As far as our plans went, this one was actually more sophisticated than most. Not because we were getting smarter or more capable, but simply because our expanded skill set urged more complex plans than ‘Rush into danger.’

Instead, Elise was flying low overhead to keep track of any Krutnik around corners while Thomas was climbing on the ceiling, and only Ben, Alexa and I were rushing into danger.

Elise: Two Reavers up ahead, path of least resistance.

I nodded and kept rushing ahead, tackling a Krutnik and knocking it off its feet. Alexa dazzled the other and we killed the one that I floored. With 30 seconds of blindness, we didn’t even bother with the other one and just continued on our way.

Elise: Just one more corner.

Thomas: Get in and out of there quick! There’s a lot of Krutnik converging on you guys, if you let yourself get pinned for even a moment you’re never getting out of there.

Darryl: Roger that.

Elise: Next corner clear.

I crossed the corner and ran into a battlefield already lost. There were four crawlers here, and only one was still alive.

She was jumping from wall to wall, clinging on to them with unnatural adhesion and then jumping onto another wall before the Krutnik could jump at her. She might be faring better if there were higher and steeper walls around here, but these ‘walls’ were just steep dirt hills and the few walls she had to work with were surrounded by a ring of Krutnik too wide for her to jump over.

Her resistance was merely a frantic delay of the inevitable if it weren’t for us, and the surprise in her eyes made it clear that she hadn’t known of our presence. The Krutnik were breaking down the walls, digging into the base to collapse them. Not to mention, she was panting and her movements were sluggish, her muscles moving only by willpower and adrenaline at this point.

I briefly wondered how I knew she was a she. The frog-girl was more frog than girl, with a broad mouth and large eyes bulging out in the position one expected a frog to have them instead of a person. She was completely naked, but there were no human curves to see, just an elongated frog torso. If it weren’t for the arms and the size, I couldn’t even have distinguished her humanoid form from that of an actual frog with the way she was constantly jumping around.

“Over here!” Elise shouted, flying over the Krutnik and stopping mid-air at about the range that the frog girl was hopping.

The girl got the idea, and jumped towards Elise. Elise grabbed her outstretched hands and swung her further, past the mass of Krutnik below them. The frog girl landed, hopped once more to get a safe distance from the Reavers right behind her, ran the last stretch to us before turning human right in front of us.

Unlike the frog, there was no confusion about her gender now. The Asian girl had long straight raven hair, a slim figure and a B-cup. What she didn’t have were clothes, and she blushed profusely as she quickly covered her sweat-drenched body with her arms as best as she could. A moment later a poncho appeared above her and fell over her to cover her upper body. She quickly crouched down to hide under the poncho entirely.

“No time to get dressed, we need to get moving!” I said as panties appeared in her hand. “Can you still run?”

She tried to pant an answer, but the difficulty to just talk was more than enough to tell me.

I turned around. “Hop on!”

Elise crash-landed behind me, killing the nearest Krutnik before batting at the others to keep them at bay.

I felt something slither around my neck, and when I looked down I saw a snake draping herself around my neck like a boa. She had the same crawler ID as the girl I just saw, making it clear what happened.

Crawler # 2,782,119. “Miho Nichiki”

Level 11.

Race: Human Hippy Cultist

Class: Druidshifter

“Alright, hang on!” I said. “Let’s go!”

There was a bright flash behind me as Alexa dazzled the horde of Krutnik, our cue to start running. Elise took off into the air, Alexa quickly grabbed on to my crown because I could run faster than she could fly for long stretches, and Ben…

“Where’s Ben!?” I shouted. “Did we lose him?”

Ben: don’t worry bout me!

Ben: right behind ya

Trusting Ben to keep up with us, I didn’t look around and made a run for it with the two girls hanging on to me. Elise was soon left behind, floating higher rather than trying to keep up with us this time. Ben and I could run faster than her flight speed, so we weren’t going to escape this place the same way we came in.

