There were a couple of rats waiting for him directly outside the safe zone, but without Ben on his back it was indeed easier to deal with them. The rats were unnaturally aggressive, but when he punted them against the wall once or twice they stayed down.

It gave Darryl some insight on the health dots as well. Red didn’t seem to be near death rather than about half, the dark hue being the hint of how wounded it was. Green was for unharmed and nigh unscathed, and it appeared that injured foes slowly but certainly regenerated their health over time.

Given how the woolf was still in the yellow just before it exploded, it likely would’ve killed them both if it weren’t for the bathroom. Not a pleasant thought.

Every time a rat died, their pop-up changed to a corpse rather than a foe, but it said that enemies couldn’t be looted without completing the tutorial first. Well, not automatically, as Darryl had already gotten the woolf’s tooth before by manually looting it. He didn’t think there would be anything valuable on these rats, though.

The same went for the other groups of foes that were about. Dangerous or not, they didn’t seem to be openly carrying much of use.

He first ran into a large stretch crawling with some kind of grotesque centaur ants named ‘Chibi Formians’, described as a smaller and weaker mutt variant of some terrifying hive mind ant race called the formians. Darryl hoped that the people making this show were just making that up.

If these midgets were truly weak versions, Darryl didn’t want to meet the real deal. He initially just ran into workers that ignored him, but the moment that a soldier showed up it screeched and the workers immediately swarmed him. Though Darryl managed to kick off the first worker clinging to his leg and ran away, the spear-wielding soldier ant had gotten uncomfortably close.

There were also some kind of floating squid-jellyfish things, which looked creepy and deadly enough that Darryl simply turned around and took the long way around. Circling around, he eventually ran into woolf territory again, ignoring the sheep that were moving just a bit too slow to catch up with him.

At that point, Darryl had to admit to himself that he was lost. All these damn hallways looked the same, and having to run away every once in a while didn’t help.

He heard sounds in the distance on occasion, though he wasn’t sure whether they came from humans or these beasts. He assumed the former, as he had yet to meet anything that could talk except the dwarf. Also, he really hoped there weren’t any mobs carrying what sounded like guns. But that was probably not the case. Anything sentient probably wouldn’t show up until the later floors, it would be pretty morbid to fill the dungeon with smart creatures driven to kill inexperienced and dazed humans, and to expect the humans to kill those creatures in turn.

Darryl mused on that thought for a while, wandering through the hallways until he walked into a door that wasn’t a toilet.

The door stood out. Well, all doors stood out as they were clearly taken from some random country and were put here with no regard to the heavy contrast they had with the mine tunnel aesthetic. But this one stood out because it was slightly ajar. All the other doors, even the ones that seemed so rickety or mouldy that they might collapse under their own weight at the slightest touch, were closed.

Slow and carefully, Darryl opened the door and peeked through.

The door led into a large room filled with cubicles. Each cubicle had a simple chair, a screen but no actual computer, and comically over the top stacks of papers and files. The room had massive skyscraper windows occupying the entire wall on the other side, showing nothing but a rocky surface. Combined with the pale TL-tube lights and the musty air, the room immediately gave a very depressing impression.

The smell of blood permeated through the air, a clearly unintentional element to what otherwise seemed like the atmosphere of an office caricature.

The origin of it was clear enough, as blood splatters covered several stacks of papers and one of the screens. Though most cubicles were empty, there were a few corpses slumped over dead as if they’d been working not moments before their demise. One of the creatures, what seemed to be some kind of gecko-man in a non-descript white blouse and pants you’d expect office workers to wear, was instead prone on the floor lying in a pool of blood.

Darryl hesitated. On the one hand, this place seemed like a trap. On the other hand, he still hadn’t found a tutorial guild and was starting to wonder how rare they were. For all he knew, the sadists who made this place put the guild behind some challenge or made it look like this to dissuade contestants to enter it.

Yeah, such a ruse might be straight up their alley. Make the tutorial guide sound important and force adventurers to seek one out before investigating anything else, only for the guilds to be hidden in exactly the kind of places you’d want to skip until you took the tutorial.

Deep breath.

Darryl looked around him, seeing a couple of the rats that were rather numerous around this area otherwise devoid of more unique foes, and then looked to the other side to see even more rats. They were still the same large rats, none seemed larger than usual. But there were a good twenty of them, and there was no telling how many more of them were around the corner.

Not too much of a problem. Especially now that he wasn’t carrying Ben on his back, he could just dash through. They didn’t actually run as fast as him, or as fast as regular rats for that matter. They’d get one or two bites in at best.

Would there be more later if he’d enter this place, though? Or would they disperse without a foe? Perhaps they’d follow him in here? The rats hadn’t displayed sophisticated tactics yet, but Darryl hadn’t gotten much of a chance to study them either.

