“I think these creatures are meant to be the cleaners of this floor, replacing the rats.” Darryl said. “If they’re an actual mob, Borant must’ve accidentally switched the first and second floor around.”

“Yeah, it would’ve been a lot easier if these were the kind of foes we’d have to be worried about before.” Ben said, touching one of the brindle grubs with his finger and the maggot failing to deal any damage to him despite Ben literally poking it in the mouth.

“Their description suggests that they become a lot more dangerous if allowed to feed.” Thomas said. “There are apparently three stages to them, and the AI is ominous as usual about that third form.”

“Really? To me it just says that these are the kind of maggots that would wriggle out of a corpse if you were to poke it.” Darryl said.

“Guess that’s one of those things that higher intelligence provides, unless you've got the favouritism of the AI.” Thomas said. “Without either you've got no warning that leaving corpses behind will be trouble, and because you didn’t see it coming you’ll be swarmed by brindle wasps in no time.”

“Nasty.” Ben said, leaving the brindle grub alone. It didn’t give any experience and they didn’t know if dead brindle grubs would also count as food for the grubs, so they decided not to kill the critters anymore.

“Well, let’s just keep moving. I think that Elise needs to fight something, or take a shower. Maybe both.” Darryl said softly so his voice wouldn’t carry.

The other two glanced at Elise, who was currently trying to get the demigriff to heel and run away. With middling success. Going in whatever direction she pointed at worked like a charm, but stopping its charge into the darkness wasn’t. It just ran until it found something to kill. And though she kept babytalking to the baby falcon-cow thing, the sharp aggression behind the smile became ever closer to the surface.

“She does seem a bit agitated. If the time we were frozen between floors doesn’t freeze our timers and buffs, it might be bloodlust withdrawal from the full day or so that she hasn’t really killed anything.” Thomas softly said.

“Then let’s just keep going, I doubt that us not having anything to kill will be a big issue in this damned place.” Ben whispered.

“If you boys are done poking insects and comparing them to your cock sizes, can we keep moving?” Elise shouted at them with half a smile.

“Yes, we’re going. Haven’t heard or spotted anything?” Thomas said.

“Other than our new pet, not really.” Elise shrugged. “I guess that the floors aren’t yet as densely populated during the first few days.”

“We’ve only been walking for about thirty minutes; it could just be a coincidence.” Darryl said, catching up with Elise and trying to pet the demigriff she was holding in her arms. The little bugger bit at his fingers, but cawed affectionately as it did so.

Ben jogged past the two of them and faded into the shadows ahead, to scout in complete darkness before the rest of the party with their very noticeable torch spell would run flatfooted into whatever was lurking around here.

Ben: All clear straight ahead.

Thomas took the rear and regularly glanced over his shoulder, and occasionally even walked backwards for a bit to make sure that nothing crept up on them from behind. Elise and Darryl meanwhile peered into the tunnels to the sides, Ben couldn’t possibly check all of them without the group moving at a snail’s pace.

It had been the formation that they decided upon a few days ago, but with the Krutnik scourge they diverted from it quite a bit. The bugs were loud when they moved their spear-tipped feet over the stone, allowing the party to rely on sound alone.

Now they reverted back to their previously agreed upon formation, meant for any and all kinds of threats. Ben not too far ahead but peering into the darkness with his darkvision to see things coming before they’d pounce the party, the rest each taking their designated direction to watch.

It was boring and a bit stressful to keep vigilantly watching while walking, they’d only been moving about twenty minutes since their brindle grub break and Darryl already felt himself grow weary from marching without letting his mind wander. While it was necessary, none of them argued otherwise, Darryl wondered if they could keep this up when marching for hours.

Ben: Guys, you’ll want to see this.

Darryl was about to pick up the pace when he saw the message, but Thomas stopped him and they kept moving at a regular pace without rushing their surveillance. Ben appeared from the shadows and walked ahead for them to follow, answering their questioning stares with silence.

“So, did you finally find something or are we going to keep aimlessly wandering these tunnels for another hour?” Elise broke the silence. Well, not quite break it as the demigriff hadn’t been silent for a moment, but her voice echoed stronger than the bird’s cawing.

“I found out why we haven’t been seeing anything but grubs.” Ben said. “It’s just around the corner, follow me.”

The room that he led them to was a lot bigger, and filled with grub-covered corpses. Some kind of giant cockroaches, which clearly made Thomas queasy despite being dead and unmoving. They were mostly lvl2 and lvl3 with the occasional lvl4 leader mob amongst them, but they had all been squashed thoroughly.

Ben walked straight ahead into the next room, ignoring the bugs.

“Wait, unless the descriptions are lying, these guys don’t seem any stronger than what we’ve fought on the first floor.” Elise said, holding on to a squirming demigriff salivating at the sight of the massacre. “Who was it that said the second floor was going to be tougher, again?”

“Common sense and the Maestro, I think.” Thomas said, walking over to the room that Ben disappeared into. “None of us made a hard claim on it, rather we all found it obvious.”

“Well, I’m not seeing the difficulty spike quite yet. Just more of the usual.” Elise said.

