This was one hell of a raid! Just getting to the main fight was a test for his guild.

One they had already failed at twice!

Brannigan had called a recent break to let the healers administer first aid and mend some wounds.

Then some additional time was needed to let the clerics get some of their mana back.

Even with a snack of mana imbued bacon, potions, and a bard singing it took some time.

The path to the raid area was wearing them down, bit by bit.

The first part was all survival and dealing with trash mobs on the way to the big fight at the end.

The area was infested with stone-lurkers, psycho-shrooms, huge carnivorous moles, giant vampire bats, and poisonous centipedes of unusual size.

The local denizens were introducing themselves to the raid one by one.

First had been the discovery that the glowing purple mushrooms that shed a little light in the caves shouldn't be picked.

TerryToony had thought that they would make great torches.

The paladin had picked two of them, held them up high, and walked around the raid shouting, "May the Holy Light of the Purple Mushroom bless you all." The colorful fungus did shed good light when he held them up, but they also started shedding glowing purple spores that floated down and outlined Terry and anyone nearby in soft purple light.

One of the clerics had laughed at him and joined in.

"I too will become a devotee to the Holy Purple Mushroom!" After that, everyone had to pick them.

The air was swirling with spores, and everyone in the raid was glowing in the dark.

Any predator nearby was attracted to the easy to spot prey.

Then things got worse.

Some idiot joked about them being snowflakes and held out her tongue to catch them.

It had been Tequila-Jane of course.

Her character was a Sword Witch wielding a Chaos Blade.

Her choices for a class and weapon reflected her personality.

Jane was not the most stable of people to start with.

Fun to have around though.

After a mouthful of psycho-shroom she started really glowing and proclaimed she was not only blessed by the Fungus God, but had gained 10 core skill points for eating the purple fungus.

She ran around laughing and singing, proclaiming herself to be the incarnation of Coyote-Bob, God of chaos.

Half the raid immediately tried to catch the flakes on their tongues, or eat the mushrooms.

They'd assume Jane's antics were just part of being Jane.

But the mushrooms turned out to be highly psycho active.

Half the raid went crazy, running off into the dark, where the waiting predators found them to be both tasty and easy to find.

Other players began fighting with each other while claiming that goblins were attacking.

Four of the wizards stood in the middle of the chaos arguing with each other over which anime character was the most powerful and whether the Hulk could beat Superman.

Twenty-three people died, and they decided to put off the raid until the next day.

The core skill points were totally a figment of Jane's imagination.

Coyote-Bob never showed up.

Psycho-shrooms were avoided after that, partly because of the horrifying hangover they gave the next day.

Brannigan saw that Tequila-Jane had a small pouch on her belt with a slight purple glow.

She was sneaking pinches of mushroom every now and then, and chewing them down.

But at least she was behaving mostly normal, so he let it slide.

"Mostly Normal" was pretty mild for Tequila-Jane.The next day, they did better.

With a lot of the trash mobs killed the day before, the raid made it to the same spot where the glowing fungus fiasco had occurred, now devoid of mushrooms.

They were just in time to be attacked by two huge mole creatures.

Normally the moles avoided the area because of the psycho-shrooms, but with the glowing fungus missing, they were expanding their hunting territory.

One dug out of the wall from each side, springing an ambush.

That fight hadn't gone too badly.

This group at least knew how to kill things.

Fighters ran to engage each of the moles, and the clerics backed them up with heals.

There was a bit of confusion, but the moles were both killed after a few minutes.

The creatures had a huge amount of health and turned out to be low level bosses.

Congratulations! Your raid has fought and killed two named bosses: Olaf and Iggy MolinskyFor slaying the Molinsky brothers, each member of the raid has earned 200 experience and 2 Core Skill points.Your reputation with the Moletariat would go down if you weren't already at the bottom.

Those moles hate everybody.