“Right, are we all ready then?” It had been almost a full day since they had entered the dungeon, and they had finally arrived at the boss room. Although Vance and his party were a little tired they had decided to push on and clear the boss before resting. They really hadn’t exerted themselves much on the previous floors, but Vance couldn’t help second-guessing himself on pushing forward. The many, many warnings his parents had pounded into him still rang in his ears. ‘Never underestimate a boss, always attack bosses with extreme force, bosses have no fear of death.’

“Yep, this shouldn’t be too bad though right? I mean last time I came through here my party cleared the boss and we weren’t that prepared. We didn’t even know what the boss was going to be.” Arthur scratched his head looking thoughtful. Vance had come to respect the younger mage, a little at least, he was a commoner and so naturally wasn’t that great at using his mana, yet at least. His mana bolts were decent enough, but he needed to focus on getting his mana shield up to par, his younger cousins could do better in their sleep.

“You need to focus Arthur, bosses are dangerous, many adventurers have died thinking that a boss should be no big deal.” Kira was still a bit of an enigma, she was very chatty about her past but surprisingly closed-mouthed about her magic or her position in the guild. Vance assumed she was a guild member at least, most mages ended up joining the mage guild when they could. The guild had a solid reputation and was generally fair to all of its members without regard to their backgrounds. Her recommendation had also come from the guild itself, but still, she refused to comment whatsoever. Well, he’d find out sooner or later, maybe she had a good reason for keeping quiet, but Vance couldn’t think of a good reason off the top of his head.

“Why’s that again? Aren’t bosses just one tier above the preceding dungeon? They’re only dangerous if you’re on a lower tier than they are right? We’re all at least tier two so with three of us we should be able to destroy one tier two monster. Right?” Once again Arthur’s inexperience was showing, not that he had been in many dungeons himself. He had just been taught extensively by his parents and family, who were all dungeon fanatics.

“Didn’t Silas mention this to you? Dungeon bosses are very dangerous for their tier, they’ve been known to routinely use suicidal tactics to take down divers, and on top of that the older a dungeon boss the better they get at combat. Dungeon bosses don’t die permanently so long as the dungeon survives, so they get very very good at combat if enough time passes.” Interesting Kira was on a first-name basis with the guild master who Vance knew for a fact was probably the strongest tier five mage in the entire duchy, maybe even the kingdom. The young noble filed the information away, it didn’t matter for now at least.

Arthur shook his head looking sheepish. “You know what that sounds vaguely familiar, I must not have been paying attention.” Vance sighed, what the young mage lacked most of all was experience and training. Since he was a part of the mage guild he would get all the training he could want, and as for experience, he was living right next to a dungeon. The monsters down here would provide all the experience anyone could want.

“There’s another danger with this boss in particular. I don’t know if you’ve heard but it's a chimera now, not a goblin.” Arthur shrugged at this obviously not understanding the difference, Vance held in a sigh and continued. “Chimeras aren’t necessarily that dangerous but most of them end up as brutal killing machines. You see chimeras adapt to wherever they are situated, gaining the characteristics of creatures in the area. So the more dangerous the place they live in is, the more dangerous a chimera will get.”

Arthur nodded, appearing to catch on. “And since this chimera is living in a dungeon, we should expect it to be extra dangerous, is that right?”

Vance nodded gravely. “That’s correct so we need to do this carefully. I want the two of you to stay behind me as we go in. The boss is supposed to be fast and strong, so we need to put it down as fast as possible. Hopefully, it’ll rush me, I’ll try and keep it busy while the two of you take it apart from a distance with your spells.” Vance looked right at Arthur for the next part. “Do not try to fight the chimera yourself if it disengages from me, fall back and stay out of its range, especially if you don’t have a complete mana shield up yet.” The last thing they needed was to have to rush back to the surface right before getting their actual hunting grounds.

Arthur bobbed his head agreeable, still looking a bit nervous but showing a bit of steel in his eyes. Maybe it wasn’t just complete ignorance that led to him delving into an unexplored dungeon. Kira just smiled, a mana shield already glimmering around her, Vance raised an eyebrow impressed. He hadn’t been paying attention to her but she had put up that shield impressively quickly. He just hoped she wasn’t burning through her mana reserves, it shouldn’t be a problem if she was tier-three though. If he remembered correctly tier-three mages could sustain such shields for practically as long as their mental fortitude held out.

Drawing his sword and gripping the handle tightly in both hands Vance proceeded into the boss room. Arthur and Kira followed after him and he heard a dull thunk as the boss door slid shut. The young noble cursed venomously to himself, idiot one of the most basic tenants of dungeon diving was to always have a way to retreat whenever possible. Quickly Vance reeled his focus back in, now was not the time to beat himself up over preventable errors. There was a dull rustle from a bush to Vance’s right and he immediately lifted the sword held before him in a ready position.

