“Olé!” The Matador shouted, dedicated to his bit to the end. His catchphrase lost much of its bravado after the first few failed attempts, though, and now he merely gasped it through ragged breath while using the manoeuvre mostly to win time.

The lame bull’s eyes went red and the Baxx forced itself to charge despite their sprained ankle, charging more by sheer weight and momentum than anything else. Ben dodged the slow and panicked creature with ease, the Matador’s afterimage fading the moment that he moved away.

Elise smashed the bull’s other leg and they toppled over, while a gleeful Cuddles charged and began to claw into the bull’s lower back. Ben quickly cut off the Baxx’s tail to ensure that there was no way for the beast to hurt their pet, and then left the Baxx for Cuddles to finish off.

The Matador raised his hand dramatically, a command for another Baxx to come out, and they heard grinding of another metal portcullis rising in the boss room.

Ben and Carter ran after the Matador to take that persistent bastard down, while Elise went to cut him off. Thomas just stood in the corner, watching the scene and making sure that Alexa didn’t try to join the fight. The little girl, meanwhile, pouted as she stabbed into the mass of wriggling pupae instead of fighting with a much more awesome boss.

Which was a lot less difficult than it could’ve been, thanks to the pupae. There were thousands of them on the Baxes killed by vespa, covering the otherwise empty room meant to give the Baxes ample room to charge in.

Instead, half the Baxes twisted their ankles on the uneven and slimy floor covered by a layer of wriggling grubs and became little more than a nuisance. And the Matador appeared to be a very deadly boss, with the caveat that he buffed the bulls rather than fight himself. The handicap to the Baxes turned him into kind of a pushover as well.

The Matador, a six-foot-tall caricature of the most flamboyant version of a matador, the glitteriest of professional ice-skaters outfits and Zorro, split into three again. This time none of the clones split off, as there was no Bax to enrage. Instead they all ran at Darryl again, to make sure that he couldn’t keep the Bax in the other room.

Darryl ignored the Matador for the time being, standing in the doorframe leading to the boss room and readying his shield. The Baxx charged at him and found their weight and horns insufficient to break through Darryl’s stance. Darryl quickly took out a torch, lit it and placed it on the Baxx’s back before turning around and running away from the three Matadors.

The Baxx grunted under its breath as the torch continued to burn into its flesh, unable to do anything about it until the stun effect ended. It only slowly trickled down its health, it looked like the AI nerfed the damage if no one was holding the torch, but it was still something.

Darryl moved out of the way, and the Matador changed targets. Carter immediately jumped back and took a defensive stance while Ben swerved to the right, and the three Matadors all went for him. Ben’s kopesh went through the right-most illusion, and he jumped back before the other two could stab him with their colourful bull-stabby things. Whatever matadors called those mini-spears, Darryl didn't know and frankly didn't really care either.

The Baxx shook its head clear once the stun effect ended and ran into the ring, and the exposed illusion ran towards Ben waving his red cloth. The cloth immediately drew the Baxx’s attention and the beast’s eyes went red as the Matador once again buffed it into a frenzied rage that made it more vulnerable but twice as deadly and a lot faster for a single charge.

The Baxx charged at Ben and the illusion overlapping him, only to step on a pupa and lose its footing as the cocoon burst open underneath its hooves. It slipped and crashed with a sickening crunch as one of its legs was caught underneath its own body, turning a good five metres of the grub-covered floor into a grotesque skid mark.

The Matador’s expression didn’t change, Darryl was pretty sure it couldn't, but one could almost feel the exasperation from the subtle changes in his movements and bravado. His act had been completely ruined by the Baxxes tripping and slipping as if the floor was covered with soap and banana peels, while Darryl made sure that he couldn’t retreat to his pristine bull-fighting area room.

Elise smashed one of the two remaining Matadors, and the man crumpled along with the blow. Carter was on him a second later, slashing into his arm with his Bleeding Sickle. Alexa screamed loudly in protest when she tried to run over and stab into the boss as well, only for Thomas to once again grab her wrist and stop her.

Ben stabbed the Matador in the back while everyone ignored the other Matador’s menacing thrusts at their heads, his illusionary mini-spear phasing through them without doing any harm. Elise smashed him again, and the Matador’s health bar finally hit zero.

