“So, what now?” Ben asked.

“I think it’s past due that we’re going to do something about Martin.” Darryl said.

“Yeah! Let’s go kick his ass!” Alexa cheered.

The little girl's mood had proven dauntless, Alexa still being chipper even after they rescued her from her claustrophobic prison after an anticlimactically easy rescue mission. They found three vespa camping at her location, which had been easily dispatched of.

Where Alexa was happy, the rest of the group wasn’t as cheerful as her. They knew that dealing with Martin would involve crawler deaths with almost all outcomes. Skulls to their name, if not losses sustained, were inevitable now that Martin’s faction had swelled in size.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit too dangerous considering the last rage elemental?” Elise asked.

“It sped off into a completely different direction, I doubt that we’ll be seeing it if we stick to the north.” Carter said.

“Yeah, but it can run a lot faster than me. If it appears and we’re nowhere near a Safe Zone or Tutorial Guild, we’re done for.” Ben said. “This thing isn’t even like the Woolf, where we technically stand a chance with good gear and grinding. It’s just a death sentence.”

“That guy without pants from the recap seemed to deal significant damage to it, even if he failed to kill it entirely.” Carter said.

“True. He built stronger explosives to toss at the thing, though, and regular explosives are apparently already a broken overkill for the first few floors. If you’ve got the means to use them without blowing yourself up, it can one-shot all mobs and half the bosses.” Thomas said. “Plus, he had that motorcycle, granting him the means to outrun the rage elemental at least for a while.”

“Yeah, and a talking kitty!” Alexa contributed.

“A talking kitty indeed.” Thomas said. “Meanwhile, we’ve got neither the speed to survive nor the power to take it down. And we saw on the recap that these things regenerate, so the rage elemental is probably back to pristine condition by now.”

“Yeah, I wonder how that guy even managed to get a hold of that much dynamite.” Carter said. “I’ve heard that one of the other groups ran into a bunch of kobolds on the first floor wielding the stuff. Some of the mobs always carried some on their body, and the stuff is hella instable.”

“The act of falling down is apparently enough to make the stuff go boom, and it blows up the mob thoroughly enough that it doesn’t leave an inventory to loot. And thus no explosives.” Carter continued. “Either the mobs have no explosives, or they blow themselves up. It’s very hard to actually get a hold of the stuff, unless you’re lucky. And in close-combat, attacking them is pretty much suicide.”

“But a small group tried attacking the kobold camp anyway. Fought a bunch of woefully ineffective kobolds wielding sticks, easy pray. But the moment the mutts realised they were losing, one of them threw a bomb. Whole pre-boss room was pretty much a powder keg, so you can guess how that turned out.” Carter said. “Those explosive mobs might give great loot, but it will be nigh impossible to get unless you’ve got some means to get all of them out of the room or prevent the use of explosives.”

“Meaning it’s a diplomacy-only resource, most likely.” Darryl said. “I wonder what this guy had to trade for this much explosives.”

“Who knows?” Elise shrugged. “I don’t suppose we have some alternatives to killing this thing?”

“I wish. A rough estimate of the experience gains for higher mobs based upon what we’ve seen, assuming the growth projection is consistent, would make everyone here immediately jump to level 22-23 if we split the experience perfectly.” Thomas said. “Except me. With this tattoo that exponentially increases my experience from more powerful mobs, I’d jump straight to level 28.”

“We might be able to injure it, even if it’s just a little bit, and then have two rage elementals fight each other until one dies. We’d only get a fragment of the gains, but it would be a lot nonetheless.” Elise said. “Or be able to take down one badly wounded rage elemental, and remove this issue entirely.”

“No one stands a chance to escape in time when they piss their pants.” Ben said. “Others can run, but summoning a rage elemental is equal to sacrificing yourself.”

“Yeah. And no one’s going to be doing that. Hell, no one here is sick enough to ask someone to do that.” Elise said. “So I guess we just need to pray to our new AI overlord that the rage elemental isn’t going to turn around. Pretty please don’t kill us?”

