Outside of the tenth floor’s boss room

Faraek yanks his two-handed battle axe out of a lycan’s corpse before the lycan disappears to return to the dungeon. He then turns to look at the rest of the party who are all staring at the several-meter-tall double-doors in front of them.

The double-doors have a large engraving of a wolf’s head surrounded by some sort of black flame split between the center of the two doors, with the doors themselves seemingly made out of multiple different types of metal, mixed with obsidian. In front of the doors are four holes on the sides of the wall, with two large, rectangular blocks of World Ore inside of two of the holes.

Meanwhile, the party themselves are covered in sweat, with half of them panting in exhaustion due to their battles against the Tier 2 monsters on the floor.

“Is everyone up for this?” Roland asks with a tense look on his face. “Because it’s not likely for us to be able to leave after entering without killing the boss.”

“We’ll be fine,” Sophia says without a hint of hesitation as she takes out a blue potion from the bag hanging at her waist.

The other party members’ eyes all widen slightly at the sight of it before they begin to relax a little.

Sophia doesn’t waste any time and downs the blue potion, causing a faint blue light to begin shimmering around her body before she goes from person to person, healing any of their wounds and relaxing some of their exhaustion with her newly restored mana.

Once she notices the worried expression on Roland’s face, she shakes her head and says, “It’s fine. If we finish the run and get some information about the boss, then we’ll be rewarded pretty handsomely by the guild, and I’ll make everything I spent on that mana potion back.”

Roland stares at her for a few more seconds before eventually nodding his head and turning towards the large double-doors.

“Now we just have to figure out how to open these enormous-” Faraek begins, only to pause as Roland walks forwards and touches the doors, prompting them to split open and slowly begin moving outwards, towards Roland.

The party leader backs up so as to not get hit by the doors, allowing them to continue moving outwards, slowly revealing the large cavern on the other side.

“That’s…” Elizabeth mutters with a touch of fear audible in her voice.

The boss room itself is made up of three large platforms, each raised high above the ground, with a pool of molten lava far below, and on bridge connecting each of the platforms to each other. Meanwhile, two of the three islands are connected to the entrance by their own bridges.

On one of the front two platforms is over a dozen wolves standing guard in front of a large void beowolf, while on the other is over a dozen lycans standing in front of a void lycan. At the same time, each island also has several other monsters of various type, with an emphasis on wolf-like monsters.

However, the wooden planks of the bridges themselves periodically flicker in and out of existence with a dark flash of black light.

“How are we-” Elizabeth continues, only to pause again as Roland stretches his arm out with his eyes narrowed in concentration.

The party stays quiet as their leader concentrates on strategizing, meanwhile the sounds of growling begin to echo through the room from the many monsters. At the same time, Roland’s eyes begin to narrow even further as he notices something strange on the last island, which has a connection to the opposite wall of the room.

‘What is that…’ he thinks to himself as he focuses on one large location in particular, where his vision begins to distort slightly.

After only a few seconds of looking, his eyes widen and he says, “Watch out, this room seems to have some hidden monsters in it.”

The rest of the party begin to look around the room with their own eyes narrowed slightly before noticing a couple of other oddities about the room.

“I think I see one of those small wolves – fens if I remember correctly – roaming around one of the closer islands,” Elizabeth whispers right before Anna says, “It looks like there are some traps, and hidden areas on the islands.”

The party continues looking from their position right outside of the large door for several seconds, only to turn around as the sound of grinding stone begins to come from behind them. Once they do, they find themselves staring at a large half-dome of metal and stone, completely blocking off their escape as it begins to slowly close in on them.

“I guess the dungeon doesn’t like us scouting everything out from here,” Roland mutters with a bit of dark humor before turning back around and walking through the doors onto the small platform connected to two of the bridges.

Elizabeth whines slightly in annoyance as she follows him with the rest of the party.

As soon as all of the party enters the room, the double doors immediately slam shut before a loud grinding sound comes from outside as the two slabs of World Ore move in front of the door, sealing it shut in the process.

Roland glances back at the door for a second, only to turn back towards the three islands as the growls begin to grow louder. Soon after that, howls begin to join the growls from several different locations throughout the room.

“Well, I guess there isn’t any more time left for strategizing…” he mutters with a grimace as several of the monsters – including beowolves, normal wolves, and lycans – all begin to converge towards the bridges.

“Do you think they can cross the-” before Sophia can finish asking her question, the lycans on the island whose bridge is currently there begin to slowly cross it with ease.

Elizabeth grimaces at this sight before raising her bow and saying, “It looks like they can cross as well.”

Roland simply nods his head in agreement and raises his staff as a fireball begins to build up on the end of it.

“Make sure you only burn down one bridge,” Sophia reminds him, to which he just nods again and launches the fireball at the bridge once the lycans are already halfway across. However, the fireball doesn’t manage to do any lasting damage to the bridge, only managing to knock it back and forth a little, causing a couple of the lycans to lose their balance and fall off into the lava below whilst howling in terror.

Roland’s grimace deepens at this sight.

“I don’t know what those bridges are made of,” he begins before raising his staff again, “but this is going to be harder than I thought.”