Things had been going well. Beyond expectations, even.

The first turn of events was a dire one, or so it seemed. They were counting on 70 clurichauns and maybe 5-6 fairies based on the dots on the map. The clurichauns wearing tinfoil hats increased their numbers to a full hundred or so, led by eight fairies.

Daunting numbers, but not impossible if they could hold the line and shave off these numbers using a few prepared tricks.

And the first of those tricks worked like a charm. The clurichauns swarmed them, only to see their first wave die to a single well-placed Fire Fingers. The spell itself needed a good six to eight seconds to kill a clurichaun, but it immediately ignited the jar with moonshine placed in the middle of the path and that most certainly killed all clurichauns in range immediately.

Darryl still didn’t believe that the jar ‘wearing’ a tinfoil hat was the reason that the clurichauns ignored the obvious trap, but he didn’t mention it. Let Ben have his fun.

The next surprise had been the unexpected windfall. Martin’s cult appeared, fell upon the fairies and took them completely off-guard. If there hadn’t been a fairy kept in reserve, they might’ve massacred half the army before anyone could react.

But the fairies turned the tide, and they turned it hard. A single command had almost all the clurichauns firing impotently through Thomas’s Poison Cloud turn around and swarm Martin’s forces, while five fairies and a few dozen of the midgets kept their side busy. Martin clearly had no answer for a barrage of projectiles, and the horde quickly overwhelmed his forces when morale broke. The massacre had been swift and relentless after that.

Then a big and mean-looking guy jumped in, his rampaging stopping the fairy charge almost singlehandedly. If this was the notorious Corey of team Epsilon, then the rumours undersold the man. Not in terms of his despicable nature, Darryl didn’t like judging people on hearsay, but in his size and appearance. This guy could’ve been Vinnie Jones’s tougher brother, and he showed it wasn’t just outward appearances.

Meanwhile their own side had a relatively easy time dealing with their half of the problems. Thomas even refrained from casting spells because there was no need. Darryl’s newfound Protector’s Aura lvl5 boon attracted the pebbles fired at them, and Elise trashed the clurichauns going into a rage and massacred them in a way that clearly terrified the little mobs.

Just like during the practice run she began to cackle in delight once she gained her bloodlust buff, which was all kinds of disturbing. She barely even needed the buff to one-hit kill the pitiful mobs, but the raw strength it granted made her swings so powerful that the splattered clurichauns turned into shrapnel wounding the ones behind them. In between her, Darryl holding his flank and Carter backing her up, they held the lines with ease while Ben focused on taking out the fairies.

The battle ended with Elise and Probably-Corey literally intimidating the remaining clurichauns to death, which was kinda weird but preferable over having to release or put down the cowering mobs. They were even but a heartbeat away from agreeing to a pact of non-violence, when the lights went out and they were teleported out of the dungeon and into some kind of round-table show.

“Come on, come close! I don’t bite!” Their tiny ferret host cheerfully said.

Darryl looked around the holographic room, which was messy and chaotic where the camera didn’t see. Only the table and the wall behind the talking forest animal looked proper, while two men were busy setting up the studio in the background.

“Aren’t we supposed to enter a trailer and take a seat first?” Darryl asked.

“Normally, yes, but I decided to take you guys out of the dungeon a little earlier. Make sure to get the roundtable interview before you guys kill each other.” The ferret said. “Oh, and I’m Gewguelre, by the way. Nice meeting you all!”

The ferret nodded with all five of his heads, showing that he had great control over his tails’ movements. On closer inspection the host only somewhat looked like a ferret, but with a dog’s nose, a prim moustache and his ears were a little too long.

And then there were of course the four fluffy tails he had, each curling like an inverse squirrel’s tail with the hair patterns bearing close resemblance to the real body. All four had been puffed up like a show poodle’s fur and none of them wore the host’s vest, hat and glasses, but Darryl assumed that a wild specimen’s tails would be difficult to distinguished from the real deal at a quick glance.

“Come on! I really won’t bite, promise!” Gewguelre said. “And neither will they! You’re in different trailers, so no one can actually hurt the others while you’re here!”

“Don’t worry, we’ve got no plans to kill these guys yet.” Corey said. “We were just about to call a truce when you did… this.”

