"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" Bannon said, holding the door for us. He was dressed up for the first time since we had met him, wearing a tuxedo and tails with an actual top hat cocked at a rakish angle. He gestured to the new silver star above our heads. "I guess that Borough boss wasn't a big deal after all?"

"No," Eva said. "Hekla dealt with it, just like you figured. It was up on the ceiling and it kept shooting webs at us but her bolts set the webs on fire. Dropped the thing on its back and she blew its left-side legs off before it could flip over. After that we just stayed back and shot it up with ranged attacks."

"Good, good. Take a seat."

The room had changed. The couch and armchairs were gone and there were two cots against the wall. A giant whiteboard stood where the fireplace had been, two armless wooden chairs in front of it. Eva and I took the chairs while Bannon stood in front of the whiteboard with a meter-long plastic pointer in his hand.

"Yappy Girl, we'll do you first because I know you would just explode if I didn't." He tapped the whiteboard twice with the pointer and the board itself dissolved, leaving behind a shimmering holographic display. In the top left corner were the words:

Recommendations

Half Nagini, Half Orc Svyio Zooryn +117 more...

The center of the frame was taken up by a bipedal humanoid with four arms and a cobra's head. She stood with arms extended in the DaVinci pose, slowly rotating so we could see her from all angles. She was roughly as tall as Eva, had no breasts, and was covered in green opalescent scales. Her face was a slightly altered version of Eva's and her slender form still whispered of femininity.

Race: Half Nagini, Half Orc

This limited race is only available to crawlers with at least one player-killer skull. Good for you for getting it unlocked!

A Nagini is an armless snake but the torso is upright by default. They are quick but physically weak and lacking in Constitution. Orcs, on the other hand, are big, strong, and tough. Also randy as hell and fertile with basically everything. (At least for purposes of race selection. The real ones mostly can't get it up at all without thinking of their sisters.) Let's keep this family friendly and say that basically no one chooses to bone an orc, not even other orcs, but when an Orc gives a Nagini a special hug then the child gets the best of both worlds. They are tough, fast, and have four quaddextrous arms that make them deadly melee fighters.

+1 to Strength

+2 to Constitution

+3 to Dexterity

+2 to the Bite skill

+2 to the Venom skill

"Wow," I said. "That's really good."

"The AI's suggestions generally are," Bannon said. "It's not your friend but it doesn't want people saying that a crawler only died because the AI wasn't smart enough to give them good recommendations." He glanced up nervously. "To be clear, the AI is more than smart enough to make good recommendations."

"Let's see the next one," Eva said. She swiped left with one hand and the image changed.

Race: Syvio

Tiny little assassins, people look sideways at these guys and keep an eye on the silver whenever they're around.

+6 Dexterity

+3 Intelligence

-5 Constitution. (Minimum of 2.) Constitution capped at 10

+3 to the Stealth skill

+3 to the Backstab skill

Backstab may be trained to level 20

+100% running speed

The image was of another humanoid reptile, except this one was only twenty centimeters tall. It had light blue scales and a feathered ruff on its head that looked like the crest of a a Roman centurion's helmet. The eyes were mounted on flexible stalks and the fin-like ears stuck out to the side. The displayed image wasn't static; the eyestalks pivoted and bent to show full 360-degree mobility and the ears demonstrated their full range of motion by rotating and lying flat against the skull before standing up and starting the looped display again. The short snout was filled with serrated teeth.

Eva looked at Bannon, one eyebrow raised in silent query.

"Stealth should be obvious," he said. "Backstab gives you extra damage if you use a thrusting weapon and land an attack from behind without your target being aware of you. 150% damage per level, so starting with it at level 3 on this floor will let you one-shot a lot of opponents as long as you have a decent weapon."

"What's the level 20 thing?" I asked. "Why is that called out as special?"

