"Potentially leveling up to 14 really isn't going to matter?" Taylor asked Levi.
The rabbit man shook his head. "Nah. You guys are probably some of the highest-leveled crawlers in the dungeon right now, but character level is mostly irrelevant. Occasionally—"
"Hang on," Calliope said. "We're the highest level people in here? Luke's people were higher than us, and those Team Valkyrie hooker-wannabes were almost as high."
Taylor: Be nice, Leo.
Levi shrugged. "The experience required for each level increases as you go up, but it's pretty small up to level 9. What that means is that people tend to be tightly clustered in the beginning but spread out as time goes on. There's generally three bands: low-tier, mid-tier, and high-tier. Here on the second floor I'd expect the low-tier crawlers to be up to level 6 or so, mid-tier crawlers to be 6 to 9, and high-tier crawlers to be 9 to 13.
Maybe 14, but I'd be shocked if anyone makes 15 on the second floor. The three of you are all level 13, putting you at the top of the heap, level-wise. By the sixth floor the bands will be more like 'anything under 25', then 25 to 40, and then 40 to 55 or even 60. Not that there will be a lot of low-tier crawlers left at that point.
"On the other hand, like I said before: your level doesn't matter that much. You'll sometimes see a class or race ability that interacts with character level, but most classes and races don't have that. There's a few skills or items out there that do something based on your level, but they're quite rare. What your level really means is that you have three times that many stat points. The thing that matters is your actionables, and even there you guys are doing pretty well. There are likely a few crawlers with better actionables or gear, but not many. You guys really lucked out by coming into the dungeon with all those guns and other stuff."
"Actionables?" Calliope asked around a mouthful of ice cream. She paused to swallow. "Spells and such?"
"Exactly. It's the catchall term for skills, spells, special abilities, stat boosts, and everything else that the dungeon might give you that doesn't exist in the normal world. What matters is which ones you have and what level they are.
"Your stats matter in that they provide your basic resources—every point of Intelligence is another mana point for casting spells, every point of Constitution is a bit more health, every point of Strength is a bit more damage inflicted with physical attacks, and so on. Still, speaking from a mechanical perspective, surviving in the dungeon mostly depends on stacking up skills and spells that give bonuses. If you have the Pugilism skill and a high Strength then you do a good bit of damage with your fists. If you have a high Strength
and Pugilism
and Iron Punch
and Bare Knuckles
and Powerful Strike then you hit harder than a truck. You guys don't have those stacking things yet, but they'll start coming."
"Huh," Taylor said, sitting back in his chair. "What about skills? How likely are we to rank them up if we stick around, and how much will it matter?"
"Depends," Levi said. "Spells and skills advance quickly up to level 5, then a bit more slowly to level 9. Breaking the wall to 10 is hard, and every level after that is a real grind, getting harder with each one."
His eyes flickered for a moment as he checked his interface. "Taylor, your physical combat skills are at 5 because you've mostly been relying on your chemical weapons. Given the threats out there, that's unlikely to change this floor. If you guys stay on this level for another twenty-four hours, you'll likely level up the two incendiary devices skills, but probably not the physical combat ones.
"Calliope, your Thrown Weapons is at 6 and Sword is at 5, counting that bonus from your Kruthak Needle. Those are your only combat skills, so if you use them as much as you can then you might get an extra level in each, but probably not more than that. And that's if you were able to engage in physical combat a lot instead of dropping fire gel on enemies. I'd go ahead and throw your javelin at stuff once it's been immobilized, just for the training, but focus on more effective methods while the threats are still mobile. It'll reduce your training rate but it's much safer.
"Drew, your Smoke Form spell is at 8. I'd be shocked if it leveled up again by tomorrow. Your base Spear skill is only 4, but you've got that bonus that makes it 7. Skill experience is complicated, but the upshot is that you might or might not level it even if you were doing a lot of hand-to-hand fighting, which you shouldn't be with as high as the threat appears to be."
"So you're saying there's no real numbers-go-up benefit to sticking around," Taylor said.
"Only major benefit will be to your socials," Levi agreed.
Taylor digested that, and then smiled as an idea struck.
Taylor: Drew, got a question for you.
He laid out the details of his idea and Drew broke up, laughing so hard that he started coughing. Fortunately, the stoner knew better than to respond out loud.
Drew: I am absolutely in.
Excellent. He nodded and gave his friend a couple of slaps on the back to help him get over the laughter that had now turned to coughing.
Levi was looking from Drew to Taylor and back. His eyestalks were cocked, one curled up and one curled down. He scratched his chin for a moment, then, to Taylor's relief, he said nothing.
