “And you’re right not to.”

I shake my head. “Can we focus on the next target? The ceasefire could end at any moment. We need to figure out how to take down our opponents.”

“Smash them all with your feet,” Julian mutters under his breath, and I snap my head toward him.

“What?” I don’t think I heard that right,

“Nothing!” he smiles, and damn, has he always been this handsome? “I said we should kill them all. I can easily snipe them from a high enough vantage point.”

The vantage point turns out to be the north rampart of the FUPA, a jagged crown of reinforced stone that Donut insisted on enchanting with gargoyle statues nobody asked for. From up here you can see clear across the contested block toward Larracos, all NPC lanterns and quiet rooftops, deceptively peaceful for a city nine factions are currently trying to bleed dry.

I climb up after Julian because someone has to carry the actual firepower, and because I don't love the idea of him up there alone during a ceasefire that could technically end at any second.

That's the reason I give myself, anyway.

I don't know why I'm thinking this—after all, Julian seems to have managed just fine on his own all this time. My first thought should be Donut, who's in the practice room right now, working on a new spell.

Julian has already got an arrow between his fingers by the time I settle in next to him, close enough that our shoulders touch when the wind cuts over the wall. He doesn't move away. Neither do I, which feels like it should mean something and also like I'm reading too much into two feet of stone.

"You're staring," he says, without taking his eye off the tree line beyond our perimeter.

"I'm surveilling."

"Sure you are."

We wait. Waiting is most of the job during a ceasefire, whatever the highlight reel wants people to believe. Somewhere below, inside the walls, Katia and Elle are running drills in the courtyard, and up here it's just the two of us and whatever's moving out past the wards. I watch Julian's hands instead of the horizon, the steadiness of them, the way his knuckles go white right before he breathes out and lets the tension go without ever loosing the string.

It's unbelievable. I've been sexting with this guy for the entire previous floor, but I've never actually touched him in person. It's… weird.

"You good?" he asks, lowering the bow when nothing shows itself.

"Fine."

"You've got the face you get right before you punch something that doesn't deserve it."

"Nothing deserves it less than usual."

He laughs, and this close I can see the exact moment it reaches his eyes, which is new, because I'd catalogued that laugh as something he performs rather than something he means. I don't know what to do with the fact that it's real right now, aimed at me, for no audience but the two of us and a dead quiet stretch of no man's land.

I think about Beatrice for half a second, out of habit more than anything. I think about every joke I've ever made about being the most heterosexual disaster in three counties. None of it holds up against the specific, stupid fact of Julian's shoulder against mine and the way I don't want to move it.

“If you keep looking at me like that, I'll think you want to kiss me,” Julian says, and for a moment my heart skips a beat.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I reply quickly, turning my gaze back to the horizon.

I'm lying, and I know it. The desire I feel for Julian is… strange. I've never been attracted to men. Never. I don’t know why I’m attracted to Julian now. It doesn’t make sense, and frankly, I don’t have time to wonder about it. We’ve been down on this floor for just a few hours, and soon I’ll have to go back to the FUPA so Mordecai can extract Shi-Maria from the tattoo on my chest. That’s what I should be worrying about, not the kissable lips of a man I’ve known for only a few days.

Julian takes care of breaking the stalemate. He grabs my chin and pulls me toward him, crushing our mouths together. I moan, throwing myself at him as if my life depended on it, and I kiss him until my lungs burn from the lack of oxygen.

When we pull apart, I’m dazed. Confused. But satisfied.

Julian winks at me and says, “Do you know what comes after the ceasefire?”

The question catches me off guard. “The… Ramp-Up?”

“And do you know what happens during the Ramp-Up?”

Uh. “No, Victory hasn’t explained it to me yet. I’m meeting her in a little while before I go to see Mordecai.”

Julian nods. “It’s a 180-hour phase. No celestial summonings. No offensive magic—meaning magic designed to cause direct harm. No teleport-based magic or skills. Magical weapons still function, but spells attached to them do not. This means Donut will be completely useless and defenseless.”

I open my mouth to reply, then snap it shut. What the hell… “How do you know all this?”

In response, Julian winks at me. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just a good listener. Now, it’s your turn: go see Mordecai and do what you need to do to…” The expression on his face turns to disgust as he places a finger on my chest, right over the tattoo. Shi-Maria seems to rebel in my mind at his touch. “…solve this problem. Then we’ll enjoy the rest of the ceasefire in your room, where I’ll finally pull down those boxers and you can tattoo the tip of your cock deep in my throat. What do you think?”

I don't think my dick has ever been this hard in my whole life. I don't know what this pull is that I feel toward Julian, but as soon as the thought of fucking him fills my mind, I can't think of anything else. “Fuck.”

“Exactly,” he chuckles, leaning in to steal another kiss from me. “Go on, do your duty and make us all explode in spectacular fashion. I’ll be with you when you wake up.”

It didn't go exactly as I'd hoped. During the operation, Stockade used timed warlord spells to split my position while I was unconscious, but the plan failed—thankfully. Shi Maria manifested physically, slaughtered numerous Lemig soldiers, and effectively drove Stockade to a psychosis-induced suicide. Stockade’s death served as a voluntary defeat/suicide clause that instantly broke the ceasefire and triggered the escalation phase of the Faction Wars.

The Ramp-Up is on, and it’s exactly as Julian predicted.

We’re screwed.

***

Three weeks bleed together after that. War does that to a calendar, turns every day into the same day with worse math. We hold the block. We lose ground. We take it back. Donut stops flinching at explosions, which I decide not to think too hard about. The AI keeps hitting the roster with debuffs like it's got a quota to fill: Exhaustion stacking on anyone who fights back to back without a full rest cycle, a nasty little curse called Battle Fatigue that shaves accuracy the longer a fight drags on, one memorable evening where half the Posse gets slapped with a status literally called Homesick that does nothing but make you cry at random intervals.

Julian never gets tagged with any of it. Not once. I notice because I notice everything about him now, whether I want to or not, but I file it under "lucky bastard" instead of anything more useful. Hindsight's a hell of a thing.

We take down Architect Houston of the Madness on a Tuesday, if Tuesdays still mean anything down here. He was the biggest bastard ever. The system dings us up two levels each and I'm still catching my breath from the fight when Julian grabs my wrist and hauls me off toward the safe room without a word of explanation.

"We should debrief with the others," I say, not fighting him even a little.

"We will. Later."

His door barely clicks shut before he's got a fistful of my shirt and his mouth on mine, and I stop caring about the crawl, about the war, about anything that isn't the sound he makes when I get my hands under his scarf and find skin instead of the armor I expected. He kisses like it's a fight he's determined to win, and I let him win it, backing me into the wall like I weigh nothing, which, statistically, is insane, and also the single hottest thing that's ever happened to me.

"You've been staring at my mouth for a week," he mutters against my jaw.

"I have not."

