Ben: no one at boss room

Dave: Right. No confirmation of the target’s location, then.

Ben: acknowledge that. target is in the wind.

Ben chuckled a bit. Roleplaying the pig latin military talk was lame and cringy, but he couldn’t deny it was a bit fun either. He wasn’t sure if Dave took it seriously and took offense to him joking about it, but he didn’t really care.

Dave: Continue monitoring situation.

Ben: requesting reinforcements to take on boss and reveal area

Dave: Denied, no additional personnel available.

Ben sighed. For the millionth time he wondered whether he should just take on the boss alone. They weren’t that much stronger than before while he got more powerful, so it should be doable. But he remembered how that low level felake hadn’t been a push-over for their team and even completely negated most of his attacks with its stone shell.

If he could open the door and observe the boss from a safe distance, he would’ve done it. He could’ve gotten his buffs up and running, planned ahead and retreated if the creature was an ill fit for his build to take on.

The second floor enabling bosses to leave the boss room ruined that plan, unfortunately. Good thing Ben learned about that before trying it.

It was a real risk vs reward issue. One that he would’ve taken, if only to feel like he wasn’t doing absolutely nothing.

He felt that he could take on a neighbourhood boss by himself. He knew he could, depending on what they were about. Plus, he had three others trailing him that could help, and while they were weaker so was this floor meant to be easy for beginners. But he wasn’t going to gamble with the lives of others for his own gain.

The gains though… It would reveal the area and tell them right away if Martin was here. It would give Ben some more loot and experience. It would cause the slow decline of his followers to stop. And the Bronze Boss Boxes would aid the galls trailing him, make them a bit more useful.

He didn’t mind having them along. In fact, he liked having people look up to him. Figuratively, that was. He knew he wasn’t the least of his group, far from it, but it felt nice to be the big hitter. To be the one that others were relying on.

The others in his group were pretty basic. His group contained everyone with enhanced Dexterity of 7 or higher willing to join, and improved Dex was often all they had going. Specifically people with enhanced dexterity, as apparently people with a base stat of 7 couldn’t run as fast as someone with 6+1 Dex. It had to be improved before the dungeon’s superhuman features would start kicking in, it seemed, though they barely qualified as superhuman yet.

Ben was the highest with 6+4 Dex, and the only one who could catch up to Martin when the old man was running. They estimated his speed to be around 8 or 9, which two of his new companions had. So they could keep up at least, even if they couldn’t pull ahead.

Sandy and Mandy were both in their late twenties, a bit too old for his tastes. Occasionally he would still ogl- appreciate their mature curves, but he wasn’t really interested beyond the occasional glance.

Sandra did some jogging in her free time and thus entered the dungeon with her Steady Tactical Retreat skill at third level, which combined with her Harpy Nail allowed her to almost keep up with Ben at Dex 8. The Harpy Nail was a single talon-shaped piece of metal with three small plates following the shape of one’s finger, allowing you to put it on your index finger and secure it with straps around the wrist and thumb.

It was quite literally just a spike that you had to poke enemies with, and Sandra already confided to the group that it wasn’t a very comfortable or useful weapon. But it boosted her dexterity and she had a crossbow she used for combat.

Mandy was the slowest of the group, but the best in combat after Ben. She had a ring of +2 Dex around her finger bringing her to 7, but she relied mostly on her flaming longsword and half-plate in combat. The flames looked cool but were a curse in disguise. They seared the creature’s veins shut preventing bleeding, had to be in one’s inventory to not give away their location in the darkness, blinded them to everything beyond the sword’s narrow but intense radius of light, and the sword would burn the wielder just as eagerly if any part but the handle or guard touched them.

And finally there was Phil. He had a spear that buffed his Dex some.

That was literally all Ben could say about the man. He wasn’t quiet or reclusive. He was just… The name and a spear, everything else was just trying to add more to someone to whom you couldn’t really attribute anything else.

“Alright, we’re to continue scouting and monitoring the situation.” Ben said, spite and annoyance clear in his tone. He wasn’t that upset about Dave’s words, but he had to play it up for the fans.

“Again?” Mandy said. “How about we kill the boss? That way we reliably scout this entire region!”

“Already asked. There aren’t any reinforcements at hand to help us.” Ben said.

“So? I’ve seen people less powerful than our group defeat neighbourhood bosses.” Mandy retorted. “I agreed to help chase this guy, not to do absolutely nothing with my time here. Or let others get those bronze boss rewards while we twiddle our thumbs.”

