Fang liked this cave. It smelled of blood.

There was mana flowing out of it as well, but it didn't feel like sunshine. It felt… Colder. It refilled the tiny bit of sunshine he was missing, but then it ignored him, not expanding his pool. However, he was perfectly fine with that. After that mana had flowed into him, his entire pool of sunshine felt slightly colder. It was still definitely sunshine, still pleasant, but it felt just a little bit less his. It sat there in his pool, intermixed yet separate at the same time. Bit by bit it was changing to match the rest of his mana, but it was slow, and Fang didn't like the feeling of having something contaminating his perfect collection of sunshine. He was using Dimensionless Stride when he first came in range of the mana, which resulted in a slow trickle of the other mana entering his pool. Once he stopped using the skill there was no more inflow.

Fang decided he didn't want this cave's mana. So he would simply have to avoid using his skills. That was no issue, he was still the perfect predator without them. Just a little slower. Slower could be good, it meant more time hunting his prey. Besides, his pets needed to learn to hunt. They were like kittens in a lot of ways. They were rather dumb, they moved in strange, awkward ways, and they insisted on using sounds to communicate. They had a lot to learn, and hunting some live prey would be good for them. He would bring them some prey and help them learn how to slaughter it.

While the rest of the party cautiously advanced into the rocky opening, Fang confidently trotted into the darkness. Lillian called something after him, wanting him to come back, but it was good for the pets to learn to be on their own as well.

As he left the dim light of the entrance behind, Fang noticed faint specks of light floating through the air. It was almost like dust in a sunbeam, except in a fully dark room. The little particles clustered around him, providing illumination comparable to starlight, resulting in a small area around himself where he could see with clarity, and vague shapes of stalagmites and walls beyond that. The individual particles drifted towards him, but once they touched his fur they flew away with some force, creating his little hemisphere of visibility.

He trekked deeper into the cave. There were a few branching tunnels, but he chose his route with confidence. It wasn't like he could get lost after all. Besides, the humans behind him were being noisy enough that he would have no trouble finding them again. There was another sound ahead of him though. Almost as clumsy-sounding as the whole group of humans behind him, something was stomping around down a passage to his left. It made human sounds too, though slower and deeper than those his pet humans made.

He cheerfully jogged towards the noises. The smell of blood grew stronger as he got closer, but that was fine. It was either a new pet or new prey. Both were perfectly good outcomes in Fang's book. The corridor opened into a large chamber filled with stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. The sounds came from somewhere in the middle of the room, but Fang couldn't see the source yet. Many of the stones had fallen, some onto other, sturdier columns, creating a veritable maze of ramps, low walls, rubble, and impassable walls of limestone pillars.

Fang liked this room quite a bit. It positively reeked of blood, and it looked like a very fun place to play with his prey. Fang leapt over columns, crawled through little gaps, and trotted up a ramp as he made his way to the middle of the room. As he reached the top of the fallen stalactite, he looked down onto a circular ring of columns with a decent sized open space in the middle. There was a circular trail of blood slightly inward from the edge, and walking along it was a… Human?

It looked like a human, but it smelled like blood and old prey that had been sitting in the sun too long. It moved even more clumsily than his humans, constantly lurching around, stomping, and deeply hunched over. The Human? was dressed in something ragged and reddish-brown, though 'dressed' might be too strong a word. It appeared as though someone with zero talent for knitting had attempted to crochet a sweater, attempted to pull the resulting creation apart, swirled it around in a latrine for a few days, and then draped it over the groaning, blood-covered human.

The human in the circle was also missing large parts of its face and chest. Fang wasn't sure, but he suspected humans needed those parts. Being able to see white bone and black, rotting organs was probably bad.

Fang decided he would see if he could help the human. It would be more difficult to recruit as a pet if it was dead after all. Fang wasn't sure if he wanted this pet, it seemed very boring and slow, but that might just be because it was hurt. As he pondered, the human shambled under his perch, and Fang leapt down onto its shoulder.

Coincidentally, at the same moment, and through absolutely no fault of Fang's, the human's right arm broke off at the shoulder.

