Myself and the two mages standing beside me stared down a menacing figure. It was the dungeon master, alright.

Never thought I’d face such a creature at this point in my career…

Coming across a dungeon master was almost guaranteed that you’d be fighting a formidable opponent. Like what that title suggests, these people weren’t any normal dungeon crawling fiend. No, they were the master of their abode. In housing terms, they were the head of their household, if you will.

In my inexperienced time as a dungeon diver, I’ve never gotten deep enough to see a dungeon master before. They were in every dungeon after all, since these monsters needed guidance. But still, I hadn’t seen one face to face like this.

I turned to my left to see the mages with widened eyes. It was unsettling. I had pegged them to be experienced mages at the very least, but seeing them shaken by the mere presence of a man in wrinkly, decaying skin, made me feel hopeless.

The dungeon master moved ahead of the crowd of undead monsters. There he firmly planted the butt of his staff on the ground and stared at us without even blinking.

“You trespass in my home! I cannot let you all leave.” The tip of his staff glowed ominously.

We all instinctively snapped back towards the entrance, only to see that a group of undead monsters had blocked the path we needed to go into to escape. We had to fight our way out.

This man, he had to be expert level or above, I could just feel it.

The dungeon master saw us all turned around towards the entrance, then snickered. “You have disturbed me. You think I would just leave the entrance open for you? No, your grave shall be here among the dead.”

I looked into the crowd of undead. Many of them wore tattered and rusted armor, while some still had on decayed mage robes on. Many of these monsters used to be adventurers, just like us. If we lost, we’d end up just like them… roaming around for all eternity.

The mages to my left raised their palms at the dungeon master. They were prepared to fight. I followed suit, alongside the knight and thief who pointed their sharp blades at the dead wizard.

Could we really win? Even the hotshot adventurers that stood next to me looked frightened and shaken. Their legs shook, sweat ran down their foreheads, and their hands rattled immensely. Especially those mages who were previously shooting out spells like no problem. I could see their hands wobble as they pointed their palms towards our opponent.

The undead mage with his impressive staff tilted his head. “Hm? Three mages stand in front of me, yet they have no staff? What kind of mages are you people?”

It was true. Neither of us had magic staffs, to our dismay. Magical staffs were an essential for high ranking magicians because of just how helpful they were in combat. Unlike the palm of your hand, a magic staff had a concentrated tip where a spell could activate quicker and make it more accurate. But sadly, we didn’t have staffs. They were just so damn expensive. This dungeon master was basically laughing at us for being broke…

“We don’t need staffs!” one of the mages at my side boldly proclaimed.

“Oh? Okay, show me then.” The dungeon master still glared at us like we killed his entire family. He lifted his staff and pointed the tip of it at us, almost as if he were provoking us to start the fight.

I stared down his staff. It was… mesmerizing. The light in it was just like the stars in the sky. Gorgeous, but I knew staring at the light too long would mean death by some weird spell.

A tap on my shoulder knocked me out of a trance. It was the mage standing beside me.

He kept one hand pointed at the decayed man, the other one handing me a rock from the nearby debris. “You know Accelerate, right?”

What? What was he planning? “Huh? Er, yes!”

After hearing my reply, he shoved the rather large rock into my hands. “Good. Here’s the plan: I’ll use Flux to keep him on his feet. Then Dalat will use Stasis to freeze him in place. Use Accelerate as fast as you can, and put as much power as you can into it. We’ll need every ounce of strength to take him out.”

After he relayed the plan to me, he sighed. He slicked back his sweaty black hair as he huffed. I wondered if he was the one that concocted this plan?

Maybe it was because of how dark it was before, but the light emanating from the dungeon master’s staff had lit up the area and allowed me to finally see the mage’s face clearly. The man who had given me the stone was very attractive, yet he was crying. I looked down at the hand that had gifted me the stone, and saw a ring on it. He was married. He had a family, I assumed. He didn’t want to die. None of us did.

That made it all the more important to suck up my emotions and press forward. I had a role to play, and I had to play it right if we were to get out of here.

I held the stone tightly in my hand, ready for the signal. The handsome mage shook his head, wiped his tears, then rose his other hand up towards our foe.

Our undead enemy didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. But was he prepared for our coordinated attack?

Before I could ponder on that, a loud yell made me jump. “Flux!!” the handsome mage screeched. In that instant, the dungeon master’s legs forcefully moved towards us at top speed, and he couldn’t control them. His legs just kept running, even when he tried to get them to stop.

