"Please step back, my liege," Lady Arne said, her voice dropping its playful edge as she shifted entirely into combat mode.
Arthur nodded and took three steps backward, giving her ample clearing. Lady Arne adjusted her stance, took a single breath, and unleashed a devastating, one-handed horizontal slash with her massive greatsword.
The heavy stone tunnel rattled as the blade tore through the air. The colossal wooden doors violently split down the middle, splintering into thousands of flying shards under the raw kinetic force of her strike. As the dust settled, Lady Arne glanced back over her armored shoulder, her eyes searching his face for approval.
Arthur offered her a confident smile. "After you, Arne."
A brilliant flash of pride lit up her eyes. She turned and marched confidently through the ruined threshold, her heavy greaves clanking against the floor. Arthur swung his manifested greatsword into a ready position and followed close behind.
The boss chamber was completely different from the dark, narrow tunnels they had just cleared. It was a massive, high-ceilinged cavern illuminated by dozens of iron torches mounted along the walls, making it far brighter than the passage outside. The architecture resembled a grotesque, badly designed throne room. Ruined stone pillars held up the jagged ceiling, and the walls were decorated with crude bone trophies and tattered, blood-stained banners.
Standing in the center of the room, directly blocking the path, were two giant Hobgoblins clad in heavy scrap-iron armor. They brandished jagged broadswords and towering wooden shields. They were easily a foot taller and twice as broad as the scouts they had slaughtered in the corridor.
These twin brutes acted as the vanguard bodyguards, because just past them, elevated on a crude throne constructed from the skulls and bones of past victims, sat an even bigger, uglier monster. The creature was gargantuan, its dark crimson skin covered in jagged battle scars.
There was no mistake about it. They had found the dungeon boss.
"You take the one on the left. I'll handle the right," Arthur commanded.
Lady Arne gave a sharp, disciplined nod. "As you command, my liege."
Arthur had quickly assessed the situation using his knowledge of the system. A Yellow Dungeon was strictly ranked as a Bronze-tier zone. In standard raiding rules, that meant every single creature inside was supposed to be capped at Bronze-tier or below, save for the dungeon boss which might push the absolute upper limits of the tier.
In this world, a Bronze-tier combatant's Fortitude usually sat comfortably between 3.0 and 4.9. Thanks to Spirit Assimilation, Arthur's current active Fortitude was a flat 3.9, exactly half of Lady Arne's staggering 7.8 baseline. While these giant elite bodyguards could easily be pushed to the higher end of the spectrum, sitting at a potential 4.0 to 4.9, Arthur was more than willing to put his borrowed power to the test. He needed to know what he was truly capable of.
With a mutual surge of aggression, both summoner and summon charged forward.
Lady Arne closed the distance with the left bodyguard in the blink of an eye. The massive hobgoblin lunged, swinging its broadsword in a desperate attempt to cleave her in two. Arne caught the blade directly on her Sunsteel Tower Shield before driving her greatsword upward in a flawless counter-thrust. The glowing blade punched through the beast's throat, killing it instantly. She kicked the corpse off her sword, turning her head to watch Arthur, her eyes gleaming with dark anticipation.
Arthur's clash, however, was a completely different story.
As he closed in on the right bodyguard, the massive brute swung its broadsword horizontally. Arthur raised his shield to block, but the raw, heavy impact of a high-end Bronze monster hit him like a runaway freight train.
BANG!
The sheer kinetic force sent a violent shockwave up Arthur's arm. His bare feet skidded backward across the dirt floor, leaving dark streaks as he struggled to maintain his balance. The brute didn't give him a chance to recover; it let out a roar and rained down a relentless barrage of heavy, overhead strikes.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Arthur was entirely on the defensive, his teeth gritted as his muscles burned from the strain. The borrowed armor absorbed the blunt trauma, but his lack of formal combat experience was glaring. He missed an opening, and the flat of the hobgoblin's heavy wooden shield slammed into his chest, sending him crashing hard onto the stone floor.
