From above, a clever Beezel, the name the Citadel Fly had given his lieutenants, held back directing the War Flies as his compound eyes took in the situation. He sat high in the monstrous trees and saw the Pocket of Sanctuary walk along the ground, a purple ringed oval on legs of solid, glass-like, purple light. It moved at a steady pace, a hole in reality from which hundreds of insects never emerged.

It watched, sitting comfortably, counting the seconds before the deadly purple tentacles activated again. He'd seen the pattern on display and repeated openly, as if its occupants didn't see any need to. . . be cautious.

The Elite monster buzzed his wings in a gesture of irritation, then sent out a signal. The War Flies retreated and the Beezel flew back to the Citadel Hive to report what he'd seen.

–

Inside the Pocket of Sanctuary.

They were having to spend points just to stay alive, and spend them faster than they gained them. Five hundred points for a Full Restoration, which healed their wounds, rejuvenated their bodies, and filled their mana pools.

Five hundred points, when a War Fly was worth thirty, and the group needed healing after every fight. A fight could be a dozen or more of the enormous insects, cramming themselves in one after another whenever the Pockets defenses went down from being overused.

The bugs were vicious monsters, melee attacks against their razor sharp bodies inevitably resulted in the attacker sustaining injuries. Their eyes shot thousands of lasers, which individually weren't much of a threat, but if they were allowed to converge could be deadly.

Ben and Vivi had both already sustained fatal injuries half dozen times, alive by virtue of Frankie's incredible skill with purchasing perks. Vivi was too stationary, and his body was a large soft target. The Aeon Slug had the highest kill count of the group, but also the highest injury rate.

Ben was only doing marginally better than Vivi at staying alive, mostly by virtue of him having no idea what the fuck he was doing. Ben didn't know how to fight, all he knew how to do was jump around and try and get cheap shots in when he could.

Short Bus had nearly been taken out twice, his body suffering from the explosion of a War Fly's laser before they'd learned to be terrified of it. He had it the worst of all of them, suffering lacerations with every attack. He didn't have a weapon and was forced to attack with his bare hands and bite with his mouth. He'd been blinded, his eyes cut nearly every fight.

Anna and her group had done marginally better, having only suffered one group wipe. They fought in formation, Anna protecting Dryst while he played music that weakened their enemies and supercharged the nervous systems of allies. Meanwhile, Thirty-One cloaked himself and took precise and skilled cheap shots that nearly always ended in an insect dying.

Ghost Ears and Red had not sustained any fatal injuries, but had both been wounded many times. Ghost Ears, because he was nimble and had been fighting in the Overcavern Forest against giant insects his whole life; Red, because her eyes dominated the weak minds of the bugs and turned them against one another. That, and she was an excellent fighter who knew how to dodge.

As for Frankie, he was in the control room, providing as much mana as he possibly could to the Pocket of Sanctuary, which was as much as he could contribute. He'd nearly been destroyed by a fly laser; there wouldn't have been any coming back for him after that, he was extremely fragile. That, and his death would result in the Pocket of Sanctuary collapsing, which would doom them all. So, he was hidden away in a place where physical beings could not go and was forced to watch while they fought.

When the flies retreated, when they stopped coming, there wasn't Ben's party, and Anna's party. There wasn't any social distance between them.

There was The Group, because there needed to be a group. For sure there was an Enemy, and worse a United Enemy. So they needed to be united as well.

“Anna,” Ben said, his eyes fully dilated in the strange almost light of the Pocket of Sanctuary, “is it supposed to be like this?” The smooth orange crystal Sunlet was also breathing hard.

“I think so?” she said, “all the reports said it was a pain to get to the dungeon.”

“Those reports were put forth by copper rank teams,” Thirty-One said, a sound like an overworked computer fan the only indication that he was respirating. For the record, he was breathing hard too, in his own way.

