Ryan stared at the red, glowing system message in front of him. This lab rat was level 23, and it was most certainly not going to be the last or strongest monster they were going to face. In the first place, this dungeon was bound to have a dedicated boss monster acting as the core room's guardian. Would Ryan actually be able to take that thing down? What if the boss monster was above level 30?

  And that wasn't even mentioning the fact that Ryan literally heard some barking in the distance earlier. If there was some kind of dog down here, it was bound to be stronger than a rat. Unless this rat just happened to be an incredibly powerful, highly-mutated variant, which Ryan obviously doubted.

  He took a deep breath and looked at the small knight standing in front of the monster's corpse, watching it slowly fall apart into small particles of mana, "Let's keep going. We need to make it to the core room as fast as possible."

  Ryan just rushed past Maximus, who quickly jumped through his domain onto Ryan's shoulder, appearing there with Granfell in his hand. Gaia also picked up the pace, trying to follow a bit faster so that they could get through this place as fast as they could. Ryan continued navigating through this place, trying to use the map as a guide. And of course, the map wasn't actually a particularly good 'guide' for him, since it didn't display the lab. Just using the few dots scattered around the map as some kind of guide wasn't as easy as Ryan had been hoping it to be.

  Even so, he managed to get to the different exits one by one, getting closer to what he hoped to be his destination with every step. And, of course, with each of those steps came more enemies. There were more skeletons, stronger skeletons, powerful, mutated monsters, and just overall so many enemies that Ryan was genuinely starting to get worried.

  This was exactly why he had been hoping to get his hands on the full paladin set before he went down here. It was easy in the beginning, but by now, it was an absolute, annoying pain. And not just a metaphorical pain, but a physical pain as well.

  While, overall, it was surprisingly easy to take down the monsters here, they were just so frequent and plentiful when they showed up that it was getting harder and harder for Ryan to avoid getting hit sometimes.

  Whether it was scratches, punches, and even biting, Ryan was slowly growing more and more injured.

  'Death by a thousand needles, huh?' he thought to himself with a long, annoyed sigh, looking down at the small tears in his clothes. Luckily, it seemed that the tears weren't making the connection to Jester worse, or if they did, then it was so gradual that Ryan didn't notice it at all. It was, frankly, saving his ass quite a bit.

  Against so many enemies, having the opportunity to have a better oversight over all of them at once was a godsent, and mentally, Ryan had already made a distinction between the combat uses for the two outfits.

  Jester's Urban Harlequin outfit was better against groups of monsters, while Maximus' Urban Knight outfit was better against singular, powerful monsters. That meant that, at least for the time being, Ryan was sure that he made the right choice not changing before coming down here.

  If he had changed into the Urban Knight outfit, it was very possible that Ryan wouldn't have made it to his destination as fast as he did. Because now, finally, he was sure he was right in front of the 'boss room', which was the only thing between him and the core room now. Large, metal doors that were going to open mechanically, just like many of the other smaller security doors that Ryan had seen scattered throughout the area. Most of those were already open, or broken to the point where Ryan was able to just push them open, but this one was different.

  It was practically pristine, and a small panel at its side was just beeping away. Ryan carefully looked at the panel. It didn't have anything to enter a code into, nor did it have a slot for a key. Instead, it just had a small slit with a very familiar size.

  He pulled out his wallet and the small plastic card that he got from the gift shop and pushed it inside. The dim, red light on the panel quickly turned a bright green, and the door opened with a loud hiss.

  Ryan was nervous, but he knew that he had to hurry up and get out of here as fast as he could. It had been so long that gods-know-what could have already happened to Silvia and Modak upstairs. Ryan didn't even want to imagine it. He looked into the darkness in the room beyond. Just like everything else, it was lit by a dim, red light.

  The walls were lined with computers and vials and vats and cages and basically everything else you could imagine being down here. It was like the cumulation or combination of all the other rooms that he had seen down here. But there was one very important thing that was missing. The 'Boss' - the core's guardian. Even in the Abandoned Copper Foundry, a young dungeon without even a properly established boss system, had a guardian that was protecting the core room.

  For a brief moment, Ryan wondered if maybe this was another type of undead - some kind of spectre or ghost, something that you couldn't see with the naked eye. Until he saw something sitting in the centre of the room. It had a familiar, fake golden-yellow coating. It was a boss statue, just like the ones that were dropped by the area bosses, sitting on top of a small pile of plastic coins that ended up being scattered around the dirty floor.

  The boss had already been killed. Goosebumps ran down Ryan's back as he stared at the statue. He squatted down, trying to take a good look.

  "Did Richie already get down here...?" Ryan whispered to himself, when he heard a slight hiss. It was subtle, but familiar. In a much more eerie way than the statue, of course. Ryan tightened his hand around the horn of shapeless water, and a wall of ice was quickly built next to him as he created a shield to protect himself. A metal spike pushed cleanly through that ice.

  Ryan shuddered as kicked against the ice shield, detaching it from the horn to forcibly push back against the thing that just attacked him. Back against Roxie, or at least one of the many Roxie units that Richard was hauling around with him these days.

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  It was bigger than the last one that Ryan saw, back at the botanical gardens. And frankly, much more terrifying.

  But there was just one good thing about this situation - this was the only Roxie, and clearly, it was acting independently. Ryan actually instantly set up a link between himself and Jester so that he could have a full overview of the room without the darkness and the dim red lights, so he was absolutely certain he was alone in here. It was also how he figured out how Richard had come in here. There was a hole in the wall, clearly dug out by some kind of... creature. If Ryan was right, they were right below the fake boss room. Richard must have found that tunnel and came down here, killed the boss, and then went back upstairs frustrated. But... if that was the case, why didn't they get to the core? If they already killed it, then - "Ah, fuck..."

