I plowed into the voggletaur that was chewing on the tree, body-checking its jaw hard enough to send it flipping into the others. It's health dropped by maybe 10%.

  Dodging like mad as they snapped at me, I rushed into the mass, sending every attack I had, trying to butcher the beast.

  My best was not good enough. I got it to half before I made a big enough mistake to trigger my auto-dodge, which was stupid. I still didn't know everything the gnolls had, and I'd just lost my best defense. Seconds later, I was flipping clear, springing off of the tops of beasts, once missing my step and having to leaping off a molar, losing nearly half my health to broken toes. The damage didn't matter, but it weakened my barkskin and forced me to cast a heal.

  Maddy: You're alright?

  Lacie: Fine. Here's to hoping they don't notice.

  I wasn't sure how many people knew that the disguise skill let you make fake corpses. It was normally incredibly difficult to do, unless you were one of the races and classes that specialized into it. However, the effectiveness depended on people noticing, not on the exact quality. Lacie had the clever idea that she could make a fake corpse for a tree that people would be much worse at noticing than they would for a human.

  It was inspired by a dumb Naruto gag, where someone would throw a knife and hit a log wearing clothes instead of the person. She had amped it up a lot by using the dying station to mix one of those Phased Weapon Oil vials to make fake blood that would show up as a kill on the mini-map.

  As to Lacie herself, she was several feet underground, in the gap her rootball had made, shielded by a shell of wood and dirt pulled out of her inventory. With her hide skills and Sink Into Shadow to further conceal her, we were hoping that she could stay out of the rest of the fight.

  Of course, things were entirely off the rails with 50 neighborhood bosses charging every which way. I just hoped I'd sold my anger well enough.

  "I thought Jailbait had lost it there," Magnificent Troy said. "That she had the sense to flee is showing that she's a serious crawler, no matter her level."

  "And just look at those movement skills," Kevin added. "She still has a low favorite count. If she weren't about to die, I expect that would be rising."

  I hated the look of Lacie's health bar in the corner of my screen. It was barely into the red, but also barely rising. She insisted that using magic was more dangerous than being low on health, once the ruse was in place, and she was better at figuring out the dungeon's dumb rules. I still hated to see it.

  Meanwhile, I couldn't let the gnolls off. I honestly expected to die to this boss, watching those gnashing teeth beneath me, but I still felt my best shot involved getting rid of the gnolls quickly. My long, slow boss battles had taught me that the bestial monsters didn't adapt very well. Those Gnolls, I knew they were going to adapt to everything.

  As I circled about, the beasts swiftly lost track of me in the fog, but there were so many that I was always getting near others. I dodged past their snapping maws, closing in on the gnolls, or at least where they were before. One Voggletaur was already dead, and beyond it a shield-dome that blocked enough that I couldn't sense through it. There was something still in there, as a series of strikes, five happening at once, came out and took chunks from the health of a second Voggletaur.

  I started sending my blade in, putting my siphon on the shield, speeding its failure. I felt a strange pressure, diving in a panicked moment. A trio of batons swiped through just behind my heel, followed by a wave of force that drained my Jaibait Barrier and knocked three gnolls from the tree.

  I was doing double-double flips between tree-branches, hurling fastballs into the one furthest from the others. There went his shield, the ruptures stacking. He started moving, but I had enough control to aim at the same point, punching a hole through the armor about his neck.

  A rupture began pumping inside his throat, setting him to spasming just as the rest of the gnolls raced in, raising a new shield-dome over them.

  A notification popped up. I didn't read it, but the glimpse I got told me that one had died. I stuttered for an instant, aware that I had just killed someone. He was an alien bounty hunter who murdered people for sport, but it was still killing someone.

  A trio of voggletaurs rushed me, forcing me to focus on the moment. I evaded, then started throwing more attacks at that shield-dome. I did get a few siphons going, then a pair of voggletaurs jumped on it.

  The shield broke, but the whole group of gnolls teleported the short distance to almost where I was—again, the fog was clearly hiding me, they were just good enough to guess my location from my attacks. I sprang back, but another one of those shield-domes appeared. How many of these things did they have?

  It was chaos. The space was maybe twenty-five feet across, but as a dome it was only twelve feet tall at the center, almost no clearance at the edges. I wanted to attack the dome, but it was all I could do to stay alive.

  Five skilled warriors, swinging like mad, and I was sliding between them, ducking into the low section at the edges to use the dome against them, doing desperate skate-maneuvers along the interior of the shield to confuse them, kicking off of air with my double-jump when they were expecting humanly-possible motions.

