The skeleton finished switching the tools at that same moment. Just a split second before the trap was activated, Raydel shut his eyes tight, praying that his death was quick and painless.
Instead of dying, he heard something.
Crack!
The sound caused Raydel to open his eyes again, witnessing what happened. Million pieces of a broken silver sword were floating in the air.
Everyone looked at Shane who no longer had his weapon. The man gritted his teeth before throwing the broken hilt of the sword away. He blocked the pathway of the blade with his own sword just now, betting that the trap would stop halfway and not wipe everything in its way out if the blade crashed into something else first.
Of course, it left him with a deep gash on his arm and cost him his only weapon. His blood splattered all over the miniboss' skull. A drop of the red liquid dripped on one of the invisible tools. Even if it was such a small stain, Sheryl could finally figure out what it was.
"You're on the broom side! Go to the right!" Sheryl shouted before racing to Shane. "Shane, how is your wound?! Does anybody here know how to perform first-aid treatment?"
Raydel collected his scattered mind. His hands and legs were trembling while he mouthed a silent thank you.
"I'll help you watch the way, but you can't forget it! The time is almost up, and we can't lose any more weapons," Sheryl said. Once she finished assigning someone to take care of Shane's wound, she walked back to continue guiding Raydel. Both Sheryl and Raydel had the face of someone bearing an unbearable stress.
He licked his chapped lips and instantly tasted the harsh saltiness of sweat. At that moment, the surrounding noises quieted down. There was only him trying to concentrate and focusing on the tools on the skeleton's hands. The moment he saw which side the rake was on, his heavy legs would drag him to that side while strong gusts of wind blew past him.
The hunters that had successfully crossed the trap area still did not attack the miniboss because they were afraid that it might trigger some new complicated conditions. They wanted to wait till Raydel and the girl crossed over the area, but that put even more pressure on Raydel, so much that his head hurt.
There were less than ten meters left but Raydel had used up most of his strength.
Hopelessness started climbing over his weary heart. The girl on his back made it even more impossible to handle the pressure. She unexplainably seemed to get heavier with each passing minute. Raydel was dripping with sweat as he tried to focus on the hands of the skeleton to find out which one was holding the rake. He kept repeating the information in his head. The broom is on the left? Right, left, right…
Raydel stepped to the right at the same moment he heard a sweeping sound! The blade flew past him in a trice!
The shoes that were cut into unrecognizable pieces were thrown all over the place. The blade swiped them all out, including the blood of the dead hunters.
Raydel shivered.
He gasped for air. The exhaustion made him want to close his eyes, lie down, and just give up, but he could not because of the girl on his back. He was the one who chose to go back and save her, so he had no other choices but to take responsibility for his own action.
In fact, Raydel was quite confident that he must have made a few mistakes, but for some reasons he always managed to dodge the blade. It felt like something was… helping him.
Something that was far more powerful than an A-rank monster.
At that moment, he felt dizzy.
And when his sight became blurry, he saw some strange scene.
Raydel saw… tentacles.
They fixed themselves onto the ground and tied their ends around Raydel's hands. The tentacles kept pulling his hands like it was trying to urge him to move forward.
If Raydel was too slow to dodge the trap, the tentacles would take the blade with their own bodies. The blade could not hurt the tentacles, so it always retreated into its hiding when it crashed into them. Then, the skeleton would switch the tools again.
Raydel shook his head to get rid of the sweat on his eyelids.
The strange vision disappeared from his sight.
What was that? he thought.
When he successfully arrived at the other end of the chamber, Sheryl took out her dagger and started slashing at it instantly.
Clang!
The dagger crashed into the shield that suddenly appeared. Sheryl gritted her teeth with rising frustration and took her dagger back. Then, the other hunters joined and attacked the shield of the miniboss, pushing it to step back. The skeleton raised the rake up, preparing to hit the hunters surrounding it, but someone dashed toward it and took the rake with a spear!
The hunter jumped out to make way for Sheryl who had just cut her fingertip and anointed the dagger with her own blood till it gleamed with intense aura. She lunged her weapon at the middle of its cervical spine. The dagger hit the miniboss' shield, and it let out a loud, shill scream.
Everyone flinched at the sound, feeling like the scream was penetrating their ears like an aggressive worm. Some of them could not stand it and collapsed onto the ground. Now, nobody was near Sheryl enough to help her destroy the shield, so Raydel put down the girl and sprinted to her. He grabbed Sheryl's hands and used all his strength to help her push the dagger through the shield.
"...!"
The monster screamed louder; the sound became a devastating explosion.
"A little more…!" Sheryl shouted. Then, she and Raydel buried the dagger into the shield that began to crack. The tip of the blade penetrated through the broken shield, but Raydel suddenly felt dizzy and saw a strange vision again.
He saw tentacles slithering all over the skeletons and then…
Crack.
"!"
