With all six of us together and refreshed we made progress at faster speeds. In no time at all, we made it back to the entrance of the dungeon and soon went about what I had originally expected.

Alec and Eris provided us the benefit of their keen eyes as we went forward and I was treated to an in-person experience of my dungeon-delving dreams. The drip of water, the sight of strange substances on some of the walls, the mix of air that was stale being caught with rank smells and cool breezes coming from somewhere else. Even the long echo down the halls of our footsteps as we moved through the gray stone and sandstone floors. When there was a trap or obstacle, Calvin and Moriah went to work dismantling it.

Which made me wonder, “Do those just regenerate? Surely we’re not the only ones in the region who have visited the dungeon.”

Eris had the answer. “Yeah, they must, because every year during the winter holidays, Charles and his visiting lords and in-laws come down through the dungeon or watch others do it; sometimes feasting while they do.”

I knew that lords in Earth’s own feudal era hunted and feasted, so it made some sense - this was not dissimilar. “Like the sports fans in a family watching the Thanksgiving football game religiously?”

The girl tensed the muscle in one cheek, making a dimpled smile in a sort of exaggerated smirk. “Yeah, exactly.”

We continued onwards, and as we did I took the time to examine everyone - because I realized that while I knew that Calvin, Moriah, and the baker boys were all apprentices in the process of unlocking their respective crafting skills class, I began to notice that Alec carried himself a lot more like Eris than the others - and his skills alone made it feel that way.

So as we went I analyzed him.

[[ Name: Alec

Age: 13

Class: Guard

Skills:

Analysis

Polearms

Survival

Hunting

Medicine ]]

That was certainly something new. I could never pull up the skills of others before, and soon I found myself doing the same to each member of the party.

Eris had the skills analysis and medicine in common with Alec, but she also had skills visible in fishing, long blades, short blades, and shields.

Moriah had smithing, blunt weapons, and fire magic.

Calvin was skilled in axes, carpentry, and nature magic.

Kenneth and Kieran shared cooking and gardening but Kieran had the skill for fire magic and Kenneth the skill polearms.

I now knew that thanks to analysis, I could at least get an estimate of people’s skills; not that it showed any numerical value beside them.

***

Through the first two levels of the dungeon, we didn’t face more than traps. While I found it odd, I was not the only one.

“Isn’t it weird that we’ve not run into any monsters on the way down here?” Kieran spoke up, in between looking around cautiously with his frying pan.

“I mean I could see you think it weird, but sometimes I swear all that flour mucks up your brain!” Moriah replied. “Obviously it is because we ran off the cobluchins that’d be in these levels. We’ve seen signs of them, but we already fought so many of them.”

Calvin meanwhile piped in a mumbling comment that I could only pick out the words ‘soot for brains’ from.

I turned off my brain at that, focusing on the only one of my monster partners that was still out. While Baloo the Cerbearus and Bagheera the Ossicarn were safely stowed in their reliquaries, Beelebian was out. He had not wanted to return to his reliquary, and somehow the fluffball of a bee monster was able to give me a puppy dog eyes expression – despite being a bee.

So I walked with it on my shoulder and tuned out the others. I may have been a kid bodily, but I had heard more than enough of such arguments as a parent to not have an interest in such ribbing when I was not involved.

Instead, I considered the moves of the bee and tried to think of a good name for it. Beowulf was out of the question; despite its meaning. The bee did not strike me as any sort of hunter. His moves were about being a shield, and the wind, at least at the moment. With no frame of reference to its evolutionary family, that just led me to think of a shield, and as I half focused at the back of the line, a knight with a fluttering cloak and feather in its helm.

Baloo and Bagheera both were named after characters from one of my favorite stories to read to my kids and which were favorites to read as a kid myself. So maybe that was the angle for a nickname for my newest partner? The image of a knight made me think, and there was no story that came more prominently to mind when it came to knights than King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

Maybe one of them would provide a good source of the name for my Beelebian partner? No, the answer was obvious.

“What do you think of Bedivere as a name?” I asked it as we followed the party through the dungeon.

“Bzzao.” the little bee replied.

***

We continued onwards until we were heading down the stairs to the next level and it was then that Moriah, Keiran, and Calvin’s conversation from before got an answer.

Here, when we entered the dungeon and were fully arrayed - we saw signs of cobluchins, and when they saw us they began to scurry away. They got only a dozen steps before Moriah lit them up with a pair of fireballs, and it was then that we saw that this dungeon was more dangerous than we had expected.

As if on cue, traps began to spring. Spears shot from the walls, and Moriah’s blast of fire turned into a huge gout of flame. Huge enough that even with Calvin instinctively using the trick he had before to create a giant log in front of us from nature magic and a chunk of wood, we still took damage from the heat alone.

