Chapter 307 Unexpected
Dave led the party through the third raid zone area. The painted dogs were nowhere to be seen. It seemed that the undead that are now residing in the Pharaoh's Crypt had eradicated them. The scorched lands of the third raid zone were monster free. Or so it appeared.
Dave had a clear memory of the sphinx that laid dormant in front of the Pharaoh's Crypt. So there was no telling what might be hiding under these black dunes.
The party arrived at an area where enormous pillars, as high as skyscrapers were rising. Some were destroyed and broken, but a few withstood the test of time. Lone was first to speak, "This is the dungeon entrance."
Perfect replied, "I don't see any entrance. Are you drunk?" the priest was wondering how would anything.
Lone rolled her eyes at the priest, saying, "Ugh, why do you have to comment on everything? The entrance is between those two pillars."
Unconvinced, Pussy Flanker moved nudged the dunlord he was riding on to move ahead.
Just as Flanker went between the most intact of the pillars, his avatar and the dunlord he was on disappeared from the player's vision.
"Where'd he go?" Fortress asked.
"He is inside the dungeon. Let's follow after," Dave said and nudged grumpy to go ahead.
The party went between the pillars, and they disappeared one after the other. Their vision swam and darkened, then cleared as they found themselves on a paved stone surface. The stone road led to a familiar door made of solid gold. But the only difference between Dave's last visit to this place and now, was the lack of the gigantic status of Raijin and Fujin.
"Dave…" Lone trailed.
"Yeah, I know, I guess those statues were the real thing."
"What are you guys talking about?" Flanker asked as he was inspecting the door and ways to open in.
"There were two statues here. They are the dungeon boss. Anyway, tread carefully. This is a labyrinth. We need to expect anything." Dave said.
"How do you suppose we can open the door? You have a key, right?" Flanker asked.
"No, the door should open on its own," Dave said.
And just as he guessed, the door opened to the party leading them in.
"Stay on your guard, and stick close together, move out."
The players entered following after Dave. The door, like last time, creepily closed behind them. Giving a scare to almost everyone in the group besides Dave and Lone, they already had their share of fright the last time they were here.
When the door close, the light came from the ceiling. There were glowing crystals set in the vaulted ceiling at different intervals lighting the way.
The floor and walls were made of white marble. The pillars had carvings of Fujin and Raijin fighting together or against each other. Every pillar depicted a story, and every story had death in it.
After several minutes walk, they arrived at a three-way passage.
"Now what?" Perfect asked.
"Tiny, bring everyone out but the manticore," Dave said.
Tiny then started by summoning the undead. He began with Singund and his regiment and then Dave's regiment.
"Singund," Dave said.
"Yes, Commander."
"Take your unit through the left path. Bud, Dog and Spark, you will co-lead my regiment through the right path," Dave said.
The undead all nodded to Dave and went their separate ways. Leaving Dave with grumpy, Tiny, his party, and six dunlords.
"Why are you separating your troops?" Perfect asked.
"I need to clear the bosses at the same time. We will group up later after the first three bosses are defeated."
"There are three mini-bosses?"
"Well, there are nine. Three in each path. If they aren't defeated, we won't be able to gather at the final boss's gate."
"I thought we were going to get to the tengu," Ralph said.
"We will, but we could also attempt the boss," Dave replied.
"You said that the boss was too hard to defeat," Ralph said.
"Yeah, I don't think we can win, but I want to try my legacy skill on it," Dave said.
"Yeah about that, what does your skill do?" Ralph asked
"I don't know, I inspected the skill, but it shows nothing beyond its name, [Final Phantasm]."
"Let's hope it does something useful then," Ralph said.
"Alright, enough said, let's keep going." Dave nudged grumpy into the middle path. The Players followed behind Dave. After going a short distance, the floor inclined, they were moving deeper.
"Watch your steps guys, there are some traps here," Dave said and curved away from a pavement that was risen a bit above the rest.
A light came from the end of the corridor. That was the mini-boss room. The exit, or what seemed to be the exit was like a window looking at the mini-boss room from wayyyy up.
Broken pillars lined the walls of the room, each was shorter than the other, and they descended to the bottom of the room.
"Seems like the pillars were repaired," Dave mumbled. The Cyclops had destroyed the pillars to prevent the undead from climbing down when Dave was here. But as it appears the Devs can't have the only way to the boss room destroyed for players. So they had to repair it.
"Dave, the boss's not here," Lone said.
Dave frowned and turned his eyes toward the bottom of the room. He carefully looked around but couldn't see anything besides stones and mold.
"Yeah, seems like the mini-boss here didn't respawn. Thank god," Dave said, "Alright, everyone, follow me. Grumps, jump to that pillar." Dave said.
Grumpy reared back and lunged forward. The big basilisk was quite agile for its size, and he managed to land perfectly on the first pillar.
"Good job grumps, guys, follow after," Dave said and nudged grumpy to the next pillar.
The basilisk continued its descent as the dunlords followed behind Dave. It took them a few minutes until they arrived at the bottom of the room.
Dave looked around again but didn't find any sign of the cyclops.
"Let's keep going," Dave said. He led them through the only door at the bottom of this room. There was another corridor that led even further down. Flanker was the last of the group to cross the door, he said, "At this rate, we won't be fighting anything."
