Countdown until level collapse: 3 days 0 hours 52 minutes.

“If I’d have to guess, and mind you I never had much experience with this…” Volos said, one of his fish eyes hovering over the crater. “A month. Maybe three weeks.”

“Three weeks before his arm is all fixed up!?” Ben said, exasperated. “In the real world, sure. But we only have five days in total for this whole floor, and the next floors only slowly increase their duration. Three weeks is like… ten floors!”

“Third floor, actually. Each floor will grant you more time than the last, remember?" Volos said, not tearing his gaze from Darryl's wounds. "Maybe the fourth if Borant decides to use the minimal time allotted, but not the second considering the duration of the first floor.”

“Well, that’s better, I suppose. But still. If Darryl’s arm is all but useless until then, his odds of surviving that long are rather slim.” Ben sulked.

“It’s not too bad. If it heals well, you won’t need to select your race based on resolving this handicap. And if it doesn’t work out, then we can resolve this issue upon entering the third floor anyway.” Volos said. “And Darryl fortunately got himself some levels as well as a build able to deal with this blow before it happened. The second floor is going to be rough, but not impossible.”

Volos retreated from Darryl’s personal space and Ben took his place to carefully scrape off bits of Darryl’s flesh with his dagger. The backstabbing properties made it cut into teammates three times easier, but with his high constitution Darryl’s flesh was still a bit hardy under the knife.

“The wound would’ve been a lot easier and quicker healed if you pressed the two parts together before healing it, though that’s always easily said in hindsight.” Volos said. “But wounds like these aren’t uncommon in the world dungeon. Sometimes wounds that cannot be closed due to distance or weight just heal over the open gash to stop the bleeding and consequent dying, making a quick healing spell or item very debilitating in the long run. Unless you’re dead without it, don’t use healing skills while you have these wounds.”

“I’m sorry. You still had enough health left for us to pull that dead krutnik off before healing you, but I just-” Thomas said.

“Don’t say it. I was wounded and you didn’t hesitate to jump into the fray and heal me once you could. You did nothing wrong, and you couldn’t have known about this.” Darryl said. “Let’s just do as Volos says and scrape off the skin so that the wound can slowly close bit by bit.”

It logically shouldn’t work like that, but Volos assured that the AI would resolve things like severed nerves reattaching. While most of Darryl’s arm was completely numb, it wouldn’t stay like that once the wound closed.

Ben got back up, and Darryl ignored the small trickle of blood running down his arm. They had improvised a sling using the XXL lingerie and a roll of toilet paper for padding, tying the arm tightly to his chest and mildly pressing it against his new breastplate.

The Naiad breastplate of the Steadfast Hero, successfully pickpocketed and thus spared its fate of disintegration, was another addition to being an unmovable tank. It increased Darryl’s Con by 3, improved his Stalwart skill from 3 to 8 and gave him favourable diplomacy towards Fairy type creatures at the expense of greater hostility towards goblinoids.

Darryl suggested someone else would wear it, spreading out their Con buffs a bit, but the others wouldn’t hear of it. It was his item, his to wear. So now he was unfashionably wearing it over his sweater while his jacket was probably never going to come out of his inventory again.

With his Stalwart going over lvl5, Darryl now had the trait of Shock Breaking. Blocked charge and unarmed attacks would return 10% of their damage to the attacker, on top of any damage they already took from striking an unmoving object. The way that Stalwart worked against the krutnik before, now it would be like running headfirst into a spiked stone wall.

They’d also gotten some Fog Cloud scrolls and Smoke Bombs before, the latter of which they decided to spread around the group instead of Darryl not having any if he ever found himself separated from the rest again. The scrolls remained with Thomas, they’d last a lot longer if he cast them.

Ben gained a silver box for his first crawler kill, granting him the Gloomy Stalker’s Goggles. It was one of those superhero masks that barely covered the cheekbones, but pitch black and Ben’s eyewhites turned a dark grey when he wore it. It granted him darkvision, as well as two damage multipliers that he could apply to one target if he focussed his attention to them for a full minute.

The idea behind the mechanic was simple. If he was properly stealthy, he could study his target without them noticing him. The item only worked for one target at a time, but granted a Hunter’s Mark that buffed his attacks by 25% for as long as the target remained in Ben’s sight or within 10m, and the Assassinate skill would double his damage one time assuming the target was oblivious to his presence for his first attack.

Though Volos assured them this stacking of all kinds of buffs onto one another was normal for rogues, it still seemed like a lot. They got conditional but very potent buffs on otherwise unremarkable base attacks to encourage stealth and ambush kills, making Ben’s initial attack devastating if it hit. He got a doubling from both his dagger and Assassinate, 25% from Hunter’s Mark, his natural Ambush skill gave an additional +15% on surprise attacks, his natural backstabbing skill added +10% unrelated to his dagger’s buff, and he had a natural 1% chance of crit damage that would once again double his damage.

As critical hits weren’t adding but stacking, that put his optimal damage output at 350% without or 700% damage with a crit. The actual number lay somewhere around 390 and 780% due to a slew of other lower level skills Ben gained, which would only get stronger over time. And that was without considering his base damage increasing. Assassins were designed to kill in one shot, or die horribly when failing.

