"I want to tame and bond this creature," I told Kara.

Her reaction was as I expected. She didn't like the idea. "Isn't it too dangerous? Can Dungeon bosses even be tamed?"

"Yes, people have done that in the past with both normal monsters and bosses too. It is not easy at all and also time-consuming. Because I cannot go inside or do anything that may be considered an attack. But this situation here gives me a big advantage. So long I don't start a boss fight, I can stay on this side and interact with the monster to gain familiarity and build rapport with it. The conditions are even better because there's nobody on this floor. We are alone and there are fewer distractions. Or people to attempt fighting the boss."

She heard my pitch without interrupting but now I knew she would make a counterpoint.

"Aren't the monsters in the Dungeon controlled by it? How long do you think it will take? What are the odds of success?"

I couldn't believe she only raised these few issues. "The Dungeon influences monsters but doesn't control them outright. Else it would conduct sneak attacks with the bosses all the time to get people killed. As to how long it will take, I don't know. A few days, a week, a month at most. I won't try for more than a month."

"Why this monster in particular?" She asked.

We both turned to admire the fifth-floor boss. I had no idea what this monster's species was. The shape of its head reminded me of dragons, the rainbow feathers were too vibrant. It could be a variant of one of those giant raptor lizards but its forelimbs were too long. The main reason was that it was unknown to me.

I read every bestiary in the Guild Hall's library. I knew about draconic creatures, some rainbow-feathered birds who all had magical powers, and bipedal lizards, often called dinosaurs. But all three combined? It was on another level.

"It's magnificent, isn't it? I think it will be a good addition to our team."

Kara hesitated. Then she stared at me in silence. "Fine. Up to one month. What do you need to make it happen?"

I grinned. She relaxed, then smiled back. "More food for the boss. Let's go defeat more Horror Limbs.

*

*

We spent four days camped at the fifth-floor boss antechamber, hunting as many Horror Limbs for their Experience and the meatiest limbs to feed the boss with.

To keep us from making and breaking camp every day, we asked William to stay and guard our stuff. William didn't mind one bit. He wasn't a battle maniac like Sleepy. I was pretty sure that if we took William with us, Sleepy would feel bored and lonely. The little guy would abandon the camp to the Dungeon and then it would be the same thing as before. I should commission something that could be used as a shelter for us and still be put in the quiver.

We returned to the chamber several times a day to drop limbs, followed by a feeding session. Slowly, the suspicion I could see in the eyes of the feathered reptile vanished. While I familiarized myself with the boss, Kara used the downtime to practice her Skills.

I hadn't yet used my Perk on it to see its species because I feared it would trigger something. It would be catastrophic if doing that started a boss fight from outside the room. It seems that granted the boss a massive buff from the horror tales of those who survived such catastrophic events.

But I was gaining small amounts of experience from feeding it so my attempts at befriending the boss seemed to be going okay.

On the fourth day, something changed. Before we even arrived back at the antechamber camp, the boss was eagerly awaiting us, preening and screeching in anticipation. It even screeched at me, demanding for food. Following my instincts and what I learned about animal training, I called Sleepy.

I used a slender elf arm to give the boss the idea of proportion. Telling Sleepy to remain still, I waved the arm in front of him while repeating the command. "Hold." When he remained completely still, I petted his snout. "Good boy!" Then I gave him the arm.

Was I teaching Sleepy that elves were tasty? No. He was a monster and monsters were born already knowing that people were tasty. It was ingrained in their instincts. The two reasons tame monsters didn't eat people were because they were trained to not do it and because the tamer bond suppressed that instinct. But accidents happened and they weren't even that uncommon.

What I tried to do was to let the boss learn a trick by example. And it worked. The boss was pissed. The spoiled thing demanded to be fed as it strutted around the room and screeched at me.

I took an Orc arm, its favorite. The boss came closer to the open doors but never moved past the threshold.

"Hold!" I ordered. It misbehaved like a spoiled child. I put the arm in one of my quiver's empty slots. It became even more annoyed and I ignored its tantrum, teaching it that misbehaving wouldn't get it anything. It took several minutes for the boss to calm down. I met its eyes and took the arm back. "Hold!" It didn't obey. I moved away this time. It shrieked loudly. Almost crossing the threshold, I glared at it and said with a firm voice, “Bad.”

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I repeated the demonstration with Sleepy, then William. When I approached the boss next and gave the command to hold, it remained still for a second. Capitalizing on it, I immediately handed it the arm with a happy "Good boy!"

It was a major milestone. A pair of blue boxes told me that.

> For training a dangerous beast, you gained 45 Experience points.

> Your knowledge and training improved your Beast Mastery to rank V. Benefit: Reduce damage taken from beasts you are friendly toward by R*(L%)*8%, where L is the beast's Loyalty score on a scale from -100 to +100. Yes, this could mean you can take increased damage if you are foolish enough to be a fool around inimical beasts.

I had to re-read that several times. It sounded worse than it really was. The rank one benefit of my Skill countered the detrimental effects of this one as it made beasts friendlier if I wasn't hostile to them. Not to mention I just needed to switch my stance to neutral or hostile toward the beast to negate this rank’s effects.