Darryl covered his nose when he entered the next room and the stench hit him, a stench so bad that the blood and gore in the other room had actually served to mask it before. There were piles of trash and stacks of boxes everywhere, and most of the contents seemed to be rotting.

Ben was standing over the corpse of an obese bloated man wearing nothing but a white tank top and stained striped light-blue on white boxers, looking human as long as you ignored him being seven feet tall with several dead cockroaches in his mouth. His description read that he was a lvl6 Hoarder, and unlike the mobs his corpse also listed who killed him.

It seemed like there were two parties responsible for the kill, a group calling themselves the Boss Slayerz with an assist of Team Alpha. The former dealt most of the damage, but the percentages didn’t add up. With 31% and 14% respectively, the Hoarder should still be alive.

“Not a clue.” Thomas said when Darryl asked, before looting the neighbourhood map from the corpse. “Think we should do something about these grubs?”

“Don’t know.” Darryl said. The grubs didn’t seem to have any interest in the rotting garbage around them, but the neighbourhood boss himself was covered in the things. “I’m more worried about those players coming towards us.”

“Players?” Ben said. “Oh damn, those weren’t there yet when I looted the map before!”

Darryl looked at the two white dots coming towards them from the west. “They don’t seem that strong, but they are clearly headed this way. Probably want to talk, right?”

“Yeah, fair assumption. Level five and four, I doubt that they’ll be looking to pick a fight.” Thomas said. “You can see their level too, right?

Darryl nodded. If he could see it, then the two humans approaching should be able to see theirs as well.

“There don’t seem to be any mobs nearby.” Elise said with a sigh. “Nothing but trash grubs, at least. Not even at the fringes of the map wandering in.”

“Let’s just go and meet those two halfway.” Darryl said, ignoring Elise. “Hear what they have to say.”

“Fine~. But we’re killing some stuff after we’re done talking.” Elise said.

__ __ __ __ __

“Hi, I’m Dave.” One of the men said. He was a bit below average height, late twenties or early thirties, and seemed to be in the first stage of a slow creep towards growing round now that his youth ran out. He wore a clearly dungeon-issued fur coat with some fantasy beast’s fluffy tail as neckline, over a camo-print shirt from the surface. With the cropped hair and chains hanging from thick pants, he seemed like one of those military wannabes that never actually enlisted or got rejected for duty.

Darryl accepted the man’s hand and shook it. “I’m Darryl, and you can see the names of the others hovering above their heads. Oh, but we call our rogue here Ben.”

“Right, and as you can see, this is Bob.” Dave said, pointing to his fourth level tag-along. “Nice meeting you all, we can certainly use more capable and armed people. Especially ones that took down a Borough Boss. We only got one other party who managed that, and they’re newcomers too.”

“You need help? For what?” Darryl asked warily, looking at Dave’s two bronze stars and his lacking collection of items. His description also said he was the leader of Team Alpha, the one that aided in dealing damage to the boss they found before, but if his other bronze star was gained from an assist as well then his already modest level might be less than warranted.

“Well, we’ve got a camp back west with a lot of people that need all the help they can get, as well as several parties that we try to coordinate defence and exploration with.” Dave said. “The boss you’ve found is but one of the first we took out, and we plan to clear the dungeon starting at the camp and spreading out. Search for a Stairways in every direction instead of hoping we run into one.”

“So, what do you say? Will you help us out?” Dave pressed.

“The others that took down a Borough Boss.” Thomas chimed in before Darryl had to give an answer. “Would they be French, perchance?”

Thomas: So, what do we think?

“Their names sound like they could be, yeah.” Dave said. “But would y-”

“Could you let them know that we’d like to talk to them? We don’t have a chat with them ourselves.” Thomas said, holding out his fist for Dave to bump.

Elise: Nope. These guys want our strength, sounds like a one-sided deal.

Darryl: Same. Sounds like they need help, but for us it’s only the right thing to do. No real gain.

“Sure, I’ll ping them.” Dave said.

Dave fist-bumped Thomas and Darryl held out his fist to exchange contact information as well. Dave bumped it and a new contact appeared in Darryl’s UI.

Ben: dunno.

Thomas: No commitment to anything, obviously. Do we want to follow and see?

Darryl: No Safe Zone here, could use the rest.

Elise: Fine.

“Anyhow, would you guys follow me?” Dave asked. “We could really use another capable team to coordinate efforts with and give us more options.”

“Is there a Safe Zone back there? One with room, I should ask. We haven’t run across a full one yet, but there is a limit to how many people can enter one I believe.” Thomas said when Darryl hesitated and weighed his words. “We’ve been awake for a while now, and had no rest since gaining our silver star.”

“Ah, right. There are some people refusing to leave at times, but we generally manage to keep a few spots free for the soldiers that need to rest.” Dave said. “I’m sure I can find room for four. So, if you’ll follow me…”

Dave turned around and began walking, the party following suit.

“So, the camp. How many people are we talking here?” Thomas asked.

“Oh, no worries.” Dave assured him with a smile and a wave. “Only about a hundred or so.”