“Thank you.” Darryl politely nodded to Raphael as he placed his spear back into his inventory but kept his shield up.

The Bouncer nodded back as he flicked the bug gunk off his battleaxe before making it disappear as well. Darryl couldn’t read him with the sunglasses obscuring his eyes, but the imposing Frenchman didn’t seem on edge or aggressive. Though he had always been the hardest one to read.

Turning to the other two, Darryl fortunately didn’t spot any hint of malice or wariness in their body language either. While Mr. Geruet could hide his thoughts well enough, Louis and Jean struck him as people that wore their emotions on their sleeve if you looked carefully. And Louis didn’t seem hostile.

Hoodie had gained some new gear, it seemed. Where Business Suit was still living up to his name and Bouncer too hadn’t changed his appearance since he’d last seen them, Hoodie now wore a brass rugby-style cuirass over his hoodie. He still clenched the large toothpick as a weapon, but dual-wielded it with a more normal-looking dagger.

“Bonjour, Darryl.” Mr. Geruet said, nodding politely. “Where are others?”

Darryl glanced over the Frenchman’s shoulder at the dark corridor before he could stop himself, and Business Suit caught the hint.

“I see. You were split.” He nodded. “No problem. We heard scream, came look. Good you’re okay.”

His eyes went glossy, no doubt typing something into his party chat to the others, before returning his attention to Darryl.

“Ah, right.” Darryl said, looking at the Krutnik that had screeched before. “More might be on their way, perhaps.”

“Killed before, possible but unlikely after chase.” Mr. Geruet dismissively said. “Tough for Louis, not so much for us. Close fight bad, mid-range good.”

Made sense, Darryl thought. Their carapace was curved to be quite deflective and the Krutnik were deceptively quick on their spear-tipped tibia. He kept their teeth at bay and they made their stab-kicks either standing still or in mid-jump, meaning they were slow and predictable either way. But if you’d fight them with a close-distance weapon like a dagger, they would undoubtedly prove a lot more deadly.

The conversation also revealed something else, something that Darryl realised he could’ve, should've, known. The Frenchmen hadn’t seen him or Ben on their minimap. They couldn’t have had, as they were still in the woolf neighbourhood and Darryl had the only means of revealing the area in his inventory.

Stupid, he never had to rush in as they couldn’t have been sneaking up on Ben. Ben would’ve noticed them even on the smaller map before they could spot him, easily enabling him to evade their attention.

But he had overlooked that, rushed in and now found himself outnumbered and surrounded.

Widening his minimap, he checked his surroundings. The crippled Krutnik met up with reinforcements, and a group of six was slowly moving in their general direction. On the other side, it seemed like Ben had noticed his situation and came running. Much further away and to the left, Thomas was doing the same but faster thanks to his bike.

“Anyway. New achievements. We share?” Mr. Geruet said.

Darryl received three messages, two bronze boxes and a silver one. They already had both bronze boxes themselves, but the silver was new. Rip off a mob’s limb and wield it as a weapon? No doubt they used one of the Krutnik’s legs for that, it would serve both as a decent club and stake. Messy, but doable.

Darryl sent the five achievements he gained from their brush with the sheaman lamb but left out the worthless Boss Babe achievement and their Death Flag triggering, and Mr. Geruet’s eyes went wide for a moment.

“Ah, are quite good.” Mr. Geruet stammered, before regaining his composure. “Merde. Hard to redo, the quick-kill. Not after patch. But no damage, perhaps?”

“But you, thank you.” He said, after a quick French exchange with the others that Darryl couldn’t make heads or tails of. “And ours, was good?”

“Haven’t had the option to gain it. We were planning to bludgeon some of those brain squids, but things came up.” Darryl said.

“Ah. Well, plenty of time, no?” Mr. Geruet said with a polite smile. “Trade?”

“Not really. We’ve gotten mostly stuff that is good. Only trade is self-made.” Darryl said, taking out his spiked whacking stick.

Mr. Geruet read the description and waved it away. “Yes, us too. Guide said AI give good stuff at first, not really random. Doubles unlikely?”

Darryl didn’t respond, not knowing the answer.

