Katelyn.

  It wasn't long before voices, quite as they were, materialized. The newcomers carefully moved through the darkness, each about the business of cautiously approaching.

  Their number was six strong, which Katelyn found herself hesitant about. That many people just made things that much more difficult for her and demanded the use of further tactics rather than bumbling force.

  “This… is new…” One of the voices below whispered, her words just audible over the goblinoid antics between them.

  "Paul?" Another asked, tone notably disbelieving of his own eyes.

  "Yeah…"

  "You've got dark sight, too, right?"

  "A-yup."

  "So, am I the one that's going crazy, or is there a person locked in that cage up there?"

  There was silence for entire minutes as the team stiffened as one, hands tightening around weapons, while the man who'd yet to answer merely stared at Katelyn with squinting eyes.

  “Okay… definitely more light…” The monster mentally noted… Though they hadn't wanted to make it look like she was some main feature being dangled as bait, a few more torches tossed about the room might help people actually see her…

  Through the tenuous atmosphere, Katelyn observed as the somewhat dull-looking young man slowly nodded his head, mouth constantly chewing upon something that only took the briefest pause to answer. "There's someone up there alright…" He admitted slowly. "Looks like a young woman…"

  "Sprigs tits…"

  "We're saving her, right?" The first girl asked, though her words came out as more of a demand. "There's only ten of them here, and they're separated."

  "Stairway won't fit more than two of us side by side…"

  "Then shoot them the fuck down!" The girl hissed, giving two of her bow-wielding companions a meaningful look.

  The group discussed a few more odds and ends before approaching, but when the decision was made, their teamwork made her wardens look fairly pointless…

  They dispatched the gathering at the fire, half the goblin's numbers vanishing before those with drawn steel even made it near.

  The squeal of the tiny creatures as they found themselves beset upon, in turn, alerted those above to the fight.

  Abby hadn't given the creatures actually guarding her any ranged weaponry beyond dirty slings...

  An oversight, in her own humble opinion, as any that fell between the goblins and herself, made Katelyn's job that much easier. However, the monster was unprepared for the absolute ruin that archaic weapons could reap upon helmetless foes.

  Though the majority of the adventure's decision to forgo protection to their head had been a topic for debate between herself and the dungeon, the reality of such a decision was realized shortly after the first wave of projectiles fell upon them.

  Stones descended upon the group below, all finding their mark and eliciting grunts of pain and outcries of surprise, but it was when one of the stones cracked against the head of an unsuspecting archer that Kate understood why there was so little light up here.

  "Fuck! They just killed Richie!"

  "Is he dead or just wounded?"

  "He took a rock to the side of the skull!"

  "Is he dead or wounded?" Their leader, a maile-dressed youth of middling height, again demanded. "And Buck, start shooting fucking arrows back at them! Everyone else, up the stairs!"

  The group pivoted, with the now lone archer looking up to take aim and loose an arrow, which promptly missed its target but did cause the nearby creatures to shy away.

  Still, those on the higher level managed two more rocks that caused the dark-haired boy to scream in pain and clutch his chest as he fell, dropping his weapon at his side.

  The leader looked infuriated but overwhelmed as he held his shield over himself and knelt down to tend to the first of their wounded, checking for a pulse.

  Whatever he found made him reach for a vial at his waist, but the now cackling and jeering goblins just outside her cage continued to sling rocks with unerring accuracy.

  The youth found himself swearing as a stone smacked into the side of his knee, causing him to crumple slightly and ball himself up to help hide better behind his shield.

  However, it wasn't long before help arrived as the three sent up the stairs quickly appeared behind Abby's forces, sughtering their previously giggling forms with significant prejudice.

  "Look for a key!" The woman called to the two others beside her, each peering between the cage lock and Katelyn herself, who was currently feigning exhaustion.

  She managed a pitiable roll of her head to gnce with gzed eyes upon her would-be rescuers. Lips moving as though to speak but failing the words…

  The adventurer looked upon her with genuine disgust, though not for the captive herself but rather for the scenario as a whole. The woman's back stood straighter as she regarded the cage, lock, and prisoner with the eye of someone who wanted to vomit.

  She then gnced downwards to see the mewling second half of their team, clearly taking them in with a critical eye before sighing and partially turning.

  "Viv, think you could run down there and give the boys a hand? Richie might be dead, and Buck and Paul don't look great either…"

  The young woman in question merely nodded, rising from her haunches as she looked down as well. "No key on this one anyways… not unless it swallowed it…"

  "Same here." A taller boy offered, standing as well before catching his partner's eye. "Could check the other bodies or try to spring it myself…"

  "Think you can?"

  "Uhhh…" Stepping over to the bars, the boy, his posture slightly hunched as though to shy away from attention, his face immune to the death and ensvement where his companion clearly was not, reached for and twisted the bulbous lock with a contemptive cast to his gaze.

