Nick quickly found himself taking on more and more of the horde as it spawned. It was growing harder and harder for him to avoid taking hits, he eventually had to start just accepting glancing blows or prioritising avoiding serious hits. The injuries started piling up but Nick was just getting more and more absorbed into the fight. All thoughts simply faded away, it was just him and wasps. No concerns about Tony, the coming war or anything. It was slip, pivot out, throw a punch. Nick just kept moving, flowing between the gaps in the swarm, using any free moments to throw a punch or take a step back to readjust.

It was on the 20th wave that things started to fall apart. The archer was no longer able to deal with the sheer number of wasps, they couldn’t even dent the horde of 50 flying terrors. The shieldbearer was quickly overwhelmed, while they could slow the wasps, being surrounded by tens of slow wasps didn’t change much. Nick could only make out their legs and they were completely swarmed. The swordsman became desperate, they charged towards the swarm, frantically slashing at the monsters. Even though they could easily take out individual wasps, any gaps in the swarm were quickly replaced by a new, equally as pissed wasp.

In no time at all the swordsman had bitten off more than they could chew and were defending themselves on all sides. It was just the archer and Nick left. They had similar strategies, both began moving. The archer kept on the move, using their superior speed to keep away from the swarm and fire shots back into it. While the archer couldn’t meaningfully damage the wasps, Nick could. Nick quickly found himself getting swarmed and was desperately moving to defend himself. He was activating his buffing skill as soon it came off cooldown, using the speed to avoid mandibles and stingers while occasionally dispatching a wasp in return.

Nick was getting stung and bitten more and more, and it was catching up with him. He was getting sluggish, his slips and rolls weren’t cleanly dodging anything any more, at best he was getting glancing blows. Nick gave up on focusing on defence, focusing on killing all the wasps before they could kill him. With a painful grunt he began to open up, swinging into the wasps that had come to surround him. He had no idea what was happening around him, all he could see were the wasps, nothing else existed. For every sting or bite he took he made sure to destroy a wasp. Destroy was the word, no longer was he just denting the wasps before they died. He loaded each punch with everything he had, throwing his weight from side to side, cleaving his way through the swarm.

He wasn’t sure how long it took or when it ended, but eventually there were no wasps left in his path and he collapsed down to the ground. He was covered in bites and swollen lumps, his entire body was left feeling sluggish. It was then he heard someone clapping.

“Hot damn! That was one hell of a performance Nick!” It was Rina.

“That was a very impressive performance for a 2-2.” Paige added on.

How did she know his levels? Did she have a skill similar to Caspers? Nick was too exhausted to think about it too hard. He watched as the last of the creatures became dust and a chest formed in the centre of the room. Nick saw that the three recruits were just as banged up as him. Their black clothes had rips and tears across them, revealing grey flesh underneath. Their blood was still red, but had strange black speckles running through it. Whatever the hell they had done to themselves, Nick wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. The Executioners could keep their path to ultimate power if it meant looking like that. The recruits were certainly far stronger than he expected, whatever that black wispiness was it added a serious bit of damage to their weapons. Nick liked bleeding red blood though, and his green eyes were a favourite feature of his.

The group made their way over to the chest, it was the largest he’d seen yet.

“Why’s it so big?” He asked.

“The loot gets better with each wave, every five you get a major increase. You guys did really well, 20 waves.” Rina explained.

After the ordeal that he’d just gone through, Nick felt like he deserved a pretty nice reward. The swordsman opened up the chest and Nick was shocked. There had to be at least a couple of hundred pills in there! Not to mention there were two items, a shield and pair of shoes, and two stickers. Everyone seemed pretty amazed by the rewards.

“Two stickers? Wow, we need to roll with you more often Nick!” Paige gasped.

Nick realised that he didn’t have any sort of frame of reference. He had no idea how good what they just found actually was. He was used to getting this sort of stuff, but he knew that it was influenced by his class. People constantly exclaimed at his finds, but he couldn’t actually differentiate between normal and exceptional.

“How often do you guys find stickers?”

“Well, up here on the 70 floors it’s pretty uncommon to get a sticker from a treasure chest.” Rina said. “Down on the 60s, you find plus ones a bit more often, with a rare plus two.”

Well that answered what his status screen had told him about better stickers. There were plus 2s out there he could get. It also showed him how insane his skill was. Nick found stickers pretty commonly, he found two yesterday. Not to mention the other two he already had. No wonder Tony wanted an Explorer so bad, Nick was practically printing this stuff.

“So what do you guys usually get from a chest?” Nick asked.

Paige sighed. “You Explorers never have a sense for the normal. Most people are lucky to get an item from a chest. Usually you’ll only get pills from most chests.”

Goddamn, Nick was shocked. No wonder Doyle was so happy with their deal, Nick earned insanely more from his roams than everyone else. A whole year of exclusive access to his loot was a lot of goddamn loot. Nick was only now beginning to understand the true worth of his skills. No wonder that Greg guy was apparently living like a king. Though it worried Nick. If his gains were this good and people still weren’t commonly taking the class the cons must be terrible. Knowing that the con was the looming threat of insanity really dampened any excitement that Nick was feeling.

“So how are we splitting this stuff?” Nick raised the awkward question.

“Well you can have the pills, the recruits don’t really need them. We’ll want the stickers and the shield though. You can have the shoes.” Paige said and Nick nodded along, it was sounding good to him.

