Darryl rubbed the new scar on his arm as he emerged from the bedrooms, stretching and flexing it in a way he hadn’t been able to for a while now. The stark white stood out on his skin and bulged out a bit, but the wound had been reduced to a scar with a story behind it. No pain, and his arm moved like it used to again.

He was met by a lot of unfamiliar faces when he entered the main Safe Zone, which was positively swamped with people.

“I see that the movement was a success?” Darryl said.

“Yep, we got to the camp and moved the ones that wanted to by using the Tutorial Guild trick. About fifteen people decided to stay in the other Safe Zone instead of braving the immediate danger of running from Vespa, and we lost several on the way here.” Elise said.

“It’s a good thing that Tall still had that Eviction Sticker Martin gave him for the Northern Safe Room that we never got to, or there would’ve been a huge issue keeping these people safe. Too many people to fit in here with the dungeon’s protection.” Corey grumbled, getting up and accepting the chains that Elise returned to him. “We still have no idea where the rest of his stuff went, including the stack.”

“Oh, I have those.” Darryl said.

“You?” Corey said. “You were the closest, sure, but he stripped himself naked before you killed him, and Thomas said that his inventory was already empty when he died.”

“He traded with me before attacking my shield. I didn’t mention that?” Darryl said, embarrassed. “Sorry, it slipped my mind. I think it was to make sure that the tickets wouldn’t end up in the wrong hands or cause arguments of who should get the items.”

“Well, whatever. Let’s just hurry, people are getting nervous looking at the countdown timer.” Corey grumbled. “Getting to the Borough Boss room takes at least 40 minutes from here, so we need to beat that bastard at least an hour and a half before time if we want to save these people.”

___ ___ ___ ___

Countdown until level collapse: 0 days 4 hours 43 minutes

“And there’s the shut-in, about time. We should’ve killed this Boss hours ago and gone down once the clock passed six. Now we’re just wasting third floor time.” An unknown woman snarled.

“Darryl, meet Eva from team Gamma. Eva, Darryl.” Elise said with a tense casual tone, eyes sending sparks to the woman who returned the glare in full. “Don’t mind her, apparently she’s always like this.”

“She’s a bit worse now.” Corey whispered to Darryl. “Lost two team members to a Vespa swarm as they rushed back. Just her, Sam and Juliette now.”

“Darryl, you’re okay! How did it go?!” Ben shouted, alerting the few that hadn’t noticed their arrival yet.

“Lost my mind, do not recommend.” Darryl shrugged. “But my arm works now.”

“And in other news, Darryl apparently has all of Martin’s stuff. So we can hand those out, too.” Corey said.

That got everyone’s attention a lot faster than Darryl’s return.

“Right, I do. Martin traded it all to me before he died, and I guess I forgot to mention that to anyone.” Darryl said.

“Great. Nice going, we could’ve trained the skills those items give us in the last few hours, but I’m sure that won’t make a difference in the surely easy battle to come.” Eva said.

“So, what do we have?” Mr. Geruet asked, ignoring Eva.

“Aside from the basic items like potions and crawler biscuits, these things.” Darryl said, dropping a bunch of stuff on the ground.

Everyone gathered around, including many faces that Darryl wasn’t familiar with. Team Gamma, or what was left of them, got to him and his pile first.

The short-haired brunette with the almost hawkish nose and full lips had already been introduced to him as Eva. She seemed to be a lvl11 lancer / swashbuckler, wearing a Carmen Santiago overcoat and a modern fencing helmet whose gauze-like face-cover could be flipped open. Despite the lack of enemies around, she held on to her rapier.

By process of elimination, and seeing her name floating above her head, that made the unknown lvl10 pale girl with the long raven-hair the other Gamma girl, Juliette. She wore a long and somewhat dirty white nightgown that billowed slightly in a non-existing breeze. The AI clearly took but a glance at this pale girl and stereotyped her as the girl from The Ring, so she probably had Japanese ghost powers of some sort.