“Yes, I suppose so. You saw World Dungeon? Weird, no?” Mr. Geruet said.

“Yeah, super weird.” Darryl said, awkwardly chuckling. The previous topics were still somewhat relevant to their continued survival, but now they’d moved on to small talk. His first instinct was that they were stalling for time, but that didn’t make sense. He knew there was no one of their group still approaching, while they should anticipate that Ben and Thomas were inbound.

He checked the map again. Ben should reach them in a minute, but he had no real way to properly gauge Thomas with the amount of corners he’d have to take.

“You uneasy.” Mr. Geruet said. “Trouble?”

Darryl flinched. He knew he wasn’t exactly being casual, his shield raised and his body language undoubtedly revealing that he was on edge, but for them to acknowledge it was a different matter.

“Troubled by us?” Mr. Geruet said, apparently reading him a bit further. “Why?”

The Frenchman stepped back a bit as he spoke a few French words, putting his back more towards the wall instead of the empty hallway behind him, and cast a quick glance into the darkness. Raphael stepped past Darryl to stand next to the other two as well, clearly eyeing him more closely behind his sunglasses. And after a quick remark from Mr. Geruet, Louis turned around to watch their back while the other two stared him down.

Darryl gulped, but took out his spear and carefully took a step back from the group. “You know why.”

“No, we don’t.” Mr. Geruet said, appearing genuinely confused.

“The girl. What you tried to do to her.” Darryl said. If they were dropping the pretences, then they might as well drop all of them.

“Ah. That. You fear you’re next?” Mr. Geruet said, tensing up and appearing a hint more hostile now, but at the same time seeming a bit relieved as well.

“Me?” Darryl said, taking another step backwards before he even noticed it. He steadied his shield and held his spear at the ready, adrenaline pumping as he felt the three were about to pounce at him. “That’s-”

A bolt appeared from the darkness, striking Louis in the shoulder. The hooded Frenchman screamed and dropped his toothpick. The next moment, all hell broke loose.

Bouncer reacted first, his battleaxe appearing in his hand as he took a wide swing at Darryl. Darryl jumped back instead of taking the blow head-on, remembering how the weapon had cleaved through the floor as if it were butter.

The next moment, Business Suit shouted something and a transparent force field shimmered into existence between them and Darryl. Reacting to his scream, Darryl heard half a dozen monstrous screeches behind him and the pitter-patter of many a pair of chitinous legs going into a sprint.

Darryl cursed and stabbed at the forcefield. He saw it flicker, but the health bar that appeared only lowered by about a sixth. The Krutnik would be upon him before he’d break through. Behind the force field, the three Frenchman turned their backs to him to face off against Ben together.

Another bolt came from the darkness, aimed at Business Suit this time. Bouncer held up his axe and the bolt harmlessly bounced off the blade while Business Suit retaliated with a magic missile that flew into the darkness, where it flickered out without hitting anything.

That was as much of the other side of the fight that Darryl could afford to watch. He turned around and tossed his torch into the darkness. The torch sputtered but kept burning, illuminating a good five metre radius of the hallway. The fire was already dimly reflecting off the carapaces of the monsters just beyond.

Darryl took aim and threw the spear as hard as he could. It split into three, each spear disappearing into the darkness to be met with a pair of screams and two health bars popping up. One was reduced to half health, while the other took but a minor drop.

The spear appeared in his hand again and Darryl readied it. One against seven was going to be tight, but with some luck the force field wouldn’t last that long.

The three Frenchmen had moved away from him, the light from Business Suit’s Torch spell no longer illuminating his direct surroundings and instead leaving Darryl with nothing but the sputtering circle of light in front of him.

A dark brown tibia slowly crept into the edge of the light, looking like the tip of a gargantuan beast’s talon while the rest of the creature was still obscured. A long, whip-like tongue followed, tasting the air in front of the creature as it twisted and moved with muscles that humans didn’t have. Small barnacle-like mouths opened and closed around the tip, while the reflection on the shaft revealed it was covered in transparent barbs.

The krutnik slowly crept further into the dying light, first a row of shining teeth appearing from the darkness to swallow up the weird worm-like tongue, followed by the lifeless black eyes and another pair of its legs.

