The scouts and cats silently descended the impossibly long, strange tunnel.
“What’s that…?”
What they saw at the end of the tunnel gave them shivers. The tunnel opened into an area filled with cold darkness, darker even than a moonless night. The scouts sensed that this darkness was teeming with powerful entities. A myriad of them.
The scouts felt hopelessly out of their depth, realizing they’d been completely oblivious to the danger until it was right under their noses. Every single opponent they could sense now was stronger than anything they’d ever defeated in the past.
“Lao Fan…”
“We have to go in. This is what we’re meant to do.”
The scout in charge went on ahead and jumped down. It was a long drop after exiting the tunnel. When he felt ground under his feet again, he was standing in front of a castle. He heard the others land behind him.
“We cannot ignore any threat to the safety of our kingdom,” he stated decisively, looking around.
To NPCs, dungeons weren’t anything unusual. The sudden appearance of a dungeon was a natural calamity similar to a monster invasion, although less dangerous since they were defensive structures.
The scouts noted with surprise that this dungeon didn’t follow the usual ant-nest layout. Instead, it took the form of a massive castle. And a castle would, presumably, have a master.
Lao Fan smirked.
“I don’t see any traps near the entrance,” another scout said cautiously.
Lao Fan thought about what that could mean and inferred that the master of the castle saw traps as primitive and not worthy of their realm. It was a trend he’d seen elsewhere. The prouder the dungeon master, the more confident in their own or their minions’ battle prowess, the fewer traps.
“Who’d have thought we’d find some king residing at the bottom of that hole in the ground.”
The Midnight Luffas seemed scared, their hackles raised. As for the scouts, they too were shaking with fear; a rational analysis of the situation confirmed that it wasn’t unfounded, but they couldn’t resist their programming and turn back.
Lao Fan led them into the castle, but as soon as they went through the door, they froze up again. The castle was perfectly maintained, without a speck of dust in sight. A red carpet embroidered with some symbols covered the floor. Holivay, a well-read man, recognized those symbols as the word for king in a foreign tongue. He sighed deeply.
“No traps inside, either…?”
That was highly unusual. But even with no traps to watch out for, there would certainly be someone guarding the castle. Fighting, though, wasn’t the scouts’ specialty. Their job was to disarm traps, find out where the enemies were, and plot the best route to the objective. Lao Fan was expecting his team to focus on searching for the Dungeon Core while Kellton’s monsters caused chaos inside the dungeon to attract the enemy forces to them. He decided it was time to call the rest of the squad in, sending a signal to Kellton to proceed. Just then, he saw something far in the castle’s hallway.
“Don’t tell me…the king himself has come out to greet us?”
Lao Fan unsheathed his dagger, his eyes fixated on a spot in the distance. A monster was approaching them, accompanied by the clinking and clattering of metal. The monster, its gender unknown, was very tall and clad in an impressive suit of shiny armor, which might well have been made of gold from the look of it. The monster wielded a golden sword and a golden shield, too. Perhaps it was a distinguished knight.
The knight’s face was obscured by its helmet. A single blue eye glimmered ominously inside it. Lao Fan wondered if the monster had lost their other eye in battle. He could sense that this opponent was a confident veteran of countless fights, conveying a deadly threat with its mere presence.
Lao Fan was shaking uncontrollably. He was convinced this was the master of the dungeon. He heard something falling behind him—thankfully, it was only the ally monsters dropping down from the tunnel. Taking half a step back, Lao Fan smiled despite the debilitating terror he was feeling.
“The dungeon has nobody but its master to defend it, it seems.”
A dungeon could be conquered by destroying its core. But there was another way, too—defeating its master.
✦ ✦ ✦
The battle had started in the dungeon. Holivay peered inside the tunnel, waiting for Kellton to order him and the rest of the adventurers to go in.
