Chapter 134

Fortunately, she wasn’t ambushed. She collected her payload of erotite—given a decent bonus for utilizing [Risky Excavation]—then dressed herself without problem. The expedition continued.

Natalie and her team worked through the polished marble and glass hallways of the underground labyrinth, slowly racking up kills and monster cores. Eventually, they reached a dead end and backtracked to the original room.

“Should we try the golden door, now?” Sofia asked.

“Could be a boss,” Jordan said. “Or a mini-boss. We’re ready for that?”

Natalie adjusted her grip on her hammer, appraising the shining metallic doors. “Honestly, I’d say we’re in better shape for this one than the others.” Geared up and with significant power spikes from progressing to level two, the boss might be comparatively weaker than the ones they’d fought earlier. Though she doubted it would be trivial. No boss fight was easy.

The party looked at each other, then nodded.

“Gold door, then,” Natalie said.

They climbed the staircase onto the platform where the doors stood. Resting her hammer on her shoulder, she eased it open and peeked in.

“That’s definitely a boss room,” Natalie said.

Inside was a grand chamber made of the same polished materials as the rest of the labyrinth. Notably, though, thirteen mirrors splayed out in a circle, surrounding the room. There didn’t seem to be another exit. Not a series of hallways and rooms like the wooden door—this golden door led to a single encounter.

“Maybe a mini-boss,” Natalie said. “But if I had to guess, a full one.”

“Everyone’s ready?” Sofia asked.

The party agreed.

Natalie entered first, with the others slipping in after her. Having the encounter seal itself off with only a portion of the team inside would be disastrous, so they didn’t dawdle.

“The mirrors mean something,” Liz murmured. “Keep that in mind.”

Natalie nodded. It was obvious enough. Like the patches of dirt for the dryad, which had acted as safe zones. Boss rooms often had some environmental factor. Natalie wasn’t sure how the mirrors would come into play, but she would keep an eye on them.

There wasn’t much to say, so Natalie advanced, hammer held at the ready. In preparation, Liz suffused her with the empowering buff, and that familiar wash of energy surged through her.

Entering the room, a glimpse of movement in her peripheral caught her eye. She spun, but saw only a mirror reflecting back what it should: her, with her weapon held at the ready. She hesitated. Had she imagined it? And if she hadn’t—then had it come from the mirror itself, or behind it?

A second flash of movement made her spin the other way.

“Did you see that?” Sofia asked.

“If I had to guess,” Natalie said, eyes darting across the room, “it’s the boss.”

“Inside the mirrors?” Sofia asked.

“That’s what it seems—”

The shadow reappeared, and Natalie’s gaze snapped to it. A hulking beast ripped out of the furthest mirror from her—the one positioned in the back of the room, closest to Liz and Ana. Natalie reacted by instinct: grunting with exertion, she hurled her hammer.

Through some miracle—since Natalie didn’t have the best aim, much less when the projectile was a giant warhammer—her weapon hit the crystalline beast lunging from the mirror square in the jaw, just as it arrived at Liz. The huge stone projectile smashed into it, and the sound of splintering glass filled the air, as did a loud yelp.

The beast, deflected by the enormous projectile, veered away, momentum diverted. The bulk of the beast caught Liz on the shoulder as it passed, though, but its snapping jaws missed her. Liz, small and with little to no physical strength, went tumbling anyway. Her wand skittered across the floor, ripped from her hands.

[Prismatic Stalker - Lv. 2]

A wolf. Natalie spared a fraction of a second to identify what they were up against. A huge, six-foot- tall, twelve-foot-long, sleek, alien beast vaguely resembling a wolf. It was made up, like many of the creatures they’d found on this floor, of interlocking geometric shapes of glass, approximating a blocky sculpture. Where most of the monsters prior were clear and see-through, the wolf had glints of prismatic colors shimmering across its body. If she hadn’t known the monster was a boss before, its elegant, sparkling composition made it clear. This thing was clearly stronger than the regular mobs they’d been fighting earlier.