So, Magnus, how do I make the chimera my boss instead of the hobgoblin? He wanted to get this sorted out before a group of adventurers could come and kill his new monster.

The drake blinked slowly and almost painfully lifted his head off the ground. Right so just reach for the link to the current boss and focus on dissolving it. It should be pretty instinctual. After that…

The core waited for the drake to finish as he focused on the link to his hobgoblin, which was a lot more nebulous and esoteric with the mob being dead currently. It seemed like Magnus had infected him with human slang, speaking of the drake was he alright? Checking back into the core room Valens saw that the drake had crumpled to the ground fast asleep. This was a little concerning before Magnus had just been sleeping a lot but falling asleep in the middle of a conversation was out of character for the usually chatty drake.

Magnus! Magnus get up. What do I do after dissolving the link to the hobgoblin?

Oh, Valens? What time is it? Just create a new bond to the chimera like you would a normal boss, so tired… The drake trailed off again and passed out, his head falling heavily to the core room floor leaving in what looked like a painful manner. Magnus didn’t even stir though, and if he wasn’t breathing regularly Valens would have been afraid the drake had dropped dead.

The core was more than a little alarmed at this turn of events, Magnus’s sleeping habit seemed to be getting a little bit out of control. What would happen if something truly powerful came for the core and its greatest defender was passed out unable to help it? He was going to have to have a serious conversation once the drake woke up, and he was not going to accept any question dodging this time.

Valens turned resolutely back to work reaching out for the bond to his weakest boss, he was trying very hard not to think about Magnus. What would the core do if something was wrong with the drake? Was he sick? Did drakes even get sick? For the longest time, Magnus had been the stable foundation that the core had built his safety on, if he was taken out of commission, he would only have his own bosses to fall back on. The bond to the hobgoblin dissolved into nothing and there was a brief feeling, like something slipping through the core’s fingers but then nothing. He supposed things might have been more dramatic if the monster had actually been alive when the bond dissolved.

Quickly reaching out the chimera, the core was very aware of a group of adventurers making their way through the seventh floor. He still hadn’t gotten a chance to mess with his floor layouts, and right now he sorely regretted that. The humans were moving far too quickly, and it was stressing him out. Valens breathed a sigh of relief as his bond with the chimera thickened and strengthened, his new boss chittered and pranced around its new boss room.

The core turned its attention back down to its deepest floors and began slowly expanding once more. Hopefully, Magnus would be fine, but he needed to grow anyway, and it soothed the core to feel his reach and power slowly grow. It got a little boring sometimes but that was okay, Valens didn’t mind too much anyway.

Slowly Todd turned the corner and caught sight of the boss room. His party member chuckled next to him, resting a hand on the head of an ax. “This is going to be a breeze; the oversized goblin won’t know what hit him.” Todd merely grunted in response and made sure his trust mace was ready for action. Well, he called it a mace, everyone else referred to it as a stick with a ball of metal on the end. It still worked fine though so why would he get a different weapon?

Their party leader, Gus, didn’t even bother to prepare them for the boss fight before they went in. The hobgoblin had been incredibly easy to take down in recent days, so no one was that worried about it in any case. Todd agreed that this would be an easy fight, but he also harbored a healthy respect for the green boss monster. It had gotten a few good hits in on him the other day and his head had been ringing for weeks. Not a fun experience and not one he was looking to repeat.

Todd stepped out first into the room as was usual, and immediately noticed that something was different. For one there was no screaming monster charging right at them. Every other time they had entered the boss room the hobgoblin and either seen or heard them came running. Tensing up Todd looked back at his party leader who was just entering the boss room clutching an old sword. “Something's wrong. Where’s the boss.” Todd shrugged he had no idea either. “Sometimes I wish you would talk a bit more Todd, it's a little disconcerting sometimes.” Todd shrugged again, he could talk just fine, he just didn’t see the point most of the time.

There was a flash of movement at the corner of his vision and the adventurer swung his oversized mace down as fast as he could manage with the cumbersome weapon. There was an explosion of dirt as he missed the agile monster, behind him someone hissed in pain. Quickly thereafter there was a chittering screech as Todd spun around to find a limping thing with a spear buried in one of its legs. The adventurer brought his mace down with all the force he could muster and splattered the thing across the floor.

“Well, that was different.” Gus came over to look at the boss monster. Todd grunted in agreement, that certainly hadn’t been a hobgoblin. The thing looked like a squashed insect on the ground, but it was all wrong. Way too large for one thing, and its back legs were disturbingly different from the rest of its body.

“Do you think we should go back and report this boss?”

To his credit, the party leader briefly considered going back. “No, we continue. It might have been a different boss monster, but it still didn’t do practically any damage to us. I’m sure Hanson will just walk off his scratch, right Hanson?” The other man gave a thumbs up though Todd did notice he winced whenever he put weight on the injured leg.