Yup, that’s Flux for ya’

Flux was quite literally the opposite of Stasis. While Stasis stopped a moving object or person in their tracks, Flux made stationary objects or people move uncontrollably in a direction dictated by the caster. Of course, it had the same drawbacks as Stasis, that being it causes the caster to uncontrollably move in any direction if the target was already moving.

The other mage, I believe his name was Dalat, followed up, yelling “Stasis!” It worked, unsurprisingly. The weird dead man had suddenly frozen in place and was completely still, despite how fast he was running only moments ago.

Now it was my turn.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t mess this up. He was frozen, the perfect target. No way was I going to miss a stationary target. I got this.

I blew all the air out. In. And out. In. And out. I had this. I did!

I clutched the rock tightly, then with all the strength my flabby arms could muster, I chucked it at the dungeon master. Immediately I used Accelerate, pouring every bit of power I had into it to make the stone soar at maximum speed. It whistled like a hummingbird soaring through the air at insane speeds.

And it struck its target. It hit its mark. I did it.

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Powder dispersed into the air the instant the rock made contact with the dungeon master, which was… odd. Once the powder smoke receded, there the man stood. He was unscathed by the attack, and free from Stasis. He had Disperse in his arsenal as well. If we had known, Stasis would have never been on the table in the first place.

Disperse was a handy counter spell, but it just took too much energy to use. But for a supposed master like the dungeon master, it was no sweat. But how? How did he withstand that accelerated projectile? It definitely struck him, but what did he do that the rock immediately turned to powder when it struck him?

All of us looked at the dead magician aghast. Our coordinated attack didn’t even lay a scratch on him. If my fully charged Accelerate wasn't enough to injury him, then what will?

While the three of us stared at the dungeon master with gaped mouths, two figures dashed out of my periphery. I had wondered what type of role the thief Christia and the knight would play.

Those figures were indeed the knight and the thief. They dashed across the spacious room and speed-blitzed our undead opponent. They had intended to flank him and cut him down from behind.

The dungeon master didn’t even look behind him, nor did he care that he was suddenly flanked by two very competent warriors. He still stood and glared at us with malice in his eyes, even if that meant exposing his backside to our allies.

The knight and thief charged right at the decaying man with so much speed that I thought they were a blur. The knight swooped in and slammed his sword against the right side of the dungeon master’s hip. The thief reached high and swiped at his neck with her dagger.

Ka ding!

Krrrrsssshhh!!

Their attacks weren’t enough. The sword broke into a thousand pieces upon contact with the undead’s pelvis, and the thief’s dagger broke in half. Their arms recoiled back as if they had hit a firm metal shield.

Their weapons were made of sturdy metal, yet they wasted away until only their hilts were left, leaving hundreds of thousands of tiny metal shards all over the ground.

First the rock, now their weapons? What should we do? Should we run? No, we can’t.

I stared back again towards the entrance. It seemed as though even more undead monsters were gathering to block it. They were clearly anticipating something out of us, but what exactly? All five of us had our hands full with the dungeon master already. There was nothing else we could do.

After he had tanked all our offensives, he sighed. After all our efforts, that was all he could respond with? Or so I thought.

The knight had stumbled off his feet, caught off guard by the recoil his strike had made on his foe. The dungeon master snapped around quickly and took advantage of his state.

“Arachnodia!” he yelled, and a thick spider web-like substance shot out of the tip of his glowing staff. The web curled around like a lasso, wrapping all over the knight's body. It just kept pouring out of his staff and wrapped all around the knight. He tried pulling it off him, but it stuck to his body like it was his skin. In mere seconds, the knight collapsed to the ground, his arms and legs wrapped in webs like he was a caterpillar in a web cocoon.

The two mages and myself audibly gasped. “Mimicry magic?” we all said in unison.

Mimicry magic was the second of three magic families, alongside Displacement magic. It entailed all magic spells that have to do with mimicking a natural ability of a living creature. Ya’ know, things like spells making you as fast and agile as cats, as strong as gorillas—or letting you shoot webs like a spider in this case.

“No way, he’s a mimicry mage?” the handsome mage beside me said. His voice shook in fear.

“No…” I fell to my knees. There was nothing we could do. It was hopeless. Who knew what other mimicry spells he had at his disposal? And there was nothing we could do to counter them. That Accelerate spell had drained every bit of magic energy out of me, so I couldn’t cast anymore spells. The other mages were too dumbstruck to even lift their hands, too. It was over.

All I could bring myself to do was stare listlessly at the ground, feeling as my long black hair brushed against the shards of metal that flew all the way to where I sat.