  Ryan figured it out. There was another door on the other side of the room, and it looked much, much more complicated than the one Ryan had just come through. There was some kind of condition connected to entering the boss room. Maybe it was a split between a boss monster and a boss 'puzzle' that was meant to protect the core. And while Richard was able to force his way through the boss, a dungeon's puzzle couldn't be hijacked that way. Even though it was a mechanical door and Richard was a technomancer, dungeons didn't work by 'regular' logic. He wouldn't be able to use his magic to force the lock open. In a dungeon like this, all the tech was basically just cogs and springs. It made even less sense than the monsters.

  Clearly, the dungeon didn't understand what 'machines' were; it had even turned the rollercoasters' carts into monsters, just because they were moving. That being the case, though, Ryan didn't particularly have the time to think about what the puzzle might be at the moment. He had to worry about the murderous robot currently standing in front of him. Right now, they were in some kind of stand-off.

  The Roxie unit was facing him, and he was facing the Roxie unit. Just staring at each other. However, Ryan actually did use that moment to double-check something. With Jester's unique vision that wasn't affected by light or dark, he was able to spot a few particular quirks making up the robot's body.

  Awkward angles of metal plating, a specific type of screw where it might be better to use bolts or even weld the metal together, and even the use of soft plastics to cover certain parts of her body for mere aesthetic reasons. This had the exact same quirks as the original, regular Roxie had back when Ryan and Maximus faced her and Richard.

  Of course, he hadn't paid enough attention to that tiny robot to remember all of those quirks now, but Modak knew enough about Richard and robotics to know exactly what kind of habits he had - and what sort of mistakes he tended to make. Modak filled Ryan in on all of that, just in case Ryan had to face these robots again. And as long as Richard didn't just suddenly change his quirks in regard to the interior design of the Roxie units, Ryan knew exactly what he had to do now.

  He snapped his finger, giving a signal to Gregor, who quickly shot at the robot. Maximus immediately declared Roxie as his 'nemesis'. Luckily, the way that skill worked depended on what Maximus himself acknowledged as a 'target', and not just targets connected to the system. Otherwise, it might have accidentally connected to Richard. But since this Roxie unit was clearly working on some pre-installed script, rather than being manually controlled, Maximus could justify just targeting this specific robot. And while Maximus ran forward to distract Roxie for a few moments, Ryan was thrown a small bottle by Jester, which he communicated through the link.

  He took a deep breath. This was going to be tough. Really, really tough. He took off his mask, weakening his link to Jester, but allowing him to build a proper link to the rest of the spirits. Ryan placed the potion-bottle against his lips. It was a mana potion.

  It was a dangerous thing; basically, a last-ditch effort. When it came to potions, there was a very important matter to account for - magically strengthened potions or medicines could cause strong side-effects. They were heavily balanced and lightened with mainstream medicine, but this wasn't mainstream medicine. It was a potion that he barely got his hands on through Kim, who was more than just hesitant to give the item to Ryan. He let out a long, deep sigh, and let the potion flow into his mouth, just holding it there.

  And then, he quickly did something very stupid. Ryan had heard from Runar how strong these things were. He would have no shot at all just regularly, so he had to go all-out. Absolutely and totally all-out. He linked to the other spirits. One link was manageable, and two links were rough. But four links? It was almost enough to shatter Ryan's mind, and that wasn't even mentioning the sudden, immediate drain on his mana. Which, of course, he had quickly substituted with the mana potion. Just going down his throat, it felt like he was drinking rubbing alcohol. It burnt like he was drinking boiling water. But just as quickly, he felt his mana replenish. Rather, it felt like he was completely overflowing with it.

  "Let's go," Ryan almost growled, trying to push out his words as he stared at the Roxie unit. Jester started playing one of his songs, the 'duellist's melody' on what seemed to be some kind of lyre or harp.

  Gregor was changing the rifle's mode from silenced to its regular mode, increasing its fire-power, while Maximus began to hammer down on Roxie's knee. Or at least, he was trying to. Just like its smaller versions, this large Roxie had the ability to almost instantaneously add momentum to itself. That being the case, with Ryan's particularly strong situational intuition, together with a total of five points of view in this, albeit quite dimly lit room, he was able to very quickly figure out the direction that the Roxie unit was headed.

  There was, after all, the first of the Roxies' quirks to consider. It had some insectoid traits to it. For one, it was the carapace-like design, which was just a 'stylish' was to add in additional armour in clever places. But beside that, the Roxie units also had small antennae. And these weren't just aesthetic. They were basically small, bonus sensors to keep track of the environment right before a change in the robot's momentum was done. After all, if it suddenly catapulted itself into a table or chair, it was going to just damage itself. Plus, in dark environments like these, cameras were hard to rely on. So, the Roxie units sent out a minuscule pulse of mana in the direction of the planned, added momentum to fine-tune the result. Like some kind of echo-location. Technically this made them closer to bats, but Richard went for an insect design, anyway, somehow.

  Either way, while Ryan couldn't track that pulse of mana, he could track the small twitch in the antennae right when that pulse was sent out. It was just a lag of a fraction of a second between the pulse being sent out and the robot's momentum changing, of course, but it was enough time for Ryan to mentally prepare and react, especially because his intuition allowed him to basically react faster than he could think. Like some kind of deep instinct.

  And so, Ryan was able to prepare a swing coming from the direction that the unit was about to change its trajectory to, hitting it square in the face. That being the case, he was hitting a heavy hunk of metal, so this attack wasn't as affective as he wanted it to be, but it was enough to force the Roxie unit into changing its direction again.

  At that point, Gregor was ready to shoot again, and managed to plant a bullet right into his fellow robot's torso. There was a small dent; not a lot of damage, but once again, a great start.

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