Time in the dungeon was a weird thing. Since there was no daylight, there was no way for Marcel to keep track of it. He had some form of estimates, but no way to prove if they were correct or not.

He didn’t know how much longer he had sat at his spot in the middle of the corpses of his battlefield. It could’ve been a day. Could’ve been less. He slept for some time. Thanks to his [Aquatic Restoration], which was always passively running, his body's natural healing was greatly enhanced. After a few hours of solid sleep, Marcel no longer felt sore. Most of his small cuts had healed, and only a few movements still hurt his overused tendons.

Marcel had no idea where to really start his search for the Dungeon Boss. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to find it right now, some more leveling at first couldn’t hurt. But then again, he had no idea how to find anything in this cave system really, and the thought of aimlessly wandering through its dark underbellies made him shiver.

Not that he had much choice though. Not knowing where else to start, he began walking in the direction the kobolds had come from. That held at least a faint promise of finding something. Anything.

It took him what he judged to be the better part of a day to finally arrive somewhere. On his way there he stumbled upon two other groups of kobolds. Both of which were noticeably smaller than the first one thankfully. One was barely more than half a dozen.

Both times they had suddenly appeared from some of the cave’s arms without warning, attacking Marcel out of the darkness. They were dealt with swiftly and efficiently. At no point during the attacks had Marcel been in real danger, not like in the first wave even, but still something about the attacks bugged him.

It took him a while to put his finger on it, and he only figured it out shortly after having dispatched of the third group. They always came out of nowhere. He had no prior warning about their attacks, nor any indication that they would attack.

Despite his Perception stat being reasonably high, Marcel thought, he had no forewarnings about the beasts. It scared him a little. The thought of having these bloodthirsty kobolds creep up to him at any time made him uneasy enough to invest three full points into Perception.

He hoped it would be enough.

He glanced at his status screen:

“Marcel Houst [Warrior of Rhea Level 14]”

Stats:

Str 17

Dex 12

Int 5

Wis 9

End 8

Vit 9

Per 14

There was no other chance to truly test that though, as Marcel finally found something other than the endless narrow tunnels of the cave.

In front of him the darkness opened up into a fiery lit cave. It was a canyon with hundreds of small illuminated holes in its side, stretching endlessly and further than Marcel could see. Small bridges were built, connecting the two sides of the canyon with each other. They looked crude and simply made, like hundreds of stone spiderwebs spanning between the two sides, but they made the canyon marvelous to look at.

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The small torches and light threw eerie shadows into the cave, illuminating this city's occupants. On their runways Marcel could see hundreds, if not thousands of kobolds scurrying along. Their footsteps echoed through the canyon, their shrieks of conversation, of fighting, and of mating cut through the silence of the cave.

By following the kobolds trail, he had just accidentally found their city. It was intimidating to say the least. Not just the sheer size of the canyon they had built, but also just seeing how many of the kobolds were there.

Seeing the two smaller groups after his first encounter had made Marcel confident that he could take on whatever sized group he would stumble into. He had almost welcomed them, being disappointed after the third group turned out rather small. But now, taking in mind boggling numbers of them, all of his confidence was squashed hard.

He held no more illusions about being able to fight any sort of group he found. Nor about this being a simple training ground for him. If they found him, he had no illusions in being able to make it out alive.

Now the true risk of this endeavor was seeping through to Marcel.

Not just that, but as he was contemplating these thoughts,a giant roar echoed through the cave. It was deep and primal. Marcel’s blood grew cold and he had to suppress the urge to cower down. Every instinct screamed at him to run and hide.

Another roar went out. Closer this time. Followed by a heavy flap. And another one.

Suddenly a giant shape flew through the middle of the canyon. It was big enough to hide most of the caves from view. Big enough that Marcel’s mind needed a moment to register what he was seeing.

An enormous black dragon flew through the valley. From his vantage point Marcel could see it surging through with terrifying speed. It landed on one of the giant stone bridges. The pathway creaked under its weight, barely able to hold the monster.

Thousands of small lights rushed towards the beast. Scarmalbing over themselves in haste to arrive there first.

Marcel couldn’t see what was going on around the dragon exactly, but his stomach dropped in sudden realization.

He should’ve known that there was a reason for all these kobolds to be here. There had been a certain unease about that in the back of his mind the whole time. This whole world was oddly similar to all of the RPG’s Marcel knew from his world, and in all of them kobolds were serving dragons.

This whole dungeon thing had just become eons more dangerous. Then, to Marcel’s shock, a soft pulse came out from it. A slow instinctive feeling crept up on him. It was the same sort of feeling he had had when staring at the centaur at the river. The same feeling when he found the first giant rat in the sewer.

He tried to ignore it. As if pretending it wasn’t there meant it wasn’t true. But it was the undeniable feeling Marcel had learned to follow. The terrifying realization that he was staring directly at the goal of his quest. Marcel’s heart dropped to his stomach.

Almost as if sensing his thoughts, the dragon let out another roar. It was followed by a giant pillar of flames erupting out of its mouth. It licked up over a hundred yards, hulling the whole cave in light bright as day.

There was a challenge in that fire. Glee almost.

Marcel couldn’t stare at those flames any longer. They did something to his inner part. He ran. Without knowing where and when, Marcel sprinted away.

The dragon had triggered something primal in Marcel. A sort of fear he had never felt before. He couldn’t think straight, all that filled his head was the thought of getting away as far and as fast as possible.

The image of the flames kept tormenting his mind. The shocking display of power fueled his legs, made his heart hammer. It took all of his conscious efforts not to scream.

He only stopped when he couldn’t run anymore. He had no idea how far away he was, but his heart was still beating at a fast pace, and he was utterly out of breath. With his constitution that meant he had run at least multiple kilometers.

His instincts wanted him to run more. What were a few kilometers against a terrifying beast like that? But he couldn’t, his legs were utterly shot, his heart already pushing just to keep up.

Marcel forced himself to relax a little. He tried breathing to calm down, knowing he needed to get a new perspective, a change of view. But with the cold rationalism he wanted to approach the situation with, also came utter despair.

How in the world was he supposed to take on a monster like that?