Sheryl and Raydel fell forward and onto the floor next to the still skeleton. The dagger pierced through the monster's throat. When it died, the power that used to put all the bones together in a humanoid structure was also gone, so the bones started to break apart and fall. They all looked like they had been crushed into pieces by something heavy.
The scream quieted down, and only the heaving of the hunters remained.
Everyone looked up to the arena, feeling confused, but it wasn't before long until they were cheering loudly when they saw that they had successfully defeated the miniboss.
"Let me see. What did it drop?!"
"Crystals! Crystals!"
"Don't fight! Hey!"
The hunters fought and snatched the crystals on the ground. Raydel moved away before looking up at the message box above his head.
[9 minutes]
"Twenty-eight, twenty-nine… twenty-nine hunters left."
Sheryl was counting the remaining hunters.
Only twenty-nine left, she thought. She felt her heart drop to her feet when she realized how big the loss was. There were only twenty-nine hunters remaining… twenty-nine from forty-three. She pressed her bleeding fingertip against her white shirt that looked like an old rag covered in smudges and dirt now.
Sheryl looked at the shabby girl whose skirt was stained with her own pee and felt relieved when she saw that the girl was safe. Then, she looked at the man who volunteered to go back to help the girl. He was talking to Shane whose arm was bandaged roughly.
She walked toward the two of them.
"What's your name?"
Raydel looked up to meet her eyes. "Yes?"
Sheryl pursed her lips before reaching out her hands.
"I'm Sheryl. Actually, I haven't done the official hunter test, but I guess I'm about C-rank. Thank you so much for helping one of my team members." She was talking about the girl.
Raydel shook her hands awkwardly.
"I'm Raydel. I should call you P'[1]Sheryl because I just graduated from high school," he said. "And I… don't have a rank. I haven't done the test either."
"I already checked. He really doesn't have a rank," Shane said before smiling at her. "But you're a C-rank hunter? I'm a C-rank as well. We must have done the quiz from the same website, I guess. And… judging by my eyes, I think nobody here is above C-rank."
"I think so too. According to statistics, most of the hunters are at C-rank or D-rank," Sheryl said.
What she said was true. Raydel remembered from the novel 'Ways to Become the No.1 Hunter,' most of the characters were low or mid-level hunters. Finding a high-ranking hunter was quite hard. Those usually were characters that had important roles in the novel, not some side characters like them.
So, for mid-level hunters like them to be able to defeat an A-rank miniboss could be considered the luckiest possible outcome.
"...." However, Raydel could not help but think about his hallucination about the tentacles.
When he and Sheryl stabbed its throat with the dagger, the tentacles also broke the miniboss' bones at the same time…
"Oh, the door to the boss room is open now," someone said.
Raydel turned to the direction that the other hunters were pointing at. A stone door was opening wide, revealing the darkness inside. The atmosphere that spread throughout pressured many of the hunters to swallow hard.
Everyone's face went pale. They turned to look at the exit that they came through.
"Is the door we came through open now? Should we retreat?"
"What? The door is still closed. Does this mean we have to fight the boss?"
"What should we do, leader?"
Sheryl pursed her lips as she thought about what they should do. She looked at the collecting prize on her phone screen and felt her heart racing when she saw a five-figure number. It did not matter how nice Asphodel seemed from the outside, an office worker like her… people in the middle class like her had to live with the extreme inequality. If she could earn some extra money for her rent, she would do it. And she believed the other hunters felt the same way.
Apart from that, if they really succeeded in defeating the boss, they would be able to fight for the biggest 'prize' and might even get rare artifacts that would help improve their career as hunters.
Sheryl gave herself a belittling smile.
Low-ranking hunters always needed to struggle like this.
"We'll rest for three minutes and then continue with the mission," Sheryl announced. The others nodded and yieldingly accepted the order. They could not go back the way they came in, and even if they sat here waiting for the high-ranking hunters, the countdown could finish before they arrived, and they would have to fight the boss anyway.
They had no choice but to keep going.
Raydel looked at Shane holding the wound on his arm and whispered, "thank you so much for helping me."
"It's fine." Shane smiled. "The wound is not that deep anyway." He laughed softly. "But I don't think I'll be much useful in the boss fight now that I don't have a weapon anymore."
Raydel also did not have a weapon. The last time he got his hands on artifacts was in the Cthulhu dungeon in the hospital. He lost that dagger somewhere he did not know, so he said, "Uh, me neither, actually."
"Here, I have backup weapons." Sheryl handed two artifacts to Raydel and Shane. They became ordinary daggers that had no special effects. "You can return them to me after we kill the boss."
"Thank you. You're quite generous," Shane said.
Sheryl did not reply. She glanced at the countdown before crossing her arms. "The boss might be a skeleton like the miniboss." She changed the subject.
"Well, yeah. We haven't figured out what this dungeon is about yet." Shane grabbed his chin. "The arena is a quarry. The monsters we found are the rats and the skeleton with a rake and a broom. There aren't enough clues."
