Turned out, it was a lot harder to survive a trio of sub-bosses with your subordinates busy trying to befriend them. Calvin still couldn’t bring in his weaker minions without them being crushed almost instantly, so it was left to Wolfey and Doggy to speed up the taming process. They ran around the cave, licking at the larger creatures and acting friendly while doing their best not to be killed.

  It took a few thousand tries, but in the end the bosses were no different from the others. Bigger, meaner, but not nearly as stubborn as Calvin. With his master’s and Hannah’s support, it didn’t matter how close they came to killing him, he was far beyond any chance of giving up. He was committed to this path, no matter how long it took.

  When Calvin did eventually make the sub-bosses his minions, he named them Alpha, Beta and Gamma, based on their status names. It felt right, in a way that he couldn’t explain.

  Without the help of his trusty Relfow minions constantly trying to befriend them, it would have probably taken a hundred times as long. The Relfows’ behavior had massively decreased the suspicion and distaste the sub-bosses felt for him, speeding up the process by a lot.

  Of course, many times they did end up harming the Relfows and even him, but well, that was how these processes went. He had to beat their nature before nurturing them.

  Calvin felt rather proud for using the most inefficient process possible.

  He could technically find some meat or something the specific monsters would like and give it to them repeatedly while taking the time to get closer to them slowly. That was a more sane and normal process.

  But when had he ever wanted to be sane and normal? Be just a normie? He was an insane genius, and he was proud of it, gods—every god but Dominic—damnit!

  Though, now that he had the sub-bosses by his side, breezing through the dungeon was practically a given, at least to the final boss room.

  For once, his overconfidence didn’t prove to be wrong. He was indeed able to breeze through.

  The dungeon threw everything it could at him, but losing its sub-bosses put it at a major disadvantage. Sub-bosses didn’t seem easily regenerable, since they only encountered one more sub-boss the entire delve.

  Having Alpha, Beta, and Gamma already on his side made it only a mild effort to tame his new Delta. After that, the dungeon could only throw endless hordes of Minions and Followers at him.

  Followers were a higher tier than Minions, yes, but were also a step down from sub-bosses.

  He didn’t even need to focus on his battles with them as the sub-bosses took care of them.

  Before he knew it, he approached the final obstacle.

  The boss room. The doors stretched in front of him. The darkness of the cave—which had always been a given—faded completely, torches lighting up all around him.

  He could finally see the cave for all its glory. It was dull, grey, and rather plain, but it was just as big as he’d expected—the ceiling was tall enough that something ten times as tall as the sub-bosses would be able to fit in the cave comfortably.

  Well. Isn’t that realization ominous? Calvin grinned to himself wryly. He was already dwarfed by his sub-boss minions, their massive forms making the rest of his pack look like newborn puppies in comparison. What monstrosity was he going to be up against now?

  After all, since the cave was this big and dungeons hated wasting space, the boss monster would likely be ten times as big as the sub-bosses. He couldn’t help but feel just the slightest bit nervous—but also excited.

  Taking a deep breath and calming himself down, he turned his attention to the boss doors. The image of a giant humanoid wolf had been carved on it, a wolf that had immensely large white and black mixed wings. It was crying tears of blood, its mouth stitched together. The only reason he could tell that the tears were blood was because they were the only part of the carving that were coloured red.

  He took another deep breath and looked back at his master. Right now, after all the twists and turns that he had seen in this dungeon, he was no longer overconfident.

  True, he did have four sub-bosses by his side. True, he did have Wolfey and Doggy, who by now were just as strong as the sub-bosses after how many battles they’d fought to reach this deep. True, a few more of the Relfow Minions had become just as strong as Doggy and Wolfey—they numbered in the tens, but…

  Despite all this, however, he was not confident in defeating the Boss Monster in a few tens of tries. Not in the slightest. He’d heard gossip about the level of preparation that went into diving an S Rank Dungeon and how guilds still always failed to defeat the Bosses of the S Rank Dungeons.

  Any guild worth its weight and not completely suicidal would go with hundreds of people to an S Rank Dungeon. Of course, most of them were not fighters—such a raid group required a lot of support staff. The entire guild would come to attack the S-Rank Dungeon, with all the resources that they could muster.

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  Support rankers would continuously create as many potions as they could, ensuring they had the freshest and most effective possible items. The loss of efficiency was minimal over time, but they needed every possible advantage against an S Rank Dungeon. And the ones who did attack the dungeon were usually a group of around five S-rankers and thirty A-rankers, for optimal safety.

  At least fifteen of the thirty A-rankers were healers.

  This was just a rumor he'd heard, so the numbers could be bigger or even smaller than this. But the fact that a group of that scale was still unable to beat this boss meant that it was no easy task, that the boss would be no easy prey for him.

