The level twenty-five boss was called the Shambling Mound. It was a ghost that blocked the entire hallways. What it lacked in movement it made up for in extremely high HP. It blocked the stairway completely and seemed to show no signs of moving. In the end, we just had to work at it. It used magical mental attacks that injured all of us slightly, but we were all prepared to take these kinds of mental attacks at this point. Lydia shook a little, but she held her ground and kept slicing away.

After an hour, the thing finally broke apart and we were free to head to the 26h floor. I licked my lips as I looked down that stairway. Had the monster been like the level fifteen monster, quick and easy to kill, I would have loved to bunker down. While this monster wasn’t very threatening, he was extremely tedious. He was basically just a HP suck that made remaining on this floor inconvenient.

I also had a theory that every time he popped, it was probably roughly the same spot in the stairway. In that way, we couldn’t use the 25th level as our base of operations without wasting an hour of time and energy carving through the mound. I wonder if the dungeon had made these decisions on purpose. On top of that, the 25th floor was very inconvenient. With the hidden stalkers, it was one of the least profitable floors to level on. Was it intentionally trying to goad us on?

I shook my head. I promised myself I wouldn’t take any more risks. The three girls were with me and we had plenty of food. If we can’t level on the 26th, then we’ll level on the 24th. I decided I didn’t want to forge on until I knew we could make it to 29 without difficulty. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to swing back to the higher floors and try to sack the treasures there too.

“Come on, girls, there is no point in continuing on. Let’s grind on the 24th floor for a while.”

The fairy suddenly perked up her ears and then flew into my backpack to hide as she used to do. As for Miki and Lydia, they started giving the stairway uneasy looks.

“Um… Master?”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Are… you…” Lydia’s ears were twitching. “hearing that?”

“What is…” I stopped what I was going to say, realizing that while I didn’t hear anything, I did indeed feel some kind of vibration. “What is…”

I created an orb in my hand, and then I tossed it out down the stairway. It acted like a ball unless I affixed it to some surface. The light bounced down the stairways, thud, thud, thud. As it went down, it lit the path of the 26th floor. It was 2

/3rds the way down when suddenly dozens of shadows burst across it. In fact, there were so many of them that the light was obscured in a moment.

“We need to run!” I shouted.

The girls had seen the same thing, and they could hear the hundreds of ghosts running up the stairway. This was an ambush just like in Mina. The dungeon was no longer playing nice. The Shambling Mound wasn’t an obstacle… it was a cork, and we just unleashed it!