Chapter 38: No Time to Rest

Several hours later, Zion stared at his trap inventory, then at his remaining essence.

He had definitely gone overboard.

Not disastrously so. The steady stream of adventurers through Floors 1 and 2 had been generous, and even after the bracelet, the trap sale, and everything else he had spent so far, he still had several thousand essence left.

More continued coming in every hour through entries, clears, and defeats. Still, the number in front of him was lower than he liked.

His inventory was now packed with more traps than he knew what to do with. Pressure plates. Tripwires. Dart mechanisms. Swinging blades. Collapsing floor sections. A spike pit. Flame jets. A crushing wall.

And several other devices he had bought simply because they were discounted.

At the time, forty percent off had made all of them feel necessary. Looking at the total now, Zion was less convinced. He also had to think farther ahead.

Floor 4 would cost another two thousand essence to open, and if the expansion pattern continued, Floor 5 would cost four thousand after that.

Six thousand essence just to unlock the space, before accounting for terrain, monsters, bosses, or rewards.

He could afford it now. That didn’t mean he wanted to watch most of his balance disappear all at once.

He looked through the dungeon. Floor 1 was still full of sheep and the Horned Ram. Floor 2 had slimes, crystals, sulfur pools, and the Tidepool Basilisk.

They were working well enough, especially against the weaker parties coming in now, but none of that changed the thing that mattered most.

His protection period was still counting down. The thought alone soured his mood almost immediately.

A pasture and a sulfur cave might stop beginners. They might even embarrass a few stronger adventurers if they underestimated the mechanics. But Zion had no intention of pretending they were enough to protect his throne once the dungeon could actually be breached.

He needed more distance. More floors. More things standing between the entrance and him.

Saving essence only mattered if he survived long enough to spend it.

With that decided, Zion reopened the Floor 3 panel. The empty space stretched across his awareness, waiting for a proper layout.

For a while, he simply looked between it and the traps he had purchased.

One option would be easy enough. He could scatter everything across the floor, put darts in one hallway, blades in another, a spike pit somewhere inconvenient, and call the result dangerous.

The idea lasted less than a minute.

Floor 2 had worked because each part had a reason to exist. The slimes encouraged fire. The mana crystals punished anyone who relied on that solution too heavily. And the basilisk forced parties to adapt again.

Random traps would still hurt people, but there would be nothing clever about them.

Zion kept scrolling through the inventory until his attention landed on the Falling Boulder Trigger. He opened the preview.

The mechanism itself was simple. A large rounded stone sat above a release point, ready to drop onto a sloped surface and continue forward until something stopped it.

He watched the preview for a few cycles, then he thought about the parties coming out of Floor 2. Anyone who reached Floor 3 would already be tired.

Some would have acid burns or damaged equipment. Others would be low on mana after dealing with the slimes and basilisk. Even the groups that cleared cleanly would have spent time breathing hot sulfur vapor while fighting through the floor.

Most of them would probably expect a chance to recover before whatever came next. He looked at the boulder again.

What if they didn’t get one?

He changed the elevation settings on the empty floor. The terrain tilted.

Zion increased the angle until the entrance sat near the highest point, with the main path descending sharply away from it. Then he placed the boulder mechanism behind the entry area and rotated it toward the slope.

The moment a party stepped far enough inside, the trap could trigger.

They would enter Floor 3 exhausted, take a few steps, and before they had time to sit down or drink a potion, they would have to run.

The idea became better the longer he looked at it.

The boulder didn’t even need to defeat anyone. Its purpose could simply be to force movement.

Adventurers who had planned to recover would be pushed deeper into the floor before they had a chance to think, and whatever waited below would benefit from the panic.

He widened the main slope and started sketching out several branches farther down. The first half of Floor 3 could stay loud and obvious.

Large traps and visible danger. Things that forced people to react quickly.

The second half could change.

Once the boulder stopped, the threats could become smaller and harder to notice. Pressure plates. Dart holes. Tripwires. False floor sections.

Maybe a few trapped chests placed just convincingly enough to tempt someone who had survived the opening.

Zion adjusted several pathways as more ideas came to him. The first part would teach adventurers to run. The second would punish them for continuing to move carelessly.

That felt much better than simply dumping traps everywhere.

