After Darryl explained his daring escape plan and they hashed out the details, the party didn’t move. Ben continued to try and fail to pickpocket Darryl’s breastplate, and unfortunately the odds of success didn’t change as the skill wouldn’t level inside a safe room.

But, as the Dungeon World Earth was about to premiere in 20 minutes and they were unlikely to find a different safe zone in time, they’d opted to stay and see it before putting their plan into action.

The show itself was… weird. The four of them watched it on Volos’s little tv screen with the Big Bad Woolf occasionally making a granny-themed disapproving remark about the sex and violence they showed, and the show ended with not a single frame of their group.

As the show ended, the same female voice from before appeared in their heads.

Good job everyone so far. We had 15 Borough bosses taken out and over 1,500 Neighbourhood bosses killed. A pair of crawlers even came across a City boss, but that ended as you may expect. Losses are right on the projected track.

Darryl grit his teeth at that. Over eight million people had died after the mass genocide on the surface, and they had the gall to refer to those victims as ‘projected losses’?

You’ll be getting these announcements after each episode. A couple quick patch notes. The Fire Fingers spell should be safe to cast now. We’ve fixed the hallway bathroom bug. So if you open the door, and someone else enters, they will no longer explode. Sorry about that. Reminder, however, hallway bathrooms are personal spaces, and they cannot be shared. We also finished the unlimited toilet paper bug. Now you’re only getting one roll per floor, so if you waste it, you’re on your own. We have a long list of fixes with the new inventory system that we’re working on. For right now, the two big ones we’ve already patched is that you can no longer transport mobs to your inventory in order to kill them. Also, any momentum an item might have while it entered inventory will no longer be preserved. It’s now safe to extract items you put in your inventory while moving at a high rate of speed.

Remember, this inventory system is a privilege, and it’s not meant to be used as a weapon. While we love and admire your creativity, any unintentional exploits will be patched, so if you find something that has an unintended feature, don’t get too comfortable using it.

“Aw man.” Ben grumbled as the announcement moved on about stuff regarding views and the next floor. “Guess I should’ve figured, but they patched some of the best exploits already?”

“Probably wouldn’t stay that useful anyway. We can lift only a few small enemies, and even fewer without them dealing more damage to you the intended way.” Thomas shrugged. “I’m more relieved that they patched the Fire Fingers spell, I have that one and I don’t want to know what would’ve happened had I used it.”

“Not that one, or even the inventory momentum.” Ben said. “I thought we could kill our big friend here using the bathroom bug.”

“I knew of that bug, crawler. Wouldn’t have fallen for it.” The woolf tutted Ben in a gravelly voice.

“Well, at least I took about eighty rolls of toilet paper before they fixed that one.” Ben sulked. “Might become very valuable on the later floors.”

Thomas J. Bennet tried to pickpocket you and failed!

“Doubt it. Crawlers can buy a wide variety of items using gold after reaching the third floor, buying more toilet paper will probably just be a pittance compared to the rest.” Volos said.

“A pittance we won’t have to spend, thanks to Ben.” Darryl said. “Well done.”

Ben just shrugged, continuing to trade back all of Darryl’s stuff while Thomas handed him back his helmet. His latest pickpocket attempt would be the last one for the time being.

“Oh, and we Tutorial guides get some info on the latest fixes. The Flame Fingers spell had the issue of overheating your hands.” Volos said, browsing through some to them invisible screens. “They added fire resistance to the fingers themselves, but not the hand still in range of the flames’ scorching radius. Enough heat to cause first degree burns after about six seconds, even with the initial lvl1 spell power. But those would heal in no time, and people got a complimentary silver box with fire-resistant fingerless gloves for their troubles.”

“Too bad, but no point crying over spilled milk.” Thomas shrugged.

“I just have one more question, Volos.” Darryl said. “How good are you at dodging?”

“Why?” Volos asked warily. “Be aware that attacking a non-combatant will have consequences, whether you hit or not.”