Levi had been a crawler once. He knew what it meant when someone's eyes flashed and then they started laughing with no explanation:
Something funny was said in chat and I don't want the audience to hear it.
Taylor: Tina, would you guys be open to a teamup? We need to get some sleep, so I'm thinking about twelve hours from now. Also, I've got a slightly delicate question for you...
o-o-o-o
"Hey there," Tina called, waving. "Glad to see you're all okay."
Crawler #813,508 "Tina Morton". Level 11.
Crawler #813,509 "Jada". Level 10
Crawler #813,515 "Louisa Lem". Level 12
Crawler #813,521 "Min Li". Level 12
Crawler #813,524 "Alice Whi". Level 10
Crawler #813,525 "Marina". Level 12
First thought: wow, they were doing great. Second thought: oh look, the ones who were going barefoot were doing more great. The AI really did have a fetish, didn't it? More importantly, was it too late to get in on the action?
Taylor suppressed a snort of amusement at the thought. He wasn't going to start going barefoot himself, but it was still funny.
"You guys have been doing well," Tina noted, looking at the properties that floated above everyone's heads on demand.
"Thanks. You too," Taylor said. It was true, although Levi had been right; the team had watched the recap, slept for eight hours, and then spent several hours murdering everything they could find, which consisted of a couple dozen Vespa and one lonely tove that had managed to hide away from the insect apocalypse. With the clock ticking down, they returned to the safe room to open loot boxes and rest, then headed out to team up with Team Valkyrie. All of that, yet they still hadn't gotten a single skill-up. Worse their social numbers hadn't increased as much as he had hoped; apparently same-old-same-old grinding didn't hold the eyeballs as well as dramatic boss fights and exciting innovations.
"Hey," Drew said, waving. He had been staring at Jada, but he saw her notice and quickly looked away.
"Gotta admit, you guys are killing it," Calliope said, her tone grudging. Taylor had pushed her to get past the dislike she had taken to Team Valkyrie; she was making an effort and that was as much as he could ask.
"Thanks," Tina said. "So, while you lot have been gallivating around, we've been getting the table set." She grinned, taking the sting from the words.
Taylor laughed. "In fairness, we
did offer to come help out and you said you had it under control and we should focus on getting those last skill-ups if we could."
"Fair point, fair point," Tina said. "Anyway, what do you think?" She waved at the area around them.
The two teams had met in another of the junctions between hallways. This one was especially spacious, as it was host to no less than twelve different tunnels. Team Valkyrie had blocked off ten of them, leaving only one way in and one line of retreat. Corpses of toves and Vespa were scattered around.
Taylor studied the area and nodded.
"This will do nicely," Taylor said, smiling with teeth. "Very nicely. I like what you did with the corpses. That was you, right?"
"Yup," Lois said. She had her warhammer slung over one shoulder and was smiling sunnily. "Carried 'em here from all over. You might want to check that one a little more closely. It's for you." She pointed to the corpse of a supersized Vespa near where Taylor was standing.
Curious, he bent down to look where she was pointing. He shuddered and laughed all at the same time.
"That'll work," he said, nodding. "Incredibly gross, but it'll work. Let's all get into position. Calliope, make sure you know where everyone is before you head out."
"Hey, uh, I wouldn't mind having somebody with me," Drew said. "You know, to cover me if things go bad."
"'Cover you', huh?" Lois said, grinning. "That a euphemism?"
"Ignore her," Jada said, stepping forward. "I've got your back." She twirled her massive club demonstratively. The chips of obsidian sunk into the wood glimmered in the light of Drew's Torch spell.
"That's settled," Tina said before Lois could make another comment. "Drew, Jada, we have a place for you over here."
o-o-o-o
"So, uh, you look nice," Drew said, once he and Jada had eeled into their assigned position for the upcoming action. It was probably far too early to be doing so; Calliope was still out collecting the party guests, but there might not be time to get hidden if a bunch of wandering Vespa showed up.
Jada eyed him sidelong for a moment. "Thanks. You too."
"Do you wanna fuck or should I apologize?" Drew asked, the words coming out in a rush.
Jada snorted. "Incredible timing, Romeo. Bug guts in my hair and cramps in my legs: just the thing to get a girl in the mood." She shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position. The stone of the dungeon floor was uncomfortable to lie on and there was a sharp limit on how much she could stretch her long legs given the nature of their hide. On the other hand, there probably was enough room that she could have put half an inch or so between her shoulder and Drew's. She did not.
