Countdown until level collapse: 0 days 3 hours 11 minutes

“Everybody ready?” Corey asked.

There were nods all around, but most were nervous rather than determined or grim. There were a little under thirty people going to follow them, and a good dozen or so would stay behind. Looking at some of the pale expressions here, the latter would likely increase once it was actually time to leave.

Darryl didn’t know if they were going to make it, truth be told. There were more people level one than three or higher, and some people never even followed the tutorial.

Which honestly wasn’t a terrible idea, if they already got this far anyway. They still had their pre-tutorial darkvision, and they might get some amazing achievements for making it to the third floor without doing something so elementary.

But still. They started with over a hundred people when the second floor began, and there would be less than thirty making it down despite the herculean efforts of several teams to keep them alive. In the end, Martin barely even scratched those numbers, most people dying to Vespa instead.

No, it was even worse than that. Another dozen remained back at the previous Safe Zone when his party came to pick them up, and there were still people in the Safe Zone before that and in the Bathrooms where they locked themselves in after the initial camp break-up. People giving up was going to be the number one cause of death.

It almost made it feel like Martin was…

No. Darryl wasn’t going to finish that thought. Not when he still had all these people’s tickets in his inventory.

“Remember, keep running. Don’t stop, and don’t lose track of the others. Always stay in rows of three and don’t switch locations with others randomly, so there won’t be a stampede with people shoving each other or getting lost in the confusion.” Thomas said.

“Ready?” Corey asked Darryl.

Darryl nodded. He and Corey would be the frontliners, lacking the Dex to pull ahead of the group easily but using their good Con stats to decide and maintain a constant pace even while fighting.

Elise and Tall were going to be the front flanks, attacking anything that came from the sides and tossing in a diluted moonshine Molotov to seal off a tunnel for a while if needed. That one they could make without the gold coin barrier preventing them from doing it now, as it turned out. By mixing the stuff with 2 parts water, they made something that burned a lot longer and could be combined with a torch without paying the two gold fee. Bea’s Lame Jug-O-Boom Knock-offs would even earn Bea royalties if anyone else made them.

Then came Bea and Grace in the rear flanks, and Ben and Thomas would be taking care of all the Vespa coming in from the rear.

But first came the horde before them.

“Damn, how many are even out there?” Someone ­­nervously asked, looking at the minimap and the mass that was more red than blank just outside of the door. Even with these people stabbing Vespa for about twenty minutes now, the bugs weren’t letting up in the slightest.

“Three hundred something, I’d say?” Bea said.

“Three hundred forty something, yes.” Thomas said. “Nice and concentrated in one area too.”

“Pfft. Someone’s showing off their higher intelligence stat.” Bea grumbled.

Thomas just smiled at her as he aimed his index finger at one of the holes in the door. “Please stand back, I’m the only one that this spell won’t target.”

Chain Lightning arced out of his fingers after everyone took several steps back, and the Vespa sizzled like someone used a massive bug lamp on helpless moths and mosquitos.

“Alright, combatants first to mop up the last survivors!” Corey bellowed. “Be ready for our signal to move out!”

Darryl ran out with his shield raised and tried to ignore the squishing of dead Vespa under his feet, Corey right behind him. There were no injured Vespa left, only dead ones and those left entirely unscathed because the lightning simply hadn’t arced at them.

Fortunately, the survivors were few and far in between. Darryl took the side with the most Vespa and focused purely on blocking, while the others poured into the hallway behind him and got rid of the two or three stragglers on the other side.

“All clear! Let’s go!” Corey shouted, and people began to move out of the Safe Zone.

Things immediately got off to a bad start as people got stuck trying to get through the door all at once, only for the ones in front to stop and push back to get a few steps so that they could jump over the pile of corpses right outside of the door.

“Come on, just run and jump! We don’t have all day!” Corey shouted, already losing his patience.

Despite his… ‘encouragement’, it took a full two minutes before everyone left the Safe Zone. As Darryl already kind of expected, five people dropped out when they were pushed to choose, and two more almost dropped out just to avoid having to cross the stack of icky Vespa corpses.

Fortunately, things went more swimmingly afterwards. For all that these people lacked decisiveness and group coordination, they didn’t lack the motivation to live. Those that did, whose whole world and life had shattered too thoroughly for them to keep struggling, already stayed behind.

___ ___ ___ ___

Countdown until level collapse: 0 days 2 hours 52 minutes

“Four incoming!” Darryl shouted, his shield popping out of his inventory and hastily equipped.

The damn thing was too heavy to carry while he was running, but unfortunately none of the shield’s skills worked before he properly equipped it. It was a balancing act to take it out as late as possible without losing out on its vital properties.

At least he could now carry the shield with his right arm, while holding the torch aloft with his left. Even for shields, his right arm simply worked better.

