Only…This rat was tiny, its shoulders came to just below my waist.

I watched as it ran slowly towards me, and I didn’t bother to dodge it, as a test; with a ‘chomp’ it attacked my leg--its teeth tore through my robe and new pants, then it began to chew on my leg. It wasn’t strong enough to break my skin…but the strange little rat wouldn’t give up, even though it was obviously futile, the rodent kept gnawing at my skin and smacking my waist with its small tail.

I heard Resh gasp behind me.

“Is this the rat you are talking about? Its one with a really weak bloodline right?” I couldn’t keep the doubt out of my voice as I looked away from the waist high rodent and back at Resh; she was staring at me in complete shock, her eyes widened and her hands shaking.

“Uhh, yeah--its a Mid-Grade Elite Rodent of Unusual Size, by the looks of it.” She stuttered slightly as she spoke.

“Mid-Grade Elite, what’s that?”

“I will explain once we get out of the dungeon,” Resh shook her head, her silky blue hair rapidly swayed side to side.

I looked back at the rat, deciding to inspect it more closely--the rodent was around waist height on me, its fur was deep brown, instead of the normal deep midnight-black of the other ones I had seen. It had the crystal claws, but they were only around the length of my hand, and were an impure green instead of clear. The scales on its strangely thin tail were also very dark green instead of black--it didn’t even have the normal shoulder blade crystal spikes.

With a slight feeling of disappointment, I stomped on the mini-rat with my free foot--with a soft ‘pop’ it exploded, spraying blood and organs all over the floor; I even shattered the tiny, impure, crystal shards in its bones.

My casual stomp accidentally caused a crater in the stone floor--which seemed softer than that of even the first cavern I landed.

Resh made a strange noise and then went silent, I looked around at her; she looked like she had passed out and was starting to collapse onto the floor. So, I stepped forwards and caught her…she was surprisingly light; I thought she looked slim, but her robe had hidden the extent--she felt like she hadn’t been eating properly.

As I held her, her silky smooth blue hair brushed my shoulder, and her hood had fallen off--taking the chance to look at her closely, I could see that she really was cute. Her eyes were quite large, but tilted up at the corners, and her face oval, with a fairly sharp chin.

She had high cheekbones, and a slim face; her skin was smooth and unblemished, she didn’t seem to be wearing any make up. Her eyes were normally sapphire blue, but they were shut at the moment.

I had no idea what she looked like under her robe, her shape, but I wasn’t going to take it off her…

Her pointed ears intrigued me…I wanted to play with the tip off them and see what she would do.

“Resh?” I gently poked her soft twitch, causing her to twitch slightly--her cheek was soft and warm, it felt nice to poke…so I poked her again; then she groaned and opened her eyes, the sapphire like irises seemed deep, like an endless ocean.

She quickly realized her position, cradled in my arms, and blushed; hiding her face with her hands, she rolled out of my embrace.

I had reacted purely on instinct, so I felt embarrassment as well--I hadn’t been that close to another Human, let alone a female, that I could remember. She may have rolled out of my embrace, but I had also frozen, I felt it was a little awkward.

“Ahem…” Resh cleared her throat as she pushed herself to her feet--then her eyes landed on the exploded rat and cratered stone floor.

“How?” She paused, her face pale.

“That rat was incredibly weak.” I didn’t have much more I could answer with, I could explain differences between it and the ones in the cavern with white crystal veins, but I don’t think it would have made sense to her.

Resh rolled her eyes at me, walking over to the corpse and poking it; she put on a serious expression and began to rummage through the remains, picking out the tiny shards of greenish crystal--she seemed to be a girl who didn’t mind getting her hands dirty…with blood and brain juice.

“Why are you grabbing those tiny crystal bits? They are incredibly impure…more dark green than clear--this is a real crystal!” As I spoke, I showed her the crystal claw, which was the length of my forearm, in my hand.

“Well, even the smallest of these shards can sell for quite a lot of money…that knife is unbelievably pure, huge…you could probably buy a kingdom if you sold it,” She muttered, staring at my claw with a slightly surprised look; her eyes glittered, she seemed as though she found it pretty and sparkly--but there didn’t seem to be any greed.

“So, what’s a Mid-Grade Elite?” I sheathed my claw.

