If Solomon could barely make out the signs of movement at the mouth of the alley after the system had boosted his vision, nobody else would be able to see anything. For a moment he had simply braced himself for a fight, focusing on keeping himself alive, until he remembered that he had other people to worry about as well.

"Look alive," he called out. "There's monsters at the end of the alley."

There was a bit of shuffling around. Everyone had been a little out of sorts after the teleportation. After a moment, the front liners were back out in front, shields at the ready.

They were in place just in time for a swarm of blurry shapes to come leaping at them from the tops of the surrounding walls. One came for Solomon. He had his hatchet ready to chop it out of the air and slam it into the ground. He stepped firmly on the center of the thing while he prepared to finish it off. That finally gave him a good look at what turned out to be the bigger, meaner cousin of the raccoon he had killed outside of his parents' house.

He brought his axe down once, then another time just to make sure. The monster's head came off of its shoulders, putting it beyond the system's ability to heal. Nothing else attacked him right away, so he was able to take a moment to look around.

Julie was handling herself just fine. She had one raccoon spitted on her spear and was fending off another. Solomon was glad he had partnered up with someone so competent.

Otherwise, the battle was a mess. Solomon saw more panicky flailing than calm focus on combat. The monsters they were facing were the size of small dogs, shifty and quick, and seemed to have a knack for finding weak points. As Solomon watched, a raccoon bit clean through the sneakers one unfortunate man was wearing. His curses blended it to the general chorus of screaming and yelling that accompanied the battle as he tried to hop forward and take revenge.

Another fighter took several stumbling steps backward before falling down near Solomon. He had his hands around the neck of a raccoon that was snapping at his face, but couldn't do anything about the claws carving bloody trails into the side of his neck. Solomon took a running start and punted the monster straight in the rib cage, sending it flying. It carried over their defensive line, such as it was, and tripped up another charging raccoon, keeping both of them out of the fight.

Taking another look, while things were chaotic, nobody else was on the ground. People were screaming, they were cursing, but they weren't dying. Solomon held out his hand and helped the fallen man get back to his feet. The cuts to his face had healed, but the blood was still there. He looked a little green around the gills, though Solomon couldn't tell if it was from poison or from nerves.

Either way, the right approach was the same. Solomon gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Let's kill the rest of 'em."

He got a shaky nod before the man charged into the fray, leading with his short spear. He ran past Solomon's sister as he aimed to skewer the leaders of the next wave of vermin.

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Tiffany was holding her own better than most. As Solomon watched she took a step back then pivoted, bringing her mace around. In another context, it might have been a beautiful golf swing. As it was, the spiked head of the weapon caught her target in the throat with a crunch. The follow through lifted it up into the air. She reversed the weapon and brought steel and raccoon down to crash into the ground together. When she pulled her weapon free, the body of the monster lay still.

The initial shock of the surprise attack had worn off. The people around him were finding their feet. The raccoons were vicious and twisted and almost certainly poisonous, but they weren't that big. As long as you kept your head and kept your feet, fighting them off wasn't impossible at all.

Solomon stepped in a few more times to help take the pressure off of people who were having trouble, but soon enough all that was left was a pile of dead monsters and a group of people who were tired, but still alive.

"All right," Solomon said, getting everyone's attention. "Welcome to the dungeon."

That prompted a desultory cheer and quite a bit of grumbling. Solomon also saw a few people reaching into their pockets for the antivenin. He hooked his hatchet to his belt and held up his hand.

"If this dungeon is anything like the last one I was in, we're gonna have to do this ten or twelve more times," he said. "I'd hold off on using the antivenin until you really have to."

Admittedly, the fight they'd just been through had seen more dead monsters than Solomon had racked up until he'd finished off the monkeys in the second part of the forest dungeon. From what Kanmi had told him, though, the dungeons scaled to the size of the number of people allowed to enter at once. It would be nice if this one fight was all there was to the outer area of the dungeon, but he was pretty sure they were going to have to work their way around the perimeter repeating their performance.

"Let's take a few minutes to rest up," he said. "Get some HP back and see if you can tough out the poison."

That got a general round of agreement, which was a relief. Solomon knew he was the group's best combatant, but there wasn't that much he could do if they outright refused to listen. If things kept going well, maybe they'd give him credit for the good advice.

People broke up into small groups to rest and talk about what had just happened. Solomon started working his way through the dead raccoons, disassembling them for parts. The first body left behind a core and a set of claws. Looking at them closely, there seemed to be little poison sacs attached at the base of the claws. Solomon made sure to put those in his inventory, not his pockets.

Julie had followed him as he started his work. Tiffany drifted over a moment later, together with Julie's brothers. Solomon glanced up at them after he disassembled the next body.

"Don't worry, we'll all get a share of the value," he said. "I'm just holding onto them for now."

"Obviously," Tiffany said, hitting his arm. "But what are you doing to make the bodies disappear?"

Solomon blinked. He'd filled her in on most of his combat abilities, but he must not have covered everything. "It's a utility ability. You'll probably get something like it if you ever fill out a non-combat grid."

Tiffany took a skeptical look around the dingy, blood-spattered alley. Solomon could tell what she was thinking. It would be a while before she could spare grid points on anything that wasn't related to combat.