“Ah yes, that’s indeed the big reason that I intervened the way I did and teleported you guys out. We weren’t planning to do this live anyway so it’s not a huge issue, don’t worry.” The ferret said, his tails nodding solemnly. “For you see, you guys kind of have to kill each other. Or at least make a good show trying.”

“What? Who the hell do you think you are, telling us what to do?” Corey said, looming over Gewguelre.

“Settle down, Corey. I’m half a galaxy away, you can’t punch a hologram.” The ferret didn’t say anything else, ignoring the hooligan as he calmly sipped from a cup whose logo design looked suspiciously similar to the Starbucks lady. He cleared his throat and placed down the cup with the same lazy air. “I already asked twice, could you all please take your seats now?”

Darryl’s side sat down, and he noticed that there were just three of them. Aside from him, only Thomas and Jude were here. On the other side Martin, Corey and a girl in a biker outfit took up the other three seats.

“Yeah, I couldn’t exactly teleport everyone in, and the more popular you are the more Borant will charge me for hosting you.” Gewguelre said when he noticed Darryl’s unspoken question. “I’m already taking some huge financial risks here, so there’s no way I can afford Elise or take any of the second-stringers just for completionism sake. I’m lucky that you guys are still so cheap, good job not getting too many favourites!”

“Who cares about your money?” Corey said. “What’s this about ordering us around to kill for your amusement?”

“Better you fight amongst each other until only one side is left, than everyone dying in a rather anticlimactic ending, am I right?” The ferret said cheerfully, swishing his tails around. “But we’ll get to that later.”

Corey wanted to interject, but the woman placed her hand on his shoulder and he allowed himself to be pushed back into his seat.

“Very well, then let us start at the beginning.” The woman said. “You said this isn’t going to be live, but are you filming right now?”

“No. In fact we hadn’t really been planning to have this roundtable discussion for a few more hours. I didn’t expect you guys to get into a fight right after the Krakaren spawn attack, so we’re running ourselves ragged to get everything in order.” Gewguelre said.

One of the guys working in the background, a big and very, very ugly green guy covered in warts, threw a nasty side-glance at Gewguelre.

“Yeah, yeah. I know I’m not running myself ragged right now, but I’m hosting our guests.” The ferret said, before returning his attention to the humans. “And as you may have noticed already, this isn’t exactly a big budget operation with a ton of employees. We’re more what you Earthlings would call a garage company. Or something, I’m not too familiar with your lingo.”

“I don’t know; the Maestro’s set wasn’t that much better.” Darry said.

“Hmpf!” Gewguelre snorted. “His trailer, maybe. Most productions really skimp on the crawler accommodations, even the ones that can afford better. But all the stuff in his studio is custom-made, that tacky throne of his is already worth more than this whole place.”

“So you’re low-budget. Okay.” Thomas said. “Does that have any bearing on how long this interview will take?”

“Not really.” Gewguelre shrugged, his tails shrugging in unison a heartbeat later. “Borant charges per second for the popular crawlers, but you guys are hired on an hourly basis. I don’t think we’ll need that long, but let’s not dawdle either.”

“Let’s start with what we even do.” Gewguelre said, waving his tiny paw dramatically at the studio around them. “We are one of the many small start-ups that look through the millions of crawlers looking for hidden gems, buying up the ones with potential for bargain prices and hope they don’t die.”

“It’s a bit like buying lottery tickets, when you’re trying to make it big. Every once in a while someone buys up the rights of some nobody that turns out to be the next Glorptar and makes a fortune. And every time that happens, a whole boatload of new idiots start taking out loans bankrupting themselves trying to reproduce the success story.” Gewguelre said. “We’re not like those guys, even if we’re not exactly the most financially stable enterprise ourselves. We hope to get that windfall, but ours is more a small risk small reward event. Buying in cheap and selling the death scenes to those gore-fetish shows like that Maestro guy you mentioned before. That kind of stuff.”

“But we make most of our money being a compilation crew. A necessary third party to make watching the crawl bearable for people that want to see more than just the top ten.” Gewguelre continued. “The crawl is live-streaming millions of crawlers 24/7 and has some basic apps to help people tune in at the right time, but obviously most people aren’t going to follow you literally every waking hour just to see if you’ll do something interesting.”