Rina then punched Paige in the shoulder.

“You’re ripping him off!”

This earned a blank look from Paige and a loud sigh. Nick then realised that the deal certainly did seem a little one sided, if stickers were as uncommon as Rina said then they were probably worth more than a couple hundred pills individually.

“Okay, you said you were looking for a watch didn’t you Nick? I’ll get you a basic one if you’re alright with us taking the stickers.” Paige then looked at Rina.

Rina looked a bit more appeased and Nick literally had no idea if he was getting a good deal, he wasn’t really in a position to argue the point though. He had no information, he was currently pretty beat up and Rina and Paige were likely pretty damn strong. The duo was in charge of looking after the recruits and Paige had been sitting in on that important looking meeting.

“A basic watch is worth a couple hundred pills. I’ll make sure she doesn’t grab a crappy one.” Rina reassured him.

So Nick accepted the deal. He asked if they could appraise the items they’d gotten but Paige said she could only get information from people, but she offered to get Nick’s new shoes appraised alongside the shield when they got back to the dining room. The swordsman and the shieldbearer got the two stickers, they were both endurance ones. Nick watched as they rolled up their sleeves and pressed them in.

The stickers didn’t meld into their flesh as easily as he’d seen on himself and Maddy. It was like their mottled skin wasn’t as receptive to whatever adhesive was used by the stickers. The recruits had to hold the stickers down and slowly wait for the sticker to become flush. Well that seemed to be another downside to whatever the Executioners were doing, he wondered if it lessened the effect of the stickers as well.

Rina decided that the group was due for a break, too damaged to continue right now. She advised that Nick should take roughly 10 pills to deal with all the taint he would have gotten from the fight. Nick was grateful for the advice, he had no idea how often he was supposed to be taking them. He asked her a bit more about how it worked.

“Well I’m sure you’ve heard but all the food here contains the taint yeah? Well food grown by the Parkland’s Farmers contains a lot less, so does food prepared by Chefs and Cooks, that’s why Doyle’s floor is so popular. Anyway, if you’re eating the food from ovens then you should be taking about a pill per meal to keep completely clear of taint. If you’re eating Parkland food, one pill every couple days is enough to keep you in the clear. If you’re eating food from the Parkland cooked by a Chef, you can get away with a pill a week.”

Nick realised that he had to get his family way more pills than they were currently taking. He wasn’t sure how many they’d taken so far but it certainly wasn’t that many.

“How long until the taint is enough to make you sick?” Nick asked.

“You can take a fair bit before the taint starts to affect you.” Rina answered. “You start to get lethargic and sick once you get too much. I've got no clue about strict numbers or anything but if you ever start feeling sick you should start throwing back the pills. If you don’t you’ll eventually be so tainted the pills can’t help you any more.”

It was useful information, it explained what had been happening to his dad. Nick then asked about injuries and looking into the darkness.

“Looking directly at the darkness is just silly.” She said, making Nick look away sheepishly. “It’s not super bad for you but it certainly starts adding up. Now, all the monsters here are literally made of the stuff, every time they injure you they infect you with the taint, basically the more injuries you get, or the more serious they are, the more pills you should be taking. The only thing that changes that is your amount of endurance, the stickers, and a healer. Endurance makes you more resistant to the taint and healers have a passive skill that lowers taint in the space around them. Their heals also remove taint from the body.”

Now that explained why Tony had forced Maddy into the healer role. Not only was a healer great for keeping your fighters in the fight, they also were a huge money saver. If the pills were also used as currency here, not having to consume all your pills just to eat was a huge cost saver.

The group made their way back to the dining room and Nick gave the shoes to Paige and she walked off towards the kitchen to get them appraised. The group went up to the kitchen as well, lined up and bought some food. It cost a couple of pills for a single meal, which Nick felt defeated the whole purpose. That was until he remembered how good the food tasted, this was only reinforced when the group sat down and started to dig into their meals. Nick was once again sent to heaven. Yep, this food was worth every pill spent on it.

Paige then came back with a familiar person in tow, Benedict.

“You got yourself some pretty cool kicks, they give you a small increase in agility when you’re wearing them. I also got you a healer, so that we can get back to roaming.” She said and she threw the shoes at Nick.

He managed to catch them and quickly set about getting them on, any sort of buff would go a long way. Trying them out he could certainly say he felt a little slicker on his feet. Then he started to feel tingly, Benedict was using his heal on him. It felt a bit more intense than Maddy’s.

“Your heal feels differently to Maddy’s, why's that?” He asked.

Benedict smiled. “I won’t say for certain, but it’s likely because my heal is a higher level. Do tell Maddy that I’m looking forward to having her around.” With that he left.

The man was certainly a little creepy, but his heal was certainly effective. Nick felt ready to take on another 20 waves of wasps, for loot like that he was willing to take one hell of a beating. Tony was certainly expecting him to.

“Why didn’t the recruits get healed as well?” Nick suddenly asked, realising it was only him that got healed.

Paige grinned. “Us Exes are built a little differently. We like our taint and it helps us heal much quicker than your average Joe.”

That was all the explanation he got, with that everyone finished up their meals and got ready to take on some more Hordes.

Nick couldn’t contain his excitement, a devilish grin spreading across his face.