Hello, crawlers. Another excellent, exciting day! We are very happy to have you with us, and we hope everyone is having a great time. You’re really bringing it, and we at Borant truly appreciate the enthusiasm you’re giving to this production.

I have a couple of announcements. First off, we want to assure everyone that we have quashed all the bugs with the new toilets. Both the exploding issue and the, ah, unfortunate suction issue with some of the units have been resolved. There is absolutely no need to be afraid of them. Those of you who have been using the hallways to relieve yourselves, please stop. We don’t want to have to start using punitive measures.

A couple additional patch notes… We have added support for all of the languages that were missing from our library. So for those of you who are hearing this and finally understanding what I’m saying for the first time… welcome. You’ll figure the rest out I’m sure. Also with the languages, we’ve implemented full cross support for native speech. So now Mandarin speakers will understand English speakers and so forth.

The Feral Rabies debuff is now curable with a health potion or spell. And the contagion is no longer airborne. Sorry about that New Zealand.

We have removed the Blender Fiend mobs. The mob’s difficulty level appears to be too high. Their collective gets stronger each time they, uh, blend, and after working their way through a group of 15,000 crawlers in a single day, we’ve been forced to take action to prevent a premature extinction event. Rest assured they will be re-introduced on a lower floor. The Street Preacher neighbourhood boss has been upgraded to a borough boss. In addition, we have tweaked the strength levels of a few dozen other mobs, too many to mention here. So just be aware of that.

One last note. A lot of crawlers are heading into the stairways prematurely. Again, it’s your choice, but it’s probably best for you to get as much experience as you can. And just so you know for later, we won’t feature you on the recap episode if viewers can’t tunnel into your feed. So if you hit the stairs three or four days before a collapse, you are going to miss out.

That’s it for now. Keep up the good work, and kill, kill, kill!

Darryl slept through the message, waking up after a full ten hours of sleep. Elise on the other hand had clearly been awake at the time, because she copy pasted the message into the group chat. The chat also showed a few messages after that where Thomas informed them he decided to escort Elise when she was dead set on grinding some more without waiting for the others to wake up, followed with regular pings that they were okay.

Darryl pinged the others that he was awake, as repeatedly requested by his team members who all clearly didn’t need a ten hour nap.

Ben: morning sloth

Thomas: Good morning.

Elise: Bout time! These dickwads wouldn’t let me kill a teensy little Neighbourhood Boss without the full party present.

Thomas: I already told you, we don’t know how powerful they are or what we’ll be facing until we’re trapped in the room with them. Darryl has the most experience with bosses and he’s the only tank amongst us, we shouldn’t engage without him.

Elise: Boring…

Ben: we won last time bec of exploitz and easy foe, real bosses are real problems.

Elise: But these critters are barely doing anything for me now :c

Thomas: You’re level 4, you’re hardly hitting the experience plateau. Level 6-8 is where the stagnation kicks in.

Elise: But it takes, like, half an hour to walk from one mob to the next! DX< And there’s rarely more than five or six grouped together.

Darryl: That’s a good thing.

Thomas: Anyway, we’re returning to the Safe Room. Don’t come out, the Woolf caught up while you slept but has been following me and Elise instead of camping in front of the Safe Room. No idea where they are right now, though.

Darryl: b

Darryl got out of bed, stretched and checked his status. Very Exhausted was gone, replaced with a Well-Rested buff. Darryl quickly asked Thomas what it did, as his own UI gave him nothing but that he had it.

Thomas: Exhausted gives a -20% Dex, Int, Wis and Cha penalty for every tier, as well as -25% penalties on various skills like Reflex and Find Traps. Five tiers of Exhaustion means death. Meanwhile the Well-Rested buff has only the one tier granting +10% and +15% for the same.

Darryl: Thanks b

Ben was lazing about in one of the booths when Darryl wandered in, and got up when he saw Darryl. Darryl sat down at the counter and asked the Bopca for something healthy but filling and befitting breakfast, while Ben took out his backstabbing knife and handed it over to Darryl.

His skin had grown back thicker than usual during the last ten or so hours, and didn’t let itself be scraped off as easily without Darryl cutting into himself. Especially given the awkward angle lacking a good view while using his left arm, but Ben couldn’t do it while they were in a Safe Room. Darryl eventually had to give up and ask Ben if he could do it outside.

Ben was half done when Elise and Thomas showed up, and aside from a disapproving glare Thomas said nothing about them being outside with the Woolf nearby.

