A Salamander, but Mighty

Tamara obviously had some reservations about entering the dungeons, her level – as Velen had confirmed to her – was too low and the level of doubts she had regarding Luchael's reliability in combat was over nine thousand. The leporan had to insist a lot and almost bow to her and begged in order to convince her to enter the backpack to reach one of the two dungeons located inside Stanbroodge together.

One was grade E-, the other was grade D+, they were aiming for the former of the two. The Sleepy Swamp dungeon had its entrance in one of the squares of Stanbroodge, in a place where there was always some preacher or adventurer, the first ones looking for new believers to inform about the imminent - it is always imminent - end of the world or adventurers who entered, exited and, in less rosy cases, organized themselves to recover the bodies of fallen adventurers... it was a profitable activity, especially if there were family members who left a request on the quest board for their loved ones' corpses.

They wouldn't have ended up that way!

Or would have they?

“Listen to me, you scoundrels!” Suddenly exclaimed a preacher who, judging by his clothing, must have been a beggar. Beggar by day, preacher by night, and Luchael had decided to take Tamara out of her room only as darkness fell, "while you indulge in your greed and hunger for glory, the Nightmare Tyrant is rising from the darkness!"

This story again? These guys exist on Earth too... Tamara thought with a pang of pain in her stomach. Only a few days had passed and the sense of the loss of her entire life - as well as her human body - was still a fresh memory, but in this world magic is real, the gods exist and conspire with each other as if they were Greek deities... that there is a grain of truth even in the prophecies? she asked to herself with the voice of her mind.

“That being of pure darkness… must… must be destroyed now! As long as it still crawls under the branches of dark forests! As long as it still has to live off Tala's scraps!” The preacher continued to shout, at least until someone from nearby houses threw a stool at him, causing him to groan and fall to the ground, where he continued to whimper his prophecy while in pain.

I'll have to find a way to explain to Luchael that I want to know more. I don't want to find myself having to battle the literal Satan of this world.

“Poor man,” Luchael said. Judging by the movements of the backpack and the noises, Tamara guessed that the leporan was leaving at least a coin for the preacher, “good. Now, let's climb down.”

The movements that Tamara perceived were those of someone going down a flight of stairs; a few minutes later she heard Luchael taking off his backpack and an instant later the dark, completely black eyes of the salamander monster could focus on a ceiling illuminated by a play of green and blue lights.

“Velen?” Tamara hissed in her monstrous tongue. When there was no classic response to her call, she felt as alone and in danger as when she was slipping into that tunnel of darkness. Velen had not only saved her, she had also protected her as a guardian angel would have done and not only that: she was the only creature with whom Tamara could communicate.

“Come on, come out…” Luchael encouraged her, smiling at her and leading the way, probably unable to understand that the monster he was carrying in his backpack had all the intelligence and emotions of any human being. “It's safe here, I've made sure to minimize the risks of crossing paths with other adventurers and major threats.”

Tamara stretched out one paw and placed it outside the backpack, the other three paws following soon after. Sleepy Swamp resembled a catacomb, with small puddles of water that glowed with green and blue light, feeding on small moss-colored drops that fell from the stone ceilings. Velen had said that the dungeons had their own day and night cycle… what time of day were they? Was that dim light the maximum or minimum visibility? for some reason, the fact that there was light even though there wasn't even a sky didn't surprise Tamara.

She really wanted to ask Luchael more things.

“We won't go down that far, our mission for today is only to recover a rodamuse skin and nothing else, we have to… um…” Luchael smiled fearfully, “test our strength, we don't want to take unnecessary risks, right?”

Tamara sighed in relief, at least the leporan's fearful nature was making him extremely cautious.

