So how do you think this is going to go? Valens was on the edge of his seat watching the adventurers finally make it to his first boss. It had been rather entertaining to watch them fight their way through his various creatures but it was now time for the main event. They also hadn’t faced any tier two creatures yet and he was curious to see how they handled the challenge.

I bet the rest of the tier one adventurers die but that none of the rest of them do. Magnus was idly flicking small rocks around the room only half paying attention to what was going on in the dungeon.

Oh, why’s that?

It seems like that their tier three is trying to force as many of the adventurers to the next tier as possible. Death or graduation as it were, so therefore he’ll give the remaining tier ones this last chance to show they can contribute to the expedition and let them die if they fail to handle the boss. Magnus laid his head down and closed his eyes but Valens could tell the drake was still wide awake.

Isn’t that just a bit cruel? I mean Aspen might be weaker than Sora but she’s still a tier two I don’t think five-tier ones have a chance.

To be frank, you're right they don’t, with Aspen being a ranged fighter and with her room favoring evasion they don’t have a chance. That being said with most other tier two bosses they could maybe find a way to kill them without it being sheer luck. The difference between tier one and tier two is that huge.

Valens was confused, was the drake contradicting himself from earlier? But you said that I would have no chance taking on a tier-three adventurer with my tier two boss so how does that make sense?

The drake sighed heavily and opened his eyes. The higher tier you are, the greater the disparity between tiers is. Maybe if they were careless or made a mistake a tier two could be killed by a tier-one, but say a tier six could attack an immortal tier for days and not even scratch them.

I see so that's the big reason you became a dungeon companion instead of trying to evolve right? The evolution condition was for you to kill an immortal tier which as you just said would be impossible.

The drake bobbed his head up and down. You're correct. For the longest time, I just leveled my race forgoing my class entirely to try and become a dragon as quickly as possible. However, this backfired when I reached the end of tier six and found out about the evolution condition. What I should have done was get a class immediately and focus on raising it into the immortal tier, then tried to evolve my race, but I didn’t know that at the time and I didn’t end up having enough time in my lifespan to finish leveling my class so here we are.

Valens didn’t have anything to say to that, he appreciated that struggle Magnus must have gone through to try and evolve before his life drew to a close but at the same time if anything had played out differently they might never have met. The core wasn’t delusional enough to not realize how much he owed the drake down to his very name. Without him, I would probably still be picking off forest critters. Anyways, enough heavy stuff, look they’re about to enter the boss room.

Valens looked back at the humans and sure enough, they were checking weapons and getting ready to enter the boss room. So it just looks like a normal room to them right Magnus? There were a lot of weird things going on with the boss rooms that the core still didn’t understand.

That's right it’ll just look like a normal room, albeit one that they can’t get out of once they enter. Magnus stood and stretched pacing around the room eager to see the fight started. Although they were strange Valens thought the boss rooms were quite convenient, they forced invaders to fight and kill his bosses if they wanted to proceed but let his monster move around the dungeon unimpeded.

Once the last adventurer had stepped into the room, a dull glow filled the room rendering the makeshift torches they were carrying unnecessary. Valens grumbled to himself, he really needed to figure out how to make proper lighting. The wooded area was small but the trees grew closely together and the invaders started hacking at the surrounding shrubbery trying to make their way further into the room. Eventually, they reached the middle of the room which had a small clearing where they stopped seeming confused.

They looked around searching the apparently empty room for anything that looked like a boss but came up short. The mini forest was eerily quiet and still no bugs or birds, and not even the wind made the silence oppressive. The party had forced their way about halfway through the room when Aspen decided to make an appearance.

The little fairy wasn’t exactly subtle as she glowed and stood out like a sore thumb, but she was small and airborne so she managed to get within striking range without being noticed. The adventurer’s tense walk in the forest quickly shifted into pandemonium as a blade of water came out of nowhere and practically decapitated one of the few remaining tier ones. As the humans panicked and tried to regroup in the dense foliage Valens nodded in approval, it seemed his boss had figured out who the weak links were.

Even the stronger members of the party looked a little panicked as they hadn’t seen what had happened either. There was still no one looking up so it looked like Aspen was going to get another free shot. Unfortunately, this time her aim wasn’t quite as good, and the adventurer she targeted managed to juke to the side, coming away with a vicious wound to the shoulder but with her life still intact.

“Above us.” One of the humans had finally caught on. They looked straight upwards to see the floating form of Aspen getting ready to cast another water blade. There weren’t any ranged members of the party besides that one caster but throwing something would work just fine in this situation. Two throwing knives and a tree branch came flying up at the fairy forcing Aspen to dodge and abandon her spell.

The boss ducked below the trees and out of sight of the adventurers just as a haphazard ball of mana splattered where she had been before. Valens snorted that spell, if you could even call it that, was horribly crude and unwieldy even compared to Aspen’s spell casting let alone some of the spells he had seen Magnus playing with. However terrible the spell did its job of driving Aspen closer to the ground, but things wouldn’t be that easy for the adventurers.

The fairy was now weaving through the branches of the trees trying to find enough time to cast her water blade again. However, the adventurers weren’t having an easy time getting at the fairy either, throwing knives and the other random garbage they were throwing the boss’s way was continuously caught on the trunks and branches of the trees. It would have been easier for them if they had an archer, but they didn’t, too bad for them at least. That mage wasn’t being that helpful either, his aim was terrible.