"That...that wasn't a no," Drew said.
"Actually, that was a
hey, we're probably going to die in a couple minutes, how about we hush for now so we don't attract attention?," Jada said, a slight smile in her voice.
Drew grinned.
o-o-o-o
Taylor: How's it going, Calliope?
Calliope: Eh. Found three groups already. They were more than happy to join the fun, but two of the groups weren't that big.
Taylor: Time to head back?
Calliope: Nah. Gotta catch 'em all.
Taylor: ...Okay. Be careful, okay? I worry.
Calliope: Hey, it's me. *grin*
Taylor: Hence why I worry.
o-o-o-o
"So, where you from?" Drew asked.
"Ananabella, Utah, if you can believe it," Jada said. "It's a flyspeck of 800 people or so, about three hours south of Salt Lake. Me and my mother were the only black people in the place, used to get stared at on the street. No idea why mom moved there after she immigrated. I think maybe she thought the name was pretty? Anyway, I got out as soon as." She smiled slightly. "Of course, when I left it was to go to college in Mississippi, which has historically been very welcoming to my people. I guess mom and I have some similar crazy. How about you?"
"Not saying," Drew said. "I've been told that girls like guys who are mysterious."
She laughed. "Yeah, you might want to check yourself on that. There's a difference between 'mysterious' and 'raising red flags because he sounds like a serial killer'. What, you got a prison record that you don't want to talk about?"
Drew swallowed and looked away as much as was possible in the tight confines of their hide. "No, just...boring, I guess. I used to work at a Kinko's and drive a beater. Not really the kind of thing that impresses people, you know?"
"Hey, don't sweat it, Romeo. You got those dreamy eyes working for you. Grow your hair out a little more and you'd look like a Romantic poet."
"Yeah?"
"Well, it would help if you had a puffy shirt."
"I can get a puffy shirt."
o-o-o-o
Taylor: How's it going?
Calliope: Not bad. Still not ready to head back. I can hear buzzing from my left so I'm gonna go pick up that group. And don't worry, there's plenty of room to maneuver.
o-o-o-o
"What's college like?" Drew asked, after the silence had lingered for a few minutes.
"Fun. I rushed Zeta my first year so I had a social group to drop into. Most of 'em are pretty cool. Plus, the dance program is good."
"Oh, cool. What kind of dance?"
"You're hoping I'm going to say 'exotic', aren't you?" she teased.
"No! That didn't even occur to me!"
"Bet it is now, though. Right?"
"Uh..."
o-o-o-o
Taylor shifted uncomfortably and checked the time again. Calliope had been out for forty minutes already and he was getting awfully tired of lying here, cramped and uncomfortable and alone. Sure, he could talk to the others over chat, but Calliope needed to not be distracted, Drew needed some space to flirt, and he didn't feel comfortable making small talk over chat with women he didn't know particularly well.
Taylor: I feel like you're really starting to push it. You could always bring us what you've got and get more later. We can do multiple waves.
Calliope: The whole point is to please the audience, right? We want one big bang, not a bunch of little ones. Besides, Moose is having too much fun. He'd be sad if we came in now. You know I can't resist those sad puppy eyes.
Taylor: Moose will be extremely sad if you're dead. Or, rather, he won't, because he'll be dead too. He won't leave you if there's a problem, not even if it means dying.
Calliope: We're fine, Unc. The worst problem I'm having is that my wrist is sore from holding onto the rope and my eyes are watering from the speed. Now give me a minute. Big group coming up and I've gotta concentrate.
o-o-o-o
"Oh my god, a flying cockroach! Taunt!"
"Aroooo!"
Calliope: Hey Unc, you guys ready? Operation Aggro Train has left the station in a big way.
Taylor: How many are following you?
Calliope: Is 'a shitton' a number? I'm going to go with 'a shitton'. Maybe a kajillion.
Taylor: Don't do any stunting, okay? Dangerous enough training that many mobs on you, don't do anything that might make you fall off your board and get caught.
Calliope: No worries there. These guys aren't as fast as Moose but they're damn fast and I'm not taking any chances on them catching up. Also, you really need to see Moose's Legion Rush ability in action. Ho-leee crapballs it was amazing. Ten minutes after we started playing bait, we had fifty, maybe sixty Vespa following us and a group popped up in front of us. Only ten or so, but it was enough that they could have blocked the corridor and pinned us in place long enough for the rest to catch up. We're about thirty feet from them when Moose howls and starts glowing blue. Then he takes off so fast he almost yanks my arm out of its socket. He went through those things like a cannonball, and I mean that literally—he went
through them. 'Bug on a windshield' kind of thing. Instagib, frog in a blender, salsa smoothy.
