Jensen's POV

  As always, I had bitten off more than I could chew.

  But I couldn't let the kid know that.

  His high spirits were already in the dumps for three reasons. Firstly, the kid was missing his family. In a way, he always had his dad or the Tumas around him. But now he had no one except me, whom he had met like five days ago.

  Secondly, he realized that he couldn't get stronger like the others by assigning stat points to his strength and speed, etc. And lastly, I may have…. and let me emphasize 'May Have' inadvertently made him realize that he was bullied his entire childhood.

  I mean, it was evident with the way he would clamp up when attacked.

  But still… for once, I should have just kept my mouth shut.

  I closed my eyes after having stared at the screen on and off for the last five days. But now that I had new info about the map. I was cross verifying it with Benzo's records and also the information that I had collected. And a lot of little interesting details had come up, which had helped me formulate a new theory.

  I eyed the boy while he was in the middle of the fight, and I was standing to one side observing it. Despite the quest from the system. I didn't hurry him down the floors in a heartbeat. Instead, I made him fight his way down the levels.

  So it took us eighteen hours between the fights and the rests. But we had reached the third floor. The tunnels down here were much the same as the floors above. It's just that we had more ways of moving around, and the risk of getting caught here was much lower. The idea was to not stop here but to move down to the fourth floor next.

  "What did I tell you?" I yelled at Jack while he fought two level three goblins head on. "No openings."

  "Easy for you to say…" He yelled back with his back facing me. "You are not the one who is being attacked by the goblins constantly."

  Yeah, I could give him some slack on that, I thought. The System was bullying him a bit more than usual by springing goblins from the ceiling. I chuckled, recalling the way he screamed and ran the first time it happened.

  "What are you laughing about?" he asked, without turning back.

  "Just kill them, and we can take a break…" I said. He was dragging it on, as I had asked him to gain as much fighting experience as possible before we hit the goblin nest on the fourth floor next.

  "Noted," he said, and went ahead to end one of the goblins who had been limping already. And he then proceeded to choke the other goblin with his bare hand.

  It was brutal. But that was expected now that he was level eight, and the goblins were level three. We had stockpiled on the stat points as well, but I hadn't let him spend another point on anything else.

  Covered in fresh green blood, a lot of filth, and a smile. The dungeon lord made his way towards the bonfire I had pulled out from my inventory. Benzo may have lied about a lot of stuff in his exploration records. There was no savage dragons here. But he was right about the savage nature of the dungeon dwellers.

  This kid, he went from being a sissy to a cold blood killer in less than five days. He had seen death all around him while growing up. So that must have something to do with the way he was just numb to it all at least when it came to killing goblins.

  "I reached level nine," he said.

  I tossed him one of the buns. This one had meat inside of it instead of jam or beans. He gobbled it down hungrily, so I tossed him another. When I had met the boy he was malnourished, and worked to the bone quite literally. But the healing potion that I had used had done more than regenerate his burned flesh. It had made him healthy inside and out. His muscles were well defined now, and his appetite was helping him grow as well.

  "Good," I said, seeing him eating heartily and reaching level nine as fast as he did. "You will be fighting the floor boss next," I said, and he looked up at me. "He will be a level or two lower than you—"

  "But I have no skills—"

  "You have me," I said to him, tossing him a flask with some healing water in it. "If he proves to be too much. I will pull you out. But there is no going forward without you killing that boss on your own."

  "But the quest—"

  "We will fail the quest…" I said.

  Jack pressed his lips shut. He knew that I wasn't kidding about it. And that it wasn't only the System that was pushing him.

  He nodded, and swallowed water from the flask.

  "The lower we go, the more difficult it's going to get," I reminded him. "So we get as strong as we can up here." I paused. "Share your interface," I said, while I ate.

  His interface popped up right in front of me the next instance. We had a little over thirty hours remaining to reach the fourth floor and destroy the nest. The system had asked us to clear two floors, and we had already cleared the second floor and gotten into third.

  Now, instead of waiting for the floors to close and open at midnight again. I wanted us to move down to the fourth floor right away after dealing with the floor boss and gaining the key. This will not only complete the quest partially. But also give Jack some much needed confidence.