She had no idea what a rodamuse was and Luchael hadn't thought it necessary to give her a description, somehow their relationship was more similar to that between a dog and its owner rather than that between two teammates. They had to wander around for quite a while before finding what they were looking for; apparently the dungeons didn't continuously regenerate the monsters that were killed inside them but had a specific moment of the day in which they reappeared. The salamander monster had no precedent for drawing deductions, but if Luchael had estimated that this was the time when they would find the least adventurers and fewer threats, one of the possible conclusions was that all the adventurers for the day had already explored the dungeon...

And committed their daily genocide.

Maybe it's better to say monstercide? A funny thought... a genocide of monsters, can something that can be respawned from dungeons be driven to extinction?

They explored different areas of the dungeon until Luchael's sudden excitement informed her that they had found the right monster: the rodamuse was a sort of cross between a rat and a raccoon that was three times her size, reaching above the leporan's knees; it had a mangy coat from which black quills emerged and its ferocious eyes expressed the blind desire to satisfy its hunger and survive at any cost typical of monsters. Tamara focused her concentration on the monster.

[Rodamuse – Lv: 6]

Luchael unsheathed his rapier at the same time the rodamuse lunged at him. There was still space to execute the typical leporan attack, he brought one foot back, charged the lunge by bending his arm and twisting his hip and threw himself forward in a gymnast's movement that pierced the rodamuse but which seemed to only make it more pissed off than before.

“Lizard monster? Help?" Luchael said as he had backed away in the meantime. His legs were visibly shaking.

If he abandons me and runs away, I'm done for, Tamara thought pragmatically, but I can't even leave him here to fight alone!

Tamara intercepted the rodamuse by opening her triangular mouth and trying to find a space to bite; Once she managed not to hurt herself with the spines that protruded from the monster's back and sides, she proceeded to use her small claws to cause as many lacerations as possible, superficial things that thanks to [Scratch I] gained just a little bit of bite and more depth.

As she had expected, Tamara mostly had to fend for herself against the monster, who did not spare itself in its homicidal fury by replying to Tamara's bite with one of its own and which made her let out a shrill cry of pain, the two rolled over and bit and clawed each others like two small children would - maybe - have done. The girl reincarnated as a salamander monster had intelligence on her side, but intelligence wasn't that much of an asset when you were getting punched and kicked by someone. The rodamuse eventually managed to get rid of her by crushing her between its spine-filled body and one of the dungeon walls.

SYSTEM: ATTENTION, CRITICAL HEALTH!

I'm going to die! Tamara began to think, feeling a sensation that, this time, was more familiar to her since it was the second time she was dying. The salamander monster tried to see what Luchael was doing, who hadn't run away, but was pressed with his back against a wall, shaking like a leaf in the wind. I don't want to die...

The moment the rodamuse tried to bite her neck again, Tamara used her last bit of energy to duck under it and throw it into the air. Call her a bastard if you want, but she threw it in a way that ended its arc with it falling next to Luchael.

The rodamuse landed hard on its side, “Skiiik!” It exclaimed angrily at Tamara, that was unable to fight any longer and collapsed on the ground... that would have been the end, and it hadn't been only because Luchael used the opportunity to stab the monster by surprise, who made one last squeak before falling to the ground, dead.

SYSTEM: DING! You went up [1] level! [+2] Traits points to place, [+1] Feat available.

SYSTEM: DING! You went up [1] level! [+2] Traits points to place.

Tamara raised her head to look at the leporan: he had abandoned his rapier in the monster's corpse and had slipped to sit on the ground with his legs open and a hot puddle spreading on the floor and staining his skirt and stockings in some parts. They had won, but he seemed so terrified by the experience that Tamara found herself thinking that this first dungeon adventure would have ended up being his last.

“L-let's take the rodamuse away, today we'll ha-have lunch in a di-di-dignified way,” Luchael told her, but he didn't even make a move to get up, “gi-give me just one more moment…”

And he started hyperventilating.

Tamara closed her eyes, the wounds from the fight were more critical than she had imagined and she found herself falling asleep against her will; any other considerations would have to wait until she woke up again.

What a great start...