Luckily, no spear launches had gone off but even without anyone moving forward they continued to be thrown. Spears without heads, really wooden spikes more than anything else. As Calvin and Moriah went to work to search for the plate charging it, the projectiles continued at irregular intervals.

As if they were being thrown manually and not by some sort of mechanism. I might be wrong, but as I noticed it the glow similar to that of the boss battle had occurred at cracks in the walls which the spears were being launched through. Strange Eyes was about perception, after all.

“I think they’re in the walls!” I shouted to the others.

Without questioning me, Eris reached for one of the reliquaries at her side, coin-shaped such as mine, and threw it. Immediately, her stony large-eared dog monster from before came out. It let out an ‘Arooo?’ in question to her and she gestured at the right wall. Without hesitation, it charged and slammed into it.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Immediately, the room began to shake as the dog monster caused vibrations through the wall as if it were the ground in an earthquake. The room began to shake so violently that it kicked up dust. Just as quickly as it started, the dog monster moved its paw from the wall. Immediately, a prompt appeared to me and the others.

[[Your party has dealt 5 damage to ???.]]

I was right then, wasn’t I?

Soon after, the spears began to be launched again, this time at a slower pace but nonetheless. Some even were thrown at an attempted angle to hit Eris’ monster dog partner. It stood its ground, letting out an ‘arooo?’ before hopping over the one spear that got close to it. When it came to a stop, it rolled into the wall and once again the room began to shake.

[[Your party has dealt 5 damage to ???.]]

“Does it need help? Maybe Bagheera could help.”

Eris looked at me for a long moment before smirking. “If you think that glorified house cat can do better at this than Clayrrier can, then you haven’t learned much. Stand back.”

The dismissal almost made me angry, but that wasn’t enough to start an argument. Spears were being thrown, and despite this, I found myself unconsciously balling my fists because of that borderline sense of anger.

If it was that easy to spark anger, I still needed to master myself.

Even as more damage prompts began to show themselves, I focused on Eris’ dog, the Clayrrier, and analyzed it.

[[Clayrriers are guardian monsters favored by many working classes and nobles for hunting hounds. Favored as monster partners for shepherds, guards, farmers, masons, and miners, Clayrriers are naturally capable of determining and reinforcing the structure of buildings and mines. This Clayrrier is male. All clayrriers are earth and nature-primarily aligned monsters. This clayrrier has a secondary artifice alignment. Its tertiary alignment is locked. It is level 4.]]

Maybe she didn’t mean it as dismissively as I thought. Clayrriers were natural dungeon-delving dogs - and naturally suited for what it was doing. As the damage dealt prompts continued, the room finally stopped shaking, and then the right-hand wall exploded further down the passage. Out of it came a jackanack, with a cobgoblin clinging to its horns and a train of another five cobluchins clinging to each of the cobgoblin’s feet and each other’s tails. as they rushed down the hall. Moments later, the same happened from the left-hand wall of the passage.

Without waiting for a word from Eris, Clayrrier rushed down the passage and over the debris that had been created. We followed it as quickly as we could attempt, but given Clayrrier’s speed of movement across the wall’s fragments Eris released her Hyborvid to fly after it and provide backup.

We continued to move after them as quickly as we could and after getting over the debris it turned into a run. We ran until my lungs were burning from effort, and I was sure the others were too by the way the bakers were wheezing. We couldn’t move any further though, thanks to a heavy wooden door that had been shut behind the pair of jackanack riding train of cobluchins.

The heavy wooden door seemed ominous, and that was before I noticed the LCD green glowing words across the door’s frame.

“Warning: Prepare for a dangerous battle. Dungeon Boss Monster ahead. Chances of luck-based whiteout status to survive when damaged beyond the 0 HP mark are reduced to 10% maximum without any skills.”

Yet another piece of new information as to how the system worked. When I had been hit by that alpha jackanack and knocked out, I survived without any greater injuries not because it was a given; but because I had benefitted from a lucky roll and being granted this whiteout survival status.

“Is everyone ready?” I asked, before reaching for my reliquaries.

When everyone confirmed they were, Eris and I touched the panels of the door and as if our touch activated a mechanism within the frame, they began to open forward into darkness.

We walked through it.

***

As we all came through the door we saw that Kieran’s suspicion from before was even more founded on solid ground than the previous passage had exposed. As we finished moving down the stairs at the end of the passage we found ourselves in a cavernous room with trees and shacks, straps of what I presumed to be leather drying on low-lying branches, and herds of tamed or otherwise pacified jackanacks. And in the center of it all, we found ourselves immediately confronted by a mass of cobluchins screeching, with at least six cobgoblins in front of them.

And in front of all of them, there was a monster which I first mistook as some sort of steroid-using, dire orangutan version of a cobgoblin, with leather pauldrons on its shoulders and shoes that split at the front of the shoe, not holding its ludicrously long toes in place. Its ears were the size of a humanoid bat’s, and its lemur-like face was so large it looked closer to a canid. It was bright orange-furred and had a pot belly.