"We are here for Blaster's quest. Fighting and EXP is secondary," Dave said.
"Right." Flanker said. The door behind him slowly closed, he looked back, and his face instantly turned pale white.
The door slammed shut, awakening him from his stunned state.
"S-say Skelly." Flanker said in a stutter.
"Yeah? I can't hear you come closer."
"Wait, wait wait!" Flanker shouted.
Everyone at the party stopped and turned toward him.
"What's gotten you so riled up man?" Fortress said.
"You said that there was no mini-boss. I just saw some big ass lion-faced guy standing in the room before the gate closed."
"Leonard? Is he tracking us here in the underworld?" Mercy said.
"No, forget that guy, this guy's even meaner. Shit."
"How mean?" Dave asked. He knew of only two lion-faced creatures in this game. He didn't want to meet any of them right now.
"He had both arms crossed and was leaning on one pillar. The fucker was smirking at me."
"I think Flanker's hallucinating man," Fortress said.
"Shit man, I swear I saw it." Flanker yelled.
"How did he look like?" Lone asked.
"Big guys, lot of muscles, he had some sort of drums floating above him."
"Shit, that's Raijin alright," Dave said.
"Didn't you say that Raijin and Fujin were the dungeon bosses? Shouldn't they still be in the boss-room," Ralph said.
"Well, they are the dungeon boss. But I have no idea what the hell was Raijin doing here. Man, this changes a lot of stuff," Dave said.
"Man stop scaring me, the last thing I want is to meet a roaming dungeon boss. That'd be game over, man!" Flanker said.
"Let's keep going. We can't stay here. If Raijin is here, it means that Fujin could also be somewhere. We need to hurry to the tengu's chamber. Man, this is not cool!" Dave nudged his onyx bassilisk and shouted, "Hurry Grumps!"
Dave's undead panel began to flash. He opened it and cursed loud, "FUCK!"
"What's wrong?" Lone asked."
"Singund and his regiment, all one thousand of them were wiped. I guess we know where Fujin is."
"That can't be, man. Singund should be immune to all damage for 3 minutes after his HP reaches 0. Is Fujin strong enough to wipe one thousand undead orcs in less than a minute?" Perfect said.
"Nah, he is much stronger than that man. Fujin has an execution skill. Singund never had the chance against Fujin. We got lucky that Raijin didn't kill us off the moment we stepped foot in the mini-boss room. Let's keep going." Dave said.
The party followed after Dave through the tight corridor until they entered a room that had four ways.
"What the heck?" Dave said.
"What's wrong?" Ralph asked.
"These paths, they should have all been closed," Dave replied.
"I think this is the reason why the bosses are roaming the dungeon," Mercy said.
"Yeah, they went through here," Perfect said.
"I doubt it, they are too large," Dave said.
"I think they can change their size, look here," Perfect pointed at the nearest wall.
There was a black scorching on the marble wall. It looked like a seismic crack in the wall.
"This is the effect of electricity hitting stone. It's still warm to the touch," Perfect said. "And these," Perfect pointed down. There were naked footprints on the dusty ground. These didn't look like the footprints of undead or dunlords. They were the sols of bare feet, and they were a bit larger than a human's.
"Yeah, there are two sets of footprints," Dave confirmed. "We can't stay here. The Tengu's room is this way." Dave led the party to the room. They moved like they had their tails on fire. Meeting any of the two bosses right now would spell disaster.
'Shit, and here I thought I could try something with these two. But man, Singund was wiped in seconds. I doubt the Undeath Legacy could do anything against them. Unless it's a boss slaying execution skill and we all know the Devs won't allow me something that broken in the game.'
The party went into a corridor and raced through it. Finally, they arrived in a room that had a small mountain rose to meet an actual sky instead of a ceiling. On top of the mountain was a beautiful three-story pagoda.
"We are here. There is no sign of Fujin or Raijin, thankfully," Dave said.
"Good, I need to put the mask on and go to the pagoda," Ralph said.
"Okay, hurry up," Dave said, looking back behind him.
"This is a nice place," Perfect said.
"Yeah, I never had the chance to truly see it. The Tengu here was enough to give me a run for my life," Dave said.
"You should try and revive it as an undead," Lone said.
The idea appealed to Dave as he said," Great thinking. He should make a powerful ally."
Dave activated his [Death Vision] he scanned the area for the Tengu's remains and found them at the other side of the mountain.
Surprise overcame Dave as he found that the body of the tengu, was sitting in seiza.
Dave drew his glaive.
"What's wrong?" Mercy asked, noticing Dave's alertness.
"I'm one hundred percent sure that the tengu died on laying on his back."
"You think it's alive?" Mercy asked
"No, my [Death Vision] shows me the dead, he is clearly dead, but something made him sit this way after his death."
"And you think that, that 'something' is lurking here?" Mercy said.
"Probably" just as Dave finished his words, he heard a loud crash, looking up, he saw Blaster being blaster from the top of the pagoda to the walls of the room.
On top of the pagoda was Fujin, standing tall and mighty, in human size.
His expressions, those of a smiling devil as he was looking at Dave's party in full disdain.
"Shit…"