The next parts of the dungeon were swarm after swarm. Kiresula was tired, cranky and out of magic. Her Fortitude still helped her through these battles. The path led through some dirt tunnels, which then led to a natural cave made out of strange dark rocks. In that cave, the boss waited.

The boss was a giant rat, about as tall as her navel and longer than Kiresula was tall with a tail with spikes. It hissed and squeaked, then rushed out at the group. Kiresula struck the animal with Flash Strikes, stunning it. Mayana rushed behind it and severed the tail with a series of strikes at it. Kju destabilised it when it tried to run with momentary shifts. But he had picked up a shelf and used that to bash the beast when he realised how little it cared as it was stable on 4 legs and after the first rush wisened up to his tricks and walked fast instead of running.

He bashed the creature's head while Kiresula used [Flash Strike]s on the extremities. The new attack, that she gained when she was power-levelled up, momentarily stunned the creature's muscles when she hit close to them. Her strikes stunned the creature's legs for moments, which made it hard for it to move. It still got some bites in and Kiresula knew that her arms and legs were scratched from not always evading on time, but she kept at it. Then the gigantic rat collapsed, and after a few [Fire Strike]s and good, old fashioned bonks onto the head and the giant rat disintegrated into magic and dissolved.

The group fell to the ground, exhausted and spent. At the same time, Kiresula noticed an exit door appearing at the back wall of the cave with her elemental awareness. As a more magical dungeon feature, it had no real associated element so it seemed to be a hole in the cave wall. After a few moments, in which they caught their breath, Kiresula motioned to the others: "I know, you are tired and so am I, but my [Illuminate] is about to run out. Can we try to make it out before it does?"

Mayana immediately got up and put her hand onto the door. She opened a small cavity on it and received something that looked like a bar of soap, then stepped outside into the rest area. Kju did the same and received bandages. Kiresula then clambered to her feet, just as the spell expired. She didn't need to see and so she slowly walked to the door, listening to what noises the dungeon made. She realised that now that they were not fighting, the dungeon was surprisingly loud. There was rustling, water dropping, a stream rushing in the distance and growling as well as howling. She felt uneasy about that. Normally dungeons were not so loud, so populated when cleared. Sure, the Savage Dungeon had birds chirping and plants rustling when cleared, but it lacked the noises of large predators or even large prey animals. This dungeon however seemed to have them or their noises around. This was not technically wrong, it was just a sign of a dungeon making things much more complicated for itself. This dungeon was old enough to still use runes from pre-Imperial times. It made no sense that it would be inefficient. She shrugged, opened the section of the door that contained the loot (after taking embarrassingly long to find it), took something out she could not see and then opened the door.

Stepping into the rest area, she shuddered. Her botanical awareness immediately warned her of poisonous plants. She looked outside of the window and realised that the place didn't remain the same. The plants were medicinal only in very tiny doses and otherwise poisonous. Clearing the dungeon had changed the rest area. This also generally didn't change between runs. "Okay, we might have a problem! Make sure to remain on the yellowed grass when going to the outhouse. A lot outside is quite poisonous."

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Mayana looked at her: "You only noticed now? You didn't mind that last time."

Kiresula nodded: "It changed! The plants were medicinal before but now, the garden is poisonous unless in very small doses. There are different plants in there, except that they look very similar. My biological awareness noticed the difference even though my eyes didn't."

Kju looked surprised: "Do dungeons normally do that?"

Mayana said: "Dungeons normally don't. But then, they normally don't instance the rest areas either."

Kiresula said: "I feel the dungeon does quite a few things strangely, but maybe we are not seeing things correctly. However, I suggest we clean and bandage our wounds and have a rest. We need to restore our stamina and magic."

Kju responded: "If applicable."

Kiresula asked: "Yeah, If applicable, of course. We are deep in conventional magic after all. Did you do anything that used magic, not stamina?"

Kju said: "Of course. I had to scope out the enemies and target their weak points. I won't need to do that for the next trips unless we encounter different enemies."

Mayana raised an eyebrow: "You can do that? That's really useful."

Kju nodded: "To a point. But you were already doing what I thought was best when I got the results."

Kiresula smiled: "That sounds good. I get the feeling that we are going to see many new enemies when we try a new run. I heard a lot of animal noises in that dungeon. Animals that weren't rats." She conjured up a bubble that the others used to clean their wounds. Then she cleaned herself in its water. The group bandaged their wounds and then, they laid down on the bed or ground and rested.

Kju woke up in bed on his own, while Mayana and Kiresula had used the floor as a mattress and the warmth of each other to make the night bearable. As she woke up, she realised that nothing in the rest area had changed: The light was still in the same position in the sky, the plants had remained unchanged, as if in static. This was good for Kiresula as it seemed to imply that the rest area didn't change in their presence. After a good breakfast, the group planned their next run, but they couldn't immediately start: Kiresula needed to top up her magic and when resting and sleeping, she barely was able to do so. With their not being any broken magic, her ambient recovery had slowed to a crawl. She had to do Serenity while the others planned how to handle the huge crowds of rats and afterwards had a round or two of a card game.

When she finally was able to recover, she asked for one thing: "I would like to go first. I would like to try something to prevent the swarm… I am not sure if it works, but I want to try."

Mayana looked at her cautiously: "We don't have healing items in here. Be careful!"

Kiresula nodded and then stepped forward. She summoned a [Bubble] and kept it in her hands. She moved down the stairs and then walked towards the pile of vegetables. As soon as the rat jumped onto her, she caught it in the bubble. The creature hit her chest, bit into her clothing and chest. She winced in pain, for a few moments realised that she made a huge mistake, then moved the Bubble at the creature. The rat scratched and swam upwards. As it did so, she moved the watery structure and the contained rat away from her. The rat reached the surface of the water, shook itself, squeaked and oriented itself towards the stairs upwards.

Kiresula walked into that direction. As she turned around, she realised that the rat pointed upwards. Following the gaze, she realised there was a trapdoor in the ceiling. Kiresula pointed to the ceiling: "Hey, Mayana, Kju, I think I found out where to go!"