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While a cursory use of the ability didn’t really show anything, I wondered just how specific or sensitive the ability could become.

My repeated uses of echo sight had shown that the ability could grow with proficiency and use, even becoming more sensitive the harder I focused on using it…

Could that same principle not also apply to heat sense?

“I need you to be as quiet as possible for a little bit,” I said to Lein, not bothering to explain yet. If the ability didn’t work out, what use was explaining it?

Taking the hint from the seriousness in my tone, Lein, for once, complied without a word.

I shut my eyes and brought to my mind the absolute focus that I had learned from Krylla when using the echo sight, except, instead of applying it to the ability she had taught me, I instead focused on the heat sense that I had gained from that mysterious secret dungeon.

At first, everything was simply dark, but after a few moments of intense focus, I began to feel a pinprick of warmth from my senses, little gouts of further warmth emerging from it.

‘Lein…?’

To describe it, it was similar to viewing myself from the top down, like what you would see on the minimap of a videogame, except everything was pitch black save for little columns of hazy orange heat focused on the center—me—and on something of a similar heat level beside me—Lein.

‘At least this confirms that it can be used to such a degree…’

I could only imagine how useful the ability would become with practice, especially if I honed it to the point where I could keep it going constantly like Krylla kept her echo sight up as a sort of second sense. If I did, wouldn’t I be basically immune to surprise attacks from close range?

I further focused my mind on the heat sight, brushing aside any curiosity I had about the way Lein or I appeared and ignoring the tingling in my senses that was urging me to reach out to the ambient heat in the air.

Pushing all such distractions aside and enduring a steady pressure building within my head, I went even farther.

Unlike echo sight, which depended on sound waves that bounced off of walls and other solid surfaces, I found that heat sight seemed to be on a different level entirely. Whereas echo sight was something that could be taught, heat sight was something else beyond human, truly something that was System or Second-System assisted.

Heat sense didn’t care about walls, obstructions, or anything else, it simply picked up any heat around me through any barriers that existed. As my sense expanded to cover more and more of the labyrinth, as the pain in my head built to a splitting migraine and I felt hot liquid running down my nose, I felt what I had been searching for—a large heat signature further into the labyrinth, far larger than what either Lein or I gave off, accompanied by its own little puffs of heated breath.

‘Got you…’

It had to be none other than the boss monster, waiting for us, its massive figure a focus of heat and contained energy.

I opened my eyes and let the heat sense go, the pounding headache causing me to bow my head and press my hands over my eyes for a few moments.

“Uh… You alright?” Lein’s worried voice broke through the silence.

“Yeah. I found where we need to go.”

I kept the direction of the boss monster in my mind and we began walking again, continuing to lead the way with an actual intended destination this time as I continued to foil the traps laid out with echo sight.

We walked for a long time, passing through identical hallway after identical hallway, avoiding trap after trap until we passed by what I felt to be a stone with small gaps around it in the otherwise perfectly constructed labyrinth.

A single stone, not even out of place, just with tiny gaps so that the stone could be depressed, located above us on the ceiling near one corner of the hallway…

If the stone was really the way through the labyrinth and into the boss room, it was easy to see why any other adventurer without a sense as specific as echo sight would have passed right by it.

It was almost like the dungeon had built itself upon the technicality that it needed to have a way into the boss room, but it didn’t actually want people to ever find it.

I could have simply used an enhanced jump, but that would have taken the fun out of it and cost me additional stamina that I might have needed in order to fight the boss, or so I reasoned with myself as I spoke to Lein.

“Hey… kneel down so I can stand on your back for a second.”

“…What?”

“Kneel down so I can stand on your back for a second.”

“No, I heard you, I was just thinking I had heard wrong… why do you want to stand on my back again?”

“It’s to disable a trap. I need to touch something on the ceiling.”

He squinted at me as if finding something about my statement suspicious, debating in his head for a moment whether he would actually do it or not before he acquiesced.

“Alright… Just… One second.”

Lein pulled a dirty, well-worn cape from his item bag and flung it over his back, tying it around his neck.

“Okay, ready when you are.”

I wasn’t really sure why I was doing it, but it felt kind of good to mess with him.

He knelt down and I stepped onto his back, giving me just enough height to reach the ceiling where the loose stone was.

I reached my had out to the smooth stone and pressed it in, having to exert more effort than I was expecting to fully depress it.

‘Probably so that random adventurers don’t accidentally depress it with an AOE ability like a water wave or something…’

More evidence that the dungeon just plain didn’t want people to actually be able to enter the boss room.

CLACK, CLACK, CLACK… CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

The wall next to the stone lowered brick by brick, increasing in speed as it went into the floor until it thudded into the ground and revealed a small staircase leading up to a simple pair of wooden doors.

It was the most anticlimactic entrance for a boss room I had ever heard of.

“Huh…” Lein let out a short exclamation of surprise when he saw that I hadn’t, in fact, just been randomly asking to stand on his back.

“It’s clear,” I said, indicating that I wasn’t able to detect any traps through the staircase up to the boss room.

The stairway was even shorter than the labyrinth hallway had been, large enough for the two of us to squeeze uncomfortably side-by-side if we really wanted to. Instead, he followed after me, and we stopped at the small square platform at the top of the stairs before the boss door.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t told Lein that it was the boss door yet, but he had to know anyway, right?

“Are you ready?” I asked.

I was still near the top of my game. Lein had used a few spells through the labyrinth to disable traps, so I wasn’t sure how he was doing in terms of mana or if he needed to wait. He had already made it clear from the story earlier about his previous party that he was useless without mana, after all.

Lein just nodded at me, a serious light to his eyes. He probably viewed it as his chance to redeem himself. To him, it was more than a boss, and to me, it was my best chance at finding where the others had gone. If I was able to bring it back, I would be able to get closer to the all-powerful dragons, who could probably locate Rhil effortlessly.

After we both confirmed we were as ready as we could be for whatever lay beyond that doorway, I pushed open the door and we stepped through the dark entrance to the boss room.

Fwoosh!

Upon entering, braziers of fire set within the floor lit up two-by-two along a pathway headed through the cavernous boss room, sending bright, flickering firelight through the room that was supported by large stone pillars spaced in pairs at regular intervals down the stone walkway. It led to a raised dais at the end of the long, wide hallway of a boss room, where the boss itself sat on an intricately carved stone throne.

More than the distant boss, though, what caught my eye were the rows upon rows of crystal pillars between the edges of the walkway and the walls of the room, which were so high that the firelight didn’t even reach the ceiling.

Within each of the translucent, blue crystals, I could see elves, humans, dwarfs, and so on. Each was stuck in a different expression of terror or surprise. I could even see some dressed in the clothing of native earth, people who had been unfortunate enough to have spawned in dungeons or to have been frozen in time when the Merge had happened.

My eyes frantically flitted between the dozens of crystallized beings, searching for any sign of Rhil, my brother, my little sister, Bernard, or Velle.

It was a few seconds before the braziers finished lighting up towards the end of the throne, revealing a man sitting upon the throne. He was as large as an orc, with pale blue skin, crackling and glittering with crystals of ice, azure eyes that glowed through the dim firelight, and a spear of jagged ice lying along his lap.

—Ting!

[[Dungeon Boss Encountered

Defeat the Ice King!]]