"Ordinarily, skills can only be trained to 15," he said. "Most train fast until you get to level 9 and then it slows down more and more as you go up. Getting something to 15 is hard but when you get there it's damn powerful. That's why it's good to get items that have innate spells—they typically work at level 10 or 15, which is overpowered for the first five or six floors." He waved the issue aside. "Anyway, sometimes you can get an unlock that lets you train a skill past 15. It's a real grind to do it but it's worth it. A level 15 Shield spell will shrug off an artillery shell or two before breaking. A level 16 shield will stop a plasma cannon and it goes up from there."

"That's good?" I asked carefully. "Earth doesn't have plasma cannons."

He snorted. "Right, I forgot. Primitive world. Yeah, that's good. Put it this way, if she got that Backstab skill up to level 20 she could use a paperclip to one-shot a god. Well, assuming she had a way around the invulnerability."

"You didn't mention the level 15 limit before," Eva noted.

Bannon shrugged. "You didn't need to know. Anyway, training a skill past 15 takes a lot of focus. You have to work on it every day, as much as you can, and you almost certainly won't be able to do it before the tenth floor unless you find some skill-boosting potions and training guilds." He raised a finger. "Also, important note: Level ups for your skills happen according to your current total including all bonuses. Let's say you've gotten your base Backstab to 8 and you've found a ring that gives you +2. Imagine that it takes 200 XP to go from level 8 to level 9, then 1,000 to go from level 9 to level 10, then 5,000 to go from 10 to 11. Those aren't the right numbers or probably even the right multipliers but it makes the math easy. You with me so far?"

"Yes," Eva said, gesturing impatiently.

"So, you've got a base skill of 8 and an effective skill of 10. You go backstab some stuff and earn yourself 2,000 XP. Your skill doesn't move because you need 5,000 to get to level 11. But! You take the ring off and suddenly you're back to 8. Your skill immediately jumps up to level 10 and when you put your ring on again you'll be at 12. Got it?"

I frowned. "So we should take our gear off after every fight, then immediately put it back on? That seems odd."

"Ding ding ding! Quiet Girl wins a prize." He pulled a banana out of thin air and tossed it to me. (I fumbled the catch and dropped it in my lap.) "It's stupid but true. Anyway. Moving on." He waved a hand and the image advanced to the next race.

For the next two hours we went through all of Eva's races and classes. She agonized over some of the choices—the Marzipan (Wo)man race would make her vulnerable to water damage but came with some excellent innate spells, whereas being a Strall would make her ridiculously strong and tough but had a big penalty to, and a low cap for, Intelligence.

Eventually the choices were made, and both were recommendations of the AI. For race she chose Half Nagini, Half Orc. For class she chose Nimblefoot Enforcer, giving her access to speed-boosting powers, the Parry skill that would allow her to knock ranged weapons (or, at higher levels, spells) out of the air, and more.

"Finally!" Bannon said. "I thought you were never going to choose. Go lie down." He stabbed his plastic pointer towards one of the cots.

Eva glared at him for the 'commanding a dog' tone but she followed orders. The moment her head touched the pillow her body collapsed into a puddle of silvery goo.

I leaped to my feet with a cry of alarm.

"Relax, relax," Bannon said, laughing. "She's fine. It'll take a little while for the AI to rebuild her body with the new race. While that's happening let's get you squared away."

He tapped the frame, which was still showing the Nimblefoot Enforcer data. It cleared and now it said:

Recommendations

Aterby Cey-wuyun Doppleganger +239 more...

Race: Aterby

These guys are decent all-arounders, suitable for ass-dragging crawlers who haven't developed a particular style yet. Most people, they've been focusing on punching, or stabbing, or casting, or whatever and so I know what to recommend. Then there's people like you.

The creature looked like a 180-centimeter anthropomorphic skunk with thick fur, sunken eyes, and serious claws on its feet. I had a sick feeling in my stomach about what I was going to see, but I checked the properties regardless.

+1 Strength

+1 Intelligence

+1 Constitution

+1 Dexterity

+1 Charisma

+5 to the Stinky Butt skill

+5% Cold Resistance

I tapped on the skill name with a sigh.