The party moved out after they had collected their loot from the boss room. Delving deeper into the tier two floors of the dungeon in search of levels and wealth. Other parties would come later to face the boss expecting to fight a hobgoblin and instead of finding something entirely different. More than one adventurer found their end that day at the mandibles of the chimera, and word soon spread about the change in the dungeon boss.

Silas was grumbling at a small table; he should be enjoying his lunch. It was a lovely day without a cloud in the sky, but he just couldn’t bring himself to appreciate it right now. The blasted dungeon had changed its boss as if it wasn’t unusual enough already, and now it went and made a chimera of all things a dungeon boss? Silas had only read about them before, and he had been around a long time. Historically though chimeras were usually put down with extreme prejudice whenever they were found. The creatures had an insatiable appetite for growth and experience which inevitably led to them attacking human settlements.

The old mage chewed his sandwich thoughtfully, that wouldn’t be an issue this time around at least. It was a boss so this chimera should stay in the dungeon at all times, it was still going to be a terror though at higher tiers. The nasty thing about chimeras was the stronger they got the better they got at changing around their bodies, and they got smarter about it too crafting their form into the most lethal weapon they could make. The only limiting factor would be the availability of other monsters around to mimic creatures from, which was not going to be a problem with one literally living inside a dungeon.

Lost in his own head and with his guard completely down, Silas failed to notice Kira creeping up on him until a depressingly large stack of papers landed right in front of him. “There you are old man. Here are the rest of the papers you have to sign, don’t worry I already checked through them, and it's just a few building permits, and a transfer order for some guards from Corinth.” Silas sighed and then reached for the papers, there was no escape was there?

“Thank you, Kira, I do appreciate your help even if I don’t appreciate the work. I know this isn’t exactly why you're here but thank you anyway.”

Kira shrugged a little, slightly embarrassed. “It’s fine, you wouldn’t get anything done without me you know. I do have a new mana recipe for you to try though.”

Silas leaned back in his chair, she had been trying to figure out the correct formula for two years now, most people would have already given up. “Oh, do tell. Maybe this one won’t blow up in my face like before.” It was funny to watch her face scrunch in annoyance as she remembered the last recipe she had proposed.

“There was too much fire that time. What I want you to try is one half-plant mana, one-sixteenth fire mana, and seven sixteenths dark mana.”

The old mage raised an eyebrow, this was a lot different from previous formulas. “Going all-in on the darkness mana I see, well maybe it will work this time you never know. This could all be wasted effort though if nature mana doesn’t actually exist, you could just evolve into a plant magus, it’d save you a lot of effort.”

Kira adopted an expression that Silas had grown increasingly familiar with over the years and shook her head mulishly. “I didn’t spend all of this time to settle for a less than optimal mana type, I’m pretty confident in this combination. Let me know as quickly as possible if you get it to work, even if I am right this time, I’ll still need time to be able to create the mana type myself.”

Silas sighed and nodded, it took him much less time to try out the different mana combinations, his class was high magus after all. “Well, you're as determined as ever, good for you. Anyway, I’ll get right on that once I finish up. This blasted dungeon just had to be so unusual on top of all the politics going on around here.”

“Is the dungeon around here really that unusual? Other than the looted stuff, it just seems like a normal, monster-infested cave.”

Silas gaped at his assistant, she usually wasn’t this oblivious, but then again, he wasn’t sure how many dungeons she had actually been in. “Well first off, most dungeons have a single monster type that they only rarely deviate from, and all dungeon bosses are usually just one type of monster. Also, dungeon mobs don’t generally behave like normal monsters, they don’t have to eat or sleep and so they stand guard constantly waiting for invaders.”

Kira snapped her fingers as something clicked for her. “That’s one of the reasons this dungeon is so good for training, right? It doesn’t have set numbers of monsters, it forces you to fight so you can conceivably avoid any fight you can’t win, besides the bosses of course.”

“Correct, also most dungeons don’t have any plants and this one is practically overgrown. There are probably other differences that I’m not thinking of right now but that’s all I got off the top of my head.”

The younger mage stared up at the ceiling looking thoughtful. “Well, that is interesting, I wonder what makes this particular dungeon different.” Silas shrugged; he had no idea either. “Well anyway, how's Arthur doing? It's been a while since you’ve had an actual apprentice hasn’t it.”

The last one had actually been before Kira had even been born, it had ended poorly too. “Yes, he’s coming along fine. I just want him to be able to cast a proper mana bolt in a combat situation and hopefully have a basic mana shield. After that, I’ll toss him back into the dungeon and let him get to tier three.”

“Any word on our not-so-friendly nobles?”

“Nothing which worries me. Gary is going to the training field without complaint and spending all of his time trying to keep an eye on Vance. If the boy wasn’t so oblivious, he would have noticed something by now. Gabriel also sent word and the rest of the Bancrofts are holed up in their manor. I don’t like it though, the Bancrofts are too proud to just lay down and surrender possession of this dungeon.” Silas stroked his beard as he looked down at his desk, just what were they up to?