Elise: Take a right and then keep going. Just one group ahead of you, otherwise clear.

Elise: Thomas?

Thomas: Nothing yet. But I haven’t exactly drawn any attention to myself quite yet. Let’s change that.

Mortar shells whistled above me before crashing into the path and walls behind us. It didn’t sound like Thomas was hitting much, the accuracy had to be abysmal at this range, but the point was more to create confusion and some obstacles.

Where the Frosty Mortar struck, sharp Christmas tree shaped remnants of ice remained, and the ground and walls around it were pierced with sharp ice shrapnel. It wouldn’t do much against the Krutnik whose hardy armour and pointy tibia allowed them to just charge through the shells and rarely step on the caltrops, not compared to other foes at least, but at least it was something.

He couldn’t do much more. The range of all his spells had doubled, but double a short range was still coming woefully short of the massive distance between him and us. So no Magic Missiles or Scorching Rays. But Frosty Mortar had no set range before the spell kind of just fizzled out, rather than physical restrictions. If you shot it from ground level, it would only go up so far before it arced back down. But if you were on the ceiling of a massive cave, the spell could fall as far as it wanted.

Consider his damage increased by 1% for every metre travelled, that meant that this spell’s upper potential was theoretically limitless. The AI hadn’t been favouring us that much, but the first spell that Thomas got after his class choice seemed to be tailored to be incredibly powerful in his hands.

Thomas: Jup, I see them coming for me. Because of course there are flying Krutnik.

Elise: Figured as much, already on my way.

Elise: Veer a bit more to the left. There’s a big group of Krutnik ahead you’ll probably run past unnoticed, but let’s not take that chance.

I went a bit more to the left, and jumped over a group of Gatherers that wandered around the corner completely unaware of my presence. Before they overcame their surprise, I was already far ahead of them.

“Th-Thank you.” The snake whispered. Her freakishly human eyes looked at me, and she had human lips on the tip of her snout that talked as if she couldn’t open her jaws wider than her face was big, and her tail split into seven tails that twisted and coiled oddly.

“No problem.” I said. “Looks like things didn’t go as planned for you guys, what happened?”

“We were overconfident.” She said softly. “Or rather, some of our group were. One of us was a Demolition Expert with plenty of explosives on him, and Alan thought he could just blast his way through the hive and blow this princess sky high. Chun and Xin were similarly confident and a bit more reckless now that we had our class and race powers, and thought we could pull it off.

“I was against it and so were Hiu and Xiang, but they convinced the others. The description said that no one defeated a City Boss yet, and they thought that this was because you needed your race and class powers to pull it off and that we would be the first to try it. They said that the Gold Quest Box was nothing compared to what we’d be getting for being the first to kill a City Boss, and that the description even said that the Blooming Princess was going to be easy.”

“But you never even made it to the Princess before the Krutnik swarmed you.” I surmised.

“We did, actually. We had three people that could stealth, myself included in one of my beast forms, so we managed to slip through and get to the Boss relatively quickly.” Miho said. “But Alan’s Kobold Kaboom! charges didn’t even stagger the Princess. They dealt some damage, but she would’ve tanked more than he was carrying. Like, way more.

“The swagger of our leading three disappeared really quickly after that, especially considering we couldn’t even handle the normal mobs that were swarming us like crazy the moment we dealt even a single point of damage to their Princess. So we ran.”

“Wait, you ran away from a boss fight after dealing damage to her?” I asked. “Weren’t you locked in some kind of force field? Or is this whole den…”

“No, don’t worry!” Miho quickly assured me. “Chun has a- Had the manager perk, and his manager told us that getting locked in is more a first and second floor thing. From this floor forwards there are almost no City Bosses with a force field mechanic, the gimmick starts resurfacing when we’ll get to a floor where they expect us to be able to defeat City Bosses in small groups.

