“There you are. Where the hell did you go?” Rachel asked, looking at Foster with a frown, while he simply shrugged in response, “Just went out for a walk. That’s fine, isn’t it?” He replied, and Rae let out a sigh, “I guess so, but let one of us know next time. We’re still in the dungeon, despite how this place looks.”

Foster climbed up the thin ladder to his capsule to go and grab all of his things. As he dragged his armor out of the small space, he glanced at his wrist. Luckily, he could at the very least make the snake turn back into a bracelet, so it wouldn’t actually bother him during his fighs. He was going to try and play around with this a bit more, but he didn’t want to waste his mana right before they were going to head into the boss room. On top of that, they still had the whole trip back to the surface to go through.

He just really needed to figure out what this new ‘mode’ for the snake did, since he really didn’t notice any particular difference. More than that… he just placed dots of mana above him, it wasn’t even a real spell. It would be easier to say that those dots were a fraction of a part of what would then make a spell.

“Let’s go line up for the boss room.” Rae said, “Let’s hope that it won’t take too long for us to get a turn.”

“Huh? We’ve gotta line up?” Foster asked confused, “Can’t we just go in?”

“No, of course not.” Kyla replied instantly, “Only a single group can enter the boss room at a time. It’s actually why the settlement was built right here! When the dungeon was first found and people came flooding into it, they had to wait for days, if not weeks to be able to enter the boss room, so they figured they could just make this place a little cozier while they were at it.” She explained, “But usually, it’s really not that bad. There are a lot of people here, but only a dozen groups tend to try and fight the boss every day, usually. But on busy days… well, it gets busy, alright.”

Surprised to hear all this, Foster tightened the strips that held the armor to his body, “So, how long do you guys think it’s going to take this time?”

“Well…”

— 

“Six hours. It took six fucking hours for us to get in there, seriously?” Foster said with a wry smile, as his party finally approached the boss room’s large metal doors. Due to the Grandosia guild coming through here on another clear attempt, a lot of people came down to try and clear the boss room to follow behind them, making everything take far longer than normal.

“Just be happy that the monsters in this dungeon don’t take as long to regenerate.” Rachel said immediately, and Foster quickly became quiet. If they had to wait a day after each group entered the boss room, then there was no way they were going to wait here until they could clear the fifth floor. In other, smaller dungeons, it seemed like that sort of thing happened quite quickly. But a world dungeon like this apparently adjusts to the people within it a lot more than others, so to lure them deeper into the dungeon, the monsters regenerate at a much faster rate.

The boss monster especially. While it did take a short while for enough mana to gather in the room to form another boss, once that mana was there, the boss monster would form the moment that the doors closed behind the next group.

Foster was the first in the group to place his hand on the large metal door, and started trying to push it open. When he did, certain parts of the metal carving on the door started to light up, and the door practically opened on its own. Which Foster was quite happy for, it would be impossible for anyone to push open something like this themselves.

The party of five stepped inside after mentally preparing themselves, and watched as the metal door slammed shut right behind them. But the moment that the door closed, Foster felt something weird. It took just a single instant, but that was enough for goosebumps to cover his whole body, head to toe. Maybe it was just his nerves acting up before this boss fight, but it was certainly bothersome. He hadn’t felt this way for a while.

“What’s going on? Shouldn’t the boss be here already?” Lynol asked as he looked around confused, “We waited for long enough, I would rather finish this up quickly.” 

Kyla chuckled with a grin on her face, “Don’t worry, the fight has already started. The King Mole appears in the cave walls around us, so we need to be careful. It could come from anywhere~!” She said, in a slightly too excited tone, as everyone quickly entered their combat stance. If the boss could come from anywhere, then they had to be prepared to react no matter from where it attacked them.

The group stood there for a while, slowly trying to make their way into the center of the room so that they were at least more protected in case the King Mole came from the side walls. If they had taken a few more steps toward the center than they managed, they might have been crushed by the rocks that started falling from the ceiling. Octer made sure to shield everyone from most of the smaller rocks that were going to be tough to avoid, while they all dodged out of the way of the larger ones. 

And then, just a moment after the rocks settled on the ground, a huge mass of fur fell down into the boss room from above. Trying to take the initiative to get it before it got the chance to recover from the drop, Lynol slashed his sword at it. But the moment his blade cut through its hide, he jumped backward while trying to hold the others back too, “Something is wrong. The King Mole is already dead.”

Startled, the party looked at the corpse of the vastly oversized mole laying in the center of the room. For just a moment, Foster activated his Dead Sight, and could see nothing but a cloud of black mist in front of him. And glancing up, it seemed to continue deep into the hole in the ceiling that it fell out of, “He’s right. It’s dead, and it has been from the start… But why isn’t its body disappearing?”

“That… Boss monsters are unique existences even within dungeons. Their bodies will only disappear once the boss room has actually been cleared. Some boss rooms require you to solve some sort of puzzle even after the boss is dead. But that has never been the case for this part of the dungeon. In deeper floors, sure, but here..?” Rachel explained, while the party started to look around the room. Maybe there was something in here that could explain the situation.

“Watch out!” Lynol yelled out as the party started to split up to look around, as he still stared into the hole in the ceiling. As all the eyes in the room focused on the hole, something else fell down into it. It seemed like just another rock at first, but soon, its surface cracked open, revealing a large purple glass orb the size of a bowling ball.

Kyla flinched back when she saw it, “It’s- It’s the Cave Golem instead? Really?” She asked confused. While she was excited about this idea last night, it was clear that she was scared when she was actually faced with it. After all, the Cave Golem was supposed to be far more powerful than they were expecting. But then, something else happened that nobody in the group could even hope to expect. The glass orb cracked, nearly split in half.

First the King Mole, and then the Cave Golem? They were both dead, so something was definitely wrong. But before any of them could even hope of figuring out what that ‘something’ was, they were surprised by another visitor. Just this time, it was certainly alive, and in extremely high spirits at that. Climbing out of the hole from above was a clearly heavily wounded creature. It looked like a huge, bestial rat. It soon dropped down to the ground, standing on its hind legs, its proud body stretching up into four meters of height. It wore a rusty metal chestplate and carried a long, cracked spear. Its tail had clearly been violently ripped off, and just recently so, the same with basically its whole left ear.

As the party tried figuring out what was going on, they watched the rat dig its spear into the dead King Mole’s body, before violently ripping its hide from its corpse. With blood splashing everywhere, the rat pulled the hide over its back. While the hide settled on him, it seemed to change and transform into a proper, albeit a bit rough, cloak hanging from its back. But even then, it didn’t seem like it was done yet. It reached down and grabbed the remains of the broken glass orb, pushing it into its mouth like candy, practically unhinging its jaw to fit it in. With uncomfortable crunching, the rat completely devoured the orb, and it didn’t take long until the effects of this could be seen.

The rat’s body started to transform as its eyes began to let out a soft purple glow. Soon, its body was covered in patches of thick rock as it grew in size even more, now reaching a full five, maybe six meters. Its spear as well became covered in a thick layer of rock, adjusting it to fit its wielder’s new physical size. The rat stepped forward, and started holdings its spear forward, as this party faced a never-before seen boss.

The Lord of the Cave.