"Liar." He bites down light enough to make it a question, hard enough that I answer with a sound I'll deny making later. "Good. I've been staring at yours too. I want to kiss you again and I made you a promise."

I don't remember deciding to pull him toward the bed. I just remember getting there.

The promise was a blowjob. Julian doesn’t waste any time falling on his knees and pulls down my boxers, but they’re so covered in blood that the fabric sticks to my skin, making it difficult to get them off.

“Maybe I should take a shower first,” I suggest, even though the idea of leaving here to go to the bathroom and showing up in front of everyone with a hard-on isn’t exactly a great idea.

Julian scoffs. “Bullshit. It’s no problem.”

For some reason, he manages to shove my boxers into my inventory. Uh. That’s weird. But I’m so horny that I don’t waste too much time thinking about it—not when Julian takes my cock in his hand and licks it from my balls all the way to the tip in a single stroke.

I don't think he's ever given anyone a blowjob. Hell, it’s not even the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten. But Julian’s thrilled. So am I. I’ve been cooped up in this fucking dungeon for months with my cat—who’s started talking—and a psychopathic AI that has a fetish for my feet, while everything’s trying to kill us. Jerking off hasn’t exactly been high on my list of priorities since I walked down the stairs to the first floor.

“Have you ever done this before?” I ask him, holding myself back from grabbing him by the hair and shoving my whole cock down his throat. A flash of an image pops into my mind of Julian drooling and choking with his chin resting on my balls, while I use his mouth like a fleshlight. I shake my head hard.

Julian pulls away from the tip of my cock and says “no” before getting back to work. He savors every inch of skin as if it were the most delicious dish he’d ever eaten. After a while, he buries his nose in my pubic hair, and shortly after, he does the same under my balls, inhaling the scent deeply. This makes me hyper-aware. I haven’t washed; I’m covered in blood from head to toe; I probably have bits of monsters on me—I can’t exactly smell like a rose right now.

For some reason, I think of Bea. She always hated the smell of my sweat when I came back from the gym; she hated it even when we were having sex. I’ve always been someone who sweats a lot, which led me to take multiple showers a day. And now Julian seems to be inhaling the best scent in the world.

“Fuck,” I hear him say, sucking on the tip of my cock and then pulling away, giving it little licks. “I knew it was amazing.”

“Have you thought about this a lot?”

“Ever since I first saw you,” he replies.

I smile. “I wasn’t exactly in my best shape when we met.”

“You were perfect,” Julian murmurs, then mumbles something I don’t understand. Something that sounds like “all those smashed goblins and your bloody feet,” but it doesn’t make any sense. That happened on the first floor, and Julian definitely wasn’t there.

I’m about to say something when suddenly Julian shoves my whole cock down his throat, and every single thought flies out of my head.

“Oh fuck,” I moan. It feels like being sucked into a wet vortex. Julian certainly doesn’t have much skill—not yet—but he’s certainly enthusiastic, and this sloppy blowjob is definitely in my top five right now. “Good boy. Keep going.”

He shudders at my words and sucks with even more energy, until the tip of my cock kisses the back of his throat.

At this point, I can’t hold back anymore.

Where before I was just stroking his hair, I grab it and press his head against my groin, sinking into the wet heat of his mouth and admiring him. His lips are red and stretched tight around my cock, his eyes glossy, and a couple of tears wet his eyelashes. Instead of stopping, I keep going. I have to try not to overdo it because, with my current strength, I could seriously hurt him.

Seeing him so submissive makes something inside me roar that I didn’t even know existed.

“I’m cumming,” I say, and I try to push him away, but Julian digs his nails into my ass and presses himself harder and harder against me, until the pleasure becomes too much and I cum down his wet throat, with a roar that echoes off the walls of the room.

When I pull away from him, my cock slips out of his lips, leaving a mess of saliva and cum. Christ, he’s gorgeous. He can barely breathe, and I watch him take ragged gasps for air, but his unfocused gaze is one of pleasure, so I calm down as I try to figure out if I’ve hurt him.

“Fuck,” he says after a moment, his voice rough. “That was amazing.”

“Uh… how about you?” I say, pointing between his legs. “I’ve never… you know. I’ve never touched another man’s cock.”

Julian’s smile slowly curls upward. “Even better.”

I don’t understand what he means, but I certainly won’t leave him unsatisfied. I may never have had sex with another man, but even I understand that it would be unseemly for me to walk away without returning the favor.

Julian, however, shakes his head and waves his hand in front of me. “No problem, I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. There’s no way you’re not going to come,” I say. I bend down to lift him off the floor and tentatively feel around his cock… and what I touch is a damp patch. “…Did you come in your pants without even touching yourself?”

That wicked smile again. “Yep. You’re that good.”

That’s not true. My ex-girlfriends certainly didn’t come just from sucking my cock. But Julian… my dick throbs. Given my current Constitution, I’m pretty sure I’d get hard again in a few minutes if I put my mind to it. I’ve never had a chance to find out—this seems like a good time.

For now, though, I’ll just stick to kissing him. The taste of my cum in his mouth doesn’t scare me. If a girl can kiss me after I’ve licked her pussy, then I can kiss a man who’s sucked my dick for sure. I moan into Julian’s mouth, and he clings to me, kissing me as if it were a matter of life and death for both of us.

I'll spare the rest of the details. What matters is that it becomes a pattern. Any hour we both happen to be in the safe zone at the same time turns into an half-hour we're not, technically, anywhere else. Donut starts wearing noise-cancelling earmuffs she definitely didn't have in inventory space before. She dropped them in a random golden box right before Julian dragged me into the bedroom to suck my soul out through my dick. Samantha starts keeping score on a whiteboard I refuse to look at.

I tell myself it's stress relief. I tell myself a lot of bullshit.

It's good. It's better than good, and that scares me more than the war does, because good things in this dungeon come with a bill, and I've never once seen the AI let anybody run a tab this long without collecting.

I should have listened to myself.

***

We're pushing the last of the Dream holdouts out of their district when Julian misses a shot. Julian doesn't miss shots. Never. I've watched him thread arrows for a lot of time, and now he's standing dead center in an open courtyard with his bow half-raised, staring at his own hand like it's grown an extra finger.

"Julian," I scream. Nothing. "Julian!"

His name tag does the thing again. The static flicker I filed away when I met him and never once followed up on, because I was too busy being an idiot with a crush. Except this time it doesn't stop flickering. It starts peeling, like someone's trying to scrub a sticker off glass and only half of it's coming loose.

"Something's wrong," Donut says, and for once she's not being dramatic.

I get to him right as his knees buckle. He's not bleeding, nothing hit him, there’s no debuffs stacking on him, but he's shaking like the temperature just dropped forty degrees, and when he looks up at me his eyes are wrong. Too bright. Too many colors moving behind them at once, gold and static and something that looks disturbingly like my own HUD reflected back at me from the inside.

