Valera gasped, the heat of the air straining her lungs, as the cute little snake snapped at the ball of flame. She might have made a squeal at the sight, judging from Doran’s stern glance, but what else could she do?

The thing was just so serious, but it was tiny. The combination was adorable - like watching a puffed-up toddler try to take on the bigger kids. You had to root for him, at least a little.

The little monster swallowed another ball of flame, snapping at it like it was some terrifying predator.

She found herself caught between two states. On one hand, it was extremely entertaining. On the other, it was eating their source of light.

Valera had no desire to be nearly blind while near a Dungeon Core. The others seemed to have similar concerns. The air seemed to flex and bend as the flames disappeared, forming shadows across the cavern.

“Should we be stopping the little guy?” Kala asked. “If he eats too many of those, we’d be stuck with the mana-light of our gear. I don’t know about you guys, but that would let monsters get far closer than I’m entirely comfortable with.”

She began to step forward, aiming to pick up the troublesome snake. Yet, just as she was about to reach him, the little monster twined its way up a nearby stalagmite with surprising speed. He neared the tip, a good ten feet above the floor, before gripping tightly onto the stone and stretching out a considerable distance into the air - relative to his own size, anyway. The little cutie couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half long.

He snapped his jaws, devouring another ball of flame that had floated too close. In their own sluggish way, they seemed to be reacting to his predations, drifting backwards and upwards. Yet still, the little snake followed, managing to stretch along a cluster of stalagmites until he reached another.

Valera was beginning to suspect that the flames weren’t just the result of the nearby Dungeon Core’s aspect. At first, she had assumed they were like the fields of altered time near the snake’s own Core, little pockets of distorted space that reflected the Core’s aspect - in this case, fire. The strange distortions around the flames had seemed to prove that theory, the way that the light bent and flexed appearing similar to the time-fields that she had seen last time. That might not have been the case. The floating balls of flame moved slowly and consistently, not like an altered field of space at all.

More like something alive.

More like something afraid.

The ball of flame began to pulse and lash out, sending little tendrils of fire at the tiny snake that left minor burns atop its scales. That, too, he consumed. The snake ignored it, closing in and swallowing the rebellious fire.

Then, something changed.

A light began to grow at the tiny Core that rested upon his head, the deep blue shifting into an incandescent azure. The little snake fell, dropping from its perch on the stalagmite to the glossy obsidian of the floor below.

“Oh no!” Valera gasped, worried at the sight of the fall.

The Core pulsed over and over, sending little sparks of blue-white fire down the tiny monster’s scales. Those same scales mutated, turning from a rather rough texture to a glossy finish rather like the obsidian of the floors.

The air around the little snake began to shift and distort, ever so slightly.

A moment later, the scales mutated again. The air distorted even more heavily, warping and bending toward the tiny monster’s scales, before he turned to look towards the remaining balls of flame, a hunger reflected in his beady little eyes.

“Look at that,” Erik said, still keeping fairly quiet. They were near a Dungeon Core, after all. There was no telling what might be listening. Valera pulled her eyes from the snake, turning towards the group’s shielder. The large man was pointing at a spot on the ground, slightly further into the cavern. She saw it, too. A section of the floor that had become clear of the distortion created by the floating flames. Though they had seemed to provide light by which to see, it had been deceptive.

Instead, they had been hiding the group’s vision and sensation of what lay below, altering the light and heat around them to conceal it.

A tiny swathe of glowing lava flowed in the place of what had previously looked to be solid ground, running across the center of the cavern. When they had first entered, the flames were scattered in places far closer to the ground, distorting and bending the light around them lightly. Now, many of them had floated upwards, as if running away from the cute little predator that wished to consume them.

In fact, they were running away. What had just happened had confirmed it - as did the little snake’s eagerness in chasing them. Though she liked to imagine that it was just fascinated by the light of the flames, she knew that it was fascinated by something else.

Power.

The flames were not just flames. They were minions of the Dungeon Core - and that meant they served a purpose beyond providing light. The little snake managed to reach another, climbing a nearby stalagmite and swallowing it whole, while the little flames continued their retreat.

As they drifted upwards, more and more of the cavern was revealed for what it was, freed from the tiny flames’ efforts to conceal it. A flow of lava drifted downwards from the left hand corner of the cavern, spilling down from a high alcove before flooding across a wide furrow in the obsidian floor. It cut across the room in a diagonal slash, creating a dangerous boundary that - had it remained hidden by the distortions of the floating flames - might have proven someone’s death.

