Akari and I had decided to split the cost of the orb if we used it, and I was also interested in checking out the boss.
“Did you already equip them, Akari?”
“Yes, I did! I like them!”
Akari had changed into the equipment that she’d gotten from the loot box. The items she had obtained were leg armor called Tiger Boots and an accessory called Bat Cloak.
The Tiger Boots were an exceptional piece of gear that granted high defense and muffled the sound of the wearer’s footsteps. They had spikes on the soles that kept the wearer firmly in place even on unsteady ground. They were just the sort of shoes needed for cave exploration.
The Bat Cloak concealed the wearer’s presence and allowed them to slip into the shadows. Something like this would be indispensable for stealth missions. Akari was super pleased with both items.
“It’s too bad you can’t use your items in the cave, Yuto.”
“Yeah, both the items I got are for the outside playing field.”
The items I had obtained were a Wolf Hatchet and a Herbivore’s Bell.
The Wolf Hatchet was a small ax for cutting down trees, and it protected the user from being attacked by weak wolf-type monsters. It did nothing against bosses or predator monsters, but wolf monsters were everywhere, so there was no shortage of areas where this hatchet could be useful. And honestly, I was just happy to have a high-level logging ax.
The Herbivore’s Bell was a magic tool that produced a barrier thirty meters in diameter and alerted the user of any trespassers. It was a handy item that allowed players to rest without having to be vigilant the entire time. And it had a generous thirty uses.
Usually, these sorts of items could only be used ten times at most, so the fact that it could be used thirty times alone meant this was probably a highly valuable item. According to Akari, this was just the type of thing frontliners would kill to have. Hey, if I could get a lot of money for it, then maybe I would sell it.
“Okay, I’m opening the door!” Akari announced.
“Let’s go!”
With Akari at the head of our group, we went through the door and found ourselves inside a giant dome-like area. The ceiling easily reached over thirty meters high. The area wasn’t well lit, which made it hard to tell just how wide the place was, but my guess was over two hundred meters in diameter, maybe even bigger.
I had a bad feeling about this place. Akari seemed to share my concerns.
“Hey, with an area this big, doesn’t it seem like we’re about to have to deal with...y’know?”
“So you think so too, Yuto?”
“Yeah.”
We were both talking in whispers. I felt like something bad would happen if we spoke too loudly.
Boss fields were typically made big enough to accommodate for the size of the boss that would appear there. Small fields for small bosses, big fields for big bosses. At the very least, the fields needed to be big enough not to hinder the boss’s movements. That might not necessarily be the case from here on, but at least for Zone Ten, that held true. So, what sort of monster could a field this vast have been set up for?
I got my answer immediately.
“Whoa! Something’s there!”
“...!”
“Kee-hee-hee!”
Sakura and Lilith both looked frightened, and who could blame them?
“Is that a three-headed lion? It’s enormous!” Akari said.
When we walked further into the domed area, we started to see a giant figure in the darkness. As we got closer, we could tell exactly what it was. Looming before us was a gigantic lion with golden fur that shimmered even in the dark. Even from its position lying down on its side, we could grasp just how massive it was. I estimated that if it stood up, it would be just under thirty meters long and over ten meters high.
And it had three heads. Was it supposed to be a lion version of Cerberus? Given its size, it definitely looked like it’d be a tough adversary.
There was one more thing that left Akari and me dumbstruck. Although we hadn’t engaged it in a battle yet, there was already a red marker above it and we could see its HP bar. All signs that this was a raid boss.
“G-Growl...”
“Aye...”
Even my normally bubbly monsters were acting timid. They must have known that if we provoked that thing without a plan, we’d be wiped out.
“Super Escape Orbs can’t be used during raid boss fights, right?” I asked.
“Right,” Akari confirmed.
I paused. “Should we try escaping before the battle starts?”
“You read my mind.”
We really lucked out. Thank god this wasn’t the sort of battle that began just by passing through the doorway! The battle probably began if we had attacked first or walked closer to the lion.
We all held our breath as we made our way back through the door. Once we were back on the other side, we exhaled sighs of relief and sank to the floor.
“Jeez, that boss had me shaking in my boots even just lying on the floor.”
“That was terrifying. I’m so glad the doors opened back up for us.”
“Growl!”
“Kee-hee.”
After a short break, we decided to head out of the dungeon. We’d finished mapping the area, so we were able to find our way back a lot quicker. It took about an hour to get to the exit. Once there, I did some stretching exercises. Doing so helped me feel refreshed, both physically and mentally. My game avatar never got stiff muscles or anything, but it was just something I did unconsciously.
“That part of the cave really kept us on our toes the whole time,” I remarked.
“It sure did.”
It had been a while since I’d felt so tense. I could go a while without doing that again. Of course, the idea of going back for more loot boxes was enticing... Loot boxes spawned randomly in the cave, and we hadn’t found a single one on our way back. The fact that we had found two on our first trip through must have been nothing short of a miracle.
It was only now that we could look back and laugh at how scared we were not knowing if we’d be able to open the doors again to leave. The doors probably would have locked once the battle actually began.
“So, what now?” Akari asked. “We found a raid boss, of all things...”
“Good question. It looked really strong.”
“Definitely. I appraised it, so I found out its name is Cerberus Lion, and five parties can join in on fighting it, with a maximum of thirty players.”
Raid bosses were made to be extremely hard to defeat on the first try. They became weaker after being defeated once, but they always gave players a hard time before being brought to that weakened state. In fact, they slaughtered frontliners across the whole game.
Raid bosses that allowed one hundred players to participate but went undefeated for a long time were responsible for making thousands of players respawn. Sometimes the verification clan recruited players to help them challenge raid bosses dozens of times over.
This wasn’t the sort of boss we could take on at our level, so the best thing to do here was probably sell this information to Alyssa. But while I had come to that conclusion, Akari proposed something else.
“Let’s call in some reinforcements.”
“Huh? Why?”
“So we can challenge that boss, of course!”
“Wha? You want to challenge it?”
“Well, yes. We found it, after all. Don’t you want to try fighting it?”
Spoken like a true top player. Of course her mind would go straight to thinking up a plan to beat the raid boss. Though on second thought, maybe that was the normal reaction. Keep this information a secret for a little bit while trying to clear the boss ourselves first. Yeah, that was probably how frontliners rolled.
It wasn’t like I was particularly dying to share this information anyway, and I wasn’t hurting for money. If Akari wanted to keep this raid boss under wraps for a bit, that was just fine with me.
“You’ll need a full team to take on a boss like that,” I said.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Do you know twenty-nine people you can call?”