I tucked the rickshaw into my inventory and headed for the dental office doors, ready to make a quick G and buy some shoes. Then I’d resume my mini-quest to find Dirk and Stecker.

  On my way in, an Animal Flossing Player who looked like a pink cartoon dog staggered out with shredded clothes and glitter pouring from a dozen wounds all over his body. His avatar still wore the game’s trademark goofy grin despite his condition.

  “That seems like a good sign,” Silas said, totally sincere.

  I was about to comment, but I realized I didn’t care. As we entered the building, a pleasant ambient theme for focus and concentration played, one I didn’t mind.

  Inside the Animal Flossing dental office, I found glowing doors with respective difficulties. The most challenging offered $1k in AllCash, and the easiest offered $150, which wasn’t worth my time. More cartoon NPCs and Players milled around, while others shopped at the Equipment and Upgrade sections.

  I loomed over all of them, easily a solid three or four feet taller than literally everyone else in the office. I was also the only one who didn’t look like a cartoon character—Octo-Boxers aside.

  “People actually play this for fun?” I muttered.

  An NPC receptionist perked up and smiled at me. She would have been an adorable cartoon redhead… but a hideous scar ran across her face. “Hello! Welcome to Animal Flossing. Would you like me to share the instructions and/or explain the challenges?”

  “No, Scarface,” I replied. “Can I play?”

  “Of course! Just move into the highlighted areas and select a challenge to begin the dental procedure. Follow the prompts and try not to hurt the animal. Cleaning an animal’s teeth isn’t always fun, but it is much needed. Remember, you’re doing the animal kingdom a great service!”

  The roar of a lion boomed from a nearby room—possibly from one of the middle-difficulty doors, but I couldn’t tell—followed by a commotion and screams of agony.

  “Maybe we ease into this one, mate,” Silas said. “I have a weird feeling about it.”

  “You just said as we were coming in that the dude who’d been mauled was a good sign, and now you’re cautious?”

  “Huh? Oh, no, no,” he said with a chuckle. “They’ve got all-you-can-eat shrimp on Saturdays at the restaurant next door. That was a good sign. In the window. So I meant it quite literally.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have such strong emotions about imaginary things, but I really hated this octopus—Karjok—whatever.

  “No time to ease in. We’ve got this.”

  I marched into one of the rooms offering $1,000 AllCash to find a chubby white rabbit sitting in a chair, pink nose twitching. Like the rest of the NPCs and Players in the lobby, he was also cartoon-style, and the name hovering over his head was “Todd.”

  He had two buck teeth, pronounced but proportional to his size, and pale pink eyes as if he were an albino. He was almost literally the size of an Easter Bunny, only he was an actual rabbit instead of a felon wearing a bunny suit in a mall food court, desecrating the true nature of the holiday.

  | Objective: Clean the bunny’s teeth. |

  | Isn’t he adorable? He’ll be even cuter with sparkling toofers. |

  “Seriously?” I scoffed and motioned toward the oversized bunny. “See? This’ll be easy. The rooms must be random in what you get assigned, so we lucked out.”

  At that, I wondered if my Luck stat had anything to do with our good fortune here, but I doubted there was any way I’d ever know for sure. And hopefully I wouldn’t be in this moronic game long enough to figure it out.

  “Against my better judgment, I’ll trust you… But that thing looks like a killing machine if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “That’s because you’ve got saltwater for brains, and there are no rabbits in the ocean, whether on this planet or Cartopia.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Karjopia,” Silas corrected.

  “Whatever.”

  A glowing START button sat on one wall, but otherwise, the room looked exactly like a standard dentist’s office, full of dental tools and equipment, including a very obvious container of dental floss. It literally glowed with golden light.

  As I approached the button to begin, a tutorial prompt appeared in my HUD, with the option to lock into the game for multiple attempts—multiple lives.

  I had already selected a game and a class by choosing the rickshaw, so the “Lock In” option wasn’t available to me. I wouldn’t want to lock into this game anyway. Getting stuck in an animal dentist simulator would only drive me one step deeper into this nightmare. Maybe several steps, now that I thought about it.

  And besides, what could possibly happen with a giant fluffy rabbit?

  I skimmed the tutorial, which explained that I’d be giving Todd the rabbit a full dental cleaning, not just flossing, as per the incorrect-yet-strangely-accurate title of the game. It went on to show me how to use the equipment, proper procedures, scoring, and how not to hurt the animal in its “rage state.”

  I almost laughed. Almost, because I’d already decided I could experience no true joy while I was stuck in this digital prison.

  I cracked my knuckles, then smacked the button to begin the procedure. “Time for a quick G.”

