Shin looked at me in a strange way, he felt like his own words bounced upon his face. After some moments of awkward silence, he sent to me privately:
'Ok, you are right. I will support you, but you need to be prepared for failure.'
I glanced at him and didn't speak again. We stayed at our place recovering our strengths and healing.
Although we didn't fight all these monsters head on, the task of luring them here wasn't that easy over Shin and Goda, especially Goda. After each battle, this swordsman was left with less than half of his HP.
I didn't know how he got all this damage while Shin only lost less than quarter of his HP.
After we rested, we returned to our routine, as we lured monsters here, let them fight each other as we watched peacefully from far, and last we killed any remaining living monsters there.
Each battle gave us more pieces of equipment, plus a small boost at our XP. This dungeon transformed from being scary to a walk in the park, we had absolutely no pressure or risk at all in exchange with fancy equipment and XP.
It took nearly 12 hours for us to raise by one level, as I and Shin reached level 8 while the rest of the team were at level 7. In comparison with the outside world, leveling up here was way faster and a lot safer.
The only thing that kept bothering me, though, was the end of this dungeon. According to Shin and my teammates, to exit any dungeon you either needed to finish it or die inside it.
There was no other way around to escape from here. the issue was about those two huge scary monsters at the both ends of this dungeon, how could we possibly kill them?
We all gained another level by the next day, where we had a problem to present itself in front of us.
"The numbers of those monsters are decreasing, why didn't they spawn again?"
I looked towards Heda as Shin replied:
"I don't know, I believe the nature of this dungeon doesn't allow monsters to regenerate again."
I asked as I didn't understand their talk at all:
"Can you explain to me what do you mean?"
"This is a general rule of monsters, little princess, as when we kill any normal monster, it reappears again after a set of time. some monsters can appear again in one hour, while others need one day.
We have been killing monsters here for nearly two days now, and not a single monster we killed has appeared again, and that's weird."
I understood the problem now, so I said:
"That's now only weird, it's also risky."
Grendy asked with his impulsive nature that I used to it:
"How is it dangerous?"
Goda answered him as he explained:
"Because the number of available monsters to be killed by us is limited. In less than two days, we won't have any monster to kill, and that leaves us with the two huge monsters at the back.
We can't get near them, and we can't find any monster to kill, so basically that will be our worst case scenario."
Everyone's face changed when Goda finished explaining his view. I totally agreed with him as I added:
"The issue here isn't about killing monsters, but also how will we get out of here. we need to finish this dungeon first, so we have to kill these two monsters."
Mony said in shaky tone from fear:
"These two monsters are way above our league. We can't possibly face them and live. How can we kill such colossal monsters then?"
A period of silence prevailed, as no one had a clue about what to do. I then said trying to calm everyone:
"Let's postpone this until we reach the end of the tunnel, literally. Anyway, we still have two days ahead of us to level up and be more prepared. Who knows, we might find a clue about how to face these two monsters and take them down."
Shin added trying to support me in raising my teammates morale:
"Agatha is right; we need to finish the task one step at a time. Let's kill these monsters and gain our desired equipment. Maybe these equipment could help us in our confrontation with the two colossal monsters."
By Shin supporting words, everyone's attitude had slightly changed. They were more accepting to the fact of facing these monsters now, so we started our hunt again.
This time, the laughing atmosphere nearly vanished, as we all were stressed by the upcoming battle up ahead of us.
So, it was normal to make some mistakes, like bringing an uneven number of monsters once, or Goda HP was about to hit the bottom except for the timely interference of Mony who saved his life.
I didn't blame anyone, as I knew how hard it was to fight under stressful conditions.
Time passed fast, as in a day and half we managed to clear all the monsters in both tunnels successfully. What remained were only the two huge bosses, and our fear.
"This is weird, we killed all the monsters here but we didn't complete the necessary pieces of all the equipment we got. That's frustrating, must we face these monsters in the end?"
Mony's words were expressing all our thoughts. I looked at Shin as I sent to him privately:
'Do you have any brilliant ideas?'
Shin sighed as he replied:
'No, if only these two bosses can move, we can try to bring them together and we might be surprised by the result like we did with the smaller monsters. Now, we are stuck here with nothing in our ability to do.'
I sighed, as he said it loud and clear. I looked towards all my teammates faces… depression, anxiety, frustration, anger, and fear were what I felt from each one of them.
They had all the right to feel so, as I also felt like them. As their leader, I should be a role model here, how could I raise their morale and lead them out of here if I was controlled by all this fear and hesitation? I clenched my fists as I stood up and said:
"You will wait for me here."
Shin stood up with the rest of the teammates as he rushed to stop me as he stood in front of me blocking my way while asking in doubt:
"Where are you going? What are you planning to do?"
I pushed his hand which blocked my way and kept walking forward towards one tunnel as I said:
"I'll try one of these monsters out, we can't just sit here and do nothing. We need information, and I will bring this info back."
Shin was about to add something while I added in a decisive tone:
"I'm the one who brought you here in the first place, if you didn't know me, you could have played normally like other players. So, it's my responsibility to bring you out of here.
If we are all going to die, then I will be the first to face such a fate. Stay put and wait for my return."
My voice faded away slowly as I entered deeply in the tunnel going directly towards that cragen boss monster. I already firmed my resolve; it was either his funeral today or mine.