“So, with the whole gang together can we finally go kill ourselves a Neighbourhood boss?” Elise said.

“Hey, the new patch really works! Cool!” Ben said. “That will make things soooo much easier.”

“Yeah, totally.” Elise said.

“Cool. So allow me to formally introduce myself, my name is Ben and I-”

“Let me stop you right there. I can tell what you want, but let me be clear about this.” Elise said, mimicking holding a stamp and pressing it onto Ben’s forehead. “Friend-zoned.”

“What? But why!?” Ben said.

“You’re like what? Fourteen?” Elise said.

“Fifteen.” Ben countered.

“Still way too young, kid. And I’m not going to bend the rules just because those were squashed along with everyone else on the surface.” Elise said. “Know that no matter how often you look at me with hopeful eyes, it will never lead somewhere.”

“Fine.” Ben pouted. “I already knew you’re too old, no need to rub it in…”

“Hey!” Elise said, punching his shoulder for calling her old but with a smile showing that she took it as banter.

“So? What’s the plan?” Darryl asked, looking at Thomas.

“Let’s go kill a boss!” Elise said. “I wanna know what this bat can do against real enemies.”

“I’d suggest we jog at least one neighbourhood away from here and start grinding further. Get some distance between us and the Big Bad Woolf. She doesn’t quite want to believe it, but that thing is an instant game over if it catches us.” Thomas said. “After that we need to figure out how to fight and work together with the whole team. Now that Darryl can only defend and a new member joined, we have to get a feel for the new battle flow.”

“I told you, I go in and smash. You guys support from the back. Easy peasy.” Elise said.

“And then you’d die from the first real hit you take. You’ve got virtually no armour, constitution or defensive skills.” Thomas said. “You’re going to have to cooperate with Darryl at least, be his right arm and let him be your shield. And know when to rely on or protect Ben, he can deal much more damage than you given the right circumstances.”

“But I’ll be the one to go in and smash, right?” Elise said.

Thomas nodded.

“Then you’re pretty much just telling me my own plan in more words.” Elise said. She laughed when Thomas sighed deeply. “Don’t worry, I’m just yanking your chain. I don’t intend to die in here, I’ll be careful and rely on you guys.”

“I hope so, it’d be a shame if one of us were to die before we even make it out of the proverbial tutorial area.” Thomas said. “We’re going to need every capable adventurer we can get going down.”

“Until it’s everyone for themselves, of course.” Elise said with a wolfish grin. “I wouldn’t mind becoming Queen of the World.”

“No one has ever made it past the 13th floor, never mind reconquer their planet.” Thomas said. “The staircases aren’t limited to just one player, but even if they were we’d be able to progress with 64 players without having to turn on ourselves. Not that this many crawlers will make it that far…”

“What the hell!? The announcement said-”

“It’s a legally bound rule the Syndicate added, but not something that the corporations are bound to give you a fair shot at.” Thomas said. “The previous season did, as we saw, but that was them leaving someone in charge of worthless rubble. I bet that it’s even a beneficial loophole that they can hand off responsibilities of managing a harvested planet to some poor sap.”

“That’s…” Elise said furiously. “That’s bullshit!”

“There are apparently ways out of the dungeon when you get to the later floors, the deeper the better. Volos got to the 11th floor earning him this gig.” Ben said. “But yeah, that does feel like a lame consolation prize.”

“The fish-guy did? Huh, I hadn’t thought much of him.” Elise said. “So his levels are actually earned, not granted? Not bad. No matter, let’s just go.”

“One moment.” Ben said, scraping the last bit of skin off Darryl’s wound. “And done. Let’s go.”

True to their plan, they made for a straight line out of the neighbourhood, only to hit a dead end. There was a large, ornate gate that appeared to be invulnerable to all attacks. The reason for its existence wasn’t too hard to guess, as the words “Boss Battle!” were hovering in front of it.

“So, I guess we can’t leave the Borough until we beat the Big Bad Woolf.” Darryl said.

“Well, then let’s-” Elise said, only to be cut off by Thomas.

“We should check on the staircase. Unless it’s also locked, we just continue to avoid the Woolf. It’s way beyond us.” He gave Elise a hard glare. “Waaaay beyond us. Especially beyond you, Miss Close range and low defence.”

Elise grumbled something rebellious but trudged along when the party took a left and made for the next neighbourhood not barred to them.