The Hidden Boss of Floor Six
“Let’s hurry up and go.”
Redel said this as he took hold of the carriage reins. His voice was unusually polite.
The carriage carrying Kim Jun and the Han Guild party rolled out through Thebes’s eastern gate.
He really caught a dragon…
Redel glanced at Kim Jun and thought it over.
Only a few days ago, when he had taken him to the scorched earth, Redel had thought of Kim Jun as a pitiful young man headed straight for death.
But after seeing him return alive just a few hours later, his surprise had barely settled before word spread through all of Thebes that Kim Jun had obtained a hidden class.
Dragon Slayer.
Redel pulled harder on the reins.
“Hyung, why are you in such a rush?”
“We could probably stop and rest a bit.”
Park Minsu asked, and Ryu Jia grumbled in complaint.
They had stayed the night in Thebes to maintain their gear and buy potions, but there were still plenty of places they hadn’t seen yet.
“If you want to rest more, you can always stay behind in Thebes.”
At Kim Jun’s words, Ryu Jia scowled.
“How am I supposed to go without you? We’re going together!”
Lee Seoyeon smiled and patted Ryu Jia’s shoulder.
*
“We’ve arrived.”
At the entrance to the sixth floor, before a massive stone gate.
“Let’s go.”
Kim Jun took the lead and opened the stone gate.
Rumble—
Beyond the gate lay a vast grassland.
Hills rose in the distance, and beyond them, a forest spread out in dark layers.
At a glance it looked peaceful, but scattered across the plains were little moving shadows.
Entered Floor 6.
Quest Generated: Subjugate the Goblin King
Objective: Defeat the Goblin King.
Reward: 100 experience, 500 coins
From the sixth floor onward, the difficulty changed entirely.
If the first through fifth floors were the prologue, then the sixth floor marked the real beginning of the Tower, after the class-selection trial.
The monsters were stronger, and the boss’s attack patterns became far more difficult to deal with.
Still, it was only the early stages.
“Hm.”
Kim Jun studied the goblins scattered across the distant plains.
The goblins, with their green skin and grotesque faces, were far larger and stronger than the ones they had faced on the first floor.
Their weapons were more refined too, and some even wore crude armor.
That meant the goblins on the sixth floor had a more advanced civilization than the ones below.
The group soon crossed the grassland and headed for the nearest goblin formation.
Park Minsu stood in front, clearing the way with his shield, while Kim Jun followed close behind with his greatsword.
Lee Seoyeon and Ryu Jia took the center, each preparing healing and offensive magic, while Han Suin circled around the party, watching for any ambush.
“Kraaaah!”
“Krrrraah!”
The first goblin group numbered around thirty. Sensing the party’s presence, they let out bizarre howls and surged forward.
“They’re coming!”
“Leave them to me!”
Park Minsu’s shield slammed into the goblin in the lead and knocked it aside. The force sent the goblin flying, but it quickly scrambled back up and resumed its attack stance.
“They’re tougher than I expected. Are you sure these are goblins?”
As if answering him, Ryu Jia raised her staff high. Blue mana gathered at the tip, then burst outward in an explosive wave.
“Frost Nova.”
Whoooosh—
A freezing wind spiraled out and swept over the goblins. Ice fragments pierced their skin, and some of them froze where they stood.
Kim Jun didn’t stand idle either. His greatsword moved with the fluid grace of a living creature, slicing through goblin necks.
Slash—
Meanwhile, Han Suin appeared behind the goblins and drove the Serpent Fang dagger he had given her toward their hearts.
The curved blade slipped into the gaps between their armor and dealt fatal wounds.
One strike, one kill.
Silently, she cut the goblins down.
“Man, I thought this would be over once we killed the boss. Turns out it doesn’t work that way, huh?”
Park Minsu said, wiping the sweat from his brow.
And he was right.
The clear condition for the sixth floor was to “defeat the Goblin King.”
But all across the vast grassland, dozens of goblin bands were scouting the area, ambushing hunters whenever they got the chance.
Their patrol range was wide, and the moment one group sensed danger, it signaled every nearby group to launch a coordinated attack.
Ignoring them and pushing straight to the boss was, in practical terms, impossible.
Then all they had to do was kill everything.
Swish—
Kim Jun took up that familiar stance of his.
“O-oh! Hyung! Are you going to show us something?”
The air around him began to spiral inward, and the instant his eyes ignited with lava-red light—
“Acceleration.”
Bang—!
His body became a red arrow that tore across the grassland.
The line he carved straight through several kilometers of earth left a river of fire in its wake, and every goblin in its path was reduced to ash without even managing a scream.
After obtaining the Dragon Slayer class, the speed and power of his signature technique, Acceleration, had become terrifying beyond comparison.
With a single sprint, he arrived at the goblin village.
Behind him, his companions were racing as fast as they could along the trail of flame he had left behind, but it would still take time before they reached him.
The settlement, nestled among huge trees, was fairly large.
Dozens of huts stood in irregular rows, and in the center a massive bonfire blazed.
“Kwahahah!”
“Krrraaa!”
Goblins danced around the bonfire as if performing some grotesque ritual.
Hundreds of goblins.
There were elite goblins wearing armor, and there were even hulking goblin champions.
And in the middle of them all, before a huge hut, stood the Goblin King in gleaming golden armor.
“It was around here, wasn’t it?”
But Kim Jun’s gaze wasn’t on the king. It was on a cave somewhere in the forest behind it.
