Chapter 38: The final room

The party turned back, retracing their steps through the stone corridors until they returned to the central chamber. Taking the left-hand corridor this time, they pushed deeper into the dungeon.

​Hours slipped by. After a long, bloody battle, Velvet and Brenda finished clearing their latest battlefield—the checkpoint room was strewn with the bodies of the slain. Standing amidst the aftermath, Smith announced an immediate encampment. They needed to rest and recover their strength for the challenges ahead.

​Stepping onto the raised stone platform at the center of the room, Smith gathered the Bronze Chest left behind and stored it securely in his inventory. By the time he returned to the group, Apollo was already taking action. Pulling a box-like item from his inventory, Apollo activated it with a single thought. In an instant, medium-sized camping tents materialized out of thin air, followed immediately by three pre-packaged rations—one for each group.

This was an storage artifacts what can store non dungeon items and it usually contain a limited storage capacity like the one that Apollo took out it has a storage space of 20 meter cubic.

​Retreating into their designated tents, Smith, Velvet, and Brenda found a remarkably comfortable setup complete with pillows and double floor mattresses. With the battle over, Velvet and Brenda helped Smith from his wheelchair and they also took off the armor and the two Queens sat down beside him.

​Smith unsealed the ration packs, which closely resembled pre-cooked meals from a modern supermarket. Though standard Queens did not strictly require physical food, eating remained a habit from their normal lives. They shared the meal together.

​Once finished, they lay down on the mattresses to rest. Even in a hostile dungeon, they knew they were safe inside a cleared zone. Dungeon creatures operated within strict boundaries; unless a full-scale Dungeon Outbreak occurred, they never wandered outside their designated zones. Confident they wouldn’t face a sudden ambush, the trio let their guard down and drifted off.

​An hour later, the party broke camp. While a Queen’s body recovered rapidly inside a Player’s spiritual space, mental fatigue could not be shrugged off so easily. The brief physical rest had done its job, clearing their minds for the battles to come. Apollo stowed the tents and supplies back into his storage artifact, and the group set out once more. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

​The next stretch proved drastically different. Over the course of the last few hours, they had cleared six consecutive checkpoints, cutting through countless groups of novice Ratmen. However, the density of elite groups—composed entirely of Intermediate-rank beasts—grew higher.

​The final battle before their last rest had been a tough battle: eight Beginner-Intermediate rank Ratmen backed by two Mid-Intermediate rank ratmen. The clash had been so severe that Malinda was forced to intervene directly. Despite her help, one of Velvet’s summoned Pawns suffered heavy injuries. Even after using Blood Replenishment and absorbing several energy orbs, the pawn had required the full duration of their rest period to completely recover for battle.

​The dungeon was ramping up its difficulty, but the rewards were keeping pace. Smith’s inventory now held a total of eight Bronze Chests. More importantly, both Velvet and Brenda had harvested enough points to gain two points of Aura each. Velvet’s Aura level rose to 13, while Brenda’s reached 12.

​Though those numbers seemed modest, activating their Titles would temporarily boost Velvet’s combat strength to that of a Mid-Intermediate Queen with an effective of 39 points —a massive leap in personal survivability.

​Maintaining their tight defense formation, the group pressed onward. Soon, they noticed a striking shift in their surroundings.

​The wall torches along the corridor burned brighter, placed much closer together than before. As the ambient illumination increased, the musky air of the corridor began to fade. Stranger still, they hadn’t encountered a single roaming group of Ratmen for several minutes.

​"Something’s different," Velvet noted, her eyes scanning the lit walls. "Stay alert."

​The corridor slowly began to narrow, forcing them to squeeze together. Where the passage had once been spacious, it now constricted to barely two meters wide—just enough for three people walk abreast.

​Reaching the end of the hall, Velvet ordered Lyra and her pawns to fall back into the main group. The party summoned their remaining Pawns to form a dense shield wall, treading cautiously into the narrow point.

​Then, the corridor opened up.

​The chamber before them was massive—a colossal, circular cavern roughly one hundred meters in diameter. At its far end stood a grand, elevated platform, much higher than any checkpoint platform they had seen before. Atop the platform sat an silver chest bathed in a dazzling, starlike silver radiance, cast down by a chandelier-like object embedded on the high ceiling.

​At any other time, Smith and his companions would have been spellbound by the chest’s shimmering light. But right now, none of them were looking at the treasure.

​Their eyes were locked onto the terrifying scene below the platform.

​Seated upon a dark, stone throne was a massive Ratman. He wore a half-plate armor over steel boots, his bare rat head exposed. Resting against his throne was a gleaming silver spear with an all-metal shaft that gleamed silver light. The heavy, suffocating pressure radiating off him signaled his strength loud and clear: a Peak-Intermediate Rank Ratman.

​Flanking his throne stood eight tall personal guards—Mid-Intermediate Ratmen clad in reinforced leather armor, each clutching a halberd.

​Worse still, surrounding the platform were four formations. Each group contained twenty Peak-Novice, four Beginner-Intermediate, and one Mid-Intermediate rank Ratman.

​Not counting the tha ratman on the throne and his guard, there was one hundred Ratmen filled the room in total.

​A cold sense of dread washed over the party.

​"This is it," Smith said with a heavy tone. "There are no other paths. This is the final room."

​They couldn’t turn back, and there was nowhere else to go. To clear the dungeon, this room had to be cleared.

​Smith hardened his resolve, breathing out slowly to steady his racing heart. "We don’t have a choice. We stick to the plan so we move Forward!"

​Taking a collective breath, the party crossed the threshold into the cavern.

​Strangely, even though Smith and his group stepped directly into the horde’s line of sight, the Ratmen remained motionless, acting as if the intruders did not exist.

​Then, the moment Smith, Apollo, and Alexander crossed the threshold, a deafening CRASH echoed through the hall.

​A massive, solid stone door slammed down from the ceiling behind them, sealing the narrow corridor completely. The dungeon mechanism had activated their was no retreating back because the escape route had been sealed so they have to face the horde head on.

​At the exact same instant, the ratman on the throne slowly turned his head, fixing his crimson eyes directly on Smith’s group.