Taylor: I get the idea, Calliope. Don't be gross.
Calliope: Heh. Important note: he can't turn for shit when he's using that ability, and it only protects him for a fraction of a second immediately after he activates it. He slammed into a wall and dropped his health into the red. I had to heal him.
Taylor: Language. He's okay now though, right?
Calliope: He's fine, no worries.
Taylor: Don't kill my dog, Calliope.
Calliope: I won't, I promise. Anyway, right now we're both absolutely drenched in bug guts. I think the stink is pulling more of them than me and the airhorn ever could. I hope you guys are ready, because we're going to be there in about two minutes.
Taylor: We're ready.
Louisa Lem: Screw ready, we're stoked! Hey, TayTay, betcha I kill more than you even with that cheat mode thing you're rocking.
Taylor: Don't call me TayTay. It's Taylor.
Louisa Lem: Sure thing, TayTay!
Alice Whi: Lois, could you please
focus instead of playing stupid dominance games with the people we're trying to be allies with? It's not endearing, it just makes you look like a bitch. Taylor, if she keeps doing it you can call her Lulu. She hates it.
Louisa Lem: Okay, okay. Geeze. Lighten up, both of you. It was a joke.
Calliope: Not a funny one, Lulu. Hey, 'Lem' is short for 'Lemon', isn't it? Because Lululemon would make a perfect name for someone like you—you know, self-important white girl in yoga pants so sheer you can see the pimples on her fat ass? Hang on, I think I can change your name in my chat interface...yep! There we go. Now every message you send me will come from Lululemon.
Taylor: [Private message] Jesus, Calliope, go easy. I can fight my own battles.
Min Li: It actually
is short for Lemon, Calliope. How did you know?
Calliope: Wait, really? I was totally dropping stank, I didn't think it was true. Oh, wow, that's hilarious.
Tina Morton: Girls, please. Save it for the enemy. Calliope, ETA?
Before Calliope could reply, the question was answered by the sound of Moose's excited howl echoing down the corridor. Moments later, two blue dots appeared on the edge of Taylor's minimap, immediately followed by the hallway behind them turning red as though an ocean of crimson paint were flowing through it. Or, more plausibly, an army of Vespa packed so tightly together that they exceeded the resoution of the map.
Taylor: You weren't kidding about having a lot of them on you. Be careful. Remember the plan.
Calliope: Yes, mom. Dropping the fire gel now. It's got two seconds on the timer.
A moment later, the line of red on the minimap was suddenly cut in two. The two blue dots raced on, putting more and more distance between themselves and the main mass of Vespa, but a smaller group stayed on them. Smaller or not, it was still enough to turn that segment of the map solid red.
Moose shot through the tunnel opening and continued straight across the junction without slowing down. Calliope skitched behind him, her Marston's Cord harnessed around Moose's chest and wrapped around her left wrist.
"Waaaahooooo!"
Taylor almost expected Calliope's excited cry to Doppler down as she went past, but Moose wasn't
quite that fast...yet.
Jada: Hard to tell, but I'd guess the forward element is something like eighty or ninety. They'll be to you in a few seconds.
If anything, she had overestimated the time. As Taylor finished reading the message, a swarm of Vespa zoomed into the junction, hot on Calliope's heels. Each one was the size of a pony with a stinger that stuck out two feet even while retracted.
Taylor let the first one go past and then he shoved the pressure washer's sprayer out through the slit in the belly of the Vespa corpse he was hiding inside, clamped down on the trigger, and drenched the passing horror bugs in an enfilade of DNP-infused Everclear. There was a pileup as the first few ranks of Vespa went down amidst insectile shrieks of pain.
"Firenado!" Lois called from across the junction. She too was hidden inside a hollowed-out Vespa corpse.
Flame appeared in the center of the room and spun up into a vortex. Several Vespa flew into it and crashed, their wings instantly melted to nubs. The firenado started to drift from its position, moving right and forwards towards where the Vespa were coming from. It passed over many of the bugs that Taylor had downed and finished the job of killing them.
The ranged fighters of Team Valkyrie jumped up from behind the rampart of corpses they had been using for concealment and sent a barrage of missiles at the Vespa. Min's slingshot bullet fractured three feet in front of her as she activated its Split Shot power; a cone of metal fragments hit the line of Vespa from the front, tearing through eyes and wings. Unless they hit at precisely the right angle, the submunitions bounced off the armored carapace, but that was okay; anything that missed tended to simply ricochet farther down the line and hit a different target.
