The group of five entered the final gate in the Dungeon, gate two-hundred. They were immediately met by what looked like some sort of throne room. The room was filled with cobwebs and old wooden tables that looked very exquisite. There were several marble pillars that were encrusted with various jewels, diamonds, rubies, sapphires and the like. They spiralled in a complex pattern from the bottom of the pillars all the way up to the ceiling which was roughly twenty-feet off the ground.
The room was congested, almost to a suffocating degree, with exquisite furniture and several bookcases that lined the walls with masterpiece paintings hanging above them. There was an ungodly amount of useless looking trinkets, that somehow looked very valuable just lying on the floor. Everything looked ancient and grand, if not disorderly. The only thing missing was the throne itself. What lay in its place was an outline of a throne, suggesting it was here not long ago.
Lone clapped his hands, getting everyone's attention. "Okay, here's what we're going to do..."
Meanwhile, Clicker was sitting on top of a spire that looked Arabian in design. He was wearing a turban, hiding his aged face and he was wrapped up in several layers of clothing. The wind carried some sand from the desert below and it gently landed on his head.
He stood up and sniffed the air. "The smell of blood never gets old," he said to himself as he watched the two armies below him fight it out. Suddenly, a change appeared in his eyes.
"Hoh, that Foxkin kid beat the Dungeon? Well, almost, hehehehe," Clicker chuckled before his body suddenly contorted and he disappeared from the Palace's spire that he was previously on, almost as if he had never been there to begin with.
He appeared inside of a dusty throne room alongside a particularly lavish looking throne. It fell to the floor with a thunderous boom and he landed sitting on it, still fully clad in his desert attire. One of his legs lay lazily over one of the throne's armrests while he scratched his head for added effect.
"Well, Lone, I didn't expect you to make it this far, but here you-... what the hell are you doing?" Clicker asked as his voice cracked.
He could see Lone and his four companions and each of them had a basket sitting next to them while they held chisels and hammers. They were prying the jewels from the pillars and collecting them. Clicker also noticed that except for the jewelled pillars, nothing else in the room remained, not even the marble tiling that was previously on the floor and ceiling.
"Ah, Clicker? You look different from what I imagined you would," Lone said as he raised his head up to look at Clicker with a very self-satisfied smile.
"I wanted to get a tan, so maybe that's why the images don't match?" Clicker said before he stood up and started walking towards Lone. He looked around in awe at the missing pieces of history that he had once gathered here. His right hand raised and he pulled down the part of his headpiece that was covering his skin, revealing the ancient face behind it.
The Golden Foxkin turned his head around and refocused his attention on the diamond he was busy carefully chiselling out of its fixture. It smoothly popped out of the pillar and he grabbed it before putting it in his basket.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
"You didn't strike me as a material person, Lone," Clicker said as he looked around the empty room once more. "Why on Altros did you steal everything in here?" he asked as his voice showed how peeved he was.
"Aha, well, I figured that the final boss would be you, so I thought it'd be fun to fuck with ya a little bit. Also, some of the shit in here was realllllly old. I wanna spend some time studying it so I can recreate it later. Same reason for the jewels. Money isn't hard for me to obtain, I'm just a curious person," Lone said with a devilish grin before he added another jewel, a sapphire, to his basket.
"I see," Clicker answered, unamused by Lone's games. A very strong sense of bloodlust began emanating through the air, forcing everyone, Eolande included, to stop their jewel collecting. "I usually give people that beat my Dungeon's a chance to defeat me in a game of some sort, but you've annoyed me, Lone. Return everything you've stolen or else I'll kill you," Clicker ordered without any of his usual comedic flairs.
"Woah there," Lone said as he wiped the sweat off of his brow that had gathered from the pressure. "It's your fault for leaving it here unguarded. Cool it with the bloodlust, 'kay? I'm busy working here. If you wanna, do it later. You can't beat any of us anyway," Lone continued with a provocative smile.
He then turned away from Clicker and resumed his theft of the jewels. Clicker looked at this with amazement in his eyes before he suddenly started laughing and his bloodlust completely disappeared. "Perfect! Perfect! Ahahahahahaha! Y'know what? I never even used the stuff in here anyway. Take it, take it! I insist!" Clicker loudly exclaimed before he spun around a few times with his arms stretched out. His head was thrown back and he was laughing uproariously.
Everyone stared at the powerful old man who was wearing desert attire with confused and suspicious gazes. "What? Really? In that case, leave behind that throne, okay? I want it too," Lone said with a toothy grin as a way to test Clicker's claims.
Clicker stopped spinning and faced Lone directly. "Oh, but of course! It would be foolish of me to keep it. Foolish I say! Feel free to take the reward. There should be a small box underneath the throne, but be careful, not all rewards are... rewarding, hehehehehehe!" Clicker chuckled as he strode through the room to be right in front of Eolande.
"As I thought! The Fairy, in the flesh! My, how you've grown. Do look after little Loney-woney here, won't you? I'm quite busy, so I can't stay in touch with him. The poor boy thinks he's invincible. Oh! I know! Lone!" Clicker yelled in excitement while he still stood in front of Eolande who was frozen in terror.
'He's far stronger than me! Him being a weakling from the Council was definitely a lie!' Eolande screamed in her mind as she tried to hide her fear of Clicker's bloodlust that had overwhelmed her senses for a moment.
Lone put down his chisel and looked at Clicker with a serious expression. "Yes?" he asked in an unsure voice.
No one saw him move, but Clicker was now standing right in front of Lone. Their faces were mere centimeters away from each other. "Do work on that confidence of yours, okay? The system does have loopholes, and trust me, there are far weaker beings than I that are far more well-versed in exploiting them. Treat this as a warning," Clicker said in a deep, commanding tone.
Before Lone could reply, he suddenly found his mouth to be clogged up. A large mouthful of blood escaped his lips and he looked down only to see Clicker's hand entering his chest. "I've sealed two of your system given powers. Now you can't access your extra lives nor can you regenerate. I did some research on you while I was busy. People like you aren't half as rare as you believe them to be," Clicker said with a smile, showing his decaying teeth and aged gums.
He then removed his hand from Lone's chest and walked away slowly with a certain air of joy around him. His body warped and he had disappeared, leaving no traces of him ever being present.
Lone slumped to the ground in a wet mess of blood and his own guts. "LONE!" Sophie screamed before she dropped her tools and rushed to his side. The rest of Lone's companions followed suit. This was certainly not what Lone thought would happen when he met Clicker face to face for the first time. Most certainly not.