Inside the tunnel, we can see that this is more of a man-made corridor than a cave–the walls and floors are carved stone. This will become somewhat relevant shortly. For now, Lilly decides they are rested enough to go on and takes off into the dark. Reed and Samus follow her, panting and gasping. I have no idea why, as they’ve barely gone five yards. As for the passage itself, it marks a great departure from most areas of its type as it has literally no twists and turns. It’s a straight shot from one end to the other. From the I Can Never Be Happy Department, this makes it pretty boring. The monsters in here include the Soul Slug, which resembles an uncreative kid’s Spore creation; the Dokugumo, which is Japanese for “palette-swapped spider” (no emails on its real meaning, please); and a humanoid called “TerroKnght.” I would assume that they had to fit “Terror Knight” into a limited number of character spaces, if this were 1988 and Suikoden III were an NES game.

We segue into a cutscene as the party nears the midpoint of the corridor, where, according to the minimap, there is an entryway to another tunnel, running perpendicular to this one to the north. Sarge points out that this part of the tunnel seems wider, and Hugo walks up to investigate. From behind the convenient large rocks all over the floor, he notices a group of four people facing the door to the other tunnel. “Someone else is here!” Hugo practically screams to his friends, and they all come to hide behind the same rock with him, making a ton of noise with their shuffling gait and not at all troubling to keep their voices down. I should also point out that no rock in here is big enough to hide Fubie, but he ducks down with them anyway. Hell, Lilly is actually in plain sight, in between Hugo’s rock and Sarge’s rock. And she’s facing the wrong way, with her butt sticking out toward these strangers. Our heroes are not so great at this hiding thing.

So, on with the eavesdropping. A man labeled only as “Masked Man,” standing directly in front of the large double doors, says, “So, the protection cannot be overcome…” He is achingly familiar, with his pretty green robes and pretty dark blond hair, and of course I know who he is, but let’s just play stupid for a while so I can call him The Mask. If I add my own dated pop culture references, I can pretend I’m recapping Lunar. The woman to his left says that this is thanks to the “Cyndar’s” ancient techniques, which is her way of saying the door is, like, magic. Also, it should be “Sindar” and the rest of the series is consistent with that spelling, so I will be as well. The woman, by the by, is Sarah, and her moonbeam-white presence explains the improved lighting in the tunnel. The other two rounding out the group are the men we briefly met with Sarah, the Man in Black and the Man in Coat. I have to say, “Man in Coat” is not doing it for me. After getting a gander at his face, I’ve decided he can be Man with Eyebrows. Better. Anyway, Man in Black is all for strapping some C4 to the door and taking their chances. Because he’s a fan of death and destruction. We’ll never hear about it again, I’m sure.

Behind their rocks, or as behind their rocks as they’re bothering to be, Sarge and Hugo deliberate. Hugo decides they look less than friendly, and at the same time Lilly snits, “Can’t you see they’re evil!” From Reed’s reaction, we can tell that she’s not concerned with using her indoor voice, and it’s a miracle that they haven’t been noticed yet. Duckman wants to play devil’s advocate for no reason and asks why she thinks they’re so evil. Of course, Lilly is skilled in the art of RPG clichés and realizes that wearing a mask and dressing all in black are general signs of evil disposition. Though she adds that the Man in Black’s face is “untrustworthy.” Given that his back is to her, I’m not sure where she’s getting that. But it’s not like she’s wrong.

Back to the Four Horsemen. Man with Eyebrows feels the need to temper MiB’s love of wanton destruction and says that they are sufficiently busy to leave this door alone for now and come back to it later if they get any better ideas. MiB basically ignores him. “This shouldn’t be taking so long,” he mutters. “Let’s just take what we need and go.” Yeah, except the door won’t fucking open, genius. Eyebrows says all they would get from acting hastily is chaos, to which MiB responds, “Chaos would suit me just fine.” Get it? Do you get it yet? God. Meanwhile, Sarah starts at the obscene amount of noise our heroes are making, but says it’s nothing when The Mask asks what’s bothering her.

Lilly says to Hugo, “That was close. We were almost discovered.” Sarge, taking the words out of my mouth, snaps back, “Might that be because you keep yapping?!” Rather than seeing the upside to shutting the fuck up for a second, Lilly gets all finger-snapping, “Oh no you di’n’t” on the duck. This is going really well.

Samus reasonably points out that they can’t hide forever and had better decide what to do before they get discovered anyway. This leaves Hugo two choices: “Let’s talk to them” or “Hmm, what’s the best way…” I don’t even know what that second one means, and I decide it’s more in character for Hugo to be an idiot and directly approach them. So he and Sarge walk over to say hi while Lilly continues to shriek about evil and red eyes and black clothing and so on. When she realizes they’re ignoring her, she takes off after them so she can continue her nagging.

Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen are still staring at the door and being emo about its refusal to open. This is so exciting. Sarah is again startled by some noise, but this time it’s our heroes standing behind them, Lilly leering angrily, Hugo smiling vacantly. Hugo and Sarge ask them innocently enough where they’re from and what they’re doing, while Eyebrows’s expression, like mine, plainly says “You have got to be kidding with this.”

Eyebrows can tell they’re not “simple travelers” themselves, and correctly identifies Lilly as Gustav’s daughter, which of course gets her hackles up. And Eyebrows would just love to stick around and listen to her scream at him for knowing her name, but he and his cohorts have other doors to examine. Sarah opens a portal in the floor and she, the Mask, and Eyebrows step into it. But the Man in Black tells the others, “I’d like to add another element of style to our exit. It won’t take but a moment.” Could he make kicking Hugo’s ass sound any gayer? I think not. The other three vanish, leaving MiB to make our heroes wet their pants in fear. Cue boss music!

MiB just pulled down his pants.

Well, if it isn’t my favorite type of boss fight, the one you can’t actually win. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking this group is loaded on the offensive side of the ball or anything, but at the least Hugo and Fubie are pretty good and they can’t really hit MiB at all. So the only point of interest here is watching MiB smoke this party like a rack of ribs. Just to spice it up, I use Samus, Reed, and Lilly’s unite for the first time. I hope this doesn’t knock you out of your chair in surprise, but it involves Reed and Samus charging at the enemy and flailing away while Lilly watches from the back, filing her nails, before charging in herself at the last minute for a couple of slashes with her own sword and taking all the credit for any damage done.

At the end, Lilly and Sarge both die at MiB’s feet, one on top of the other. Do I find this irrationally amusing? Why yes, I do.

Afterward, MiB remarks that they weren’t even a challenge. I can’t really add to that. Hugo wakes up from his ass-kicking to glare daggers at MiB, who is all too willing to dispatch him once and for all. But Sarah appears from a portal in the floor to ruin his fun, as the others have been waiting on him to stare forlornly at their next locked door. The two of them disappear, leaving me to wonder if Hugo could use the portal and follow them. Knowing him, he’d probably end up in a corn field.

After a Black Screen of Smelling Salts, Hugo puts on his Captain Obvious hat and lets us all know that “They…were too strong for us.” Come on, Hugo, one of them was too strong for all of you. That’s pretty sad. Lilly rails on about evil some more, making everyone wish they’d just carried her unconscious to the Great Hollow. Sarge looks at the door, wondering what they wanted here. We won’t find that out for a while, and I’m pretty sure by the time we do, Sarge won’t be invited to join me in adventuring anymore. So he’ll just have to wonder forever.

Sarge has to tell Hugo how to do everything.

So long as I remember to heal everybody up from their one remaining hit point, this trip out of the secret passage should be uneventful. And look at that! I did! I’m so proud of myself. Toward the end of the tunnel, Sarge thinks they should be close to the Lizard Clan, like that wasn’t the entire point of coming this way. Lilly is excited for a bath and “a nice bed” when they get there, and I’m sure she won’t be remotely disappointed.

Outside, the group only has a moment to relish the sun and fresh air before they hear the sounds of swordplay. Hugo freaks out that they are again too late to stop the Zexens shedding Grasslander blood, and the party runs off to help. From a ridge, they can see the lizards and Zexens having at each other, and Hugo can choose to join in or wait. He chooses to watch, since this loop of fighting is so very fascinating. After a moment, we cut to Chris and her crew. Chris reminds her men, looking at Borus the whole time, that they’re not there to go insane and exterminate all of lizardkind, but to “show them the dignity of Zexen.” Whatever, Chris. There’s a guy behind you with a bowl cut. You have no dignity. Lucia cuts in from offscreen to basically echo the bowl cut sentiment. Or she’s mad about her village being burned down. Same difference.

Somewhere, Chris is grinding her teeth.

Hugo watches as his own clansmen join the fray as well. “It looks like the White Maiden of the Knights wants bloodshed,” Lucia says. Oh, I can feel the icy glaring from here. Bubba’s about to go postal at this slight on his leader, but Chris holds him off. She tries to be diplomatic, saying she hadn’t expected to see Lucia again after the “treaty negotiations,” like there was no village-burning incident between then and now. Lucia and Chris exchange some lesbian banter for a moment (it involves pretty faces and tongues), but Lucia’s really too angry to keep it up and lapses back into yelling at Chris for killing her villagers. Chris has no response to this, because she knows it was a shitty thing to do, but her men get all riled up over it like Lucia has no point at all. Of course, the new Lizard Clan chief, Well-Endowed Dupa, also wants vengeance for his dead predecessor, and that one really isn’t on Chris at all, so confusion ensues. Our heroes are about to head in there and help, mostly because they can’t get into the Great Hollow without fighting their way there, but Fubie stops them with a warning screech, as both sides are withdrawing. Hugo thinks that the fighting stopped because of Fubie’s screech, which seems ridiculous but no other explanation is provided. So…go Fubie?