Alexa

My eyes were glued to the screen as Darryl and Tatiana began to run into the darkness, each of them holding up a torch. Tatiana quickly took the lead, shouting that she remembered vaguely where she entered the basement.

The main screen returned to Thomas, who kept climbing even as the tower began to shake and tilt over. A bar appeared in the corner with the words ‘Bring the house down!’, rapidly declining.

Shalander’s dot started to move quickly, presumably to get to safety somehow. Azriel was moving just as quickly in the opposite direction. The town guard was casually lumbering down the stairs.

Thomas reached the second to last floor, and shot a Chain Lightning at something off-screen. The camera rapidly pivoted, showing the electricity hit a harpy and quickly jumping to the next one.

“Why are so many of them surviving!?” Ben said. “He killed the first ones, but…”

“Chain Lightning gets 5% weaker every time it jumps around. “Maestro said. “Back on the second floor you didn’t notice because Vespa are incredibly fragile and have energy vulnerability, but Borant obviously wouldn’t add a spell that can kill an unlimited amount of mobs as long as your damage is high enough the first time. Chain Lightning gets progressively lesser as the average creature health climbs up, and outright killing thirty of them is actually way stronger than the spell is meant to be.”

Thomas fired rays of fire and frost into the survivors, not stopping. Harpies shrieked and died, and Thomas avoided as many as he could as he kept rushing to the top. Then the tower started to keel over, throwing the harpies off-balance while Thomas ignored the shift thanks to his Spider Climb.

Thomas threw another Chain Lightning to finish off all the nearby harpies around him, and popped a mana potion. He finally reached the top, and harpies crawled out after him as he reoriented himself. Many harpies took flight to get off the tower as it began to crumble and fall under them, and Thomas ran towards the side of the building. He took out what looked like folded laundry with hearts on it, and strapped it on.

The tower was now truly falling, losing about a floor of height every second as the walls crumbled in on themselves yet so tall that it continued to fall to the side despite that. Squirrels were jumping out of windows and gliding to safety on all sides, and the harpies already in flight looked like they were ascending fast as the tower sank underneath them.

Like a giant domino the tower fell to the north, while Thomas prepared to jump off to the east. Once his parachute was secured, he made the jump and flew. The parachute billowed to turn into a pair of massive granny panties with the legs tied in sloppy knots, but it worked regardless.

Thomas slowly sailed away from the crashing building, the sun slowly starting to set behind him as the stone sank into a rapidly growing cloud of dust.

Next to me, Elise broke down and began to cry. As Miho turned to console her, I heard the dying screams of harpies as they descended on Thomas to be met with spellfire, only for a few to use the massive blind spot of his parachute to get close.

The granny panties were torn up, and Thomas’s weight only tore the fabric further. Then one of the harpies dove straight through the parachute to get to Thomas, and got tangled in it. Several more clung on to him and began to peck and scratch as he fell to the ground.

Being the true dick that he was, Maestro turned up the volume as Thomas began to scream in pain. He flailed and cast his fire fingers to scorch scores of the critters, but it was already too late.

I looked away from the screen, and Elise’s sobbing grew louder as Thomas hit the ground with a loud smack. Beside me, Ben let out a breath he’d been holding this entire time, hissing in anger and rage.

The whole audience cheered as a deep announcer voice shouted “Die!”.

“Oh, looks like your first answer is incorrect!” Maestro shouted triumphantly. “She’s definitely, certainly and unarguably very, very dead.”

“F-F-F-Failure!” The announcer voice said.

“Fun fact.” The Maestro told the audience. “Our eggheads ran some simulations, and collapsing the tower actually increased the Choldrith’s chances of survival. There was a worg Neighbourhood Boss on the top floor, and without the rush and chaos he would’ve almost certainly torn her apart! Odds of her defeating the harpies and that boss before the ghouls showed up were negligible!

“Had she crawled onto the side of the building and waited there until the dust obscured her, there was a 17.2% chance of survival! The highest survival rate available to her! Guess she wasn’t enough of a smartass to think of it, though!”

Ben snapped and drew a knife, throwing it at Maestro’s face. The dagger hit an invisible wall and vibrated for a moment after the sudden stop before floating in place with the tip obscured.

Maestro only laughed harder. “My, right for the kill, eh? Good plan. Too bad you’re on a holodeck, kid!”

The audience laughed with him and I ignored Maestro’s antics to instead help Miho to console Elise. Thomas hitting the ground was played over and over, with a different gag sound effect added every time. The crowd kept laughing, and Maestro didn’t seem like he’d move on to the next topic until they stopped.

I took a deep breath and looked at Darryl’s side screen, holding up my hand to obscure the screen with Thomas’s death scene. They were huddled up in some dark spot, the world shaking around them and dust obscuring the cam. But the health bars showed that they were both still alive.

“Enough of that, let’s get back to our other two contestants! It seems like we missed quite some stuff while we were watching the main show happen!” Maestro bellowed.

Darryl and Tatiana appeared on the main screen, running through the basement. They ran around the vines, and Darryl just burned off the one that managed to grab him without stopping or trying to avoid burning himself.

They ran up the stairs and ignored the last few tanarruk and goblins that were running out of the tower coming down upon all of them. One or two of the boar demons charged the two crawlers, but most of them were panicking and in no mood to fight. One of the attackers died to a brick to the skull, the high velocity projectile ramming its way down all the way to their belly button before stopping.

Large boulders were falling, and glass rained down on all. Tatiana took out some kind of blanket and tried to shield herself with it, while Darryl took the glass in stride and looked up to see any falling rocks in time. His health still dropped with every piece of glass that struck him at high velocity, but he had yet to drop into the yellow. Around them, goblins, tanarruk and white-striped wolves were getting squashed into pulp and slashed into ribbons.

