Jack's POV

  Jensen and I stood side by side facing a man I had never seen before.

  That man was as old as the dungeon itself, and stood at the tail end of the tunnel some twenty feet away from us. He was holding a lantern right next to his face with a bright orange flame in it. His long bushy red beard, a big belly, and a partly bald head. All pointed at him being a dwarf. But he was about five feet tall.

  "Who are you?" asked Jensen, while I stood on his left with a dagger in my hand. Even with everything that happened. I hadn't let go of the only weapon I had on me.

  "I'm Benzo," said that old man. "I'm the Lord of this Dungeon," he declared.

  Wait, a minute… I thought. Could it be the same Benzo? I asked myself, and then looked at Jensen to my right.

  "Is it the same fuck you Benzo?" I asked Jensen out loud.

  "Watch your tongue, boy," growled that old man, and the flame roared inside that lantern, making the tunnel brighter. "I can have you crushed right where you stand," he said.

  "Are you the same Benzo that explored this dungeon?" asked out Jensen, having now lost all the features that made him look old.

  Benzo's tummy rumble as he chuckled from the other end.

  "There is no way…" Jensen stared at that old man. "It would make you well over three hundred years old," he said. "No human can live that long—"

  "I'm part dwarf now," said Benzo.

  "You had your race changed?" asked Jensen.

  But Benzo didn't respond to him.

  I made a mental note of everything I was hearing. There was so much I didn't know about the dungeon and the world at large. Having just used broken sentences all my life to talk to other adventurers. I haven't had the chance to be a part of a full fledge conversation like this before.

  With others is just me shouting herbal weeds, and then having a back and forth in numbers, and nodding and shaking my head at the right moments. I used my words as sparingly as possible. The only reason I even had a conversation with Jensen was because I knew he wasn't from here. Moreover, most people just ignored me in the market. And more often than not. It was Mrs. Tuma who would buy the weeds from me at the end of the night to make cookies. I liked her cookies. They made my work easier in the field and the pond.

  "You know, now that you have come all this way," said Benzo, and I snapped out of my thoughts. So much for me keeping a track of their back and forth. "I can't really let you both live," said Benzo to us.

  "Is that so?" asked Jensen.

  "Yes, it is," said Benzo. "It's been decades since travelers have been caught in this trap of mine after reading my exploration records. I was worried for a second that System might have marked my exploration records down as inaccurate—"

  "Oh, it sure has," said Jensen.

  "And you still came here?" Benzo laughed out. "How foolish are you?" he asked.

  "My exact thoughts," I gave Jensen a side eye.

  "Hey, whose side are you on?" he asked me, even his voice sounding much younger than before.

  "Definitely not yours," I said to him.

  "Who else knows you are here?" asked Benzo, and both of us looked back at him.

  "I can count the people who know on my fingers," said Jensen and showed him a middle finger.

  Benzo grumbled at that and began chanting a spell.

  "Throw a fireball at him," I said to Jensen under my breath while keeping my eye on that old man.

  "I'm out of mana," said Jensen, without looking at me.

  "Drink a potion," I looked at him, bewildered.

  "Restrictions," he said, not letting Benzo out of his sight.

  "I don't care about your stupid restriction—"

  "I know," he said. "But I'm unable to access my inventory in this space, and I don't carry a mana potion on me. Give me another fifty seconds, and I will be good to go—"

  "Fifty?" I almost yelled out while eyeing mumbling Benzo, realizing that he was the real deal if he could restrict access to inventory. "The plan was for five—"

  "Well, he isn't a floor boss now, is he?" asked Jensen.

  "I should have escaped when I had the chance—"

  "Too bad I took your device," he smirked.

  In that moment, I so wanted to stab Jensen with that dagger. But instead, I threw it at Benzo with everything I had in me and...

  It missed.

  Of course, it missed.

  I had never thrown a dagger in my life before.

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  But it broke his concentration enough that he stopped his chant and stared at me.

  "Enough of these games," I declared and took a step towards the old man.

  I have to get those fifty seconds, I thought.

  "Before I kill you," I said to Benzo. "Tell me…" I said, hoping he would bite the bait I was dangling in front of him.

  "Tell you what?" he asked.

  "Why place such an elaborate trap to kill the travelers from outside?"

  He kept quiet.

  "Why go to these lengths to hide—"

  "Hide?" he asked me. "I'm not hiding," he said.

  "Yes, you are," I said, taking another step towards him. "If you are the dungeon lord, as you claim. Why let the dungeon council exist?" I asked him. "Why not take total control?"

  He chuckled at that. "Who says I don't have total control?" he asked me, and with a wave of his hand. He collapsed the entire section behind Jensen's back.

  That one act from him all but confirmed that he was the dungeon lord he claimed to be.

  I turned and looked at his gloating face.

  "Are you the one who spawns goblins right in the middle of our fields?" I asked him, as that was the first thought that occurred to me. "The one who has killed the strongest among us time and time again by springing surprises on them like this." I looked around the tunnel.

  "I have done things far worse than that…" said Benzo with no remorse. "It's just that old age has now made me softer." He chuckled.

  So he wasn't just watching, I told myself. He was actively culling us and was making us weaker. If there was more food to go around. Then the increasing human population wouldn't even be that big a deal.

  Truth be told, I knew for a fact that he was hiding down here, but I couldn't care less about his reasons. Because if he truly was the dungeon lord. Then he was the sole person responsible for the way the dungeon functioned. Which meant he was the reason why the drops were so low and why me and my family had to scramble just to stay alive.

  And that. That thought right there. It pissed me off.