Tobias, he was not calling the human Blood Fang even in his head, apparently figured out that bunching up his forces out in the open was not a good idea as one of his subordinates took a water blade to the head. Letting Aspen stay in the trees was just begging for her to take potshots at them to whittle down their numbers, and so with a lot of shouting to get organized the adventurers crashed their way into the trees.

It was a decent enough idea but they should have at least tried to stay organized, now they were dealing with a whole different problem as Aspen switched to targeting the isolated adventurers before the others could even notice her. The two remaining tier ones were swiftly cut down as they wandered away from the group, only the injured tier-one showed enough sense to stick close to the stronger members of the party as she wrapped a makeshift bandage around her shoulder.

After that Aspen started taking riskier and riskier attacks as the trees which had helped her at first now forced her to get close to her enemies to get a clear shot at them. To her credit, she did manage to kill one of the tier twos with a water blade to the back of the neck and seriously injure another with a cut across the chest but on her last attack, she was a little too slow.

Seeing an opportunity Tobias lashed out almost faster than even Valens could follow, Aspen’s left wing exploded as the gossamer-thin appendage was rent asunder by the invader’s blade. Resistant to physical damage did not mean immune, the fairy was lucky to be alive period but Valend didn’t think that was going to last long. A glorified blob of mana came sailing out of a group of adventurers and struck Aspen across the back as she spun out of control with only one wing. The mage wasn't the best at aiming but it seemed like a crippled fairy was a target he could hit.

The core’s poor fairy was flung hard into a tree and crumpled to the ground. Unable to fly or focus enough to cast spells, she was done, for this round at least. Blades, spears, and the other assortment of odd weapons came down mercilessly on the boss, not stopping until she was a smear on the ground. Well, that was a little disappointing. He had been hoping that she would at least take out a few more of the tier twos.

I wouldn’t be that hard on Aspen, she was doing the best she could with that tier three around. Without him, things would have been a bit different. Besides she had a much stronger performance than I was predicting, she did very well to keep out of reach for as long as she did. Magnus’ comment mollified the core somewhat, it had been Tobias whose actions had led to the defeat of his fairy.

Hey Magnus, why is it raining treasure? He had just noticed but random bags of coins were falling seemingly out of thin air in front of the adventurers. Most got some silver, but a few got a gold coin, curiously Tobias got bronze coins and the tier-one adventurer that had survived got a gold coin.

It's a part of the boss room, since the bosses don’t give any experience it's an inbuilt function for parties to get specialized loot for defeating the boss.

Really. That was interesting, but as long as he didn’t have to do any work to make it happen he supposed it was fine. What's with the distribution though, that Tobias guy did most of the work and he only got bronze coins. The core had a rough idea of how currency worked and generally the shinier ones were more valuable, he hoped the loot function wasn’t broken.

That's because the loot isn’t distributed based on contribution but rather how difficult that fight was for each person who survived. Also, the loot drops should get more varied as you grow and learn more about adventurers, and the world in general.

So the treasure is based on what I know? But I’ve never even made coins before. He had indeed figured out the patterns for quite a few different metals but he hadn’t found a use for them yet.

Maybe? I’m not exactly clear on how the room works. Magnus flipped through his book and sighed dejectedly. It seems like the stronger you are the better the loot is, but it also seems partially based on what you see that adventurers value. If I had to hazard a guess I would say that the room sort of works based a little on your subconscious, and grows stronger the more powerful you are. That's just a guess really, but it makes sense to me. You knew the basics of currency from me, and you knew how to make gold, silver, and bronze. The boss room took those two ideas and ran with them to distribute its loot.

Valens wasn’t sure he liked this, having anything even a room fiddling around in his mind was not something he wanted happening. So the rooms are reading my mind? Is there any way to stop that?

Magnus scratched his head a little sheepishly. This is where my theory breaks down a little bit. Reading minds isn’t possible with most normal magic, we can get a sense of each other’s thoughts because of the spirit link and I imagine you can do the same for the other bosses. Other than that sort of link I don’t know how mind reading could be possible, and that sort of bond would be very noticeable by its very nature.

Valens nodded at that, he could sense all of his bosses including Magnus like dull flames in the back of his mind. It wasn’t distracting but it was obvious, taking a quick look around his mind the core confirmed that he couldn’t find any other bonds or anything else besides his own thoughts. So you have no idea how this thing could be reading my mind.

Magnus shrugged a little helplessly. Not really, I suppose it might be picking up on surface or projected thoughts, but I don’t know how that would be possible. Then again I haven’t explored everything that the higher affinities can do. Tell you what I’ll start experimenting and come back to you if I find anything, but I still think you should keep the rooms, they’re very helpful.

Valens sighed he didn’t enjoy the idea of anything rooting around in his mind, besides his bosses they were a little different though. The rooms didn’t seem to actively mess around with his thoughts though and they were convenient. Fine, I’ll keep them around for now but if I find anything fishy in my mind they’re gone.

Magnus grinned enthusiastically. Fair enough now let's get back to the show they’re about to move on to the eleventh floor. The core returned his attention to the invaders still in his halls and watched as they proceeded to his final floor.