Looking around, I realised that my shield was going to be almost as useless here as my spear. The protection it granted only applied to anything hitting the shield itself, not my calves. Which the hatchlings were currently biting into like a chew toy. Their teeth broke before my skin did, courtesy of my high Moh hardness, but I was still taking some damage as hundreds of little dents accumulated on my feet and shins. Right now, I was the giant boss that slowly died from a hundred sword strikes to my toe.

Just as I was about to wonder how I was going to defeat these things without using my spear or kicks, the world turned blurry and purple. For me that was all that changed, but the health bars around me began to plummet. Nice, now I only had to outlast the Krutnik in the Poison Fog.

Still, it wouldn’t do to just stand here and take it. While it was risky given my own precarious stance, there were a lot more hatchlings with much worse footing underneath me. I took out one of the pints of Oil of Slipperiness we got from those sweaty Boggles two days ago and poured it over the masses beneath me.

The effects were instantaneous, the whole living ramp just collapsed as if someone took out a load-bearing can from a supermarket pyramid of soup cans. The Krutnik that were biting into me held on and a few bit into their limbs to cling on as well, but most were slipping and sliding into one big mess.

I grabbed another jug and poured it over the right flank, and repeated the process to my left. There was no way I could turn around on this Cleaver corpse without falling, but I traded two pints to Elise and she floated over the pile pouring them out for me. It wasn’t easy for her given how big Cuddles had become, she couldn’t carry him under one arm any more, but she managed.

As the Hatchlings were slipping over each other trying to get to me and managing to occasionally raise one of their own to reach me despite the oil, I just stood there waiting for the poison to do its work. The Leavers already died, and the Young Gatherers were starting to drop. The Young Reavers would take a while longer, but as things stood right now they wou-

A white string of silky goop attached itself to my breastplate, and the Beaver pulled. I immediately fell over and into the mass of slippery Krutnik, crushing several with my body.

New Achievement! Dropping the Fat Man!

You just killed something by falling on it! Or sitting, or dive-bombing. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you killed something usually too big and sturdy for an average human to squash under their body! Better yet, you killed multiple creatures at the same time! That’s using your brain, and the rest of your biomass, to kill creatively!

Reward: You got a Gold Obesity Box!

The text floated in front of my face as I was dragged through the crushed corpses and skidded over the floor towards the Neighbourhood Boss. The Oil of Slipperiness now worked against me, as the Krutnik crushed underneath me lubricated me and allowed the Beaver to drag me over the floor with only half friction, rapidly accelerating my slippery slide towards their dam.

Then the rope went limp and I came to a stop. Ben had cut the string at the stem, tentacle and all. The Beaver roared in pain, and tried to toss him off again.

I quickly got up and turned around to the mass of Krutnik, who immediately abandoned their corpse climbing party to rush at me in a swarm of angry fangs and talons. The world turned blurry around me again as Thomas dropped concentration on the first Fog and cast it anew on my position, but things were going to be a lot tougher without the high ground.

I wondered if I should ignore the fog and just run circles. As long as I was faster than them I should be able to outlast them easily with my superior Constitution-granted stamina, but then I gave up on the idea. Elise couldn’t wield her weapons right now, I didn’t want Alexa getting too close to these guys and Ben was currently stuck on the Beaver not dealing much damage. Even the swing that saved me before had been at the cost of him almost slipping off.

Only Thomas could really thin their numbers, but that might be a fool’s errand as there were still critters crawling out of the dam to join the swarm’s numbers. Which, considering the game mechanics of this dungeon, might imply that we were facing limitless reinforcements as long as the Beaver lived.

Then again, there were a lot of Young Reavers rushing at me.

I turned tail and ran away. “Thomas, kill the Boss! The critters might never stop spawning if we leave the Beaver!”

Thomas acknowledged my request by firing a Frost Bolt at one of the Beaver’s joints, followed by a Scorching Ray. Ben kept trying to stab it, but the Beaver was constantly rocking and trembling now and forced him to cling on for dear life.

