Ball of Nothing

Zero had just taken care of Penelope's children when he heard scuttling coming from the upper floors of the dungeon. He waited in the dark for them to arrive because they sounded very near. However, about ten minutes later, the movement stopped and everything became deathly still.

"What's going on?" he wondered. Whoever they were, they refused to move from their spot so Zero consulted the map.

The red dots appeared to be camping nearby and out of sight for some reason as if trying to lay an ambush. Zero saw that most of the dots were small but there was one big dot at the back of the mall ones.

Was this going to be the second kind of dungeon master he had to defeat? Zero wanted to get over and done with everything. He was only here to find the desert poppy, dinner was waiting for him outside.

"How should we approach this?" he called for a strategic meeting with his assistants.

"Let's go for an ambush in return," Wii suggested. "We can take the boss down by surprise in one hit using absorption and deal with the underlings easily."

Mii begged to differ. "What if this boss was a useful monster that Zero wants to capture? We should take time to spy on it first and appraise its abilities. If the dungeons were more dangerous with the lower levels, this boss monster should be relatively weaker than Terror Night Spider Queen Penelope."

Zero thought about it and looked at Lily who suggested that they left the monsters alone and peacefully and try searching for the desert poppy instead seeing as these monsters weren't willing to go any lower to meet Zero.

With the suggestions, Zero considered the best course of action. Indeed, Lily was right. If they were not causing trouble for him, he should mind his own business and get out of the dungeon as soon as he could. Truen and Bob weren't very happy that he tricked them to leave them outside the dungeon. He had to also return in time for dinner.

"However, if I leave them there, who knows if they would attack me from behind in a pincer formation, cutting my escape route?" Zero reasoned. "I don't know the lower floor boss but I don't think I can afford any distractions later. Do we have a good layout of this dungeon floor yet?" he asked Mii who checked her mini-map.

"Yes, we have sufficient information. In fact, there is a good hiding spot for you to take them down with ranged attacks if you want. We can spy on the boss to appraise his abilities to make better arrangements for the attack."

"We'll go with your plan then," he told Mii and assigned tasks for everyone. While the strawcherry fairy assisted Zero with the battle plan, Wii and Lily were to make preparations and contact the villagers to inform them about Penelope's arrival. They had a good number of spider corpses for sale too and Lily was in charge of making the transfer from inventory to Zoe for dismantling and safekeeping. Zero wanted Monoman to sell the dismantled corpses as his first official task after setting up New Moon Village.

After crawling through small cracks in the dungeon, Zero finally got into the good spot that Mii proposed. There were many ghoul scorpions and Zero noticed how weak they looked compared to the brave spiders. The spiders were swift and ferocious but these ghoul scorpions looked sluggish and brainless.

The biggest red dot on the map belonged to the boss scorpion monster who looked freaky. It had three heads without eyes on the two extra heads but they had mouths. The tail was poised high and coiled, ready to strike but Zero couldn't see very well in the dark. Somehow, he thought that the barbed tail looked slightly deformed. Those pincers looked like huge scissors and Zero didn't know if he should pity the monster for having such a weird appearance. Still, the half rotting stench filled the air and reminded Zero that these were undead monsters who felt no pain in battle.

"Appraise!" he whispered and scanned the status of the Scorpion boss.

Name: Ghoul Scorpion Emperor

Title: The Cowardly Emperor

Level: 65

Attack: B

Speed: D

Defence: C

Health: A

Ability:

- Tail Whip: A surprisingly agile tail with a flail instead of a barb that can bash skulls in.

- Sleeping Breath: Spews out sleeping gas that makes anyone who breathed it fall asleep within seconds.

- False Start: A low-tier illusion to confuse adventurers of an attack

Deadpanning at the lame title and the lack of an individual name, Zero dismissed the Scorpion Boss monster as just another target to wipe out.

"There's no need to spend so much time dealing with the cowardly emperor who doesn't even have a name," he told Mii who agreed.

"If you wanted a summon, they had to be at least as strong-willed and determined as Penelope. She might be tricky to work with but she has the right mindset. Even if she died, she wouldn't give up and her love for her children was commendable."

With a mutual agreement that the Scorpion Emperor didn't deserve the same kind of treatment Queen Penelope received, Zero decided to go for the easiest way to end this battle. Since ghoul corpses sold for a handsome profit to necromancers and alchemists, Zero told Wii to organise his inventory a little.

"One Cowardly Emperor coming up and a few hundred ghoul scorpions. Tell Zoe to prepare for that too and ask if Merlin is interested in them. He gets priority orders at a discounted rate if he helps to maintain my garden golems."

"Roger that," the eggplant fairy chimed and got to work.

Zero climbed to the highest spot he could and targeted the safest spot to land on. Wii's job was to time the absorption of the monsters once Zero made contact with them. He didn't want to waste more time and energy than necessary battling it out with them if he wasn't going to tame them. All he wanted was their corpse and they fetched a better prince when they were intact.

"Ready?" he asked and his mindscape assistants gave him the green light.

Zero swooped down from the ceiling like a ninja and landed on the Cowardly Emperor's back. Before anyone could react, he was gone. The inventory space filled up quickly and Zero worked efficiently, moving from one scorpion to the next, catching stragglers who were trying to escape.

"Oh no you don't," he told them. "You're going to fetch a handsome profit so don't even think about it."

Fear filled up the dungeon and desperate screams could be heard from the bottom-most floor as the ricochet off the bedrocks. The final dungeon general awaited with unease. First, Penelope, now, the Scorpion Emperor. Who exactly was this adventurer?