Stinky Butt: Your ass is a weapon! You may spray a foul musk at your enemies. If they fail their save they will receive the following debuffs: Queasy, Blindness, and Noseblindness. Maximum area affected, duration, effectiveness, and cooldown depend on the level of the skill. Obviously, you can't have anything over your butthole if you want to use this, but the fur will keep you from getting on the censors' naughty list. Of course, it also means the musk will get caught in the fur and you'll stink to high heaven but what can you do?

Bannon was struggling not to laugh. I shook my head and moved on to the next choice.

Race: Cey-wuyun

It's not true that the Cey-wuyun argues with itself, but that's the rumor.

It was a quadruped the size of a pony but built like a greyhound. More specifically, like a pair of greyhounds who had been cut in half and the front halves stitched back together. It had a triangular head at each end and the front and rear feet faced in opposite directions. The hairless skin was iridescent blue in a band around the middle, running a gradient in both directions such that one head was a deep forest green and the other was heart's-blood crimson. There were no ears, merely a pair of holes in each head, and all four eyes glowed red.

+3 Strength

+2 Constitution

+2 Dexterity

The quadruped interface package

+2 to the Firelance spell (red head)

+2 to the Toxic Cloud skill (green head)

"That is disturbing."

Bannon shrugged. "It's not a bad choice. Firelance and Toxic Cloud are both excellent spells and the quadruped interface actually has some advantages over the regular one. For instance, you can loot bodies at a small distance without having to touch them."

"But I wouldn't have hands."

He nodded. "But you wouldn't have hands. How about Aterby? At high level the Queasy debuff is incapacitating. The target falls down puking and can't do anything, including cast spells or use their interface if they have one. It lets you take down enemies you couldn't touch otherwise. Queasy them, then walk up and stab them in the eyeball."

"No. It's gross and I don't want to be a monster."

"Fair enough." He swiped on the image and the final recommendation slid into place. He straightened up in surprise as he finally noticed the name. "Oh, wow."

Race: Doppleganger

This rare and exclusive race is unlocked only by someone so milquetoast they willingly mold themselves into whatever the people around want them to be.

Ah, dopplegangers. So many legends, both on your world and out in the galaxy. Elite spies, shape-shifting assassins whose bodies are living weapons, infiltrators that can't be stopped even by the narrowest sewage pipe...the list goes on.

+10 Constitution

Body Sculpting

Mass Absorption

Color Shifting

+5 to the 'Walk in Their Shoes' skill

Hidden Skill Bonus! +2 to any Doppleganger skill you unlock

The displayed image started off as me and then slowly morphed. The breasts ballooned out to grotesqueness, then shrank to nothing. The eyes migrated around the head, the hair grew longer and shorter, changing color and thickness. The length and thickness of the limbs changed, making the image taller or shorter, offering extra reach or less reach but larger muscles. The features and skin colors changed, becoming male and female and a wide array of colorations from Nordic white to African black to bubblegum pink.

"Wow," Bannon said. "Wow. Okay, it's been a long time since I saw that one unlocked."

"Is it good?"

"Hell yeah. Last time I had a crawler make it to the eleventh floor, he was a doppleganger. Plus it's a rare race so you can really spike your social numbers. People like rare."

I clicked on each of the abilities in turn, trying to figure out what was so impressive.

Body Sculpting: With a bit of concentration you can mold your body like clay. Shapes are limited only by your available mass and skill. Density and hardness may be altered within limits.

Mass Absorption: Equipped items are absorbed, becoming part of your body. You retain any bonuses or abilities. Absorbed items may be relocated across the body and can be reshaped so long as they remain contiguous.

Color Shifting: You may change your coloration freely, allowing you to adopt any racial coloring or (with sufficient skill) to blend in with the background.

Walk in Their Shoes: Modify your stat block to match the person you are imitating. Duration: 1 minute/level. Only usable with a 90+% appearance match.

Hidden Skill Bonus! Dopplegangers have a racial affinity for a large array of skills. If you unlock one of these skills it will start at level 3 instead of level 1. The bonus will be applied retroactively if you already have any of the appropriate skills when you choose this race.

