Boss room

As they continued to eat to their fill, Nagi looked around and spotted that they were near a giant gate that looked like a boss room.

The gate was over 50 meters tall and over 20 meters wide, with silver material taking up most of the gate structure.

Covered with tiny dots of gems, which imitate the night sky they see every night since coming into this world.

At the top, there was a giant circular carving that looked like a planet and a crescent moon at the very top of the gate.

On both sides of the gate, there were growing crystal-like stalagmites and stalactites of different sizes and colors.

Nagi narrowed his eyes and thought they looked like some kind of candy, giving himself a craving to lick them.

Looking back at the table behind him where the food they eat, he wanted to tell everyone they are about to enter the boss's room in the dungeon, but stayed quiet not wanting to ruin their appetite.

*****

"Are you ready, kids?" Clark asked them, putting his hand on the gate.

Looking around at each other, they gulped down their worries and answered with a nod.

He asked them again and once again they nodded.

Seeing they were firm with their nods, with a single push from his hand, the gate opened.

For a second, Ritsu managed to take a good look at the environment inside it.

The room mimics the stem of a rose, where spikes take the spotlight.

The inside of the room had countless spikes spiking from beneath the walls and the ceiling.

Tiny patches of water from every corner of the room, with droplets of water dropping down from the ceiling.

At the very center of the room, an open space can be seen, which is lit by a carved-out sculpture of a crescent moon.

Pillars of earth that hold the room stable, allowing the fight to execute without the problem of collapsing.

And in the middle of the crescent moon a chandelier with white crystal rods that reflected the light to every corner of the room, where the light was coming from above,

As soon as the gate opened up, Clark used his stealth skill to hide himself and leave the rest to the heroes, and said his final words to them.

"Do great"

With those words of his, the final battle against the boss of the second-floor dungeon is about to begin.

•••••

As the room opened up, the group split up.

Nagi runs the furthest in allowing him to scout the area and hold back incoming attacks from the boss.

Ritsu climbed up from one of the pillars of the room, to gain a further view of the room.

Ren and Yuki stayed near each other, ready to deal with a monster attack and slay them.

And for the girls, they went to the corner holding, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

.....

A couple of minutes had passed since they entered the room, yet the boss was nowhere to be seen.

No entrance.

No roar.

No intimidating pressure.

No giant bar of HP.

The only thing that has been happening all this time is the chandelier's rod falling, now and then.

Making their emotions uprose in anxiety and fear, still, no boss monster can be seen.

"My passive skill is not telling me anything, so we're still safe by now," Ritsu said, looking high above from one of the pillars of the room.

Looking at the falling chandelier rods, he pondered why something like this was in here, for a place that meant to have a fierce fight against two sides, it was too beautiful to be in here.

Looking down, Ritsu spotted the thirteen rods that had fallen all this time.

Looking at it carefully with his magic item, he found that the rods contain sperm-like liquid, making him shiver in disgust.

Looking up back, he found another rod about to fall, counting the ones below and the remaining one on top, he counted a total of eighteen rods.

Ritsu chuckled for a bit.

The number of rods below was the same as the number of minutes, they had been in here.

It seemed like the rods were counting how long they had been in here by minutes each time one fell.

•••••

Eighteen minutes after they have entered, a change finally happens.

Without the knowledge of the heroes, the liquids from the destroyed rods began to changed.

Its liquid took a change, from pure liquid to a hardened, like slime.

It moved deeper within the cave, trying to find something, something that could help it take a better form, than what it was right now.

It moved around the entire room multiple times, trying to find anything, it doesn't matter what it was, all that mattered was that it could help it.

From its constant moving, it took the water from the puddles of the room; it didn't know what they were, but one thing was for sure: it was helping.

With the knowledge that the water is good, it changed its plan to find something that could help it, and decided to take all the water from the puddles inside the room.

Minutes have passed again, and 'it' has finally gained something from the water it has taken from puddles.

Inside of 'it', something was forming, a warm yet cold energy from the water was changing, into a hardened marble inside of it.

Then it formed a mana core allowing it to go through an evolution.

Finally allowing it to get stronger.

From the core inside of it, the mana froze its body from within, stopping its movement completely.

'It' thought that it had made a big mistake; it shouldn't have collected the water if it was gonna freeze it to death only.

And for the first time, it gained emotion, the emotion of fear, the fear of death.

It hasn't even been an hour since 'it' was born, now death was near.

But within this death, something took hold of 'it', inside of the black void existence a cloud-like creature was in front of 'it' sitting in a lotus position.

Even though 'it' had no form of intellect, it decided to do something, and that was to smooch over to this cloud-like creature.

The cloud-like creature didn't rejected 'it' instead accepted it with all it had.

The cloud-like creature waved its hand in the empty void space, and in the next second, a tiny sphere was in its hand, smaller than the marble inside 'it'.

The cloud-like creature looked down where 'it' was sitting in its lap, patting 'it' body for a moment, then pressed its finger deep inside of 'it' and did not stop till the sphere on the tip of its finger reached the mana core of 'it'.

Then it cracked, the frozen body of 'it' was shattered into pieces, along with the mana core it had.

Chapter 18 end.