Chapter 37
My first boss fight went far better than expected.
It was a battle that taught me a lot—things I hadn't been able to appreciate when fighting weak monsters that offered no real resistance.
“You did it, Zephyrus-kun! Congratulations!”
Hannah came flying at me while I was still holding my stance—not so much because I was maintaining my guard as because I hadn't fully grasped that the fight was over yet. Only then did I feel the tension leave my shoulders. I guess I'd been more on edge than I thought. That's what makes it real.
“Yeah! We did it, Hannah! Did you see that? Easy, right?”
I forced myself back into my usual upbeat mood and gave Hannah a quick high five.
Only then did it finally sink in.
As Hannah and I celebrated clearing the dungeon, an announcement suddenly rang out.
〈Your first clear of the Tropical Forest Dungeon has been confirmed. You have received a first-clear reward.〉
〈Congratulations! You cleared the dungeon.〉
Oh, I know this one. It plays when you clear a dungeon for the first time and get a special item.
Hannah and I were startled to find small badges in our hands. Neither of us had noticed when they appeared.
“Whoa, what’s this?”
“A dungeon-clear bonus. It’s like a medal.”
The so-called proof that you cleared the dungeon.
Little touches like this were part of what made 〈Dan-Katsu〉 so fun. It really appealed to my collector’s spirit.
There was even a pose that let you pin a pile of these proof badges to your chest like a general to look more imposing, or stitch them inside your uniform and flash them by flipping open your blazer. It was pretty cool.
I remember a video of someone trying to figure out whether you could do the same thing with a girl’s skirt. It ended with a little girl holding a sign that read, “That feature doesn’t exist, mister. You’re a pervert!”
That one had me laughing.
Now that it’s reality, I could probably pull it off, but I won’t.
As I grinned to myself, gazing at the badge and reminiscing, Hannah tugged on my sleeve.
Her eyes were fixed on the pile of drops scattered below us.
“That’s amazing, Zephyrus-kun! There are so many boss drops!”
“Oh, right, those. Okay, Hannah, put everything away for me.”
“Got it.”
There were fourteen drops this time: five “boss drops,” eight “dungeon monster drops,” and one treasure chest.
The “dungeon monster drops” were a random mix of drops from the weak monsters we’d encountered on the previous floors.
The treasure chest this time was a “Silver Chest.”
“A Silver Chest!”
Hannah cried out excitedly when she saw the silver box shining among the drops.
“Oh, getting a silver one right off the bat is a good sign. Go ahead and open it, Hannah.”
“Really?”
Well, she was this excited, and I’d made her do the tedious job of Porter, so she deserved a special treat.
Besides, I owed her for making her suffer through that wooden chest earlier.
Hannah opened the “Silver Chest” with great trepidation, and a High Potion appeared inside.
It was a pretty good item among the rewards from a lower-tier beginner 〈Shocker〉 dungeon. In other words, it was a “winner.”
In RPGs, they’re so commonplace that they don’t feel special, but in 〈Dan-Katsu〉, they restore 500 HP. That’s enough to fully heal you while clearing a beginner dungeon. Your max HP almost never exceeds 500, after all.
You can see why an item that lets you bounce right back from a tight spot would count as a “winner,” right?
“A High Potion!”
“Nice one, Hannah!”
Hannah spun around in delight at her first boss-defeat reward.
I joined in, spinning around with her, and we finished with a high five.
Spinning around is fun!
Man, looking back, that was a real boss fight. It was so intense!
I was getting excited now, too.
Hannah and I spent a while making a racket. After about thirty minutes, we’d both finally calmed down, and together we put all the drops into her 〈Item Bag (Capacity: Large)〉.
“I’m done putting everything away! What should we do, Zephyrus-kun? Head back now?”
“No...”
Hannah asked as she looked at the pink return teleportation circle.
But I ignored the circle and chose to return to the Safety Area instead.
“Come over here, Hannah. And what happens next stays between us. Can you promise?”
“Huh? Why all of a sudden?”
“We’re about to play a secret game that we can’t tell anyone about.”
“A-a secret game!?”
I’d exaggerated a little, and Hannah took the bait.
I knew she liked phrases like that.
“Don’t tell anyone, okay? Can you promise?”
“Um... I-I guess so? W-what are we going to do?”
“Well, seeing is believing. Just watch.”
With that, I stood on the Safety Area side and used a Skill to slash at the gate to the boss room.
“Brave Slash!”
“Eek!?”
A heavy thud rang out, followed by Hannah’s scream.
Then something strange happened.
“Huh? Wait, the teleportation circle disappeared? And the Bear Anteater came back to life!?”
Nice reaction, Hannah.
Just as she said, the Bear Anteater we’d defeated had respawned in the boss room.
This was what I’d really wanted to do today.
Hannah seemed to realize something and looked at me with a “No way!” expression.
She was a Slime Respawn addict, after all. She must’ve immediately guessed what I was planning.
“Z-Zephyrus-kun, are you going to do a Slime Respawn marathon against the boss!?”
“That’s the idea. But it’s not a slime this time, so it’s not Slime Respawn. I guess we’ll call it a Boss Respawn marathon?”
“That’s not the point!”
Oh? She’s actually making a comeback at me.
Well, you can see what I’m doing.
Normally, a boss respawns when the player who defeated it leaves using the teleportation circle.
But if you leave the boss room without using the circle, like I just did, the boss won’t appear again.
That’s why the academy teaches students to always return using the teleportation circle after defeating the boss, so they don’t inconvenience the next party. But there’s a trick to it.
Even without using the teleportation circle, you can make a boss respawn by delivering a powerful impact to the gate from outside.
So after defeating a boss, you can return to the Safety Area, then make a big impact with a powerful Skill to farm the boss repeatedly.
It saves you the trouble of going all the way back to the entrance and then coming back down to the lowest floor. Brilliant.
Incidentally, this was a strategy the developers had officially approved.
〈Dan-Katsu〉 was designed to have you spend three years at the academy, so it had a time limit.
If you spent all three years doing nothing, you could even get a Game Over.
But there were all sorts of obstacles to clearing the game.
For example, 〈Upper Job Change Tickets〉. If one of those never dropped, you were stuck.
You needed an Upper Job to clear an Upper Dungeon. But if you got trapped in a streak of bad luck where an Upper Job Change Ticket never dropped, the result was too awful to contemplate.
〈Dan-Katsu〉 had plenty of those sorts of landmines. You can see that just by looking at this world. We’re living in an age when muscle is said to be the strongest. It’s downright depressing.
The developers came up with the option to farm bosses as a desperate measure to help players avoid those pitfalls.
Apparently, they had no intention of changing the Jobs or the absurdly large number of drops, no matter what.
And so, boss farming was officially sanctioned.
We gamers happily threw ourselves into farming bosses and enjoyed every minute of it.