I sat on the floor and wept. Sobs wracked my body, twisting my gut as the dungeon's cruelty sank into my bones.

  I could feel it, of course. They could change my body, infiltrate my mind, why not force some weird addiction on me because of some cloud of mist I'd been sprayed by whatever-it-was?

  I screamed, hurling my knife at the wall, then snatching potions from my inventory and hurling them, just because I knew they would break. Half my healing potions became a pile of glass shards before I fell back to my knees, the wracking sobs continuing.

  I know I was there a while, because the only thing that shook me out of my confusion was the sound of a train screeching to a halt.

  Gritting my teeth, I forced away everything but the moment. Date With Lacie. This hellish place had given me an addiction, but that didn't mean I was dead. Maybe there would be a cure, or something. As long as I didn't let it make me go mad and kill everyone, as the AI threatened.

  I ran to the outer ring first, unsurprisingly finding every single pre-filled vial destroyed. Awesome.

  Back to the Krakaren. When I arrived, they had been filling tanks. I looked at the shattered remnant of one. There was a huge spill beside it, and the corpses there were all face-down in it. They'd been licking it off the floor as I killed them. Would I get that desperate at some point?

  No, no, that was the end of the race. Look at the next ten steps.

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  The cart had wheels. They'd been wheeling it somewhere. And the jug, or I guess not a jug as I'd thought at a glance. It was more of an open-topped glass bin. It had no spigot to fill individual potion vials, which meant there was another step in this process. I raced around the sides of the room and saw nothing.

  I closed the hitai-ate and circled again, tapping my knife on the wall as I went. A third of the way around, the tone changed.

  Hitai-ate open, I couldn't see the difference, but I did spot a shiny spot on the wall. I pushed the same block they'd pushed enough times to wear the rough surface down slightly. The segment of wall clicked. Pushing on it slowly swung it inwards.

  Hearing drug-addicted monsters approaching, I rushed in, slamming the door shut behind me.

  To my left was a huge rack of empty potion bottles, probably a thousand of the things. To my right was a massive tank of Rev-Up drugs. There was a row of a hundred spigots, and space for the team of workers I'd just murdered to fill the little bottles. I was just one person. Filling them one at a time would take forever.

  Looking around again, I spotted more of the big jugs. It took stacking some of the bottle-racks carefully to balance everything, but I could get a glass jug under six spigots and open them all. I could fit thirteen jugs at a time, and I got fifty-seven full before the larger tank's pressure dropped to a drizzle.

  Taking a jug into my inventory, it was identified as Twenty-Gallon Jug of Rev-Up Amazing Cure-All Vitamin Immunity Shot. I didn't know the math, but I didn't need an exact number when the bottles were identified as Empty potion bottle, 2-ounces. That was a lot of doses.

  Outside, I could hear the creatures milling about, desperately searching for their fix. This horrible place. A rage built in me, like nothing I'd ever felt before. I screamed as I left that room.

  I could have been safe, climbing walls and killing them from a distance. I stayed on the ground, right next to them, easily evading their drug-addled flailing, hearing them scream as I killed them.

  When they were all dead, blood coated me head-to-toe. I didn't feel better.