“Not us. If our big bad friend here tries to strike at you, can you dodge them to not even take any damage at all?” Darryl asked.

“Easily, why do you ask?” Volos said.

“Then please dodge them for a bit, okay?” Darryl said as his spear appeared in his hand. The next moment the three of them struck at the Big Bad Woolf almost simultaneously.

Darryl didn’t see whether the other two landed their hits or hear what Volos or the Borough Boss said as he struck. The moment his spear touched the woolf’s skin, he found himself in darkness poking air.

He took out one of his torches, whose interface was visible even in the dark. Darryl selected the Y and light filled the cavern. He hadn’t actually noticed the absolute darkness before thanks to the seamless transition between being able to see in the dark and having someone with the torch spell.

But Volos explained during the tutorial talk that crawlers were granted high darkvision until they took the tutorial. The percentage of people surviving to find a tutorial guild would’ve been way, way too low otherwise. The World Dungeon occasionally skipped doing that when the world’s inhabitants had a habit of carrying light sources around in their daily life, but fortunately Borant decided that smartphones wouldn’t do the job.

The minimap changed that, of course. Darryl had been chased by the Big Bad Woolf in complete darkness, relying purely on the minimap and the knowledge that the floor of these mine-style hallways was completely smooth and not littered.

Darryl looked around, and more importantly looked at the minimap. He already saw Ben’s blue dot on the far end of his minimap, as well as a couple of mobs he could easily avoid thanks to the neighbourhood map stripping away the fog of war.

Making his way over to his friend and zooming out to see if he could spot his other friend on the minimap, Darryl hoped that his plan would work. Teleportation would leave no scent trail, so it should keep the woolf from finding them for a while. Hopefully. He also hoped that mobs including the woolf being unable to open doors meant that they couldn’t leave the guild either while the door was closed. If Volos kept dodging it, the woolf should be trapped in the guild for a while.

Meaning that Darryl only had to meet up with the other two and start planning for a way to kill or escape the woolf. Worst case scenario, they’d have to leave the borough and find a new stairway.

But that probably wouldn’t be necessary. The Borough Boss shouldn’t be omniscient about their presence and the breakneck speed they ran at before should only apply when spotted. They should be able to sneak back into the borough without detection when the time came, if they hadn’t found another stairway before then.

According to Volos the hunter elites always followed adventurers at a walking pace, only catching up if they lingered or found themselves cornered. And on the later floors before which the hunters shouldn’t appear, investing your attribute points would apparently allow Darryl to casually jog as fast as he had cycled before. But right now, they couldn’t possibly outrun the woolf yet. These hunters weren’t meant to spawn on the first floor, even on a mechanical level.

In the end it all came down to one simple plan: Don’t run into the damned tranny granny.

And like all plans both simple and convoluted, complications arose to screw things up.

Darryl saw three blue dots appear and slowly creep towards Ben’s location. Mr. Geruet, Raphael and Louis, and only Louis was a level below Ben. Geruet had levelled up to lvl6 since they last saw him, putting him and Raphael on par with Ben who levelled twice thanks to some grinding and them beating the neighbourhood boss.

Repressing a curse, Darryl started to jog. He had planned to take a few more corners to avoid a group of mobs, but now he would have to rush past and dodge. He unequipped his shield to not haul the slab of metal while running, and put it in a quick slot to minimise the time pulling it out again.

Ben apparently hadn’t seen the Frenchmen, instead slowly pacing away from a few sheep that were slowly giving chase. He had never been one to juggle a larger than minimum minimap with doing anything else.

Darryl cursed himself for forgetting to join their party again before splitting up like this. He couldn’t PM Ben unless they were face to face now, and he didn’t know if Thomas was in range to warn Ben.

He ran the quarter mile between him and the mobs he’d have to kite past, cursing the massive size of this dungeon while doing so, and then sprinted past the krutnik. They were a weird kind of bug-like monstrosity the size of a pony, the kind you’d expect to see as the fodder units of the endless bio-plague from scifi rather than the more medieval theme the dungeon was going for.

