You know, I initially thought that my trip to the Ancient Gate dungeon that separated the Capital from the other areas in Briarwood was going to go like any normal trek through a dungeon. I thought that I would just have to kill a few waves of mobs, then butcher the normal Level 10 boss, and unlock that shortcut out of the Capital. I thought that I could just unlock the shortcut, take the blob with me, maybe slay a few mobs and level up along the way, and head to the area with the taming quest so I could do whatever it was the blob wanted me to do on top of my growing list of little goals. Finish the tutorial, get out of the Capital, mod the Ethereal Cape, get my Class back, go to the Fortress of Ruin dungeon to make use of that levelled down state, recreate my equipment collection, 100% the game again, and now, babysitting a thing that I refuse to believe is smarter than me.

Well, that was what I thought would happen. What I didn’t expect to happen, was for my luck to be great for once (or, in this case, not so great), and spawn the Level 20 hidden boss.

It had started out just fine. A couple minutes after Marge teleported back to the guild, she sent me the Crystal Drop she owed me along with a threatening note warning me not to let the blob out of my sight or else. Then, before Hana left as well (she was on a journey to become stronger, she said. Apparently she wanted to challenge the Faerie King’s hidden boss at one point), I managed to ask her what she had done to get her Ethereal Cape to look like that.

“Oh that,” she had scratched her head. “Well, I… coerced the seamstress in the Inner City into doing it for me. It’s cool looking, but it gets in the way during combat. She really didn’t want to do it at first, since UR items are apparently holy or something, but I used Overpower on her and then everything was fine.”

Well fantastic, I had thought to myself. I only had to put up with the Ethereal Cape for one day more while the Overpower cooled down.

Apparently not. It was at that point that I found out a thing that I should have looked into at the very beginning.

After heading back to the Inner City, turning in the fetch quest items (the Jilly hologram didn’t seem to notice that the Crystal Drop wasn’t from me), and receiving the main story quest that gave me access to the Ancient Gate dungeon, a day had passed and I had taken the blob and run straight to Poppy’s store.

Upon which, I had discovered that 24h on the Overpower did not mean a day, and that the time here passed faster than back in the other world.

Video game world. Four days here is one day over there. I should’ve known that. What the fuck was I expecting?

And thus, my plan to liberate myself from the Ethereal Cape had to be put off.

Then came the next order of business. According to the blob (who turned out to be extremely chatty once given a screen to type on), it needed to be tamed as soon as possible in order to escape detection by the System. Apparently sentience is a big no, and it reasonably didn’t want to be reset, so it came to the conclusion that if it was tied to a player through the taming mechanic, the System wouldn’t be able to track its changes as easily. Or something. Well too bad, the taming quest was in the Deep Forest biome, a level 30 area, which theoretically, at Level 10, I was not ready to tackle. Yeah, it would be tough, since, at my current Level, I wouldn’t get any skills until I reached the Class Change quest at Level 15, and the Deep Forest isn’t exactly a place where someone with the basic Human class and no iron equipment can muscle through. It might be a different story, however, if I had my Kobold class with its levelled up speed and Unique Skill.

Well, regardless if I decided to go to the Deep Forest to get myself killed or not, I still had to leave the Capital through the Ancient Gate dungeon.

According to the story, the Ancient Gate was set up when the wise king Oberon made a pact with the Tuatha de Danann, a race of gods that sounded impressive, but were sadly just flavour text, to be able to set up the Glamour that separated Briarwood from the rest of the world. After the pact was formed, the Ancient Gate built itself up from the ground as a physical symbol of the oath. And now, if you wanted to get past the noobie area that was the Capital and head to areas with harder dungeons and better loot, you were obligated to pass through the Ancient Gate, which served as the last part of the Tutorial quests to teach you what dungeon diving was like.

