Ch.33 Broken Strings

Malpetios was frustrated in his core room. "Why are they standing around the entrance of my boss's room, it has already been four hours, do they think standing in between the two rooms will somehow keep them safe?" Not wanting to waste this perfect opportunity to kill them, I quickly ordered my boss to open the doors and skewer them with its vines.

He was sadly disappointed. Upon trying to open the door the boss simply stopped and went back to his previous standby mode. The confused Malpetios continued trying to order the boss but it just kept resetting before it could pull the doors open.

"Why can't I open the door?" I get this feeling that I should maybe wait till they come inside, but why wait? "No! I'm not giving up that easily!" His previous attempts having failed, he tried using boss fusion to do it himself only to blank out for a few seconds, coming back to his senses when the boss reset back into place.

Malpetios felt something was, off...? He did not feel anything was wrong like this is how is supposed to be, and he was being silly. Although something inside his mind was telling him that there's a problem, he couldn't pinpoint it. He however could not understand why killing the weakened invaders was silly?

The thought seemed to contradict itself, killing the invaders while they are weak is right, so I should open the door, but opening the door was silly it was... it w-was... W̶̝̝̰͓͉̐͛̂r̴͙̺̲͎͘o̸͈͛̍̔̉̒̄ñ̴͙̺̔͒ǧ̴̫̰͑?̵͉͚͂

"Yes! It is wrong, I cannot open the doors, that's right I must have forgotten?" I still felt something was missing but couldn't put my finger on it. Q'ill has been looking at me talking to myself and she asked what was wrong, I quickly told her my questions.

Q'ill responded to them a bit confused. "Dear, dungeons cant open their own boss rooms or have creatures from other rooms or floors move outside their post. Dungeons of a higher level usually get past this by having field floors, depending on how fast it can gather Elemental Mana they can start making them around the twenty or thirty floors."

Q'ill stopped to think, she looked like she just remembered something, "oh! I do remember that there are ways to bend these rules, like if the monsters are still in combat or they have long-range attacks. The creatures however don't follow you past their own room or floor, unless of course is a (Dungeon Rage)."

Malpetios froze, rules? Something in him was screaming, the moment he tried to focus on that feeling it was gone. He couldn't figure out where the wrongness was, he thought back to where he first felt it, the doors. Since neither he nor the boss can open it, he orders the Mirror slimes he had hidden around the boss's vines to open it.

They too went back into their spots just before opening them. Malpetios couldn't understand why he was still trying. Just like Q'ill had said the dungeon rules wouldn't allow me to open the doors so why do I keep trying?

I knew it was against the rules, right? The feeling of something being wrong however did not leave. I thought back to my Human memories trying to find something similar, only to find myself emotionally detached from them.

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I wasn't like this before... or maybe I was? The feeling wasn't going away and yet I couldn't figure out where it came from.

Looking at Q'ill she saw nothing wrong, only seeming confused, something told me to fight this feeling of comfort of... contentment? Wait?! Since when did I saw myself as something other than human, although I am no longer one it was only a day ago that I had a panic attack from killing other humans. Looking back at that pain and disgust seem distant and dull, almost like it happened to someone else, like, I was just a spectator of some kind.

Before I could dig deeper into whatever is happening to me I suddenly felt danger coming from the entrance of my Dungeon.

Focusing on the source, I was surprised to see a single young man walking inside. The new intruder was wearing a Knight type armor with many golden feathers around his waist and hands, the armor on the back of his neck was elongated looking like a strange metal hoodie with a golden sun on it. His appearance aside, this Knight also has the largest Life Aura I have seen yet, it was big enough to cover half of any single room.

I had reset my rooms when no life auras were present by instinct, apart from the balance scale they were all ready for invaders. To my surprise, the knight glowed in golden light levitating over the river rooms at a much faster pace than the mages did. By the time he made it over the middle point, triggering the ice wall, the metal slimes had gathered very little kinetic energy.

At that moment I was reminded of the doors again, why didn't my slimes continued to gather kinetic energy all this time? I tried to remember but I never told them to stop. As I was wondering the same feeling of wrongness from before started to get stronger. "NO!"

Hearing my cry Q'ill asked, "What's wrong dear?" Malpetios was quickly forgetting about the slimes, when he heard Q'ills cry, he quickly came up with an idea. "Q'ill remember this don't forget! 'I did not order the metal slimes to wait' please remember that! I blank out as she nodded.

I quickly snapped out of it when I stopped fighting the feeling, thinking I was acting weird, of course, I can't leave the slimes running it's against the rules why am I overthinking this?

My mind jolted as I felt someone entering my sand and gravel room. The Knight at some point grew transparent golden wings, these wings increased his speed but more importantly acted like flexible shields protecting the knight from the metal slimes and steam bubbles not slowing him down the slightest bit.

He quickly went past the blender room like it was nothing, worrying me, it's he going to make it all the way to the other invaders? While I started to panic slightly the knight's progress was slowed down greatly, all thanks to my puppy. The knight would stop abruptly when my puppy got near his life aura and would not move for a long time even if my puppy did nothing but stand still.

I quickly noticed that this powerful and proud invader would start to shiver the moment my puppy got near, coming to the conclusion that he was somehow greatly afraid of it, even if their power was vastly different. I order my puppy to harass the knight as much as possible, constantly moving around him allowing me to rearrange the maze walls when I could, his huge aura not helping.

While I was starting to punish this invader for making me feel afraid of him the doors to the boss room open. Taking a look I saw what remained of the small army, twelfth soldiers were upfront with shields raised marching slowly, fifty-three mages that looked paled but bursting with killing intent were behind them.

I quickly left orders for my puppy, and tried to but failed, to reset the balance scale room not understanding why I couldn't. I quickly stop as that same wrong feeling was creeping back up. With no time to be worried about this, I focus on the boss room and the fight to come.