Kellton furrowed his brow. “This is odd…”
He’d sent in the monsters after the scouts let him know of the enemy knight, but for some reason, the scouts were fighting, too. That wasn’t the strategy they’d agreed on, which could mean only one thing—that knight was the master of the dungeon.
“Change of plans. Our new target is that knight. Defeat it, and the dungeon will be erased from existence!”
“Understood. That makes it simpler.”
Everyone seemed happy with the new orders. Everyone except Holivay, who was keeping a close eye on the battle progress and noticed it wasn’t going as expected.
We’ve sent in so many monsters…but they’re losing?
The knight was sweeping the monsters away with its sword as easily as if they were dust bunnies. Both the scouts and the ally monsters had been pushed back to the entrance in no time. They were regrouping to try again. At least none of the monsters had been killed, apart from the one that had suffered an unlucky drop into a dark chasm. This meant the enemy knight wasn’t that strong, although the attackers couldn’t get past it, either.
“We’re going in.”
The S-rank adventurers drew their weapons and went to join the fray. Holivay followed after the others, pulling his twin swords out of their scabbards.
He saw the knight with his own eyes. The enemy wasn’t a towering giant, but it was much taller than Holivay. He’d never seen the likes of the armor the opponent was wearing before. Its weapon was a heavy longsword.
The enemy’s poise, appearance, and deftness of skill told Holivay that this knight far outranked any that his home country boasted about.
“Piercing Icicle!”
“Ensnaring Hands!”
Magic users cast their spells. A mass of spectral hands reached for the knight as a giant icicle struck its chest. On cue, the archers shot volleys of arrows at the monster, which wouldn’t stop attacking.
“Right on target!” someone called.
Meanwhile, Holivay gripped his swords tight and sprinted at the monster. At the front, ten others were about to engage the enemy, the clerics casting buffs on them.
“Indomitable Spirit! Steel Body!” the clerics shouted, buffing the tanks.
“Sharpen Blade! Hard Hitter!” They buffed the damage dealers.
Buzzing with power, the adventurers struck the knight, sending sparks flying. But the knight didn’t budge.
Only Holivay seemed to have the presence of mind to note something was wrong.
Our attacks aren’t working.
They’d hit the knight with the most powerful attacks they had, to no visible effect. The most terrifying thing about that knight was its endurance. Nothing the adventurers had tried was working. The physical attacks, magic, Poison, Curse—the knight seemed immune to it all. In its armor, it was like an impenetrable wall.
Holivay smiled in despair. This Beorite seemed truly invincible, and it hadn’t even raised its shield yet. Its armor repelled all attacks. It was terrifying to imagine what this monster would be like with the shield in use.
The other adventurers had lost their confidence, thrown by the battle taking longer than expected. The knight’s attacks hadn’t killed anyone thus far, though. The squad was perfectly safe, as long as nobody forgot to heal up after sustaining damage…or so Holivay thought until he saw his companions suddenly collapsing all around him.
Did the knight use some new attack…? No, that was something else…
Holivay reflexively dodged as something bounced at him. It hit the person behind him instead. Holivay turned around and saw that the “thing” was a black blob, sticking to the other adventurer, who was frantically trying to get it off.
No…!
The moment Holivay realized what the thing was, the attacked adventurer was dead. The man’s armor melted where the blob had touched it, and the poor adventurer’s body was evaporating through it.
“There’s another enemy! An Abyss Slime!” shrieked Holivay.
As they all knew, Abyss Slimes were the deadliest slimes in the world. They didn’t have physical-attack skills, but they were highly resistant to all manner of attacks and could inflict a range of horrific status ailments on their victims. Defeating these foul creatures was nearly a Sisyphean task, with no less than four clerics needed to handle just one.
The squad was faced with a knight they couldn’t defeat no matter what they tried, and an Abyss Slime opportunistically taking out the fighters while their attention was elsewhere. If players were doing that battle instead of NPCs, they’d have surely chosen to retreat.