  "Are you seeing this?" Kevin asked.

  "I am seeing it, and I am shocked," Magnificent Troy replied.

  If the voggletaurs hadn't started swarming, chomping on the shield, I think I would have died.

  Instead, as the shield began to fail, the leader of the gnolls slowed his swings, looking at me. They all were dressed identically, but I could see it in his stance who was in charge. "Fuck me. You've got to have 17 dodge."

  I gave him a cruel smile, and backflipped into the mass of bosses with a parting throw of the blade to set a siphon. I didn't point out that I actually had 16.

  "That can't be possible," Kevin said. "Can it?"

  "It would explain what we're seeing. We'll need to check the books. There must have been a legendary that slipped through the trackers," Magnificent Troy said. "I'm sure we'll be seeing challenges about this soon enough."

  "This late? It's baked in by now."

  My secret was out, but too late for these hunters. I sped away, outpacing the voggletaurs that pursued me to begin skating around the dome, ready to speed up it and dive at the gnolls again.

  The game changed.

  These gnolls were not only coordinated, they were smart. That one had figured out my high dodge just by watching me move. They used some AOE blast to send the voggletaurs flying, then moved on Lacie. They didn't need to see through the ruse to know it was a ruse, not with my poor acting.

  So, they had forced my hand. I sprinted at the bubble and had my suspicions confirmed when it let me keep going in an arc across it, getting overhead of the gnolls.

  I'd figured this maneuver out, and told myself it was too dumb to try, but I also had been banking on Lacie's concealment. Too dumb to try could swiftly become desperately needed. As I went off the surface above them, diving earthward, I tucked tight into a series of twisting flips.

  Below, as they re-entered the reach of my blindsight, I heard a hissing noise. I sucked in a breath before I could reach whatever gas they'd released.

  Twisting, I evaded one swing, coming out of my spins shoulder first, chugging my best potion just as I hit. I didn't have the momentum buff to grant me constitution, so shoulder-checking that guy at over a hundred miles per hour shattered my humuerus and clavicle, compacting my shoulder into my chest.

  Meanwhile, he took almost twice as much base force due to illegal checking, stacked with however much of a damage multiplier I'd gotten with (I estimated) 18 full 360s for flippy shit.

  He folded, his shield flaring, then skidded sideway, driving a furrow into the earth.

  Both better and worse, I didn't lose momentum. I rolled through and came up, checking another gnoll in the gut. That one still had a lot of force, but not the buff from spins. I hadn't thought through the weird interactions of that hit. I had a buff to maintain my speed after the hit, but he had a buff to dampen how far he was tossed.

  That shoulder broke worse than the first, throwing me into the red, while I tore clean through his gut, doing the same to him. I really wished I still had Momentum.

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  At least I had the speed. Hurtling clear, I rolled in the air, arcing over one voggletaur, shrieking in agony as I twisted to get my arm out of the reach of another's swipe, then came down in a roll that, had it not been done on broken shoulders, would have been easy.

  Lacie: Barkskin just went. What's happening?

  Maddy: They went towards you. I checked through their formation. The soothing stream is still going.

  Lacie: Be more careful! You almost died.

  She had almost died, I thought, which was obviously a more important concern. I didn't say that, though. I didn't say anything, as I was occupied with having come up in front of a trio of the very-hungry voggletaurs. With my arms still mending—I only had enough mana to cast heal three times—it was all I could do to backskate away, trying to sense where the gnolls were.

  On the periphery of my blindsight, I could see the gnolls trying to battle the voggletaurs back again. The upsides of Lacie's fog remained, as they were surprised by every approaching voggletaur, and their path towards Lacie was slightly off-angle.

  Impaired or not, they were closing in on her and I still wasn't fully healed.

  Maddy: 11.

  Lacie: Roger.

  My potion cooldown finished, so I drank another and shot back to full health. I had some lingering debuffs I ignored, doing a double-double into a fastball on a line across Lacie's pit. The yelp of a Voggletaur sounded as one rushed into what I thought was an opening.

  Even worse, I could feel the rumble of the rest of the swarm closing behind me. I realized we'd had a lull because the ravenous beasts had stopped to chew on and sqaubble over the dead crawlers. This whole fight was about to get worse.

