By the time morning came—or what felt like morning based on the fifty-six hours we had left, anyway—I was as ready as I’d ever be. We’d stuffed my backpack full of battery bombs, each wrapped in paper screw bags filled with bits of hardware. I had twenty or thirty of them; we hadn’t bothered counting since half ended up getting ripped apart and rebuilt. Calvin was many things, but precise under pressure wasn’t one of them.

Still, I’d had time to build a couple of other weapons—nothing as spectacular as the bombs, but functional, solid weapons I’d be able to get some mileage out of. The sharpened shovel looked like some kind of medieval weapon now, even if the balance wasn’t great. It reminded me of a curved-bladed slicing axe.

Calvin had opted for a crowbar. He kept insisting he wasn’t a fighter, but he was part of the team, and he was going to be armed, even if he refused to go monster hunting.

I didn’t even poke my head into Calvin’s cave. Instead, I crept forward, eyes on the two Rat Men I could see just inside the Tunnel Lord’s lair. When I felt like I couldn’t get any closer without them spotting me, I broke into a sprint. The sharp shovel blade went up, then down, and the first Rat Man—a Level Two—died almost instantly. Then I spun and sliced through the second one’s arm.

It screamed, but a quick chop cut that off, and a moment later, both of their orbs floated into me. I didn’t bother hoping for a level out of them; the real prize was further in. As I hurried down the tunnel, the darkness pushed around me until I could hardly see a thing.

Then, hanging in front of me, I saw a wall of thick gray fog.

It looked like something out of one of my ex’s video games, and based on the stat screens and messages I’d seen so far, that didn’t surprise me. She was probably thriving in her Tutorial Dungeon—this kind of thing was her jam. I’d watched her play enough to know what I had to do, though.

I shifted the backpack so it hung off my side, with the opening at chest height for easy bomb-pulling. Then I stepped into the room.

Welcome to your first Dungeon Boss Battle!

Dungeon Boss Battles are no-retreat, winner-take-all tests of power against an elite monster! Each boss has certain rules that change how the fight works. Here are the rules for this one:

Arena Battle - The Barrier seals behind you, making it impossible to leave.

Party Exclusive - Only members of the challenger’s party can join the fight.

I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, the fog wall was gone. In its place hung a massive iron gate with spikes that jammed into the ground. In front of me, the cave spread out in a roughly circular stone-floored arena, with a dozen or so wide lead pipes leading into it from every side. Water dripped from a few pipes, and the normal semidarkness was a touch brighter.

Something smelled familiar. I’d smelled it before, but couldn’t place it. It smelled a little like death.

My first bomb already sat in my throwing hand, shifting the shovel over to my hurt arm to compensate. Then I braced myself for the boss.

What I got instead was Rat Men.

Lots and lots of Rat Men.

They weren’t high-level—a good mix of Level Ones and Twos. But there were so many of them. Still, the shrapnel bombs had shredded an entire store. One or two of them should turn this crowd into most of a level-up.

I tossed the bomb toward them, then finger-guns’d it. It was a Makita rechargeable drill battery, and the pop was a lot louder than the 9-volt battery, but nothing compared to shooting a gun. Still, nuts and screws flew everywhere, and a half-dozen Rat Men hit the ground, already dissolving into nothing.

The first orbs hit me a second before the wave of Rat Men did. I managed to get another bomb off, but not to shoot it. Then I was backpedaling and swinging with the shovel-axe. I took a spear thrust to the stomach; it hurt, but not enough to knock me down. Then I whirled. The shovel-axe lashed out, and Rat Men fell back screaming.

In the half-second of space I’d bought, I shot the second bomb. It ripped into the Rat Man horde from behind.

Level Up! Five to Six.

Another spear punched through my armor into my shoulder. It didn’t go far, but I couldn’t keep tanking hits like this. I put both points into Body, and my wounds closed up.

The Rat Man horde had thinned a lot. I counted six left where there’d been at least fifteen before. But they’d also figured out the bomb trick—with so few of them, they could stay spread apart, making my improvised explosives less useful.

I grunted; the closed hole in my shoulder wasn’t too painful, but my infection hadn’t quite gone away. Then I hefted the shovel-axe and rushed the first Rat Man. The others piled in as soon as I made contact.

Fifteen seconds later, it was all over. I breathed heavily, surrounded by orbs that slowly drifted toward me. I could practically taste the level, and I’d need it; if the slime outside was Level Seven, I’d have my work cut out for me with anything much bigger. I breathed heavily to clear my lungs, fished out another bomb, and readied myself for whatever was next.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I didn’t have to wait long.

The Tunnel Lord: Level Twelve Dungeon Boss

Current Difficulty: Extreme

Even rats have kings. The Tunnel Lord rules over the Redline Tunnels’ stations with an iron paw—or twelve of them!

Fight for your life!

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I’d seen Rat Kings before.

Only once or twice, but we’d get them on the farm sometimes. If a group of rats got tangled up in each other, say, in the grain silos, and their tails got knotted too much for them to pull free, they’d die like that, all stuck together.

The first time, Dad made me shovel it out into the field. The second time, I’d just done it without telling him. They weren’t a big deal, other than how much it had to suck to die like that.

This one was made of Rat Men, though. They were bigger than the ones I’d been fighting. And they were alive.