The tongue slipped back into the darkness caged by the teeth, which slowly closed themselves to create a wolfish grin. The face turned left to better study Darryl with one eye, and then slowly twisted to the right to do so with the other.

Slowly, carefully it- Then another jumped, shaking Darryl from the scene he realised managed to catch his full attention. Without a sound the creature leaped over the approaching bug to jump at Darryl and turn him to ribbons.

Then it crashed into his shield, and it was as if the bug hit a windshield. All of its tibia but one shattered on impact and he heard some of its teeth and joints crack as well, while Darryl felt but the mildest push backwards.

The krutnik fell on its back, and Darryl stabbed his spear into the prone foe before it could change that. It shuddered and twitched, but with a sliver of health left the blood gushing from its wounds would likely kill in a matter of seconds. Darryl instead turned his attention to the incoming wave of insects.

A chilling scream came from behind as Hoodie was injured by something terrible, and Darryl could swear he heard something sizzling.

Darryl ignored it and thrust his spear at the first krutnik. It tried to stop and dodge backwards, only for the krutnik behind it to prevent such a move. They bumped into one another, the back bug halted in their tracks while the front one found itself trapped and skewered by a spear.

Darryl pulled it back and the krutnik came with it. Cursing, he returned the spear to his inventory and quickly turned to the insect that ran past their felled comrade to flank Darryl from the left. He slapped it aside with his shield, but the slap didn’t nearly have the force and momentum behind it that the last clash had. It merely gave the creature a slight wallop, not even knocking it off its feet.

Teeth found their way into his shoulder as Darryl made the spear re-appear in his hand, and he screamed as the they sank in deep. The krutnik that attacked his right flank eagerly hugged him close and relied on him to carry all of its weight, unbalancing Darryl in a deadly embrace that would be the end of him if he allowed it to drag him down.

He struck at the creature with the side of his shield, once, twice, three times. The krutnik ignored the attempts as the shield bounced off its leg leaving shallow dents. The shield and its skills were clearly meant to defend, because it became painfully obvious that using it offensively caused but a shadow of the damage that standing stalwart inflicted on colliding objects.

Darryl instead retreated all he could, feeling a slight zap as his back hit the force field behind him. The krutnik began to shake its head like a dog while the barbed tongue began to flay the flesh caught in its teeth to tatters, and warm blood gushed down as Darryl saw his health bar steadily dropping. He already lost a fourth, and it wouldn’t take the creature long to double that in this position.

The concussed krutnik had since regained its wits and snarled, sidestepping further towards the field to flank Darryl the best it could, while the last attacker crawled over the two dead krutnik and prepared to join the fight in earnest.

Darryl tried to keep them at bay by waving the spear at them, only to wince in pain. His arm was already shaking with his fingers barely clinging on to the spear, but trying to move his arm only aided the grappling krutnik in driving its teeth in deeper and drawing more blood.

Then he saw the last of the group, a more vicious-looking specimen the size of a wolf standing in front of the torch and opening its fanged jaw wide. It spat a glob of smoking green fluid on the light source. As the world immediately turned pitch black, the AI continued to narrate the description that Darryl saw for a split second.

Young Krutnik Reaver, lvl6

From all the insectoid life forms that aren’t sentient or of a behemoth class, the civilised lands fear none the way they fear the Krutnik. These bugs are nigh impossible to exterminate entirely, rapidly numbering into the millions if allowed to fester in the deep wilds and always having at least a few subterranean colonies deep down missed by even the most capable bug-hunters. Meaning that if these creatures ever plague a planet, they will always plague the planet!

The reavers are the poster children of this loathed and feared species, as they are the first and most numerous wave to appear in a cityscape and start killing! Literally thousands of these critters pour out of the ground in mere minutes and indiscriminately kill anything that moves! With a carapace strong enough to block small arms and acidic spit to deal with barriers and flanking foes, the local law enforcers rarely stand a chance against these beasts before the military shows up. Though much smaller and weaker compared to the light tanks that are true reavers, even these young ones are a force to be reckoned with!