Lokgrod had seen many battles in his years outside this prison, both between young adventurers and grizzled veterans. He himself had fought through this labyrinth many times when he was low leveled, struggling to deal with even the weakest threats. The Deepstone Rabbits that were being so casually slaughtered had nearly overwhelmed him on numerous occasions. He had been level 23 on his first run of this place, in his desperation for strength and food he had hunted the beasts here. Many times had he crawled out of the bright caves covered in puncture and bite wounds, the metallic horns of the rabbits leaving his limbs and torso riddled with holes.

Now what he witnessed from a creature lower leveled than he had been. It was pure destruction. Rue had agitated a nest of the rabbit creatures having found a burrow. He knew from experience that there could be hundreds of them in there, many of them with higher evolutions and levels. He had prepared himself to save his new dragon but let the chain of events unfold.

She had started by breathing a thick orange flame down their hole, the flame seemed to readily flow down their warren and soon the burrow's entrances erupted with small white rabbits. Many of them had blackened fur and all of them were angry. He had prepared to leap in and save the dragon when she danced for joy let out a deafening roar and dived towards the onrushing horde of fur. Many of the rabbits fell over shocked or even unconscious from the deafening roar. Those that had resisted leapt at the huge, scaled enemy.

He had expected the dragon to retaliate with a huge wave of fire, dealing huge damage and perhaps even giving her a chance. Instead, she met them with claws and teeth. Each swipe of a paw too fast for the fluffy creatures to dodge and pasting them against the floor and their fellows. Her jaws opened and shut like a steel vice, crunching and shearing a new rabbit with each repetition. The shaken and torn corpses flung to the wayside and a feral snarl on her maw. The flexibility of her neck and the balance provided by her tail and wings allowed her to snap with blinding speed at her new prey.

Those that avoided her claws tail and maw leaped at her flanks and hind legs, using their powerful jump to impale the dragon with their horns. Those that connected had their plans foiled. The dragon’s scales were like armor, even the sharp and strong horns could not penetrate their protection. The rabbits bounced off the red scales, not even scratches left where the scales were thickest. The few that found a less armored hide merely left small scratches or puncture wounds that bled slow rivulets of blood. The small wounds not even a hindrance to the huge mass of slashing fury the was the dragon.

Lokgrod stood a few dozen meters away and watched as the huge scaled red dragon slaughtered her way through a horde of the creatures. The few higher evolution individuals that came out from the smoking burrow giving her no pause as they were beaten and crushed. The silver furred and metallic rabbits had tougher fur, enough to resist the slashing of her claws but they were pulped in either crushing jaws or squashed by the dragon’s weight and strength.

Lokgrod was trying to imagine how easy this fight would have been if she used her fire. A single blast of the same fire from earlier could have cooked dozens of the rabbits. Why did she not use her flames?

It took her a total of 10 minutes to slash and crush all of the rabbits into a sea of bloody fur. They never retreated. He never understood the reason but the creatures in the labyrinth never fled. They were compelled to attack everything, even other monsters from the labyrinth. Lokgrod looked upon the field of battle, hundreds of rabbits had been slaughtered. His dragon now had many small wounds and even some larger wounds coating her body. Where hundreds of attacks had slowly chipped away at her defenses. Her belly was covered in cuts and some deeper puncture wounds while her sides and legs only had a few scales dislodged. Her maw and paws were covered in blood, even her raised wings were splashed with evidence of the terrible battle. The thunderous roar the sounded her victory made even his hair stand up on end. A mere level 20 beast now, what power would she grown to in the future?

As she bent down to examine one of the rabbit corpses and broke off its horn, he realized why she hadn’t been using fire. She was harvesting materials. He remembered the horn she had deposited in the entrance to the labyrinth. Was there something special about the horns? They were partially metallic, probably maybe silver or some alloy of silver. If he had been trained in the ways of smithing like a true dwarf and not been stuck here, then perhaps he would have liked to collect and refine them. Even having a skill to identify metals would have been useful, but that would require training from a skilled smith. It pained him to deviate so much from his lineage, but survival had taken priority over such things.

