Countdown until level collapse: 1 days 11 hours 49 minutes

“I can’t say for sure, but the inside looks to be a swamp of some sort. It smelled really bad, and there were dancing flames around the putrid water.” Ben said.

“So, a will-o-wisp Borough Boss? That would be useful information if we actually knew what they do.” Elise said, lifting up the bike and putting it in her inventory.

“We can always ask Volos.” Thomas said. “Any other details?”

“Yeah, it’s not a single door like the Neighbourhood Bosses. You go through a much larger door into an empty hallway, and the swamp room is behind that. I never entered the hallway, obviously, and I could barely see a few corners of swamp. They didn’t give me a clear view.” Ben said.

Thomas nodded. “I’ve passed it on to the others. Good job, Ben.”

They continued walking south where the southern exit out of the borough should be, careful of vespa activity. They were in uncharted territory now, which meant that their only warning was a few seconds of buzzing before acid would start flying.

They considered going to check out the Borough Boss first, but decided against it given their time restraints. So Ben had gone alone, riding Thomas’s bike while using his stealth skills to go there and back in record time.

Doing that worked, kind of. With his darkvision goggles, Ben could ride in complete darkness and evade most detection, and his stealth and fading into the shadow skills seemed to work even while on a bicycle. The vespa didn’t notice him until he was already past them, unless they were right in front of him with no room to swerve. Things apparently got close a few times, but Ben only took a few drips of acid to the leg the whole ride.

As a result, they managed to enter a new area with little delay. The rest only had to wait for Ben for about fifteen minutes near the edge of the fog of war, to make sure that he didn’t have to look for them without the map to rely on.

Darryl: Remember; no speaking out loud. Only few seconds buzzing warning.

Ben: roger!

Thomas: We’ve finally gotten a confirmation. Everyone is going to keep searching for twelve more hours, and if no one finds anything then everyone’s going to rush to the Borough Boss room.

Thomas: Mr. Geruet is going to come back in eight hours, they’re planning to clear just one more Neighbourhood Boss before returning. Gamma is a bit vaguer, but they’ve given their word at least.

Darryl: Epsilon?

Thomas: They’ll be there too. And Mr. Geruet said that he’ll bring the Lambs along on the way back.

Elise: Shit. Even if we manage the Borough, bet that it’s going to be a huge issue getting everyone to escort the camp to the Stairways, though.

Ben: yea :(

Thomas: All the more reason to not let things be last-minute. We should be back at the Borough at least 12 hours before collapse. I’m already pressuring the others to account for sleep too, to make sure they don’t stall things until the last hour.

A few vespa appeared, and Darryl raised his shield while Ben shot forward. Ben drew the most fire on account of being closer to the bugs, but with his dodge skill and the beasts firing where he was rather than where he was going the acid only found stone.

Ben slashed through them, for all the problems that they were causing these critters went down easy at least, and didn’t even slow down after finishing them. He ran into the direction that they came from, sending a message a few seconds later.

Ben: clear

Ben returned to the group and ran past to go scout ahead.

There were plenty more of those encounters, but at this point everyone got used to the vespa and their tricks. Elise was still a bit at a disadvantage without shield or ranged, but even she could deal with two or three by herself.

There was also the occasional corpse overgrown with pupae, which Thomas quickly dealt with. Mana generation apparently went up really fast once your intelligence went over a certain threshold, so he no longer needed hours to recover a single mana point and no longer had to worry about using his Flame Fingers so often. It wasn’t generating fast enough to recover mid-battle, but while travelling most of his mana regenerated by the time they ran into the next pile.

All in all, the vespa weren’t that big of an issue while they searched for the Neighbourhood Boss room. Fortunately, it was right in the centre of the neighbourhood as most were, so they found it in record time.

Ben: strange ugly smurfs. lots of tehm

Ben closed the door again and slinked back into the shadows before the Neighbourhood Boss decided to come out. He quickly ran out of the sub-boss room and met up with the others.

“Lots of them. Like, a lot a lot. I think they’ve been spawning and refusing to come out of that room for days now. Which, given the vespa being bigger than them, is probably a good call.” Ben said. “They’re called Boggles, and they look intelligent-ish. They have daggers and a few have blowguns. Small with really big dumb-looking heads, and really sweaty. The whole place was glistening.”

“Did you see the boss?” Darryl asked.

“They weren’t a bigger or very distinct creature, so no. There were a lot of those Boggles in there, and I only peeked in for a few seconds. I still think that at least a few noticed.” Ben said.

The door opened and a male creature peeked out. They were about a foot tall and their head was indeed disproportionately large. About a third of their height was just head, and the eyes were large for their head even then.