“Come on, this way!” Darryl shouted, dragging Tatiana with him.

There was a lot of chaos, and even the camera seemed to have trouble keeping up with everything as glass regularly fell to obscure the view. Behind them the second floor crumbled down upon the first one and turned the base of the tower into a pile of rubble only precariously holding up everything above it. Then the fourth floor just cracked, and the tower slowly started to fall to the side. The worst side.

“This way!” Darryl said, yanking Tatiana into a different direction. “Quick! The tower is about to fall down upon us!”

The camera suddenly swirled around, changing the perspective entirely. The building filling up the background as it slowly came closer to the two crawlers running away, turned into a much less dramatic-looking scene of Darryl and Tatiana running sideways on a clear sky with the glass almost looking like rain.

Maestro cursed and angrily whispered something into his sleeve, and the camera tried to position itself to get a better shot, but it didn’t return to the position it had before.

“Fuck, not that guy!” Darryl cursed as he kept running and veered away from something off-screen.

“I think he needs help!” Tatiana said.

“Don’t get near him, we should stay clear of Azriel and everything he’s involved in.” Darryl shouted back, continuing to pull her away.

They kept running as the tower collapsed, and then Darryl jumped through a window into the burrow created by a piece of rubble slightly bigger than the rest of the rocks. Elise’s fishing rod had persevered until now, but it was shaking wildly and the hook was flapping in the wind. Tatiana hesitated but then followed him in, and a moment later a dust cloud blanked out the feed.

The camera settings readjusted to turn the dust semi-transparent, revealing the powerful wind currents that were dragging fist-sized rocks and pieces of rebar with them as if they were paper bags, the edges of the rubble eroding smooth by the powerful sand blasting.

The feed switched to inside the large rock, showing the gnawed bones and tiny shrine that Ben found before, now getting tossed around by thrashing and swirling dust. Darryl was shielding Tatiana with his body with his shield out, and the both of them were rapidly losing health.

A side-screen popped up to give some background information on the dust cloud’s velocity and effects, which was definitely more extreme and deadly than a real world skyscraper collapse would be. I think. Darryl’s shelter was apparently slowly rising in atmospheric pressure as more wind pressed into the space, but the lack of flow-through stopping the sandblasting effect was mentioned to be the reason they weren’t already dead.

There was a loud crash as the tower finally hit the ground, and then there was silence. The winds eventually died and the dust settled. Tatiana used another Heal Scroll on Darryl and Darryl one on her, both of them already used a health potion not moments ago, and Darryl got up.

The nearest goblin wasn’t that fast, and Darryl stabbed through the layer of dead goblins into the unfortunate sap before they could dig themselves out. All the other surviving mobs that sought shelter here roused from their cowering, most of them near death but none inclined to just lie down and take it.

Tatiana quickly let loose several arrows with impossible grace and speed, and Darryl cast his Phantom Phalanx before stabbing into the nearest tanarruk. One of the Skulljaw Wolves I hadn’t seen before leaped at Darryl, only to smash snout-first into his shield and fracture their skull from the reflected damage. Tatiana quickly put an arrow between its eyes before it could get back up.

The following moments were a haggard and grim scene of two exhausted crawlers defending themselves from a small horde of equally exhausted mobs, shield and arrow reaping death as Darryl stomped, stabbed and once even head-butted the desperate enemies to death.

The audience liked it, but Maestro was filing his nails absentmindedly. I noticed that the chance of survival in the corner was actually pretty high. About 74%, though constantly fluctuating. As I was looking at that number, I noticed that Darryl was now level 20. He jumped up four levels since I last saw him. Crashing the tower apparently meant that he and Tatiana, now at level 17, had gotten at least some of the experience of every mob dying in the crash.

And meanwhile I was still a puny level 14. I needed to train harder.

“Alright, last chance to die!” Maestro said, putting away the file and getting back up. “This one’s going to be a doozy! Now, which one of you lot is going to help him?”

We gave him uncomprehending looks.

The Maestro smiled. “Well, never let it be said that I’m not a fair host. You guessed one right, so you’re due a teleport.”

He pointed at Darryl’s name, and only now did I see the skull next to it.

“Hiu died in the collapse.” Miho grasped.

“It’s gonna have to be you or me, Elise.” Ben said after a moment of silent. “No offense, but-”

“I know.” I softly said.

“You two are stronger than us, no argument there.” Miho said.

“So, Azriel.” Ben said.

“Fucking Azriel.” Elise nodded.

“You might be able to try diplomacy first, he’ll probably attack me right away.” Ben said. “But I’m in a better state, and probably a better match for him.”

Elise wiped the tears of her face and looked at him with red eyes. “I need something to smash right now. Hit it till it breaks.”

“Then it sounds like we should send in Ben.” Miho cautiously said.

“Little fairy, your thoughts?” Maestro asked me, mock interest dripping from his words.

“Well, uhm…”

I pondered on the question. From the one hand, Ben might be a better match for Azriel considering Elise was more vulnerable to the oaths vs Ben’s dodge DPS build, but Elise really looked like she wanted to do this. But in the end, the choice was clear. It would have to be-

“Who are we kidding? Your opinion doesn’t matter!” Maestro interrupted me at the exact moment I was about to speak up. “Either you vote Ben and it’s three against one, or you vote Elise and it’s up to me to break the tie! So in the end it’s actually up to me to decide! Bye Ben!”

The last mobs eventually fled as Darryl and Tatiana stood their ground without breaking, and Darryl climbed out of their dusty hiding spot. Ben popped into existence next to him, and they exchanged some hushed whispers.

“Alright, let’s take care of-” Ben said, his voice trailing off as they both saw their last foe.

“Oh, fuck.” He and Darryl said in unison.