What did the dragon plan to do with them though, refine them into pure silver? So, she would not have the knowledge or skills to do that. Just collect them or eat them perhaps. No, just collecting them was the most obvious answer. Well, dragons did like valuable metals so if they really were silver then she would want to have them. He would have to keep a journal of this young dragon’s development, so little was known about true dragons’ stages of development. Most were already hundreds of years old, with new dragons being quite rare. Perhaps he would become a dragon scholar, ha. He let out a wide grin as he watched the dragon's almost worshipping face as it harvested the horns from the bloody battlefield. Every so often it would take a bit out of one of the more intact rabbits.

Rue collected yet another horn, licking it and using [Mineral Assay]. It had leveled up early into her sampling of the horns and now allowed her to tell the ratio of minerals composing the horn. She had decided to only keep the best. So, she was sorting them into high quality and low quality, ready for transport.

{Silver 22% + Organic 78%, Impure, Precious, Common}

Blegh, that was one of the worst, even before analyzing the horn she could tell it was low grade, her greed skill and natural senses not pulling at her to own the horn. She batted it aside with her paw, creating a small splash of bloody mud, and moved to the next corpse.

She felt a tingle of desire from this one, quite strong. She bit the horn and snapped it free from the rabbit licking it with anticipation.

{Silver 87% + Organic 13%, Impure, Precious, Common}

She let out a rumbling of approval and carried it over to her growing pile. It was the second-best sample she had found. The high-quality horns appeared to come from the rabbits that had silver fur. She had licked the fur as well and it did contain trace amounts of silver but not enough for her to bother with. Their horns however were all above 80%, making them very desirable. Perhaps there was a way to get the silver out of the horns, to make it pure. At the thought of pure silver, she felt a strong desire radiate from her chest. She would need to find out if that was possible.

Once she had collected the valuable horns and eaten her fill of rabbit, she curled up next to the small pile of silver horns and checked her status messages.

Ding! For Slaying [Silverstone Rabbit Lv16] x9 In Combat +1669xp

Ding! For Slaying a Foe [4] Levels Below Your Own [-4%] xp -67xp

Ding! For Slaying [Deepstone Rabbit Lv12] x8 In Combat +2461xp

Ding! For Slaying a Foe [8] Levels Below Your Own [-8%] xp -196xp

Ding! For Slaying [Deepstone Rabbit Lv11] x14 In Combat +2730xp

Ding! For Slaying a Foe [9] Levels Below Your Own [-9%] xp -248xp

Ding! For Slaying Foes [2+]Species Stages Below Your Own [-100%] xp

Ding! For Slaying [Deep Rabbit Lv10] x18 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Deep Rabbit Lv9] x26 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Deep Rabbit Lv8] x28 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Deep Rabbit Lv7] x32In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Deep Rabbit Lv6] x34 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Horned Rabbit Lv5] x23 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Horned Rabbit Lv4] x56 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Horned Rabbit Lv3] x45 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Horned Rabbit Lv2] x23 In Combat +0xp

Ding! For Slaying [Horned Rabbit Lv1] x20 In Combat +0xp

Total Xp Earned From Combat Encounter +6349

Reached Level 25: 3015 XP lost from overflow

Ding! Level Up x5 … [Stat Points] +25

Ding! Stat Points Allocated For Species [Dragon - Juvenile] +40 {S10 V10 D10 I10}

Ding! Stat Points Allocated For Species [Red Dragon - Juvenile] +40 {S25 V15 D0 I0}

She decided to invest her free points into strength, vitality, and dexterity. With her new skills and basic stat boots, intelligence would be fine. She needed to be able to stand tooth and nail against the dwarf as soon as possible.

Why she had not gained any experience from half of her kills was unfortunate but made sense to her. They were far too weak to be a real challenge. Only the larger and stronger beast had even been able to wound her, why would she get anything for killing those which posed no threat to her. Perhaps with her devourer of flame skill, she could still gain power, but it was far more satisfying to kill powerful creatures. That and they could give her precious objects. Rue looked to where her small pile of silver horns lay. She walked over to them and curled up around the pile, her form was far larger than the pile but where her scales touched silvery metal, she felt a pleasant warmth. It gave her a great sense of satisfaction basking in even these meager possessions. What would resting atop and a pile of pure Mithril, just as shiny as her precious door feel like?