He spent several minutes experimenting with the shape of the lower floor before finally reaching the part he had been avoiding.

The boss.

Zion opened the boss catalog.

Normally, he would have placed a large chamber near the end and built the rest of the floor around reaching it, but something about that felt wrong this time.

Floor 3 was becoming a floor about movement. He didn’t want adventurers spending the entire run dodging hazards only to reach the end and suddenly stand still while trading blows with one large monster.

Maybe the room itself could stay dangerous. Zion adjusted the boss filters and started looking through faster creatures.

A Giant Cave Spider caught his attention first. It could climb walls and ceilings, which would make it difficult to track while adventurers tried to watch the floor for traps.

A Razorwing Bat looked even faster, but the amount of open space it needed would force him to redesign too much of the lower section.

He kept scrolling. Several more creatures passed by before a black feline appeared in the preview window.

[Shadow Panther]

[Boss Unit]

[Beast / Shadow]

The creature crouched low in the display, its body long and lean rather than bulky. Dark vapor drifted from its fur whenever it moved, and even inside the preview it seemed restless, pacing several steps before lowering itself again.

Zion opened the full description.

[Shadow Panther]

A highly mobile ambush predator specializing in sudden bursts of speed, pouncing attacks, and rapid repositioning between strikes.

Abilities:

[Shadow Step]

[Pounce]

[Predator’s Instinct]

[Low-Light Adaptation]

He leaned closer. "That sounds cool. It sounds very agile."

He could already picture it leaping across a boss room while adventurers tried to avoid pressure plates or swinging blades at the same time.

Then another tag beneath the creature’s name caught his attention.

[Roaming Boss]

Zion paused. "Roaming? What’s that?"

He selected the tag. A smaller information panel opened beside the listing.

[Roaming Boss]

Allows a designated boss unit to move throughout all compatible areas of its assigned floor rather than remaining within a fixed boss chamber.

He looked back at the Shadow Panther.

"The entire floor?"

That changed things. He had only been looking for something agile enough to make the final room more interesting. Instead, the system was offering him a boss that didn’t need to wait in one.

He continued reading. Near the bottom of the panel, a line of red text appeared.

[Early Floor Restriction: Floors using a Roaming Boss cannot support additional monster units.]

His excitement fizzled out a good bit.

"No monsters?"

Zion looked back over the unfinished Floor 3. That was a much larger restriction than he expected. He had assumed he would eventually add a few basic monsters between the traps, even if they were nothing special.

Without them, every threat on the floor would have to come from the environment or the boss itself.

For a moment, he considered closing the listing and returning to the normal boss options. Then his attention drifted toward the trap inventory:

Pressure plates.

Darts.

Blades.

Collapsing floors.

Flame jets.

A spike pit.

A crushing wall.

More than enough mechanisms to fill the empty sections without needing ordinary monsters. Zion looked at the Shadow Panther again. Maybe the restriction wasn’t a problem at all.

A normal floor used smaller monsters to keep adventurers occupied until they reached the boss. Floor 3 didn’t necessarily need that. The traps could handle the pressure.

The panther could do everything else.

More importantly, if it could actually move through the entire floor, it wouldn’t need to wait for adventurers to reach some final chamber.

It could appear while they were trying to avoid traps, attack when they were already distracted, then disappear before they could finish it off.

The idea immediately opened several new possibilities:

It could chase people down the main slope after the boulder stopped.

It could appear from a side passage while they were examining a pressure plate.

It could force them toward traps they would otherwise notice. If they hurt it badly enough, maybe it could retreat deeper into the floor and attack again later.

Zion looked over the unfinished layout with renewed interest. The more he thought about it, the less the lack of ordinary monsters bothered him. A floor with no regular enemies might even make the panther feel worse.

Adventurers would enter expecting something to attack them, only to find traps instead. Then, somewhere along the way, they would realize something else was moving through the floor with them.

Zion opened the Shadow Panther preview again and watched it pace through the small display.

A boss that could hunt them from the moment they entered until the moment they escaped. That was much better than putting it in a room.

Zion selected the listing and returned his attention to Floor 3. He already had the traps. Now he had the thing that would chase people through them.

All that remained was figuring out how to make the two work together.