The team of five progressed down the cave tunnel, Natalie taking the lead. She set a slow pace, and not only because of the slippery footing, the faintly glowing blue moss ging to floor and walls, but rather, the potential of traps.

  While the first level of the dungeon wasn’t likely to include lethal ones, maiming was still oable, the healing of which would use up Liz’s valuable mana pool. And when it came to the dungeon, the operative words were “usually” and “probably”. The dungeon couldn’t be quantified, broken down into tidy, rigidly sistent rules. Trends, yes. But stants, no.

  By the standards of most delvers, Natalie aeam were well prepared. Geared up, in an archetypal team position, and eae of the brightest of a geion, they could take fort in the fact that as far as preparatio, few matched them. While brutal, the odds of death were, all things sidered, low. Not this high up in the dungeon, and in a full squad, with potions on standby.

  Still, those rational discimers made, Natalie was anxious.

  And, of course, excited. She’d always been a girl who itched for a fight. And for the first time in a while, she’d found a flict that mattered in an immediate sense. Beyond just fighting for her life, and her allies, she was fighting for direct progression, and less relevantly, but still important, resources. Her success or failure mattered in a way it rarely did. Not spars, but real fights, with real rewards.

  They trekked along, staying silent and alert. Even Liz had found an uncharacteristic seriousness. It was strange ohough, Natalie figured, not ued. For all Liz’s exuberant attitude, she’d grown up as a Beaumon. She khe risks of dunge. Half her family were career delvers, and not smalltime ones.

  Turning a er, their first enter came into sight.

  Natalie held a hand up, stilling her group. As the vanguard, she’d seen the monster first. She peered down the cave, dimming the glowing device fixed to her shoulders so that it didn’t draw the monster’s attention.

  [Lesser Kobold - Lv. 1]

  It was a squat, rather unpleasant looking creature, humanoid, with red skin. Scales decorated its elbows and lower limbs, with thick, cwed, animalistic feet. A reptilian, sinister face peered down at something on the cave floor, the creature hunched over and scratg the ground with i.

  Natalie fed the information back to her team. The bae had paused around the er, so they hadn’t seen it. “Level one kobold with a spear. No armor.”

  “Just one?” Jordan asked.

  “Just one.”

  “Easy start,” Sofia said.

  Natalie didn’t disagree, though their instruight have chided them for being dismissive. Natalie didn’t io treat the enter with an undue ck of respect, but a single kobold wasn’t much of a gehreat, not for a talented, well-prepared team of five.

  Still, their instructors had drilled in the importance of treating each fight as if it were life or death. And it was, teically, for all it would take something going catastrophically wrong to even be seriously injured, much less a team wipe. With Liz, and healing potions on standby, even a serious hit could be, if not brushed off, at least easily handled.

  Natalie appraised the creature in closer detail. A spear. She appreciated her ret practice against Elliot. Though she doubted the kobold would have simir training to a Teudent, familiarity in general against a on was useful. She’d have to py around its reach. And, Natalie knew, trary to its diminutive stature, the monster would be viciously fast, powerful, and above all else, blood-thirsty.

  Not to mention the ever-present wildcard: skills. As a level o had one or two at most, possibly none, aainly nothing overwhelming. But the problem was that she couldn’t know what. She could make guesses, drawing on knowledge from various monster encyclopedias, but that could be as dangerous as going in blind. Expectations were fine, but not assumptions. Assumptions got people killed.

  “Ready, then?” Natalie asked. She itched to get started. Her first dungeon enter.

  When she received no disagreements, Natalie o herself, then rolled her hammer around in her grip.

  “Start us off?” Natalie asked Ana.

  From this distance—far enough the kobold hadn’t noticed them—nding a spell with any sort of accuracy would be difficult. But what kind of delvers would they be if they didn’t take a free shot, however minimal the be?

  Likewise, Jordan drew her bow and nocked an arrow. Her css seemed poised to be melee focused, but she’d trained in archery, and, again, free shots were free shots.

  Jordan took aim, and Ana held her crystal ball up, pg a hand on the gss and drawing on her mana. Shadowy tendrils swirled around the orb, and the kobold stiffened, sensing the vibrating energy that came with magic. Liz leveled her staff toward Natalie, and that invigorating suffusion of her buffing spell washed through her.

  The kobold spun, fag them. Its eyes widened as it took in the group, then shrieked, the grating noise boung off the walls of the cave tunnel. It sprinted forward, scrambling across slippery moss-covered floor in its eagerness.

  Even knowing what the monster’s rea would be, the ferocity of it caught Natalie off guard. There was unadulterated hatred in the scream. Why did it want them dead so badly? As simple as beiorial? Puzzling over why fabrications of the dungeon behaved as they did robably pointless.

  Plus, she had bigger things to worry about.