  "Will killing him make me the dungeon lord?" I asked Jensen in a low voice.

  "No," he said. "As per the records, we need to clear the dungeon for that. But…" He paused. "Killing him will make sure that there will be no more dungeon surprises."

  And no more suffering, I thought.

  Benzo was mumbling a spell again, and I had to break his concentration and keep him talking.

  "I hope you have said your prayers," I said to him. "Because you are not getting out of here alive," I promised him that.

  "You?" he chuckled. "You who is covered in filth and rags." He eyed me head to toe. "You, will kill me?" His belly rumbled.

  "System restrictions," I said. "I have but one skill left active on me," I bluffed.

  "What skill?" he asked.

  "Thou shalt not die," I said. "I can activate it only once per day, usually." I grinned at him. "But after I sealed everything away. I fuelled that spell up. And now, I'm basically an immortal." I shrugged.

  "You are bluffing…" said Benzo. But he did take a step back. "The System would never allow such a thing—" He waved his hand in front of him as to get rid of the screen which was blocking his view of me. The System must have given him a warning about me. But he was too scared to look away from us and read that notification.

  I didn't have to know him for too long to know that he was a coward. A coward who watches from the shadows, who hides in the deeper floors where others can't reach him, and even if they do. He has them crushed by boulders or uses a horde of goblins to overwhelm them.

  He kept waving a hand in front of his face to get rid of the screen and kept his eyes on me. But it had been over fifty seconds, and I had no clue why Jensen hadn't attacked yet. It hit me the same second that I was blocking his path. And seeing no other way in that narrow tunnel to clear a path for him. I decided to be the decoy.

  I smiled at Benzo.

  "I hope you reap me good experience, dungeon lord…" I charged at him without thinking twice.

  The buffs were still active on me. That was the sole reason why I was able to escape the boss room as fast as I did. But Benzo was a good seventeen feet away, and I had no skill at my end to hit him with. My only hope was in Jensen to hit him with a fire ball.

  The moment Jensen would launch a fireball. He would yell, and I would duck. That was the plan, I guessed. But just as I was thinking that, a dragon like flame zoomed past me and hit Jensen. It was so fast that I hadn't even registered it moving past me until Jensen cried out, and the hair on the side of my head burned up. But I couldn't stop charging at Benzo because he was already mumbling a spell again.

  Benzo's lantern wasn't just for lighting up the place. He, being a dwarf that he was, had managed to cast a spell under his breath and had bent the fire to his will. I covered my face with both of my arms as the next fire spell came my way and burned my forearms. But I continued to charge at him, while yelling out his name, "Benzooo…"

  The spell hit me the second time. Much weaker than before but still causing burns. But I ran through the pain, the only thing fueling me other than the fading buff being the fact that this weasel was the reason my family was in ruins. He was the reason that my father hadn't smiled in ages. He was the reason my parents had cut down to one meal a day, and he was the reason why my sister was fighting for her life every single day just to make ends meet.

  "Benzooo…" I raised my fist to bring it down on his ugly face.

  I almost had him when he hit me with a fire blast once again at point blank range from his flickering lantern, and I was thrown away by the force of that fire. My face burned, and I cried out at the top of my lungs.

  Benzo laughed at me. And it was that laugh of his that made something inside of me finally snap. I stopped writhing in pain and stepped out of that mental space. The space where pain had overwhelmed me and had taken over my senses. I stepped out of it, as though stepping out of a room, and stopped. I stopped clutching my face and crying.

  Benzo's laugh died that instant.

  So I chimed in, while still being on the floor.

  "Ha-Ha-Ha…" My laugh echoed in that tunnel as I got back up with my arms dangling, having been burned to crisps.

  "How?" he asked me, taking a step back and holding up his lantern again, which had dimmed considerably.

  "Told you," I smiled at him. "I will not die," I said.

  The System must have chimed in with my information, and his eyes glazed for but a moment.

  "Benzoo…" I called out and stepped towards him. He panicked, waving his hand again. "Benzooo…." My voice got louder, and my steps got faster. "Benzooo…." I jumped and caught him by the side of his face, and head-butted him before he could complete his spell.

  He let go of his lantern and fell behind his back with the speed at which I came at him. The next thing I knew. I went after him like how a hungry goblin goes after an adventurer. He had cast his spell with the intention of killing me. So I went at him with my bare hands, and not only gouged out his eye. But used the same lantern to smash his face until the very flames he used on me. Caught his beard and clothes on fire.

  Benzo tried to push me away. But he had become so huge while hiding down here that he couldn't get back on his feet easily. Moreover, I wouldn't have let that happen even if it killed me.

  "Ha-Ha-Ha…" I laughed like Jensen while my flesh burned and sizzled. Smashing the lantern on Benzo's face and making him bleed wasn't enough. So I grab the flickering flame from inside the broken lantern and put it inside Benzo's screaming mouth, and closed it.

  He struggled.

  He struggled for a long moment and then went still.

  But it wasn't enough.

  "Die…" I declared and punched him with my charred fists. "Die. Die. Die..."

  "Jack…" Raored Jensen from the other end of the tunnel and snapped me out of it.

  I punched Benzo in the face one last time. To make sure he was really dead. Once I knew that he was. I got up and looked over my shoulder at Jensen.

  "I killed him," I said, and the weight of those words came crashing on my soul. "He was..." My vision darkened. "He was the reason my family…"

  Then everything blanked out as I fell back into the room where pain was waiting for me. I had but escaped that room for a precious few moments. A precious few moments where I had taken a life to save my own.

  *****