This Was the Dungeon Boss?

The space above the stone platform suddenly swelled, sweeping through the entire room like a shock wave!

Everything left in the room shattered wherever it passed.

The shock wave swept over Lilia, breaking her straight into parts and sending her back to the coffin to respawn.

Lin Yuan withstood the impact, but wounds covered his body, and his durability dropped by nearly 2,000 points.

Including the durability he had lost from being stranded after leaving the coffin earlier, Lin Yuan now had less than 7,000 durability remaining.

Good thing this explosion wasn't too violent. I can take it.

Just as the thought surfaced in Lin Yuan's mind, he saw the space above the stone platform suddenly contract, then expand again.

Boom!

Another shock wave swept through the room. This time, even the walls shook on the verge of collapse.

And that wasn't the end of it!

The strange point in space above the stone platform was like a constantly beating heart.

Every expansion after a contraction produced a new shock wave.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Lilia had barely poked her head out of the coffin after respawning before she was torn into countless pieces again. In the end, she could only hunker down inside.

Lin Yuan also wanted to hide in the coffin, but the powerful force carried by the shock waves made it difficult to advance. He could only withstand them with his body.

Use Emergency Repair at maximum speed!

At that critical moment, Lin Yuan roared inwardly. The wood filling his warehouse began disappearing in piles, while his durability kept recovering and dropping like a roller coaster.

Meanwhile, the wood in his warehouse vanished rapidly. Before long, a little less than half was gone.

Fortunately, when Lin Yuan had sought trades in the regional channel earlier, the others hadn't had anything he wanted, so he had kept all his wood.

A few minutes later, the strange point in space gradually began contracting and expanding more gently.

This strange point in space was a spatial vortex formed when the space lost its support after Lin Yuan took away the Death Seed hidden in the spatial rift.

With time, this space would naturally settle down.

Boom.

After releasing one final, weak shock wave, the point in space finally fell still.

By then, the wood in Lin Yuan's warehouse had been reduced to one last pile, totaling just under 200 units.

And he had around 4,000 durability remaining.

Phew, thank goodness it's over. If it had gone on a little longer, I'd have been in real trouble.

Lin Yuan thought, still shaken.

Looks like I'd better stock up on more wood in the future. It really can save my life.

But wood takes up too much warehouse space. Even after the upgrade, my warehouse can only hold around 2,000 units if I fill it entirely with wood. At 20 durability restored per unit, that's roughly four lives.

It would be nice if there were wood that took up less space per unit, or wood that restored more durability.

Lin Yuan had already upgraded his warehouse once. He couldn't expand it again until he upgraded his hull.

After making a mental note of this, Lin Yuan looked around and frowned.

The explosive impacts had collapsed most of the room and blocked the exit.

And he remembered that before the room was destroyed, the passage outside had already collapsed and become blocked.

Trapped in here, huh... This is when Lilia comes in handy!

"Lilia, get out here and get to work! Dig us a way out!"

Without ceremony, Lin Yuan lifted the coffin lid, hauled the doll girl out, and lay down inside himself.

The coffin's recovery ability was particularly useful at a time like this.

"Bandit captain! Stealing a crew member's coffin!" Lilia protested loudly.

Unfortunately, her protests were ineffective. She could only shoulder her scythe and obediently get to work.

Fortunately, whatever her scythe was made of, it was extremely sturdy. It was also quite efficient when used as a hoe to dig.

"You spend more time in the coffin than I do now! Penniless captain, don't you have a coffin of your own?"

Lilia grumbled as she huffed and puffed, digging away.

She was only complaining without thinking, but her words got Lin Yuan thinking.

Lilia's coffin really is a treasure. Even a ship like me can fit inside. I wonder if it counts as a Transcendent Item, and what grade it is.

Come to think of it, the system considers me a ship, so I can't dive or go ashore.

Then... can I board other ships?

Don't tell me I can only keep swimming in the sea forever?

Anything but that!

Although he now had the Seashell Pump Propeller and could swim as fast as an ordinary ship, with no limits on his stamina, either.

Swimming himself was still a hassle. How could it compare to the comfort of other people lying on their ships, sunbathing and fishing?

More importantly, there was the matter of looking impressive.

As the players gradually grew stronger, when they met, one would be sailing a massive steel warship, another an ancient ghost ship.

Then they would turn and see the Lin Yuan splashing its way over...

Lin Yuan shuddered, reassuring himself that surely it wouldn't come to that.

Surely...

After an unknown amount of time, Lilia's cheer pulled Lin Yuan back to reality from his terrifying thoughts.

"I've dug through! That's me for you!"

"That fast? Wasn't that passage pretty long?" Somewhat surprised, Lin Yuan immediately shared Lilia's vision through their mental link.

It turned out that Lilia hadn't dug out along the way they had come. Instead, she had dug diagonally upward and emerged through the ground.

The passage outside the laboratory was long, but the distance to the ground above was much shorter.

"Not bad, Lilia. You actually thought of that."

"Huh? Thought of what?"

"Digging a path up to the surface instead of digging out along the way we came in. You did that because you knew the room wasn't very deep underground, right?"

"Huh? Wasn't I... just supposed to pick a direction and dig?"

"..." Lin Yuan held his forehead. He had still given Lilia too much credit.

He shouldn't have expected anything from this thing's intelligence.

"Forget it. Where are we now? Why does it look like we're still inside a cave?"

Lin Yuan turned his shared view and discovered that although the surroundings were spacious, they were actually inside an enormous cavern.

There also seemed to be a pile of things beneath the distant cavern wall.

Dragging the coffin containing Lin Yuan, Lilia approached and discovered several skeletons lying on the ground around an old-fashioned treasure chest that looked quite weathered.

As Lilia approached, the skeletons seemed to awaken. They picked up the cutlasses beside them and rose from the ground.

After the Undead Tree and the laboratory crisis, these Skeleton Pirates brandishing their cutlasses menacingly looked particularly adorable and friendly.

Without any need for Lin Yuan to act, Lilia charged forward with practiced ease, swinging her scythe. Before long, she had cut down all the skeletons.

One of the Skeleton Pirates wore an extravagantly shaped hat and was taller and larger than the ordinary skeletons. It seemed to be a more formidable Skeleton Pirate.

It did indeed have some strength. It took several attacks from Lilia without falling, and even severed one of her arms and one of her legs with its counterattacks.

In terms of offense and defense, it was actually slightly stronger than Lilia.

Unfortunately, against unlimited respawns, that little advantage was nowhere near enough.

From the moment the tall skeleton failed to kill Lilia in a single blow, the outcome of the battle had been decided.

Soon, this skeleton also fell beneath Lilia's scythe.

Just then, the system notification sounded in Lin Yuan's mind.

[Player "Lin Yuan" has successfully killed the boss of the "Skull Island" dungeon, "Skeleton Pirate Captain," and cleared the dungeon.]

[Clear reward "Paradise Sea Chart" has been issued.]

[This dungeon has a fixed duration. Please wait patiently until the dungeon's 24-hour duration has elapsed.]

As Lin Yuan listened to the system notifications, his eyes widened further and further.

A meme about military industry workers from his previous life's Rabbit nation involuntarily flashed through his mind-

"You're telling me this weak-as-hell skeleton was actually the dungeon boss?"

"Then what the hell did I kill earlier?"