  Halfway to them, a bck-feathered arrow sprouted from the creature’s neck. It didn’t falter. The kobold ripped the projectile out then tossed it aside, flesh reknitting in an instant. Jordan’s beautiful aim had cost the creature HP, but killing even a level one monster wasn’t as simple as a well-pced shot.

  Nor a well pced spell. A shadow tendril whipped out, jured from Ana’s crystal ball, sshing across the creature. It gruhe weight behind the blow slowing it much more than Jordan’s arrow had, but still only briefly.

  Then, finally, it arrived, and Natalie could participate.

  With Natalie leading the pack, the farthest forward, the kobold was happy to focus on her. A spear jabbed out, lightning fast, whiatalie narrowly blocked with her shield. Even with Liz’s emp buff reinf her, the movement jarred her shoulder, the spear’s metal tip smming against her shield hard enough to make her grunt and nearly lose her footing—even well-braced as she’d been.

  The dungeon wasn’t inteo be tackled alone, as that first exge demonstrated. Well trained, reinforced with a healer’s emp buff, and braced for the hit, and still the level one kobold had nearly toppled her over with the strength of its first attack.

  The kobold yas spear back, dragging her shield with it, having embedded into the wood. Natalie grunted, again, with exertion as she yanked back, freeing herself. Again, she struggled to keep her footing.

  It was strong. More than she’d expected, for all she’d been warned. Even simple level one monsters were meant to be handled by eeams.

  As the tank, it was her job to keep the kobold’s attention, and preferably not to get cut to pieces while doing so. Sihe monster was faster and strohan her, and had supernaturally enhanced onry, it wasn’t the easiest task. Natalie’s focus wouldn’t be on the offehat was Jordan, Sofia, and Ana’s task. Natalie just o survive a bloodthirsty, enraged assault.

  She found herself grinning, heart pounding hard enough she felt it in her ears. The kobold traded another blow with her, whiced off her shield, and a window opened, whiatalie seized, swiping her hammer forward. The kobold sidestepped it easily. Natalie’s defensive p making it difficult to seaningful hits against someone so much faster than her. But the maneuver opened an opportunity for the rest of the team.

  Sofia edged in from the kobold’s fnk, sg a ssh against its thigh. The kobold growled and spun on her, jabbing a spear forward, but Sofia had already danced away. Natalie knew first hand how impossible she was to hit.

  Jordan and Ana snuck their own attacks in, but Natalie focused on herself; trag everyone was impossible, and she had a role to fill. With the kobold’s attention briefly diverted, she went on the offensive—if only for a quick shield bash, then a sed swipe of her hammer. It succeeded in drawing the kobold’s attention back, but not in doing much damage.

  The following minute was a blur of the sort Natalie had plenty of experieh. She took several hits. That was close to iable as the team’s tank, and the reason healers were a standard fixture for any team.

  Natalie didn’t feel the injuries, doused in adrenaline as she was. Most were gng scrapes from the kobold’s spear, Natalie not managing to escape in time. The wounds knitted over in an instant, infused with a warm glow—Liz’s tributions.

  If the kobold nded a thrust into a more important pce—say, her chest—Natalie’s HP would rear up and block the blow entirely, uhe minimal prote it offered her arms and legs. That would demolish her reserves, though, and, as a level one, she probably only had one ‘lethal save’ of HP, even as a defense oriented css. Ued deaths did happen down in the dungeon, even to Teudents.

  The reminder, oddly, excited her.

  Natalie found opportunities, here and there, te forward a her own blows in, but for the most part, she pyed defensively. Moment by moment, each of her team’s attacks scraping down the kobold’s impressive health reserves, the moarted to fg. That indicator shown, the three damage dealers watched with razor focus for the ce to nd the lethal blow. Natalie halfway wished she could, too, but as fast as the kobold was tiring, so was she. Hard to matething so powerful, vicious, and swift without exhausting herself.

  Jordan found the opportunity. Her dagger sank into the throat of the kobold, and as fast as the bde had darted in, it withdrew, spraying green blood across Natalie’s fad against the cave wall. That was gross, but in the middle of a fight, it barely registered.

  For a few moments, the kobold choked, hand grasping at its throat. Uh Jordan’s arrow, at the start of the fight, it didn’t have the HP t the blow off.

  Unceremoniously, it stumbled a step, choking, then colpsed.

  Sofia stepped in and stabbed it through the skull. Natalie doubted the creature was faking, and its death was immi without the stab, but pying it safe was always a good policy.

  Its brain punctured, the thrashing stilled, then, spear, clothing, body and all, it evaporated in bck smoke.

  Whe strands had spiraled away and dissipated, five panting girls surrouhe defeated creature. In the ter of where the kobold had been ying, a shining white orb coalesced, elevated a few inches off the ground, where its chest had been.

  Then, fully maed, the monster core ked to the floor, rolling aossy stone.