More and more bosses appeared at the entrance.

When they saw the devastation inside the supermarket, despair spread across their faces.

The crow boss, its body covered in over a hundred eyes, completely lost it.

"Where's my shaved ice? Is that gone too?"

That was when someone finally noticed me.

"Oh my god! Ms. Thrushwood is tied up! It has to be these damn players!"

"Wasting food and kidnapping the shopkeeper? This is unforgivable! I'm killing all of them!" one of them chimed in.

"Don't fight me for it! Do you have any idea how many years I've waited for this store to reopen?"

The bosses cursed at each other and somehow even started arguing over who would get the kills.

Meanwhile, the players around me were scared stiff.

Normally, they would run into maybe one boss a month, and even then, there were level restrictions.

An S-rank boss alone could wipe out a 500-person team without breaking a sweat. Yet now, there were this many SSS-rank bosses gathered in one place.

Just standing there was enough to make the players' sanity plummet.

Gavin barely held himself together and threatened me with his dagger.

"Hurry! Save us!"

I shot him a glance, stood up, and addressed the bosses.

"Everyone, calm down for a second. Have you forgotten? This supermarket is governed by rules. As long as we're inside, NPCs are not allowed to kill."

Otherwise, they would be punished by the system.

The bosses fell silent for a beat.

The next second, the vengeful spirit let out a furious scream. "I don't care! I'm killing them today!"

The other bosses hurried to grab her and talk her down.

"Hey, hey, easy now. Nobody's got it easy. If not for yourself, think about the other NPCs under you. If you get suspended, they lose their jobs too."

The crow plucked an eyeball off its own body and handed it over.

"I've got plenty. Have one to calm down."

Seeing this, Gavin exchanged looks with the other players and quietly let out a breath of relief.

If the supermarket had restrictions, then all they had to do was not leave.

Players had time limits when logged in.

As long as they could hold out another thirty minutes, they would be forced to log off.

By the time they logged back in, these bosses would definitely be gone.

And this was only an A-rank instance.

Once these overpowered bosses were gone, if they tried hard enough, escaping should not be a problem.

They started using whatever items they had to stabilize their sanity.

As long as they did not die, they could just heal their physical injuries.

But if their sanity dropped to zero, their real-world brains would suffer damage, leaving them broken, deranged, or even worse.

The bosses kept arguing, unwilling to let the players slip away unpunished.

But none of them dared risk their lives by breaking the rules.

Suddenly, the crow pointed at the figurines in the players' hands.

"Wait, those aren't Pop Forge's newest mystery boxes, are they?" the crow asked.

"Looks like it," one of the bosses replied.

"That's great. They even looted the mystery boxes. Then we don't need to worry. When she arrives, every last one of these players is dead."

The players had no idea what was going on.

They only knew that after the bosses glanced at the figurines in their hands, the arguing stopped.

Even the blood-heavy stench in the air seemed to fade.

Gavin was ecstatic.

So the mystery boxes really did work!

But a few minutes later, the players' Anomaly Detector exploded.

They froze in shock.

"The detector caps out at SSSS-rank," one of them muttered.

"Which means, there's a boss above SSSS-rank approaching," someone added.