“Alright, so just keep scratching the scabs off.” Darryl said. “Thanks for the advice, Volos. We’ve got to get going, the Woolf is getting awfully close.”

“Right. See ya!” Volos said, waving them out.

The woolf wasn’t actually that close. But the dungeon was so big and the ‘mini’-map so expansive that half a kilometre felt close, and in a few hundred metres it would be a straight line between them and it. It probably couldn't spot them from that distance, but it was still an uncomfortable thought.

The party went the opposite direction, moving towards the French’s Safe Room. They hadn’t seen Mr. Geruet and Raphael return to it yet, the French having retreated to the grounds revealed to them first and thus taking a wide detour.

Darryl didn’t worry about them beating the French to their destination, these Neighbourhoods were about three kilometres wide so the detour dwarfed the head start that the French had on them. His own party didn’t move as fast considering his condition, but they should still beat them there handily.

They ran into a few more mobs, mostly rats and mostly diminishing returns. None of them had levelled, but they were already fairly high level so the rats started to yield negligible rewards.

Ben was getting really close to lvl7, though. He also managed to kill one of the squid things by using it as a club. Clubbing them to death was easier said than done, their gravity-defying powers apparently didn’t care too much for centrifugal forces either, but after tying some junk to their head which lacked said anti-gravity they didn’t act as if you were swinging around a balloon.

The effort required didn’t allow them to bludgeon more than one squid at the same time, not without the squids dealing too much psychic damage during the binding at least, so they had to kill all the squids but one and beat one of the remnant woolf mutts to death with the last one. They didn’t see any more squids around afterwards for Darryl and Thomas to replicate the achievement.

Arriving at the rundown tavern safe room Ben got himself another blade, because the AI apparently wasn’t going to stop giving him those until he was dual-wielding. This one was better than the crappy short sword and not as useful in someone else’s hands as the poisonous dagger, so Ben obliged and switched his backstabbing dagger to his left hand.

In his right he now had the Renderer Knife, which was as much a knife as Darryl’s forearms were a shield. In practice kind of correct, but the thing looked more like a jagged kopesh. It boosted both his Piercing and Slashing by +4 and gave a rendering effect of dealing an additional +20% Slashing and Bleeding damage on top of either. It was rather bulky, but definitely worth equipping and only increasing his sneak attack to ridiculous heights.

They were not going to scratch off Darryl’s skin with that blade, for obvious reasons. The thing looked like it might lop his whole arm off if Ben sneezed.

Gunther noticed their arrival soon enough and joined them, still unable to make himself understood but appearing relieved nonetheless. Jean was the polar opposite, no doubt already gotten word of what happened from the other two. He glared at Ben with unmasked anger.

“And now we wait.” Darryl said. He sat down to get some rest, while the other two escorted Gunther out. The rats were no longer worth the effort for them, but the German father could still grind the critters while they kept an eye on Jean.

Jean never even bothered to oppose them. He just eyed Darryl from across the room and no doubt PM’d everything that he saw, but that was it. The other two hadn’t entered the neighborhood yet, and the Big Bad Woolf was still quite far away.

The plan now was simple and straightforward. They had the location and the map, while the others were split and effectively outnumbered. Ben could track and ambush them easily in this Neighborhood, and at this point he could probably kill Mr. Geruet twice over if he got a surprise attack. No telling how tough Raphael was, but he couldn’t be that much more powerful and they saw what was probably his best trick before.

Jean was pretty much out of the fight. He was still level 4 and all alone on this side. If it came to a pitched battle, he’d be fodder rather than a serious flanking threat. Assuming him to not hold intense bonds with the others worth sacrificing himself for, self-preservation would keep him from leaving the Safe Room.

So as long as the other two didn’t wait long enough that the Big Bad Woolf forced them to move, and they shouldn’t as they didn’t know of its existence yet, the plan was a simple but effective means of intercept and conquer.

Darryl followed the others on the map and saw them take out a group of rats. There was literally no end to those buggers, it seemed, so they didn’t have to travel far. It took half an hour and four groups of rats, but eventually Gunther shot up a level.

“You- think fair?” Jean suddenly said, drawing Darryl’s attention back to the Safe Room. His accent was extremely thick. Where Mr. Geruet was barely comprehensible, Darryl needed a moment to realize that Jean even spoke something that was supposed to be English at all.

Darryl turned to the Frenchman dressed up for a LARP convention, not saying anything but conveying the message to elaborate by slowly raising his eyebrow.

“You think- kill for…” Jean made a hand gesture whose meaning Darryl didn’t know. “You think is human? You- You!”

The Frenchman didn’t know what to say, by language barrier rather than emotion, but he radiated more anger than the frustration of it should cause. He said a lot in French, most of which Darryl couldn’t even remotely place, and tossed his hands around in a feeble attempt to convey his words as if conducting an orchestra.

“You see yourselves as the victims?” Darryl said.

Jean didn’t understand him, nor did he react. He didn’t have to. Darryl had noticed something off about his exchange with the others too, something he couldn’t just ignore any more.

Darryl: Guys, I think we’ve made a mistake.