It landed on the ground with a wet plop, and both it and its (previous) owner began flailing around, looking for each other. Fang dropped silently to the ground next to them, his intended perch now nonexistent. The 'human' was making human-ish sounds louder now and seemed to be in more trouble than before. Other noises were coming from the caves. Similar not-quite-human speech and clumsy shuffling announced more dead humans making their way towards the commotion, but Fang had more important concerns. The fallen arm was still moving, and something about it had woken the primal instincts embedded in him through years of hunting his pets' blanket-covered limbs.

Fang leapt high in the air and came directly down on the elbow of the arm, claws extended and his full body weight behind it. Granted, given that Fang was the leanest and meanest of hunting machines, that was not much weight, but it was plenty to pin the arm to the ground. Fang ducked down and bit it, then lifted the arm off the ground. It should have been quite difficult for him to lift, but somehow the only trouble he had was keeping it balanced as the arm writhed about, obviously trying to pet him for such a phenomenal display of hunting technique.

The human would probably need its arm back eventually. He had never seen one take a limb off before, but they did often remove their fuzzy coatings and swap them around. Fang thought that was about as bizarre as taking off a leg. He liked his coat, it soaked up the sun very nicely. He couldn't imagine anyone else wearing his fur. If they tried, he would probably have to remove theirs in return, and that sounded like a lot of work for such inferior fur.

Fang meowed through his teeth at the rotting human, then started walking off at a moderate speed, back in the direction he came. The humans would know how to take care of his new pet. It turned and finally saw him, arm in mouth, and started quickly moving towards him.

Quickly, of course, was relative, as this creature's top speed appeared to be a stumbling, stuttering shamble which was most closely comparable to a baby's determined tottering. Fang found it vaguely cute on the occasions he looked back.

By the time Fang reached the entrance to the large cavern he had come through, the other shambling noises were much louder. When he crossed into the relatively open area near the edge of the room, there were several corpses shambling in his general direction. He weaved his way between them, ducking away from their grasping hands and smacking one in the back of the knee with the first one's arm. This was no time for petting, he was on a serious mission. If he let his pet catch up, he might wander off without his arm.

Fang decided that since there were now more clumsy humans like his new pet, he would have to give him a name. For mysterious feline reasons unknowable to the human psyche, Fang decided on Jack. Jack was limping after him as fast as he could, but he was slowly getting lost in the swarm of humans in various states of decay. That was fine though, because they were all following Fang, therefore Jack was following him too. He would just sort them out once he got back to the group. Jack was very noticeable, given both his missing arm and his red color from being covered in blood.

Perhaps some of the newcomers would be good pets as well. They could be Jack-One, Jack-Two, Jack… All right, he might have too many following him. Maybe the squad would want some as pets. Humans keeping humans as pets was a bizarre idea, but humans were bizarre creatures.

Fang continued down the tunnel, the throng of rotting flesh behind him steadily growing. He could no longer hear his current pets over the chorus of groans and stomping behind him, but he was not lost. He made the turns without any doubt, only appearing to hesitate when the arm in his mouth grabbed at the ground or smacked into something. Finally, he caught sight of the group, huddled up in the hall, the floor around them littered with a circle of torches to fend off the darkness.

~30 minutes earlier, at the entrance of the cave.

The squad advanced into the cave, taking out and lighting torches as they passed into the full darkness of the dungeon. It was technically lit by the ambient mana, but that was barely enough to tell them when they were about to run into a wall. Charles took point, ready to tank anything that came rushing out of the shadows. Angela covered the rear, extending her mana through the earth and stone to watch for any sneaky pursuers. Lillian and Alex stood in the middle, marking the paths they took and ready to defend against an attack from either direction. They did their best to keep quiet as they explored the labyrinth of tunnels. There was not much point being stealthy in most dungeons. The core would know the moment they stepped inside, and its creatures never had trouble finding a party once a battle started. Still, it was better to at least not make a nuisance of oneself, lest the core decide too early that they needed to be removed.

As the biggest nuisance of the trip strode off alone into the darkness ahead of the squad, the party watched with apprehension, which only grew as Lillian's shouts of, "Chairman Meow, don't go off alone, this is a dungeon, it's dangerous!" and similar sentiments were soundly ignored.