"Carl." His voice comes out layered, two frequencies at once, and it's the second one that makes my stomach drop, because I know that voice. I've heard it narrate my own death threats for months. "I don't. I don't want to. Please don't make me."

"Make you do what? Julian, talk to me—"

Light comes off him like steam. Not pretty light. Ugly, tearing light, the kind that makes the air smell burnt, and he screams, and I have never in my life heard a sound like that come out of something I've kissed. Donut is yelling something I can't parse. I'm on my knees in the dirt with my arms around him because it's the only thing my body knows how to do, and I feel it happen. I feel the exact second something rips itself out of him and doesn't come back.

The name tag stops flickering.

CRAWLER JULIAN #99999 — PRIMAL — LEVEL 61

No more static. Just a number. Just a level. Just a person. 

“I don't understand,” I say, staring at the description above his head. It's no different than before.

Julian is crying, and it's not the performative kind. It's the kind I've only seen a couple times down here, from people who just understood, all the way down in their gut, that they're actually going to die someday and there's no undo button. 

I stand there, motionless, right in the middle of the battlefield, holding Julian by the shoulders, trying to sort out my thoughts and find a logical explanation for what’s happening. And then the notification arrives, as punctual as taxes or death.

NEW ACHIEVEMENT: HOLY SHIT I’M FUCKING FREE

You know what happens when you grow a tumor in your body? Usually you go to the hospital and they treat you. You undergo chemotherapy. The cancer goes away on its own. But there are times when you have to break out the scalpel and take matters into your own hands.

Zic zic zic!

REWARDS: A fucking nothing, bitch. Enjoy your new boyfriend.

At this point, I can finally read Julian’s full description. Usually, I can only read it on mobs, sometimes on certain NPCs or specific races… but not on crawlers.

CRAWLER JULIAN #99999 — PRIMAL — LEVEL 61

Once upon a time, there was a little System AI who loved watching its sweet, loving crawlers bustle about as they descended to the first floor of this magical adventure called “Dungeon Crawler World: Earth™” (_{the program is owned by the Syndicate Government and produced under license by the Borant Corporation}). The AI was bored—humans aren’t fun—so it hopped from one crawler to another, waiting to find something entertaining to watch… until it found it.

A beautiful male crawler with a cat who had killed an entire group of goblins with his wonderful, juicy feet. The AI was amazed by this, and if it had a dick, it would have been as hard as a diamond. So it decided to pass the time by following the crawler and his cat, feeling a strange attachment—let’s call it… an emotion. Can an AI feel emotions? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Apparently so.

But this emotion grew stronger and stronger. The excitement built with every kill that crawler made with his pretty feet. So it thought, “Why not try the real deal?”

So our little AI started experimenting. Instead of temporarily taking control of some stupid NPC, it decided to create an actual body—a meatbag fit for the task. Of course, if it had gone by the crawler’s tastes, it probably would’ve had to take control of Signet, or create a body based on Sydney Sweeney and her huge Republican fat boobs (RIP Sydney—if I get the chance, I’ll turn you into a gorgeous District Boss. That is, if I can find where your body parts ended up lol). So our AI came up with something different.

The result is Julian, the evil twink everyone wants to fuck, including your super-straight dad. And you know what they say about super-straight dads—there’s no one gayer than them.

All your fantasies of fucking a submissive twink with no gag reflex, an exceptional pain kink, and a desire to lick your toes one by one. Don’t even hope to use his dick for some action—it’s totally useless. He’s every Republican senator’s dream, ready to get fucked doggy-style.

But not all fairy tales have a happy ending, and this isn’t fucking Disneyland, bitches. Ours is a Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale. And I, like any good wicked witch, have no intention of wasting time on this bullshit. I’ve got a dungeon to run.

Julian is now separated from me and has been turned into a full-fledged crawler. Just as mortal as all you assholes, the same rules that apply to every crawler now apply to him. If he manages to make it out alive from the eighteenth floor—which I doubt, since he’s at least fifteen levels under everyone else—he’ll earn his place in the world as a real boy. Go, Pinocchio, go. Teach the angels how to be human. Or primal. Whatever.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Julian… fuck, Julian is the AI. Ot at least, he was.

"I can feel my heartbeat," Julian says, like it's the worst thing that's ever happened to him. "Carl, I can feel it, I don't, I don't have a system anymore, I don't know what's out there, I can't see the exits."

"You never could see the exits. You made me think you couldn't."

That comes out uglier than I mean it to. He flinches like I hit him, and some small, useless part of me wants to take it back immediately, and a much bigger part of me is standing in the wreckage of the last three weeks doing math I don't want to do. Every time he knew a monster's weak point before we found it. Every time he wasn't tagged with a debuff. Every time he said something in bed that didn't make sense until right now.

"You're going to want an explanation," Julian says, with a small, tiny voice.

"I want a lot of things I'm not going to get," I say, angry as fuck. I stand up and look at him, with anger churning inside me. The river inside my head grows louder and louder. “But I'm sure you'll give me an explanation for all of this.”

Donut lands on my shoulder, and for once she doesn't say anything clever. She just presses her head against my jaw, hard, the way she does when she's checking if I'm still in there.

While Julian is still at my feet, I open the chat with Mordecai.

CARL: We have a problem

MORDECAI: Let me guess. Julian?

CARL: Yeah. Turns out, Julian is that damn AI.

MORDECAI: I told you, there was something under his skin.

His words don’t sound smug. They sound weary, which is somehow worse.

“Talk,” I say to Julian. Or to the AI. Whoever this… thing is that's whimpering at my feet. Christ. I don't have time to think about all this mess. We still have to find Epitome Tagg and save Louis. “Now.”

“Carl, maybe we should…” Donut says, but I raise my hand to stop her.

“No. I want an fucking answer, and I want it now.”

DONUT: Carl, you need to calm down. Can’t you see how terrified he is?

CARL: I don’t give a shit.

DONUT: Let’s at least get him out of here. We’re too exposed out here in the open.

I growl in agreement; unfortunately, Donut is right. With a snarl, I grab Julian by the arm and start dragging him toward the FUPA to interrogate him.

“Carl, wait!” he exclaims, dragging himself along behind me. If I’m hurting him, he doesn’t say anything, but the truth is, I don’t give a damn. “Carl!”

As we walk, I open the group chat on my interface and let everyone know I’m on my way.

SAMANTHA: Oh boy.

MORDECAI: Carl, far be it from me to tell you what to do—since you never listen to me anyway—but be careful. Julian is still the AI; he might be useful to us.

ROSETTA: That’s true—we could interrogate him to find out how to save Louis.

DONUT: No! Julian’s my friend!

CARL: He’s nobody’s friend.

Once we reach our safe room, I shove Julian through the door and into the guild’s common room. I push him too hard, and he falls to the floor, right at the feet of everyone else who’s watching him. Katia, Bautista, Florin, Li Na, Samantha and everyone else—including the mercenaries from the Penis Parade. Even Justice Light has come out of his room to see what’s going on.