A place where green light seeped from the darkness. The goblin shaman’s lair.
The hidden boss of the sixth floor, and the condition for the hidden clear.
The goblin shaman.
In his previous life, Kim Jun hadn’t known its true identity, so defeating the Goblin King had taken quite a while.
That was because the Goblin King was nothing more than a summoned servant of the goblin shaman, and as long as the shaman itself remained alive, the king would keep regenerating its blood while they were forced into a hellish, drawn-out slugfest.
He still remembered the four hours he had spent clearing this floor before regression, completely unaware of that fact.
There was no need to waste any more time.
Swish—
“Krrk?”
“Kraaaah!”
The alarm gong echoed across the entire village.
Clang, clang, clang, clang—
Hundreds of goblins picked up their weapons at once and charged at Kim Jun.
The elite soldiers surrounded him with spears and shields, while the archers lying in ambush in the trees drew their bows at him.
“K, krrraah…”
But their momentum didn’t last long.
Under the overwhelming pressure radiating from Kim Jun’s eyes, the goblins’ bodies began to freeze in place.
Their instincts had sensed danger before their minds could, confronted by the aura of a being that had already risen far beyond the sixth floor.
Slice, slice, slice—
Ah, I should leave some for them.
Even while slaughtering goblins, Kim Jun was worried about his companions’ experience points.
Not just me. All of us together.
If he killed every monster by himself, his comrades’ growth would lag behind. In particular, the experience from boss-class monsters needed to be shared.
So he intentionally left a few goblin champions and elite soldiers alive.
There were enough for his companions to handle once they arrived. And more than anything, he intended to leave the Goblin King to them.
The Goblin King wasn’t what mattered.
“Kraaaahhh!!”
The Goblin King, whose Achilles tendon had been severed by Kim Jun’s greatsword, roared in agony. Its massive body tilted to one side and lost its balance.
Green blood streamed through the gaps in its golden armor, and its face twisted into a mix of rage and terror.
“Hold on a little longer. My comrades will finish this.”
Swish—
Kim Jun’s greatsword flashed. The blade dropped in a perfect right angle, cutting through both arms of the Goblin King and severing the tendons in its remaining leg.
Screams echoed across the entire village.
“Kraaaahhh!”
No matter how endlessly it regenerated, if he seared the tendons with dragon flame, it would take considerable time to recover.
This should be enough.
Leaving the shrieking Goblin King behind, he headed toward the small cave on the hill at the rear of the settlement.
The cave entrance was decorated with strange rune patterns, and a sinister green glow leaked from within.
Kim Jun entered as if he were completely familiar with the place.
As soon as he stepped inside, a cold and sinister energy wrapped around him. The cave walls were covered in bizarre pictographs, and strange patterns were drawn across the floor.
At the very back of the cave, by a pool of water, a figure slowly revealed itself.
The goblin shaman.
It was far thinner than an ordinary goblin, with wrinkled green skin and a hunched back—its form resembling a bent old woman.
But its eyes burned with a fierce light. On its head it wore a crown decorated with animal skulls and feathers, and in its hand it held a staff that looked as though it had been made from human bones.
“Kurruk… human. How did you find me?”
The voice sounded like branches snapping.
Kim Jun didn’t even deem it worthy of a reply. He gripped his greatsword and raised it at the goblin shaman.
At that instant, the shaman’s staff flashed—but Kim Jun’s body was already gone.
In a single second.
The goblin shaman’s head hung in the air, and the greatsword was already resting against Kim Jun’s back.
Hidden Boss defeated: Goblin Shaman!
Hidden Quest achieved: Ruler in the Shadows!
Reward: 1,000 experience, 1,000 coins
Skill Acquired: Detection C
Level Up! 32 → 33
“Yeah. Might as well take this too.”
Kim Jun reached into the shaman’s disintegrating body and plucked the staff from the dust.
The thing, made as if from bark and bone fragments, radiated a powerful surge of magic like ripples across water.
C-rank
Effect: Rises in rank in proportion to the user’s mana
Properties: +20% magic attack power, +15% mana consumption
“Mana consumption goes up, but it’s still plenty good enough until I reach the upper floors.”
Kim Jun muttered the words while thinking of Ryu Jia.
The moment he stepped out of the cave, he saw his companions running up from the base of the hill.
“Hyung! You were here?”
Park Minsu shouted, waving. Behind them was the Goblin King’s body, collapsed and leaking dark blue blood.
“You already finished it? That’s amazing.”
When Kim Jun expressed his admiration, Han Suin answered quietly.
“That was all because of the guild leader…”
For Han Suin, who rarely spoke, that was a long answer.
Her eyes held gratitude, as though she had noticed the consideration behind Kim Jun’s actions.
A silent exchange of understanding without a single word.
A special connection only comrades who had survived long battlefields together could possess.
Kim Jun liked people like that.
“Let’s go together.”
The sudden words made everyone look at him.
“Huh?”
“To the top of the tower.”
The emotional declaration left a brief silence in its wake.
“…;; Hyung, you know that’s getting pretty cringey lately, right?”
“I think it sounds great! Stop talking back to him!! Oppa, please don’t change! Let’s keep going like this!”
“Hehe. I think it sounds nice too. Ever since we climbed the tower, the guild leader’s been different~. Hehehe.”
Thwack—!
“Ack!”
“Be quiet.”
Kim Jun’s expression remained deadpan, but a smile he couldn’t quite hide slowly crept to the corners of his mouth.
8