"I think the boss can't have been anything other than a giant rat or a skeleton," Sheryl said. "What I'm worried about is will there be traps like the ones we have just got through? I don't want to lose any more hunters. This is already too much for an office worker like me."
Shane remained silent.
"I feel you," he said.
Sheryl let out a sigh before smiling softly. "Living in this country, we have to accept our fate," she said and looked around to see if the other hunters were ready to get going. "Whatever, I'd like you two to help me dissuade them from acting too hastily. I'm sure that there will be traps waiting for us in the boss room. It could be something like choosing the same side as the rake of sorts."
Listening to what Sheryl said, there was a possibility that the boss could be a giant rat, or a skeleton and the traps could be similar to what they had encountered before. However, Raydel had a bad feeling. Especially when he looked up to the countdown, the strange feeling tightened its grip on his heart and kept poking at it non-stop.
He felt there was more to it than this.
He thought back to the first second the train got sucked into the arena of the dungeon. The first moment he saw the quarry with walls built with bones, Raydel knew that this place was not a normal quarry. It felt like… an underground graveyard and the word 'graveyard' was more than just a common clue.
There were also the giant rats with cooties… and the skeleton with a rake and a broom…
Raydel stared at the message box above his head.
[6 minutes]
The time that kept counting down since they defeated the giant rats and the cooties.
It felt too strange. Why would it count down to the time that the boss will appear after they killed some ordinary monsters? Raydel could not find any relevant connection between the two things. It would be more reasonable to start the countdown after they killed the skeleton. These thoughts kept prodding in his mind because he knew that the countdown might not be for the boss.
It might be for something else.
But could it be? Raydel thought.
'Whatever, I'd like you two to help me dissuade them from acting too hastily. I'm sure that there will be traps waiting for us in the boss room.' Sheryl's words echoed in his head.
That was what he was worried about…. He feared that the countdown was another trap of the dungeon.
Sheryl clapped her hands to get everyone's attention.
"Let's go."
They walked into the new room. This time, it was larger and had a skeleton dressing in luxurious attire standing in the middle of the room. The clothes looked like that of a priest. It stood still with its skull looking down, and there was no movement even with the sound of the hunters walking into the area.
Bam!
The door shut behind them.
Everyone was quiet.
Then, a message box popped up in front of them.
[Passed the secret condition '1 of 3 was eliminated'. The boss will be awakened.]
The hunters whispered to one another.
"What secret conditions?"
"One in three was eliminated?"
"Is it talking about us?!"
Raydel frowned. One in three was eliminated?
He suddenly froze, his eyes looking around to count the number of hunters.
Twenty-nine… if I count the ones that died and those that ran away… then it equals forty people.
'One in three' …
The sound of a footstep destroyed the silence.
Everyone quickly turned around to the skeleton that stood still in the middle of the room. It did not move, but something was walking from behind it.
It was a person in a long, black coat. His face was covered by a beak mask.
"Is it the boss?" A hunter mumbled before looking at the newcomer through his phone screen. "Level ninety. It really is the boss!"
Gasp!
Everyone was startled because the suddenly boss looked up and spread out its arms before smashing its cane into the ground, creating a loud bang. Then, something unexpected happened. The time that was counting down changed from five minutes, to four, and to three.
It continued descending, going from three minutes to one minute.
And from one minute to…
[30 seconds]
Raydel's eyes widened.
He looked at the hunters with bloodstains on their bodies. It was the blood from when they fought with the giant rats and cooties. Those people looked quite unwell. Some of them coughed. Their clothes and bodies were stained with dirt from the adventure in the dungeon, but when Raydel carefully inspected those messy spots, he realized that they were not stains of dirt from the dungeon.
They were…
[20 seconds]
"Stand back. Don't get near those who have bloodstains on their bodies!" Raydel shouted, startling everyone. "Get back!"
His heart ached when he apologized to the hunters with bloodstains. Everyone was pushing and running away in confusion. A lot of them did not know who had the bloodstains because it was such an abrupt order. They kept pushing one another back. Raydel who tried to help was shoved into someone with bloodstains.
"What happened?!" Sheryl shouted before following Raydel along with Shane. "Stop pushing each other!"
[10 seconds]
"...!" Raydel frowned, trying to get away from the hunter he touched. His heartbeat raced as he saw that there were only nine seconds left. Now, the faces of the hunters with bloodstains were distorted. They coughed loudly and spat out jet back blood. Some of them fell onto the ground, dark spots spreading across their entire bodies like forest fire.
[5 seconds]
Raydel cursed. Sheryl and Shane finally got to him at that moment, but he pushed them away.
[3 seconds]
"Stand back!" Raydel shouted.
That was not the countdown to the boss appearance, but rather to the symptom of the 'Black Death!'
[1 second]
[Successfully awakened the boss 'Plague Doctor.']
At the same time, Raydel heard a 'Pow' sound as blood splashed everywhere.
[1] (Pronounced as 'pee') A term used to call someone who is older than the speaker to show respect.