  After a few moments, he merely knelt, not saying a word as tools manifested from his sleeves, and he began pying with the thing, engrossing himself in his task.

  For her part, the girl stepped up to Katelyn's cage, smiling softly as she peered inside, their eyes meeting for the first time as the adventure winced but spoke all the same. "We're going to get you out of here, don't worry, Trevin here's a wonder with things he shouldn't get into."

  "I'm not a thief." The boy compined, but the girl ignored him.

  "Can you speak? Can you move?"

  Katelyn barely shifted her head, tilting it slightly from side to side and earning herself an acknowledging nod for her efforts. She had pnned on taking the trio that had made their way up by surprise and thus cutting their numbers by half.

  However, as it stood, doing that would give everything away while there were potentially four more adventurers below. And while she could leap from her cage to the floor without much injury since she wasn't really a human and her body didn't work exactly the same way, Katelyn could wait until she had a better opportunity.

  It came shortly thereafter, Trevin managing to pop the lock and, together with the girl, they grunting began to carry her to the others who were already putting themselves back together.

  No few of their number looking at their liberated captive with equal parts distaste and, in a less morally proper way… intrigue.

  Those sorts of looks weren't at all lost on her as she could see everything around her, regardless if her eyes were turned the other way, the lingering stares that even caught the attention of the girl who'd saved her causing a small hissing outrage among their group.

  Some questions were asked of her while the monster regarded them all, ignoring their words for the most part and deciding that it was probably the best opportunity she would get.

  When the change arrived, none reacted.

  Katelyn's sudden explosion of motion and violence simply caught the lot of them completely off guard.

  Her arms reshaped and lengthened into long and hideous bdes, sweeping like twin scythes along the vector of unprotected heads and necks!

  It was over far faster than even she had pnned it.

  A veritable fountain of blood sprayed into the air as bodies absent heads simply—tumbled where they stood, crumpling as lifeless corpses that hadn't ever had the opportunity to respond.

  Below, and still lying on the ground, two gazes stared up at her, time seeming to slow as realization, horror, and paralyzing shock bled through two previously pained expressions.

  She smiled at the pair while the thuds of several heads and bodies met the stone floor, some bouncing, others just—wetly spping… the various heights causing, likewise, varied sets of wounds...

  She ate the archer first.

  Kneeling down as he screamed and tried to shuffle back, only for her own head to—split and widen, revealing rows upon rows of serrated teeth and the yawning abyssal maw within, her arms shoving him face first and screeching with terror!

  She merrily crunched him down, her form snapping back into its previous state once the meal had been properly devoured, wherein she saw the man, leg fractured by a stone, impaling her through the midriff with a bde she hadn't even noticed was there.

  Gncing down, they both seemed to regard the steel pnted in her chest with almost humorous interest. Kate noting how—little such a wound even registered to her... The meaningless dip her health took an almost ughable companion to the absurdity...

  All the while, the man, now shaking with horror and leaking liberal piss at realizing his ineffectiveness, began blubbering a pleading bleat for mercy.

  "You're not going to eat the others then?" Abby asked a handful of minutes ter as Katelyn, now returned to her more casual attire and absent the fake grime and other bits of disguise, simply shook her head at the pixie who regarded her handiwork with smug satisfaction.

  "Eh… It sort of takes a lot of the joy from it all when they're already dead… I mean, I'm not hungry, so I'd just be doing it for the sake of doing it…"

  "It's not like you're going to get fat." The other girl giggled, ughing as she flitted over to nd on Katelyn's shoulder and take a seat, legs bobbing with clear delight!

  Kate—looked at the small creature with some curiosity, though she allowed the overfamiliarity to slide in light of the dungeon's infectious mood.

  They were both exceedingly pleased with how things had turned out, and she did like the other girl, so she chose to ignore being used as a seat. After all, Abby basically let her walk around in what was essentially her guts, so… turnabout was fair py.

  Either way, she shrugged at the tiny creature's comment. "Still not that interested… I mean, they taste good and all but... eh..."

  "Hm… then I'll close the shard once you're ready…"

  "You—care if I take all the monster orbs to use ter?"

  "Not really… They don't cost that much to repce, given they are so weak, but…" The pixie paused, Katelyn, feeling her eyes bore into the side of her head as she continued. "How can you… like, even use them again? I—ugh, know I've seen you do it, but…"

  "Trade secret."

  "Whatever…" The pixie compined, grumbling but not pushing her, given she was taking the lion's share of souls at the moment, "like I said, go for it.

  Kate nodded and started collecting the various orbs and depositing them into her storage. The annoying restriction to her maximum experience had been an issue somewhat solved with the aid of the dungeon's rather expansive repertoire of knowledge. And had rgely stemmed from both her ignorance and her human page's glitchy nature.