Alice's magical throwing daggers hit much harder, easily piercing the frontal armor of the Vespa. When they hit the head, the mob went down, instantly dead. When they hit the thorax, the mob went down with its health in the yellow and took more damage from faceplanting. The brown-haired woman wore a bandolier of eight daggers across her chest; it rotated every time she pulled one out, bringing the next one into position for easy retrieval.
Alice's sister, Marina, was firing her bow as fast as she could manage. The powerful bow sent the arrows deep inside the enemy's bodies, whereupon the arrow's power activated. It was a random effect each time; one Vespa literally froze and shattered when it hit the ground. Another exploded. A third became separated; its front half moved one foot to the left while its back half moved one foot to the right. Unfortunately, Marina only had twenty arrows in her quiver. They were indestructible and could be retrieved after the battle, but there were a lot more than twenty enemies on the field right now.
Taylor didn't have more than a moment to appreciate all that. His eyes were fixed on the firenado, which was doing a brilliant job of killing downed Vespa and some airborne ones, but was also drifting towards Taylor.
"Pull it back!" he shouted, not taking the time to use chat.
"I'm trying!" Lois called back, worry in her voice. "It isn't totally controllable!"
Taylor struggled out of the Vespa corpse as the firenado drifted slowly closer. It was wobbling back and forth like a drunk as Lois mentally struggled to pull it left, but the spell was not cooperating.
There was no time to get the pressure washer hose unthreaded from the corpse of the Vespa; he clicked the first of his remote triggers, abandoned the pressure washer, and limped away, his legs too cramped up for smooth movement after being curled inside the dead Vespa for an hour. He got out just as the firenado grazed across where he'd been before turning left, wobbling a few feet, then turning left again.
Between the pressure washer, the firenado, and the various missile weapons, the Vespa swarm had been reduced from eighty to less than twenty, five of whom were blinded and had friendly-fired several of their hivemates. Half of the survivors turned and went for Taylor, the other half went for Team Valkyrie's missile brigade.
Taylor hobbled as fast as he could, desperately watching the countdown timer running in the bottom left of his HUD. As it hit zero, he threw himself to the ground and buried his face in a sheet of moisture-proof cling wrap to protect against what was about to happen. Blobs of Vespa acid passed over his head as he dropped, some of them hitting close enough to splash him with a few drops.
The remote trigger activated the Distributor Cap that Taylor had stashed at the bottom of the pressure washer's reservoir. The Distributor Cap activated and grabbed all the liquid immediately around it, atomising it and blasting it outwards. The pressure washer channeled the blast upwards so that the insecticide mist geysered up and then spread out in a mushroom-cloud plume. Every Vespa that it brushed across went to the ground, seizures wracking its body.
Drew: Fire gel burned out. Next batch is coming through. Stop or clip?
Taylor: Stop! We're still dealing with this batch.
Tina Morton: Clip. We've got this and we need to keep it hot for the viewers.
Drew: Could I get some consensus here?!
Taylor: Fuck! Fine, clip.
o-o-o-o
Drew peeked out from inside the Vespa corpse that he and Jada were hiding within. They were eighty feet down the hall from the junction where the fighting was taking place and his minimap showed the red of solidly-packed Vespa reaching from where they were to as far out as his map showed.
Drew: Leo, there's such a thing as doing too good a job of being bait.
Calliope: What? Not my fault if they come in big groups. I could have pulled a lot more than that if I'd wanted to.
Jada: Seriously, there's easily a thousand of them. Probably more.
Calliope: What can I say? I'm thorough.
Drew ignored the byplay and watched the Vespa stream past. The battle plan had been, by necessity, fluid. The first part had gone off smoothly but this second part was the tricky one: should he stop the Vespa horde from continuing until the first batch was dealt with, or should he clip off the swarm, letting some through and stopping the rest? It would allow the main team to continue with the 'defeat in detail' strategy, but it would also require them to deal with that next detail immediately, despite not having completely cleaned up the first batch yet.
The reluctant consensus being 'clip', he waited a few seconds while the first fifty-ish Vespa streamed past. They were moving too fast for an accurate count, but that seemed like it was in the ballpark.
"Any time now," Jada whispered, her voice tight. The two of them were hanging out in the breeze here; the hall was wide, but the Vespa were passing not more than six or seven feet from where she and Drew huddled. If they were spotted they would be dead before they could react.
Drew nodded and slammed his fist into his palm. "Gravity Anvil!"
