Inside a rocky tunnel, with one end occupied by a blazing obsidian monkey as large as a house, and the other blocked by a thick wall of rocks that came from nowhere, a head poked through the groovy walls with fluffy silver-gray hair and piercing yellow eyes.
Rhett Convir sniffed the air and eyed to the side, confirming that the boss monster was indeed asleep, and notified the two behind him that the coast was clear.
They slowly walked out of their little hole, and carefully spread their mana just enough that they had high enough magical senses while still being under the monster’s radar. With slow and steady steps, they went the opposite way of the giant fiery monkey and walked through the dark tunnel ahead.
Their plan was simple. Distance themselves away from the beast, go along their planned route, and run the fuck away to the exit of the labyrinth. They had a high chance of success, and there was practically no need to fight the monster itself since they could still run away if caught.
So, they confidently went on their merry way, sneakily tiptoeing in the dark cave until they arrived at Rob’s playful scheme.
“A… wall?” Alice murmured. Her eyes gazed at the rocky wall, shocked and confused about how this suddenly appeared.
“Did we go the wrong way?” Rhett asked, bewildered.
“There’s only two ways, idiot,” Alice retorted, but she soon paused along with the other two as they felt the ground shake.
In the far distance of the dark tunnel, a fiery red shine appeared abruptly as the sound of footsteps echoed like two heavy boulders crashing against the ground in a rhythmic interval.
Thud. Thud.
“Fuck, it’s awake,” Kain hissed.
Things were looking bleak. The strongest on their team was Rhett, and he only had at most quasi-Royal Knight-level strength in his transformed state. That’s a far cry from the raw power of a Rank B boss monster.
Even with human wisdom, that’s still too big of a gap to overcome with their combined strength.
Although they weren’t too worried about actually dying since they still had life-saving items on hand, fighting such a powerful monster was still terrifying no matter how rational they be.
Rhett hurriedly smashed his fist and clawed the wall, breaking off large sections of the rocky thing blocking their path, but the wall morphed like liquid goo as they reformed and returned back to its former state.
“What?!” Rhett gasped in shock.
Alice and Kain swiftly did the same thing and the trio tried to break through the wall, but it healed too fast.
They also wasted some precious mana as the molten monkey hurriedly approached them from the distance. At this rate, escape was nothing but a futile attempt.
“Well shit, it looks like we need to fight!” Rhett growled and clicked his tongue. His piercing yellow eyes dilated into a bestial form while his nails extended out to form sharp claws. His silver-gray hair turned spiky as his aura grew.
Alice took on a stance as her purple eyes glowed brightly with overflowing mana.
Kain swung his blade forward and created numerous floating arrows of light around his body.
The molten monkey soon arrived with a loud roar upon seeing its prey and rapidly approached them with a hasty rush.
…
The closer they approached the lower floors of the labyrinth, the more the foreboding feeling Anna felt grew. The vision constantly replayed in her mind like a prophetic warning as the two subconsciously turned up the pace.
Soon, they arrived right at the eleventh floor and the tingling sensation in the back of her head was guiding her, leading her to somewhere unknowin.
“You sense anything with your divination?” she hurriedly asked and turned to look at the reborn archmage of miracles beside her.
His rainbow-like eyes glowed brightly for a second and he wore a strange look of surprise. “Yes… It’s quite close, in fact.”
“What did you see?” Anna asked with a more worried tone.
“A molten monkey, B Rank boss monster, fighting against Alice Lamuer, Kain Vizwel, and Rhett Convir,” Noel said with a curious smile. “What an interesting match-up.”
“Gold and Silver…” she murmured as she seemed to realize something. “The hair color matches!”
“We gotta save them!” Anna exclaimed.
“Why should we though?” Noel asked with squinted eyes.
“It’s the Crown Prince!” Anna swiftly responded. “Also… You’ll probably even be able to gain access to the royal library or something like that if we save them!”
“Oh, now you’re getting smarter,” Noel murmured while rubbing his chin. “But oh well, you’re correct on that one.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
So, as if edged on by an invisible guiding force, the two swiftly arrived at the fiery battlefield.
The molten monkey seemed to be fine. On the other hand, the trio were not so good. Rhett had burns on his exposed skin, Kain’s clothes were partially charred and his hair was covered in char, while Alice used large amounts of mana to keep the temperature at a manageable level using her ice magic unless they wanted to die from the overbearing heat radiating off the boss monster.
Rhett was the first one to notice the two’s sudden arrival and widened his eyes in surprise.
“You guys! It’s dangerous here!” Rhett shouted as he warned them not to approach.
Kain and Alice also soon noticed them and agreed with Rhett’s judgement.
Even though they appeared rather battered down, using the items they had on hand could easily change the tides of the battle, especially with the things Kain has, but having two unknown variables would radically change their circumstances.
Noel ignored them though and instead stretched out his hand. A lance of ice quickly formed and launched itself at incredible speeds at the molten monkey, embedding itself deep into its obsidian body and dealing with what appeared to be significant damage based on its loud roar.
It swiftly turned to look at the newly arrived humans and growled in anger.
Its black eyes burned with a fiery fury as the temperature around it rose to dangerous levels unsuitable for human life.
Alice grunted as she used more mana to put the surrounding temperature at a manageable level as her legs and arms trembled with the exhausting strain.