“Ben, I do not like this place,” Short Bus said, breathing hard. He squinted and blinked, then shut his eyes really hard, then opened them again. The trauma of being blinded playing itself out through physical action.

Vivi didn't say anything, but his big spherical eyes were open wide and dilated. The Aeon Slug wasn't so much breathing hard as hyperventilating, his scattered focus betrayed by his eyes rapidly darting around, like every little sound startled him.

Red was merely scowling, looking at the last spot a fly had died, and where its body had vanished. She needed corpses in order to use [System Looting], and the Pocket of Sanctuary took them before she could do anything with them.

Ghost Ears had a furious scowl on his face.

“That,” the True-Elf Fairy said, “was extremely bad! Those are not normal monsters!”

“Really?” Anna asked, and it looked like Dryst winced when she admitted total ignorance in a single word.

“Yes,” Ghost Ears growled, flying up close to the Sunlet and pointing a finger straight at her left eye, “I've seen the monstrous flies of this forest a thousand times, and what we just fought were much, much worse.”

“How so,” Ben asked, looking Anna in the eyes, playing the part of a setup man, the guy who asked leading questions for another member of his group to answer.

“Well for one, the flies of this forest can't shoot lasers!” Ghost Ears screamed, directly in Anna's face, tiny fraction of a raindrop sized bits of spittle flying out of his mouth and landing on her face. She didn't notice, and the spittle sizzled away on contact. Anna was hot, both in the sense of slang and temperature.

Ben's heart, which he thought had been beating hard, started to pound, the sound of rushing blood making him go deaf. He'd nearly been taken out by one of those lasers, nearly had one of them blast his neck apart. His nope sense was screaming him to nope the fuck out of this situation, classes and powers be damned.

Anna looked like she wanted to say something rude, but then her eyes looked over the group she'd selfishly roped into assaulting the Pestilent Hive of Horrors. Ben decided to say aloud what he'd already decided.

“We're getting out of here, now. Frankie, turn this thing around. This is not worth it.”

If only it were so easy to correct a mistake. They did turn around, and for a few minutes their mobile sanctuary walked unmolested. Then they saw the formations of 'humanoid', and I use the word so very loosely, grasshoppers and crickets. There were oh. . . about sixty of them, but each one was about as big as Short Bus. They wore thick armor of chitin on top of their thick chitin bodies, and were armed with swords, bows, and spears. Spiders with humanoid torsos were holding strange glowing wands and staves. They looked a bit like centaurs, except their human half was ninety-eight percent spider.

Overhead, a fresh swarm of War Flies buzzed. The small army wasn’t advancing and was spread out for one very obvious purpose.

To keep them from getting away.

The Pocket of Sanctuary stopped while its occupants yelled and screamed at one another. They might have committed to a suicidal charge, except a lone human sized snail with an iridescent gold and blue shell made its slow way towards their position.

Ben, being a royal with the class, realized what he was looking at. He quickly removed his towel, which according to the law of his skill [The Prince Has No Clothes], actually made him look less royal than if he were just wearing a crown. Then Ben quickly polished his crown in what can be briefly described as his most creative use of the utility pocket yet, fixed his hair, and fixed his face into an expression of imperial boredom.

Then Ben looked at The Group and started arranging them to look like a united front. He had only moments, and he wouldn't fool anyone who looked too hard. He had to hide Vivi, who was still in Post-Traumatic Stress from basically dying a half dozen times in quick succession, but it would do.

Anna had just been going along with it, because let's be honest, she was also in Post-Traumatic Stress, but after a few seconds of standing there, she got it.

“Oh no,” she said quietly, and then the rest of her group got it as well.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Dryst said, even though Ben didn't know if he actually did say that.

“A fucking citadel,” Thirty-One swore, and for those who knew him, they knew that was unusual.

“A Royal,” Anna said, then quietly, “just follow the [Prince's] lead. Do whatever he says and we might get out of this alive.”

“Silence,” Ben said quietly, “the [Herald] is almost here.”

