I Shall Pervert the Heavens

On the other hand, there were seven adults concerned about the family that waited for them outside the fortress: the family that needed money to buy food, to pay for taxe, to protect them from bullies, to survive. Just thinking about the possibility that they might not be able to get out of this fortress today and thinking about what their family outside would have to go through had already made everyone there afraid.

Even Zach was worried, but not in the same way. He wasn't thinking about someone depending on him out there. No, his mind was elsewhere,which he considered super important too!

He was hoping to survive, yes, but survive so that he could finally go explore the bodies of some MILFs, GILFs, and anything else with curves that caught his eyes. Zach was, after all, a little perverted in his own way.

When he looked at his hand, there was no shaking, no nervous tremors. He wasn't tense. On the contrary, Zach stood still and composed, because he wasn't bothered. While the others were panicking over survival, he knew with the certainty of a supercomputer that though this dungeon might injure him, he would still live through it. Death wasn't in his calculation.

He never studied fortresses, never cared to analyze monsters or Bosses like the blessed ones did. He never had blessings to rely on, either, in fact he never knew of such things. But what he did have was his unnatural intelligence, something so sharp that even without prior knowledge he could adapt and respond like he had done it a thousand times before.

Standing here and looking at the dungeon, Zach couldn't help but feel like he was inside some twisted video game, only this one had no respawns, no continues. If he died here, there was no coming back. If only there was respawn, then he a dungeon core, maybe he could respawn monsters in his dungeon endlessly without needing to breed them all.

Although he hasn't study the dungeon before coming. The others have done their bit of studies and getting information. Of course that doesn't include those dumb students who swagger into the dungeon like their daddy's backyard.

And Zach too had no information on this one. None. But that didn't trouble him after all he doesn't know how deadly a dungeon was for him to make comparisons between. Like the saying goes, only those that know more will fear more.

Looking from side to side, Zach couldn't help but sigh as he accepted that most of the faces he was staring at would probably not make it out alive. But of course, it wasn't as if he cared so much. At the end of the day, the only important thing was making it out alive himself.

"Okay, people with Blessings that favor ranged attacks will stay away from focusing on causing damage to the Boss. Be careful not to spend all your energy in the beginning, since when the Boss enters Berserk mode, everyone will have to do damage as quickly as possible so he doesn't call a huge hoard of rats to himself," said the scarred man as he opened the metal door that led to the King of Rats' lair.

Zach was now on full alert. He didn't know how the monster would react, he didn't know if it would rush them or wait, but he wasn't about to take chances. He just wanted to be cautious.

The circular door creaked open, and from the shadows the King of Rats launched himself at a woman carrying a shield. She had no chance. The beast's massive fangs clamped down and dragged her inside before she could even scream.

The teenagers froze, horror flooding their faces as the memory of their friend's death replayed. The only difference now was scale—this rat was no mere oversized vermin. Its hulking body was as massive as a warhorse, its presence alone crushing their courage.

If only they knew the monster would rush out for people at the front. None would have agreed to be at the front. It wasn't Zach who had predicted this. It was the scarred man, and he had chosen to say nothing. If he had warned them, nobody would have dared to take the lead, and the entire party might have collapsed before even entering. Sacrifices were necessary, and the scarred man carried that weight in silence.

Taking the lead, the scarred man dashed forward with his sword raised high, shouting, "Let's go! Attack!" to shake the others free of their paralysis.

Zach had already snapped into action. In the middle of the dark chamber, he conjured his flames and hurled an improvised fireball toward the sound of movement, guiding the Blessed toward their target.

Thanks to the spatial sense he had honed, his clumsy fireball struck true, hitting the rat and setting patches of its fur alight. Though the damage was minor, those faint flickers of fire now painted the beast's silhouette in the dark, giving the others something to aim at.

The light also revealed a grim sight—the Blessed woman who had been grabbed earlier was already torn in half. The upper part of her body dangled from the rodent's mouth, while the rest had been discarded somewhere unseen.

Since Zach had only recently awakened his Hell Flames ability, his control over them was crude and unrefined. Just as a Blessed who wielded earth could not immediately raise towering walls in his first year, Zach was still learning to shape his fire. A proper fireball was already a struggle; anything more complex, like flaming constructs, was far out of reach.

Looking ahead, Zach knew this would be a close battle against the Super Boss.

He had already thrown several fireballs at the rat, but the effect was pitiful. Against normal rats, his flames burned through them with ease. Against this hulking monstrosity, whose hide was thicker than hardened leather, his fire barely singed it.

But Zach noticed something. When his flames struck unbroken hide, the King of Rats barely flinched. Yet whenever his fire found an open wound left by another Blessed's attack, the monster shrieked as if impaled by steel. His flames seared deeper when they met flesh already torn.

That meant only one thing—their best chance of victory was to combine their attacks.