  The cartoon rabbit shuffled in place, but like the tutorial had shown, I carefully strapped him in, slapped on some latex gloves, and grabbed the first tool—a motorized toothbrush.

  Silas leaned in to watch the procedure, and I pushed up the bunny’s furry lips with my finger and began scrubbing. I nicked its gums a few times, but so what? None of this was even real.

  Even so, Todd the rabbit shuffled and issued a low growl… a sound a rabbit shouldn’t be able to make.

  Well, maybe they can. I’m neither a veterinarian or an animal dentist, thank heavens.

  “Say, mate? That growl didn’t sound good. Try not to do that.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it. This is… harder than it looks.”

  I nicked Todd’s gums again, and a few sparkles trickled out. The rabbit gave another growl, and its eyes shifted from pale pink to a dull red glow. He also grew more restless, shifting side to side, increasing the difficulty of my already frustrating task.

  As I brushed, a “Smile Bar” above the bunny gradually filled in its blank red space with a cartoon-style sparkly white-and-blue toothpaste. Once I reached the end of the bar, the brushing part would be over.

  I finished brushing without further complications, and a new bar popped up. Flossing would be the next step, and a red bar gradually filled with tangled mounds of white floss.

  I wrapped some floss around my index finger and thumb, as the tutorial had suggested, and with my other hand, I gingerly eased the antsy bunny’s mouth open so I could floss his surprisingly jagged teeth.

  Silas wiped his brow. “Are you sure you don’t want help?”

  “Go for it.” I stopped and extended him my hand with the floss wrapped around my fingers. As I did, a few particles of glitter fell from the middle of the string.

  If Silas could do this nonsense while I received the rewards, then someone in my life would finally prove helpful.

  “Bloody shell, no.” He held up his tentacles in refusal. “I meant that nice lady with the horrendous scar. I’d go get her for you.”

  With another sigh that felt like part of my soul leaving my body, I shook my head. “Just hold his lips open so I don’t nick them.”

  “…right.” He hesitated. “Didn’t I just mention how that thing’s a ferocious, murderous beast? And you want me to put my tentacles near its bitey-old mouth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t be serious. I’ve only got eight limbs, mate!”

  “Just help me already!” I snapped, and Todd the rabbit flinched. His eyes had grown redder, and they glowed a bit more brightly, but overall we still seemed to be okay.

  With a grumble and a sigh, Silas crawled onto the chair, donned a pair of tentacle-shaped latex gloves, reached over, and held the rabbit’s lips back.

  I held the two ends of the floss in a death grip, stalling at the sight of Todd’s teeth. With Silas working the rabbit’s lips, I now had a better view of its chompers. I didn’t know if real rabbit teeth looked anything like the mess of jagged bones in Todd’s mouth, but even in cartoon-form, they looked fiercer than before.

  Had they always looked like that, or are they getting worse as I work on him? And why is my heart pounding so fast? I reassured myself, This isn’t real. Todd isn’t real. None of this stupid game is real.

  I took a deep breath and went to work, first thinking of the gear I could buy and then of my life outside this virtual skithole. The tangled mounds of floss gradually filled in the bar as I threaded floss between the bunny’s teeth, eliciting a few more sparkles whenever I got a little carried away.

  When I finished with the flossing, I had to switch to scraping with those metal hook-things dentists use on people-teeth. A new red bar popped up over Todd’s head, and it filled with an ever-growing heap of cartoonified metal dental tools to denote my progress… kind of freaky, but I had bigger concerns at the moment.

  I moved far more carefully with the scraper, but Todd twitched harder than ever, and I nicked his gums. A solid sprinkle of glitter pulsed from his mouth, which now snarled—not growled, snarled—at us. His glowing red eyes fixed on me, filled with fury.

  “Todd-Rabbit,” I cursed.

  The rabbit roared then chomped its glittery mouth, sending me staggering backward. Silas shrank and withdrew his tentacles just in time as Todd thrashed and snapped, fighting against his leather restraints.

  What happened next looked like something from a werewolf movie: Todd the rabbit began to transform into a larger, even more ferocious version of himself with sharp teeth, claws, an anthropomorphized bipedal shape, and manic glowing red eyes. His cartoon appearance didn’t alter, which somehow made him even more terrifying.

  All the while, Silas and I clung to each other, backed against the wall.

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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.

  When their powers attract the attention of a dangerous criminal organization, their routine lives are shattered. Eos and Maxima must search for freedom and the truth about their past as hostile forces close in.

  The answers they seek lie behind one word—!

  Occam's Favor

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

  This time he refuses to fight alone, bringing a crew of misfits and a mech powerful enough to rewrite the war itself.

  is a can't-miss power-scaling mech series. Read it now!

  ------

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