  Whatever. They were currently behind me. I sprinted straight at the gnolls. A tight double-double-fastball knock-backed a foreleg of a voggletaur in the way, and I came out of my jump rolling on its flat head. I leapt from there, arching my back to clear another pair of snapping jaws, sending a breaking ball ahead to plink around some gnoll shields.

  I came down among the gnolls as they were halfway through Lacie's dense wooden barrier. She'd taken a few hits through it—their shockwaves were also debuffing her with something called Disorient—but being revealed meant she could use magic again, and her health was topped off.

  The four remaining gnolls were at full health and full shields aside from a few seeping siphons. As I arrived, they were forced to focus on me. I slashed like mad, struggling to get any jabs in while evading all their attacks. Fortunately, they were in about the same state, unable to turn any attention to Lacie without leaving me free to start dealing damage.

  Magnificent Troy declared, "It looks like we were all fooled, and Lacie is in fact alive. Jailbait's earlier act was well played, but this time it's for real. You can see the difference in how desperate her moves are."

  That held for several seconds of madness, when Lacie sent 47. I wish she wouldn't take that sort of risk, but once she called the play it wasn't up to me. Keeping steady, dodging carefully, I waited for the shift. The ground beneath us vanished. They'd been attacking it, but technically it was just a lump of wood that she was gripping. It was in her hands, so they couldn't put it in their inventory, but once they lost enough contact to stop pinning it, she could suck it away.

  Risking a potential hit, I kicked off of one and gave another just enough of a check that he landed outside the hole while the other three fell in. I jabbed madly at one, trying to break that shield. The siphons stacked to seventeen before I had to focus on evasion again, turning my fastballs to directing attacks away from Lacie.

  Then the shield broke, and Lacie's arms wrapped about him, covered in dirt. He screamed as a seed in his cheek began sending tendrils through his veins, lancing thorns deeper into him, out through his flesh, his blood running free.

  This wasn't where I wanted to be. We were in tight quarters, where the gnolls had an advantage, and the voggletaurs were coming to make it worse. I wasn't going to be able to protect Lacie for long.

  Maddy: 16.

  This was supposed to be a last resort. We could do it once, and it was going to make the whole rest of the fight more difficult. But I needed her clear.

  She did as I said. The signature feature of Lacie's Berry Witch specialization was "Popping" her buffs. She could end a buff early, giving a very short burst of power, more based on how much time was sliced off of the buff. In this case, she was popping Strength of the Wilds three hours early. For thirty seconds, the +30 strength would become +90 strength. I shoved a gnoll, grabbed Lacie, and hurled her. I couldn't quite trigger it as the breaking ball I was trying for, but I got good range all the same.

  Just as she shot from the pit, the voggletaurs arrived. I sent a heavy fastball down into the face of the gnoll I'd shoved, then another, barely dodging the snapping mouths of voggletaurs reaching down for us. I broke the shield, but he got his physical riot shield in the way, and I had to focus on the voggletaurs again. As one fell into the pit, I used it's bulk to leap clear, having to slide flat under a swing from the topside gnoll that still managed to graze my thigh with enough force to deal almost a third of my health.

  As I scrambled upright, dodging another voggletaur snap, he swung again, and I felt my kaeshi-waza give its first superior trigger of the fight. The look on his hyena face as I gripped the incoming baton, rolled back, and bicycle kicked him over my head into a voggletaur mouth was comical. As it tried to chew through him to me, I skated easily backwards and stabbed his face repeatedly.

  He vanished, and I fell towards the rushing voggletaur. I slapped a hand at its lower teeth, flipping myself back.

  My leap stopped. One of its tiny little arms gripped my knee. Shoot.

  This was going to be it. Or, I had to actually think. As its maw descended, I sent a fastball with the extremely sharp knife and cleanly removed most of the hand gripping my knee.

  I was finally upright again, no gnolls in sight. I rushed to the pit and hailed a trio of fastballs in. My barrier jumped up again as I pulped the gnoll's head. As the swarm of voggletaurs closed, I fled.

  "I believe she's going to do it," Kevin declared.

  "It looks that way, but the big question of Lacie surviving the bosses remains. Only six of these neighborhood bosses are down, and we've seen quite a few major cooldowns get used already. She can't have many tricks left. Even worse for Going Steady, this fog is starting to clear."

  The fog had, indeed, faded enough that I opened my hitai-ate to see better. The gnolls would be able to finally find us, and they were right about Lacie running out of tricks.

  Right then, her health plummeted. My rush turned into a mad dash. I sent a fastball as best I could, then another, but the last two gnolls were still playing smart and steady. One had their shield aimed my way while the other was attacking Lacie.

