After we all found each other again, we swam to the end of the boss room. The room was quite massive, and just swimming across took about fifteen minutes. Considering we hadn’t gotten much rest and then had to fight a massive underwater beast, everyone was quite tired. We finally found a hatch leading up. It didn’t lead straight onto the next floor but dumped us into a pond. Thankfully, the pond didn’t have any monster fish, and we were able to swim to the surface un-perturbed.

As I broke the surface, the air never felt so fresh. We had been rebreathing the same air for several hours, and it was getting a bit thin. I wondered if we were more resistant to carbon dioxide because of our job levels. Perhaps, a normal human would have already passed out by now.

We emerged in a small pond. There was a small waterfall next to us that gave the entire environment a pleasant, beautiful feeling. Of course, at the depths of this pool was a powerful and dangerous Kraken boss, so the beauty was only a deception to the real danger. The group of us flopped out of the water while gasping for breath.

“That safe room was a joke,” Terra complained.

“It looks like there are loopholes to the idea of safe.” Lydia frowned.

They were right to be angry. Dungeons were supposed to have rules, and one rule was that safe rooms were safe. However, this safe room needed you to close the door to keep the water out, and then spawned a boss that might grab and drown you while you were trying to recover. It was malicious, although it probably fit Calypso’s personality quite well.

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Typically, every ten levels had a boss that came after a safe room. On the final boss, there was no door between the boss and the safe room, meaning the door that you had to close was the outside door to summon the boss. As a general rule, the Dungeon Master didn’t enter the safe room. This was because they would be weakened by entering the safe room.

The same set up didn’t exist for every other boss level. These safe rooms had a door on both sides. As soon as you entered the boss room, the door behind you would shut, and the boss would appear. I had always thought the boss was in some way sequestered before you entered the room. I supposed there was no reason to believe that, other than experience. I had just never had an instance where the boss took the initiative to harass us in the safe room.

“What should we do, Master?” This was asked over the Slave Communication channel by Lydia.

In that fight, I had acted out in ways that didn’t fit my persona. I wasn’t even sure of everything I had said, and if any of it gave away the secret. There was also no guarantee that Calypso was watching us that closely. Just because she had awareness of the entire dungeon didn’t mean she was listening in during my fight. Even if she could listen in, wouldn’t my words be muffled through all the water and noise of battle? I just didn’t know enough about what it meant to be a Dungeon Master.

“We’ll keep on as before. Select a guard and we’ll rest until morning.”