Linda left the dungeon holding only her adventurer’s pouch and the new staff she had been gifted. 

 

Thanks to the staff she had an easier time fighting the few wild beasts that attacked her in the forest. 

 

Linda had to admit the staff was a notice above what she was used to, her magic shields formed twice as fast and took even less mana to muster up. 

 

After three days of wandering through the Alki forest Linda had finally made it back to the nearest Adventurers Guild residence.

 

When Linda stepped inside the hall room of the adventurers Guild none of the other adventurers paid her any attention despite her tattered state. Truthfully it was a common site to see adventurers return from quests half beaten and hardly breathing. 

 

Linda ignored the group of adventures who were circling the notice board and walked up to the reception area.

 

The receptionist was a slender female with brown hair falling to her shoulders.

 

“I need to make a report!”

 Linda who had finally mustered the words shouted. 

 

—

 

A few hours had passed and Linda finally let out a sigh of relief as she sat back inside the private room of the branch guild masters’ quarters. 

 

The guild master was a middle aged man with a bald head that paced around the room as he listened to Linda’s report.

 

“It seems you’ve ran into the creature. However it is completely normal for dungeons to be taken over by new monsters periodically.”

 

The branch guild master rubbed his chin as he continued.

 

“My condolences for your teammates, but thanks to their sacrifice we can now raise the grade of the dungeon, this will prevent this from reoccurring.”

 

Raising the grade of a dungeon would automatically prevent adventures of lower levels from exploring it for their own safety. 

 

Very rarely would the adventurers guild launch a full assault against a dungeon, this was only done against particularly dangerous dungeons since dungeons had a symbiotic economic relationship to surrounding towns. 

 

Even with the constant threat of a possible monster wave, if the guild took it upon itself to conquer a dungeon they would face the backlash of the surrounding villages more so the nobles in charge. 

 

Dungeons were known to be resources for precious  gems, metals and monster parts which all supported the income of the governing nobles. 

 

The monster waves were considered tolerable side losses more so since these waves could provide benefits not only in terms of monster parts but also experience for their armies. 

 

The guildmaster contemplated for a while.

 

Before the Marvel Dungeon was considered very beginner friendly and so long as one did not wander too close to the dungeon boss even iron plate adventures could escape easily. 

 

The guildmaster had noticed a rise in the number of deaths within the few months and wanted to raise the level of the dungeon to a sliver dungeon; however the backlash he received from the ruling lord quickly shot down that petition. Furthermore, since the increase was so minute, he could not invoke his right as the guildmaster. 

 

However now that not only an entire team of silver ranked adventurers but also a gold rank adventurer had been wiped out he was well within his powers to raise the level of the dungeon.

 

After careful consideration the guildmaster turned to his assistance and spoke.

 

“With immediate effect the Marvel dungeon will be raised to a silver ranked dungeon with the dungeon boss being a Gold ranked dungeon Boss.”

 

The assistance bowed her head and quickly left to implement the guildmaster’s orders.

 

Despite how sure he sounded when giving the order the guildmaster still had his reservations.

 

While higher ranked dungeons were known to give better rewards there were a few drawbacks with upgrading the difficulty rating a dungeon. 

 

The most obvious was that if too many resources were extracted at once the dungeon would collapse and if the monsters were killed faster than they could respawn the dungeon would become barren regardless of time. 

 

Both of these results would leave the nobles very unhappy. But the safety of the adventures was his main priority. 

 

A guildmaster’s job was to maintain balance not only for the nobles and the economy but also to maintain the strength of the adventures. He had to admit doing this now might force the weaker adventurers to leave for a better training ground while some adventurous bunch might even ignore the grading since they were already familiar with the dungeon. 

 

Regardless, the guildmaster still had to set the precedent and let it be known. 

 

But there was another thing that the guildmaster had just recollected, 

 

‘Did she say the Dungeon Boss actually spared her and gave her a gift for healing him?’

 

The guildmaster rubbed his chin and tried to understand the intentions of the Boss.

 

A Dungeon Boss was known to be nothing short of a wild beast only good for parts and training so why would one gain intelligence only a few days after usurping the title?

 

Was it a creature that had lived for an extended period of time and gained intelligence gradually or was it something completely new?

 

These actions were simply unheard of and the guildmaster couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation.

The guildmaster slumped down into his chair and sighed.

 

He had a look of resignation and decided to leave this small detail to faith and time for it to decide what it meant. 

 

The guildmaster looked at the ceiling and smirked in pity,

 

“Right when I was only a month away from my retirement, this new boss pops up?

The Gods must surely be mocking me.”