Chapter 82 - Unexpected Encounter

"I'm ready," Claudia said, shaking her hands to warm them up for a fight. 

"Don't be so hasty," Tom countered, shaking his head. "We still have yet to see the boss," he added, smashing the blunt end of his spear into the head of the last monster that stood in their way. "Depending on what it is, we will still take our time to figure out how to fight with it," Tom warned the girl, putting a hand on her shoulders just to make sure he would go in the corridor first. 

"Sure, sure, there is never too much caution in the dungeon," Claudia replied with an amused smile.

'She is really treating this place too lightly,' Tom thought with worry, heading towards the gate beyond which the boss room would start. Even though this was the floor that he only rarely visited, he was more than aware of the exact layout of it. 

Not because the floor itself had some special meaning to itself. But because this was the floor where he once met a monster that he was capable of conversing with. 

Even to this day, with everything that happened since that time, Tom still considered that meeting as one of the most important points in his life. Not the moment when he first fucked Claudia, losing his own virginity in the process. Not the moment when he learned of the true nature of the dungeons. 

It was the meeting with that giant monster that set his life on the track it currently was. That meeting, and the meeting he experienced back in the city when he faced the boss of the entire dungeon resting at the very bottom floor of it. 

Those two meetings with what were supposed to be his natural enemies turned out way differently than anyone could ever expect. For Tom, those two instances were like the breaking points that allowed him to wrestle himself free from the restraints of all the lies spread by the organization behind the Online Hubs and the Dungeons Online game itself. 

And now, he was about to enter the same place where one of those massive changes to his life occurred. 

"By the way, I can't really understand why you are so wary of everything," Claudia said as the two followed the corridor towards the boss room of the floor. "While I believe in your idea that the dungeon will adapt the strenght of its monster to the strenght of those trying to conquer it, it's not like our might comes from the raw strenght or skills alone," the girl said, slapping her gloved fists against each other. "It's the way that we learned to use those skills that give us the advantage. As such, I believe that we are way stronger than anything the dungeon will be capable of throwing at us!" she claimed, raising her chin in the expression of her confidence. 

"This is exactly the type of confidence that gets newbie soldiers killed on the frontline," Tom said, recalling one of the stories that his uncles often fed him while he was younger. "If you underestimate the opponent or overestimate your own strenght, you won't even know what killed you when you slip on it once," he added, shaking his head. 

But instead of keeping the topic up, Tom raised his hand. Even with how dark the interior of the dungeon was, he could finally see the light shine at the end of it. The light shine that marked the border between the normal corridor of the dungeon and the entrance to the room housing the boos of the floor. 

"I will ask again, then," Tom turned his head to the girl, looking at her with clear worry. "Are you ready?" he asked, tightening the grasp of his fingers over his spear. 

"I was born ready," Claudia replied cheekily. But then, instead of moving forward, she shook her head and placed her hand on Tom's shoulder. "Seriously, I know that you are worried about me. But I'm not the weak, meek girl that you see me as when we fuck," she said with a small smile surfacing on her lips. "I'm happy that you care for me enough to be seriously worried, but I would appreciate it if you could give me some of your trust," she said, looking Tom deeply in the eyes. 

"So be it," Tom replied after a moment of hesitation, shaking his head again. 'Now that I think about it, ever since I entered this dungeon, I shook my head way more than through the former part of my life,' he thought, shaking his head once again as if to just prove his thought. 

With everything said and done, the two of them reached the light barrier between the corridor and the boss room. The thin veil of light was the only thing that protected them from whatever was inside. 

And for some reason, they were unable to see through it. While the outline of the room was clearly visible, there wasn't even a hint as to where the boss itself could be. 

'Is it the time for the cutscene?' Tom asked himself, recalling how the experience of this floor looked like back when he explored it through his avatar. But while he could accept the existence of cutscenes before the stronger bosses while he still believed the entire thing to be a game, it was hard to accept it as a part of reality. 

"Well, we won't know unless we check it," Tom muttered to himself, shaking his head yet again before taking a step forward. "Wait for me for a moment, here," he asked the girl before fully crossing the barrier. "I will check what kind of boss we are against and then call for you," he said, pushing at the girl's shoulder at the same time as he made another step and finally passed the barrier. 

The interior of the boss room was... not extraordinary at all. It was a spacious, circular arena. Its shape was exactly the same as all the other boss rooms so far. The only thing that set it apart from the other places like this was a complete lack of decorations that would normally set the tone of the upcoming fight. 

If a place was filled with moisture and had a cave-like appearance, one could expect one kind of monster. If there was an illusion of open space embedded into it, one could expect a different kind of monster.

But this time, the walls were plain, the floor was even, and so was the ceiling. In a sense, the entire place looked like the insides of a massive can of packed foods, with the only difference being that instead of metal surrounding Tom from every side, it was the stone that the entire dungeon was made of. 

Groan. 

Tom couldn't waste any more of his time sightseeing. The entire room shook as soon as the noise appeared. And then, right from the seemingly flat ceiling, a massive body descended. 

"Huh?" Tom shrugged in surprise, watching as the giant roughly twice the size of a normal human dropped to the floor. It had two legs but four arms, all of which were bulging with muscles. 

Yet, despite its clearly physical-oriented appearance, Tom had no doubt that his opponent was more focused on skills of magical nature rather than the raw power behind its fists. 

"Welcome, challenger," the giant said, putting a weirdly kind smile on its lips. "Are you ready for the fight?" it asked, instead of jumping at Tom at the first given notice. 

"No, I'm not, my friend," Tom replied, too stunned by the discovery to move for as much as an inch.

"Huh?" This time it was the giant's turn to be surprised. For a moment, it just stood in place, staring at Tom as if he was an actor on a live stream who suddenly reversed the meaning of the lines he was supposed to say. "Take your time, then... I guess?" the giant replied, scratching the side of its head with a baffled expression on its face. 

"Come on, do you really not recognize me?" Tom asked before falling to his knees and then on his ass. The spear that he held tightly in his hand upon entering ended up dropping on Tom's crossed legs. 

"What are you talking about?" the giant asked, puzzled beyond any rational measure. 

"I see, you do not," Tom muttered, with a hint of disappointment clearly hearable in his voice. "And here I treated my first meeting with you as one of the most important days in my life," he complained, hiding his face in his hands. 

"Are you okay?" The giant asked with worry written all over his face along with all the confusion that Tom had already brought to its massive brain. 

"Ah, could it be that there are more of your kind in the different paths to the bottom floor?" Tom suddenly asked, voicing out the one idea that would stop him from this massive feeling of devastation that awaited him just behind the corner. 

"TOM!" Claudia shouted, forcing her way through the barrier to the room. She laid her eyes on Tom's sitting body. Her face was instantly covered in a dark hue. "What the hell did you do to him!" she screamed, launching herself at the giant.

"Stop it," Tom raised his hand to prove that he was relatively okay. "There is no need to fight that guy," he added before shaking his head for the nth time in the last few minutes. 

"What the fuck are you talking about?" This time it was Claudia's turn to act baffled by Tom's seemingly ridiculous behavior. 

"This guy is the one who taught me what the Origin Mage skill means," Tom said, pointing his hand at the giant only to move it back and hide his face again. "He already allowed me to pass through the floor without a fight once, so I don't think there is any reason for us to fight him now!"