  Taking a deep breath, Calvin pushed open the boss room doors and entered, his strongest pets following him. His master and Hannah walked behind him from a distance—his master with his usual gentle smile, whereas Hannah looked solemn and concerned.

  As soon as he entered the boss room, awe filled his mind. This room was no longer a cave—it was a royal grand palace. Albeit a dilapidated palace that lacked its former glory and revelry, in ruins with moss hanging all over, bricks that looked seconds away from crumbling.

  But still the palace retained echoes of its previous regality, enough to strike amazement into his heart.

  At the very center of the room was a coffin. A very, very normal looking coffin.

  Calvin was surprised. He’d expected to enter and find a battle waiting for him immediately. He had expected that he would face a very, very large Relfow that he would fight again and again till he could finally defeat it.

  Instead, he faced an anticlimactic moment where he entered a room and nothing happened.

  Sensing his confusion, his master chuckled lightly. “This is a boss room, you know, Calvin. They expect you to challenge them and initiate the fight. I suspect that if you open that coffin, then your battle will start.”

  Calvin blinked. Right. That makes sense. Guess the stories and rumors don’t bother with such mundane details.

  He walked toward the coffin, slow but steady, then reached out to touch it lightly.

  Seconds passed, and nothing happened.

  He looked down and realized it was latched shut. He would have to open it physically, not just show his intention. He grabbed the latch—made of pure gold—which didn’t seem to match the dull, colorless wood of the coffin and tugged at it. Pulling the latch apart was easy; with just a hint of his strength, it broke, and the coffin opened.

  The boss inside was humanoid, just as the drawing on the door had depicted, but Calvin hadn't expected it to be so human. Not only did it resemble a person, complete with a full hairstyle and a beard, but it was also human-sized. Its features were the only things that gave away that it wasn’t human.

  Calvin had expected the boss to fill the entire cave, towering over them and making even the sub-bosses look like children—instead, it was very small. The sub-bosses looked like giants next to it, ironically enough. In fact, it seemed to be slightly shorter, thinner, and overall more petite than Calvin had been in his malnourished state.

  Perhaps that moment of underestimation was what had made him less alert, what had made him not notice the monster flicking its fingers.

  That was all it did—flick two of its fingers—and Calvin was on the ground, his body split in two.

  He felt his own blood pooling beneath him with deep, numbing shock. There hadn’t been time to do anything.

  His pets were in the same state as him, cut in half where they’d stood.

  Hannah could heal them, of course, even at this stage, but they had rarely sustained this much damage after he’d made Wolfey his pet.

  Without a moment’s delay, Hannah healed him and he was back on his feet, his pets also standing next to him. But this time, all of them were alert, fully aware of the threat this monster—this boss monster—posed. They were aware logically, before, but emotionally…

  Normally, Calvin would have inspected the creature before the fight began, but the boss monster gave him no time to do so. No sooner had he opened the coffin and taken in its appearance than he’d already been struck down.

  Now, though, since his master would have frozen it after it nearly killed him, he had at least more than a split second to actually use Inspect.

  But unlike all the minions and sub-bosses, who had frozen calmly and without resistance, entering a trance of his master’s control, this boss was resisting. It twitched desperately, trying to break free of its shackles, hungry to end him and his pets once and for all.

  Calvin couldn’t help but feel mild shock. He knew that his master had probably barely used 0.01% of his true passive power to subdue this monster, but for it to be able to bear that pressure, that whim of his master, and resist so fiercely?

  Was this what the boss of a dungeon looked like?

  His inspection gave him the results he needed, and when he saw its status, everything clicked.

  Relfow Boss Supreme’s Status Screen:

  Level: 430

  Specializations:

  Terror Inducement [Lvl 430]

  Moon Strike [Lvl 430]

  Heavenly Stealth [Lvl 430]

  Heavens’ Curse [Lvl 430]

  [Expand?]

  Titles:

  Dungeon Owner [Unique, SSS Grade]

  Cursed by the Heavens [Unique, SSS Grade]

  Cede, Bleed, Creed [Unique, SSS Grade]

  [Expand?]

  It was level 430. SSS rank.

  Calvin scoffed incredulously. Why was the boss monster of an S-rank dungeon SSS rank? Was this why dungeons were never completely destroyed? Because even the King of Nohl himself wouldn’t be able to scratch a toenail of the boss monster?

  If boss monsters actually left the dungeons during dungeon breaks and wanted to spill human blood… None of them would have stood a chance. Humanity would have perished. It was truly a miracle that these boss monsters remained trapped inside their dungeons. Perhaps it was a miracle granted by the gods—

  He glanced at his master. Right, it was just luck. The Goddess didn't exist.

  As he finished inspecting the boss’ stats, his master spoke. “There’s no way you can defeat that monster in your current state, Calvin.”

  read up to chapter 41 and it should be up to 43 tomorrow.