7 (7) Stone-set invitation

Back in Kraton's cave, a lone figure could be seen sitting motionless in front of a smoothened wall. upon looking closer, one could see countless dates, tallies, ancient numbers and words crudely inscribed into a rectangular portion of the wall which reflected a darker, metallic luster than the other rocks. This section looked smoother, more refined, but at the same time it kept it's raw roughness, the glistening crystallic texture was still as course as sandpaper, however what made this section more mysterious was the characters inscribed upon the surface the dates dated back to over 30 years ago.

The sole purpose of this wall acted similarly to the notice boards in the upper world, it recorded the dates in which Kraton had killed a player. This stone tablet was bound to every Boss monster, so no matter which dungeon they claimed, it would appear with all the right data inscribed on it. It also acted as a way for other monsters to see their progress, whether they were rivals or the leaders of the of the underworld, every monster could search for another's data stone.

On the stone, the tallies showed how many parties had entered on that day, and the ancient numerals detailed the number of kills Kraton had taken for each party. The names were of course the names of the players that fell and lost their lives to Kraton.

And if you read the stone wall line by line, you would realise that there were large amounts of time that had passed between each inscription, one almost reached 7 years apart! 7 years without killing a player, this was very shameful for a dungeon Boss.

Kraton was sitting down, watching the last inscription very warily in case it might disappear. This was of the 40 man raid that morning. Next to the date, there was a small star enclosed in a circle. This represented the record number of kills in that day, and right now, the numeral read '25'. No other party had entered the boss room just yet, however from the raid alone it had already broken his previous record of 6!

If it was any other dungeon, his dungeon rank would have been raised from 0-star to 1-star, however because the ranking and levels about a dungeon was published by the players above, they looked down upon this dungeon and chalked it up as 'Accidental record due to idiotic desires', therefore nothing much changed in the perspective of the players. However, for a monster like Kraton, he knew that this was the start of his new life.

Kraton had now levelled up to level 6, all his attributes increased by a bit once again. At level 6, he recieved the named basic skill 'basic attack'. Although Kraton could attack like normal without using this skill, it was still useful as the damage outputted was not dependant on Kraton's state at all. It would not matter if he was tired and fatigued from not sleeping, or being extremely awake and hyperactive, using this skill would make sure the damage dealt from the attack would remain constant. This benefitted a tired and lazy monster, however for a monster that increased it's power from either being in rage, or from pure excitement, it acted as shackles, preventing the extra force from doing extra damage.

Skills like this was even more useful for monsters that kited players around, depleting the players stamina but at the same time, becoming more exhausted themselves. Most monsters that relied on this method and skill often specialised their attributes in speed, but monsters could only start to specialise attributes at level 10! Otherwise all attributes would grow evenly.

Low-level monsters like Kraton didn't care too much about any of this information, however Kraton was more excited due to the fact that his total kill count had finally reached over 25 000! Over his 37 years of being a Boss, this progress was extremely slow. However for any Boss monster, this was a major milestone as the underworld would finally distinguish them as a growing novice rather than a mindless animal.

As the day went by, Kraton started to lose his excitement, he recieved no notice or hints that the underworld had noticed his prescence. Three more parties had entered his room, two of which completely destroyed him and Kraton had only managed to kill one person from one of these groups. The third group was much weaker, Kraton treated them as punching bags, playing with them to relieve himself of the nervousness and helplessness as he watched the time pass by without any sign of the underworld. In the end, this group still beat him black and blue, the last person activated a scroll in the last moment as a clutch device. Rich scoundrel.

At 9:18 pm, when Kraton was busy in the corner of cave relieving himself into an deep hole in the ground, the doors of the room shook intensely and slammed open. Jumping in fright and cursing non-stop after spraying his 'bed' and ceiling with a yellow liquid, he turned around and glared towards the doorway. What he didn't expect was a stone slab to come flying right towards him, smashing right into his face and causing him to be knocked over in pain.

*SLAM*

The doors shut closed as quickly as they had opened, and by the time Kraton looked up, the figure by the door had long vanished. Cursing that pervert in his head, he picked up the stone tablet at his feet and read through the words that were etched onto the rough surface.

"You have been invited to the Hell dungeon for becoming recognised as a new boss. Please arrive at the designated dungeon at 22.00 on the first day of the year."

Visible excitement flushed through Kraton's face for the second time that day. He punched the wall in happiness, not caring about the stinky liquid that fell onto him and started to plan his future life as a real dungeon Boss.

The only thing Kraton didn't realise at this point, was that the new year was still 3 months away. It was going to be a long wait.