The snail was slow, and Ben suddenly felt the inadequacy of his crown. It was a warning directly from his class, one that told him everyone he loved was going to die unless his crown got an upgrade.

“What's the most valuable thing you have on you,” Ben hissed, keeping his position and his face fixed in a superior sneer.

“Fuck,” Anna said, then reached into a very small pocket dimension. Ben was surprised by both his ability to sense the interior size and quality of her inventory, and the fact that she pulled out a fucking smart phone.

“Uh, what?” Ben said, his eyebrows fighting so hard to rise, and his royal willpower trying so hard to keep them composed.

“Fuck you this thing cost me my entire savings,” Anna whispered back.

“Slime you actually bought a Plus Perk?” Vivi said, revealing that the cure for trauma, for him at least, was the opportunity to feel superior to someone.

“It's worth it!” Anna snapped back, and it's worth noting that everybody was frozen in their pre-arranged positions and talking out of the sides of their mouths without looking at one another.

“How could you possibly afford the payment plan?” Vivi asked, but Ben silenced him with a burst of power from his crown, took the Smart Phone with his utility pouch, and then affixed it to the front of his crown. In the same place a regular crown might have a big gemstone, or an artistic representation of the royal's power.

Ben had a Smart Phone, which The System had called The Smartest Phone, which was one of the Plus Perks granted to humanity, glued to a shitty black iron ring. He'd used the wispy white strands that protected the entrance of the Lair of the Aeon Slug dungeon, it attached to the first two things it touched, and formed a smooth rubber cement type bond.

If Ben had a mirror and saw what he looked like, stark naked with a Smart Phone glued to his fucking forehead, he would not have been able to pull off what came next.

Good thing he didn't have a mirror.

The [Herald] Snail entered the range of the Pocket of Sanctuary, and under Ben's strict instructions, the purple tentacles retracted. The snail continued uninterrupted, as though he had not even considered that he would be attacked. Who indeed, the [Herald] thought, would dare risk the wrath of his master the Citadel King?

The snail entered the Pocket of Sanctuary, and the first thing Ben thought was something like 'Is every gastropod in this world a total snob or something', and then he went back to thinking entirely royal thoughts.

The Aeon Slug's eyes made contact with the eyes of the Herald Snail's, and the two of them exchanged a look of utter superiority over the other. The snail sneered at the slug, and the slug ignored the snail as beneath him.

Ben ignored the apparent racial rivalry. He'd given strict instructions to his entire group to keep silent, and so far, they were obeying. The one who spoke first, indeed the one who acted first, was the inferior, the supplicant. The bitch to put it in modern parlance.

But it was a game as old as the universe, make no mistake about that. Dominance was an Inevitable, after all.

The Herald did not lock eyes with Ben, and Prince Ben did not look at the Citadel's Herald. Silence stretched, and with every moment, the threat in the air increased.

To Short Bus, who was sensitive to such things, he felt the moisture in the air be sapped away, leaving everything dry. Something was moving through that dry rough atmosphere. Tiny static pops happened infrequently around them, electrical discharge between bits of dust.

Violence was imminent. Everybody knew it, everybody felt it. Ben's crown started to grow warm, the cellphone's screen brightened by a fraction, simple white light spilling forth.

It was so intense everybody wanted to scream, but they kept it together.

“You are to stand trial in the Citadel of Horrors,” the Herald said, breaking and ceding to Ben. “Should you refuse, you will be killed like the naked slugs you are,” he said, then turned around and left.

The group was frozen in place, then the entrance to the Pocket of Sanctuary fogged over, and their rigid postures melted like powdered snow blasted by the fire of a propane weed burner. They fell, every one of them, and began breathing hard like they'd just exerted themselves.

“Oh man,” Short Bus said, holding his head and taking in deep powerful breaths, “that was intense! This has just been a horrible idea all around, I'm never listening to Anna again!”