“Imagine having to watch someone walk for literal hours, or having to piece together the background story and social bonds of people that don’t narrate what happened previously to inform new viewers. Not to mention those stupid inaccessible chats that you Earthlings effortlessly got used to. Most planets don’t start using those until the fourth floor or so, because they never upscaled texting like you guys have.”

“But that’s where we come in. We buy the rights of a few dirt-cheap crawlers, or in your case your general area, and make a compilation of what you guys did. Highlighting the more interesting fights, show the scenes where you guys have meaningful interactions in an understandable chronological order, give them some background information on what your surface job even is. Anything to get the viewers to tune back in after they zap away.”

“Which is beneficial for everyone involved! We create some easily digestible 1-3 hour floor reports about a few crawlers, rake in ad revenue and maybe land a sponsor that wants to buy up your rights from us. You get followers and views, and maybe even rise from the muck that is obscurity. Don’t let those numbers fool you, your first ten thousand followers are all bots. Becoming popular is a matter of early luck rather than skill and pizazz, as hype needs viewers and viewers don’t watch crawlers without hype. But with our help, you might get some actual favourites!”

“If there are thousands of bots watching us, wouldn’t they buy up our rights before you could, though?” Thomas asked.

“Peh! For a few easy and reliable patterns that make a good crawler, maybe.” Gewguelre scoffed. “Syndicate rules ensure that there’s no AI worth the name for sale, and the programs we get can’t tell apart interesting crawlers from that random goat lady that walked in with a bunch of goats. Literally every AI is declaring that one goat’s random bleating to be the best marketable catchphrase of the decade.”

“Even the AI in charge of this floor is only oriented to find and endulge a few core kinds of entertainment, and has well-known blind spots in what the people want to see despite his nigh omnipotent control over the dungeon. Most bots browsing for hidden gems are either looking for the crawlers with the biggest damage potential and best items, or can’t for the life of them predict if the funny human will survive this floor. We on the other hand are better at… hedging our bets.”

“Hedging your bets?” Thomas said. “I take it that this is related to you buying up the region rather than any specific crawlers?”

“Yes! Good to hear that you guys are paying attention!” Gewguelre chirped happily. “I have to admit that I feared you to be a dull boy without your intelligence buffs, Tomehas, it’s a common issue with crawlers when you take away their items!”

“It’s Thomas.”

“Yes, whatever. I bought up the area because it’s dirt cheap. Normally the starter bids for areas are too high to consider and a legal nightmare when the crawlers within it are bought by someone else, but you guys are in what you’d call a dead zone. An area without Staircases.” Gewguelre said.

Everyone went dead silent.

“A dead zone?” Corey stammered.

“Jup. Areas like that are almost assured to kill everyone in the region, and it’s a metric that every AI worth their credits can recognise. Not even farmbots will bid on you guys. The second floor has a few of these areas that are technically within regulation, offset by a few areas swarmed by Staircases. You are dead centre in a grid without any, though.”

“Where’s the nearest Stairway, then?” Corey asked.

“There’s a Borough Boss nearby that will spawn a Staircase if you beat him, but the nearest unprotected Staircase I’ll keep a secret until Martin delivers on his promises.” Gewguelre said, his moustache curling up as he smiled wickedly. “I guess that makes three reasons for you to fight each other and get me a proper finale for this floor.”

“I don’t recall you actually mentioning what the first two are.” The biker woman said.

“First, there’s a rage elemental on the loose in your general area.” Gewguelre shrugged. “The AI follows much of the same reasoning as me: If nothing interesting happens, we’ll make something interesting happen. The AI seems invested in Martin’s little crusade, but when that turns out to be just one big wet fart then a certain angry tornado will appear to slaughter you all. It would be terribly dull compared to what could be, but the AI has plenty of eggs in their basket.”

“And second, you guys need views. Especially the silver stars here.” Gewguelre nodded to Darryl. “Don’t ask me why, true AI are always weird like that, but the dungeon seems to dislike you guys.”

“Dislike, as in…?” Darryl asked.