The giant beast loomed over him, raising its broadsword with both hands for a executioner's strike.
Think, damn it, think! Arthur snarled internally. He couldn't just rely on brute force. The Hobgoblin was clearly stronger than him.
Suddenly, his vision shifted.
[Passive Skill: Summoner's Insight]
The translucent golden interface highlighted the charging hobgoblin in a wireframe matrix, suddenly illuminating a pulsing, bright red structural flaw right beneath its left armpit, a gap where its crude scrap-iron plate armor was poorly fastened together by a rotting leather strap.
As the broadsword came whistling down to split his helm, Arthur rolled desperately to the left. The heavy blade shattered the cobblestones right where his head had been a millisecond before.
Capitalizing on the monster's overcommitted momentum, Arthur drove his heels into the ground and thrust himself upward. He abandoned his shield, gripping his greatsword with both hands, and channeled every ounce of his 3.9 Fortitude into a singular, explosive thrust.
The glowing tip of his sword found the exact red marker highlighted by his Insight. The blade tore through the rotting leather strap, sinking deep into the unprotected flesh beneath the hobgoblin's armpit and piercing straight through its heart.
The monster's roar morphed into a wet, choking gasp. Arthur gave the hilt a brutal twist, tearing the blade out sideways as the giant brute collapsed forward, crashing onto the stone floor as a lifeless heap of flesh.
Arthur staggered back, panting heavily as the ethereal golden armor hummed around him, his chest heaving from the sheer adrenaline of his first real kill.
But it quickly became apparent that he wasn't accustomed to wielding this level of power just yet. His vision blurred slightly at the edges, and a sudden, crushing weight settled over his chest. He had reached his limit.
"Fuck! Seems like I can't go on, Lady Arne," Arthur panted, deactivating the skill as the ethereal golden armor dissolved into mist, leaving him standing barefoot on the cold stone once more. He pointed his finger toward the grotesque figure looming at the back of the room. "You will have to cut down that ugly motherfucker up there."
Lady Arne gave a sharp nod. "With pleasure, my liege." She adjusted her grip on her greatsword and began marching confidently toward the skull-adorned throne.
The Boss Hobgoblin glared down at her, its thick lips peeling back to reveal rows of yellowed fangs. It began muttering a low, gravelly chant in its gibberish language, its voice dripping with venomous rage as its bloodshot eyes darted between Lady Arne and the corpses of its elite bodyguards.
"There's a language barrier, I'm afraid," Arthur called out from the rear, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "But the only language I care to understand right now is that you need to be dead for us to get out of here."
Finally, the Boss Hobgoblin slowly rose from its throne. It was a true monster, standing at a towering eight feet tall, its massive frame easily twice the width of its subordinates. With a deep roar that rattled the loose gravel on the floor, the beast ripped a massive, dual-bladed battle axe out of the stone socket next to its seat.
Lifting the heavy weapon effortlessly onto its broad shoulders, the colossal warlord descended the throne steps, each heavy footfall sending a thud through the cobblestones as it moved to meet the radiant Paladin halfway.
The two forces collided in the center of the throne room.
As the boss stepped into the light, a heavy, suffocating crimson aura erupted from its skin. Arthur's eyes narrowed as his Summoner's Insight instantly registered the raw threat level, the beast was pulsing with an active Fortitude of a possible 4.9, the absolute apex of the Bronze tier.
With a deafening war cry, the warlord swung its massive battle axe in a vicious, horizontal arc meant to cleave Lady Arne in two. The air shrieked under the weight of the blow.
But Lady Arne moved like a phantom under the flickering torchlight. With a fluid, hypnotic sidestep, she let the massive axe blade whistle past her chest, missing her by a mere inch. Infuriated, the giant recovered instantly, raining down a desperate, relentless barrage of overhead chops and sweeping strikes. The stone floor shattered beneath his heavy weapon, kicking up shards of cobblestone, but every single blow met empty air. Arne evaded each attack with effortless, mocking grace, her ocean-blue eyes completely cold.
