Aurora

I stared in horror at the actions of Maxwell. While my main body would be fine, this one would be on a quick trip to the paste town if it was teleported like that. Not to mention many of my monsters in the dungeon were unable to survive a drop from too high. Wings standard on my vampires, so at least that was a good thing.

Since the boss was defeated, I quickly moved around the room making note of the secret passage. Once I had it marked on my mental map, I moved over to the tunnel heading out of the chamber. The nature cave theme was still going strong. Only now, I felt like I was in a cave that hadn’t seen natural light in decades. Glowing moss illuminated sections of the cave with boulders and other rock formations adding variation to the decoration of the cave.

As a fellow dungeon core, I felt there was a lot I could learn from this dive. While the natural cave theme wasn’t really my thing, the way the dungeon core had aligned and set the caves up was informative. If a person were to go through my dungeon right now, they would be bored quickly.

I was going for the Middle Ages castle, dark and eerie and all of that nonsense. While the dungeon possessed walls, floors, ceilings and lighting that played to that theme, it was lacking that fine touch. I needed to spend a few days decorating my castle with much more to bring home that gothic castle inhabited by vampires vibe that I wanted to go for.

Sighing at the thought of actual enjoying being a dungeon core becoming normal for me, I turned my attention back to the task at hand. The tunnel ahead was surprisingly empty of traps. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find anything. Perhaps after the pervious boss, it was a straightforward march to the last boss. That would be good for me, since I had already been here for almost three hours. I had other matters that had I had to deal with in the dungeon and the spider city.

I soon reached the next chamber. Peeking inside, I looked around for the next monster would be up against. I spotted a gleam in the corner of the room. Peering closer, I realized that it was a golem, but it appeared as if the floating crystal and the stone golems had fused together. I tried to get a better read on the monster, but it was at a bad angle from the entrance. My job done for the time being, I made my way back to the others.

Of everyone here, Sasha was the least irritating. It helped that it felt like I was undermining Maxwell’s authority, so I went to her to explain what I saw. Sadly, I failed to rile Maxwell up. “No traps?” Sasha asked once I finished describing the tunnel ahead. “You’re sure?”

“Positive, but they might have been too high level for me to detect.”

“Fair enough. Take a breather. We still have about five minutes before we move on,” Sasha said before she went to talk to Razz and Maxwell. I sat down and closed my eyes. I thought about taking a second to check on my dungeon, but I didn’t want to risk something happening to this body.

“How are you holding up?” I opened my eyes to find Rowena looking down at me.

I shrugged. “I’m fine. Still plenty of dungeon to deal with, right?”

“Good point. You are certainly making this easier. I’m glad that you found your way to the village.”

“A few weeks camping. It wasn’t as bad as it seems. Life wasn’t exactly the best back on our blue marble.”

Rowena sat next to me with a sigh. “Tell me about it. I was trapped in a body that failed to show my inner self.”

“Huh. Looks like you got an upgrade then,” I remarked as I studied the wolf-kin. While the game allowed for a lot of customization, she hadn’t gone too crazy. It looked like she had spent a considerable amount of time creating an avatar that truly said what she saw. Unlike my main body. Even if it was almost three years ago, I remember the day when I basically set all the sliders at random. Given how the game worked, it spat out a beautiful lady of the night.

“I’m both thankful and scared about what happened to us. I mean, come on! Aliens are studying us right now. What if one day they decided to just… pull the plug on their experiment. There is absolutely nothing that we could do to stop them.”

She had a point, but it was a meaningless point in my opinion. Why bother worrying about something that you had no control over. Yeah, it would suck if we all just ceased to exist one day, but to the more religious people, that might as well have already happened. The soul that lived in our bodies had already moved to heaven or hell or whatever place you believed in. I’d rather enjoy this reprieve for this copy of my mind while I could.

Rowena was still waiting for me to reply. I cleared my throat. “Well. Things could be worse,” I said finally as I jumped to my feet. “We could be dead.” With that I walked away. The others were ready to move on as well. Heading into the tunnel, we soon reached the chamber with the new golem.

Since the chamber appeared empty besides the one monster, we didn’t hesitate to rush inside. The golem turned toward us at the noise of our entrance and made a gravelly roar. It then proceeded to charge at us with the speed of the second version of the golems. The tanks managed to get their shields up in time, but it was close. They were still pushed back a few paces from the strength the golem possessed.

Spells began to crash into the golem, my own fire shot hitting it a few times for good measure. This might be the third version of the golem, but it was still taking damage. At least, it did until the crystals on its back flowed brightly causing most of the damage to heal. There was a collective groan from the party, but we soldiered on. While the golem healed much of the damage, some of it remained. That gave us hope for defeating it.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

As luck would have it, we found out its weakness on accident. A stray shot from one of the mages hit the ceiling over the golem causing some debris to rain down on the monster. A decent sized rock slammed into the crystal on the golem’s back breaking it off with almost comical ease. With the crystal gone, the golem was no longer able to heal, letting us bring the fight to a quick end.

The next few chambers were more of the same. One or two of the self-repairing golems. As for traps, there was just a single trap that would have caused the walls to quickly compress. I was glad that I noticed that one before the party moved through the tunnels. It also gave me a good idea for my own dungeon.