Darryl ran a bit ahead, drawing the Vespa’s fire. Their acid dripped from his shield, only causing hints of damage when he walked over some droplets. The people behind him were more careful to run around it, as they didn’t have magical shoes that wouldn’t be damaged and a decent regeneration speed to heal the wounds on their soles.

Once the Vespa spat their acid and their countdown timer began, Corey rushed past Darryl and punched a few out of the sky while jump-stepping on the others. Darryl swiped one with his torch, once again glad that Borant made their wings so vulnerable to fire.

“Everyone be quiet now. Hopefully the swarm won’t notice us.” Darryl said as softly as he could without being inaudible, the others following his example to spread the word.

“Two ahead.” Corey grumbled under his breath, and Darryl silently nodded and ran ahead.

­­­___ ___ ___ ___

Countdown until level collapse: 0 days 2 hours 38 minutes

“Swarm incoming! About forty!” Elise shouted. “Seal it off?”

“Too many side tunnels, we’d only delay them for seconds!” Bea shouted back. “Either throw it in their midst or we fight!”

Elise loudly cursed and the group sped up a bit again under the stress. They had been going slower than expected, as few people could jog for more than a few minutes without wearing themselves out, and they had been running for almost half an hour now. Still at least twenty minutes to go, too.

They never stopped, hadn’t allowed the people to do so even if it meant leaving them behind. Which had happened several times, reducing their group to just eighteen escort mission crawlers. Leaving people behind because they were literally puking from exhaustion while their legs cramped up or gave out felt bad, but they couldn’t do anything else.

Not with what was on the map, and Corey’s firm stance that his group would run ahead and abandon these people once sentiment turned this mission from dangerous to suicidal.

It made him feel guilty, but Darryl was secretly glad that he was in front. This far away from the ones left behind, their rasping pleas to wait were fainter for him than the others and drowned out by the echoing of many running feet and the ever-present echoing of buzzing wings from all around.

It would be a lot worse for Ben. Thomas could turn off his emotions for cold pragmatism, at least outwardly, but this grim march must weigh heavily on the kid. But they couldn’t stop or carry these people. They simply couldn’t.

Not while there were this many Vespa. Too many. Too many to be even remotely fair. Even after attracting and killing over three hundred of the fuckers right outside the Safe Zone door, there were still swarms sometimes numbering into the hundreds converging on their location or ‘conveniently’ located just ahead of them. Even with the foresight of having the map, the swarms had gotten impossible to avoid.

And they were bulldozing through them, rather than going around. They simply didn’t have the time to dodge and weave through the tunnels, and the non-combatants were running on fumes already so they wouldn’t be able to keep up if too many detours were taken. If they wouldn’t get lost running around corners in the narrow hallways, that was.

But their straightforward approach had been mostly born from the ludicrous amount of Vespa that were around, destined to catch up if they wouldn’t keep moving forwards.

A swarm behind them from the right, which Thomas said numbered about a hundred and twenty. Another one from the left further behind, over three hundred. A swarm to the far right ahead of them, a hundred and sixty. A swarm directly to their right, eighty. And Thomas already told them that he’d only be able to use his Chain Lightning once more after drinking a mana potion, so they only got one more free out of jail card.

At least the AI was fair enough to make the swarms move at their location rather than where they were going to be, allowing them to avoid a lot of swarms as long as they kept going forward. But even then the Vespa’s faster moving speed made it so that dodging ten Vespa would see them confronted with thirty more as a penalty, while creating a tense threat of endless Vespa hordes if they’d drop below a certain pace.

While Darryl couldn’t oddball it himself even remotely, Thomas and Bea could grasp the numbers and equation to know how fast they had to keep moving to avoid the hordes.

If one train leaves the station at 09:00 going 50km/h and another train leaves the station at 09:10 going 60km/h, assuming neither will slow down or stop, at what time will the second train pass by the first one?

Apparently Thomas and Bea’s beyond human intelligence boosts allowed them to cross-reference distances on the map against the hallways they travelled through in real-time, deducing their and the Vespa’s speed from the distance crossed after a minute, and then solve the equation above maintaining various different paces to know how fast they had to go to just narrowly beat the swarms behind them to the Boss Room. With two decimals behind all the comma’s, at that.

Which meant that, at the very least, Darryl could tell himself that leaving those people behind was an absolute necessity. There were no maybe’s here, either they maintained a pace that those people simply couldn’t match, or they would all die. As much as he hated the thought, at least he didn’t have to vex about the what if’s and could have’s.

This was, quite literally, survival of the fittest.

And yet, even with those hard choices and the hellish pace of this forced march, they might not make it. Not with yet another horde coming from just ahead.

“Corey, straight ahead is clear for a bit. Can you handle it alone while I go help Elise hold the passage against the horde?” Darryl asked.