Realizing it couldn't touch her, the monster bared its fangs and overextended, committing everything into one final, desperate downward swing.
Arne didn't dodge this time.
She pivoted on her heel, and her massive greatsword ignited with a blinding, roaring torrent of holy golden energy that illuminated every corner of the dark cavern.
"Die, filth," she whispered.
With a speed that completely defied the laws of physics, her glowing blade cleaved upward through the darkness. The strike was a singular, perfect flash of cinematic violence. The divine edge sliced effortlessly through the shaft of the iron axe, split the boss's massive torso clean down the middle, and parted the air behind it with a sonic boom.
The golden light faded as she smoothly sheathed her weapon. For a second, the colossal warlord stood entirely frozen. Then, a thin line of blood erupted from its center, and the two symmetrical halves of the dungeon boss crashed heavily onto the stone floor.
Arthur's vision filled with a flurry of system notifications.
[Lady Arne Margadalen has used active skill: Judgement Strike – Lv.1]
[Lady Arne Margadalen has slaughtered the Dungeon Boss: Hobgoblin Warlord!]
[You have successfully cleared the Trial Dungeon!]
[REWARDS UNLOCKED]
[NEW TITLE EARNED] : Hobgoblin Slayer
[SUMMONER STATUS] : Leveled Up! (Bronze II)
[SUMMON STATUS] : Lady Arne Margadalen has reached Lv.2!
[BONUS REWARD] : Instant Dungeon Key
Arthur smiled, a sense of pure relief washing over him. "That was easy. Well, the gap in power between them was just completely massive after all."
Before the text could fade, a brilliant flash of light materialized right in front of him. A solid golden key, engraved with intricate runes, floated softly down into his palm.
"Huh, a key into an Instant Dungeon?" Arthur muttered, turning the heavy metal over in his hand.
[Would you like to access the Instant Dungeon now?]
[YES / NO]
"Hmm... instant dungeons are completely private domains, right?" Arthur mused, his Summoner's Insight whispering the mechanics to him. "People who manage to get their hands on these usually use them as a safe haven to grind for resources and level up rapidly without anyone else interfering."
He was incredibly tempted to tap yes immediately, eager to see how much stronger he could get. But before his finger could touch the screen, Lady Arne's sultry voice broke his concentration.
"Did you enjoy that, my liege? Was the show to your absolute liking?"
The key in Arthur's hand automatically dissolved into his system inventory as he turned his head. The beautiful, dangerously sexy Paladin was walking toward him, her ocean-blue eyes locked entirely onto his.
Damn, man... Arthur thought, his eyes helplessly dropping to her chest. Those boobs under that amour are incredible. She makes me so damn horny.
He shook the thoughts from his head for a brief second and clapped his hands together. "You were fantastic, Lady Arne. Seriously. I've never seen any summon fight with that kind of grace and power before."
And it was the absolute truth. Most conventional summons in the world fought like wild, unhinged beasts, relying on basic claws and primitive instincts. Arne fought like a highly disciplined, apex warrior.
"Thank you, my liege," Lady Arne murmured. She stepped right back into his personal space, her breath turning shallow as a heavy, unmistakable spark of pure lust flared in her eyes. "Now that the filth is gone and the task is complete... will you keep your promise to me, my liege?"
Arthur looked her up and down, the raw desire finally overriding his tactical brain. "I always keep my word, Arne. Let's finish what we started."
The moment the words left his mouth, the entire dungeon structure violently trembled. The ancient stone walls and the flickering torches dissolved into a vortex of rushing colors.
A split second later, the damp chill of the cavern vanished. Arthur's bare feet touched the familiar, warm floorboards of his own bedroom. The two of them were standing inches apart in the quiet dark, staring at each other with absolute, burning lust.....