I glanced over my shoulder, and saw that I was actually gaining some distance on the big swarm. Oh right, I put quite a few points into Dexterity. Fifteen in fact, five points above what Volos suggested our minimum Dex score should be for the next two floors. Which made me the second-fastest member of the group. Or maybe third, I didn’t know what Alexa’s stats were.

“Elise! Can you give me Cuddles, so you can go beat up that Beaver?” I shouted.

I quickly ran away from the horde while Elise descended. She floated slower than I could run, but with enough of a head start it should be doable to transfer our mount, who was ironically always the one being carried, before the Krutnik would catch up.

“Star Struck!” Alexa said, followed by that same pitch perfect giggle from before. The cavern lit up brightly and the swarm of hatchlings behind me tripped and crashed over each other as most of them were blinded.

“Here!” Elise said, using Alexa’s distraction as intended by touching down and pushing Cuddles into my arms. I steadied my grip on the demigriff as he squirmed to stay with Elise, and then I started running. Elise nodded a thank you to me, and floated back up again.

Cuddles shrieked in fear and confusion as I ran with him, occasionally jumping awkwardly to kick or jump on a hatchling coming from ahead. The Leavers died even from my regular kicks and I had nothing to fear from the Feavers, so I just had to avoid the Reavers.

Many bugs screamed as flames ignited behind me, and Elise flew away to engage the Beaver after dropping one of her last slow-burning Clurichaun molotovs on the blinded and mostly stationary swarm. I couldn’t see where Alexa was, but I hoped she was staying safe.

I jumped and landed on another Leaver, which crunched under my sandals. Cuddles nervously licked my face in a misdirected attempt to soothe me and stop me from moving so aggressively while holding him, and I tried to steady him as much as I could while I started running again. He just started whining sadly and snuggled his head against my chest.

Above me, the Beaver screamed again as Elise smashed through a joint that Thomas weakened with continuous blasts of alternating extreme cold and heat, and the Boss struggled to remain standing on its four remaining limbs. It could still move, but required at least three limbs to remain standing. It was going at a snail’s pace now.

Ben: guys! look what i figured out just now!

I couldn’t turn to look at whatever Ben was doing, and instead kept running away from the group of Krutnik behind me. Only a few were still on fire and dropping like flies, but many fresh additions had joined the swarm to prevent me from turning around and facing it head-on.

The Beaver roared, and I saw Ben standing on one of its limbs stabbing into the joint. I was about to chide him for his reckless behaviour, when I saw that he was no longer on the Beaver. Only his shadow was there, standing on the thin leg’s shadow. Then he got up and ran up another limb without as much as a wobble, and started stabbing into the joint that Thomas had been shooting at.

Thomas: I see. You’re two-dimensional in your shadow form, and thus so is your footing. With clear shadows like the ones I make with my Torch spell, you can just walk on the silhouettes of monsters and objects alike.

Ben: yeah, but DPS is garbage.

Darryl: Your shadow stab skill is still at level 1, right? It will get stronger in time.

Ben: yeah :(

With another smash Elise destroyed another limb. Thomas brought his torch light in close and made a shadow puppet with a finger to cast a shadow over half the room, granting Ben a massive shadow ramp to slide down as the Beaver struggled to keep standing. It was immobilised now, and swaying heavily with each and every strike that Elise inflicted on it.

Ben popped out of the wall after sliding down Thomas’s massive finger-puppet shadow and quickly joined me. “I think we can start thinning the herd now!”

I nodded and slowed down, putting Cuddles on his own four feet again. “Alright boy, you want to go fight some things?”

Cuddles hopped excitedly and I pointed at an isolated Young Gatherer coming at us from the left. He bolted off, charging to ram into it full body.

“I’ll take the swarm, you take the guys coming from the right?” I said.

“No problem.” Ben said, drawing his blades and rushing off.

I turned around and equipped my shield and spear again. The swarm rushed at me, and with the characteristic whistle of a falling mortar shell a piece of ice fell into their midst and exploded in many small shards.

There were a few unscathed Krutnik in front, and the first of them died as I ran into it with my spear. I swung the spear corpse and all at two Young Reavers to my right, sweeping them off their feet. I kicked a Leaver before it even knew what to do, and then stabbed into another Young Gatherer. I turned to the large and still disoriented ice-covered swarm, and-

Winner!

