"Co to think of it... where did all the Komoerus go?" Enatsu inquired, stopping suddenly.
"Uhm?" – Shioko and Yoichi turned to their companion, who closed the line.
"All the Komoerus that Yoichi put on the run. They flew in this direction, right? If there's light down there, bat demons are unlikely to be in the next room. This ans that we should have found them before the tunnel, wouldn't we?" showing keen intelligence and attention to every minute detail, Enatsu instilled a new doubt in the minds of his comrades.
"They probably holed up sowhere else in the dungeon while we were in the three spirits' room," Shioko superficially replied. "Or maybe they're down there waiting for us. Anyway, don't let your guard down and get ready to attack," the archer added.
"Komoerus are very sensitive to light, and their eyes retinas do not resist continuous brightness. There's sothing wrong with that! How can they just be... vanished into thin air?"
Yoichi stood still thinking of his companion's words. The intermittent, reddish light reflected on the tunnel walls indeed ca from an artificial source. The flicker of light seed to be punctuated by the natural movent of a fla as if a torchlight illuminated the boss's room.
"Nobu!" Shioko called, breaking her silence again. Then, suddenly, the Hotasagi deactivated its power, and its tail stopped emitting white light.
Before proceeding over the tunnel curve, Yoichi rolled his eyes to his friend, crossing his gaze with him. "There are many mysteries in this place. I'm sure if we can figure out where this black mud ca from, we'll also understand what happened to the surviving Komoerus. Co on, Enatsu, you and Rokuro are doing great."
Yoichi's encouraging words broke through in the perpetual anxiety that stord his rchant friend. Smiling with his eyes and mouth, the blond-haired tar heartened his fellow adventurer, making him realize that the best way to get to the root of the problem was to stop thinking for a mont.
"I... I... I'm ready. We can go" – taking a deep breath and trying to shake away the anxiety and cold, Enatsu narrowed his eyes for a short ti. The one who was talking to him was not only a faithful friend and travel companion but also the owner of Lumya's last dragon demon.
Shioko was the first to pass the tunnel curve and see the exit. A rocky door, decidedly smaller than the entrance to the boss's room, had been excavated in the wall. The marks of the tal teeth of the tools used by the miners to dig were visible on the sides of that rough opening.
Beyond that door, the three tars didn't know what they would have found. They did not realize that what they would find would have turned their lives upside down forever.
When Enatsu's feet, the last of the three, also crossed the door, the boss's room appeared before their eyes in all its grandeur: as already described by Shioko, it was a large round room, about 40 ters in diater.
Along the walls, a row of torches hung with hooks in the rock. The cave floor was invisible under a layer of thick black mud, so deep that it wetted the ankles of Yoichi's boots, the tallest of his companions.
Right in front of the entrance, a huge beast was crouching in the mud on the other side of the room. The dungeon boss was so big that it exceeded the height of three ters, even in its sleeping position.
When their eyes eerly traced the outline of that infernal beast, Enatsu and Yoichi, who had never seen such a giant wild demon, stood still staring at it. The glacial cold of that room added to their fear, giving them goosebumps.
The dungeon boss, lit by the faint light of the wooden torches hanging from the walls, was sleeping, snoring loudly. Its great mass raised and lowered, following its deep breath.
The first detail Yoichi could notice was the face of that monster: a huge rhino-like horn stood on its nose. It looked like it was made of rock and its outline was chipped and sharp.
The blood of its victims stained the horn and mouth, identical to that of a pachyderm, but with big curved fangs popping up from its lower jaw. Above the sizeable greyish muzzle, full of cuts and scars, four eyes were closed.
One upon the other, it has two eyes on one side of the face, two on the other. Between them, the broad forehead of that rhino demon had a split in the middle, reflecting the morphology of its skull.
From its large nostrils damaged by a thousand battles, the sleeping demon forcefully exhaled the cold air in its lungs, sleeping blissfully. When Yoichi's gaze fell over the head of the Blackvault Mines boss, the young warrior was stunned in front of such bulk.
The chin of that colossal beast rested on two muscular and mighty crossed arms, identical to those of humans. A mangy blackish fuzz uglied its prominent deltoid muscles. The biggest problem, however, was the second pair of arms.
Unable to believe their eyes, all three tars gasped to discover that the rhino-headed demon had four humanoid arms, which ended with large hands equipped with three fingers each.
The back of the giant demon's body was not visible due to its strange sleeping position. However, a slight long pachyderm tail swayed occasionally behind it, erging and diving into the layer of black mud.
The sa substance that had endangered the village of Blackborough, that had enhanced the wild demons and increased their ferocity and that had accompanied the tars from the entrance of the dungeon until its end had accumulated there, around the body of that giant demon oozing wickedness.
Although the flow of black mud continued its centrifugal trajectory, moving from the inside to the outside of the cave up to the stairs, its true source seed to be hidden sowhere behind the boss.
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