Jensen's POV

  The kid panicked.

  Big time.

  And chose the worst possible options from the ones given by the System. Well, saying he chose those options would be a stretch.

  "I'm sorry…" He trailed behind me as I walked into the tunnel, clenching my fists. The orb continued to illuminate the path ahead while Jack's voice echoed behind me. "Jensen…" he pleaded.

  But I kept walking. I had to calm down. I had to. I was the adult here after all. Screaming and yelling at that kid was not going to help him or me. If he had only listened to me. I would have completed the second stage of the quest and gotten closer to knowing the reality of this dungeon.

  There is more to this dungeon than what meets the eye, I recalled the System's word.

  Jack's interface popped in front of me that same second, crashing my chain of thoughts, and the journal tab opened up on its own.

  "Oi, oi, oi," came the text from the other lord of the dungeon, and I stopped in my tracks. "Slow down, will you," he wrote. "How did you manage to reach level fifteen so fast?" he asked.

  We had less than an hour before we were to face that monster. Such confidence doesn't just come from being the lord of the dungeon. This creature, whoever it may be. He had hunted before, and he had hunted down foes so strong that Benzo realized that it was better for him to hide at floor thirteen.

  "Jensen—"

  "Not a word," I said to Jack, who was standing a few feet behind me.

  I tapped on the keyboard option, and started typing a response the good old fashion way.

  Of the choices given by the System to Jack. The boon he chose was for him to interact with others interface. And as it goes both ways. I decided to make the most of it. Me telling him to do something, and him being all clueless about it, was getting on my nerves anyway. This was one of the reasons I never chose to have a protégé ever before. It's simply not worth it.

  To make matters worse, the boon he wanted to choose was to see the levels of others and not the one he picked. As I said, he panicked. And the penalty he chose to remove was the journal tab one. But the system picked the hiding of the lord of the dungeon title on its own, as Jack didn't respond in time.

  I closed my eyes for a solid second.

  Let bygones be bygones, I said, and opened my eyes.

  "I will tell you how I got to level fifteen so fast," I respond to the other lord of the dungeon.

  At least something good came out of this, I thought. Thinking about how I could now not only move the map without relying on Jack. But could also scroll back and read things from the beginning in the journal tab when we unlock it at level twenty.

  "What will it cost me?" asked the lord of the dungeon from the other end.

  "For starters, how about we introduce ourselves?" I typed.

  "Sure, sure," he said. "I have been called a many names. But the one that has stuck by me is Lafin," he said.

  "My name is Jack," I responded. "But you can call me the lord of the dungeon."

  "Wait," Jack butted in, and stood next to me. "He thinks that he is talking to me," he said.

  "Did I say that to him?" I asked Jack, while he was to my right.

  Jack shook his head.

  "Good," I said. "So his misunderstanding isn't really my fault, now is it?" I asked him.

  Jack appeared conflicted with anything that’s a shade too grey from the white in which he had lived his life so far. This bad habit of his would either get him killed or his loved ones eventually. Or maybe the world will do the right amount of wrong with him and break this bad habit of his.

  I left him to do his moral debating and went back to chat with Lafin.

  "So, how old are you, Lafin? What do you like to do in your spare time when you aren't killing things?"

  "Hehehehehe," he said. "Where is the boy I spoke to last night?" he asked, and my eyebrows rose. "Your words sound a bit too cocky to be coming from someone who is about to die," he said.

  "I could say the same about you," I said. "Just how many lords of the dungeon have you killed to have this blind arrogance to think that you will survive me?"

  "Blind arrogance?" he asked. "You wouldn't be saying that if you knew who I was."

  Hmmm, I eyed that text for a long moment. Longer than I had intended to. There was something wrong here, and I couldn't place a finger on it. But I felt it in my gut.

  "Jack," I called out.

  "Yeah…" he said, while waiting for me to respond to Lafin.

  "I want you to invest five stat points and upgrade the map right now," I said.

  "But—"

  "Do it," I said, a bit louder, while typing out a message.

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  Jack invested the points and had the map pop up in the bottom right corner as per the settings he had made last time.

  "Shouldn't we respond to him?" Jack asked me.

  "We should," I said, while staring at those texts. "But something doesn't feel right," I said. I had typed out a clichéd response so that it shows that I was actively typing something. But I still hadn't sent it.

  My hands moved quickly on the small screen of the map. It was now updated and showed the names of the adventurers and bosses, along with any higher level mob.

  "Jensen…" said Jack.

  "What?" I asked him, while my hands moved through the topography of the third floor in search of Lafin.

  After the map update, I could now see even the thickness of the dungeon walls, and the solid ground that made the floor separation. There were maybe ten people on floor three, and none of them looked like they could hold a candle to Jack, let alone me. Their dots were too tiny to be any threat to us.

  "Jensen…" said Jack again, and I looked at the journal tab, knowing he was panicking over something that Lafin had sent.

  Pulling the screen into focus, I was ready to retort when my hands froze.

  "I'm on your floor," Lafin had said. "Where the hell are you two?"

  To say that the moment we read that text from Lafin, we both ran towards the staircase that would lead us to the lower floor would be an understatement. In total, there were three exits on the fourth floor. So the probability of us meeting him was less than half. So we went towards the one closest to us that was a tunnel down and a few hundred feet from there.

  "Hide the lord of the dungeon title," I said to Jack, while he ran side by side with me. I wish I had time to process how strong he had grown to keep up with me without having assigned any stat points to his speed. Maybe it was the boots. But with Lafin on the same floor as us. We couldn't risk stopping and chatting up.