The creature was shoved out by others and the door closed. He, the lack of loincloth unfortunately made that pretty clear, tried to get back in by banging his small fists against the door, but then sighed and started looking around.

The party retreated to the nearest hallway as the Boggle glanced into the hall they were hiding in, and after a while he was done scouting the place. A very sloppy job, but the others seemed content and let him back in.

“Do we want to fight those things, or shall I take care of them?” Thomas asked.

“If I want to fight a horde of naked creatures that, knowing this dungeon, will try to climb or jump on me?” Elise said. “Pass. Plus, that one just now was level 3. Vespa give more experience than him.”

“Very well. Follow me into the sub-boss room, but I’ll take care of them.” Thomas said. “Chain Lightning doesn’t actually have a limit of how many times it can jump to another foe nor does it take any mana after the first three, as long as there is a new target within range. It’s taxing, but very much worth it for a room where everyone’s packed together.”

Thomas opened the door and threw in some lightning. He quickly closed the door again as creatures screamed and a wall of experience flooded in.

New Achievement! Too Cool for Duel!

Your party managed to find a Boss Room and defeat the boss before I could even turn on the Boss Battle theme music! That means you’re either very resourceful, very lucky, or bullying poor underlevelled bosses! Whatever the case, such savagery must be rewarded. Once. Those bosses are here for the viewer’s entertainment, so don’t make a habit out of this! Or do, I don’t really care.

I’ll give you a reward relative to the way you killed this thing, and let’s just say that I’ll reward people killing Borough Bosses or better this way very handsomely! We both know you didn’t kill one of those just now, but one of these days someone isn’t going to be lame…

Reward: Ask the one that actually did the killing, groupie.

“Damn it, we should’ve kicked you out of the party before doing this.” Elise grumbled. “But nice, Thomas!”

“So, what did you get?” Ben asked.

“A Silver Destroyer Box, but that’s our reward instead of us all getting a Bronze Boss Box.” Thomas said. “So it’s probably going to be a net loss, even if we handled this boss faster and more efficient than usual.”

Thomas opened the door again, and the guys went in. Elise stayed outside as a lookout, not even hiding that she had no intention of touching those naked freaks or walk through the greasy puddles they left.

For Darryl, who was wearing sandals, it was… less than fun. There were dry spots to walk on, but the oil splashed up high whenever someone stepped in it.

The boggles didn’t drop much. The daggers were cheap flint too small to wield, and the blowguns were just hollow reeds. The darts were simple splinters barely shaved smooth, and the lvl5 Bigger Boggles didn’t wield anything better. They were barely even bigger, but they were certainly sweatier.

The Boggles themselves were loot, though. Most of them didn’t drop an ‘alchemic ingredient’ version of themselves after how thoroughly they got scorched to death, but a good quarter of them did. It was odd, being able to take a Boggle out of a Boggle’s inventory and then have a dead Boggle that you could take out of your inventory who looked just like the dead Boggle right in front of you.

The lvl7 Bogglettes weren’t wielding anything at all, but they did drop themselves as a higher-grade alchemical material. Their description came with accusations of paedophilia, as their naked bodies were just as childlike as the others but more sexualised by whatever fucked-up board designed these creatures. Darryl ignored it and just kept gathering them. It seemed like the Bogglettes had close to a sure chance to drop themselves, at least. Only one had an empty inventory.

In the end, they added about forty dead Boggles and six Bogglettes in their ingredient tab. They also had a few dead fairies in there, though they had no idea how to purify them into the anti-Taint cure that the bodies were supposedly an ingredient for. Other than that, they hadn't found a lot of ingredients yet other than the tons of mob meat like poor rat steak from the first floor.

The place also had a ton of crude clay pots filled with Boggle sweat, which the description said was Dirtdweller-grade Oil of Slipperiness. They didn’t bother gathering more of the disgusting stuff from the literal pool of sweat, but they took the many pots lying around.

The Boss was eventually found in one of the corners. The creature was called a Gotago Quickling, and he was just as small as the Boggles but with a naturally-sized head and a lean elf-like body. His jacket had been destroyed by the spell, but his pants and shoes were still unblemished magical items. They also found a tiny rapier on him, and of course the Neighbourhood Map.

After looting the map, the Neighbourhood boss was thrown into the corpse tab and Thomas used his Fire Fingers to burn the place.

Nothing here burned easily, but once the oil and mushroom-houses ignited they burned slow but persistent. They half-melted into dirty black coals resembling burned thermosetting plastics, and the smoke didn’t look healthy. The party left the fire to deal with the corpses as they closed the door behind them and made a beeline for the Southern Borough.