Looking at the message before him, a series of questions formed.

“Why am I only getting access to the boss-monster function now?” he asked

“And why wasn’t this covered in the tutorial?” he quickly added. You would think that such things would be covered in the tutorial, as it is in the nature of tutorials to cover the basics.

Some of your abilities are locked to your rank, as to make sure there is a prober difficulty progression in the dungeon. As for why it wasn’t covered in the tutorial. You didn’t have access to it at that time, so there was no reason to tell you.

“Well, I guess that makes sense,” he said to himself. But he was still a little irritated since it would have been nice to have known earlier.  

“But now you got to make up for it, so tell me everything you know about the bosses” he requested.

Of course.

There exist 4 kinds of bosses. Mini-Boss, Floor Guardian, Sector Guardian, Quadrant Guardian.

Mini-Boss:

The “Mini-Boss” is an optional creature that can exist on any floor. They exist to provide an extra challenge for invaders.

Floor Guardian:

Every floor has a monster that stands above the rest, an alpha if you will. They are the “Floor Guardians”, on every floor there exists a strong beast that makes sure that the weak doesn’t make it to the next floor. They have to be defeated before the path to the next floor opens.

Sector Guardian:

The “Sector Guardian” appear every 3 floors. They are exponentially stronger than the “Floor Guardians” on the floor before it. Because every 3 floors there is a difficulty spike inside the dungeon. They exist on a semi floor between the floors and must be killed to open the path to the next floor.

Quadrant Guardian:

The Quadrant Guardian is the strongest obstacle in the dungeon. They stand guard every 10 floors. Just like the “Sector Guardians” they exist on their independent semi floor, between the floors.

An important thing to note. Is that the “Monster surge” event in your dungeon will not affect the “Sector Guardian” and the “Quadrant Guardian”. The “Floor Guardian” will be allowed to choose if it wants to try its luck on the next floor or stay.

It was good to finally know this, he thought to himself. He did feel that something was missing before he would be able to dig a new floor, and it good to finally know what that feeling was.

“Okay then. Tell me about the different options there are to getting a “Floor Guardian” He requested.

There exist multiple ways to get a Boss monster for a floor:

[Boss summon]: Summon a new monster from your summoning menu, this monster will then be upgraded to a boss class monster. Every time it is slain, it will reform 24 hours later.

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[Random Boss summon]: Summon a random boss monster of an appropriate rank for your dungeon.

[Boss promotion]: Select a monster on your floor and promote it to become a permanent boss. Each time it dies it will respawn.

[Theme Boss]: This option is available, by having a floor theme. If this option is selected, a random boss monster that is compatible with the floor theme will be summoned.

[Natural Selection]: This is a unique option, only available to you through your core type. If this option is selected, the current strongest monster on the floor will gain the title “The Apex” and become a Boss class monster. If killed by another monster on the floor, that monster will gain the title and become the next Boss.

[Boss creation]: Use one of your monster designs tickets to create a unique boss monster for your dungeon.

Looking at the different ways he could get a boss only 4 of them seemed interesting. [Boss promotion], [Theme Boss], [Natural Selection] and [Boss creation]. These were the only ones that seemed interesting to him. Because all the others were just boring in comparison.

[Boss summon] was just summoning a boss version of the monsters he already has unlocked so there was nothing extremely new in that, and [Random Boss summon] was just a coin toss. He had an equal chance to get something good as he had to get something bad. So, in his opinion, it was simply not worth it.

Now came the time to sort the others. Starting with the [Boss promotion]. It was a very viable option, choosing one of his already established monsters to become the boss, could be very good. He could select the monster with which he saw the most potential. From there it would then just continue to grow in strength without having to worry about dying as it would just be resummoned after a while.

[Theme Boss], it was the same as [Random Boss summon] but with this one, he could at least be sure that he would get a monster that was perfectly accustomed to the floor. But he didn’t like the gamble, so he opted out of this choice.

[Boss Creation], the choice of designing his unique boss was very appealing. A monster that he knows will be fully adapted to the environment, capable of killing everything. But he didn’t want to waste the creation ticket. He wasn’t sure he was ready to design his monster. He wanted to observe a few more monsters, their traits, skills, and hunting style before he begins to design his creatures.

In the end, there was only [Natural Selection] as a choice. Who was he kidding? As soon as he saw it. He knew that he was going to select this choice. It offered such variety, in comparison to the others. No two bosses were ever going to be the same, and it builds upon his core ability so there was never really a choice. So that was what e he did.

Selecting [Natural Selection] he could feel how a wave of information surged through all the monsters in the dungeon. He could feel how they all instinctively now knew how the boss system worked. He could feel as 4 creatures inside his dungeon immediately tried to lay claim to the title, but they were quickly overshadowed by a fifth overwhelming presence. When it laid its claim on the title of “The Apex” no one contested it, for they knew that there was no winning in single combat against this creature.

When he looked after it, he found that it was the metal-infused Giant Centipede he was just looking at just a few minutes ago. He watched as the title took its effect on it. Before his eyes, he saw its body grow to twice the size it was before. Its carapace breaking into cracks and then reforming for every burst of growth. Its mandibles became even thicker and tougher, with metal infused carapace on the tips. Its eyes shone with a newfound intelligence. When the transformation was over, it stretched itself into its full size. An aura of pure domination immitted out from it, pushing down on all nearby monsters. Every single creature in its immediate surroundings knew that this was a superior being, that this creature could kill them without even trying. It was an awe-inspiring scene to watch.

But, as soon as the aura spread around it. The aura disappeared and the centipede just continued, on its way as if nothing had changed with it. Seeing this he then decided to take a quick look at its status to see what had changed with it.

Status:

Race: Giant Centipede (Metal infused)

Title: “The Apex”, 1’st Floor Boss

Level: 8

Hp: 1700

Mp: 195

Skills:

Active:

Crushing mandibles lv. 7

Tunnel lv. 9

Dash lv. 6

Passive:

Tough Carapace lv. 8

Dark vision lv. 6

Devourer lv. 5

Metal infused Carapace lv. 1

Thick Carapace lv. 3

Tremor sense lv. 2

Apex Aura lv. 1

Joint Scales lv. 1