  I had already let Jack slip on the boss of floors one and two. But seeing that we had time, and he was getting a little complacent with the way he dealt with the goblins. I wanted him to have a reminder of how dangerous this place could be.

  But this quest timer wasn't bothering me as much as the one that was counting down the destruction of floor one. Jack had saved that floor, and in return, the system had reduced the safe zones of all the levels to keep the dungeon functioning.

  "You looking at the same big red countdown as me?" asked Jack.

  "Yes," I said. "I don't think we would know how to fix this dungeon unless and until we kill the minotaur and take total control over the dungeon."

  "You saw that monster," he said. "You sure we both can take it on our own?"

  "We will try, and try again," he said. "We have time."

  I knew he was feeling a bit homesick and wanted nothing more than to see his family. But if he wanted freedom, like the way he had said he did. Then he had to break free of the safety that his family provided. I saw how they all coddled him. Such humane behavior would get the others, and him, killed on the surface.

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  Even if he loses access to the interface. Which I bet he will, unless I figure out what this achieved system was, and how it functioned. I wanted the kid to be strong enough to fend for himself out there and inside the city with the tower.

  I munched on the hot bun, and drank a sip from my flask which Jack had tossed back to me. We sat there until he had healed, and when I was done marinating in my own thoughts. I looked up. Jack was sitting with his legs crossed on the other side of the bonfire and was eyeing me.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Can I ask you something?" he smiled, with curiosity bubbling up in his eyes.

  What started the day before yesterday on the first floor with me asking a question about his Ellie. Had now turned into some sort of a ritual. It was only so much a human mind could endure before the boredom of repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again outweighed the reward. So, to keep Jack engaged. In exchange for him telling me about Ellie. I gave him a tidbit of information about the outside world.

  Truth be told, Jack was a bit of a monster. He just didn't know it yet. He had grinded all the way from having zero xp to now having well over six thousand xp while killing goblins that on average awarded him four xp. And he had been at this for the last five days with barely any sleep under his belt.

  "Jensen…" said Jack, and I snapped out of my thoughts.

  "What do you want to know?" I asked, and plastered an amused smile. "But you get just one question…" I said, and cast the mirage spell on me to up my familiarity with that skill.

  "Can I spend some stat points on the map?" he asked.

  "Nope," I said. "We still don't know whether or not you can spend stat points on your own growth. For all we know, this might be a system penalty for now."

  Jack huffed at that. He had but given up hope of getting strong the normal way. But I knew how the system worked. There was nothing that it couldn't do. Moreover, the reason he wanted to spend points on the map was to see the names of the adventurers. He wanted to know where his family was and if they were safe.

  "Jack…" I said, and he looked away from his interface. "We won't go down before we meet them," I promised him.

  He nodded. But still looked deflated.

  "The thing is," I decided to tell him what was going on in my mind. Hoping that it would help him understand why I was so adamant about this. "You remember how Benzo had introduced himself?"

  "Dungeon lord—"

  "No," I said. "He called himself the Lord of the Dungeon."

  He blinked at that.

  "Your sister too called you that in the inn," I reminded him.

  "What's the difference?" he asked. "Dungeon lord or lord of the dungeon, isn't it the same thing?" he asked me.

  "It could be a play on words," I said. "Or there could be more than one dungeon lord."

  His eyes widened at that.

  "But how is that possible to have multiple dungeon lords?"

  "It is possible," I said to him. "If this isn't just a dungeon but a failed labyrinth," I said. "A labyrinth has multiple dungeon lords as each floor is considered a dungeon in its own right."

  He stared at me with his mouth half open.

  "As I said, we are still playing this game blind to some extent," I said. "The faster you level up. The sooner we can unlock the journal tab and find out what really happened here." I paused. "For now, all we have is a theory."

  He nodded at that.

  I kept quiet for the remainder of our time inside the bonfire. Once I was sure he had healed up. I asked him to take us to the floor boss in the shortest path possible.

  *****

  Jack walked beside me as the tunnel twisted and turned, merged and demerged with other tunnels. The entire time the path was illuminated by the glowing orb. But he kept quiet. Usually, he had tons of questions. But now he was as quiet as the dead in their grave.

  "You have something on your mind?" I asked, while we walked.

  "I think I'm starting to understand Benzo," he said.

  I looked at him with the corner of my eye. But said nothing.

