As she composed herself, Lyrhea realized that maybe, just maybe, she might stand a chance in this battle to the death against a horde of angry woodland critters. The arena was, to put it mildly, cramped, but it was only cramped because of several factors that turned the odds less in the favor of her foes and more towards a neutral middle ground.

First off, there were far too many enemy combatants here than there should have been. Perhaps out of fear or out of some other emotion, the power that controlled and managed this Dungeon had sent more lifeforms than the arena could easily hold to this place.

This was an inconvenience for the enemy that was made by its own hand was compounded by the terrain that the arena was filled with. Sure, it had been a mostly empty space and it still was, but that was only in the immediate center, and on the outskirts, the places where someone who looked in would not immediately view, the situation was different.

Though a path of cleared space made a walkway between the two closed sets of doors, everything else was covered in an environment that heavily favored anyone or anything that could move fast, with great agility, and that had excellent maneuverability. Lyrhea, of course, excelled in all three of those places.

The only downside was the presence of a few smaller, less well-armored versions of the wolf-bear creatures that she had experienced the displeasure of facing beforehand, but while that was worrying for her, she felt that maybe they were more bark than bite. After all, if memory served, the Forest Guardian, which she assumed was the core of the Dungeon, had seen its Level (which she still could not tell if provided any benefit whatsoever) dropped to 5 from whatever number that was no doubt much higher than it had previously sported.

She felt no change back then when her own Level was forcibly adjusted, but maybe these other things had different reactions to such changes. She hoped that they would, as she would be very dead very soon if it was not the case.

She made the first move just before the horde of angry forest monsters made theirs, and she moved to get among the broken bits of architecture and random flora that were closest to her current position. With a burst of speed that surprised even herself, Lyrhea made her way to a tree and scaled it before launching herself to another and then another before trying to vanish inside the foliage.

Her movements were not as secret as she would have liked, and the foe quickly caught her scent, no doubt aided by some kind of Dungeon-focused omniscience that the will controlling the Dungeon almost certainly possessed if the various fictions she had dallied in were to be believed. Only about of absentmindedness on the part of the Dungeon Core had saved her from this arena before, and she would more than likely not be granted that unintended help again.

The flora did provide some cover and did obfuscate her moves a slight amount, though, and she was beginning to make a good use of that. As a crow the size of a turkey flew at Lyrhea’s side from underneath her, it failed to notice that despite the fact that she was moving forward she was also gripping one of the nearby branches rather tightly.

Though the plant matter did not endure her change in velocity and direction too well, it lasted long enough for Lyrhea to redirect herself and both dodge the giant crow and also deliver a kick to it, snapping its neck and sending it flying off like a feathered soccer ball and into another of its kind. As she flew between the branches, Lyrhea put her semi-human form to good use and twisted herself in a way that no normal human would ever consider doing.

The combination of her speed, movement, and the rotation of her body was enough to let her slip between branches that normally would have turned her into a broken mess, though she did end up having her nose broken as she skimmed past a nearby tree a bit too close for comfort. Although, getting a broken nose was a better result than having your bones broken upon impacting a number of branches and a tree truck, so it wasn’t that bad.

A pair of blue-furred squirrels were less lucky, and they ended up face-planting themselves against a branch, only to rebound off it with a crunch and find themselves a bit too far up above the ground with nothing beneath them but air and the ground and a lack of sense enough to try and get ready for the landing. Sadly for the fluffy buddies, they did not stick the landing, they did not survive, they did not pass Go, and they did not collect $200.

By the time that they had hit the ground, though, Lyrhea had already moved on. She had no prehensile tail to use as a fifth limb, but she was making like a monkey and turning the arboreal ruins into a playground. Despite it being their home turf, the Dungeon Defenders were not putting on a good show, and while she had not taken down many of them Lyrhea was indeed making a mockery of their efforts.

That was what the Primordial Serpent wanted, after all, right? She was getting her time to shine, and she was running circles around her foes, all while delivering a few good cuts and jabs here and there to further humiliate her enemy.

[“Stop playing around and kill them already!”] the Serpent-God demanded at long last.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Lyrhea retorted as she spun in the air and slit the throat of a green deer before sliding across the ground and somersaulting over a fallen pillar. “You wanted a show, didn’t you? You wanted to humiliate your rivals, right?”

Lyrhea flipped over another obstacle and grabbed a lanky, long-limbed monkey with pink fur by the head and pivoted in the air by using the monkey’s head and neck as a knob. The neck snapped, leaving the creature's face locked in a pained expression as Lyrhea’s feet landed on the side of a tree before launching her off of it and over a reaching wolf-bear.

She left another gash on the wolf-bear’s back as she went, too, all before tumbling away and underneath another green deer while delivering a pair of slashes to the beast’s own version of its Achilles Tendons, which sent the animal to the ground as she passed from its underside. Another bound saw her scale up a tilted stone wall and through an open window before she turned and struck a pose, her arms stretched out to the side and a smile on her face.

“Are you not entertained, my serpentine master?”

She was met with a slow clap from behind, and as she turned around to see who or what was responsible she was met with a sucker punch to the face that landed her on her ass. She looked up, and to her shock and, in some ways, amusement and horror, she saw a man who made the late Robin Williams’ portrayal of that guy from Jumanji look rather prim, proper, and well dressed.

“You cannot beat the Chosen of a God, snake!” the hairy, disheveled and utterly naked man yelled before lunging at Lyrhea. Lyrhea, though, had collected herself and me the naked man’s lunge with the only response that a woman should truly give to a naked, disheveled, hairy man rushing at them.

She lifted one leg, and she met the crazed Chosen’s unprotected willy with a swift and crushing kick, before leaping a the quickly-prone man herself and shoving her knives into his heart and jugular.

[“Yes.”] the voice of the Primordial Serpent added with mirth as Lyrhea furiously stabbed the enemy Chosen. [“Yes I am. And that is why you should be careful and just go for the kill, by the way. Good show, though, but you’re not yet done.”]

“I know!” Lyrhea yelled back as she retrieved her now thoroughly bloodied knives from the mangled corpse and flicked them clean. She didn’t have long to wait for more foes to arrive, though, and she was back to the old grind once again.