If there was ever a worse way to start your week than crawling through a half-collapsed dungeon with a broken flashlight and a mop that smelled suspiciously like rat piss, I hadn't found it yet.
"Well," I muttered to myself, squinting into the flickering dark. "At least the monsters are already dead. That's something."
The walls around me pulsed with leftover dungeon mana, still humming faintly even after the Guild's sweep team had cleared the place out earlier that morning. Magic always lingered like that. Bitter and sharp, like burnt ozone soaked into stone.
This was supposed to be a simple cleanup. Easy pay. No danger. Sweep up whatever corrupted gunk was left behind, salvage anything the hunters missed, and get out before the residual magic fried your kidneys. Or your brain. Or both.
But then, of course, the floor caved in.
Because of course it did.
"AH—!"
The scream tore from my throat as the stone beneath my feet cracked with all the subtlety of an earthquake. I scrambled backward—too late. The ground vanished beneath me, and I dropped like a sack of bricks, limbs flailing, mop flying from my hand.
I landed on my back with a bone-rattling thud in a lower chamber, blinking stars out of my eyes. Dust filled my lungs. Somewhere above me, a chunk of ceiling collapsed and took out what was left of the hole I'd fallen through.
Silence.
I coughed, sat up, and immediately regretted it. My ribs ached, my elbow was bleeding, and my back felt like I'd been kissed by a particularly hateful boulder.
"Brilliant," I wheezed. "Absolutely brilliant."
I reached for my flashlight—miraculously intact—and flicked it on. The beam cut across the chamber.
That's when I saw it.
Tall. Twisted. Cloaked in dungeon fog. Its skeletal body shimmered with veins of violet light, and its face—if you could call it that—was a cracked porcelain mask, grinning from ear to ear.
A boss.
Still alive.
Still very, very real.
And staring right at me.
My heart did the sensible thing and tried to escape my chest.
"Oh, no no no no—"
The boss moved. Fast. Too fast. A streak of bone and black flame, surging toward me with claws raised and a shriek that split the air like a banshee on a bad day.
I did the only thing any reasonable person in my position would do:
I screamed again.
And then I ran.
The chamber blurred as I sprinted between fallen pillars and crumbled archways, my flashlight bouncing wildly in one hand. I had no weapons. No class. No system menu. I wasn't even supposed to be here. I was a janitor!
"WHY IS THERE STILL A BOSS IN HERE?!" I shouted to no one, because no one sane would be within five hundred meters of this cursed pit.
I dove behind a broken altar just as the boss's claw slashed through the space where my head had been. Stone cracked and flew, and I rolled onto my stomach, panting.
Okay. Think. Think, Arjun. Use your brain. What did the Guild briefing say about residual bosses?
They didn't. Because this wasn't supposed to happen!
The boss roared again—high and warbling, like a violin being tortured. It was circling me now, slow, deliberate. The mask split slightly down the middle, revealing twin tongues of flame where its mouth should be.
No weapons. No allies. No way out.
Except…
My eyes flicked up.
The chandelier.
A massive, rusted iron thing still dangling from the ceiling on frayed chains. A miracle it hadn't fallen yet. Directly above the boss.
And just behind it…
My mop.
Still lodged against a broken lever. A stupid, old, unreliable maintenance lever I'd once used to prank a Guild intern by dropping fake blood on his helmet.
I could reach it.
Probably.
Definitely not.
But I didn't have a choice.
I bolted.
The boss shrieked and lunged again, but I rolled beneath its swipe, skidding on the dust-slick floor. My fingers closed around the mop, yanked the lever—
—and the ceiling groaned.
The chandelier dropped like divine retribution.
The boss looked up at the worst possible moment.
And then it was light and sound and bone and fire and one final, echoing screech before the whole thing collapsed in a cloud of ancient dust.
Silence.
Again.
I coughed. Sat up. Blinked.
The boss was gone.
Crushed beneath a thousand pounds of enchanted iron and poorly-maintained stonework.
I stared at the wreckage, mop still clutched in my scraped hands.
"…What."
Then the air shifted.
A ripple of pressure rolled out from the boss's remains, thick and shimmering. My mop disintegrated in my grip. My flashlight burst. The runes in the chamber lit up one by one, glowing gold.
And then—
INHERITANCE OF THE BROKEN CROWN: ACTIVATED.
A searing light burst from my chest. I screamed as a mark burned itself into my skin—circular, with jagged lines like broken thrones and crown-like spikes radiating outward. It pulsed once.
Then again.
Then everything went dark.
I woke up two hours later in a field hospital, surrounded by confused Guild staff, a suspiciously attractive officer taking notes, and a medical mage muttering something about "unclassifiable signatures."
So yeah.
That's how I accidentally killed a dungeon boss, unlocked a forgotten mythic class, and jump-started a magical inheritance meant for a long-dead king.
With a mop.
I didn't even get paid for the cleanup.