"That Constitution bonus is huge," I noted.

"Yeah," he said, "but it's the least of what's on offer, especially for you. With all those Con-boosting items you've been finding, you're already at 28. That's excellent for the third floor, by the way."

I considered the other abilities. Color Shifting sounded nice but I wasn't sure how effective it would be; there were plenty of things in the dungeon with superhuman senses other than sight. Color-based camoflage would be useless against a bloodhound, or against a sonar-using bat, or plenty of other things. As to the shapeshifting...

I winced. "I'm not really comfortable with it," I admitted. "It's a little too 'monster girl' for my taste. Can we look at some of the other options?"

He looked at me in disbelief, then shrugged. "I can't choose for you and I can't recommend a choice. Sure, we can look at some other things. Still, if you're going to be fussy about the aesthetics let me show you how the filters work so that we don't waste time."

Bannon pointed out where in my menus to go in order to filter the list of races. I immediately got rid of anything that lacked hands, bringing my total down from 239 to 197. Eliminating races smaller than thirty centimeters or larger than three meters brought me down to 152. I got it down to 126 by getting rid of anything that would have trouble being in a party with other crawlers—for example because it had a strong body odor, or its skin was acidic, or it was radioactive. Finally, I filtered out anything that had a strictly better choice on the mechanics; that got me to 117.

I insisted on reading every one of the 117 descriptions and discussing them if they had any appeal whatsoever. Bannon had the same sort of comments on each one:

"Never had anybody make it to the eleventh floor with that, but..."

"It's not as flexible as doppleganger, but..."

"It's a common race so it won't draw the kind of numbers you'd get with doppleganger, but..."

I eliminated races as we went, and when we finally got to the end I still had twelve options to pick from, including Cey-wuyun and doppleganger.

"Up to you now," Bannon said, shrugging. "I'm not allowed to make recommendations and even if I could we've already established that you aren't interested in my input."

"That's not true!"

He shrugged again. "It's fine. Choose whatever you like. Just remember: In the short run you need something you can survive with, but in the long run your social numbers are more important than anything else. Yours have been terrible so far, meaning that it would be smart to choose something that will help you get views. Something dramatic or something rare."

At this point I was starting to feel bad. Bannon had made it to the eleventh floor. He knew what he was doing far, far more than I did and I had been ignoring his clear advice for an hour now. Was the 'monster girl' thing really so bad? I would still look like myself—in fact, I could look better than myself. I could fix the gap in my teeth that had always bothered me, and the fact that my left shoulder was slightly higher than my right. No one had ever commented on it but it threw my posture off and gave me a chronic cramp in my upper back. Besides, Bannon clearly thought that the doppleganger abilities were the most powerful of all the ones we'd looked at. And that +10 to Constitution was enormous.

I reached out and clicked on doppleganger.

Bannon's face lit up. "Hey, what a good choice! I'm so glad you thought of it all by yourself."

I gave him my best version of my mother's Mom Glare but it didn't shut him up the way it had done to me when I was young.

"Almost done," he said. "Pick your class, distribute your stat points, get your body rebuilt, and you're good to go."

He tapped on the display frame but I raised a hand to stop him.

"Distribute stat points?"

"Yeah. We'll do yours now and then you can go start your rebuild. I'll walk Yappy Girl through it while we're waiting for you to finish baking."

"Right, but I don't know what you mean by it."

"Remember how you get three points every time you level up but you haven't been able to assign them until now? Well, now you can. You're level nine—which is way too low for this floor, by the way—so you've leveled up eight times and you've got twenty-four points to distribute. Doppleganger doesn't have any stat minimums, which is good. Most of the classes will have minimums, so you'll probably have to put some points into specified stats in order to qualify for whatever you choose. After that you can put the rest wherever you like. You've got Constitution out the ass so don't pick that. You'll want to have at least ten Dexterity but the rest should go to something that fits your build, whatever that ends up being."

I nodded. "Okay. Let's do this."

He tapped the display frame and the contents shifted to my potential class list.