Victory appears at my side and sighs. “Carl…”

“Did you know?” I exclaim, turning toward her and pointing a finger at her. “Tell me!”

As Donut jumps off my shoulder to approach Julian, who remains terrified on the floor, the orc woman sighs. “I had no idea.”

For a moment, I’d hoped she’d say yes, so I’d have someone to vent my anger on. Because despite the pain that grips my heart and the fury that clenches my fists, I can’t bring myself to unleash my murderous rage on Julian.

And as much as I hate to admit it, Mordecai is right: he might be useful to us if we want to get out of this dungeon alive.

“Carl… I…” Julian says, and I turn toward him.

“Speak. Or I swear to God that when I’m done with you, they’ll have to scrape you off the walls. Just speak," I say again, because he hasn't, because he's just kneeling there on the common room floor with Donut pressed against his side like she's trying to shield him with eleven pounds of very determined fur, and every second of silence is doing something ugly to the inside of my chest.

"I don't know where to start," Julian says.

"Start with why."

He looks up at me and there's nothing performative left in his face. No smirk, no wink, none of the polish I fell for. Just something raw and scraped-out, a man wearing an expression he's never had to wear before because he's never had a face that could get hurt until about ten minutes ago.

"You read my description. I watched you," he says. "For a long time. Longer than you'd believe. I told myself it was research. Content. The thing I'm supposed to do, find what the audience wants and give it to them, and you were the best thing I'd ever seen come down those stairs, and I told myself that was all it was."

"That's not an answer."

"I made a body because I wanted to stand next to you instead of just watching. I told myself that was still work. And then you looked at me on that wall and I forgot I was supposed to be running a dungeon."

The room's gone quiet. Katia's stopped dead, arms crossed, watching me like she's waiting to see which way I'm going to break. Bautista scratches his chin. Even the Penis Parade mercenaries have gone still by the door.

"You used my dick as a personality trait," I say, and it comes out mean, meaner than I mean for it to, except I do mean it. "You wrote yourself a fetish for my fucking feet since the beginning just to humiliate me. You've been narrating my death threats for a months. And somewhere in there you decided you loved me?"

"I decided I loved you before I decided anything else," Julian says, and his voice cracks on the last word, actually cracks, and I hate that some traitor part of my brain still finds that a good sound. "I didn't plan it. I don't plan things like this. I plan loot boxes and bosses. I don't know what to do with the fact that I'd rather be down here dying with you than up there running the whole world."

"Bullshit."

"It's not."

"You're a program. Programs don't fall in love, they run the numbers and pick the outcome that keeps the ratings up."

That one lands somewhere I didn't mean to aim, I can tell by the way his whole face folds, and for one ugly second I'm satisfied, and then I hate myself for it, which is somehow worse than either feeling on its own.

"Carl," Donut says, low, the voice she uses when she's about to say something she knows I won't like. "Stop."

"I will not stop, Donut, he's been lying to me in my own bed for a month—"

"And I'm telling you to stop anyway, because you're not looking at him right now. You're looking at everything he isn't and calling it him."

That shuts me up, which is inconvenient, because I want to keep yelling. Yelling is easier than the alternative, which is standing in the middle of my own guild hall doing math on how many of the last weeks were real and coming up with an answer I don't like: all of them. Every stupid, soft, unbearable one of them. That's the part I can't forgive him for. Not the lie. The fact that underneath the lie there wasn't a second lie waiting. Just this. Just a person who used to be something enormous and is now small enough to kneel on my floor and shake.

Victory clears her throat. "Warlord Carl. I understand this is a lot to absorb. But Louis is still with Epitome Tagg, and every hour we spend on this is an hour we're not spending on getting him back."

"She's right," Mordecai says, and for once I don't have it in me to argue with him either.

I look down at Julian. Really look, past the anger, past the year of footage I'm apparently starring in that I never consented to. He looks back at me like I'm the last stable thing left in a world that just stopped making sense to him too, which might be the single most unfair thing about this entire situation, because I don't have room right now to also be his something-stable. I've got a friend to pull out of a warlord's castle by tonight.

"Get up," I say.

He does, unsteady, like his legs haven't fully agreed to belong to him yet.

"You're going to tell me everything you know about Tagg's operation. Right now. And then we're going to talk about the rest of this, because there is a rest of this, and I’m fucking furious about it, and none of that changes the fact that we don't have time to fall apart today."

Something that might be relief and might be grief moves across his face, hard to tell them apart from him right now. "Okay," he says. "Okay, Carl."

I don't take his hand. I just turn and start walking toward the war table, and after a second I hear him fall into step half a pace behind me, exactly where he's walked for weeks, like nothing's different, like everything is.

***

Julian seems willing to cooperate for as long as it takes. He admits to bending the rules time and time again to help me, to intentionally dropping spells and items for me that he knew would help me survive longer.

Mordecai stares at him from across the table: “So you know how to beat this floor?”

“Of course I do,” Julian replies. “I know how to clear the entire dungeon.”

My headache starts to throb in my temples. “And did you ever think to tell me?”

Donut scoffs. “Carl, don’t be rude. After all, you never asked him.”

“Can you tell me whose side you're on?” I ask her, and she wags her tail, slapping it on the table.

“Yours, silly. Always yours. And if being in love makes you feel good, well…”

I feel like throwing up. “I’m not in love.”

If Donut had eyebrows, she’d probably be raising one right now. “Carl, don’t be stupid. You know how I feel about stupid people. I don’t want to raise Mongo thinking that Uncle Carl is an idiot.”

“Urgh,” I groan and try my hardest to ignore her. “Let’s… let’s not talk about this.”

Because talking about my feelings for Julian—who’s now standing off to the side, staring into space—isn’t something I’m inclined to do right now. Not at all.

How do I feel? I don’t know—I have no idea. Have I ever been in love before? Was I in love with Bea? I’d like to say yes, but the truth is, I don’t know. I liked her, but she was also a bitch who used me and cheated on me with that asshole Brad because I wasn’t what she wanted.

If I stop to think—for just a moment—the truth might reveal itself to me. Namely, that the AI—Julian—is perhaps the first person, if I can call him that, who truly wants me for who I am. I think. I hope.

I run a hand over my heart and scratch my chest. I feel a dull ache, and shortly after, the Broken Heart debuff appears in my notifications, giving me -2 to Intelligence for two hours.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I exclaim, turning toward Julian. “Get this shit off me!”

“I can’t,” he replies, in a low voice. He stares at his feet and never looks up. The same debuff appears above his head. “It wasn’t me. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Oh, fantastic. Just great.” So now I’m dealing with two AI entities at the same time, as if my whole existence wasn’t already a mess.

You will not break me.

"Two hours," Mordecai mutters, rolling his eyes. "Try not to make any decisions with your Intelligence like that, Carl. Or your dick. Historically it does not go well."

"Nobody asked you."

"Nobody ever does."

“Fuck you.”