Anna hurriedly helped and used the surrounding fire spirits to lessen the temperature emitting out of the molten monkey, while using the earth spirits to create hand-like constructs to grab at its arms and legs.
It roared furiously as it easily escaped the earthen binds that had formed around its limbs, but that gave Noel enough time to launch more attacks.
Around the molten monkey, a circular glow appeared beneath and on top of it as a barrier of cold energy seeped into its body. Then, around the circular barrier, glacial lances formed in midair and rapidly stabbed into its body, piercing through its obsidian skin and turning its molten flesh into black obsidian.
With his highly trained mana control, Noel could casually cast a multitude of spells with vastly low mana cost and soon overwhelmed the molten monkey with his comparably low mana reserves.
Along with Anna’s support, the trio watched in awe as the monster they struggled to defeat was taken care of so easily and swiftly.
When the molten monkey noticed that its life was widdling away helplessly, its eyes burned brightly with a ruthless light as its molten core began to bubble as if it were a volcano ready to explode.
Noel seemed to realize what it was doing and hastily instructed Anna, “Erect a barrier around it! It’s about to detonate itself!”
Anna didn’t question Noel’s judgement and followed methodically. She roused up the earth spirits and encased the molten monkey in numerous layers of rock and dirt, and as they heard a loud boom from within along with the lava that oozed out from the spherical cage, she sighed a breath of relief and relaxed her control.
With the boss monster now dead, Anna felt that the latent danger was already taken care off, but the same prophetic vision replayed abruptly in her mind as the tingling sensation burst out, screaming loudly as if to warn her of the incoming danger.
“And that’s when the big bad boss arrives to ruin your victory, right?” a voice murmured in whimsical amusement as Kain, Alice, and Rhett were knocked unconscious in the blink of an eye.
At the very opposite end of the dimly lit tunnel, right in front of the rocky wall erected from nowhere, a tall muscular man with shadowy skin, wearing a pair of eyeglasses and a white lab coat glanced at them with a playful smile.
“You know, I always wondered why the Demon Lords in those stories always let their minions attack the hero while the hero slowly grew more and more powerful. It just seems dumb for a big bad villain guy, right?”
“Me, on the other hand? I ain’t dumb enough to let the heroes get their little wins by sending out my minions, not like I don’t have any. It’s just wiser for the strongest to attack the weakling before they bloom into marvelous flowers that can threaten their life,” Mammon chuckled as he glanced at them with a dangerous glint in his nonexistent eyes.
Anna was about to launch an attack, but Noel stopped her and signaled for her to listen.
“Oh, you’re actually going to listen to my long monologue? That’s nice, smart even, since you little archmage of miracles was smart enough to realize I won’t actually kill you for whatever mysterious reason.”
“But as for this Crown Prince though… kukuku,” Mammon chuckled mischievously as he stared at the three bodies lying on the ground, unconscious. His eyeglasses seemed to glow dimly with a golden light for a split moment.
On the other hand, Noel sneakily did a few motions with his fingers with bated breath, with a droplet of sweat sliding down his forehead down to his cheek.
Anna had a sense of deja vu as she realized this was just like the vision, but her thoughts were soon interrupted when Mammon launched a sudden attack.
“Not killing doesn’t mean not hurting you though,” Mammon laughed as his outstretched fist collided with an invisible mana barrier, but he easily broke through it but was only met with disappointment as he once again collided with another barrier beneath the first layer.
Anna hurriedly reacted along with Noel as they distanced themselves from the crazy guy while Noel strained his brain as he threw three strange black stones aimed right at the three unconscious bodies behind Mammon.
Mammon wasn’t stupid to not intercept them though as the three stones halted in midair, but space began to warp around the three bodies as a sign of incoming teleportation. He also intercepted that attempt by disrupting the warped barrier of space, but the earth beneath the three suddenly sunk down.
He also stopped that plan from coming to fruition by using his alchemy magic to solidify the dirt, but it appeared that was a deception as time seemed to fragment itself and he soon found the bodies continued to sink deeper and deeper far away from his reach, like his previous action didn’t happen at all.
Mammon was about to intercept them again when he paused and chuckled loudly.
“Illusion, eh?” Mammon muttered loudly as the environment around him melted into sludge, before he soon found himself back again in the dark tunnel with Noel and Anna, along with three bodies missing in sight, leaving him alone with the frozen corpse of the molten monkey.
“Oh no, look at me, fooled by the Archmage of Miracles by being trapped in multiple layers of illusions, how stupid for a supposedly smart big bad boss villain,” Mammom murmured in a playful tone and shook his head in dismay… over how smart he was.
He chuckled and left the premises of the cave, appearing right at the very edge of space once more like before using his highly advanced space magic formation.
Things were coming along nicely, very nicely indeed.
The heroes won, and they grew both in wisdom and strength, like pigs being fattened up for a marvelous slaughter.
Not only that, he he hid his true plans underneath another layer of meaningless mystery as he successfully achieved his plan while disguising it as a failure, fooling not just Anna and Noel, but even the world.
“Now that’s how a fantastic thief roles,” Rob muttered with a twisted smile as the body he inhabited entered a pocket of space and disappeared. As for what plan he has in store? That would only come into fruition much, much later.
Three years, in fact, but three years is just a drop in the ocean when compared to the eons he spent struggling.