After steadying myself on my feet again, I turned to look at the others who had been standing near the entrance to the boss room all this time.

Each of them held a different expression on their face and reaction to what had just happened.

Knowles remained stoic and impassive, neither upset nor elated. Gunderson's demeanor was extremely tense. Clenched jaw, squeezed and balled up fists, he was clearly not happy with what he saw, and having to have just stood there and watched.

Bobbie seemed somewhat irritated and anxious, whether from my inability to beat this giant, invisible, and seemingly invincible boss, or perhaps it was just because she had to just sit and wait on the sidelines and not get involved herself.

Sheffield and his small squad had their assault rifles drawn and in hand, ready to act at a moment's notice. Sheffield remained inside the boss room with the others, while his other two men were stationed just outside the room and back in the hallway, probably to our backs and covering a possible retreat.

All of them though, save the ones in the hallway, were watching me like a hawk. Each of them, for their own reasons, was waiting to see what I would do or say next.

Would I try to keep fighting?

Would I take another hit and be unable to fight, a real possibility?

Or, as I was planning, would I retreat?

There was really only one option once I learned what this monster was capable of. I had to get out of there as fast and safely as possible, and hope it was unable or unwilling to follow me outside of this room. If it did, that created a whole new set of problems, but also some new opportunities as well.

In either case, I had to get moving out of this room.

I threw up two sets of Chromatic Shields, layered over top of each other, and sprinted for the still-open door that we had come through.

Seeing the action I had chosen, the others hustled out as well, all except Gunderson who seemed to be waiting for me to leave first.

Mid-sprint toward the door I felt thunderous slam against my shields, shattering one, but only hitting the other hard enough to knock me off balance slightly.

To be honest, I was a bit surprised, given how strong this ‘boss’ monster was, it couldn’t even smash through my shields like the forest drake or the alchemical horror I fought before.

That made me think that this boss was actually much closer to my level than those other two were. It would make sense, given that this was a lower-level dungeon, and even if it was a boss monster, it should be closer to the general level of the monsters in the dungeon, right?

Feeling a bit more confident, I put on a burst of speed as I sprinted past Gunderson through the door, and then out into the hall, coming to a heel-screeching halt next to the others waiting there for me.

Gunderson, having followed not even a second right after me, came up beside me and put one of his large hands on my shoulder, thankfully the uninjured one.

“Hey, you okay?” He asked desperately.

Instead of answering I just shook his hand off my shoulder and turned around to look back in the direction we came from.

Waiting in silence, I just stood there catching my breath while keeping a wary eye on the room where the very dangerous monster might come from at any moment.

“Is it going to follow us?” I demanded loudly all of a sudden.

No one spoke for a bit until Bobbie finally broke the silence.

“No, it’s stuck in there unless we're very, very, very unlucky.” She explained tonelessly. “A boss can only leave the boss room of a dungeon if it somehow becomes anomalous, and this dungeon is way too young for something like that to happen."

I looked to Knowles to see how he’d react to Bobbie revealing that little tidbit, and not unsurprisingly he was giving Bobbie a dirty look that she was doing her best to ignore.

“Bobbie, you know that she is supposed to be learning these things on her own. Your role here is only to assist if her life is in danger, and to provide advice on how to better perform her as a supernatural and survive.” Knowles lectured emotionlessly.

“Uh-huh.” Bobbie said with an exaggerated eye roll. “I am helping her perform and helping her survive, just not in the way you want.”

“You know that's not how th-'' Knowles started to say before he was interrupted.

“Shut up.” I told him after having spun around on my heels to look at him.

“Excuse me?” He said with one of his eyebrows raised.

“I said, shut up.” I replied back while glaring icily at Knowles in the process. “I'm tired of this fricking bullcrap Mr. special agent. Seriously, I’m done with it. You want me to constantly fight terrifying monstrosities, despite me never having wanted to. You say that you are all eager and willing to help me whenever and however I need, but what do you do whenever I am in actual danger, literally several feet away from you. You all stand around with your thumbs shoved up your collective buttholes. I don’t mean just the tip, I mean way, way up there. No need to see a doctor this year for your colonoscopy, I’m sure you can all give each other a clean bill of rectal health right here, right now.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The whole hallway was silent for a good long while before, Bobbie was the one to, once again, break the silence.

“Damn right!” She practically shouted before loudly and obnoxiously clapping her hands while smirking tauntingly in Knowles’ face.

“I just-” Gunderson started to say before he too was interrupted.

“Save it. I don’t want to hear an excuse that doesn’t start with I’m sorry and or I was wrong.” I said to him coldly. “Your intentions matter less to me than your actions, and so far, today especially, you have done frick all to keep me safe or make me stronger, all I get is more empty promises.”