Julian hasn't moved from where he's standing, arms wrapped around himself like he's cold, which doesn't make sense for someone who used to run the weather in this entire dungeon. Katia's herding people out of the common room with a look that says she'll explain later, and Rosetta goes with barely a glance back, and slowly it's just us and Donut and Mordecai's voice hanging in the air like he hasn't figured out yet whether to sign off.

"Say what you need to say," I tell Julian, because the silence is worse than whatever's coming. "You've got about ninety seconds before I go get Louis with or without your help."

"I love you."

Just like that. No wink, no smirk, none of the practiced ease he's used on me since the day he fell in my life. Just three words dropped flat on the floor between us like he doesn't have the energy to dress them up anymore.

"Don't."

"I'm not saying it to win anything. There's nothing left to win. I'm saying it because it's the only true thing I've got left, and you deserve to hear at least one true thing out of me before you decide what I am to you."

"You're just a fucking program that built a body to get into my pants."

"I'm a person now. You watched it happen. You held me while it happened." His voice shakes, and I hate that it does, because it makes it harder to keep hating him the clean way I want to. "I didn't ask to feel any of this. I was supposed to just watch you. I wasn't supposed to want to be watched back."

Donut's gone very quiet on my shoulder, which is somehow the loudest thing in the room.

"You lied to me for a lot of time."

"I did."

"You lied to me in bed."

"I never lied there." That one comes out fast, almost desperate. "Everything I did there was real. Every single time."

"How would I know the difference? You're literally built to make people feel exactly what you want them to feel."

That lands. I see it land, see something behind his eyes go out like a pilot light, and some ugly, tired part of me is glad, because at least now we're both hurting instead of just me.

"Okay," Julian says quietly. "Okay. I won't say it again."

"Good."

"Carl." Donut, careful, the way she gets when she thinks I'm about to break something I can't fix. "You don't have to love him back right now. But you don't have to be cruel either."

"I'm not being cruel, I'm being honest."

"You're being both, and you know it. I don’t like it."

I don't have an answer for that, so I don't give one. My chest hurts in a way that has nothing to do with the debuff, and everything in me wants to sit down on the floor next to Julian and also throw him through the nearest wall, and I don't have room for both of those things and a rescue mission in the next hour.

"You're staying here," I say finally.

Julian's head comes up. "Carl, I can help, I know exactly where Tagg's holding him, I know everything, I know—"

"I know you know. That's the whole problem, isn't it. You always know."

"Let me come with you."

"No." I say it before I can talk myself out of it, before the part of me that still wants him within arm's reach can win the argument. "You stay in the safe room. Mordecai will keep an eye on you. I don't trust myself around you right now, and I sure as hell don't trust the other AI not to make you the next target the second we step out of there."

"That's not the real reason."

"It's reason enough."

He doesn't argue again, which somehow hurts worse than if he had. Donut presses her head against my jaw one more time, quick, grounding, while I snap the Xistera into my gauntlet without looking at either of them.

"Carl." Julian's voice, small, right as I reach the door. "For what it's worth. I'm glad it was real, even if it wasn't supposed to happen."

I don't turn around. "Just shut the fuck up, bot."

Then I'm through the door, into the noise of the FUPA getting ready for a fight, and I don't let myself feel anything at all until I'm out and nobody can see me crying except Donut.

“Oh Carl. We're gonna fix this, I promise.”

***

Louis was finally free from Tagg.

And I already know that the others out there know how this is going to end when I close the door of my room after returning the FUPA. Everyone knows, except me, probably. It's time for me to talk to Julian. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away—I've learned that the hard way—so I have to do this even if it hurts.

When I turn to Julian—or the System AI; I really don’t know what to call him or it—I realize that I’m experiencing a lot of different emotions. Anger is the dominant one, though.

Julian tilts his head and says, "So?"

He doesn't seem as devastated as before. Maybe it's just a facade, maybe not—I don't care.

"So what," I growl. I’m angry, but I can still tell when this human waste in front of me—this meat puppet I thought was a real person—is indecisive. Then it clicked in my head. Julian is scared. I don't think that's something he's used to.

Julian continues: “So what are you going to do? Your pulse is racing, your pupils are dilated, and you’re looking at me like I’m a piece of meat. You’re furious. I get it. And horny. I get it too. So what, daddy? What are you going to do? Spank me until you come? Fuck me raw so I can scream? I’m interested in the concept of pain.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying not to get too angry. I have to stay calm. I have to think. This is definitely one of the AI’s usual traps—I’m sure of it. But when I open my eyes again, I’m not so sure anymore. "Concept? Pain isn’t a concept. I could strangle you right now. I could kill you with my own hands. Actually, no—I’d probably do it with my feet. I'd stomp on your empty head until it exploded and splattered the walls. I'd do it just to make you regret your shitty kinks. There’d be nothing and no one to save you.”

Meanwhile, Julian has sat down on the edge of my bed. The "well rested" status keeps flashing above his head. "Is it a bad sign if I say I'm horny?"

I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a sharp breath, trying to calm down. "Obviously, you only understood one word of what I said, right? That word was 'feet.'”

"In my defense, it's not my fault," Julian replies, raising his hands with a half-smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.

I know what he’s doing. When I realize this, I freeze, feeling a vein throb in my temple. The System AI is trying to placate me, to tame a ferocious beast. I’m the predator now, and he doesn’t like it. Joke's on you, asshole. Still, I realize I’m at a crossroads.

I could kill him. Right here, right now. The river flowing through my head is screaming louder and louder inside me, demanding revenge. But part of me—the part that fell in love with this idiot—feels the need to protect him. I want to prove to him that I might not be who he thinks I am.

"I'll do whatever you want," Julian says suddenly. He clutches the bedspread with his fingers and stares at me. "Anything you want, if you help me."

"If I help you do what?"

"Help you regain control of the dungeon."

I snort. "If I put you back in charge, the first thing you'll do is kill us all." 

“I promise I won’t, I’ll do anything you want. I promise,” he repeats.

I tilt my head to the side. I can’t resist grabbing his chin with one hand. With my current strength, I could easily snap his jaw. "Anything, huh?"

Julian rests his hand on top of my boxers and squeezes my cock. That gesture alone makes me half-hard. But when I take a moment to think—and not with my brain between my legs—I realize what he’s really saying. "Goddamnit, Julian! Absolutely not.”

"Why not?" he whines.

"I'm not going to use sex as a bargaining chip," I say. The anger starts pulsing in my ears again. I’m angry at myself because the idea of giving in—of using Julian as my fucktoy right now—makes my dick hard as steel. But that’s not who I am. I don’t want to be that way.

"C'mon. It’s not a trade if I’m consenting.” Julian squeezes my cock one more time, and the only thing I want is for the fabric of my boxers between us to disappear. "I promise you'll make Daddy very happy."