“On the first floors they want to dissuade crawlers from adapting hit and run tactics, and favour quick thinking and balls to the walls attitudes over cautious approaches. Giving all bosses a locking in mechanic greatly reduces the amount of crawlers that get the achievements and play style to allow them to specialise in that. Urging against performing in a way that Borant considers to be an ‘unentertaining’ fashion, without breaking Syndicate rules. At least, that’s what Balbarwar said.

“But right now, only Neighbourhood Bosses will regularly come with a force field while even Borough Bosses will often be open for skirmishing tactics. It’s usually quite obvious if they’ll lock you in from context, at least according to Balbarwar.”

“So what you’re saying is that we can attack the Princess without getting stuck in here?” I asked.

“Yes, but you won’t be able to kill her! She’s too tough for us, the promise of killing her faster is just to make us reckless!” Miho pleaded.

“We don’t need to kill her. We’re on a silver quest to keep this hive from getting so numerous that it spills over. And I bet those eggs around her aren’t as tough as she is.” I said, before quickly messaging what I just learned to Thomas.

I looked up at his position, and the spells that stopped raining down after I messaged him. He had been shooting his Frosty Mortar to cover my retreat sporadically, but right now he and Elise were focused on keeping the swarm of flying Krutnik away from him while making their way back to the entrance.

Behind me, Ben caught up with us.

“What were you doing?” I asked him.

“Looting the bodies. They had some great gear on th-” Ben said, before freezing when he realised that he was talking about the friends of the snake around my neck. “I mean, sorry for the disrespect. But it was just lying there and they no longer needed it, so…”

“That’s okay.” Miho struggled with the words. “You’re right, you shouldn’t leave their stuff behind for my sake.”

“By the way, how many of you were there?” I changed the subject quickly.

“Eight of us.” She answered. “I saw Hiu fly away and he’s still in the party, so he must’ve made it out. But everyone else didn’t make it. Things were going well, but then Alan’s Kobold Kaboom! suddenly exploded in his hand and took out both him and Chun. Alan had multiple skills and class features that prevented exactly that, but… The Leavers are usually just in the way than anything else, but one suddenly jumped for his hand. I think it knew what would happen if they touched the stick. As if the AI wanted us dead.”

Or needed some dramatic cue to make us come in after all. Would Alan have died if we hadn’t decided to turn around and leave the hive and the quest behind at that very moment, I wonder?

“Wait, why didn’t you fly away as well?” Ben asked. “Couldn’t you turn into something with wings?”

“Yes and no.” Miho said. “My class allows me to change into beasts and beastfolk, but only if I’ve eaten them raw. Not necessarily the whole body, though it improves the transformation. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier to eat raw flesh when you’re in a beast form. Especially after I got this snake body that can just swallow a creature whole. But I haven’t eaten anything that can fly yet.

“It’s a pretty lousy class, though. Balbarwar told me that everything I have equipped would unequip the moment I shapeshift, but he didn’t mention that they wouldn’t reappear on me when I shift back. It’s… embarrassing.” Miho blushed despite being a cold-blooded reptilian. “And I’m pretty sure he knew it would happen too, he hinted that this class would ‘help my popularity’ without specifying why. Asshole.

“What’s even worse, he didn’t tell me that many beasts and beastfolk have a stat cap. My shapeshift ability allows me to gain the physical stats of the creature I become while keeping my mental stats, but almost all beasts cap at 2 intelligence and I risk my life with bestial recklessness when I turn into a bear or wolf. Most beastfolk aren’t that much better. The frog was capped at 5, and this sentient snake species is one of my few options without a cap.”

“I have an Intelligence of 5.” I grumbled.

“But you’re a sentient species without a cap, right?” Miho said. “That cap is more important for how dumb the AI makes you than your actual stats. A creature with 10 Intelligence and a cap of 10 might be more of an idiot than someone with 7 Intelligence and no limit.”

“I see.” Ben said. “But how about…”

He stopped talking as the fireworks started above our heads.