The two illusions faded away immediately and the world froze to congratulate them on their victory after this long and frankly kind of lame boss battle.

New achievement! Slow and steady grinds the race!

You killed over a hundred mobs during a boss battle! Either you are badass enough to treat Neighbourhood Bosses as a good opportunity to grind fast and easy, or you’re so stupid that it took you over a hundred dead minions before you figured out you should target the unique one first! Either way, I bet you just learned that boss battles with their enhanced spawn rates make for a great grinding opportunity for only a slightly greater risk!

Reward: You got a lot of experience from killing all those mobs, right? There’s your reward.

Darryl ignored the achievement as he walked over to Alexa, who was taking her pouting to a whole new level.

“Damn it, this was my first boss battle and it sucked! Why didn’t you guys let me help?” Alexa whined. “I could’ve been like ‘Whoosh!’ and ‘Haha!’ while that guy went like ‘Oh no!’ and ‘Please help me!’ and I would’ve been lik-”

“You get to fight in boss battles when you got more levels. Right now you’re lacking the gear and skills to be in the thick of it.” Darryl interrupted her. “Now, we’ve got three Baxxes left that are still alive. You can kill those for more experience and skill-up’s.”

“Fine.” Alexa pouted, handing Darryl back his Spear of the Heavens and taking out her Bax Axe that was too short to use against pupae without coming within their range of attack. “But I’ll have you know that the dungeon gave me a parasite box for just standing here doing nothing, and it’s all your fault!”

Darryl stuck out his tongue to her, and she giggled as she returned the favour. “Meanie…”

“A bronze parasite box, so it probably won’t be very helpful. I got one too.” Thomas said. He hadn’t contributed to the battle once it became clear that the rest could handle the lvl8 Matador. “I think the latest patches are more useful, though.”

Darryl checked the minimised notifications, and found that unlike achievements the patch notes indeed didn't automatically open after combat.

Hello Crawlers,

Keep up the good work. Everything is running smoothly. Now that we’ve reached the halfway point of the level, game guides are now able to instruct you upon some of the intricacies regarding the third floor and how the race and class selection process works. Be sure to visit your game guide prior to descending in order to make the transition more smooth.

Effective immediately, any non-sapient mobs who happen upon a stairwell will not be disintegrated. Yes, we all just watched that rule get exploited on the recap episode. It was very clever and very exciting. But it’s not going to happen again.

The System AI has determined the proliferation of the Brindled Vespas is too aggressive, and we have halved the number of these mobs currently in the dungeon. In addition, the damage from their spitting acid attack has been adjusted down. Slightly. Please note, new Brindle Grubs will continue to generate upon the creation of a corpse, but each one now only has a 50% chance to proceed to the pupa stage.

That’s it for now. Now go out there and kill, kill, kill!

“Damn, that's neat! I think these vespas were a bit much for large groups, but apparently things are even worse elsewhere if they actually fixed it.” Ben said.

“I suppose that they also had to remove the exploitable brindle farming. If I can do it, then there must be others that optimised it even further.” Thomas said. “The patches probably also reduce their experience gain and kill count, or perhaps there are some unspoken patches under the hood. Either way, I think I should still get rid of all these pupae, boring as clean-up duty is.”

“I think Elise has you covered there.” Darryl said, looking how Elise was carefully splashing the pupa-covered Bax remains with a jug of Clurichaun moonshine. Not an easy task, as the writhing mess of pupa tails meant she had to awkwardly stand on her toes holding the jug up as high as she could like a human inverse J to pour out the contents without the tails slapping her.

“Fire in the hole!” She shouted after the mound was decently drenched, throwing in a torch in a lazy arc to fall onto the pupa.

The tails, thanks to sheer quantity making up for poor aim, actually managed to slap the torch away. It bounced back up again, only for gravity to render the pupa’s valiant defence moot. The torch bounced and hopped a few more times before it fell through a crack in the pupa tails and fell onto the moonshine.

The result was more explosion than fire, as a bright flash preceded an intense heat that incinerated the pupae more than it burned them. The sheer temperature killed all the grubs in a three-metre radius around the mound, while a cacophony of dying wails from a hundred half-formed vespa filled the large room. Darryl’s chat was once again spammed by notifications of gaining miniscule amounts of experience.