  She dropped into red and immediately shot back to full. That was her popping the healing stream. She had a few seconds of truly insane healing, and I still had voggletaurs in my way.

  Maddy: Use it

  She activated the nightfall jacket's teleport immediately, as if she'd already been considering it. I'd pre-activated the accept button on my hotbar, starting a spin. I appeared on top of her, spinning, releasing a fastball half an inch into a surprised gnoll's jaw. He bounced only a foot up, but would have been better off going higher. I jabbed at his throat with the extremely sharp knife, his weight coming down and helping damage his shield.

  As the blue barrier vanished, Lacie slipped in for her Invasive Growth. It barely made it from his forearm to his elbow before I sliced deep enough into his throat for his head to flop back. The other gnoll was running in a careful side-scuttle. I hurled a breaking ball at him.

  I wasn't surprised when, panicked, he teleported. That was why it hadn't been a fastball. I shifted the path, tracked into him, and got a siphon going. The throws kept coming, his efforts to evade me useless. His barrier fell, and the big riot-shield did nothing as my blades curved around to hit him from all angles.

  He tried to heal his way out of the ruptures, but it was useless. He tossed some gas cannisters, and I just held my breath. Breathing seemed so minor a skill, but I'd recently determined I could hold my breath for thirty minutes, or about fifteen in combat.

  Soon enough, he was dead as well.

  Lacie had stayed admirably on-task, hurrying away as I finished the final gnoll. She got as far as she could, found a dip in the earth, and dug out some space to lie flat and hide. She still had two minutes until Sink Into Shadow reset, but that just meant I needed to be aggressive enough to maintain the attention of the voggletaurs.

  "There's little doubt how this will end," Magnificent Troy declared.

  "There can't be many gamblers celebrating this result," Kevin replied, "although the winners are going to be having one wild celebration indeed."

  "Are we here for the duration?"

  "Afraid so."

  Magnificent Troy sighed. "Can you imagine a Carl fight going past ten minutes?"

  "That I cannot, Magnificent Troy. That I cannot."

  They were right to be a bit worried about how long this would take. Blood was everywhere, and the voggletaur vampiribarons were lapping it up, staying consistently at full health.

  It could have taken days, but the voggletaurs were easily distracted. If a pool of blood was closer than me, they would stop to lap it up.

  With some care, I could get a few aside and keep the focus on one, bleeding it out while I evaded the others. It was still slow-going, as the space was too crowded and small to truly keep a few apart, and the whole time I had to steer them away from Lacie.

  Fortunately, around three hours in, I got the total down to twenty and the game changed. The crowd was manageable, a single target easy to focus on. With each one down, I got faster and faster, and those last twenty all combined took only another hour.

  For the last five, Lacie came out to get more practice. That involved a lot of my rushing her away and using heavy steel fastballs to slow them down, but she managed to cast six invasive growths and got four kills.

  Lacie: Keep the last alive.

  Maddy: What?

  Lacie: Other hunters could have watched this and decided to camp the dome. I want to loot everything before the barrier disappears.

  I strung it along while she looted.

  "Man, they have some bullshit lock thing so we can't use their gear." There was a note to her voice that left me doubtful, and when I glanced her way I saw a sly look in her eyes. Lacie's favorite game was finding exploits. I wondered what this one was.

  Lacie: Alright.

  Maddy: I'll cue it up for you.

  I got in close, managed to force a kaeshi-waza, and slammed it in front of her, upside down and already at 25%. She cast and we backed off.

  Winner!

  "Thank fuck that's over." Kevin gave Magnificent Troy's shoulder a shake. "Wake up."

  New Achievement! Janet Jackson's Nipple!

  You have been featured during a live special event. Normally, this happens to people with loyal followers, but instead it happened to you. Most of the viewers didn't even know who you were and stopped watching early enough to skip the boring parts, which were basically the whole fight. This is like getting onto the halftime stage at the Super Bowl and then playing a kazoo. Please, just get off the stage.

  Reward: Despite everything encouraging the opposite, this quest reward grants you a Platinum Fan Box. Who is going to pay to vote for you?

  Note: Voting is now enabled on this box's prize. The box will become available in 30 hours, so if you can find another boss, it might be ready when you finish.

  New Achievment! Lonely, So Very Lonely

  You killed a city boss with just Lucille helping for the second damn time. Maybe if you weren't so boring someone else would help out.

  Reward: Fuuuuuuck no.