The System's recognition meant I did something right. Or that Skip, the System God, was setting me up for some shenanigans. I immediately became wary of the latter.

Right after the boss finished eating the arm, I repeated the training. I waited a bit longer before I gave it the treat. Then, again and again, coaxing it to remain calm and calmer as it waited to be fed.

Each attempt at this gave me a few points of Experience but not as much as that huge award. Diminishing returns as the danger waned.

The boss became sated after a couple dozen repetitions. It lowered the crest of long feathers and chirped amicably toward me. I still didn't dare to try and pet it. Not when it could trigger a boss fight. But I was pretty certain that I was close if not already there.

That's when the world came and spat in my face. The whole Dungeon shook. I didn't even need to be a mage to sense the deluge of mana flowing up the floors. We could literally hear the Horror Limbs spawning in the corridors outside the boss room antechamber and rush up the floors.

“George?” Kara came out of the tent, startled. “What is happening? Is it another stampede?”

I wondered what the fuck had just happened. The Dungeon was System contracted to behave, as this kind of reaction could cause it to become an Oathbreaker.

“Let's break camp and get ready to fight or to run away,” I replied.

In the next few minutes, we broke camp and shoved everything in the giant club-chests. I had plenty of space among the six I brought so it didn't matter much whether things were properly packed.

Once we had all our stuff with us, we turned to check the boss's room. The dangerous thing in a Dungeon Stampede was that the monsters rushed from below and always traveled up. Delvers had to worry about getting attacked from behind. Since we were in the boss room, that meant the feathered lizard and the ones from below.

The boss knew we were there but didn't attack us even though it shouldn't be confined to its room anymore. It was an odd behavior that didn't fit the situation. It gave me some hope. Then, three monsters from the sixth floor came up the stairs. They just peeked carefully. They were some brown-furred beasts with triangular ears.

The behavior was similar to the visit months ago when Alice and Clotilde were inside the Dungeon, forcing a reaction because the Dungeon was scared shitless of Alice's power.

It could very well be the same but there was another possibility that passed through my mind. Either someone displaying a power level in the high hundreds was inside the Dungeon again, or the City Lord had died and the contract was voided.

What rotten luck if it was the latter. I was pretty sure Hector was his only heir, which would mean the City was Lordless.

The boss started to attack these monsters. They were bipedal humanoid raccoons with brown fur and those bandit-masked snouts. They didn't seem to use tools like the Horror Limbs.

“Do not enter the boss room!” I shouted as I readied Scout's Oath.

Kara got ready to fight, as well as my bonds.

The boss was wounded but dozens of the humanoid raccoons lay dead in the boss room. Despite the danger, I had to act.

> Do you want to bond with Quetzalcoatl Land Drake (boss)?

"Yes!"

> Bond failed.

Dammit. At least I knew its species and it didn't make it hostile toward me.

"Stay outside the boss room!" I shouted.

Enraged, I nocked and fired arrow after arrow from Scout's Oath. A single arrow didn't kill them but their HP was low and they dropped unconscious. Once the room had no moving targets, I started to snipe the raccoons as they came up. The boss ran to attack the raccoons that came up and blocked my line of fire. I slowly walked next to one of the doors to get a better angle and braced to get a clear view of the stairs. From there, I sniped every bandit mask that poked up from there.

The Boss chomped on one raccoon I had shot and scored our first joint kill.

> For killing level 46 Racoon Teddy, you gained 308 Experience points.

Damn, these guys were good to farm despite their low rarity, only Uncommon. If only we hadn't stayed in the fifth to tame the boss. Too bad the Dungeon was going mad. Soon, we would have the sixth-floor boss and then the seventh-floor mobs to deal with.

I started to kill the unconscious raccoons on the floor, scoring many more Experience awards.

The pressure on the Quetzalcoatl Land Drake diminished as the flow of raccoons dwindled. The boss ran to one corner of the room and breathed a cone of fire at the remaining raccoons in the room.

After the fire consumed almost everything in the room, no monsters came up the stairs for several seconds. I thought the worst, was that we had run out of normal monsters and the sixth-floor boss was next. But it turned out that the raccoons were just scared of the fire and a big bunch came out at once, an explosion of fur pouring out of the stairs.

I started to shoot at their heads, knocking several out. I had no idea why but their HP threshold was too low for a monster that was so high-leveled. And the fact they dropped unconscious with one hit was also odd. Were they swarm monsters?

The Land Drake went mad. Instead of breathing fire again, it rushed into the mass of bodies, trampling, clawing, and biting three at a time, crushing the raccoons’ fragile bodies. Limbs fell off the sides of its snout as it swallowed what remained inside its mouth. Sweeping its tail, it caught several raccoons and launched them at the wall, where they crashed with splattering sounds.

I tried to tag as many of them as I could to get the Experience awards. I gained a level but dismissed the blue box as soon as it appeared. Between the boss and me, we killed them all. No more monsters came from below. It was another lull in the mass of bodies.

Now that the room was clear, the boss looked at me. At that moment, the doors swung closed violently, shoving me inside the room.