Naturally, as a mandatory quest dungeon, the Ancient Gate wasn’t supposed to be particularly challenging. You ran into a few Spirits, you murdered them, then you ran into a few low level Fire Hounds, then you murdered them too. Then you got to the end and found the final boss, a slightly bigger Fire Hound with more health, and a new attack you had to use dodge on, and you murdered it. Fairly straightforward stuff, wasn’t too much of a challenge.

Then, however, I had the absolute best luck I’ve had in a while, and managed to spawn the hidden boss with a rare spawn rate of 5%.

It was just after I had murdered the big Fire Hound, with the blob “wah”ing for me to stop organising the loot in my Inventory and get going, when a massive rumbling sound started up, and a nice popup appeared to tell me that, congratulations! You’ve won the lottery and spawned the hidden boss.

What had supposedly been just a series of small, barely noticeable vibrations from the ground suddenly increased in magnitude, and I found myself stumbling as rubble began crashing down all around me. The ceiling of the boss room was crumbling, bits of moss crumbling away from the cracking stones as the ceiling caved in to reveal the sky overhead. Yep, typical dramatic timing, usually, I would not have been very impressed. But then again, seeing it in person happens to be a lot more distressing. You see, upon experiencing a rock smashing down barely a finger length away from your face, you suddenly become very consciously aware of where exactly you’re standing.

The blob seemed to share the sentiment, but for very different reasons.

“Wah,” the blob hurriedly tapped away at their screen and pointed it at me.

“[This is a waste of time.]”

“Oh, tell me about it.”

We watched as the floor tiles slowly rolled apart, a statue slowly rising up out of the opening. It was a very tall statue made of a sort of blackened stone that smoked slightly, and every so often, flaked off the surface to reveal glowing magma underneath. Its features were very roughly hewn into the rock, showing a face with what vaguely looked like a crooked nose resembling an eagle’s beak, sunken eyes, and a wild mass of hair. The hair, in particular, had more of the black stone flaking off of it, making it look like its head were on fire.

[Hidden Boss Encounter]

[The Fading Oath]

And just like that, my quick and easy plans to breeze through the Ancient Gate dungeon and get to everything else as quickly as possible were dashed.

“Appraisal.”

[Skill Appraisal activated.]

[Scanning target…]

[Skill All Seeing Eyes (Passive) activated.

Target’s full Status screen shown.]

[Hidden Boss - The Fading Oath]

[Lv 20]

[Description:

Guardian of the ancient oath between the Faeries and the Tuatha de Danann. Through the years, its power has diminished to but a fragment of its true self.]

[Stats

HP 20000

ATK 500-800

SPD 0

DEF 20]

[Skills:

Fire hound: Releases a fire hound that spawns around the Fading Oath and runs in a straight line, loosely tracking the player, and disappears upon contact with the player or the wall. Deals additional fire damage. Flaming spear: Releases a flaming spear that spawns around the Fading Oath and loosely tracks the player, disappears upon contact with the player or the wall. Deals additional fire damage. Can be parried. Hellstorm: Releases a ring of flaming spears that spawn around the Fading Oath and loosely track the player, disappearing upon contact with the player or the wall. Deals additional fire damage. Can be parried.]

Dang, if not for the HP bonus from the Ethereal Cape, this thing could one hit KO me at my current Level.

“Wuh,” the blob rudely shoved its favourite screen in my face again. For something that wasn’t meant to be able to talk, it sure was chatty.

“[Your Level is currently too low to efficiently defeat this boss. Die and respawn to reset the dungeon. I will rendezvous with you outside.]”

Wow okay.

“Umm, no,” I shoved the screen back at it while waving away the Oath’s status with my other hand. “Great plan, but you forgot one crucial thing.”

The blob stared at me scathingly.

“And that, is the fact that I don’t fancy dying just because my supposed pet told me to,” I opened up the Status Screen and checked the durability on my Copper Knife. Still going strong. “Go sit in the corner and watch or something.”

