Okay, obviously we all—alright, this isn't getting us anywhere. Let's just wipe this one away, how about. Forget it ever happened.

Like we were  never       even                      here                                           at                                                       all. . . .

"Oh, fuck! This is the best peanut brittle I've ever had in my life! Hillary, you have to try this! Oh, I just can't stop eating!" he yells, clutching his sides and moaning like it was the best orgasm of his life. The sound exits his mouth, but it echoes, louder, then louder still, appearing at last to come for another part of the brittle-patch, maybe 200 meters dungeon-east of them. And suddenly there's a cacophony of movement toward that direction, thundering away from the victims and towards the voice.

Looks like it was way more than one lone pig, after all.

"Not what I expected. But—should buy us time?" Misha says quietly. "Move fast, no noise, yeah?"

The victims nod, mutely.  The eater is terrified, the abstainer just looks - focused.  Distilled.  Like everything but get the fuck out has been carefully carved away until nothing is left but get the fuck out.

Okay.  That just happened.  It's probably fine.

...

Think about it later.  "Okay, uh.  Next vic is over by the sugar mountain.  Cover me for a sec, I'll check the map."  Once covered, he's looking at the map.  "Yep, we still have eyes on 'em.  Two hundred meters that way, a little ways up the mountain.  We should be able to see them once we're out of the forest?"

...okay then.

"Right, let's get moving before those pigs come back..."

Yep.  Great.  Cool.  Excellent.  Fantastic.  Let's just.  quietly walk out.  The sugar mountain is a little ways north, and they can loop northwest.  Tim gestures towards Fiona - watch our six - and braces himself for a moment, offering Misha his hand.  Will Misha accept, and if so, how's his backlash looking?

Uh, yeah? Yeah, he’ll accept? Obviously? He’s fine, frankly, just a little zing. He can feel his shirt on his back and look in people’s eyes. He is used to carrying around so much worse. But a real person—confirmed real previously!—was offering to guide him, so why the hell wouldn’t he? Is this another one of those Western things, no guiding without consulting a lawyer or whatever? He considers making the joke, but Xa—no, Ha, with a sigh, get it right—Ha Si-Yeon-sunbae isn’t here to appreciate it. So instead he takes the hand and grins mischievously. “You don’t need worry over me, Shirtless. I take on way worse than this back home.”

But if you're holding my hand and looking ahead, I don't have to justify asking Graviton to watch our back instead of you.  "Just a good habit to be in.  Might need you fresh for the boss, later.  And it lets me keep an eye on our little crew."  Sure enough, Aumento's net-neutral on backlash, but it's notably being guided away. 

Yeah she's keeping an eye out behind them. 

"No reason not to do it, if you've got somebody compatible right there. Until Aumento needs his hands free again."

"Exactly.  I'd be doing it for Graviton if she needed it."  And then I'd have to decide how to trust this guy to watch our six.  If it was just me, that'd be one thing...but the civvies...

If he's checking, Tim's desire right now is for safety for their little group.  Everything else is downstream of that.

Already on it, boopsie. Have we not established as much? We could do more, if it would help….

The Dungeon Ruckus subsides after a few minutes.  It's not long before Our Heroes and Our Dungeon Abduction Victims have located the next abductee.  This one's picking his way up the mountain - they're perhaps seventy meters away.  You'll have to raise your voice to get their attention, or get quite a bit closer.

Well they were trying to be quiet so, they should probably get closer first. She will say as much.

"Yeah.  No point scaring off the horde of pigs and then calling 'em all for dinner."  He pauses a moment, then addresses the vics.  "Uh, not that it'd happen.  Graviton here could solo the whole lot of them, she did it earlier."

The nervous candy-eater has objections to this strategy.  "So why didn't you just kill them all, they could come back for us later!"

"Conserving backlash. We still have more people to rescue and a boss to fight."

"Don't you have to kill every monster in a dungeon, anyway?  Aren't they going to come after you during the boss fight?"

"Might be we end up fighting them later, but it's not always necessary to fight every monster in a dungeon. The only strictly necessary things are to get the victims out and secure and destroy the core."

There's probably another law about saying actually, only the core is really necessary, so you should pipe down before we decide you're compromising the mission, idiot. Especially when they deserve it. The law serves the jackasses and never the plow-horse, as his father had said after getting fired when Misha was eleven. So instead he glares at the complainant witheringly and contemplates violence. (Actual violence always sounds less appealing when he's undergoing active guiding, though, so it's less beating the guy up and more tweaking his nose while saying condescending things.)

Where sweet reason has failed, glaring has succeeded.  Misha, you have successfully intimidated a dungeon abductee into relative silence.

Our Heroes have to pick up the pace a little bit in order to get within talking distance of their next victim, since shouting is off the table.  But it doesn't take that long to get within range.  The Mountaineer Victim turns around, points behind them and screams.

It looks like a winged serpent - white and blue mottled to blend in with the dungeon "sky".  It's swooping down from above, fast - 

Well how does it like 2 Gs? Hopefully that will be enough to at least ground it. It usually is.

It does not.  That's more than enough to send it crashing into the dirt.  It's hissing and crawling towards the group as a whole.

"Another delivery for me, Graviton?"  He's seriously considering whether he can out-rassle a twelve-foot-long flying snakemonster.

"All yours now."