Not only that, but they moved as one, they moved impossibly quickly for a half-dozen monsters all stuck together, and they seemed focused on one goal—killing me. All their eyes snapped toward me as I dropped the bomb. It rolled toward them, and I pulled my finger gun’s metaphorical trigger.

The bomb detonated. Shrapnel flew everywhere, and I caught a whiff of acid. But when I looked, only one of the six rats had taken any damage—and it was mostly shrugging it off. The rest of the Tunnel Lord crab-walked toward me, a half-dozen spears ready to stab into me.

“Well, shit,” I said, reaching for another bomb. I had plenty, so I tossed this one ahead of me and started running. I figured I’d have enough time to get some distance. But no. The crab-walking rat king accelerated, paws pounding the cave floor in unison. I looked over my shoulder; there had to be a gap.

There. The one I’d bombed was maybe a half-beat slow. Its spear was a little out of sync, leaving a moment when I could get through if I was fast.

I leaped for it.

Then everything was a whirlwind of spear-thrusts. I hit the ground hard right next to my bomb. A spear punched into the stone, burying its whole tip. I rolled, grabbing the bomb. Another spear punched through it. Bolts leaked out onto the ground. Then I scrambled clear as the Tunnel Lord turned. It reared up, looming over me, and I threw a Lightning Bolt at the stuck bomb. It detonated in the Rat Man’s face. The spear splintered, and the stone head punched into the cave wall three inches from my eye.

For a second, I dared to hope. But the Tunnel Lord hardly seemed to notice that one of its members was bleeding from an arm stump, missing an eye, and sporting a dozen shrapnel wounds. Even that Rat Man was still moving with the group.

There had to be a solution, but up-front damage wasn’t it—and I didn’t have time to look for it. The Tunnel Lord was on me again, and this time, it made contact.

I screamed as the spear punched through my back and out of my stomach. Even with my Body score over ten now, it felt like fire being slammed through my guts, but without my stat points, it would have killed me. As it was, I saw stars, and my vision went black for a second. Then, the spear ripped out of me, and a second wave of pain rippled across my body.

My reflexes took over. I’d been in similar places while stick-wrestling; the next blow would be to the back of my head, and eleven points in Body or not, I wouldn’t survive that. As the blow came in, I rolled, and through the pin-prick I could still see clearly, the Tunnel Lord’s tangled tails hung overhead.

The spear thrust missed. It stuck in the cave floor next to me for a moment, and I looked up at the rat king’s tail cluster.

It was glowing orange. So were all the rats men’s tails. I’d seen this before, in my ex’s games—a weak point. Awareness had paid off!

In the few seconds I had, I grabbed my shovel-axe and sliced into the tail cluster. My stomach screamed from the motion, and I screamed with it. But the axe caught one of the tails, and a second later, the Tunnel Lord’s hovering text changed as the Rat Man separated from the amalgam boss.

The Tunnel Lord: Level Ten Dungeon Boss

Rat Man Brute: Level Four Monster

The Tunnel Lord staggered back, but the brute rushed me. I blocked its blow, swinging my shovel-axe to counter its spear, and chopped a leg hard enough to knock the monster to the ground. Then I slammed my weapon into it over and over. Its screams filled the cave.

They cut off after a few seconds and a final, crunching blow—this one to the thing’s neck.

Level Up! Six to Seven.

The two points in Body stitched up my stomach wound and finished recovering my shoulder, and I faced the Tunnel Lord. It still looked stunned, but I had no idea how long that would last. It had a weak point now, though. If I could sever the rest of the tails, I’d be dealing with a handful of less powerful enemies. I could handle that.

I rushed toward the Tunnel Lord. It recovered in time to whirl and protect itself, but it felt a beat slow. Still, I wasn’t getting under it again—not without taking another punishing wound, and I wasn’t close enough to a level to use Body points to fix myself again.

But another plan came to mind. I shrugged off the backpack—one of the rat king’s spears had all but broken the strap, and it snapped as I pulled it off. Bombs spilled all over the floor. Then I started running.

The Tunnel Lord followed me, and I smiled a predatory smile as its first set of paws stepped into the bombs.

The Tunnel Lord had taken bomb hits on its front sides. None of them had done anything useful for me, but every rat king had to have a tail tangle, and when I’d cut the one loose, I’d realized that this one’s nerves were all connected. It had only shrugged off the damage to one Rat Man at a time because it represented a tiny fraction of the whole. But if I separated them, I was willing to bet all that damage would add up.

I fired a Lightning Bolt at my backpack—and at the dozen bombs still inside of it.

The pop ripped into my ears. Nuts, screws, and washers pinged off every surface. I threw myself to the ground but still took a couple of hits from bolts that felt like bullets. But when the dust cleared, and the acid smell faded enough for me to risk looking, the Tunnel Lord was gone.

In its place were four greenish-yellow orbs that floated toward me and a single Rat Man with the words Tunnel Lord: Level Two Dungeon Boss over its head. It was down, struggling to push itself to its feet. As I limped closer, I realized why; it was missing one.

The shovel-axe came down on the Rat Man’s neck, and a moment later, another set of words popped into my vision.

Hardcore Boss Defeated: The Tunnel Lord

Level Up! Seven to Ten.

Dungeon Delvers who were not in the arena will receive fifty percent of your team’s experience.

I breathed a sigh of relief as the fight ended, then turned and started limping back to Calvin. I needed to get to him before he spent his points. But before I could go, the System continued.

Congratulations! For defeating your first boss, you have unlocked Magical Items and the Inventory System.