  "On it," he said, and went into the settings.

  I remained focused on the map. I was panning and moving the map around in search of Lafin. But he was nowhere to be seen on our floor or the floor above. But there was no time to stop and think, and that's when I came to a halt.

  Jack tried to stop as well, but he went a few yards ahead before skidding to a halt.

  "What's wrong?" he asked me.

  I stared at the map, and then at the wooden door a few hundred feet ahead of us.

  The exit of this floor.

  "He played us," I said, squeezing my eyes shut.

  "Lafin?" he asked.

  I nodded and looked at the map again.

  Jack did the same, and he froze right where he stood.

  Lafin wasn't on the third floor, or on the fourth for that matter. Nor had he had the ability to hide himself on the map like I had thought when I couldn't locate him. Instead, Lafin, the lord of the dungeon, was on the floor underneath us. And now, he stood on the same staircase as us. Just a floor below.

  And that wasn't the worst part. We could have run to the other side. But we wouldn't make it to the staircase in time, and with him following us from the floor below. It would only be a matter of time before he meets us there.

  "I took his word for it when he said he was on the third floor," said Jack.

  "Well, that makes the two of us," I said, running my hand through my hair.

  "What do we do?" he asked me. "He is right underneath us." Jack looked down at the floor, and I think I saw his noodle like legs shiver.

  "Maybe killing all the goblins on this floor wasn't such a good idea," I said, cracking my neck. "He now knows that it's only the two of us here, and matched our location."

  "If we go down," said Jack, and looked at me. "He will kill us."

  "And if we don't go down," I said. "He will trap us on this floor and kill us anyway."

  Either way, standing so close to the staircase was like standing at the doorstep of death. So I opened the map, moved it around, and found a spot that could have given us a chance at surviving this Lafin monstrosity.

  "Let's go," I said, with less than twenty five minutes of head start left on the clock.

  Jack followed without a question, and we made it to the safe zone after putting in a solid forty minute nonstop run. The last fifteen minutes were terrifying as Lafin had not only entered the floor but was gaining on us at an alarming rate. The dim lit dome shaped barrier with a dull green vibrant hue marking its presence had come in view and gave us the last push we needed to make it to safety. We had just entered the barrier when Jack collapsed from exhaustion.

  The plan?

  I will tell you the plan. No one is allowed to harm each other inside the safe zone. Even the lords of the dungeon, as per the records of Benzo. So the kid was safe in here. As far as the other lord of the dungeon is concerned. I held my hand out and conjured a fireball. This part of the idea had come from the people who had managed to kill adventurers inside the safe zone last month during the dungeon council meeting.

  "Jensen…" Jack called out.

  I looked at him to my right, while he remained planted firm on the dungeon floor. Hell, after spending the last five to six days with him. I could tell just with his tone if I was about to do something brave or what some might call stupid.

  "Stay right there, kid," I said to him with a nod, and charged up the spell.

  The ball grew, and grew in size. But I didn't have to expend a lot of my mana to maintain it. Why? Because Lafin was fast. He was so fast that I had run the fastest I have ever run in my recent memory. My heart was still beating like wild drums while I fed mana to my fireball, making it nearly five feet in diameter.

  The ball of flame in the palm of my hand illuminated not just the safe zone but also the tunnel through which we had entered the dome. The same tunnel through which Lafin was chasing us like a rabid dog. Those are still a thing.

  My eyes wandered to Jack's interface in front of me, and the map highlighted a big red dot coming at us at blinding speed. My eyes darted up, and a fog filled the twenty-odd feet of space between the barrier and the tunnel ahead. The fog was so heavy that it blocked out the view completely on the other side. This had to be Lafin's doing. I just knew it in my gut.

  So I raised my hand over my head, and grew the fireball from six to over seven feet in diameter. The moment the interface would show Lafin appearing inside that dome through that tunnel. I would step out of the safe zone to greet him with a giant ball of flame. Harming him on the inside of the safe zone was out of the question.

  "Lafin…" I called out while the red dot on the map raced towards us.

  The dot didn't slow down. So, while I armed myself with the biggest fireball in my arsenal. I stepped out of the safe zone just as he was about to reach us. There was no second guessing myself now. Nor was there going back either. But just as Lafin entered the dome shaped structure, while still being outside the barrier of the safe zone, thanks to the twenty five percent reduction of the barrier size.

  The system chimed in.

  Ping!

  "Who is going to carry the boats?"

  Definitely, not you.

  The system recognizes your crazy and is willing to up the stakes.

  Challenge: Kill the twelfth floor boss on the fourth floor and gain a title.

  System Restrictions: You have to kill him inside the dome structure!

  Accept?

  Yes/No

  "Twelfth floor boss?" I asked myself.

  And just as I looked up.

  Two bright red eyes stared down at me from some eight feet high, and when he stepped up into the light of the fireball. My feet froze up. The safe zone was but a step behind me. But I couldn't make myself move. Something primal had caught a hold of me in that moment. Something that made me feel like I was the prey. That I was the one being hunted.

  "The cocky one, I presume…" came its voice with a purr.

  And then, the twelfth floor boss leaned in to make itself known.

  A figure moulded in darkness, some eight feet tall, with canine teeth, claws for hands, and big furry legs. A smile stretched across its wolfish face, and the only thought that crossed my mind in that moment was…

  There is no way in hell this fireball of mine could one shot a level ninety nine boss.

  *****

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