As I analyzed it, this time I felt the name of the monster that the analysis skill and monster bible provided was wrong. It didn’t perfectly fit.

[[Cobliaths are one of the possible final forms of the cobluchin and cobgoblin monster families. Obsessed with clothing and shoes but also prone to ruining them thanks to the fact it does not care if it fits them or not, these creatures are known to raid villages for new clothing. Capable of using its ferocious order to tame lesser monsters such as Jackanacks, a troop of cobluchin led by a cobliath is often referred to not as a troop but as a warband. Cobliaths have immense natural strength but little of the dexterity of their prior forms. This cobliath is male. All cobliath are fae and nature-primarily aligned monsters. This cobliath has a secondary artifice alignment. Its tertiary alignment is locked. It is level 10. This Cobliath is a boss class monster.]]

“Cobliath? More like Coblogourd.” I commented because, despite its monster bible description and its status as a boss monster, I was reminded more of a fat pumpkin than a great monster of towering height.

It was here and now that I found out the first steps of my own way of the monster. My Tao of Monster taming.

My Tao of Monsters, First Tenet. Perceive danger as what it is and act accordingly.

Essentially, focus on the danger in front of you. I was taught this tenet by doing the opposite of it. While mocking the boss with childish abandon I thought I was in some sort of superhero comic, the Cobliath greeted our party. It did so by rearing back and catapulting a volley of cobluchins with a swing of its cartoonishly large hand and despite the fact it seemed slow; we soon had furry fastballs with major league speeds rocketing at us.

They probably would’ve hurt even if they didn’t land with screeches, claws, thrashing, and of course primate fury. I only ended up with one of them on me, but that was enough. This was not rookie number damage.

[[You have received 5 damage from the Cobliath’s attack.]]

That was within the first second of impact. As Bedevere the beelebian and I struggled to get the furious cobluchin off and Baloo the Cerbearus and Bagheera the Ossicarn ran interference on another strike landing; I took another two damage.

Seven health points out of my total of twenty-nine health points. Scratches, bites, and bruises all down me before Bedevere’s breezecall technique and my own sword hit punches finally brought it to 0 HP and unconsciousness.

Even as it fell to the ground and I was treated with a system prompt about two experience points gained, I felt things only increasing in tempo. All around me, the others were getting similar attacks as the Cobliath launched its tribe members at us like so much artillery ammunition.

“Bagheera, Baloo, to me. Prepare a rolling stone and salmon leap attack respectively - but don’t go forward yourself. On my word, Bedevere, you launch a breeze call and all of you try to combine your attack at the attack from Cobliath. If we’re lucky, it’ll throw them off course and I’ll be able to strike down whatever it launches before it truly becomes dangerous to use by landing.”

In moments, I saw the eerie LCD green glow of the strange ways activating and highlighting the cobliath’s arm and leg as I actually tried to focus hard. When it did, I almost perceived a timer, and going on instinct I called out as I saw its muscles tense in the arms and legs.

Moments after the cobliath launched its next attack, I gave my monsters the signal to counterstrike with their techniques. As Bagheera tore into the ground like it was upholstery, magically summoned rocks flew forward. Bedervere’s Breezecall caught the rocks and sped them up, and the water bubbles that Baloo created were soon popped in sizable explosions by the rocks flying through them. The shockwave of the water and air pressure slowed the cobluchins before they could even spread out in trajectory and moments later the air-propelled rocks hammered into the cobluchins themselves.

The experience gain prompts I gained moments later told me that I did not need to step in, so instead I kept my focus on the cobliath.

I was not a fighter, but I also was keenly aware that I was here mostly as a way to benefit the others in the party. I was not their leader, even if I certainly should have been based on real age alone.

I couldn’t rally them or try to lead a strategy even if I could figure one out. I barely knew everyone, as much as I saw the chance to become friends with them. If I wanted us to win, I needed to take the pressure off of the others so they could defeat their opponents and we could take down the cobliath together.

That meant getting up close and personal with it, as much as I would come to realize later that it was a bad idea. Even with the system-derived ability increases, I was still not even a nine-year-old. This thing was what amounted to an ogre.

Wisdom comes with age and experience, they said back on Earth. As I ran forward to deal with this boss monster, I must have thought I was some sort of video game protagonist and that I would be able to handle the boss by myself.

I would be taught that first tenet of what would become My Tao of Monsters, a second time. Perceive danger as what it is and act accordingly. If I already formed that tenet and followed it, I would have realized that as a not-yet nine-year-old without even a true warrior class, I should not be trying to fight a boss monster one on one.

Instead, I found myself slapped away with one of those massive hands and had the characters of the tao written in my own blood when I smashed into a wall.

I passed out.