  Monsters worked in an entirely different way.

  When they leveled from zero to ten and were awarded the possibility to evolve if they met certain criteria, and if they did, they reached the next threshold, only for their apparent level to simply reset with the addition of a new threat ranking.

  People, by contrast, worked in what she felt was an altogether even stranger manner than that!

  Take a human as an example.

  They could only gain ten base levels, and that was that; no more personal growth was afforded to them. Without the proper application of knowledge, they could easily go the rest of their lives without ever gaining another modicum of experience!

  Until, that was, they either chose a css or a profession to specialize in.

  Either worked for the purposes of expanding one's capacity for self-improvement, with the former typically serving a rather broad spectrum of needs, as might the mage css when taken as an example, where the tter was typically speaking, much more refined and narrow of scope.

  One could, of course, take mage as a profession as well; however in doing so, find the benefits of making such a decision to be much more socially oriented.

  To the best of her understanding, csses were about amassing personal strength, whether that came by means of raw power, utility, or even survival skills!

  The flipped side of the coin, however, was taking that simir knowledge and applying it in a way that could better aid a community, which would be cssified as a profession.

  A sorcerer might learn how to lob fireballs at goblins all day long from his css, but the profession of the same would push him down a path where his magic might transform into fire runes to heat stoves or keep snow from rooftops in winter…

  It was an odd system, to be sure… one where each aspect could evolve into something new if one took the time to pay attention, but where an individual could be equally punished for being a moron, to the point where they could cripple themselves forever!

  "It's like this—" Abby had expined while trying to help her friend understand the somewhat bizarre nuances of her new universe, "The system doesn't care about the souls themselves when it grants someone like you power; it's more like a means to measure success.

  You don't absorb the damned things when you kill someone like dungeons do; instead, they're sent back to the universe, which, in turn, offers you what it thinks you deserve for what you did.

  And that's where the level disparity arrives, as the higher you are when killing something theoretically weaker than you, the less the system actually dolls out.

  People in the Lacunae have been trying to power-game this shit since they all started writing it down…

  And, you can even, say, take nine csses before your first level and go off and murder something really tough and just boost yourself to some crazy numbers because the system will still consider you only at level zero when first allocating experience to every css!

  And since early levels are ridiculously easier to gain across the board, people have figured out that they can explode upwards in power from trying to jank how the universe does things! I think the current record in my dungeon is something like—level forty from some chump dumping as many csses as he could into himself before nding the killing blow on Grom.

  But," she chuckled, the sound somewhat—sinister, "That's the trap. You can't just force your experience into one css among all the ones you have! Nope, it doesn't work like that at all…

  Everything gets a cut unless it's already maxed out, and you can't abandon csses or professions when you take them. So, until they get to level ten, someone who tries to take too much on at the same time will find that they outright stop getting any sort of considerable gains after their initial power skyrockets.

  Worse, they then have to go fight stronger things without the aid of any feats awarded from maxing out other csses or te-stage skills that are always the best a css will offer you.

  All the while dealing with the massive pit of experience it takes for them to get a single new level! Once they power-level themselves out of the range of my monsters, they're shit out of luck and need to fight real threats that don't py nearly as nice as I do.

  Of course, there is some wiggle room where people have naturally developed builds that synergize really well together, but they don't often take it to the aforementioned—extreme…"

  There were checks and bances abound.

  And while she could see the benefits of suddenly jumping to a high level given the stats involved, the issues with doing so were equally prohibitive to any gains… Especially when Kate imagined how a poorly thought-out level forty individual might fare against a monster that had a times-four multiplier attached to their own statistics...

  For people, much of their power came from feats, not raw might...

  Once more, Katelyn's somewhat odd situation arrived at the forefront of her thoughts… Though she seemed to share experience between her two halves, neither individual side appeared to greatly strangle the other...

  Though, admittedly, she didn't exactly possess a first-hand example of what one might look like without the other, it at least didn't feel restrictive in the way that Abby had described it.

  Maybe it was because she was simply keeping the active drains on her experience retively low; however, her human half, which by all accounts should currently read out as level twenty given what she'd come to understand of the system, instead remained at a measly ten, despite the not inconsiderable stats she possessed, thanks in equal parts to both of her possible souls…

  While the raw power seemed to transte between one another, ignoring that ghost Kate couldn't exactly use any of it, the system didn't seem to pick this up, or instead, wasn't capable of cross-referencing the combined levels of her equal halves.

  Thus, her current existence as a somewhat overpowered low-level monster…

  It was complicated to be certain, but not at all beyond Katelyn's ability to rationalize.

  Something about her was definitely broken. But even beyond this, once it was all expined, she finally understood what needed to be done...