(12) The start of a new journey

The rest of the day was hectic. Many of Celeste's so-called fans had discovered that not only had she went to the poor region of Florid Boulevard, but she also became injured by one of the local bosses. The infuriated mass of self-proclaimed lackeys delved into Kraton's Burrow non-stop for the rest of the day, eventually even a monster like Kraton would grow tired and sick of repetitively killing simpletons that kept shouting out their admiration towards Celeste. Half of them were weak, scrawny males that had words such as "For the Furore Princess!" or "Marry me Celeste" written on their arms with black markers as they were unable to afford the cheapest of tattoos.

Even after a day of reaping the lives of these love-sticken fools, Kraton's experience had barely crept past a fragment of level 9. The efficiency of killing masses of lower-levelled surface dwellers had significantly been reduced, to point where the negative level difference almost prevented any gains from the once prosperous grinding.

After tomorrow's gathering, Kraton made sure he would remember to start decimating whole parties. Not that it needed any reminding anyway.

Eventually the bustle died down when these zealots realised that they were the one losing levels with every death. And by night, everything had returned to normal, with no-one bothering to enter the dungeon, Kraton read the insciptions on the black wall before deciding to sleep early, he would sleep until midday tomorrow, and leave right after, it was quite a long trek to get to the infamous Hell dungeon, and he needed or the energy to make it there on time.

As soon as Kraton's head hit the stone block which served as a pillow, his mind went blank and provided an undisturbed sleep which he surely needed after being rudely woken up in the morning.

In his dreams, the numbers and data on the black wall kept swimming in his mind. Unlike his previous dreams of the same wall, it wasn't a depressing dream, but instead a rather content dream. The day's numbers had read that 15 parties of normally five had entered the dungeon that day -excluding Celeste's solo raid- and on average, Kraton had killed two fanatics per group, sometimes three. The final kill count was once again a new record for Kraton, it had totalled up to 30 kills in a single day! This was very fast progress compared to half a year ago, and yet Kraton had completely forgotten how this rocket in progress had started, he was confused at why he had never reached an average like this for his 37 years as a boss, however Kraton didn't ponder for too long on this matter and had put it at the back of his mind before going to sleep.

It was just before midday when Kraton woke up from his soundless sleep, he had already barred off his cave entrance with a sign saying "Boss on leave", similar things happened every month when a Boss left without a trace and only came back the following day or week, so the humans weren't bothered by it too much as they would just grind in the other parts of the dungeon anyway.

As Kraton got ready to leave his dungeon, he realised that most of the journey would be through the over-world. He would have to be very careful in avoiding strong parties lest he would get sent back to the dungeon. After moments of extra preparation, Kraton covered himself with thin metal armour and hid his spiked mace underneath. His rusted armour looked half like a cloak, but also hald like as a random pointed rock. A 'perfect' disguise, who would suspect a moving, brown, metallic rock to be hiding a boss monster underneath?

Kraton left his dungeon, none of the goblins or other monsters noticed Kraton leave, giving Kraton more confidence of his disguise. He managed to sneak out of the town without encountering any human parties, they were most likely hungover in the taverns or already exploring the dungeons nearby.

Kraton headed directly towards the forest, hoping that it could provide extra cover for him. Along the way, he became awed by how much the overworld had changed in 37 years, he could remember the polluted air that stank of coal, as well as the loud noises of carriage wheels pulled by enslaved, stupid monsters. But now, the forest was serene and quiet, with the occasional sounds of forest beasts such as mutated rabbits foraging around in the bushes.

One part of him regretted becoming a dungeon boss, he hadn't experienced the change in the overworld first-hand, but could only experience the difference afterwards. However, Kraton was still happy for becoming a dungeon Boss, it had helped him become stronger than regular monsters, he held the power over his small domain and no normal monster nearby would challenge him.

Even if he didn't interact with the lesser monsters that much, they at least all knew not to piss off the being behind the large stone doors. Only humans dared do such rude things. They lacked privacy, and they lacked manners. Storming into someone's room and killing them, what type of etiquette was that? Did their parents not teach them anything.

After an hour, Kraton had already seen a couple of human parties, however these people didn't look like the regular people who raided his dungeons each day, instead they wore less metal armour, more leather and cloth garments and hardly held large broadswords. There were much more bows, daggers and people with large sacks over their shoulders.

They seemed much less of a threat than the dungeon raiders, yet they exuded an aura that spoke of confidence. These groups seemed to treat the forest as their home, they knew every plant, cave and animal that resided in the area. Therefore, Kraton carefully avoided all of these groups, he couldn't risk being sent back to his dungeon and be late for the gathering, maybe he should have left yesterday.

At one point in time, Kraton heard rustling from all around him and immediately froze, he shrank inside his rusted cloak and stopped moving, hoping that whoever was near him would just pass by.

"Hey Lil John, was this boulder always here?" A voice resounded all around the area, Kraton sure hoped that they weren't talking about him.

"What boulder? There's never been a boulder in these parts of the forest, they normally get eaten away by those weird bugs," A gruff, hoarse voice responded, becoming louder with each word. "Oh, there is a rock here, never seen one with red patches on it though." Kraton nearly jumped in fright at this moment as the voice was right next to him, he slowly gripped his mace firmly and prepared to attack if his cover was blown.

"Hey look, there's a monster here!" another voice rang out, footsteps approached Kraton's location and stopped right beside him.

'Sh**'