Corey nodded, and Darryl handed over the torch before running to the side.

“Glad to have you, we can really use that shield of yours.” Elise said, still just on the verge of being out of breath.

Darryl was feeling even better, his high Con bonus making it almost impossible to get winded at the pace that they were going at now. Tall, joining them instead of defending his mostly deserted flank, wasn’t doing so hot. While Elise got a few Con buffs from her Barbarian build items, Tall was almost entirely relying on his own natural constitution buffed only by a single +1 Con ring. Even without having to carry his oversized sword, he was drenched in sweat.

“We’ll have to take the tunnel right after the next!” Elise said. “We’re running low on slow burners, and Bea cannot make more until she can stop at the next bathroom. And we only have 20 seconds or less to deal with these incoming ones before we have to return to our stations to deal with other Vespa!”

“I’ll go ahead and draw their attention, Elise right behind me and Tall ready to jump in!” Darryl said, running ahead.

By the time that Elise and Tall caught up, Darryl’s shield was once again slick with acid. He already had a good pint of Vespa acid without a container in his inventory, simply because he could take his shield out of his inventory without bringing the acid along. And if these Vespa could help it, he’d be getting a lot more before this was over.

Darryl threw his spear at the Vespa, skewering two on one of the two light spears that popped into existence and damaging several Vespa enough to injure them or make them fall down. Who needs good accuracy if there were too many enemies to miss?

His spear popped back into his hand and he returned it to his inventory. Lacking reach or not, the damaging berth and swing of a torch made it a better weapon against these creatures than the spear. The latter too easily missed or got deflected on their small body and round carapace.

Not that Darryl had to fight much. Elise was just two seconds behind him, so when the Vespas finished spitting and moved in to sting she was already with him. Darryl’s shield moved left while Vespa to the right splattered against the wall.

Tall took one out with Small’s blowgun and then ran ahead to swing his sword like a giant baseball bat, hitting several Vespa with the blunt of his blade. Not all of them died, but these creatures were easily stunned and crippled so they didn’t mind the survivors.

“Get behind me!” Darryl shouted.

Tall quickly walked backwards while holding his sword as a shield. While it didn’t corrode, the lack of magnetic pull made the acid splatter around it at Tall and he still slowly took damage from it covering his blade. But once he was behind Darryl again, he just pocketed it and took it out again clean as a whistle.

“Sixteen dead, five seconds. Good time!” Elise said. “But don’t let up!”

More acid flew at Darryl’s shield, the Vespa fortunately not learning from their brethren like the Krutnik did before, and they repeated their manoeuvre. This time Tall only took one step ahead of Darryl before taking a swing, and retreated much faster.

“I’ll have to get back in formation, good luck!” Tall shouted, and left.

“Twenty-one, ten seconds! We’ll have to ignore the last few!” Elise said.

The Vespa were flooding in slower and more gradually now, making it harder to slaughter them quickly. Darryl had to keep his shield straight to catch just one or two spittle attacks while Elise smashed one side, leading to the issue that the other side had no offensive without Darryl’s shield moving to protect it. He couldn’t even use his torch that well, as his shield was in the way.

Darryl shield-bashed two that came too close, and while they didn’t go down he bought himself a second.

Still, they managed. One Vespa stung his arm, but Darryl just burned it and used the Heal spell.

Thomas: Time’s up, move back into formation. I’ll seal the tunnel behind us.

Darryl waited one second for Elise to go first before following her, finding the group only a few seconds ahead of him and easily bridging the gap. The moment he and Elise caught up, Thomas cast Poison Cloud behind them to act as a plug that would stop a few.

Darryl saw someone peel off from the group and enter a bathroom, but looked away. They knew the group wasn’t going to wait, and probably just couldn’t keep going any more. Better in there than out here where the Vespa could reach them.

A few minutes later someone fell from exhaustion, and the person behind them tripped and hit the ground hard. He shouted at them to help him up, but they didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. He tried to hobble after them after healing his sprained ankle, but even after just a few seconds of rest his legs simply didn’t want to start back up again. The man that fell over didn’t even bother, and just lay down waiting for the end.

Two blue dots were crossed out not much later.

Elise threw her last slow burner Molotov into a hallway to stop sixty Vespa dead in their tracks for about half a minute, and Darryl and Ben held a corridor against twenty Vespa not much later.

Countdown until level collapse: 0 days 2 hours 14 minutes

“Final sprint!” Thomas shouted. “Don’t go slower, we have to go faster! Just a minute left!”

The people didn’t oblige, probably couldn’t, but at least they couldn’t complain either. They most certainly would have, if they could spare the breath grumbling about Thomas saying these things while riding a bicycle himself.