Fifteen gravities of force slammed down in a seven-meter radius. It pancaked dozens of Vespa into the floor and instantly converted them to crunchy paste. There was no visual marker for the edge of the effect; more and more Vespa crossed the invisible threshold and were instantly killed.
The Gravity Anvil spell lasted for as many seconds as the caster's Intelligence score. Calliope had, reluctantly, loaned Drew her Mutable Ring, giving him an extra 10 Intelligence and therefore raising the duration of the Anvil to 18 seconds in combination with Drew's other gear. He wasted two of those precious seconds staring in amazement at the continuous river of Vespa crashing into the boundary and being slurried. He only snapped out of it at Jada's demand to, "Move it, Romeo!"
The two of them forced the Vespa corpse off of themselves and ran for the junction where the others were still fighting. A trio of plastic tubs dropped out of Drew's inventory, their lids remaining behind so that the smoke within boiled out.
"Smoke Form," Drew said as he ran.
Behind them, the smoke coalesced into two vaguely humanoid shapes, standing in the center of the Gravity Anvil's effect. The color of the smoke shifted, becoming closer to Drew's and Jada's respective flesh tones. The smoke still billowed and swirled within the confines that Drew had laid down for it; it wouldn't even momentarily have fooled anyone with two neurons to rub together. The Vespa, fortunately, did not (metaphorically) have two neurons. They shrieked at the sight of the 'enemy' and charged forward, getting splattered the instant they crossed into the area affected by the spell.
Jada has left Team Trick Shot!
"Hate to see you leave, gorgeous," Drew gasped. Members of the caster's party were able to move freely in the midst of the Gravity Anvil, and thus it had been necessary for Jada to change affiliation briefly.
"Hey, congrats for not saying 'but I love to watch you go'," Jada laughed. "Rend!" She placed her hands together and then yanked them violently apart. Ahead, one of the flying Vespa had its head torn off.
"I would never say such a thing!" Drew said. "Marina! Set!" he shouted over to where Team Valkyrie was fighting.
Marina slung her bow around her neck just long enough to spin her arms in opposite circles, bring her hands together as though cradling a softball, and then thrust both palms forward, all the while shouting: "Star Power: Infernal Breakthrough!"
In the time it had taken Drew and Jada to run to the junction, Teams Trick Shot and Valkyrie had killed what was left of the original batch of Vespa and the majority of the new batch. The last handful were hovering in the center of the junction while firing acid blobs at whichever human caught their faceted eyes, all while flitting back and forth in avoidance of missile weapons. When Marina thrust her hands forward, the area around the surviving bugs was suddenly filled with sparks and bangs and smoke as her spell (which was in fact the prosaically-named Fireworks) triggered.
"Smoke Form!" Drew said, swirling his hands as though molding the smoke like clay. It was completely unnecessary; the smoke responded to his thought, but the hand gestures were dramatic and presumably audience-pleasing.
The smoke from the Star Power: Infernal Breakthrough (née Fireworks) spell was thick and heavy. Drew packed it into dense groups, wrapping some of it around Vespan eyes and ramming the rest up against four of the Vespas' abdomens, where lived the tracheae that, against all principles of reason or biology, served them in place of lungs. Within seconds the bugs staggered in the air, their legs twitching as they did the equivalent of gasping for air, and then they hit the ground.
"Fire in the hole!" Taylor shouted. Jada and Drew dove for cover behind one of the carefully-prepared piles of Vespa corpses as two bags of fire gel arced into the air.
WHUMP!
The Detonator Caps triggered and piles of charcoal that had previously been Vespa crumbled to the ground.
"Fall back!" Tina called. "Everybody out! Taylor, I've got the washer, you get the missiles!"
"Gold Grabber!" Taylor cried, holding up one hand.
Dungeon coins, as it turned out, were almost pure gold with a few traces of something or other that kept it from being so soft it would scratch in the course of normal commerce. They were easy enough to melt in a propane-powered crucible.
"How the hell do you have a crucible?" Lois had demanded.
"Doesn't everyone?" Taylor asked, eyes innocently wide.
Once melted, daggers and arrows could be carefully dipped in the melted metal in order to give them a thin coating that Taylor's spell could latch onto.
Twenty arrows and seven daggers tore free of the corpses they had been embedded in and zipped across the room, hitting Taylor's upraised hand and stopping dead before falling into the plastic trash bin he had positioned there for the purpose. Once he had everything, he threw the bin into inventory and ran.
o-o-o-o
There were three more junctions that Team Valkyrie had prepared. At each junction they repeated what had come before; let a block of Vespa through while stalling the main body of the insect army for a few seconds, kill the vanguard, repeat, fall back.