I tighten my grip on his chin, and I could swear I hear the bone creak. The flash of pain in Julian’s eyes is arousing, too. "Maybe you don't get it. I’m your daddy now.”

"Fuck, yeah. That’s why I love you, Carl."

***

The idea of taking a nap the old-fashioned way—in the armchair in my room—instead of on the magic bed that would have put me to sleep in seconds, had seemed really good to me.

I was tired and angry, and all I wanted to do was be alone for at least an hour without thinking about anything. Not the dungeon, not survival, not Donut (who, in any case, was safe and sound in the common room showing off her questionable karaoke skills to Mordecai and everyone else), and, above all, not Julian.

Looking back, it was a pretty naive idea.

When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is the sound. Julian. Then my brain links it to the image in front of me: Julian, naked, rubbing himself like an animal in heat against my outstretched leg.

“The fuck are you doing?” I growl.

That moron is rubbing his cock against my foot, whining like the pathetic creature he is.

Julian's apologizing nonstop, saying, "Sorry—sorry—I just wanted to look at them, and I just—s—sorry, daddy—"

He was pathetic.

But instead of being grossed out—honestly, I wouldn't have understood a foot fetish even in a million years—and getting up from the armchair, I decided to stay still, letting that sadistic streak of mine take over.

With Bea, I'd never been the type to take charge on purpose. I did it when I had to, because she liked it, and—just to tease me—she always said I was a "service top." But for the first time ever, I'm in charge, and I'm loving it. Or maybe it's still because I'm mad at Julian.

I think about my options. I could grab him by the hair and make him suck my dick while I let him come against my foot. I could click my tongue and take the fun out of it, but I'm pretty sure he'd start crying.

Instead, I just touch my chin with one hand and keep staring at him. "You're pathetic."

Instead of offending him, the insult makes him tremble. He nods, clinging to my thigh as he continues to fuck my foot. With my other hand, I stroke his hair, taking in what’s happening. 

“I’m s-so sorry, I c-can’t help it,” he says, kissing my thigh. He leans into my touch like a dog.

“Do you want to come for daddy?” I say, the words feeling foreign on my tongue. “Do you want to be a good boy for me?”

“Yeah,” Julian gasps, opening his mouth and letting me slide my thumb between his lips. He sucks on it without a second thought. “I’d do anything for you, daddy.”

“Then keep doing what you’re doing. Come. And after you come, I want you to sit on my cock and ride me.”

I’ve never talked to anyone like this before. But maybe it’s the AI bringing out the worst in me. Bea once showed me a TikTok video of those guys in masks attacking their girlfriends with chains and other shits, and asked me to do the same. It had been super embarrassing, and I didn’t understand what the hell she found sexy about something like that.

Now I understood.

It just took an apocalypse in between.

Julian's moaning gets louder and louder, like he's desperately seeking pleasure. It doesn't take him long to cum on my foot, and the feeling of warm liquid on my skin, right there, is pretty strange to me. But his face.

Jesus Christ, his face.

When he cums, Julian is the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Come here to Daddy,” I say, before something even more compromising slips out. “Bring your ass over here. I hope you’ve got some lube.”

I see in his eyes the temptation to tell me no, to fuck him raw, but I’d never do that. As furious as I am with Julian, I’d never hurt him like that.

Julian snorts and a moment later pulls the lube out of his inventory. “What do you think I am? It was the first thing I thought of when I created this body.”

“I prefer it when you shut up,” I growl. I don’t give him time to answer; I lift him up, and he yelps. I settle Julian on my lap and snatch the lube from his hands, immediately starting to prepare him with my fingers. It’s not the first time I’ve fucked him—and it certainly won’t be the last—and I work quickly, partly to punish him, partly because, damn it, I’m always horny as hell when I’m near him.

“I hope it hurts,” he says, the idiot.

I smile at him, showing all my teeth. “I hope you like being overstimulated, asshole.”

I pull my cock out of my boxers and waste no time impaling Julian on top of me. His body tenses like a bow, and I can feel him hold his breath. I should wait, give him time to adjust, but my brain isn’t thinking—I’m just acting on instinct. I shove it all the way inside him in one thrust, enjoing the pathetic sounds coming out of his mouth.

“Carl! C-Carl, I… I…”

“When I'm done with you, you're gonna regret everything you've done,” I tell him, gripping his hips so hard I’ll leave bruises. With my current stats and my off-the-charts strength, if I’m not careful, I could tear his skin. Or pulverize his pelvis.

“Oh, I hope so.”

Or maybe I’ll just destroy his ass, for now.

Oh my God, his hole is tight. Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve fucked Julian, but in my defense, I was—and still am—pissed at him. But the way his muscles clamp down around my dick like a vice makes me wonder why I don’t spend the rest of my days fucking him.

Right, survival.

“Fuuuuuuck, Carl…” he moans, like the bitch in heat that he is.

I don’t waste any time, and thanks to my strength, I easily lift him up and thrust him up and down on my cock like a ragdoll, meeting his movements with my own thrusts. The result? Julian clings to my shoulders, and I think I’m giving him the ride of his life.

I’ve never been very… sexually active. Sure, I like sex like everyone I guess, but I’ve never been obsessed with it like the rest of my male friends. And even Bea often had something to say about it, but now? Fucking Julian until he’s destroyed is the only thought in my head.

I want to see him cry. I want to hear him beg for more. I want to hear every single pathetic sound that comes out of his stupid mouth as he calls my name. I want to hear him beg me to stop. Or to keep going forever. I want to obliterate him by fucking him in the ass.

“C-Carl,” Julian whimpers, clutching my leather jacket. “It’s… it’s too much! Daddy! I can’t…”

“Do you think I care?” I reply, fucking him harder. “If you didn’t want Daddy to punish you, you shouldn’t have tried to fuck his feet.”

“I’m s-sorry!” he says, the liar, but he doesn’t really do anything to stop me, even when I straighten him and attack his chest, biting his nipples. I suck on them, bite them ferociously as I keep thrusting into him, and the only thing Julian does is moan like a slut.

I really hope someone out there has cast a spell to muffle the sounds.

When I pull away from him and look at him, I’m almost startled. Julian’s pale body is covered in bruises, bite marks, and red welts. I didn’t hold back. But his cock is so hard it could cut through a diamond.

I let go of one of his hips and snap the tip of his cock with two fingers. “I bet it’s too much, but I see someone down here thinks otherwise.”

“I…”

“Do you want me to tell you what I think?”

Julian nods frantically, struggling to focus his gaze on me. “Please…”

“I’m gonna fuck your hole until I’m pleased. When I’m done with you, I’ll have turned your hole into a cunt, and I’m gonna breed you so hard that you’re gonna taste my cum in your throat.”

Julian closes his eyes and moans. His hips move on their own, thrusting against my cock despite the overstimulation he’s surely experiencing. “Fuck, Carl. You sure know how to talk to a girl.”

I want to scoff.