  "If there are multiple dungeon lords," he said. "Then Benzo, being the coward that he was, might have sealed himself away from the others in the lowest level. But once the others died. He had to make sure that other adventurers won't grow strong and challenge him…"

  Jack looked at me, having come to the same conclusion as I had.

  "For an adventurer to go from bronze to silver rank," he said, recalling my very first lesson. "The adventurer would need to reach level twenty five. That is like fifty thousand in cumulative experience. Plus, he or she would need fifteen thousand credits," he said.

  I nodded and confirmed the same to him while fireballing the goblin into oblivion that had spawned due to the penalty on Jack.

  "So if the drops are low, and the credits are even lower," he said, unfazed by my kill. His eyes fixed on the credits in the top right corner of the screen. He zoomed in on that with his two fingers. "It would take a long time for anyone to break into silver rank, let alone gold or ranks higher than that."

  "True," I said, killing another pesky goblin.

  "Just the housing and food takes a toll on the credits given how much we need to kill to make a living," Jack continued, thinking out loud. "Plus, I'm starting to think that the dungeon council and Benzo had some sort of an agreement on collecting rents inside the safe zone." He grumbled after having read one of the penalties on day two about not being able to change the rents in safe zones.

  "So if someone got exceptionally strong," I said, as Jack went quiet. "They would either leave the dungeon altogether, or Benzo kills them to stop them from coming after him."

  We both went quiet after that. Humans greed and their need to have control over things to the point of destruction was something I could never comprehend.

  "Is the city and the tower just like this?" he asked, glancing at me.

  "Would you change your mind about our deal if I say yes?" I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  "In some ways, the city is much better than the tower and this dungeon…" I looked around. "But a cage is a cage no matter its size," I shrugged.

  "Is that why you came all the way out here to explore?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said, as I couldn't lie to the kid in that moment thanks to the condition I had placed on our deal. "I'm searching for the same freedom as you are," I added, charging up a fireball and ending another stray goblin.

  "If I find it before you," he said. "I will let you know."

  "Please do…" I chuckled at that.

  "Do you really think that there is another lord of the dungeon?" he asked me, as we got closer to an opening that looked more or less like a boss room.

  "I think there is one more dungeon lord at least," I said. "Even a coward like Benzo would have tried to control the dungeon eventually. But he was being kept in check by someone…"

  "Makes sense," he said, and got lost in his thoughts again. As I said, his mood was all over the place since I pointed about him being bullied.

  The reason I had to tell Jack about my theory of another dungeon lord being out there was not to scare him. But to warn him about how much we still didn't know about this dungeon.

  The interface was a boon. But this dungeon had a cycle of three years. So this dungeon had gone through countless resets after the publishing of Benzo's exploration records. Now, the main structure had remained the same more or less. But everything else had jumped up in difficulty.

  Benzo, that stupid son of a bitch. Being a merchant, he knew the numbers better than most. And over the last century. He had brought the entire dungeon's adventurers' progression to a standstill. If this dungeon had been left unchecked for another century or more, thinking it to be a backwater place. Then we as a species would have faced another dungeon break on a massive scale.

  Now that I had seen the map and the population. I wanted Jack to unlock the journal tab more than anything else. Not only because I wanted to complete the next step of the quest chain, but also because I wanted to know what really happened here.

  What was hidden on that thirteen floor? And more than that. I wanted to know if anyone should even own a dungeon such as this.

  Forget what I had said earlier about this being a low leveled dungeon. This was now a dungeon that housed nearly twelve thousand bronze and silver level adventurers. Even if the remaining eight thousand were used as cannon fodder. This dungeon right here, the adventurers in here could be used to topple many guilds that rule parts of the city and the tower floors.

  I should destroy this while I still have a chance, I thought.

  Ping!

  Are you sure you want to end this Redemption Quest?

  Yes/No

  Note: As you have negotiated a self imposed restriction with the System for the completion of this quest. Willingly, ending the quest will result in the System taking back anything and everything under the sun from you. Right from slapping you on the wrist to emptying your account, your inventory, and dropping you down to level one.

  Proceed with caution.

  I closed the prompt.

  I had bitten off more than I could chew once again.

  But this time.

  This time I will make the right choice…

  I eyed the boy.

  *****