And the winners are…

Our mugshots appeared for a few moments, the wailing guitar music faded out and the world unpaused itself.

I stabbed into a krutnik, at this point I wasn’t even paying attention to the specifics any more, and kept stabbing and kicking them. I used Phantom Phalanx again when the survivors behind me got back on their feet, and then jumped backwards to crush one under my feet before killing the others now in front of me.

I could just barely spot Alexa in my peripheral, stabbing a Krutnik through the eye and killing it instantly, before quickly disengaging and shooting some kind of fairy dust at an attacking hatchling to stop it from biting her in half. A moment later, it too got a rapier through the skull.

Elise crash-landed amidst the swarm and lightning sparked around her, the hatchlings screaming and convulsing as their much thinner armour wasn’t insulating enough to protect them like the older Krutnik. She was sweeping and thrashing not moments later.

A Krutnik Reaver roared angrily, its shrill voice downright cute compared to the roars of the much larger Juveniles and Cleavers, but it was a lot less adorable when it inhaled in a way that I had gotten very familiar with.

Before I could react, it spat acid right in my face. For a moment I was blinded as my face turned into a smoking mess, but then I rubbed most of the acid off with my left hand and popped a health potion. My sight restored itself in seconds and the smoking quickly stopped, and if my face healed similar to my acid-covered hand then it was once again unblemished. I could feel the little bite dents at my ankles pop themselves out.

Huh, seemed like my cooldown for healing potions was down to just 32 seconds now. Right, higher constitution decreased the duration of those cooldowns and I gained a lot of it during my stat distribution. Still, it was a more massive reduction than I expected. Thomas told me that there was a tipping point pretty early on where hour-long cooldowns turned into mere minutes, but still.

I quickly stabbed another Reaver, the one that spat at me was now in cooldown making it the least threatening of the bunch. “Careful, they’re spitting acid again!”

“I know!” Ben shouted. “Probably because we beat the boss!”

“Which ones!?” Alexa panicked, quickly flying away from the Leaver she was about to stab and landing on my shoulder.

“Just the Reavers as far as I know.” I said. “And there are none of those left- now!”

I stabbed into the one that spat in my face, and it shrieked when I tossed it into another Krutnik. Elise smashed the both of them with one overhead swing before they could get up, and a dozen more woefully underlevelled hatchlings later we were standing in a room filled with dead critters. The moment combat ended, a few pop-ups opened up without asking me.

New Achievement! Little Bitch!

You ran away from enemies more than 10 levels below you! That means that you have to be at least level 11 and thus with plenty of experience facing and defeating enemies already, and still you ran like a little bitch! Maybe the weak creature you ran from was accompanied by some pants-shitting scary monster, or there were a lot of them, but I don’t care! Coward, coward, little coward!

Reward: I’ll be nice and give you a little something for amusing me. You got a Bronze Coward Box!

New Achievement! Super Mario!

You killed a creature by jumping onto it with both feet and all of your weight, and you didn’t slip and fall down. Or statistically more likely, got killed by an angry monster with a bump on its head a few seconds later! This isn’t a Nintendo game, and we don’t care if you try to bring some other game’s mechanics into our show! But this time, you managed to make it work! Good for you!

Reward: You got a Silver Footwear Box!

I dismissed the notifications and turned to the others. “So…”

“So.” Ben said. “What now?”

“I’d say we continue.” I said. “The quest is still going, so this Neighbourhood Boss wasn’t enough. Aside from that acid surprise, I didn’t even lose a tenth of my health this entire fight. Maybe even less a twentieth. And even acid to the face didn’t hurt me that badly or blind me for more than three or four seconds. Meanwhile none of you guys even got damaged at all.”

Cuddles swaggered over, bruised and ruffled but dragging a dead Young Gatherer to Elise as a trophy.

“Almost none of you guys, I mean.” I corrected myself. “But I think we can handle what will come next, if we don’t get too careless. Honestly, we may have been a little too careful this fight, I probably could’ve just tanked the swarm while you guys killed the Beaver.”

“Right. Then let’s keep going!” Alexa cheered. “Onwards, to save this random town or whatever!”