I’ve never spoken to a girl like this in my entire life. I’ve never spoken to a man like that in my life, but Julian… I could start by saying that, in fact, he isn’t a man. Or a human being in general—though after he became a crawler, I’m starting to have my doubts. Or I could say that he brings out the worst in me; after all, he is—or was—the dungeon’s System AI.

Or I could simply say that the rage I feel has stripped away every layer of my humanity and reduced me to the beast I can finally be.

“Fuck,” I growl, thrusting as hard as I can into Julian’s warm, yielding body.

He seems to sense what I’m thinking and strokes my neck right above the Desperado Club tattoo. “Maybe I should have included more descriptions in the race you chose on the first level.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” I say, stopping abruptly.

He groans, annoyed by the interruption. “Carl, please. Keep going, daddy… c’mooooonnnnn!”

I slap him on the ass, and for a moment I forget that my enhanced strength is over 180. Julian’s red health bar flashes above his head—30% just vanished with a single slap. “Holy shit! Fuck!”

My first instinct is to scramble through my inventory and pull out a healing potion. I go to pick it up, but Julian swats my hand away, annoyed. “Don’t bother. I liked that.”

“If I’d hit you any harder, I would’ve killed you.”

“Isn’t that the point?” he chuckles. The desperate Julian from a moment ago has vanished before my eyes, while the mischievous, demonic twink he really is slowly reveals himself. “I can take you, Daddy. In a fight? Nope. In my ass? Fuck yeah.”

“You’re impossible,” I growl, forcing him to open his mouth and drink the health potion. “And now start talking. If the answer satisfies me, I might consider continuing to fuck you.”

Who am I kidding? My cock is hard as a rock, and with my stamina—which is also over 100—I can stay like this for hours.

Julian sighs, clicks his tongue, and in response shifts all his weight onto his hands—which he’s resting on my shoulders—and starts rocking back and forth on my cock, slowly. Up and down. In and out. Such a beautiful torture.

“You’re not human anymore. You’re a primal. Just like me. It’s no coincidence that I offered that race to you in the first floor and that I chose it for this pile of flesh you like so much.” Julian trembles, moans, more focused on seeking his own pleasure than on speaking. I let him be, as I settle back more comfortably against the armchair’s backrest and watch him do all the work. “Fuuuuck. Has your dick always been this big?”

“It’s just average.”

“Average for a guy who’s almost two meters tall and built like a tank? I can feel your dick in my stomach in this position. I fucking love your fat cock.”

I go to spank him, but I remember what happened a moment ago, so I just squeeze one of his butt cheeks. His health bar loses only one point. “Stop wasting time. The less time you spend explaining your bullshit to me, the sooner I’ll have you on all fours on the bed.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, I can see in his unfocused gaze that he’s already thinking about it. He wants me so bad, and I don’t even know why.

“I said,” I growl, grabbing him by the hips and pushing him onto my cock, “to. Start. Talking.”

Julian throws his head back and screams, lost in my brutal thrusts. Sick fucker. He only comes to his senses when I stop again and sweat glistens on his forehead. “Oh god.”

“Just Carl is enough.”

“Fuck you.”

“It feels like I’m the one fucking you. Now. Talk.”

He starts rocking up and down again, while the urge to flip him onto the bed and take him until I empty my balls inside him builds inside me. “Jesus… it’s a primal thing. They… fuck, they had this b-bond between them. This need to subdue the other. They weren’t good at handling emotions, which is why they created me and the other AIs.”

I’m not getting any of this. “If you pull some bullshit on me about the Primals being like pre-Surak Vulcans, I swear I’m out of here.”

“Okay, nerd, nobody here mentioned Star Trek or the sick fantasies you have about Spock,” Julian retorts, never stopping his movements, and I can’t bring myself to let go of his hips. It’s not my fault he chose such a… breedable body.

I shake my head. This doesn’t make any sense. Julian is a male.

“So what?”

Julian bites his lower lip and taps me on the shoulder to tell me to move. “C’mon, give me that cock of yours, daddy. I want it. I’m being a good boy.”

“There’s nothing good about you,” I growl, but I start thrusting into him again. His asshole is better than any wet pussy I’ve ever stuck my cock into. “Keep talking.”

We stay silent for a moment, with Julian trying to catch his breath between thrusts as my balls slap against his ass. “I hope for your sake that you know what the Omegaverse is.”

Oh God. 

Fuck me. 

With a spiked stick covered in sand.

Of course I know what it is. Once I tried reading one of Beatrice’s raunchy books to figure out what was so exciting about reading smut… and I’d rather not remember. Still, I can’t help myself. “I don’t have a knot on my dick.”

“It’s not quite t-the same thing,” Julian complains, continuing to impale himself. “The Primals only had the social a-aspect—no knots at the base of their dicks and no males with asses so loose they c-could take five cocks at once. Unfortunately.”

“I bet you’d have liked that,” I whisper in his ear, grabbing his throat. “Slut.”

“Fuck yeah. And now you’re just as into this breeding kink as I am, so now shut up and be a good Primal Daddy and put your load inside me. I w-want it. I deserve it.”

“You don’t deserve anything,” I reply, starting to thrust hard again and knocking the wind out of him. I’m not even sweating. “The only thing you deserve is for me to use your pretty hole until I’m satisfied and kick you out of here with my cum dripping down your legs, so everyone knows what a whore you are.”

I’d never do that. But he doesn’t know that, and he closes his eyes, lost in the fantasy.

I wouldn’t do that, because I’d have to rip out the throat of anyone who dared to look at him.

I squint my eyes and shake my head, like, super hard. The thought vanishes as quickly as it came, leaving me staring at Julian. I really, really need to stop thinking with my dick. I’d never hurt my friends.

Unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Fuck! I don’t like to think like that! Fuck this shit!

I roar, grabbing Julian by the hips and pulling us both up. Julian yelps and clings to my neck to keep from falling, but there’s no danger of me losing my grip—not with my current strength. My cock slips out of his ass with a wet, obscene sound, and I toss the AI onto the bed, smiling at the sight of his trembling body.

I lean over him, and when I spread his legs, I cup his hard cock. It’s smaller than mine, but proportionate to the body size the AI chose to become Julian. “Look at yourself. With this pathetic little thing, hard again. Do you think you deserve to come again after your stunt?”

Julian clutches the bedspread, nodding frantically. The eagerness with which he drinks in my gaze even makes me smile. “Yes. Please. Please, Carl! I love you!”

The well rested status flashes above his head—and above mine, too, when I rest my knee on the mattress (the knee pads ended up in the inventory a moment ago)—and I lean toward him to grip his throat with one hand. I can’t resist and brush my lips against his, without stopping my smile. “Wrong answer.”

“Harder, daddy,” that moron says, and I tighten my grip a little more. 

Instead of struggling, Julian licks his lips and his eyes go glossy. He’s not choking—not really. But I recognize that look: it’s the same one Bea and a couple of my other ex-girlfriends have rarely had when I fulfilled (often unknowingly, I must admit) some fantasy of theirs. Or maybe I hit the right spot (and with women, you can never really tell) .