Elise glanced up and batted her eyelashes in a mockery of a doe-eyed girl, only for her to flinch halfway and seem shocked before a grumpy annoyance took over.

A bronze box appeared before her and opened, giving everyone a brief glance of what looked to be some kind of shiny marble before it flew into her inventory.

“Well fuck, the AI actually listens when you make jokes like that. Loot seems useless, and the achievement strongly suggests that it’s not going to do shit about the rage elemental’s whereabouts unless they want to spice things up a little.”

“So… Rage elemental aside, nothing we can do about it anyway, what about Martin?” Darryl brought things back on track.

“The camp is regrouping, slowly, while Martin and his goonies are prowling the surrounding area for lone stragglers.” Carter said. “He’s not bothering to use his eviction stickers on toilets, but people stuck in those are making a run for the camp only to be caught more often than not.”

“Fourteen crawlers have been caught, of which 9 have been killed already. The other five seem to be either prisoners or new members, probably the latter considering that joining is a lot more alluring when the only alternative is death.” Thomas said. “All in all, those numbers aren’t too bad considering the amount of people on the loose. We were lucky that the group never split up.”

“Everyone needs to be with Martin.” Darryl realised. “He’s the one with the tickets, and handing those out to people is pointless if they don’t have the specific person linked to the ticket. If he’s being paranoid or trying to keep control, he’s not giving people tickets before they catch the victim. They stick together in one big clump around him because they have to. They can’t fan out and kill more people without catching them, which is a lot more difficult and dangerous.”

“Meaning that their movement is limited to their slowest members!” Ben said. “Yeah, guess we don’t need to worry about Martin’s superspeed anymore!”

“Martin and the fast ones can always split off to give chase, but when we’re talking about their general movement and location you’re right.” Elise said.

“That’s all nice and good, but what about when we actually face them?” Carter asked. “Not to mention all the other issues we’re dealing with.”

“When we face Martin’s camp, I don’t think that we can reach a compromise.” Darryl gravely said.

“Yeah, guess not.” Elise said, turning just as grim. “Question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“What do you mean? We have to stop them, of course!” Carter said.

“But are we willing to kill them so that they cannot kill others? Are we willing to put skulls next to our name that will haunt us in the floors to come?” Elise countered. “If we attack them, then things will escalate. No two ways about it, we cannot expect to get into a brawl that only ends with bruises and a clean resolution. Even if we are willing to risk our lives, we have to ask ourselves the question if we’re willing to kill others? If we’re going to kill so that they cannot.”

“Yeah, shit. That’s a different problem by itself.” Ben said. “We can’t expect to get into a fight and not kill anyone, and I don’t think we can get into a stand-off that forces them to stay their hand. Not when waiting will just see more people dying to vespa and fairies that cost them tickets.”

“Maybe we should just leave and focus on clearing new neighbourhoods.” Thomas said.

Everyone turned to Thomas and threw him credulous looks.

“Shit. He might be right.” Elise said after a tense silence. “If no one finds a Staircase, we all die no matter what happens. And if we go in the opposite direction of the rage elemental, we minimise the odds of getting killed by bad luck.”

“It doesn’t sound right. But then again, killing people isn’t right either. Not even to protect others, not like this.” Ben said.

“But can we abandon these people, though?” Darryl asked. “Just leave and pretend nothing is going on?”

“I know. But it’s not that simple.” Ben said. “Killing someone is- It’s not as simple and clear-cut as you might think, and that skull stays.”

Darryl didn’t respond to that. It’s true, he noticed how a lot of people threw glances at Ben or were afraid to approach him. How one’s first impression was tainted by that skull.

And he understood the hesitation that the others had.

How Sandy and Mandy weren’t saying anything at all, like students trying to be as unnoticeable as possible when the teacher asked a question. How Carter’s initial determination wavered the moment that he noticed the group wasn’t on the same wavelength, that just putting steel in your spine and sprouting protagonist-y sentiments didn’t work. How even Alexa grew quiet and demure.