“Wuh...” the blob sulkily slid over to stand near the door, out of the way of any falling debris.

This thing was developing an attitude. I’m sure Marge would get along much better with it.

I turned my attention back to the Fading Oath. At this point, its entrance animation had just about finished, and it was starting to telegraph… one of the three attacks. As a Level 20 boss, the attack telegraphing should last for a pretty long time of about one seconds, and the attacks themselves shouldn’t be that fast. It usually wouldn’t have been too hard to handle, but the Level gap was a bit of a problem. As long as I was paying attention, dodging the attacks shouldn’t be too hard, but at my current Level, my ATK was a tad too low. Even with the attack bonus with the copper knife, my ATK rested at a measly 250, and without reaching Level 15, I didn’t have any skills. Even if it was easy enough to dodge the attacks, it would still take forever for me to slowly chip away at the boss’ health with my base attack alone. Technically, the blob was right about rerolling the dungeon being more efficient. I didn’t know how it intended to leave after I had died and respawned, but from the fact that it had suggested it, it probably had a general idea.

The Fading Oath raised its huge arm, and a flaming spear appeared in the air above its head, spewing sparks of light as it began to spin around faster and faster. It didn’t immediately shoot, but instead left the spear spinning in the air for a few seconds. In that case, it might be a tracking projectile. I experimentally shifted to the left. The spearhead slowly turned to aim at me. I shifted back to my original position, and the spearhead followed.

The type of attack that tracked your position and couldn’t be outwalked. It was only Level 20, and the attack itself shouldn’t be able to come shooting out that fast, so even if I failed to do the dodge on my own, following up with the dodge keybind action should still save my skin.

If that was the case, and if my luck with the skills didn’t turn out too badly, then taking this boss down should take at most… five minutes.

“Wah! [This is a waste of time],” the blob repeated from all the way across the room, waving its screen around. I gave it my most unimpressed face.

“It’s just a Level 20 solo boss. Give me five minutes,” I trained my eyes on the spinning spear, trying my best to keep focus. It should be slow, but still faster than hologram Dullahan had been in the tutorial. Even if I thought I was completely solid with my makeshift training session, that didn’t mean that I shouldn’t be wary of something that was of a much higher Level than I was.

Zing, and here came the spear, streaking down from the air in a fiery burst, trailing sparking embers behind it as it came. It came fast, faster than Dullahan, but I knew that this attack was far from the fastest type of attack in this world. It was like watching a bike coming downhill at you, not so slow that you couldn’t get out of the way, but still fast enough to give you a little scare. Normally, I would have dodged by now. But in the name of a five minute speedrun, I didn’t.

Quickly, it closed the distance, its pointed tip aiming straight for my head.

Just a bit more.

I waited, the instinctual side of my brain screaming threats at me to use that dodge move I just learned and get out of the way.

A bit more.

And...

Now.

I swung the Copper Knife.

There was a loud clang, the force of it sending rattles up my spine as I managed to parry the spear and send it flying back at the Fading Oath.

Thunk.

The Boss’s HP bar appeared in the corner of my eye, and went down by a decent chunk.

Good. Parrying projectiles at the boss could damage it for the same amount of damage it would have done to me.

Fortunately, this sort of quick clear method still worked, even if I no longer had the luxury of a keyboard and mouse.

Just had to do it… a couple more times.

The Fading Oath let rip a roar, and then began telegraphing its next attack. A glowing mound began forming at its feet, and leapt forward, flames bursting to life and streaming over the mound. The mound moulded itself an elongated face, sharp teeth, and four long, gangly limbs until it turned into one of the fire hounds, and began charging at me in a straight line, leaving behind a trail of smoking tiles.

Can’t parry that. I clumsily twisted to the side and the fire hounds passed me by, slamming into the wall and disintegrating in a puff of smoke. That was ugly. Looks like I still had to work on the dodge.

