Rieren figured that by the time she had attained Peak-Awakened, the dungeon must have already been overtaken by the Abyssals. Batcat had reported that, just as suspected, a large procession had followed the trail left by the first Abyssal. Most had been E-Grade Armistice Enforces, but there had apparently been some D-Grade Blightmanes in there too.

At least they hadn’t bothered Rieren while she had been cultivating. She could face them all when she reached the dungeon.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, the dungeon wasn’t filled with monsters. Well, not the Abyssal kind, at least.

Rieren had supposed that she would find it filled with Abyss Rents, just as the dungeon underneath Lionshard mountain had been. She could then take her time killing monsters and waiting for more to appear so she could kill them too. A simple, if potentially lengthy, way of earning herself a great deal of Credits.

Unlike her last dungeon experience, there was no pressing need for her to clear it or rid it of the Abyssal influence. Even if there had been some random Sect on this lonely mountain, she had no reason to give a monkey’s colourful behind about it.

Getting herself a good number of Credits came first.

But this dungeon had no wish to cooperate with the Abyssals. When Rieren got herself to the opening, she found a dreadful pile of Enforcer corpses left there to greet her.

“Hmm, I do not think this bodes well, Batcat,” she said.

Batcat agreed with a rustle from its perch on her hair.

They went in anyway. Rieren had to get to the chamber that held one of the old sword relics she needed for her Enchantment. Of course, reaching the Enchanter Profession would take a little time, but there was no point wasting the opportunity to prepare herself for it.

At first, the opening was no more than a cave, covered in dust and strung with old cobwebs. But it didn’t take long before Rieren’s boots were stepping from solid earth onto a tiled floor. More ceramic tiles surrounded her, covering the walls on either side. Most were plain white as she remembered, but there were some bearing strange mosaics here and there.

She grimaced when she saw what they depicted. Slimes.

Slimes and Oozes were the kinds of creatures she always had the most trouble dealing with. Just as had happened with the cloudy Anachron last week, her normal physical attacks, the ones she relied on most often, would have no effect on their gelatinous bodies.

At least these ones ought to allow her to use her Domain to take care of them without too much trouble. They were disgusting though, that was for sure.

Memories were slow to return. Maybe she could ask Batcat to pilfer around in her recollections and bring up the specifics about the dungeon her mind was failing to dredge up, but she supposed they would come to her automatically with time. She likely just had to get farther in.

There wasn’t any further evidence of monsters, at least not as far as Rieren could spot. Well, not living ones. She did find more corpses the deeper she went.

A few had obviously been killed by traps. Arrows sprouted off their bodies, large as ballista bolts. A few looked like they had been squashed by some giant stepping on them, though there was a strange, dragging trail coming off their crushed bodies and heading off in one direction. Yet more had half their bodies burned to ash.

All of that confirmed the various traps Rieren remembered. Or rather, the corpses helped her recall the traps she had faced in the previous timeline.

It didn’t take long for those traps to present themselves before Rieren. Of course, she wasn’t about to engage with any of them. Now that she was farther in, she could finally recall all the little nooks and crannies she had explored, all the hidden pathways and ticked-away shortcuts that made traversing the dungeon so much easier.

The first one appeared at her top right just before the first large chamber. It was a little ledge with an opening at the far end just before the large doorway into the chamber.

Rieren wasted no time climbing onto the ledge and then crawling into the opening. It was similar to a venting system adjacent to most buildings. Large enough to crawl through, but too small to do any movement other than forward or backward.

Which was exactly what those that had built it wanted. This was little more than a lure for unwary delvers to be killed by slimes. The opening was a narrow passage that would force them to crawl through, which would restrict the adventurer’s mobility and allow the slimes to suffocate and dissolve their prey with ease.

Thankfully, Rieren had her Domain to safeguard herself. All she had to do was summon her water and turn it into steam, letting it billow out into the narrow passageway. A second later, the sputtering shrieks and hisses confirmed that her steam had found its target. The slimes that had been lying in wait for were now retreating as fast as they could.

Batcat meowed from where it was crawling along just behind her.

“Yes, I have taken care of the monsters that sought to harm us,” Rieren said. “Now we can travel with ease. For a while.”

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The duct led her to a different tunnel. All the chambers and tunnels she had bypassed were filled with more slimes and more traps, none of which Rieren had any intention of confronting.

But that didn’t mean she was free.

Rieren recognized the passage the vent had opened onto. Like with the others, this one had a trap too. This dungeon was relentless in its efforts to confound and ensnare all those who invaded its borders.

She didn’t drop down onto the main tunnel floor just yet. As soon as she did, she would be activating another, deadly trap. However it needed to be activated, which meant she was going to have to find a way to get some sort of weight on the actual floor.

Rieren was considering trying to buy something from the System Shop, but before she could do so, Batcat squeezed past her and hopped down. That might have been dangerous had not the boulder that immediately began rolling down the tunnel from its dark end bypassed the little kitten harmlessly.

It was small enough that it could squeeze past the little gap between the wall and the rounded bottom edge of the boulder.

