The entire dungeon corridor had eight rooms, only one of which contained a door leading to another corridor.
Loulan concluded that the boss room should lie beyond that door. Recalling the skeletons hidden in this dungeon's treasure chests, he also sensed that something was slightly wrong.
Who put such identical skeletons in chests along with battered books?! Never mind the two things he'd obtained from the first chest. No matter how he looked at it, something was wrong.
Yet the later chests had the usual low drop rates and produced entirely ordinary items, overturning Loulan's earlier theory that chest contents were completely linked to his bonus rewards.
There was a connection, but not much of one.
In any case, perhaps this boss would prove even more troublesome than the Rampart-Creeping Fungus?
To ensure Lulu's safety and avoid unnecessary trouble, he planned to put her in the bearskin backpack and leave it securely outside the boss room until the battle ended.
That was also why Loulan had not rushed to spend 10 star crystals on the Beautiful Monster-Girl Elixir in the 【Girl's Wonderhouse】 and transform Lulu into a true monster girl.
He wasn't sure whether she would cause trouble after becoming a girl.
Yes, trouble! For example, she might lack the intelligence to know better and force her way into his battle with the boss.
The reasons were simple: she might be greedy for Allure Brew or just want to help, among other possibilities.
Loulan had no desire to experience that kind of fucking plot where a fight he could easily win through superior stats became unpredictable because of a pig of a teammate.
That would be utterly maddening!
"Mm~ Mm~"
The collar Lulu had become wriggled twice and rubbed against Loulan as though trying to understand what "transform" meant.
Monsters possessed intelligence, and Lulu could understand some of Loulan's simple commands. The little creature was wondering what "transform" meant.
"It's fine. Come on, get down first."
Loulan placed his palm against his neck. Obediently, Lulu changed her body back into the oval shape of an ordinary slime and landed on his palm with a tiny hop.
Thus, Loulan took advantage of the walk to give Lulu a thorough rub. Only after entering the second corridor did he reluctantly place her inside the bearskin backpack.
Just as Loulan had guessed, the second corridor was tiny, barely over ten meters long. It was so small that not even a minor monster could "spawn" there. Only one door, different from an ordinary one, was embedded in the opposite wall, gazing across at the door through which he'd entered.
The only difference between a final boss and a secret-room boss was the style of the room's door and what lay inside.
Take the Rampart-Creeping Fungus, for example. It could be either a secret-room boss or a final boss. The only difference was that a final boss's secret room was guaranteed to spawn one treasure!
It might directly provide a relic, a treasure chest, or even a large locked chest, among other things.
Most importantly, a final boss room was guaranteed to contain the portal out of the dungeon!
"Stay here and don't move. I'll come get you soon."
Loulan set the entire bearskin backpack beside the secret-room door, gently patted Lulu, then settled her inside and closed the backpack.
"Mm~"
The slime's soft, delicate voice sounded quietly, seemingly in response to Loulan's command.
Smiling, Loulan slowly rose to face the door directly.
"Open up, dungeon warmth delivery!"
"BANG—"
With a mighty kick, Loulan blasted the sealed dungeon door open. What greeted his eyes was not a huge horde of minor monsters surging toward him under the boss's command.
On the contrary, the "boss" appeared to be all alone.
As light streamed into the dark secret room.
At its center, a humanoid white skeleton a full two meters tall knelt on the floor, its bony hands resting gently on its knees.
Like the skeletons buried inside the treasure chests, its body was covered with yellowish-brown mushrooms. A book with an ornate cover was stored within its rib cage.
If the human bones in those chests were likened to devotees, then this one should be something like a bishop?
"You... holy... fungus..."
A strange, muffled voice echoed through the empty secret room, seeming to combine countless men, women, children, and elders.
Before the voice could finish, however, Loulan charged forward in great strides and swung his blade at the skeleton.
"SWISH, SWISH, SWISH—"
"BANG-CRACK~"
White bones scattered everywhere. After only a few slashes, the formerly intact skeleton had completely fallen apart. Its upper body splashed across the floor like water from an overturned basin, with only a few bones remaining intact.
And that was not the end. Loulan raised his foot and kicked twice more, smashing to bits the parts his blade had not shattered and sent flying.
"Tch, still dawdling through its cooldown chant. But this isn't the boss's true body? Hey, if you can speak, you should understand my language, right? Fighting is awesome! Got it?!"
No bonus-reward window had appeared, so Loulan understood that his sneak attack had only destroyed an empty shell. The real thing had yet to reveal itself.
He therefore assumed a fighting stance where he stood and kept taunting and shouting, trying to provoke the boss into coming out for an awesome fight.
"Battle... savage... gentleman... no..."
Its halting, pieced-together enunciation sounded again, but the boss seemed to be hiding in an unknown corner, somewhere in the darkness Loulan's natural glow could not illuminate.
Of course, Loulan could vaguely make out its meaning. It seemed to disdain such barbaric combat or something along those lines.
【How strange. The last boss forced me into an awesome fight, but this one wants to subdue me without fighting?】
"THUD!"
His body instinctively stomped down hard, and the powerful reaction force launched Loulan into the air.
Looking down, he saw several thin, cheese-colored fungal stalks that had somehow crept over from the darkness. They coiled around the discarded bones, dragged them away, and rapidly retreated.
Loulan looked around again and discovered that every bone he had scattered had vanished. The final boss here had clearly stolen them back.
【A bacillus? No, it doesn't look like one. The records don't mention this type of bacillus boss. It's another fungal branch.】
From those thin fungal stalks, Loulan swiftly searched through the monster knowledge in his head, trying to identify the boss's type so that he could find its original form.
At first, Loulan had thought it was a bacillus, but most bacilli recorded as bosses did not match the current situation.
Bacilli had an extremely strong desire to fight and liked to wrap several fungal stalks around a fungal brain to form a crooked shape, perhaps humanoid or perhaps something else, then use those stalks as weapons in battle.
But this boss was different.
"Let me guess. Are you a Blood Fungus or a Rot Fungus?"
Before long, Loulan arrived at the two possibilities closest to the answer.
During that brief interval, accompanied by faint "clack, clack" noises, the familiar skeleton walked upright out of the darkness. Standing, it was a full two-point-six to two-point-seven meters tall.
Most notably, the eerie book Loulan should have casually smashed while hacking apart the skeleton had reappeared inside its body...