The unknown guy, who was best described as a Ron Weasley lookalike, was Sam. He was clearly a lvl11 tank, his looks more squire than knight thanks to his lanky frame not filling the armour that was more leather straps than metal plates. Armour that seemed familiar, it took Darryl a few seconds to realise that this was the squire armour that the French had but didn’t use. Sam also had a buckler, a bucket-like helmet and the first proper longsword that Darryl had seen since entering the dungeon.

Then there were his party, the two Frenchmen and team Epsilon. Mr. Geruet looked mostly the same despite levelling to lvl13, but Raphael now wore an unflattering chain mail that turned his imposing girth and half muscle half fat look into just looking like a lvl14 fat knight. Level-wise, they were the strongest people here. There was a clear advantage to grinding with just two people, assuming you survived doing so.

Epsilon still looked mostly the same, but Corey and Seith had since claimed their last tickets to add something new to their appearance. Corey wore football shoes, the kind with the knobs that really hurt when someone kicked you with them, and Seith wore a bright yellow brigantine. Corey was level 12, while Seith lagged behind at lvl8.

Small and Tall looked mostly the same as before, as did Bea. Both hooligans were level 11, and Bea was level 10. Then there was one of the less memorable Epsilon members called Earl, and the poncho-wearing archer with the black-feathered arrows. Poncho was still just lvl7, and Earl was lvl8. The girl in the maid outfit had since grinded herself to lvl8 somehow, while the other two women stayed back at the camp.

His own party was average for once, though certainly not behind the curve. Thomas and Elise were both lvl11 and Ben lvl12, while Darryl was still at lvl10. Their levels hit the plateau really quick on this floor, as they all came in at lvl9 except Ben’s lvl10. Without grinding tons of Neighbourhood Bosses, killing weaker mobs had been a matter of diminishing returns. Even fighting the fairly high-level Vespa had its limits. And Carter, who had been following their group for a while now, was lvl8. Still better than Cuddles at lvl4, but pets were probably meant to be lower level than their owners.

The two women he saw back at the Northern Safe Zone were here too. Sandy and Mandy looked mostly the same as before, Sandy reluctant and calm while Mandy looked too pumped up and excited for someone older than 14. He didn’t remember what level they were, but they were now level 8 and 9 respectively.

Jeremy, Merry and Pippins also showed up, though they were amongst the weaker ones and had no group to speak of. Jeremy was just level 7 after staying mostly inside a Safe Zone taking care of his family and killing the occasional lone Vespa coming near the door, while Martin had spent the last 30 hours blinded. He and Pierre had pretty much been sitting around, and it showed. Level 6 and still with piss-poor gear.

There were some other lone crawlers and small groups, as well as the Lambs. They progressed some, but some still wielded the Bax Axes and Clurichaun Slingshots that suggested that they hadn’t unlocked a lot of rewarding achievements since. Aside from one lvl9 man in a trench coat that solo’d a Neighbourhood Boss and looked decently geared up, they were all still around level 5 to 7. Definitely no one that they wanted in the front, that was for sure.

All in all, there were almost forty people here, ready to take on the Borough Boss. While the Recap episode showed that numbers alone certainly weren’t going to suffice against these monsters, the undermanned and woefully unprepared battle with the Woolf showed that defeating these bosses wasn’t impossible either.

More likely, the recap only showed the large groups dying and the small groups succeeding, while successful large groups were ignored. There had been fifteen groups that defeated Borough Bosses on the first day of the first floor, after all. Borough Bosses weren’t that terrifying, though Darryl wasn’t going to say it out loud.

But with their numbers, it was quite a crowd when everyone gathered around Darryl for loot.

Ironically, Martin’s two pre-murder items sparked some of the most heated arguments and claims even amongst those that had plenty of gear already.

The cane came with Wayfaring and walking skills, and Elise was far from the only one who since gained a deep loathing for the long walks between Neighbourhood Bosses and Safe Zones. Or got lost searching the literal maze of miles of tunnels in each Neighbourhood before you found the Boss room.

