The world is filled with deadly monsters and beasts. Slimes are one of the most varied monster types in existence as they can be found nearly everywhere and can develop unique abilities even surprising experienced adventurers.

Except for a few special ones, Slimes have a relatively weak physique and are very slow. Their impressive regenerative abilities allow them to survive even the loss of most of their body mass. But thinking of slimes as weak and harmless pushing-blobs is a fatal mistake.

Slimes are magic-type monsters and their magic can be as destructive and deadly as the breath of an arcane wyvern. Parred with their high regeneration these slimes can be compared to nearly unkillable archmages that fling meteors at you without moving an inch. But be rest assured that these magical death slimes are nonetheless relatively rare and the general intelligence of slimes is far from high. Also, slimes are known to condense cores more frequently than other monsters.

In the end, we can only say that Slimes are great sources of wealth but shouldn´t be treated lightly as they can be a real danger. The general chance of survival is nonetheless quite high.

As she walked towards her target Lena noticed the detailed carvings on the walls. The impressive hall of stone was covered with pictures of kings, heroes battling large dragons, and detailed representations of treasures. The large stone hall was absent of any greenery, not a single mushroom or leaf could be seen. Only perfectly carved cold gray stone. The only real structure inside the hall behind the entrance were two rows of giant pillars stretching up to the ceiling.

The entire place felt different from the world outside, not just the higher mana density but the entire place. It felt ancient. The large amounts of dust only proved it.

The large hall behind the gate ended in a much smaller door. It was closed and much to her surprise she had to push it open with quite a bit of effort. The labyrinth must have more than one ending and lead to several entrances as this one hadn´t been used for a long time. The fact that slimes couldn´t roar also indicated that there must be another entrance. Or there was a monster hiding in the labyrinth and she just hadn´t met it. Either way, Lena already had a clear objective. After all, a Dungeon was much more interesting than an unknown roar.

When she stepped through the heavy stone door Lena finally lay her eyes on the large monster she had tracked, and much to her joy, it wasn´t a slime. Twenty meters behind the door stood an enormous humanoid figure. It was covered with deep gray, stone-like skin. Its arms were long sharp spikes the size of Lena that seemed to be made of metal and grew right out of its shoulders. Its bat-like face ended in a prolonged snout with rows of long sharp teeth that dripped with some purple substance. As it turned her way and watched her with its glowing yellow eyes she tried to gauge its strengths.

She didn´t know what kind of beast it was but the amount of mana radiating from its core identified it as a rank four monster. It should be easy to beat but the rank one slimes had shown Lena that she should be more cautious. She wasn´t going to underestimate it. After all the mana inside of cores was only an indicator of the potential a monster had. In the end, many other factors influenced the real strengths a monster possessed.

The beast let out a deep growl and its eyes glinted with rage and bloodlust before it attacked. Lena decided to stay defensive at first and dodged the large metal spike that pierced the ground where she had stood a second before. The ground shook and the beast let out a furious screech before it swung its other arm at her. Her swords flashed and she met the beast's attack with her own. The impact of the giant spike-like arm was tremendous and despite her own strengths, Lena was flung backward. Thankfully she managed to stay on her feet and focused on the creature again.

"My turn." she said with a hidden grin and rushed the beast.

Within a few steps, she was in front of the giant creature and brought down her blades onto the scaled gray skin of her enemy. Her blades cut deep into the beast's flesh and left bleeding cuts all over his chest and legs before she jumped back and out of its reach again. Within this short encounter, Lena gained a lot of knowledge. First and foremost she learned that the edged spike-like arms of the creature were genuinely made of a metal-like material that her blades couldn´t cut. Even with a blade skill, she wasn´t sure if it was possible without damaging her weapons.

The second thing she learned was that the creature wasn´t skilled in close combat. It wasn´t slow nor weak but against her quick blades, its giant arms were simply not ideal. Finally, she learned that it had great regeneration abilities, her cuts were already healing at a rapid pace. Eshen had taught her how important it was to gain knowledge over one's enemies in order to achieve victory. Within a few seconds, she had gained valuable information that would help her defeat her enemy. She smiled and attacked again.