Sandra seemed more reserved towards the situation, but after a moment nodded in consent. While Mandy was a bit more Elise about things, Sandy was the kind of person that went along with others but worked hard once the decision was made, so that was no surprise.

“Well, uhm…” Ben said, shrinking a bit when he felt the rest of the group turn their attention to him.

He knew that he was their unofficial leader by levels and ironically seniority, but he was really uncomfortable about making final calls like these. Thomas usually filled that role, Elise wouldn’t hesitate to challenge his call or usurp the role and Darryl had this silent expert mode going on that when he gave his opinion everyone listened.

Ben meanwhile had been the one that just went with the flow and supported the ideas of others. He could support something loudly, but he felt really uncomfortable pitching plans of his own and convincing others to follow them. Taking risks for himself only, sure. But dictate the actions of others? Especially in a place where there were severe consequences to a bad call? No thanks.

But here he was the arbiter, the one that had to agree before the plan was accepted. Much as his surface self from two weeks ago would’ve liked this kind of power, now it was the part of group dynamic that he could do without.

“I wasn’t going to order you guys to risk your lives, but if you want to do this yourselves…” Ben said. “I wouldn’t underestimate these Neighbourhood Bosses, especially if it’s a bad match for us this can get really dangerous. Just the last floor there was a stone-covered boss that my attacks were almost useless against, so don’t expect that I can solo anything they throw at us easily.”

“That’s a good point. Maybe we should be more careful?” Sandra said softly.

“They’re butterflies. The most annoying thing about these dodgy critters is that they’re so damned hard to hit at all, we won’t have that issue with a bigger version of them.” Mandy said.

“The stone-covered boss belonged to a neighbourhood filled with tiny hairballs anyone could kill in one hit.” Ben said. “No telling what boss we’ll be dealing with here.”

Mandy thought it over. She was the only one around here with a gamer mentality aside from Ben, apparently Candy Crush counted to get into the mindset of grinding resources and levels, but even the most experienced gamer would be disillusioned by this dungeon. The tutorial was still very deadly and not necessarily fair, so many who thought this place followed game mechanics would end up dead expecting fair odds and subconsciously the option to respawn or reload if things got too tough.

“I say we do it. I got a really good reward the first time around.” Mandy said as Ben expected, tapping her half-plate.

“What I got was pretty good, before the Boss Slayerz took it from me.” Sandy said. “Did you hear anything about whether we might get it back now that those guys died?”

Ben didn’t answer that. The French must’ve looted everything from those guys’ remains after killing the Boil Boss and kept it for themselves, but he wasn’t sure if they knew the situation around those items. And honestly he wasn’t sure if they would just give back items when one couldn’t even prove it was really theirs.

And he wasn’t going to be the one to ask Mr. Geruet to give them back, no way.

“If we’re all in agreement, then let’s do it.” Ben said. “The boss can leave the Boss room into the second room now, so we have to lure all of those butterflies out before we do anything else. I bet that suddenly having to fight twenty regular mobs and a boss at the same time is the most dangerous part of the boss coming out.”

“On it!” Sandra said, moving to the large group of peacefully fluttering murder insects.

What followed was more annoying than dangerous. These Black Widow Butterflies looked like black and green-winged butterflies at a distance, but were actually spiders with large wings. They flew slowly and predictably, and their wings made them easy to spot and follow.

Their tactic was that they would slowly and daintily land on their victim, and then suddenly bite them. No one knew how potent their venom was, there hadn’t been any volunteers to test it, but everyone assumed that a single bite would be lethal. And as long as you didn’t let yourself get surrounded by them, it was child’s play to keep them off of you.

The biggest issue was their wind pressure movements. While they fluttered slowly, when someone struck at them the winged spiders would follow the wind current made by the strike to flutter out of the way instead of getting hit. Either that or they could move small distances quick and sudden.

No issue for a larger area of attack, Elise’s bat or a regular frying pan would’ve struck these things with ease. But his team had almost exclusively thin pointy weapons, and lacked the weapon skills to accurately hit a small insect out of the air.

Only Mandy was a good match for them, missing didn’t matter if the butterflies burned after a near hit. Ben awkwardly swatted at them with the flat side of his Rendering Knife as back-up, while the others stayed back.

After that… less than impressive display of killing about thirty lvl2 creatures, they warily entered the pre-boss room. Ben slinked into the shadows and carefully sneaked to the door.

Inside was a massive cocoon surrounded by black butterflies. A prime target for Thomas’s flaming fingers, had he been here. And his skeleton could’ve probably killed these things without taking a single point of damage, being immune to poison as the undead tend to be.