Gunderson hung his head at my words, not knowing what to say in return.

“All of you keep your thoughts and feelings to yourselves, unless it is some actual useful piece of information that helps me survive this stupid dungeon I’ve been cursed to deal with.” I yelled at the group of adult men and one adult woman “If you got a problem with that then you can just go back to that stupid overgrown IDPA camp outside. As far as I am concerned, right now, I’m clearing this dungeon alone. The rest of you can do what you want.”

With that, I hustled back down the underground tunnel in the opposite direction of the boss room door and its collection of glowing gem accessories.

Doing my best to put the others out of my mind, I instead tried to focus on the task ahead of me, or technically behind me… whatever.

How do I beat this boss?

Was it really invincible? Maybe.

Should I have retreated in that situation? Definitely.

Was there a better way to prepare before going in? Likely.

Should the other more experienced people nearby who were supposed to be supervising and helping me better at this BS job I’ve been cursed with said something about what I should or shouldn’t have done before walking into that obviously ominous and dangerous room, very much unaware and unprepared for what was inside? Absolutely.

I let out an irritated huff as my thoughts inadvertently drifted back to the others.

Whatever, if they were intent on being useless, then I’ll just treat them as exactly that.

So, I was obviously unprepared for facing that boss. Really it was obvious to me even before I went inside, I just honestly hoped and expected at least one of them to say ‘Hey stop, don’t go in there, it's, like, super dangerous!’, or whatever.

But no, they all seemed intent on letting me go into constant mortal danger, because hey if I die, meh. Some other poor girl or guy will probably end with the job soon enough.

‘Focus Jenni, focus.’ I said to myself mentally while slapping my cheeks roughly to get my mind off of stupid things and stupid people.

Okay, we know going into the boss room when I did was bad. Why?

Well obviously the others knew and that is why Knowles wouldn’t let them say anything to me beforehand.

So it seems likely then that the open door and glowing gems told them something about this boss. Probably that it was a trap for noobs, or at least extra dangerous at the time.

It’s pretty safe to assume than that those gems weren’t just some gaudy decorations the dungeon set up in front of the boss room. I would’ve said they were some kind of indicators for a lock for the door, except for the fact that the door was already wide open when I got there.

So, if were assuming that the door, the gems, and the boss are all connected in some way, then maybe the gems aren't indicators for the door, but for the boss, maybe?

“Hmm.” I muttered to myself while casually popping a slime with a shadow bolt that had tried to sneak up on me from a dark corner I just passed.

Four gems + open door = unbeatable boss

I think that's right, it also felt somewhat familiar, not entirely sure from where. Probably from some game that Scott was talking about, or maybe just from some pulpy fantasy novel I read at some point.

In either case, this seemed like a puzzle I needed to solve before facing that boss again. Since the only thing I’ve seen between the entrance of the dungeon and the entrance to the boss room has been rampaging murderous green slimes, I had to assume the other parts of this puzzle were elsewhere in the dungeon.

Taking the moment to update my hand-drawn map, I decided to turn off at the nearest side passage I had indicated on my map.

Hopefully, this would lead me to further clues on how to clear this stupid dungeon, hopefully before curfew. Good thing we brought tons of supplies.

*************************************************************

More winding and twisted hallway, and more dead over eager poison slimes.

So far, nothing really felt all that different other than the cardinal direction I was now walking in.

The others were still following me, of course. I hadn’t bothered to look back at them to check, mostly out of sheer stubbornness and pride, but I could still hear them walking close by.

I wouldn’t be the one to break the silence, and if they were content to do the same then so be it.

I kept diligently marking my map, and sniping whatever poor, brave slime came into sight. Until, eventually, something new happened.

A red slime was mixed in with a trio of green slimes.

“Huh.” I said while looking at it. “Are you going to be tougher than your friends or something?”

Instead of waiting for a reply, I sent a barrage of shadow bolts at the cluster of slimes, and once the dust cleared and nothing remained, I got my answer.

“Nope.” I said to myself cheerily.

A small snicker from behind that came from Bobbie was quickly suppressed. I only slightly turned my head to listen, but when nothing else was said I continued on in the direction that this latest group of slimes had come from.

As I went deeper and deeper in this direction, more and more red slimes were mixed in with the green, until eventually only red slimes were showing up.

This must be a different section of the dungeon then. Hopefully, it meant there was a clue on how to tackle the boss somewhere nearby.

Sure enough, after not that long of a walk later, the typically narrow corridor opened up into a larger room that had some sort of stone gazebo at the center of it.

And resting inside that stone gazebo was a large, pony-sized red slime. Except this slime was literally on fire right now. And also moving towards me. And also shooting large flaming balls of slime at me.

Frick.