Thomas peeled off and rushed ahead to the last big obstacle, the mass of red dots right in front of them dying in rapid succession as Thomas fried the swarm that had converged in front of the Borough Boss room with his Chain Lightning.

The world around them suddenly bloomed with red dots appearing out of nowhere, but Darryl ignored the spawning Brindle Grubs. As long as you didn’t slip on them, they were a non-issue.

Thomas was still pulling open one of the large double doors as the rest of them caught up, a few Brindle Grub survivors already eagerly crawling in.

“Come on, everyone get in!” Darryl shouted, already ploughing through the ankle-deep layer of dead grubs and Vespa attracted to the dead crawlers inside this to them inaccessible room.

The buzzing was getting louder and louder, the echoes of hundreds of wings turning into an ominous static as the tunnels of the minimap turned into fast-flowing rivers of red as the swarms all converged on their location. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of Vespa were trying to catch up.

Thomas and Bea hadn’t kept much of a buffer in their calculations, as the swarm was literally seconds behind them. He could already see them somewhat, a literal wave of wings and stingers coming for them that could black out the sky if there was one.

Corey grabbed two people by the collars and literally threw them into the room, and then quickly followed them in.

“Wait! Don’t leave me beh-”

Elise and Tall pushed the double doors closed, ignoring the pleas of the last three people out there. They slowed down instead of making a final sprint when they saw the doors, and there simply wasn’t time to wait for them.

With her enhanced strength, Elise snapped off Vespa limbs and cut a few in half as she slammed the door shut. There was a loud drumming for a few seconds as dozens of Vespa crashed into the doors, and then there was only angry buzzing from the other side.

…

“We… We made it. We actually made it.” Someone said.

Eleven people made it. Out of the hundred and spare people that came down here, only eleven managed to get this far, their path paved with the bodies of those left behind.

“Alright, remember!” Bea said. “When you go down, be sure to pick a class and race that allows you to either fight or survive! The death rate just getting to this point should make it clear that this is no game, and no one is going to be carrying you like this anymore! From this point on, it’s do or die!”

Only a few of the survivors that had jogging as a hobby on the surface had the energy to trudge through the swamp and get to the Stairways, but most just collapsed on the spot. With two hours left on the clock, they now had the time to catch their breath before wandering this last little bit.

Darryl took out his spear and began skewering the Brindle Grubs that got in like he was cleaning the streets from papers and plastic bags, when he noticed someone approach him.

“About me, and my *Pant* performance…” Grace said, approaching Darryl.

Darryl: Guys?

“You have proven to be capable and reliable, and able to persevere instead of just surviving yourself when facing odds like these.” Thomas said.

“And with the ridiculous risk that you’ve taken, it would be kind of mean to say ‘No’ now.” Ben said.

Elise grumbled rebelliously about letting another pretty girl into their team, but didn’t say anything and just nodded.

Darryl gave Grace a thumbs up, and she smiled weakly through her exhaustion.

“Guess we’ve got our charisma mule, then.” Elise said.

“I don’t like *Pant* being told what to do, especially not in that tone, but I would like *Pant* less combat and those charisma items Elly is wearing if that’s what you guys are offering.” Grace shrugged.

“Nice.” Darryl said. “You’re already in our over-party, so no need to add you. Come on, let’s go down!”

“Good luck out there.” Corey nodded. “I know we’ll all survive to see each other again, and I hope the events of this floor will be behind us when that happens.”

“Right. Good luck, Corey.” Darryl said, shaking the large man’s hand. “And good luck to you guys, too.”

Corey’s group, now bolstered with a middle-aged woman willing to take the healer role of their party, went down the stairs.

“Wait! *Pant* Do you guys *Pant* still have those *Pant* kill tickets of us?” One of the women asked.

“Right. You’ll probably want certainty that no one will come for your head later.” Darryl said, walking towards her.

“No, that’s *Pant* not it. I’ll try getting myself a good *Pant* class and race, but if *Pant* even that won’t suffice to *Pant* allow me to fight. I want to be *Pant* useful to someone, at least. This race *Pant* change will be my last chance, *Pant* and if I still can’t do it after that...”

“Oh.” Darryl said, grasping what she intended to do with the ticket if she still couldn’t keep up after getting a second chance.

“Don’t worry, I don’t *Pant* want to die quite yet. But *Pant* if I will anyway, I’ll *Pant* do so helping a good kid like you.” She said softly.

Darryl held the ticket with her name out to her, and she took it. He walked around and gave others their tickets too, whether it was for the same reason or just to assure them that it wasn’t somewhere out there still.

Darryl nodded the woman good luck, and she smiled thinly as she sat down to regain her stamina.

“Good luck, guys! And remember, pick a good class and race to fight with!” Ben said, waving at the knocked-out people at the entrance.

Those were the last words that Darryl heard as he went down the stairs and the world turned black.