A few more waves of fire hounds and spears, and the boss’ health was down to about a third. So far, I had been able to dodge most of the fire hounds, and parry most of the spears without using the commands, even if they looked far from elegant. Once, I almost killed the blob with a pretty badly angled parry, and sent the spear flying into the centre of the boss door, right above where the blob had settled in to spectate. It had screeched what I presumed to be threats at me.

Then, the Fading Oath started to do something new.

The statue itself, which had previously just been raising and lowering its arm, started to rear up, pieces flaking off of it at an even quicker rate than before, the magma hiding under its shell hissing and popping when exposed to the air. It raised both its arms in the air above its head, and let out another booming roar. A multitude of fiery spears began materialising in the space between its hands, spinning quicker and quicker as they trained in on me like the previous ones had, except, perhaps, looking a lot more extravagant, and maybe a lot more intimidating.

Ah, so this was the Hellstorm attack.

I looked at the sheer array of spears turning their heads towards me. Based on the sequence in which they appeared, this was probably the type of attack where the spears flew at me one by one instead of all together, but still...

Was it even possible to parry all that manually?

Both the Fading Oath’s arms came slamming down.

What happened next could be described as complete chaos. Somehow, I ended up only performing the keybind Parry command out of panic instead of trying to do it manually as intended, which resulted in me being unable to fix the angle I would have liked since the autoaim function of the keybind actions kept jerking my arm to take the spears at a right angle. As a result, flaming shafts went flying everywhere.

There was fire. Everywhere.

I suspected that I might have killed the blob.

[Ancient Gate dungeon Clear!

Quest Reward +200 EXP]

Oh boy, Marge would skin me for sure.

Then, finishing off the boss as quickly as I could without taking unnecessary hits, I slowly made my way over to the place where the blob had been spectating.

[Unlocked Achievement: Gateway to the Outside

Clear the Ancient Gate dungeon.

Achievement Unlock Reward +100 EXP]

I checked under a piece of debris.

“Wuh.”

I turned to see the blob squeezing out from behind a shattered urn, its spotlight eyes glowering at me with the same ferocity that I’d have expected from Marge. It held up its screen.

“[‘It’s just a Level 20 boss’, you said.]”

“Sorry buddy. I overestimated myself a little. Appraisal,” it still had its attitude, and looked just fine, but I decided to check its HP anyways.

[HP 5]

Ouch. It was nearly dead. I mean, I was surprised it wasn’t dead altogether, since the spears would have one shotted it at its normal HP, so it probably got in that state from the burning effect, but ouch. I’d have to find out whether I could set it back to full health with Elixirs, otherwise it’d be dead long before I actually got to the taming quest.

But first. The loot.

After confirming that the blob was fine, I mosied back on over to the pile of goodies to inspect my prize. Maybe, if I had suddenly gotten the luck to spawn the boss, I would also suddenly get the luck to drop the boss’s unique R weapon, Lesser Areadbhar. Lets see.

[Obtained Items:

1000G (underdog bonus +200G)

Tattered Tunic (N)

Tattered Shoes (N)

Monster Hide (N) x 10

Magic Powder (N) x 4

Fire Crystal (UC)

Obsidian Crown (UC)]

[+1000EXP (underdog bonus +800 EXP)

LV ^

LV 10 → LV 13]

Of course not.

I took the Obsidian Crown out of my Inventory.

“Wuh.”

“Appraisal.”

[Name Obsidian Crown (UC)

Effects Def +3

Spd -1

Crafting N/A

Description

A heavy crown that once fitted the brow of the Fading Oath.]

Ew Speed down. And the Defence boost wasn’t even that great to make up for it. I’d probably ditch it once I got my Kobold class back, but for now, something’s better than nothing. But on a brighter note, even if I would leave it collect dust after 2 more LV ups, it was the first of my soon to be grandiose equipment collection. I was making progress already.

I arranged my Inventory, pacified the blob, and for the first time in an ingame week, left the Capital.