This time however the creature was prepared, and its arms began to glow. Dozens of sharp gray spikes formed around the monster and flew at her with impressive speed. But such attacks were useless against her. Lena forced her way through the deadly rain of metal, only deflecting the spikes that targeted her head and letting the others harmlessly bounce off of her armor. Unhindered by the attacks she reached her target, jumped up, and slashed at the creature's eyes. With a deep howling sound the creature staggered back and swung his arms blindly in her direction.

Lena dodged the blind attacks with ease and pushed forward, not wanting to give the creature the chance to heal again. With a swift and precise attack, she sliced off one of its unprotected legs and watched as the giant beast fell on its back. Unrelenting, she dodged another wild swing of the creature's arm and brought her swords down on the beast´s chest. With a single elegant motion, she embedded her blades deep into its heart, and the creature went limp.

"Well, that was fun I think." She said with a satisfied smile under her mask.

She was about to pull out her swords from the beast's chest when she sensed the movement. Unable to react in time she only saw the creature's yellow eyes brimming with rage before its jaws closed around her throat. She felt the large teeth bite deep into her skin and the burning pain that followed. In a wild panic, she repeatedly smashed her armored fist into the creature's skull in order to break free from its maw. The pain only intensified as she tried to scream and continued to smash her fists into the beast's skull. In a battle of instincts and rage, she tried to free herself, to escape the searing pain. Finally, the giant jaws loosened and she dropped on the hard stone floor.

Lena lay on the ground, her throat a bloody mess, her pained screams only ending in a bloody gurgling noise. After a few minutes, the pain eventually resided and her throat regenerated again.

When she finally stood up again Lena felt weak, she absentmindedly touched her healed throat as she thought about what had happened. The sensation of the beast´s poison eating away at her mana. The feeling of having her very self, her mana being damaged and burned. When she had felt the veins of mana inside her body being destroyed it had reminded her of the agony after her death. It was the first time that she had been directly hurt after becoming undead.

Eshen had warned her that she wasn´t unkillable, that she could be hurt, but until now nothing had actually done it. When the slime had dented in her skull it hadn´t damaged her mana, the mana veins inside her skull had simply been displaced. She hadn´t even realized it. But the poison of this beast had actively burned and destroyed her mana. She looked down at the corpse beside her, the beast still had her blades deep inside of its chest. But apparently, it hadn´t been enough to kill it. Luckily she had managed to crush his skull and free herself in time. She shuddered.

Inside of the beast´s destroyed skull, she could feel the materialized core brimming with mana. At least she had gained another core. After retrieving the core and her swords she made her way deeper into the dungeon. Just because these monsters could really hurt her didn´t mean that she was going to back down.

"Let´s see what else hides in this dungeon." With that said she walked down the dark corridors of the dungeons.

As she made her way through the silent maze of cold stone Lena took her time to make sure her equipment didn´t suffer any fatal damages. But her armor held up well and only showed slight scratches. The creature's magic attack hadn´t even dented the black steel. Even if her body could grow back and normal attacks couldn´t really hurt her, the additional layer of protection provided her with an extra sense of security which she was grateful for. Lena would have to thank Eshen for this, and maybe even ask for some kind of helmet.

After a while, Lena turned into another identically barren corridor, only to see a small door at its end. It was open. Before she even reached the door she could smell the disgusting stench of blood. Slowly she made her way towards the door. The dust on the ground indicated that it had been opened recently. A quick glance into the room showed multiple corpses on the ground, monster corpses.

As she couldn´t detect any immediate threats she entered the small room. It was as empty as the rest of the dungeon which was a little disappointing. She walked over to one of the corpses. It was identical to the other monster she had defeated earlier only much smaller, and instead of giant spike-like arms, it had sharp claws that glinted like metal. Its skin had the same grey color and the small frame reminded Lena of a child. A child with deadly claws and poison but nonetheless.

In total Lena counted six dead monsters. Their bodies had been cleaved into bits by something big and sharp, but she could only identify one kind of wound and suspected that it was only a single attacker.

She was about to search for more when she heard a deep roar. It was the same that had led her into this dungeon only much closer. This time she wouldn´t let this monster escape she thought and rushed out of the room, and into the next dark corridor.

