"Are you girls ready?” I asked.

Only after Lydia and Miki assured me did I take a breath and started heading down with them next to me. We entered the massive stone door, and it shut close behind us, sealing us in with the monster. The room itself didn’t differ at all from the floor 10 room. Once I defeated this guy, I could start looking for Celeste. That was what was important.

I didn’t take any risks this time either, the best jobs were selected for everyone, and I even re-added exorcism just in case. Bosses were always many times stronger than the mobs between levels, and I expected this guy to be no less than a challenge. A moment later, a man suddenly appeared in the middle of the room.

He was a ghostly man, wearing a fine suit. His hair was combed, and he looked refined, not intimidating or scary. He seemed vaguely familiar to me. No, he seemed more than familiar. He was the guy in the murals! He was older, paler, and sadder, but this was definitely the man whose story I had been following. Wait… isn’t this Karr’s dungeon?

Then again, now that I thought about it, Mina’s Dungeon was not actually created by Mina, but her brother. So, in other words, this wasn’t Karr’s dungeon? Did that mean it was the fairy queens?

“So, more challengers have come.” The man said sadly. “First, a fairy destroys me, now animalkin slaves. It seems only suiting that this would be my fate. Please, bring me death.”

This ghost also seemed to be self-aware. The mid-tier boss I defeated seemed unintelligent and never learned from battle to battle. If it had, it might have started avoiding me or changed its tactics. On the other hand, this guy seemed to remember his premature death at the hands of the fairy. Was that a trick of only intelligent bosses? And why was he intelligent anyway? I might have expected the Dungeon owner to be intelligent like in the case of the necromancer, but why was Karr capable of intelligent thought? Wait, let’s make sure…

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Why do you want to die?” I asked, cautiously, feeling out the boss.

Karr looked over at me. “I failed her. I failed them all. I tried to protect everyone, and in the end, I saved no one. My great city fell, and I died a pauper’s death. All the good I tried to do in life, in the end, it was wasted.”

“The Fairy Queen? You’re talking about the Fairy Queen, right?” I tried to push him for more information.

“She gave everything for me… and I failed her too…”

“What about Celeste? The one that killed you. What does she have to do with this? Is she the one?”

“Who is Celeste?” His eyes flashed and then he shook his head. “Enough of this! You have come here for a purpose. It is time that we fulfill that purpose. I may seem like a weak noble to you, but I was a great adventurer in my day. I even fought alongside the Great Harem Hero, Artemis.”

“Harem Hero? What is a Harem hero?” I blinked.

Karr’s eyes flashed. “You have two women at your side and you pretend not to understand? I envied that man. I envied the path of the Harem. In the end, I lost everything because I was not fit to have a harem!”

I shook my head. “What? Why are we on harems now? Rather… I don’t care about your love life!”

“If you don’t want the knowledge of a harem, then you aren’t fit to have one!” Karr shrieked.

I was at a complete loss, but apparently, I had pissed him off and now he was attacking with all he had. Spells came flying at the three of us. The battle had finally begun.