Everyone in the group had plenty to contribute. Drew's Gravity Anvil had likely killed a couple hundred of the bugs. Lois's Firenado spell did for fifty more. The refilled pressure washer, still functional although much the worse for wear after its near-miss encounter with the firenado, took out easily a hundred before running dry. Calliope's Feathers Fall spell, previously regarded as useless, turned out to be anything but. It formed a cloud of feathers thick enough to block sight and apparently uncomfortable enough that the Vespa preferred to wait a few seconds for the feathers to stop falling instead of passing through it. It slowed the mobs' advance enough to let the crawlers manage.
Blue-ribbon best in show, however, went to the fine and completely non-magical art of chemistry.
The teams retreated from the first junction into a low-ceilinged hallway leading to the second pre-prepared junction. Halfway down the hall, Taylor dumped a bucket of bleach into a bucket of ammonia, then left a torch and a bag of fire gel on the floor. The oxygen fountaining out of the chemical reaction hit the torch and exploded, spreading the fire gel everywhere and feeding its flames into something so intense that Taylor needed to use Heal three times to get the blisters off his back after not running quite fast enough. The Heal spell did not regrow crisped hair, so he ended up with the anti-mullet: long-ish in the front, missing in the back.
The second junction that Team Valkyrie had prepared was significantly smaller and lower-ceilinged than the first. Once again, there was only one entrance and one exit. Tina waited at the exit while everyone else continued on to the third junction. Taylor dropped a half-full bin in the center of the room and kept going without slowing down. The moment he was through the exit, Tina dropped a pre-prepared barricade and Taylor helped her duct-tape some plastic sheeting across it to produce an approximately airtight seal. The moment that was done, the two of them fled.
The bin that Taylor had left behind contained his remaining stock of bleach and ammonia, several gallons of each. By the time the Vespa army arrived, the junction was filled with enough chloramine gas to kill scores before one of them managed to tear the barricade aside and resume the chase.
The third and final junction was small, an oblique encounter between only two hallways, and adjacent to a critical location. Both teams had posted up at the entrance, weapons ready, everyone looking anxious until their leaders arrived.
"Good to see you guys," Jada said. "Romeo here has been regaling me with plans for the dates he'd like to take me on."
Taylor: You okay, Drew?
Drew: Yeah, pretty much. Actually, let's just go with 'yeah'. It's been fun flirting when I know that it's just for fun and not going anywhere, plus I even get prompts from the lady in question. Although I still can't believe she told me to start off with 'so, do you wanna fuck or should I apologize?'
"Good to be seen," Taylor panted, leaning over with his hands on his thighs as he struggled to catch his breath. "As many as we've killed, they still reach all the way to the end of my minimap. Calliope, you way overdid it."
Taylor: She what now?
Drew: She said it was a line she'd read somewhere and thought it was hilarious. She's always hoped that some guy would have the stones to use it for real.
"Taunting, it is my art," Calliope said primly. "You wouldn't expect Picasso to leave a painting half-finished, would you?"
Taylor: ...That is a very odd woman that you are fake-romancing.
Drew: I know, right? Cute, too. Glad she's the one who volunteered to be fake-romanced.
"Nah," Lois said, spinning her warhammer around its long axis and then balancing it with the handle on her palm. "You did good, honey. Haven't had this much fun since we got here."
"I say we go with Sunny Butch right from the jump," Taylor said.
Tina grimaced. "I still say that's a bad name. You do know how the movie ends, right? Butch and Sundance get riddled with bullets."
"Hey!" Calliope said. "Spoilers! I haven't seen it."
"It's from 1969," Tina said. "That's probably before your
mother was born. Statute of limitations on spoilers is up."
"Whatever we call it, I say it's the plan," Taylor said. "Objections?" He looked around at the two gathered teams. Some looks were exchanged, but no objections were raised.
"Cool," he said. "Let's get into the exit. We'll give them one last volley, then the kiss off."
"If we're going with plan Sunny Butch then I want to try the Ginsu Glide before the kiss off," Calliope said. She held out her hand to Drew. "Gimme my ring back, Uncle Drew. I need the mana points."
