Chapter 38 (1/2)

Boss Monster

The Chicago Dungeon Gate showed the following information.

-Dungeon Information

Level: A Maximum number of entrants: 15 Clear conditions: Eliminate the Boss Monster on the Last Floor of the Castle Time remaining to evolve: 102 days, 3 hours, 22 minutes Status: Steady

The system message did not explain what the boss monster was capable of or looked like. When one would meet with a boss monster, it didn’t even kindly tell him or her, ‘That’s the boss monster.‘ It just notified them that the dungeon had been cleared once they had ended it.

‘Experienced hunters are confident that they can tell the boss with their own eyes.’

It was usually the boss who was waiting alone in a vast room, having to be very large, or some ability that no other monsters had, or something that looked very bizarre, or on the contrary too normal, or of an unknown species.

‘But when experience and age accumulate mediocrely, it becomes a poison that hinders judgment.’

That was the knowledge of the elite hunters of this era.

Since some time had passed since the Cataclysm, they were confident that they knew the Dungeon ecology well. Still, the knowledge that humankind had acquired now was only a first-aid procedure on a bleeding wound, relatively or absolutely.

For example…I was now in front of the last room of the dungeon. However, the expedition team that had attacked the site in my previous life would never have imagined that to be the boss room.

‘The system explained that the boss was on the last floor.’

I was definitely at the bottom of the dungeon at this moment.

However, the Dungeon explorers’ analysis, especially by Emily’s B-level clairvoyance, would have differed. There was a bigger room beyond this room from her eyes, and most of all, there seemed to be the next floor underground.

It was all fake.

That was an area that Hunter could not enter in the first place, and it was not part of the dungeon. That meant that the last floor of the dungeon was right here.

There was a lock on the door. It was not easy to get in from the perspective of other hunters, even if it was not even the last room. In dungeons, these areas were usually called the ‘treasure rooms.’

Woong!

I made a key with various Mana patterns and stuck it in the door.

Creek!

The door opened with an eerie sound. In front of me was a room similar to what I had seen a few hours ago.

‘Oh… Is this?’

The sword murmured as if it found this strange. The room’s scenery was too similar to the room where it had been locked up for many years.

As same as then, there was nothing in the room except one pile of bone and a sword that penetrated its chest. Even the structure of the inner wall was entirely identical.

As soon as I opened the door, I heard telepathy as if it had waited for me.

‘Oh, I’ve been waiting for you! I can’t believe you woke me up. An adventurer from another world! You’ve already got your hands on [Devil Slayer], haven’t you?’

It wasn’t the sword that was whispering in my mind.

Considering the direction, another sword in that room was thought to be the source of the telepathy. At this point, the expedition of their previous life must have had this thought from their point of view, especially when they had a clear memory of getting the sword that way.

‘There’s another item like the Devil Slayer! In this dungeon!’

Furthermore, Emily would have confirmed that there were no traps in this room, that it was just a room.

Well, that was what it might seem to her. The sword spoke as if it found this all odd.

‘I don’t know how it knows me.’

Of course, it didn’t know what that was. The sword wasn’t born in this dungeon. It was just swept away when parts of the other dimension were recombined and sealed in this middle dimension.

When the expedition team in my previous life encountered that thing, the sword was in possession by Kevin McKid. No matter how he may be, he couldn’t hold two similar artifacts. In other words, ‘that sword’ would go to one of the other explorers besides McKid. This was a treasure house, anyway. Confident that they had to pass through it to get to the next room, they would have entered the room to identify the artifact’s true nature.

‘You can use the sword and me to deal with the boss downstairs. Please, if you would accept, I’ll be…’

However, I didn’t have to.

Even before the telepathy had entered my head at the speed of light, I threw what I had in my hand into the room!

Swish!

‘Oh, no. What is this? Wait a minute. Listen…!’

It shouted in dismay.

On a thick bundle of Mana cores flying in mid-air, an Iponia crystal was attached to it.

And then…

Woooooong!

This was a room that wouldn’t open the door again once you entered until you cleared it.

This was the unbreakable construction of a dungeon playing by its own rules. However, I didn’t go in yet.

Thump!

In an instant, by combining the Mana patterns, the door was closed again without stepping into the room. When the skeleton and sword disappeared from my sight, the sword murmured.

‘Whoever your opponent might be, you don’t listen to others until the end, do you?’

At that moment…

Boo-boo-boo-boom!

Vibration and blast sound was faintly transmitted over the door. It was the sound of the Mana core exploding with ‘Deep-Sea Swimming’ sweeping the inside.

I opened the door again once the noise stopped.

“Squeaaaal!

The scenery in the room was completely different from what I had just seen.

The familiar bricks that I saw throughout the exploration of the dungeon were nowhere to be found. Sword and skeleton also disappeared.

In the first place, the sword lured its prey like the tentacle of an angler fish.

If Emily checked it with Penetration, she would not find any traps because they were hidden like the wall’s bricks when, in fact, they weren’t even the wall. One had to use a different skill than Penetration to find that.

“Squeal!”

The smell of burning flesh and the disgusting smell of rotting organic matter mixed in and stung my nose.

In the room where the hexagonal shape collapsed, dark red mud was waving. They surrounded the outer walls of the castle and resisted the hunters’ entry. Slimy things that appeared to be a mixture of mud, flesh, and intestines covered the whole room and twisted themselves in agony.

The dungeon’s boss monster was the last room itself.

Rip!

Tubes protrude from all parts of the burned and torn flesh and shoot acidic solutions in all directions. I would have been in trouble if I were attacked in the room.

But still, I blasted the sword movements from the outside without stepping a foot in the room.

Swish!