Meanwhile this just seemed…

It seemed too much of a death trap. Maybe that was just foolishness on his part, walking into a death trap assuming it not to be one because he could tell it was one and ending up dead in a rather stupid way. But on the other hand he hadn’t been making much progress either. And the level countdown didn’t suggest he was supposed to take his sweet time, either.

Darryl took another deep breath and opened the door. The moment he closed it behind him to keep the rats out, the air immediately grew two degrees more stale and sweaty. Darryl closed his eyes and focussed on taking shallow breaths through his mouth for a minute, while keeping his ears pointed for anything out of the ordinary.

Then he walked in further, hunching over to not be easily spotted by anything glancing over the cubicles. Upon examining the first corpse, he found that the gecko-man had white foam on his lips and wide opened eyes. There were no wounds or blood on him, he had just collapsed where he sat and died. His fingers were still on the keyboard, which upon closer examination they were stuck to. The gecko-men had suction cups at the tips of their fingers, still sticking to the keys even in death.

Corpse of a Green Corpora Slave, lvl2

You cannot loot corpses with the inventory system before completing the tutorial.

Same as the rats he killed before, this new foe didn’t give a description as a corpse. Well, nothing aside from the creature’s name, that was. And the level did tell him a thing or two, at least. Darryl checked the creature’s pockets and found nothing of interest. It unfortunately wasn’t wearing any shoes, meaning Darryl had to continue walking on his woolf-torn sneaker. The only thing remotely interesting on the desk was a pen, which he took.

Darryl grabbed one of the papers on the top of the pile and looked at it. It looked like the ordinary lay-out for office papers, but in some Asian language that he didn’t recognise. He placed it back on the stack again.

The next gecko told a different story. Though he also collapsed still seated, there was a large open wound to the side of his neck that looked like it had been inflicted by a blade of some sort. His entire work station was covered in blood, and more was still dripping from the ceiling. Darryl didn’t study that one too closely.

Next he went for the gecko that was torn from his work station. It had been tossed a good two metres from his cubicle, with his chair and plenty of papers sprawled over the same length as his body. The keyboard was still sticking to his left hand, while two of his right hand fingers had dislodged keys stuck to them. He too had foam around his lips, and seemed to have been hit by something large and heavy. The cubicle showed a similar scene, with the frail plastic wall broken off on one side and two of the paper stacks having collapsed to create a mess on the floor.

Darryl moved on, creeping through the row of cubicles while occasionally peeking over to see if there was anything moving in the other rows. He found more scenes of geckos both poisoned and viciously stabbed, and eventually heard a living one. Or rather, he heard the frantic tapping of fingers on a keyboard.

Cautiously approaching the source of the sounds, Darryl indeed found a living specimen of the geckos. It was hunched over much like the poisoned ones, but with his face glued to the monitor screen while his fingers rapidly tapped and tapped.

His back and head didn’t move, instead his weirdly sticking-out gecko eyes continuously moved across the screen. He didn’t even seem to be typing in much. Darryl noticed that his fingers didn’t dislodge from the keys, instead he seemed to be frantically tapping the same eight keys over and over again in what might be a random pattern.

Green Corpora Slave, lvl2

The corpora are known to be a hardworking but miserable lot, every single one of them dreaming of becoming a merciless and filthy rich big-shot as they lament being bullied by their merciless and filthy rich big-shot superiors to work harder. They don’t earn much more when promoted up the corporate ladder, but after years of gruelling slavery the thought of bullying others like they’ve been bullied urges them forward.

The green corpora slaves, though officially called ‘interns’, are the ones at the very bottom of the corporate ladder. They don’t even get paid, they work overtime and get shouted at to work harder for the chance of being promoted to an underpaid contract worker.

“Uhm, hey?” Darryl said.

The gecko ignored him, frantically typing while his mouth-breathing fogged up the screen and sweat trickled down his forehead. Why a lizard would sweat Darryl couldn’t tell, but all the dead geckos he had seen up to now showed large sweat stains around their armpits too.

“Is this the Tutorial Guild?” Darryl asked.

The gecko continued to ignore him.

“Can you direct me to the nearest Tutorial Guild?”

...

“I want to see the manager?”

...

“Work harder.”

The gecko ignored his every remark, not even batting an eye. And with his freaky gecko eyes, he wouldn’t even have to turn away from the screen to do so.

Darryl sighed, knowing that he might get a response when he touched the gecko but having seen enough movies to know that such an act would likely trigger whatever this trap was. Instead he did the smart thing and backed off. The gecko continued to ignore him.

“Well, I guess-”

Suddenly the music started, what sounded like a disjointed guitar with a heavy beat appeared out of nowhere all of a sudden, abrasively starting blaring mid-tone. The announcement came not moments later, echoing through the room as this time it was an actual sound rather than a voice in his head.

Boss battle!

You have discovered the lair of a Neighbourhood Boss! Put your game faces on ladies and gentlemen! Aaaand Here. We. Go!