Krutnik Gatherers, lvl4

A far, far ancestor of the marauder ant, the Krutnik are some of the most troublesome and aggressive insect-based plagues that still threaten many a civilised planet. They preferably live in rainforests where they fight with all kinds of hunter and behemoth species for dominance, but are also known to burrow small back-up colonies deep down which can sustain themselves for centuries before having to return. Just in case the main hive is wiped out for any reason, they nope that notion! When the Krutnik burrow out in a civilised area, and they always do if possible, thousands of people die and the city will be forced to evacuate before the military can even begin to push them back!

The Gatherers, though the most numerous, aren’t the back-bone of this city-destroying force of nature. They never wander regions that haven’t been cleared by the Reavers yet. But don’t let their job description fool you, the Krutnik are carnivores and rarely have cattle-farms large enough to sustain their population. As such, even their bottom of the rung Gatherers have evolved and trained to hunt while gathering of moss and plants!

They turned their large beady eyes towards Darryl and screeched, immediately giving chase. The closest one reacted even faster, launching itself in his general direction without bothering to turn towards him first. Darryl blocked its sharp hind leg with his forearm, feeling a shallow gash draw blood while the point of the bug-thing’s carapace broke off on his cufflink-fortified flesh.

He held out his hand above the krutnik and brought out the cabinet still covered in grey matter that no longer retained its momentum any more. It fell slowly, but still proved to be a heavy and clunky object you didn’t want dropped on you. The Krutnik snarled and tried to poke at Darryl as he ran away, but the cabinet combined with one of its legs hanging by the flesh kept it in place for now.

Darryl sprinted to get some distance between him and the other three, and took out his spear. He threw it and saw that two spears now appeared instead of the one. One missed while the other deflected off the smooth carapace of the creatures, but the real spear struck true and blue blood gushed out of the open wound as Darryl made the spear re-appear in his hand.

Turning tail to run away again, Darryl noticed that his gloves’ cooldown timer now said 26 seconds instead of the original 30. There was no telling which stat caused it, his helmet increased all of them after all, but that was worth looking into later.

As the crippled Krutnik resigned itself to failure and began licking off the brain matter on the cabinet, Darryl kept running away from the other three down the long corridor. Twice more did he turn around and throw his spear, all spears but one missing and even that one scoring but a shallow wound. The wounded Krutnik had fallen behind though, meaning he might be able to finish them off one by one if he could wound another.

Darryl scrolled through his items, seeing if there was something other than his spear that could come in handy here. The whacking stick was inferior to the spear, and he didn’t have anything in particular that wou-

Darryl jumped to the side as a streak of light shot past him. It hadn’t been aimed at him, buzzing past and striking one of the Krutnik instead. It didn’t seem to take much damage, but it was blasted back and the light clung on to the insect like a net.

His shield appearing in his left hand and quickly equipped, Darryl turned around and struck at the other Krutnik. He scored a gash that took out one of its eyes and it dodged back when he struck again. A creepily long tongue hung out tasting the air as it started to hop on its feet, and with surprising agility it tried to flank Darryl’s unshielded right before he could block its advance with his spear.

He kicked it instead, the Krutnik’s health bar going from yellow just barely into the red as his Spartan sandals sent it flying into the wall. Before it could regain its footing, Darryl stabbed it and its health bar emptied.

Darryl turned around shield raised to meet the shiny Krutnik, and saw a thin copper string attached to its head. Before he could follow it back to its origins, he heard a loud whirling as the insect braced itself to not be pulled in. It didn’t matter, Raphael hadn’t braced himself and his belt pulled him towards the Krutnik as if he’d made an impossibly long jump. The next moment his battleaxe eviscerated the creature and left a deep gash in the dungeon floor itself.

Darryl turned to the wounded Krutnik catching up and threw his spear, which found its target and killed it before disappearing back to his hand again.

Shield still raised, he turned to the French crawlers who had apparently decided to intercept him instead of Ben.