The thief hadn’t given up yet. She still had fighting spirit in her, enough to have the courage to tightly grab the hilt of her broken dagger and hurl it at our enemy mage. She just as quickly picked up a throwing knife that had fallen off of the knight’s belt in the middle of their scuffle, and threw that at him too.

He smirked. “Armoral!”

Both the throwing knife and the broken dagger ricocheted off his body. A loud “ding!” rang throughout the dungeon corridors. That spell made his skin as hard as metal, mimicking the armor of an armadillo.

The knife bounced off the undead man’s skin and flew back towards the thief with suspicious accuracy. Unlike the undead mage, her skin wasn’t like metal.

The knife struck her in the thigh, and blood poured from her wound like a red river. She fell over and screeched in pain.

Oh no.

The undead monsters around us, at the sight of blood, began drooling just like that one undead that had caused me to freeze in place had done. That same black liquid poured from their mouths as they licked their dry lips.

The dungeon master then turned to us. He once again slammed the end of his staff on the floor. “Come on, cast another spell. Unless you all ran out of magic energy already?” He talked with a mocking tone. “Whatever the case, your Displacement magic won’t work on me, and you’d already lost your frontline fighters.”

He was right. The rest of us were only armed with Displacement magic. We didn’t know how to swing swords as well as the knight, nor were we as quick and nimble as the thief. Things would have been different if we knew different spells. But as things went, these guys next to me only showcased spells that I also knew. None of us had a diverse set of spells, from what I could gather. We had lost, and were now mere moments away from turning into these monsters that surrounded us.

I subconsciously clutched my knees very tightly. My hands were shaking, so I felt the need to keep them still somehow. Of course, that didn’t solve anything.

The dungeon master grew exasperated, so he began approaching us slowly. His scowl was so menacing, and that white light pouring from his staff revealed every bit of weakness that we showed. The married mage right next to me clutched his hand with a ring on it and began sobbing. The other mage lowered his head in defeat.

“This fight was less exciting than I had anticipated.” The dungeon master gritted his teeth and stomped on the ground. “I was woken up by mere children! If anyone was going to disturb my home, it should’ve been those worthy to do battle with me. Clearly you all are not.”

This is it. This is where my career ends. Why did it have to end this way? I couldn’t even make it to my twentieth birthday, much less live my life to the fullest.

Just like the others, I began to sob. Tears came flowing out of my eyes and I couldn’t stop. The dungeon master raising his staff to finish us off made me sob harder. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live.

I couldn’t see clearly. The tears made my vision blurry. I couldn’t even see the features of our executor anymore. I just… cried and cried. My final words wouldn’t even be words, just ugly sobs and whimpers.

As I wailed, something weird happened. The tears trickling down my face suddenly disappeared—or rather evaporated. My face was now as dry as it could be, and my hair smelled of burnt wood.

“Cautery!” a yell echoed from the direction of the entrance. Then a fireball flew at the speed of light right at the dungeon master.

That was it. The heat from that spell had wiped away every tear. But as I stopped sobbing, I grew more confused than ever.

Was that offensive magic? Of that caliber? Impossible.

The offensive spell Cautery slammed right into our would-be executor, which sent him flying into the crowd of undead monsters. That spell didn’t only hit him, but it burned through the wall of undead monsters protecting the entrance. It was finally opened to us. A singular mage with rather long chestnut colored hair came out from the entrance and waved a hand to us.

“Over here!” he yelled, “before the dungeon master can recover!”

“Right!” Dalat, the other mage who stood near me, ran up to the knight and lifted him on his shoulders. The handsome mage ran up and carried the thief as well. I likewise got to my feet and ran to the strange mage by the entrance.

The dungeon master was still laid out flat on the ground. But he had just enough strength to raise his head and yell “After them!”

The undead monsters now broke into a sprint to pursue us. But they were no match for the sheer power of the man’s offensive spells. They were just… so powerful! Each Cautery spell he cast was like the sun itself bearing down on the enemy. I found myself swooning as I trailed behind him, no matter how much smoke from his spell got in my face.

We were this close to death. But just as quickly, we were given a new shot at life. All thanks to this mysterious mage with incredible power at his palms.

In no time, we were mere feet away from the outside world. But before we had escaped where the undead couldn’t follow us, I could see the dungeon master’s murderous gaze among the crowd of pursuing undead as we slipped from his hands. It shook me to my very core.

Even as we jumped out into the sunlight outside of the dungeon, I couldn’t shake the glare he gave me.