And the ring, while just a minor boon, was a minor boon that stacked really well with many builds. Just wearing it increased someone’s bludgeoning damage or placed more penetrating power behind their thrust. That one caused a heated discussion between those that had no magical gear to speak of and those whose attacks would be buffed more, though one crawler doing more damage eventually won out over the communistic sentiment of more people contributing a little.

Martin’s shoes got a similar discussion, and was the first item that Darryl’s group made a bid for. The ‘Nikey Personnel, Kid’ allowed for you to teleport up to 20m once every 30 hours, but only allowed you to appear behind someone’s back and the teleport had to be combined with an attack. Turns out that Martin didn’t just stab someone in the back both times he used the item, he had to do it.

The arguments were a bit more heated this time, but the massive damage output potential that Ben could get out of this item sealed the deal. The item was a guaranteed backstab, after all, and he was the only one that had extra modifiers to make such an attack even more devastating.

The next item, the wavy cultist dagger, was given away with a lot less arguments. While it gave a good Dex bonus and caused a bleeding effect, most of its worth clearly lay in its pvp modifier that tripled damage when attacking a fellow crawler. The dagger went to one of the Lambs who already had two knife-wielding skills but used a shitty Bronze Box knife.

The Priest Robes and the Repentant Cross were given to newbies too, specifically the ones that were smart enough naturally or already wore some intelligence items for more mana.

Darryl would’ve liked to have Martin’s shield, the one that could reflect a blinding effect once a minute relative to the force of the bludgeoning damage of the attack, but he already had a good shield. The Pope’s Second Line was given to Sam, after a lot of newbies reconsidered their bid when the shield came with the condition that you actually had to be on the frontlines tanking damage.

“And finally, I think I’ll just hang on to the crown.” Darryl said.

“Really? Because I feel like you’re also wearing that there fancy helmet already, while my head is suspiciously bare.” Eva said. “And plenty of others are equally unprotected from the rain.”

Darryl took out the crown of thorns. “The Barbed Crown grants five Constitution, sure, but it also comes with the power to draw 75% of damage from a team member to yourself.”

“Okay, you can have that one. But I don’t think you can also wear that helmet…” Eva tried.

“Fair enough.” Darryl hesitantly said.

“Guess he’ll just keep his helmet in his inventory during the fight, then.” Elise said.

“Indeed. We are sharing Martin’s items, but we’re not going to be giving away our own just as easily.” Thomas said, as he and Ben moved in to create a united front with Elise.

“That said, we do have some items we’re not using anyway.” Thomas said as a concession. His eyes glazed over, and Ben nodded. “This dagger here, the Pocket Viper, adds poison damage proportionate to the piercing damage dealt. But as it’s a rather low percentage and no stat improvements, it isn’t as good as Ben’s other weapons. We never actually used it ourselves.”

“And I think that this staff will be of more worth in your hands than mine, at least for the upcoming fight.” Thomas said, handing over his Drambledrar’s Quarterstaff of Blinding to Mr. Geruet after a quick argument over the best piercing damage potential resulted in Sandra getting the dagger.

“You don’t get a skill for properly handling it, so be careful when you swing.” Corey said, taking out his chain. “It’s a pretty damn good weapon if you’ve got nothing better, though. Works if you wrap it around your fist and punch something, too, not just swinging like the description suggests.”

“I don’t need this one anymore, I guess.” Tall said, taking out a broken bottle. “It’s a magic item by the way, not some junk. Comes with two combat skills.”

“I’ve got a switchblade, if anyone needs it.” Small said.

Mr. Geruet and Raphael took out some of the weapons that they no longer needed, and a couple of other strong crawlers joined in. The items weren’t great, no one was giving away something that could be better than their main weapon even in specific circumstances, but for the weaker people they were a godsend anyway.

“Alright, I think that’s enough on loot.” Mr. Geruet said when people started peddling items to trade instead of donate. “We’re on the clock, so let’s discuss strategy.”