The sound of battle grew louder and after a sharp turn, she finally saw the monster that had led her to this place. But it wasn´t a monster. The nearly seven feet tall humanoid figure swung a crude greatsword and cleaved through a horde of small grey monsters with sharp claws. The creatures didn´t get the chance to pierce the fur-covered feet of their prey before the warrior sliced them apart.

Lena stood there and watched as the Beastman killed the last of the creatures. He only wore dark pants that seemed to be made of rough untreated animal hide, his entire body seemed to be covered by short brown fur. His face was slightly longer than that of a human which gave him an almost feral expression and his teeth were much longer and sharper than that of a human. As he looked over the carnage of corpses the large Beastman warrior finally saw her.

His golden eyes were warm and reflected the calculating warrior that lay behind. Lena could easily see the moving muscles under the warrior's short fur as he turned towards her. Studying her from head to toe his giant hands gripped his sword tighter before he spoke.

"Friend or foe?" he growled in a deep warm voice.

Lena was slightly thrown off by the aggressive stance of the warrior. As she had never seen a real Beastman she was excited to finally meet one and hadn´t really paid attention to how she looked to others. Her black armor tainted in blood and drawn swords didn´t really give off a friendly picture.

"Friend." She answered rapidly, unsure how to approach him. He seemed friendly but didn´t let his guard down either.

"Are you also exploring this dungeon?" she asked. Rapidly regretting such a useless question. His eyes seemed to look right through her mask and into her soul.

"I am here to prove myself in combat in order to claim my place as the head of my clan." he said in such a serious tone that it made her speechless for a moment.

"I assume that you are an adventurer searching for wealth and power, driven by human greed and selfishness." He asked with visible disgust. It sounded more like a statement. Lena wasn´t flattered by what he said, but she couldn´t fully contradict him either. Sure, she liked fighting and adventure, and power wasn´t really something she craved for. But she did like wealth and she knew what kind of fortune dungeons contained. Lena wanted treasures and who could blame her for that? After seventeen years of poverty, she had the right to desire something more, to be a little selfish. Also, she wasn´t human anymore so it was undead greed and selfishness at most.

"Why should I search for something I already have?" she answered, proud of her response. She didn´t need to admit her shortcomings after all.

The Beastman visibly relaxed and lowered his weapon as he grinned a terrifying grin underlining his nature even more. Lena sheeted her swords and walked towards him inspecting the dead monster corpses on the way. When she stood before him she began to see how tall he really was. His entire figure seemed to be made of thick dense muscles, and his barbaric-looking metal sword even if simple, was as large as Lena. After a quick mana sense, she could see that his entire body was relatively densely packed with mana, which indicated quite a bit of martial potential. At least for a non-monster. Compared to Eshen he still had a long way to go, but it was still respectable.

Lena didn´t know how exactly power was measured for humans and other non-monster races but she would classify him as a peak rank four monster in terms of strength.

"Do you have a name?" She asked.

After assessing her on his own, he answered.

"My clansmen call me Garrothon´ag, but you can call me Garro."

"Nice to meet you Garro, I´m Lena, adventurer. How about we explore this dungeon together? Two people are better than one after all." She said and smiled at him only to realize that he couldn´t see it due to her mask. She tried to ignore the sad strain in her core. She had to get used to the fact that other people couldn´t see her face.

"Another warrior is always welcome. Especially one as skilled as yourself." He said and stretched out a large hand with sharp claws. She shook his hand in return. When he saw her own metal claws he laughed.

"You're not like the other humans are you?" He said in a booming voice.

"Normally humans are too afraid to enter dungeons alone, they need entire groups the size of warbands to even enter such places. " He laughed. Lena couldn´t decide if she should be angry at how he spoke about humans or happy that he seemed to like her. She decided that she didn´t really care. He eyed her with his golden eyes and leaned his giant sword over his shoulder. His face was suddenly serious.

"We should get going, this place is quite vast and if we want to find the boss before dying of old age we should hurry up." with that he turned around and marched towards the next room.

Even if Lena didn´t have to fear old age she didn´t want to waste more time either. This dungeon was large and she wanted to reach nightfall as soon as possible. Preferably with a bit more funds. She smiled eagerly and followed the large warrior into the next stone hall.