But Thomas wasn’t here. This didn’t seem to be one of those room leaving bosses, in fact it seemed to be immobile, but it was churning and bubbling from the inside. A timer, perhaps? Waiting and looking at it might be a very bad idea if this cocoon just began a countdown to hatch into the real boss.

Without taking his eyes off the large cocoon, Ben gestured the others to come closer.

Ben: we go in. Mandy, butterflies.

Behind him Mandy sighed and grumbled but didn’t object. She was still the only one really able to deal with the small critters, even if she wanted to fight the big one now. The others said nothing at all, and Ben went ahead as they entered the boss room.

Boss battle!

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

The world froze and Ben saw his mugshot appear first, followed by Mandy and Sandy as a tag team and another icon only half on the screen. Strange, he didn’t remember there being an option to scroll down before. On the other side was some hideous insect face.

Black-winged Matriarch Larva!

Level 6 Neighbourhood Boss!

The Black-winged Widows have no direct relation to the black-winged matriarchs aside from a shared ancestor about two million years ago, even if they may seem very alike. The former is considered an annoying pest killing cattle, but their stings are too short to penetrate the Mantis-kin’s skin so they haven’t been mercilessly eradicated! They are often swarming around hatching matriarchs because these larger bugs exude massive amounts of what the widows use as a mating hormone, presenting offerings of food that the matriarchs ignore and don’t need. If they can digest it at all.

The matriarchs are a much more beloved and cared for species, as their wings and silk make them luxury cattle. The cattle variant is often domesticated and weak, eating only a few slow farmhands and the occasional rat, but this is no domesticated bitch! We’re talking a bona fide savage matriarch, the kind that kills for pleasure and will bloom into an aerial predator that swoops down on elephyrs and behemoth beetles without hesitation! It’s almost in the larva stage right now, the stage where the winged birth-form cocooned into a caterpillar-like form to ravenously hunt to grow fat and bury underground to hibernate during the planet’s two-year winter!

Look out for their sting, if it hits you’d wish it were just poison.

The world unfroze and the small swarm of the black-winged widows sitting on the cocoon rose into the air. Ben quickly shot forward, not giving them time to disperse.

The creatures didn’t scream or whine, they were too small to make any meaningful sound, but the sizzling of the boiling hot fat covering them made it seem as if they were screaming. Ben ignored it and jumped backwards after dropping the bucket of fries still in boiling oil over the cocoon.

He quickly equipped his Rendering Knife and looked around for more of the butterflies. Mandy was already swinging around at a few while Sandy prepared her crossbow to take pot shots at the stationary foe.

Ben swatted at a few butterflies that came close while trying to stay near the cocoon. He had to observe it for a minute, but staying within 10m also counted.

Apparently time stopping didn’t stop the countdown, because he saw the timer regress as the AI was narrating the boss’s description. As such he only had to wait for another five seconds or so. A useful thing to know, as it greatly improved the practicality of fighting bosses for him.

Not that he’d need it this time, it seemed. The health bar above the cocoon was rapidly decreasing by itself, jumped down a few times when Sandra shot into it and a spear was regularly making sloshing sounds as it went in and out of the sac.

“Alright, that was the last of the butterflies. Good thinking killing most of them with that bucket of yours.” Mandy said, running towards the cocoon and gleefully stabbing her flaming sword into it.

The health bar plummeted to zero and the cocoon tore open. An ugly face peered out, and a second later the monstrous centipede-looking caterpillar with dozens of spider legs crawled out. It seemed like the spear and sword did something at least, as it was at about 80% health instead of full.

“Aw fu-” Mandy said, jumping away from the horror creature with a pale face.

Ben stabbed his knife into the critter’s head and its health bar depleted immediately.

Winner!

The world unfroze after showing their mugshots and a quick overview of their respective contributions.

“Huh.” Ben said.

“Is that normal?” Mandy said.

“Maybe, I do have some ridiculous buffs and an assassinate skill that doubles my attack if I observed the creature for a minute. I guess that watching the cocoon counted?” Ben said.

“And you were wondering if you could handle it.” Mandy laughed. “Well, nice! Let’s go open our loot!”

Ben didn’t answer her. He took the Neighbourhood Map and looked at the newly revealed area.

“Guys…” He said. “Martin is in this Neighbourhood. And it seems like he’s not alone.”

Ben quickly opened his chat and typed in a message. This was big. This was bad. The others had to know this, fast!