“I did not know you were heavy enough to activate it,” Rieren said as she climbed down to join Batcat.

The trap was activated by weight. To think just one little kitten was enough… unless it was manipulating its weight somehow. Rieren decided she had more important matters to worry about.

Batcat itself only shrugged.

Rieren hurried in the direction the boulder had gone. Once it went far enough, it would reverse course and hurtle back into the corridor it just rushed through. That meant it would crush Rieren while she tried to head in the original direction the boulder had come from. That wouldn’t do.

As such, she dashed after the giant boulder. It didn’t take long for her to find it. The rumbling was slowing down as the boulder prepared to turn around and head back the way it had come, which gave Rieren the opportunity she needed to take care of it.

It was a simple matter, really. All she had to do was get close enough to pull the entire boulder into her storage ring.

She was probably stretching the confines of her storage ring just a bit. Attempting to store anything else would have been impossible. But Rieren knew where she could dispose of the giant boulder so that it was longer a danger to her traversing the dungeon, so she wasn’t worried overmuch about it.

Back up the tunnel, she soon found herself approaching another chamber. There were more traps to evade, of course. Pressure plates activated a rain of boiling, burning oil that could only be avoided by shimmying along the wall. Arrows rushed out of murder holes but Rieren was well aware of their placement, so they flew past without ever touching her.

The chamber she had been heading towards held a different sort of obstacle, though not a surprising one. It was flooded with slimy liquid.

At the centre was a gleaming little pinprick.

Bait.

As soon as one entered, all the slimy fluid covering the floor would coagulate together to form a Great Slime. She’d had the unfortunate experience of encountering it in the last timeline. Rieren did not wish to repeat the incident.

There was an easy way to bypass it, though.

It just required her to find another duct near the edge of that chamber, climb through it, kill more slimes waiting to ambush her with her steam, before coming out onto a ledge that overlooked the main chamber. A quick slice with her sword along her arm let several droplets of blood fall into the dungeon’s main chamber below. This immediately summoned up the slime.

The Greater Slime, as its name purported, was enormous. If it was made of water, there would have been almost half as much as Rieren could have summoned through her Domain. Its shape kept shifting of course, but at its peak, it brushed the point where she was standing—nearly seven paces into the air. In effect, it was big enough to swallow a Life Stifler.

Nevertheless, there was a rather easy way of dealing with it. Rieren held out her hand and pulled out the giant boulder from her storage ring. As there was nothing to block its descent. The boulder crashed down onto the slime. It crushed right through its centre, destroying the misshapen heart in the middle of its bloblike body.

The monster’s shriek was far louder and ear-splitting than its smaller counterparts’ had been. Even Batcat cringed at the noise.

Rieren supposed that would draw the smaller slimes here, if they weren’t already nearby, but she could deal with those rather easily. Flood the room with her steam and they would all run—or, well, gelatinously move—away soon enough.

It turned out to be true. The other slimes did appear, though they seemed too shocked by the turn of events to do anything but stare.

No doubt it was quite surprising to see the very boulder they used to crush trespassers now killing their own leader.

Rieren wasted no time taking advantage of the opportunity. She summoned her Domain once more, turning the stormy water immediately into steam. The rain of hissing vapour fell upon the slimes with as much deadly effect as the boulder had upon the Greater Slime. Soon enough, they all ran away, screaming and shrieking in terror and pain.

Batcat hissed at the departing slimes.

“Yes, good riddance,” Rieren said.

She jumped down, Batcat following with its little wings flapping. The little glint in the centre of the chamber that was supposed to have been a lure was an intriguing little loot. It had been more interesting in her previous life, when things like these had been new and she had spent a great deal of time wondering if she could, or even ought, to make use of it.

Now… well, Rieren had a very clear idea of what exactly she needed, and a Necklace of Succession didn’t really fit within the scheme of things.

New Item!

The Necklace of Succession grants one the boon to raise the potency of each successive attack by 3% within a period of 2 seconds. All forms of attacks are applicable.

It was a powerful little talisman, no doubt. For those who intended to raise their power after successive attacks in a short period of time, it would no doubt be invaluable. But it was also rather situational.

If Rieren’s experiences had taught her one thing about battles, it was that battles rarely lasted too long to make a talisman like that a viable use. That two-second window would disappear very easily.

So, Rieren sold it and obtained a good chunk of Credits in the System Store. There was also the matter of the Beast Core dropped by the slime. The boulder she had thrown down had almost crushed it, but she pulled it into her storage ring, and then provided the Beast Core for Batcat to eat. That ought to strengthen the kitten’s abilities some more.

But the cat stopped eating all of a sudden as it went still. A heartbeat later, Rieren learned why.

Essence swirled somewhere in the depths of the dungeon. Within a moment, Rieren began hearing shouts and loud curses. A second later, two men tumbled into the chamber from the tunnel that Rieren had been about to take, the one that led further into the dungeon.

It was impossible to tell who was more surprised. Both men stared in shock at her, while Rieren returned it with no less of an uncouth expression on her face.

Then she found out what they had been running from. A loud roar erupted through the chamber, and a moment later, a Blightmane Lykan charged in.