Loss is a thing that should be compared to love, for neither can exist without the other. Without love, there is no feeling of loss, no hole that will never truly be filled. And without loss, there will never be proof that your love was real.

We want so badly to escape loss, to escape this world without those who are gone, that we would rather hurt ourselves than confront that pain. But pain has a way of worming its way inside, of burrowing deep.

Don’t let it, for time can heal much, but it can not heal scars.

--------------------------------------------------------------

We continued deeper inside the dungeon after 30 minutes of rest, a cold resolve taking hold. We now had a better understanding of what awaited us, but we also understood that if we did not grow stronger, the world that awaited us and our loved ones would be bleak.

We did not tell ourselves the lie that the strong would protect the weak, not when everyone had the power to grow stronger, not when the worst of humanity had the power to become gods.

That was the only reason I had been able to convince them in the first place. The dungeon wasn’t that hard, we had to clear two more rooms with more skeletons and zombies, both being slightly higher level than the ones in the room before.

During these battles, I started to understand how my new skill would help. It reminded me of when I started learning the guitar, what I was doing right now was playing simple notes, making my muscles remember each of them so that I could play them faster and smoother later on. I was also learning how to make the sounds more quiet, I had been playing as loud as I could without needing to. It was hard, but I knew that it would simply require time.

I leveled 3 more times, with 80 points to go to the next level. I still hadn’t invested any stat points, I wasn’t sure how to distribute them and I didn’t necessarily need them.

After our fight in the third room, we found our way to a small area, a room with comfortable seating and some beds. Everybody looked at me and Chetanjeet.

“A room of rest, it means we’re either fighting the boss or a mini-boss. My guess is this dungeon is too small for a mini-boss so it’s probably the boss.” Chetanjeet said.

I looked at my friends, tired and dirty, though mostly unscathed. “This dungeon was easy, a bit too easy for my tastes, but that doesn’t matter right now. The boss is called {The Master of Sorrows}. Now, I know that since the rest of this dungeon was easy, it might seem that the boss isn’t going to be hard either, but don’t let your guard down. Its name suggests that it might be able to draw out our sorrows, and I know we all have some of that.”

They all nodded and got some rest. Getting to this room had taken us about 2 hours. The fights hadn’t taken that long but we’d rested after each fight. Not enough for each of us to be back to full but enough that the rooms hadn’t been too hard.

Simon had taken the brunt of the fatigue, using {Divine Decree} a second time during our third fight.

I hadn’t used my pure magic yet, but it was the one thing I knew would be stronger than anything else I could do.

I looked at Marie, her brown hair seemed to be on fire in this lighting. During every fight, I’d held back in fear that I’d need to protect her. I was so afraid she’d get hurt. To this day, I still regret bringing her to that dungeon, bringing all of them to the dungeon.

During our time resting, another group arrived, a group of four. They looked more like those you’d see in Manhwa, wearing actual armor and carrying actual weapons. Something we sorely lacked.

As they arrived, we got up to enter the boss room. They readied themselves too, preparing themselves to fight the boss with us.

[Welcome to the boss room of {Tombe der Verlorenen}, prepare to fight {The Master of Sorrows}

2 Parties detected

…

Multiple high rarity Classes detected

…

Generating boss level and skills

{The Master of Sorrows

Lvl. 25

Class Rank: 2

Stats: ???

Skills:???}

Fusing Parties

…

Boss activation imminent]

That message took both our parties by surprise, ours because of the fact that it took the rarities of our classes into account and theirs because we had enough high rarity classes to make the boss exceed the dungeon level parameters.

As we looked at each other, and before we could react, the boss moved, spearing Simon clean through.It’s blade was a Bastard sword, not as long as a Zweihander, but longer than most one-handed swords. Its length allowed it to be used both with one and two hands. Ella rushed to Simon and tried to heal him as Victor’s {Berserk} activated with an enhanced effect. I saw the boss move for Ella and I rushed in to stop it. And as I blocked its attack with my bare hand, I saw what it was. Who it was.

The boss was a figure cloaked in dark robes, making it’s true form hard to make out, but as I blocked its strike aimed at Ella, I saw Marie, her face battered and bruised, her mouth in an open scream of pain.

“How could you let this happen to me, Oscar?” she asked. “How could you let them hurt me?” I dropped my hands and I was slapped to the side.

“{Presence of the Queen}!” Marie screamed. The skill took hold but all it did was snap me out of it for a second, then I saw her face and I was unable to do anything again.

It kept whispering in my ear, kept asking me questions I could not answer.

“How could you let it happen? How could you let me get hurt? How can you live with yourself knowing that this will happen? Just let it end.”

With those words, I looked at the real Marie, and snapped out of whatever that thing was trying to do. She would never ask me to do that.

But I was too late to stop it from reaching Ella. Victor wasn’t though. Fun fact about berserkers, pain only makes them angrier, as the creature tried to use the skill it used on me on Victor, he just got stronger.

When it noticed that didn’t work it moved backwards and activated the second skill in its arsenal. I could hear it speak the skills name, its voice like a cacophony of sobbing. “{Grief: Fourth Stage}”

And as it said that, each of us had a skill that got deactivated. It stopped Victors {Berserk} effectively taking him off the field. That’s when the other party moved, their mage freezing the monster’s feet, their main damage dealer rushing in and cutting off pieces of it’s robe with an axe, a two-bladed battle-axe to be exact.

The monster shrugged off the attacks like it was nothing but it was enough for Charlotte to activate the skill she’d gotten from reaching the threshold.

{Speed is Relative} procced, slowing down the monster a lot. The skill slowed down a creature by calculating the difference between Charlotte and the target. The faster Charlotte is compared to said creature, the bigger the effect. Combine that with her ridiculous speed boosting skill and it made for an insane debuff that basically only Simon was immune to thanks to his class skill, {Time is Money} which negated all speed debuffs.

Both me and Marie moved in tandem, willing the magic in the air to simply kill the boss. A blinding ray of white light appeared out of nowhere hitting the boss and making it scream in pain.

It tried to escape the light but it filled the entire room, the creature slowly withered and died. This wasn’t what either I or Marie had in mind but the magic had followed our base intent. Our simple need for this battle to end.

Then we turned to look at Simon, and we knew it hadn’t been us. The last of the magic that had saturated him left his body as he had ended the battle before there were any more deaths. And then he stopped breathing.