Taylor rubbed his eyes. He absolutely hated everything about the Ginsu Glide play. Not just the ridiculous name that Calliope insisted on, not just the way it left Calliope and someone else in an exposed position for far too long, not just the fact that it meant she was separated from the rest of the group and therefore they couldn't retreat without abandoning her, not just the fact that if she got the timing even slightly wrong then both she and her assistant would probably die. He hated every aspect of it. Still, he could tell that arguing with Calliope wasn't going to work; she had that set to her jaw that said she wasn't going to be convinced. Besides, there was no time to argue; he could already hear the buzzing of onrushing Vespa. Apparently the chloramine had dispersed or been absorbed enough that it was no longer a barrier and thus the enemy army was advancing again.
Of course, the thing he really hated was that Calliope's stupid plan would probably be extremely effective and that this was the perfect situation for it.
"Fine," he said. "I'll be the porter. Leo, grab your board and let's get into position. Moose, Drew, go wait by the exit. Ladies, could you spread this stuff around?" He started dropping things out of his inventory. "Uh, be careful with that one. Probably best to keep it in inventory while you're moving it."
Min, who had been in the process of picking up the indicated plastic tub, froze. She looked at Taylor for a second, then lifted the container very carefully and slipped it into her inventory.
"Center of the room would be good for that one," Taylor suggested. Min nodded and moved off.
o-o-o-o
Taylor watched his minimap nervously. The Vespa were clearly in a rage; they were coming down the hall faster than ever and they were still in numbers high enough that their entire section of the map was red.
"Go," Calliope said, raising her skateboard with both hands.
Taylor straightened up, taking a firm grip on Calliope's legs so that she didn't fall off of his shoulders as he moved. He took a breath and started jogging.
Two steps later, he lurched to the side as Calliope was suddenly pulled to his right. He caught his balance, tightened his grip on her legs, and moved quickly across the mouth of the hallway which the Vespa were three seconds away from.
"Bustin' shins / for the win! / for your sins / gonna bust those shins!" Calliope chanted as Taylor jogged.
He completed the pass across the hallway and turned to run towards where the rest of the teams waited behind a trio of steel barricades at the far end of the room.
"You do not...have a career...in rap!" he panted.
She laughed and wiggled until he let her slip down off his shoulders and onto her board.
"Grab on," she said, stretching one hand out to him. He did, holding wrist-and-wrist for security. She tilted gravity for herself, accelerating and helping pull him along.
They were halfway to the barricades when the murder wasps came in sight. Their buzzing rose to a crescendo and they lunged down the last bit of corridor and into the junction, clearly intending to get inside, rip the heads off their mammal tormentors, and drink deep from said tormentors' life fluids as though enjoying a nice Chianti and some fava beans.
This was when the Vespa learned the nature of Calliope's 'Ginsu Glide' tactic.
The Shin Breaker spell creates a low wall of force, 30 centimeters high, 1 centimeter wide, and, given Calliope's current stats, 540 centimeters long. The wall was always in contact with the ground and always vertical, which greatly reduced its utility.
Unless, of course, you had the ability to shift gravity around and could thus freely redefine 'down' and, by implication, 'the ground' and 'vertical'.
While Taylor carried her past the mouth of the hallway, Calliope had turned gravity so that her version of 'down' was towards the wall. She had laid down six separate Shin Breakers across the mouth of the tunnel, placing them like vertical and invisible prison bars.
The leading pair of Vespa slammed into the Shin Breaker bars and had their heads caved in. The Vespa in the second rank, not knowing what had happened and flying too close to stop, slammed into the leading Vespa and forced them forward, driving the bars deeper into them. The Vespa in the third rank slammed into the ones in the second rank, forcing them forward...
Given the mass and speed of the Vespa, the Shin Breaker spells worked like dull knives. Slices of Vespa came through the bars along with a geyser of bug guts and blood-analog. The destruction continued, rank after rank of Vespa being crushed and then forced through the bars, until the spell timed out, 15 seconds after casting.
Several dozen Vespa died, yet there were still hundreds behind them—some that Calliope had attracted but far more than had been drawn in by the sounds of combat and the pheromone stench of dead Vespa. Those survivors burst into the junction, determined to finally have their vengeance—
—and discovered that there was a reason the humans had posted up here: this junction contained a stairway to the third floor.
"Tricked you, motherfuckers!" Taylor shouted, clicking the remote trigger and then hurling it so that it bounced off the head of the closest Vespa. While it was still in midair, he turned and ran down the stairs.
Just as he touched the door to the third floor and felt himself vanish into the sparkles of teleportation, the trigger activated and every scrap of explosive and incendiary substance he owned went up. The room above, the hallway, and the previous junction instantly turned into a hellish inferno; hundreds of Vespa were wiped away by the hand of a wrathful fire god, dying so fast that they didn't even have time to scream.
