Chapter 161: Boss Room
Meanwhile, several corridors away, deep inside the damp and monster-infested labyrinth, the trio had finally stopped moving.
For the absolute first time since entering this death trap, nobody was actively swinging weapons.
There were no magic explosions tearing up the walls.
No desperate screaming echoing through the halls.
And no ugly goblins flying through the air like thrown sacks of garbage.
Just pure, suffocating silence. Well... mostly silence.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Cold, murky water fell slowly from the cracked stone ceiling, splashing onto the ancient floor.
The humid air smelled heavily of wet stone, old monster blood, and something deeply unpleasant that had clearly been left rotting in this dungeon for several hundred years.
Leo aggressively wiped the cold sweat and grime from his forehead with his sleeve, then slowly turned around to check his surroundings.
Nothing behind them.
He looked to his left, finding only dark stone.
He looked to his right, finding even more dark stone.
His cheerful expression slowly darkened as an uneasy feeling took root in his chest.
"Man... where the hell are they?"
Kaito leaned casually against the cold wall, crossing his arms with an unbothered posture.
"Probably exploring off on their own."
Leo immediately frowned, his eyebrows scrunched together tightly.
"That’s exactly what worries me!"
He clenched his right fist so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Sera-chan is still completely missing! What if she ran into some overwhelmingly powerful monster all by herself?!"
Kaito merely glanced at him sideways, his tone completely flat.
"She’s a Rank-D hunter."
"So?!"
"Well, combined with her tenacity and ego, she is literally stronger than ninety percent of the basic monsters we’ve encountered in this dungeon so far."
"So?!"
Kaito stared at him in complete deadpan silence.
Leo stared right back, his eyes wildly burning with pure, unyielding anxiety.
"..."
"..."
Kaito finally let out a heavy, exasperated sigh.
"You’re going to keep worrying regardless of logic, aren’t you?"
"Of course I’m worried! I’m her close friend!"
Leo shouted loudly, slapping his own chest with immense pride.
Kaito raised a single judgmental eyebrow.
"Her actual boyfriend is standing right over here, you know."
Leo froze dead in his tracks, his raised fist hovering awkwardly in the air.
"...Right."
A deeply painful, agonizingly awkward silence instantly descended upon the corridor.
Kaito silently looked away at the wall.
Leo awkwardly stared at his own boots.
Neither man seemed particularly interested in further discussing that specific relationship detail.
Standing just a few feet away, Hina remained completely quiet, leaning her back against the ancient stone.
Her rare Ghost Eyes remained fully activated, the eerie golden glow within her pupils flickering softly as she continuously scanned the surrounding dark corridors for mana signatures.
Nothing.
No incoming monsters, no human mana signatures, and absolutely no sign of that perverted trash Kaizen... or Sera.
Hina’s face remained completely calm and innocent on the outside, but her internal thoughts were considerably more degenerate.
’Where on earth did those two disappear to?’
She narrowed her glowing eyes, a wicked realization dawning on her.
’Knowing that absolute trash... he’s definitely dragging her into incredible trouble right now.’
’Her tight little holes have probably been stretched to their absolute physical limits by his monstrous size! Hehehe...’
A tiny, cruel smile briefly threatened to appear on her lips, but she suppressed it immediately, returning her face to a pristine mask of concern.
Leo suddenly snapped out of his awkward depression and stood tall.
"We should go find them immediately!"
Kaito nodded slowly.
"I agree. We shouldn’t stay in an open hallway."
Hina calmly pushed herself away from the wall, sighing softly.
"Then let us move forward."
The three continued marching deeper into the dark, winding depths of the dungeon, their heavy boots echoing steadily through the ancient stone structure.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The further they walked down the damp path, the stranger the dungeon’s environment became.
The walls were no longer roughly carved rough stone; they were smoothly cut and detailed.
Ancient, unreadable symbols covered nearly every inch of the walls.
Some of the carvings had been violently scratched away by long-dead hands, while others were stained dark with ancient blood.
Leo stopped to glance curiously at one of the larger murals.
"These symbols... they look like some kind of ancient religious writing or ritual text, don’t they?"
Kaito paused his footsteps, raising his enchanted flaming sword closer to the wall to illuminate the dark stone.
The bright orange firelight revealed a heavily faded, ancient painting of a group of bald monks.
All of them were kneeling down on the ground, facing toward the same gigantic central figure.
The depicted figure possessed six massive arms, but its facial features had been deliberately and violently scratched off the stone with a sharp tool.
Kaito frowned thoughtfully.
"How interesting."
Hina glanced at the creepy mural.