With that being the case, we made it to the boss room in record time. Unlike the previous chambers, there was some sort of barrier that prevented us from seeing further inside until we stepped through it. Since the new golems had a pretty obvious weakness, the party decided to give it a go.

The tanks stepped through the barrier first with the rest of us following behind them. Inside the room, we found the first appearance of something unnatural. A temple like arena spread out in front of us. Columns that looked like they had been carved from the stalactites. There was a general aura of nature and earth magic in the air as well. Green globes of light illuminated the room for us to see.

In the center stood a tall golem that was made from crystal and stone. The monster was truly a combination of the previous two bosses. Unlike the second boss, it looked like there weren’t going to be golems for Maxwell to throw at the monster. While the others planned the attack on the monster, I was busy looking for some far more important than some monster. I was looking for the dungeon core.

I narrowed my eyes when I failed to find it in the room. My own dungeon core floated at the center of my dungeon’s core room. I figured the same would be the case here. Since I failed to find any more passages leading deeper into the dungeon, this was the last room. Of course, I didn’t forget about the trapdoors. I would have to spend a minute looking for it when I got the chance.

A battle cry from the goblin tank pulled my attention back from the room to the issue of the boss. The others rushed down the steps to surround the boss. I drew my pistol and waited. With a taunt from the tank, the battle started. Weapon skills slammed into the lower half of the boss. With the monster being close to ten meters tall, it was hard for the melee members of the team to hit higher than the shins.

I studied the boss, then aimed for the crystals that covered its back. If the boss was allowed to heal this fight likely wouldn’t end well. My fire shot hit one of the crystals causing it to crack, but not completely destroying it. I narrowed my eyes then quickly fired as rapidly as I could. It took four shots to completely destroy a crystal. There were over a dozen of them to go through.

The rest of the party were doing their part. Maxwell and the other mages were aiming for the crystals on the back. If there were a phase system to the fight, then we needed to take out all the crystals before the boss healed itself. Though, that was just our best guess. The fight might have a completely different pattern.

The boss didn’t just take the beating. The tanks were doing everything in their power to hold it back, but a single hit from the boss generally sent the target flying a few meters. The tanks were focusing on dodging the boss’s attacks, but the only one nimble enough to handle that level of movement appeared to the Rowena. I think she was a Beast Knight or something along those lines. Whatever her class, she was fast on her feet.

We were down to the last crystal when it began to glow. The shattered stubs of the other crystals began to glow as well as they slowly started to repair. I would rather not have to deal with destroying all of the crystals again, so I quickly leveled my pistol at the crystal and overcharged the spell as much as I could in just a few seconds. With a blast that cracked my pistol, a lance of fire erupted from my gun slamming into the remaining crystal. It exploded even managing to do some damage to the boss.

Putting away my pistol, I pulled out a knife. I knew it wasn’t going to be much use, but I could still use magic even without the weapon, it just wouldn’t hit as hard. The cavern started to shake as the boss glowed a bright green. With a stomp, cracks appeared through the room threatening to send us plummeting to our deaths. The shaking got bad enough that I was unable to keep my feet and feel to the ground.

Several others were in the same situation. The boss whether purposefully, or not was unknown, attacked those that were on the ground. Two of the Jade Collective experienced crushed legs and a crushed arm. A goblin managed to roll out of the way from of the boss, but ended up hanging for dear life from the edge of one of the cracks.

The shaking finally ended along with it; the cracks that covered the room began to close. That spelled doom for the goblin that was too far for anyone to reach in time. With the stone of grinding stone and flesh popping, the crack closed, crushing the man. It was the first player death that I had seen since this craziness started. Part of me wondered what would happen to the man if he managed to respawn.

With the boss’s spell over, horrifying death aside, we were able to resume our assault. Unable to heal, the damage added up quickly. The healing gimmick appeared to be the only trick up the boss’s sleeve, which was understandable. The boss was only level twenty. If it was much harder, it wouldn’t be cost effective to dive it.

When the boss collapsed to the ground, Razz ran over to the spot where the dead player had been. There was nothing to hint at anything other than death. The goblins might be my enemies but being crushed to death was a pretty grizzly way to go. Even I felt a bit bad about it. Maxwell walked over to the boss and looted it while I searched around the room. In the corner, I grinned but quickly hid my expression as I found another passage.

I found a stash as well. It looked like a prize for the winner. Since I was going to claim the whole dungeon as my own here soon, if I could of course, I felt it was right to share the loot with the others. “Hey guys! I found some treasure!” I shouted as I pushed the panel open. Maxwell, Sasha, and Razz walked over to inspect the loot.

There were just a few gems, a pile of gold coins, and a dagger of epic quality. To my surprise, they offered me the dagger. Since I had broken my gun, it was natural for me to take the knife. The gold and gems were split amongst the group. I waved off my share. I had little need for gold coins.

“Well this didn’t quite go as planned, but I got two levels out of it, so I’m calling it a success,” Maxwell remarked as he gave the room a glance.

“We got a decent number of mana stones as well,” Rowena added. “Thanks for telling us about this place, Kaga.”

“My pleasure,” I replied with a crooked smile. I doubt you’d be saying that in a few days.