The party and three familiars crept onward through the eerily silent halls for a few minutes before Alex asked, "Aren't there supposed to be… you know, monsters and traps and all in a dungeon?"

Charlie never took his eyes off the tunnel ahead as he replied, "Yes, but this is a young dungeon. Until they reach a certain size, dungeons are usually content to passively absorb materials and assimilate creatures which pass into them. A dungeon this young isn't likely to produce traps or send monsters before we attack something or get close to the core room."

Angela tacked on, "We don't actually know how old this dungeon is though, all they told us is that it's one floor. For all we know, even that could be wrong. It could be secretly making a second floor, and send some extra-large monsters up to meet us. Or it could even be older than they said. I've heard the teachers sometimes lie and send students somewhere more difficult as an extra test. The kind of test where those who fail don't come back." The glint of teasing in her eyes was lost in the flickering light of the torches.

Lillian and Alex both gulped, gripping their weapons tighter. Charlie rolled his eyes, though from their positions nobody could see it.

They continued like that for a while, before Angela stopped the party, "There are tremors coming from ahead. Either a big group or a large monster is coming down this tunnel. We should get out of the way." She pointed to a side tunnel they had just passed, and the party hustled down it, leaving the relatively straight and wide tunnel for the more narrow, winding one.

Partway down it, Angela stopped again, brow furrowed. "They're coming down the side path. It's definitely a large number of normal-sized entities. Do you think the dungeon is after us? I don't know what we could have done that would prompt a swarm."

"A dungeon this young shouldn't even be able to coordinate a swarm in the first place," said Charles, brow furrowed. "We'll continue past the next turn. If they follow us again, that's enough to rule out coincidence, and we'll find a defensible place to break the swarm. Agreed?" There was a chorus of affirmation, then the party hurried down the corridor before turning into an even smaller offshoot, which dumped into a larger tunnel after a couple twists and turns.

"They're still following. It's hard to tell precisely with them spread out in the thin hallway, but I'd put the number somewhere between fifty and seventy bipeds, or half that many quadrupeds. They're moving slowly, so my vote is we cut them down as they exit this tunnel. Any objections?"

The party's response was to make a tight line around the tunnel exit and draw their weapons. Angela roughened up the terrain at the end of the tunnel and inside their perimeter, introducing little grooves to catch and twist ankles, ridges to trip over, and so on. After that, she started forming stalactites from the ceiling, creating a forest of hefty spikes aimed at the kill zone. Lillian placed a healing glyph on each party member, ready to activate as soon as they got hurt. She pointed her quarterstaff at the tunnel entrance, feet sliding into her preferred stance. Alex layered a pair of charm spells onto his shield and twirled his sword in a flourish that he had practiced more often than any actual swing. Charlie simply readied his spear and pointed it at the darkness.

They waited in silence, eyes fixed to the opening. Then, two little sparks of light came bobbing out, greenish disks of reflected light. After a few more moments, the torches on the ground illuminated the rest of Fang's face as he trotted over to their line, completely unperturbed by the uneven footing.

The squad stared in confusion which only grew as they first realized he was not the swarm, then realized Fang had a severed, bloody arm in his mouth, then realized that said arm was still moving.

Lillian finally broke the silence, "Chairman Meow, what are you… What is… What?!" The multitude of questions got jammed up in her throat and it was all she could do just to loudly exclaim in confusion.

Fang replied solemnly through his mouthful of arm, "My new pet is broken. You will fix it with healthy sunshine." He trotted over to her feet and dropped the arm, which immediately started squirming and grabbing for people's ankles. He turned towards the narrow corridor. "Jack will get here soon. He is even slower than you. He is the red one."

While that only raised more questions, Fang looking at the tunnel was enough to remind the squad of the danger they were about to face. They turned their attention back to the growing sounds of shuffling footsteps and gravely groans. As the first ones stepped into the circle of torchlight, Alex groaned, "Zombies? You have to be kidding me, I hate undead. The one type of monster completely immune to my charm spells."

Angela patted him on the back. "One of two types. Don't forget how ineffective your charms are on women. Now focus up, there's at least thirty of them, probably upwards of forty. If we lose the choke point this could get ugly."

The group nodded grimly and launched into their defense.