"This place is literally calledas the Corrupted Monk’s Dungeon."
Leo nodded sagely, looking incredibly bright.
"Yeah. So naturally..." He pointed a dramatic finger straight at the mural. "Monks!"
"Exactly," Hina said flatly.
Kaito stared at Leo with sheer, unadulterated judgment.
"...That was seriously your groundbreaking intellectual conclusion?"
Leo proudly puffed out his chest and nodded vigorously.
"I’m getting significantly better at dungeon analysis! You guys should praise my sharp instincts more often!"
Hina quickly covered her mouth with her hands, barely holding back an embarrassed snort of laughter.
Kaito simply shook his head and continued walking down the dark path.
"Oddly enough, there have been absolutely no monsters other than low-grade goblins since we entered this zone."
Leo frowned, following close behind.
"That’s completely true, now that I think about it. Even though this place was officially rated as an A-rank high-danger dungeon anomaly."
Kaito’s expression became unusually serious as he pondered the weird monster distribution.
"Which means... there must be heavily mutated or specialized forms of goblins guarding the inner layer."
Leo blinked his eyes in surprise.
"Different forms? Like what?"
"Perhaps elite, heavily armored vanguard goblins," Kaito analyzed coldly, his eyes narrowing in the darkness. "Or higher-tier caster variants like goblin shamans and grand sorcerers."
Leo’s face slowly turned deadly serious as his wild imagination kicked into overdrive.
"...What about a giant Goblin King?!"
Kaito gave a small, solemn nod.
"It is entirely possible for an A-rank lair."
Leo instantly clenched his right fist tightly, his eyes burning with intense, shonen-protagonist determination.
"A Goblin King... Then I will definitely be the one to smash its head and defeat it!"
Hina glanced sideways at him, her tone carrying a light trace of amusement.
"You sound exceptionally confident for someone who almost died to a basic swarm earlier."
Leo grinned brightly, raising his glowing fist into the air.
"I completely broke through my spiritual limits during our last life-or-death battle!"
"I can literally feel the overwhelming power difference inside my veins right now!"
"I promise you guys, I won’t ever run away or hide in the back again!"
A dense, surprisingly sharp aura slowly flared up around his body, making his clothes flutter slightly.
Hina’s expression softened just a tiny bit.
For all his dense, utter stupidity... Leo had genuinely changed during this hellish expedition.
He was undeniably stronger, far more confident, and most importantly, he was finally beginning to understand what it meant to stand at the front lines as a real vanguard tank.
Leo turned around and looked deeply at the two behind him.
"If we run into a high-tier monster, I’ll draw its full aggression and hold it back with my own body! You two just focus on dealing massive damage from behind!"
Kaito gave a approving nod.
"A standard, reasonable tactical distribution."
Hina nodded as well.
"I have no objections to that plan."
Leo smiled heroically, feeling like an absolute legendary hero.
"Awesome! Now then, let’s go hurry up and find Sera-chan so we can conquer this place together!"
Hina’s left eye violently twitched.
’And there it is... the absolute real reason behind that pathetic heroic speech.’
She let out a long, exhausted internal sigh.
’Of course. It always comes back to that bitch’s obsession.’
The party continued marching forward through the winding tunnels.
The narrow corridor gradually opened up, expanding into a colossal, grand hallway made of smooth black stone.
And then... they finally saw it.
Standing at the very end of the grand hallway was a colossal, terrifying stone door.
It towered at least fifteen meters into the air, its ancient surface completely covered in intricate, glowing red runes that pulsed like a living heart.
Enormous iron chains, each individual link thicker than an adult man’s entire torso, were tightly wrapped around the massive structure to seal it shut.
And from the tiny, ominous cracks beneath the heavy door... a thick, freezing black mist was slowly leaking outward, rolling across the stone floor like liquid darkness.
Kaito instantly stopped in his tracks, causing Leo to almost walk straight into his back.
"Hey, why’d you suddenly stop?"
Kaito didn’t answer immediately.
His dark eyes were fixed on the terrifying door, his handsome face growing unusually pale and serious.
"This..."
He swallowed hard, his grip tightening on his sword hilt.
"...is completely different from anything we’ve faced so far."
Hina activated her Ghost Eyes to their absolute maximum limit.
The precise moment her glowing purple pupil focused on the massive door, her eyes shrank to the size of pinpricks!
An absurd, incomprehensible quantity of dark, mutated mana was concentrated directly beyond that threshold.
It was dense, utterly suffocating, and heavy enough to make her skin crawl with goosebumps.
"This is definitely not another normal room..." Hina whispered nervously.