“Woo! Now that was hot!” Elise cheered, pumping her fist in the air. “Guess I can be more prudent with this stuff after all!”

She took out her jug again and splashed some on the nearest mound, this time just throwing the liquid out and letting momentum do the rest. She splashed a bit on all sides and threw another torch, while the rest gave the soon to be bonfire a greater berth this time.

“Can I do one too? Please, please, please!?” Alexa said, grabbing Elise’s hand and jumping up and down in excitement.

“Sure thing. It’s all yours.” Elise smiled, dramatically waving at the third mound she splashed.

“Alright!” Alexa said, before taking a strange stance.

She crossed her arms before her chest, swung them out wildly, lacking the symmetry she probably intended, formed a triangle with her hands by pressing her fingers and thumbs together and looking through her hands at the mound, and then placed her hands on her cheeks with her elbows pointed forwards.

“Super-awesome Fire Princess Blast!” Alexa shouted, as a bolt of fire shot from her necklace and struck the pupa mound.

She quickly spun on her heels in an attempt to turn her back to the explosion and walk away, but the moonshine already combusted before she finished pivoting completely away from the fire and the strong air current made her half-stumble.

“Yeah! Awesome!” She cheered, undeterred by the flawed execution of her move.

Elise bent over and gave her a high-five, which the broadly smiling girl immediately accepted. “Nice item, kiddo! That blast was a lot bigger than me throwing a torch.”

“Yeah! Awesome, right!” Alexa said, puffing out her chest proudly. “I got it from my hard-won pyromaniac box, which I earned during an amazing adventure of great danger and importance! And with this necklace I can blast a Scorching R- I mean, Super Fire Princess Blast, every hour!”

“Nice!” Elise said. “But if it takes a full hour to recharge, I guess I’ll have to destroy the rest myself.”

“No need to rush, I can use some training myself.” Darryl said, as he threw his spear at one of the mounds. It split off into three spears each going way off his original mark, but there were so many pupae that all three of them still killed one. “I haven’t gotten many opportunities to train my spear skills lately, especially the ranged variant.”

“Hold on, I’ll prepare a mound for you to stand on.” Thomas said.

Darryl gave him a quizzical look.

“Your spear is more effective when throwing it from above, remember?” Thomas said. “And it seems to improve your Living Ballista as well.”

“Ah.” Darryl laughed sheepishly, having forgotten half of his spear’s description. “Right, thanks.”

Thomas flicked his fingers and purple clouds appeared in one of the more isolated mounds in the corner of the room, cutting the area of effect in four to kill as few brindle pupae as possible. The chat filled with notifications of kills that granted absolutely no experience ten seconds later.

“I still train my skill levels this way, but even that is minimal.” Thomas said. “But considering I gain no experience, it’s for the best if someone else does this.”

“On it!” Elise said, splashing another mound and making it go ‘Fwoosh!’

“Me too!” Ben said.

“Remember that we really have to get back to the camp soon!” Thomas said. “We’ve been procrastinating to go back and face Martin for almost a day already!”

“What about the other mounds?” Elise said. “I’m seeing at least seven huge red dots on the map that are probably dead baxes covered in pupae. Shouldn’t we go clear those out too? You know, before they hatch a swarm?”

Thomas walked over to Elise, who took the dead Matador out of her inventory again so that he could take the neighbourhood map.

Thomas studied the map and grumbled. “Can’t make the assumption that all these baxes died to vespa today, and just one has to spawn a swarm for things to really get dire. You’re right, we can’t leave this be.”

“You guys keep clearing out this place, maybe leave a mound or two to practice your real skills on, while I go clear out the rest.” Thomas said, taking out his bike. “Don’t dally too long, though, we really have to go help the camp soon!”

Thomas cycled away, the torch spell’s light that followed him quickly disappearing into the darkness of the tunnels.

“Oooooooooh, that’s right!” Elise said. “This is a great time to practise my bloodlust, see what’s it is all about. Guys, could you stand by and be ready to intervene if this skill turns out to be bad news? And make sure to keep a distance, especially Alexa and Cuddles, I’m not sure when I lose control and would start attacking you guys too.”

“Wait, maybe this isn’t a great id-” Darryl said, a little too late.