His friends weren’t much different. Ben seemed torn between what he knew was right and what he knew was real, disinclined to choose and defend either. Elise looked confident, but he assumed that this was her enhanced charisma subconsciously keeping her back straight and her eyes from glancing away. Thomas seemed the most level-headed, but Darryl could tell he was detaching himself from the conversation to only add the facts that people were forgetting.

No one seemed to be inclined to make a choice, or defend it strongly. People felt the desire to act how movies taught them to be in the face of danger and adversity, but no one was without doubts and everyone had that one voice that spoke against branding themselves as murderers.

And Darryl couldn’t say he was much different. He wanted to help these people. He felt like it was the right thing to do, something that they should do. But once you started wondering how to do it, he too hesitated. He too had both an angel and a devil on his shoulders, making good arguments.

“I think…” Darryl said.

Everyone turned to him. There was hope in their eyes, that he would make a decision so that they wouldn’t have to. And fear about what this choice would be, as both answers were with their fair share of undesirables.

And while he hated to admit it, Darryl felt the same way. He too was terrified of making a choice, of committing himself to either direction. While he hated himself for hesitating like this, he heard the words get past his lips.

“I think we need to wait and see with Martin. He’s a high priority, but there are too many variables. We should go to the camp and deal with the Clurichauns first, prevent everyone getting slaughtered.” Darryl said. “Once we’re there we can see what we can do about Martin, and what he does in response to our presence.”

There were approving murmurs all around, as he knew there would be. This might be a cop-out and they all knew it, but they neither committed themselves to the hard choice nor ran away from it.

“So, who’s going to stay here?” Thomas asked. “Someone is going to have to guide these lambs, try to get them fighting fit, and I don’t think any amongst them is quite ready for a leadership position yet.”

Darryl glanced at Sandy, Mandy and Carter. Right now their own party was direly needed to deal with, well, everything, so it had to be someone else. Alexa wasn’t a viable option, obviously, and neither was Phil.

Carter wanted to speak up, but Mandy beat him to it.

“Me and Sandy aren’t really suitable for fighting Martin, if speed is no longer important.” She said. “My sword is pretty great for these vespas but pretty gruesome to use on people, and my armour has some obvious blind spots that crawlers can use.”

“Yeah, and my weapon is pretty useless against either.” Sandy said, sourly looking at her finger needle. “I too rather face vespa by taking potshots with my crossbow.”

“Right. Then we’ll leave the lambs to you guys.” Thomas said. “While we go deal with the small army of midgets, magical fairies and murderous crawlers.”

Everyone got up and walked out of the Safe Zone while Sandy and Mandy began to rally the lambs, of which at least a few seemed disinclined to go back out again. Which made sense, these people needed a whole week before they got the courage to join a group with mentors. And then half of them got killed on the first excursion, which wasn’t even half-bad considering the circumstances.

“Uhm, Alexa? The Lambda group is that way.” Darryl said, noticing the tiny stowaway following them out of the Safe Zone.

“I know. I’m not going with them. I’m sticking with you guys.” Alexa said.

“It’s going to be very da-”

“Very dangerous. I know. It’s going to be dangerous wherever I go, so I figured I go to the guys that won’t try to kill me instead of fighting the bugs that most certainly will.” Alexa said.

“Well, I suppose you’re right. It might be less dangerous if you come with us…” Darryl conceded.

“Ah, I guess this is a bad time to suggest we swing around the Bax neighbourhood and clear their boss first?” Ben said. “I just realised that these vespa are killing baxes that will turn into massive vespa breeding grounds, while the neighbourhood boss will be pumping out a continuous stream of the bulls.”

“It can wait, it takes two days before the grubs turn into vespa and the vespa have only just appeared to start killing mobs. But travel time is quite a significant factor and we're nearby, I can see the mirth of your plan.” Thomas said. “And it would be useful if we can secure another Safe Zone for all the people that are currently stranded.”

Darryl sighed, but Elise gave a thumbs up and Ben nodded in agreement before he could even begrudgingly agree that this too was a priority that they shouldn’t put on hold for too long.

They had way too many problems, and not enough time to see to half of them.