Darryl had been quietly scouting the place. He needed every bit of info he could get for his plan to work, and fortunately doing so wasn’t too difficult in this small arena despite it being heavily obscured by all the stacks of paper and poor lighting.

He counted seven living interns still typing away at their desks. The desk at the slight elevation was indeed the lady gecko’s desk, equally covered in stacks of paper but slightly more lavish in design. He also found a third dead human, but the eighty year old Greek lady hadn’t carried anything useful on her person.

What he had been looking for, however, were the basic luxuries of the interns. The way that they had reacted to the destruction of the coffee machine suggested that something might happen if it happened again too often. Hopefully, it would make them hostile towards their boss, or something similar.

The first luxury he found, or rather remembered seeing, was a water dispenser right next to the entrance. He was saving that one for last, in case their rebellion would open the doors.

The second item was a big, clunky radio. It wasn’t producing any sound, on account of being smashed in already. The woman’s severed left leg was still stuck behind one of the large shards after she had been thrown into it, and the radio only produced an obnoxious static now.

And so, Darryl instead approached the third luxury item in the room. It hadn’t been what he was looking for initially, but the ‘Hang in there!’ poster was so out of place in this otherwise designed to be miserable room that it had no doubt been placed here for the same reason as the coffee machine.

Darryl easily tore down the poster with a weird gecko-cat hybrid and turned it into confetti, as the interns began to wail just like he expected.

The one nearest to him didn’t wail though, instead he got up and lashed out with his tongue. The tongue, just like the intern, was a lot smaller and less intimidating than the boss lady. Darryl dodged it, as it was fortunately a lot slower too, and the gecko rushed him.

These interns didn’t have oddly out of place nails on their fingers, so when the fingers poked him it didn’t pierce. Instead the suction cups stuck to his jacket, and bits of fabric tore loose as the intern withdrew his hand viciously.

Darryl didn’t like the thought of that happening to exposed skin, so he didn’t stick around for another round. The gecko shouted something but Darryl ignored him as he darted around the corner.

It was as he thought. He hadn’t actually studied the female gecko as she moved, but they were incredibly slow walkers. As much as she could slash and pounce like a lioness, these geckos weren’t actually wearing shoes and their toes automatically sucked onto the floor. The bits of jacket falling from the intern’s fingers suggested that they could loosen their cups at will, but they were walking as if they were wearing magnet boots.

Not that it mattered much to them, considering their tongues. If their enemies were within mid-range, they could yank a small enough target towards them with ease.

Darryl crouch-ran across two corners quickly, frantically looking around for the big lady, and noticed that the other interns also turned hostile towards him. They didn’t actively search for him, but once spotted they did give chase. Which was-

"Geeuleun!"

Darryl froze as he heard the dreaded lady’s voice shout at him. He hadn’t seen her, but she clearly spotted him. He immediately dove under the nearest cubicle and heard only a whoosh and a crash as something was thrown at him.

Knowing that getting trapped by her was a death sentence, Darryl immediately left his hidey hole again and darted in a random direction. He heard her shout something behind him, and as he glanced back he didn’t see h-

She was on the ceiling. The damned office lady was crawling over the ceiling as if she was Spiderman, with her eyes twisting odd angles to look at him despite her face facing the ceiling.

Darryl almost tripped as he tried to process the freaky sight, and stumbled around the corner. With an awkward twirl he dodged an intern’s sticky grasp and slammed into him with his shoulder to knock him over, rushing past while already seeing the lady gecko crawling over the row of cubicles to keep him in her sight after all.

With a loud thud she landed on the ground, lashing out with her tongue. She cursed loud and clearly despite the outstretched mouth-filling tongue as the hostile intern stumbled after Darryl and blocked her attack, and Darryl kept running. The intern shrieked as he was violently pulled back.

Running around another corner, Darryl found himself meeting the wall and quickly followed it away from the lady until the body of the sprawled out dead gecko blocked his path. Darryl stopped and turned around, panting. He took a sidestep to the wall, gauged the distance he had and cursed. It would be tight.

The gecko lady had jumped onto the ceiling again and crawled to the next row, once again seeing Darryl and shouting something at him. Her head twisted to the right and her tongue latched on to a monitor, which she hurled at him.

Darryl didn’t move. The geckos were clearly meant to use that tongue directly on their enemies rather than tossing things at them; as much as she could stick it somewhere with incredible accuracy, her throws weren’t as good. The monitor flew over the row of cubicles and landed somewhere out of sight after toppling a stack of papers.

The lady gecko dropped from the ceiling, landing on her feet with the grace of a cat, and began to slowly magnet-walk towards Darryl. Without tearing her gaze off of him thanks to her freak-eyes, her tongue found a swivel chair and she threw it at him.

This time it was more accurate. No doubt thanks to her not hanging upside down while she made the throw. The chair flew at him and Darryl jumped to the side, feeling a cold wetness all over his back as the water dispenser burst open in the collision.

This was the moment of truth. Darryl closed his eyes and hoped he was right, that this was indeed some hidden way to beat the boss without the weapons he was clearly meant to have before coming in here. That him ripping up the poster himself hadn’t ruined things. That something would happen to save him.

The wailing began again, but this time it sounded much angrier.

He looked over at the door. Still closed. Darryl crawled underneath the cubicle for cover and waited, knowing that if the geckos wouldn’t open it for him then he was dead anyway.