Several seconds passed and Vance slowly crept closer to the suspicious bush, before he could get there though there was a blur from his left this time. Vance turned and presented the flat of the blade to his enemy, shifting his left hand down the blade to brace it. One of the reasons he favored a greatsword is that it worked as a decent enough shield in a pinch. The chimera’s jaw clashed around the steel of his sword which groaned in protest but held firm.

Vance grinned turning the blade and intending to split the skull of the frankly horrifying looking ant chimera. Unfortunately, the boss was a tiny bit faster hurriedly scuttling back before Vance had a chance to finish his opponent. Arthur and Kira had not been standing idle though and two streaks of blue-tinted power raced forward. One spell struck the chimera dead on carving a chunk out of its chitinous body which oozed foul-looking purple blood. The other mana bolt caught the boss in its legs, taking two of the ant-like appendages clean off and scoring a long gash down a furred paw.

The chimera chittered in anger clashing its mandibles rhythmically while staggering in an attempt to keep its balance. Vance grinned this was it, maybe he had been too worried before, but now this fight was over. He brought his blade down a brilliant crescent of steel and force, but again he was just a little too slow. The boss managed to launch itself forward once again, barreling past Vance and straight towards the vulnerable mages behind him.

Arthur yelped and dived to the side, good instincts there his partially formed shield would not have withstood the boss’s charge. Kira on the other hand stood firm trusting in her arcane defenses as another mana bolt seemed to form almost lethargically in her hand. The chimera’s jaws once again proved ineffective sliding right off the mana shield. Vance followed right behind the monster sword extended in as fast a lung as he could manage. Normally the chimera was quite agile but deprived of almost half of its usual legs it was not quite fast enough to avoid the young noble. Vance's sword slid deep into the chimera’s main body before he quickly withdrew his blade and swung again at the neck of the struggling monster. It took him two tries to fully decapitate the writhing boss, and only then did he put down his sword and collapse to the ground breathing heavily.

Arthur popped his head up from where he had dived, looking none the worse for wear. He looked on breathing heavily from the stress of the brief encounter and commented. “Well that was scary, next time I’m going to try and put up a shield before we go into the boss room. Good thinking Kira.”

Vance chuckled a touch hollowly from his spot on the floor, which actually sounded like a good idea given how quickly the fight was over. He hadn’t expected the oversized insect to be so fast. Three loot bags fell out of the air, and Vance closed his eyes, a brief rest sounded wonderful, then they could continue and get some levels, that was the point of their trip after all.

Silas tapped his desk thoughtfully and groaned once again as he considered how much time he had been spending behind it. The various members of the mage guild’s knight order had been keeping an eye on the wayward Bancroft in their midst but so far the noble hadn’t done anything. The mage was honestly quite surprised, even back in Corinth Gary tended to attract trouble like a magnet. One time the noble had gone to a bar and proceeded to beat a fellow patron severely. Silas was still grinding his teeth over having to let that sort of thing just slide, the laws regarding nobles might prevent wars and violence but they still condoned a horrible level of depravity. The problem was that the nobles were just objectively more useful to the kingdom in the long run, they lived longer, leveled faster, and were on average smart, stronger, and more capable.

The keyword here was on average, the nobles were all high humans, but that didn’t preclude them from the particular strain of human stupidity that was all too common. The old mage had a thousand reasons why the current system was atrocious but his main gripe was how the kingdoms set up encouraging power growth. Commoners, those who were born as normal humans didn’t have an easy time climbing up to their next racial tier. It took practically a miracle, a genius, or a knowledgeable teacher for someone to survive long enough to become a tier six. The reason for this was that most nobles didn’t want new nobles rising in their territory and carving chunks out of their land to create new territories. The kingdoms weren’t any better but at least at that level, there weren't very many overt suppressions to growth. Most lords kept a stranglehold on dungeons, setting entry taxes high enough that most commoners couldn't afford it, and those that could weren’t able to enter repeatedly to level.

The old mage took a deep breath and let it out, he was getting worked up again. He had had quite the uphill battle to get where he was today, but the truth was things were better in some places. The Storms really were a good bunch, on the whole, they had a massive dungeon and still only set a nominal fee for entry. They also sponsored schools and training facilities, but the problem was most of those opportunities were confined to the capital Olympus. Each noble wielded an enormous amount of influence over their domains and the lords were a prime example of this. Not even a monarch could dictate how the dungeons were supposed to run and that was a prime reason why change was so hard.

Silas held back another sigh and closed his eyes, it seemed like Gary was behaving and that was good, but he wasn’t counting on it lasting. Vance was fine and Silas was actually quite pleased with his behavior. The trick would be to keep the two of them separated as much as possible. Vance was starting dungeon runs so it should be a little easier now, he would just schedule their dungeon dives in such a way that the two nobles avoided each other. So long as they were separated Gary couldn’t get up to any mischief, right?