Chapter 396: Entering The Abandoned Tropical Island Dungeon

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The sea stretched so far that there was no other land in sight. Waves rolled toward the beach, and beyond the sand, the trees grew close together, hiding most of what lay farther inland. Looking at it like this, Riven could almost understand why someone would want to come here for something other than conquering a dungeon. It was a pretty nice place, if he ignored everything they still had to deal with.

Of course, the three bosses made that a little difficult. Having their own territories meant they weren’t all roaming the same part of the island, but it also meant the group couldn’t assume the whole jungle was safe just because one area was clear. Riven looked toward the trees, thinking about the others already inside. The island might look welcoming from here, but he hadn’t come to admire the beach.

Due to its nature, it only had a single floor. Claymore and Frostbane had worked together with what appeared to be Japan’s Yokai Guild on this particular Gate, as it had immense value as a food production site.

Indeed, the seas were full of fishing boats constantly overfishing the population of fish monsters, which ranged from small creatures to enormous beasts. This, coupled with the two Mana Reactors and the single Spirit Reactor, had slowly begun to kill most of the life in the Dungeon.

The boats kept bringing in their catches, taking whatever they could pull out of the water. Small fish monsters were hauled up alongside larger ones, and even the enormous beasts were treated as something else to harvest. There was little chance for the population to recover when the fishing never stopped. And while the boats emptied the sea, the reactors were making things worse across the rest of the island.

Whatever remained had started mutating into weird, ugly forms. With half the jungle already gone, even the dungeon bosses had changed.

The jungle wasn’t much better off than the sea. Trees had disappeared across large stretches of land, leaving gaps where there should have been shade and cover. The creatures still living there had fewer places to hide, and many barely resembled what they had once been. Looking at them, it was hard to think of this as the same tropical island the Dungeon was supposed to be.

For security, though, Frostbane had sealed the bosses within designated areas using underground Spirit Formations fueled by the Spirit Reactor.

That kept the bosses from roaming freely, but it didn’t undo what had happened to them or the island. They were still there, confined to their assigned territories while the Spirit Reactor supplied power to the formations. The arrangement dealt with the danger they posed without doing anything about the damage around them. For Kagehisa’s group, those formations were another thing that had to be dealt with.

Kagehisa and his party destroyed every one of the Spirit Formations and, with the help of Riven’s Spirit Clone, defeated the bosses.

Of course, destroying the formations hadn’t meant the bosses would simply let themselves be defeated. The group still had to face them, and Riven’s Spirit Clone had helped Kagehisa and the others finish the job. Even after the damage to the Dungeon, these were still bosses. They couldn’t afford to treat them like ordinary monsters just because they had been kept sealed away for so long.

The three Dungeon Bosses of the Abandoned Tropical Island were the "Great Black Panther," the "Cannon Beak Toucan," and, lastly, the "Lizardman Shaman King," the leader of the island’s tribe of intelligent monsters.

The Panther, in particular, had been frustrating to fight. Whenever the group thought they had a chance to hit it, it slipped out of reach, forcing them to find it again. They had to watch the shadows as much as the beast itself. Losing track of it meant giving it a chance to strike and chasing after it carelessly was hardly a good idea either. They needed to catch it without leaving themselves open.

The Great Black Panther was a deadly foe, capable of shifting between shadows and unleashing powerful assassination attacks. It was fast enough to evade attacks easily or even teleport away entirely, so catching and taking it down had taken some time.

The Cannon Beak Toucan was a flying monster, a massive toucan the size of a truck. Its beak heated up and fired a powerful, explosive cannon blast at its foes, but its weight also made it slow. It ended up being far easier to defeat than the Panther once they disabled one of its wings.

The most troublesome part had been getting close enough to attack it. Whenever its beak began to glow, they had to move out of its way before it fired. Taking that blast head-on would have been a terrible idea, and the holes it left in the ground were enough to make that clear.

But once its wing was damaged, the monster could no longer stay in the air. It kept trying to lift itself, flapping its remaining wing and dragging its beak through the dirt, only to leave itself open to another attack. After that, they just had to avoid standing directly in front of it.

And lastly, the Lizardman Shaman King, unlike the two previous bosses, had been brainwashed along with his tribe. With a special Enslavement Collar around his neck, he was commanded and used by humans, while the lizardmen under his control were used as free labor to maintain the island.

That made dealing with him a lot more complicated. He wasn’t protecting the island because he wanted to, and neither were the lizardmen following his orders. Whoever had put that collar on him had turned an entire tribe into workers and guards without giving any of them a choice.

Simply defeating him wouldn’t necessarily solve that problem. The collar was still there, and nobody knew what would happen to the tribe if their king died while wearing it. They needed to find a way to stop him without killing him, which was much easier said than done when he was trying to stab anyone who approached.

And right now, Kagehisa was fighting him.

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