“Dislike, as in your Staircase dumping you in a dead zone. Your location before the third floor should be geographically set, but the lack of a physical representation of the stairway gives the AI a lot of leeway to control where you start. Something of a 50km radius, I think?” Gewguelre pondered. “No matter. What’s interesting is that this season Borant and the AI seem set on exterminating the larger groups early for some reason. They've been throwing larger groups like yours into these dead zones all over the place. Which is very unusual, but good for people like me!

“You seven ending up in such an already saturated area suggests the AI wants you guys specifically to either die or lag behind.” Gewguelre said. “And yes, the AI is allowed to be biased like that.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone respectfully didn’t say anything to let the two silver stars think.

“Any idea why the AI might dislike us?” Thomas said.

“Not a clue. Doesn’t really matter either, once they’ve got an opinion of you it’s set in stone. Or well, they’re pretty stubborn. Regulations prevent it from screwing you over too much, and you guys seem to be on the mild displeasure side of things rather than an outright loathing, but it’s going to be very difficult to appease the AI now.” Gewguelre said. “Fans and sponsorships on the other hand, those can save your asses big time if you catch the spotlight. Completely unrelated to the AI, and it’s not allowed to tamper with any of that. Not even by creating mobs and challenges custom-made to counter your fan box gains.”

“So bottom-line: Either we entertain the AI, or it kills us. Especially our group.” Thomas said. “And you give us some extra incentive to do it.”

“I wouldn’t call it incentive, more than a lifeline.” Gewguelre said.

“Or a ruse.” Darryl said. “As the Maestro bought up our rights, there’s no point for you to make us more popular. In fact, you’ll favour Martin and Co as they’re still relatively cheap if they survive. And you telling us the location of the nearest Stairway relies purely on you keeping your word afterwards. After you already got what you wanted.”

“He’s got a point. Bringing us onto your show to tell us the location, even if it’s just one of us, will cost you a lot of money.” The biker girl said. “Might be cheaper to just let us die. Nothing we can do about it.”

“Wait, wait! Why the suspicion?” Gewguelre squeaked, shrinking into his seat. “What have I ever done to you!?”

Darryl leaned over and flicked his head.

“Ack!” The ferret said, grabbing his forehead as if Darryl put any force behind the tap. “What the Singularity, man?!”

“Half a galaxy away, huh?” The biker lady said. “Seems like you lied about that, and if you’re lying about one thing then why should we believe the other things you said?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but let’s not do things we may regret later.” Gewguelre said. “Just because I lied to keep you from threatening and hurting me, doesn’t mean I’m lying about my business proposition!”

“Or, we can agree that your tells are pretty obvious.” The biker woman said. “When you said you were a hologram, your tails flicked around to change the relative location of the real you. When you were talking about common knowledge, no such thing happened. Every time you lied, your tails flick. Only that rage elemental threat seems to be the truth, and you can’t do anything about that. So there’s no reason to hear you out.”

She nodded to Corey, and Corey smiled maliciously as he cracked his knuckles.

“Boore! BOORE!” Gewguelre shouted.

“Yeah, yeah. No dunna scream shrill, boss.” The big green man said, sauntering over to the table. “You, no punchy.”

Corey got up and turned around rolling his shoulders. “And why should I? I’ve fought bigger, and I kinda miss fighting with my ole reliable unenhanced strength. Nothing satisfying about enemies turning into mush as I punch them.”

“You dumb or what? I’s troll! I’s as tough as my talky is simple, they say!” Boore said. “You’s too elokgwent to beat me!”

“Well ‘scuse me, big guy.” Corey said. “That sounds like someone’s trying to weasel their way out of a real fight.”

“Hey, you can’t say that! That’s offensive!” Gewguelre said.

“Oh, you on!” Boore said. “Me punch you into pulp, wait till you regrown and then punch yo-”

Corey struck the troll with an uppercut, and punched him again before Boore could recover. Unfortunately for him the troll didn’t seem too fazed, and punched Corey right in the nose.

“Fifty credits on the troll! I take all!” Gewguelre shouted from behind the camera. “And Boore, turn more to your right! Your other right! We don’t have omnidirectional video, don’t make me film nothing but trollback!”

Darryl frowned and Thomas sighed next to him. “Well, we’ve got a whole hour, so as long as this doesn’t take too long…”