They were nearing the fourth floor of the dungeon. They had so far fought stone statues, scorpions, cobras, zombies, zombie dogs, and mummies. The first time Jason saw a mummy he had immediately turned around and sprinted away before Selene had yelled to him that it was a level twenty-eight. Then on a dime, Jason had turned and sprinted right toward the mummy sending a punch to its face when he got close.
The mummy on the other hand had other ideas as it wrapped Jason’s fist up in its wrapping and sent him spinning away. Using its wrappings like tentacles it had tried to finish Jason off, but Jason somehow survived the onslaught. The fight had ended quickly after that with an arrow through the mummies neck which sent its head flying and three green spears that had melted the body of the mummy from the inside. That had been the end of the third floor.
“I don’t get it. If this was supposed to be a temple for Taurus-eye over here then why is it formed like a maze?” Jason asked for the umpteenth time. Selene mechanically gave out the same answer she had been giving every time he asked.
“Ask the architects.”
“Well, I can’t really ask them now can I. They’re all level twenty-six or so zombies now. They aren’t exactly fond of talking.” Jason gestured behind them to the dead mummy and three zombies. As they went further down they had been fighting more and more powerful creatures. The stone statues had only been on the first floor. Or at least the intact ones. The statues on the floors below that had already been destroyed by the zombies and mummies for some reason. Whatever reason they had it allowed for the odd scorpion and cobra to appear and live safely in the dungeon as well. As long as they could survive against the undead.
The undead were all above level twenty-four with usually being around twenty-six to twenty-eight. There were none above twenty-eight and only one actual level twenty-eight which was the mummy.
“Well, that’s not my problem.” Selene in her weariness had allowed some of Jason’s influence to stem into her speech patterns. The group of three descended into silence as they went down the staircase. Once they reached the end of the staircase they saw a small room.
The room was square and had two stone benches on either side with an altar in the middle of the room. It was a small altar with it only being the symbol on a pedestal. On the far side of the room, there was a singular door. The door led to a completely empty room with a dog fast asleep in the middle. The dog was jet black and even curled up and asleep it was still as tall as a person.
The main thing that set it apart from other dogs was the fact that it had two heads. Not three like Cerberus and not one like a normal dog it had two.
“Why can’t I see its level and species?” Jason had a passive inspection ability which while annoying also was extremely informative about everything. Selene also stared at the beast activating her own inspection ability while Caleb did the same.
“It must be the boss monster. In the book I have it says that the boss monster can’t be inspected until we walk into the room, but if we can figure out what it is by look then that’s fair.” Selene gave the answer to Jason’s question.
“W-well at least it’s as-asleep until we walk in,” Caleb said as he brought out his bow. Little Cub made his presence known as well by running around in a circle. I’m surprised that just by giving it food for a few days it completely forgot that we were the ones who killed its family although from how quickly it grows it had actually probably only been a part of that family for maybe a day when we arrived. Little Cub was now level thirteen and in the next month everyone expected it to become level twenty-four or higher. Its leveling is completely dependent on the meat it gets which makes sense in a way. Also explains why all the monsters in the forest were all around upper teens or lower twenties. They just weren’t strong enough to hunt and eat anything above those levels.
“That’s actually not true. We were just lucky. Or rather Jason was lucky and we’re with him. The boss doesn’t need to be sleeping. How stupid would that be? The boss being unaware of us until we walk in when we can see it from here.” Jason swallowed his words. Damned video games making me think that was normal.
“S-So at any point it can w-wake up and see us.” Caleb raised his bow. For how brave Caleb’s become he still stutters like a wimp. Might be just a genetic thing. Selene considered it and nodded.
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“Yes.”
“So we should go right now while we have the drop on it.” Jason without even waiting for the retort he knew was coming went through the doorway into the boss room. The other two were forced to follow him.
“Jason if you back up right now we can make a plan still. The fight needs to actually start for the system to lock us in the room with it.” Selene fiercely whispered at Jason. Jason for his part immediately threw a heart at the beast. Which both woke it up and started the fight. “You bastard!” Selene yelled.
Caleb immediately shot three arrows in a second. One normal, one fire, and one corrosive. All at different eyes. The normal one hit and stuck itself into the left eye of the left head. The fire arrow hit an eyelid and was knocked away while the corrosive arrow struck the right eye of the left head. The corrosive itself didn’t seem to do much damage as the eye only slightly started to get watery. Although that could easily have been because of the arrow in the eye and not because it was starting to melt.
The monster now completely awake jolted up with a howl. The left head now completely blind before the fight even began made Jason more confident than ever. Until he saw the level and species.