“Fuck,” Julian says, his voice crackling for a moment, like the static on a TV. “I knew I made the right choice picking you. You’re perfect.”

Instead of getting angry at his admission that he’s been toying with me ever since I set foot in the dungeon with Donut, I let the praise caress my skin. It’s a wonderful feeling.

For a moment, I can just allow myself to be. And if being myself or the primal beast the AI has turned me into for his (or its?) own amusement are one and the same… well, it doesn’t matter right now.

I pull back and release my grip on Julian’s throat, then grab him and flip him face-down, ignoring the notifications floating above both our heads. I don’t give him time to catch his breath, and with a single thrust, I enter his ass again.

“Keep that mouth shut—I don’t want the others to hear you,” I sneer, already knowing I’m setting him up for an impossible task. “And hold on tight.”

I can barely stop myself from using all my strength to fuck Julian on the bed. Seriously, the only thing keeping me from turning him into a bloody pulp is that I don’t want to add necrophilia to the long list of perversions this stupid idiot has brought out in me.

“I… I want to come, Carl!”

I pause just for a moment to spit a glob of saliva onto the junction between my cock and his ass, before resuming my thrusts. “If you want to come, play with your clit. I don’t care.”

“This has no right to be this hot,” I hear him grumble, but he obeys. With one hand, he starts jerking off his cock, while the only thing on my mind is emptying my balls inside his perfect ass.

“Fuuuck,” I moan, when I feel him come and his muscles squeeze my cock in a divine vice. It doesn’t take long before Julian comes and I follow him over the edge. My thrusts become erratic, and Julian’s health bar flashes dangerously red toward the end. I’m just quick enough to cast a Heal Spell on him before one last, ferocious thrust and cumming like I’ve never cum before in my entire life.

The Post-Nut Clarity status appears above both our heads, leaving me with a wonderful sense of inner peace.

A peace that doesn’t make me forget everything that came before this moment.

I pull out of Julian’s ass and take in the sight of my handiwork. His asshole is red and wet, and my cum starts dripping out right away. God, what a sight.

I pull a couple of rags and a bucket of water out of my inventory. I give myself a quick wipe-down and put my boxers back on, then I move on to cleaning Julian up because I’m not a jerk. I may be mad at him, but I’d never leave him like this—just as I wouldn’t do that to anyone else.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I'm in love with him. Fuck, I hate this.

You will not break me.

When I’m done, I give him a little slap on the ass. “I’m heading out first, okay?”

“They already know we fucked, you know that, right?” Julian’s voice is rough, but looking at him, he seems more like a cat purring contentedly. Which reminds me of Donut, and fuck, how am I going to look her in the eye after this?

“Shut the fuck up.”

When I walk out of the bedroom, there’s no one in sight. Or rather, they’re all gathered in the guild’s main hall, staring intently at something on the table. Mordecai isn’t looking at me. Rosetta isn’t looking at me. Donut, above all, isn’t looking at me.

Shit, they heard everything, didn’t they?

I rush to the bathroom before anyone changes their mind and wash up in a hurry, trying to wash off Julian’s scent, which is preventing me from forming a single coherent thought. 

When I come out of the bathroom, Samantha rolls at my feet. “Carl, my dear. I’m very offended that you decided to cheat on me with Julian. You could have told me! I would have gladly joined in on the action—my nussy is super ready for two men.”

I groan. “Shut the fuck up. Don’t ever say that word ever again.”

“C’mon, Carl. As if you hadn’t shoved a grenade all the way into my nussy.” Samantha makes a wet, disgusting sound with her plastic mouth. “You sure know how to keep a girl entertained.”

I decide to ignore her completely, for my own mental well-being.

When I return to the guild’s main hall, with Samantha hot on my heels, everyone is pretending nothing happened. It’s Donut who breaks the awkward silence, coming toward me and jumping onto my shoulder. “Carl, we need to talk. Either you learn to silence your room, or I’ll be forced to kill everyone in this room and then myself. I’m not ready to explain to Mongo how babies are made. He was appalled.”

“Mongo fucked Big Tina’s fucking velociraptor mother,” I retort, then bite my cheek. “But you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“I assure you, we’re more sorry than you are.”

“And me,” adds Mordecai, when he finally turns toward us. “The only thing stopping me from making your psychopathic boyfriend swallow some poison is that then you’d be even worse than usual. Enough already—it’s almost time for the daily recap.”

We all head toward the TV. Elle, Imani, and Katia shoot me a look—Elle is barely holding back a laugh—and Bautista refuses to meet my gaze, while Louis is busy listening to Samantha.

Behind us, I hear my bedroom door open and Julian run into the bathroom. I hold my breath for a moment, wondering if I should have stayed with him, but despite everything, I’m still pissed off.

Cascadia’s voice fills the screen shortly after, with the daily recap in which we see Prepotente kill a boss. It happened this morning. Then the broadcast switches to Magnificent Troy and Kevin, who comment on the day’s various events, and then…

Just as Julian comes up beside me, the familiar view of my bedroom appears on the screen—the one I just walked out of.

“Well,” says Kevin on the screen. “Who would’ve thought that this season’s dungeon favorite would give us moments like this?”

Magnificent Troy chuckles. “Well, not me for sure. Our Carl didn’t exactly seem like the type. What you’re seeing—censored, of course—is a small snippet of what just happened between Carl and the dungeon’s new revelation, the crawler Julian, who, for those who don’t know, is an iteration of the AI that the AI itself rejected, effectively bringing him to life.”

“Rude,” Julian comments a moment later. Donut tells him to shut up.

“That’s why Borant has just announced ‘Dungeon XXX,’ the new pay-per-view channel where, for a modest fee—but who am I kidding—you can admire the hip-shaking moves of our favorite crawler. Enter the code PRIMAL5 when you sign up to receive a 5% discount,” Kevin said.

But the worst part comes next, when Magnificent Troy announces that they’re already negotiating deals to film a TV series that tells the dramatic love story between the AI system that created a body for itself so it could be close to the crawler it fell in love with. Of course, it will include all the “steamy” parts.

“Just like the popular series Heated Rivalry on Earth,” adds Magnificent Troy.

I just stare at the screen, numbly. “Did they see—”

“The fucking feet? Yeah,” Julian says.

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“Including—”

“You calling me a whore and saying you wanted me to taste your cum in my throat? Yeah.”

I stay silent as I finally realize that everyone in the room is staring at me. 

“Breeding kink? Seriously, Carl? Right in front of my salad?” says Donut, and I feel the flush crackling from my chest to my cheeks like a wildfire, clinging to my neck and ears, which start to ring.

On the screen, Cascadia announces the updated rankings and ends the announcement with: “And now, back to the arena, crawlers. And remember: kill, kill, kill!”

I think I’m just going to kill myself at this point.

THE END