Only the little monster’s predatory instincts had saved them.

Valera gave Doran, who had argued against keeping the potentially dangerous snake alive, a smug look at that. “I guess he was useful, huh?” She laughed.

Doran just sighed, gesturing to Kala. “You think you can get rid of some of those things? We need to make sure there’s not anything else they’re hiding before we move forward.”

The archer nodded, nocking an arrow and pulling the draw. A few moments later, a number of the little flames had been pierced by an arrow, sending them clattering against the boundaries of the cavern. As the light around them died, Valera was finally able to see them for what they were - tiny little fairy creatures with wings of brilliant gossamer. It was a wonder that Kala was able to hit them at all, given their size.

She had always been impressed by the archer’s ability.

The light-bending creatures drifted higher, pushed up against the ceiling by Kala’s threat, and revealed the cavern in full.

Fortunately, there were no remaining threats beyond the brilliantly glowing lava. Yet, even that would have provided some difficulty, stretched across the breadth of the cavern as it was, had they not been as well-trained as they were.

Countless hours had honed their muscles and minds; consumption of trace amounts of mana-filled water from birth had reinforced their bodies further. It was a delicate process, as the human body had to become accustomed to the mana over time - too much at once early on was a death sentence. And yet, it was necessary for survival.

The world was different than it had once been, ever since the First Core began to flood it with mana.

Dangerous. Deadly, even.

Preparation was necessary to face it and survive.

Kala knelt, unpacking and assembling a special sort of arrow from the belt at her hip, twining a cord made of the silk of a Webweaver, a species of captured monster that Orken had imported from a neighboring city and kept relatively well-controlled, onto a loop at its end.

The arrowhead glowed in the light, infused heavily with the mana of Orken’s captive Earth aspect Core, strengthened beyond reason. A split second after being shot, it pierced through the stone ceiling, the hooks in its design forcing it to hold on tight.

Erik tugged on the cord, checking its hold, before swinging across the stream of lava. As the heaviest among them, if the arrow came loose, it would do so now.

Fortunately, it held.

Valera tried to pick up the little snake, hoping to carry him across with her, but it just hissed at her. It was even more disappointing when he climbed onto Kala’s shoulder unbidden, twining himself around her upper arm.

She couldn’t help but feel a sting of jealousy.

Eventually, they all made it across safely. Kala worked to tie the cord’s end onto a nearby stalagmite, securing it so that they could use it again if needed on their way back. Meanwhile, the snake slithered across the obsidian stone, devouring the strange flame-fairies that Kala had shot down.

By the time that it had finished, its scales had become even glossier, and the distortion of light around it increased again.

It was growing stronger.

It was a known fact that Ascended creatures were able to become more powerful by consuming the bodies of their foes, allowing them to mutate and gain a trait of that same foe. It was much of the reason that Ascended minions were referred to as boss monsters.

Simply put, they were the bosses of their Dungeons. Any others, strong as they were, couldn’t compare to the potential strength that an Ascended minion could gain. There were some limitations - and ones that likely had a heavy impact on her favorite little snake - in that the Ascended minion had to be large enough to actually consume its foes, and that there appeared to be a certain quantity eaten required to absorb another monster’s trait.

Humanity was thankful for that.

There were some truly dangerous monsters, deeper in the World Dungeon. Orken, Valera’s own city, managed to avoid many of them due to its position near the edge of the World Dungeon’s current reach. Yet, the further in that one went, the more dangerous things became. Dungeon Cores became more common and, with them, the neverending wars between the various Dungeon Cores. The defeated monsters spread themselves haphazardly throughout the World Dungeon’s depths, most doomed to die. And yet, some of them found their place in the world, chancing upon a weak Dungeon Core and Ascending.

Becoming behemoth bosses with no Core to defend.

Instead, they simply ate anything and everything that crossed their path.

In a way, the little snake was the same - a voracious predator with enormous potential, constrained by its size for now. If anything, that made it cuter in Valera’s eyes.

Occasionally, humanity had managed to tame weaker Dungeon monsters - though only those that had already lost their Dungeon Cores. Scholars theorized that there was some compulsion that Dungeon Cores created in their minions, as none had ever been tamed while the Dungeon Core still remained to be defended.

Valera wasn’t sure if an Ascended beast could ever be truly safe, but she wanted to try. She hadn’t lied when she told Doran that it could prove a great boon to humanity in the future. Mostly, though, her reasons were simple.

She looked over at the tiny creature bobbing its head and hissing in happiness at the sensation of becoming stronger.

It was just so damn cute.