He heard the gecko lady scream something, and heard the interns scream something back. Darryl just curled up and waited for death or salvation, knowing that he couldn’t do anything else any more. He heard the screams, followed by a shrill and panicked yelp.

A moment later, something heavy crashed into the far wall. Something that sounded like it had all of his bones snap and break in the crash. But the remaining interns kept screaming angrily, and Darryl glanced out from his hiding spot.

He was met with the sight of the gecko lady shoving her hand through an intern’s chest, while another intern had latched his tongue onto her shoulder and yanked hard enough to catapult himself at her. A third intern already lay dead at her feet, but her health was now back in the deep red that it started at.

Two more interns walked past Darryl’s hideout and the lady’s eyes were shooting fire at them as she casually backhanded the lunging gecko with the impaled one and turned them into a pile of flailing limbs. She shouted something and lashed out with her tongue, grabbing one of the new challengers and pulling him towards her. He too was pulled right into her sharp nails and found himself with a large hole in his chest.

As the gecko lady rolled her tongue back in to lash out at the other intern, another one fell from the ceiling. He had crept up on her unnoticed and now fell onto her head, grabbing the knife while his other hand sucked onto her face. She screamed and shook him viciously, but where his legs were tossed around like a ragdoll his hand was stuck and held on.

And then he began stabbing. It was clear that this wasn’t just some programmed in event, the gecko was viciously screaming with cathartic glee and rage as he stabbed her in the face over and over again. The blip above her head turned red and then blacked out, but he kept stabbing and screaming even after she crumpled down to the floor. At that point the other two surviving geckos had joined him, punching and kicking the body while shouting at her in their odd language.

And then the world froze. Darryl’s mugshot appeared with Winner! on it, with a greyed out mugshot of the three dead crawlers underneath it.

And the winner is, Darryl D!

The world unfroze again, the interns straightened their backs and turned around as calm now as they were frantic before. Then they walked to the door and left, one of them still clutching on to the dagger.

Darryl didn’t move as they left, nor after that. He just stared at the plain cubicle wall in front of him and panted from all the exhaustion and stress that caught up to him now that the adrenaline left his system.

New Achievement! Dead meat trifecta!

You’ve entered a boss battle all alone, without weapons and before taking the tutorial! That’s the big three of boss-related mistakes that turn a boss battle into assisted suicide instead! You must either be really stupid or already got tired of this game!

Reward: If you by some miracle manage to survive, we’ll double your rewards for this boss. But let’s be real, you’re not going to survive.

New Achievement! Stank armour!

You’ve managed to evade or escape an attack or battle by being utterly disgusting, without using one of the surprisingly numerous magical items that can provide such a boon. Wow, you stink. In a good way, kinda. Except you’re also disgusting, so take that as you will. You do know that there are showers in the safe rooms, right?

Reward: You’ve gained a Bronze Hygiene Box!

New Achievement! Dead meat trifecta veteran!

Amazing! Do you know how many people get the previous achievement without it being their last? Quite a few actually, as they get the Boss Babe achievement before dying. But they die anyway. You didn’t! That’s actually incredible!

Reward: You’ve got three bronze boss boxes for the three achievements this one consists of.

Special condition: Doubling reward! Instead of doubling your boxes and previously attained achievements, we’ll upgrade these three to two silver boss boxes! Yes, that’s better than getting twice as much trash, don’t question our generosity.

New Achievement! Supreme morbid kill-stealer!

You’ve taken credit for a kill of a creature by waiting for someone else to do all the hard work for you, die for their efforts, and leave you with a crippled and sad shadow of a mob still granting you their full xp and loot reward. How cruel! Better yet, you did so with a boss!

Reward: You’ve got a silver villain box!

Special condition: Doubling reward! You got another Silver Villain Box!

New Achievement! Idle crawler!

Congratulations, you’ve managed to not contribute to the fight at all! Well, maybe you healed your buddies or cast some supporting spells, but we don’t care about those. You dealt not a single point of damage to the boss or a significant mob! You suck!

Reward: You get everything you deserve for fighting this way, meaning you get nothing!

Special condition: Doubling reward! You get twice that, which means you still get nothing!

New Achievement! Sole idle crawler!

You somehow managed to kill a boss and take full credit for it, without dealing even a single point of damage to them! That’s either incredibly lucky, incredibly manipulative or an error in the system! I bet you were at the back of the line against some kind of kamikaze boss, am I right?

Reward: You’ve got a Golden Parasite Box!

Special condition: Doubling reward! You got another Golden Parasite Box!

Darryl looked at the slew of achievements pass and only absorbed half of it. It all felt so unreal. The woolf, for all that it had been a terrifying monster, had still felt like just a savage beast that attacked him. Just a minute of stress and poor technique in hindsight.

But this… This was a sentient creature, trying to kill him with unfathomable power and an odd mockery of civilisation about her. It was so unreal, and it forced Darryl to realise just how unreal this whole situation was.

The dungeon. The monsters. The strange AI in his head. The billions of people that died. It was so unreal before. So much like a very realistic dream that it hadn’t really sunken in before.

This was real.

This was all real. It was real, and Darryl had no choice but to be tossed headfirst and blind into this madness. He had to survive in this… This insanity.

Darryl curled up into a fetal position as tears welled up in his eyes. In a dark corner underneath a dead gecko’s cubicle, he cried and wished that he would wake up and it would all go away.