Level 33 Death Dog
“Oh,” was all Jason could say. Maybe we should’ve planned. It’s an entire nine levels above us. Jason didn’t get any more thoughts before the death dog saw him and pounced towards him maws gaping. Jason felt so much like he was going to die that he saw the fires of hell within the maw of the blind head. No wait, that's an actual fire. SHIIIIIIIIT!!
Jason dove underneath the dog as it pounced towards him and let loose a torrent of flames. The flames weren’t pure flames. From within the flames, one could see skeletal apparitions trying to break out of the flames and into the world. The right head turned to the right where Caleb was and short forth a torrent of darkness. Caleb immediately sprinted and jumped so he wouldn’t get hit. Where Caleb was just seconds earlier the stone was melted.
There’s the reason why the corrosive didn’t work. It’s because it is immune to and uses corrosive itself. Well, fuck that means Selene’s poison won’t do much either. Just as Jason determined that a poison spear shot by Caleb's head and into one of the blind eyes of the Death Dog.
“Selene, that's not gonna do much it has corrosion resistance.”
“Good that means you all will finally stop seeing my spears as acid spears and more like the actual poison spears they are,” Selene yelled back at Jason.
Since a few days ago Caleb and Jason have been seeing her spears as more acidic than poison. After all, they just melted everything they touched and according to her did a set amount of damage over a few seconds. That sounded a lot like acid to them. Selene though insisted that the true poison was the fact that even after the damage over a time ended the liquid would stay in the bloodstream and would weaken the creature gradually. As no creature had ever survived that long Jason and Caleb both thought that Selene was overexaggerating her poison.
“Well frankly if you aren’t joking about the poison then that would be great. This would be the best time for you to weaken a creature.” Jason yelled back as the death dog swiped at him with its claws. Since Jason was supposed to be the main tank he was forced to fight the creature close up while the other two backed away and fired at it from range. Unsealing his Aura Jason simply trusted that his companions weren’t going to get caught up in the radius of the skill. As Jason fought he listened to try and find the death dog's music.
The dog's music was quick and fiery. There were violins playing as fast as they could along with drums banging out a thunderous rhythm with frequent cymbals throughout the song. It was a song about fire and death. A quick and powerful song similar to the death dog itself.
As Jason dodged claw and teeth the dog sent out powerful blasts of either fire or darkness towards the long range attackers when they got too trigger happy. This meant that Caleb and Selene were forced to run around a lot even though that would just waste stamina. Both of them had a decent amount of stamina and Caleb had a good amount of stamina regeneration, but constant running would take its toll on anyone. Especially if you had to aim and launch arrows or magic at the same time.
As Caleb and Selene were slowly weakening they were also pelting the death dog with arrows and poison. The natural defenses of the beast deflected most of the arrows that Caleb shot at it forcing him to use his abilities to a degree he had never had to before. Repeatedly shooting power shots, sky shots, and disengaging shots. This drained him faster than ever and forced him to drink the precious few stamina potions he had.
Selene had an even harder time because she had no movement abilities. She was doing a lot of running and shooting trying to stay at the back of the death dog so it couldn’t attack her easily.
Jason was fighting in melee range by himself. As designated tank his one and only job was to keep the creature's attention and protect the others. While listening to the dog’s music Jason was barely able to dodge its strikes. His body was full of slashes and bruises but as always Jason ignored his own body’s health and went on the offensive.
A few minutes into the fight everyone was starting to slow. Including the death dog. Its hits were no longer coming in faster than Jason could keep up and it didn’t spend much effort trying to attack the two ranged opponents anymore.
“HA! The beast is slowing down.” Caleb said with unusual strength in his voice.
“It must be getting tired,” Jason yelled with excitement in his voice. Selene on the other hand just shook her head.
“It’s my poison.” Both Jason and Caleb still weren’t convinced of that because as far as they had seen it was essentially just acid. “I can tell neither of you believes me, but right now just trust me. You’ll see afterward. JASON WATCH OUT FOR THE FLAMES!” Selene was talking normally, but at the end shouted at the top of her lungs. She shot a spear of poison towards the dog’s blind head in an attempt to prevent it from actually hitting Jason with its breath.
Jason turned from the right head which he was dealing with and saw that the left head had somehow gotten right next to his head. He saw the flames with the encaged skeletons in its mouth. He heard it too. The cymbals. They weren’t there yet, but he recognized this part of the music. It had been repeated a few times and he knew exactly what came next. He looked into the maw and grinned. Aw fuck.