“Enemies in dungeons come in grades. There are normal Monsters: Low, Mid, and High grades; after them come Elite enemies: Low, Mid, High…and extremely rare cases, Cataclysm grades. When not in dungeons, when found in nature, they are assigned letters. Normal Monsters from low to mid-grade are ranked as F, stronger mid-grade to high-grade are usually D or E, depending which ones. Elites start at C, and Cataclysm-Grade are usually SS…I have to explain the letters used, from lowest to highest are: F, E, D, C, B, A, S, and finally SS--then there are Demigods, Land-Gods, the Watchers, and the Gods…” Resh spoke distractedly while poking through the rat puddle, “The rat which you killed would probably be rated between higher B-grade, and lower A-grade.”

“So, it would normally be very dangerous?”

Now I was a little worried, for a few reasons, the first of which is that exposing that I had the power to kill Monsters like this would earn me a lot of fear--and greed from others, who would try to find ways to control me. The other fear was that I was too strong, and I might accidentally kill or injure innocent people.

Resh sighed and nodded, then she looked over at me and rolled her eyes with a smile; luckily, it seems that she had lost her fear of me.

She seemed like she was about done, so I just stood patiently, watching her happily dig through the rat goo. The way her hands and purple robe were covered in the red blood, which contrasted with the white skin of her face and deep blue hair, I found her very attractive.

It seemed that she somehow noticed that I accidentally got distracted and stared at her, she made a confused noise and looked up at me, a smile tugged at the corner of her lips, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I felt embarrassed that she had noticed that I was watching, I didn’t mean to be found out…I mean, I didn’t mean to stare.

For some reason, she just smiled and shook her head.

She took one last poke at the rat puddle before slowly climbing to her feet, “Well, I think we should probably begin moving again?”

I nodded to her, and then walked out the exit of the room.

Walking in front of her, I could hear the scuttling of rats along the stone corridors--but when I saw them, I could see that they were just small rats with brown fur and no crystal claws.

Whenever they got close, I just shattered their incredibly fragile spines with a single kick; Resh would cut them open carefully with her knife, and dig out a single, tiny and impure green crystal core…which was around the size of a fingernail.

This is how we continued, we had fallen into a silence, since I had no more questions and Resh didn’t seem to want to talk; and after what felt like an eternity, we reached the exit--it probably felt a lot longer than it actually took, since I was excited about it.

I had been seeing an increase in illumination for the last half-hour or so, the artificial white light was the same, but I could also see a yellow light as well. After seeing only the artificial lighting of the cave system for as long as I could remember…the sunlight seemed strange.

When we stepped out of the entrance, the sun was blazing down on the ground, without a cloud in the sky. This was the first time that I had seen the sun…it was hot and bright.

Suddenly, I felt like my ears were exploding as incredibly loud noises penetrated them, my hearing had apparently become incredibly sensitive, because I could hear the soft scraping of rat claws on stone a few passages away. But now, I was hearing the sounds of uncountable people, of things moving over stone with clattering and clanking--voices and shouting.

Unable to help it, I wrapped my arms around my head to block the noise--and fell to my knees. The pounding pain in my head was almost overwhelming, similar to when I overused or rapidly increased the power of my light.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I could hear the quiet voice of Resh, even though I was blocking as much noise as possible--her soft hand suddenly rested on my shoulder.

She actually sounded like she was worried for me.

“Yeah, it’s just incredibly loud…” I opened my eyes and looked into her large blue eyes; I smiled at her, “I just need a second to get used to it.”

She watched me, a worried look on her face, until I adjusted and stood up again; uncovering my ears, I stood up and smiled at her.

Behind me was the entrance to a cave, grey rocks showing small glints of white in the bright sunlight--standing in front of me with a worried expression on her face, was an incredibly cute blue-haired Mage…who cocked her head in confusion when I looked at her.

After being distracted by Resh for a second, I shook my head to clear it and started looking at  the surroundings.

Apparently this place, the Beleran Dungeon, was situated directly in the middle of a huge city. They seem to have been built around the city, but it did raise a question: Which came first--the city, or the dungeon?

I have never seen a city before, but I still had knowledge…but no memories.

There were massive building constructed from stones, or bricks; stone roads, which were used for vehicles that were being pulled by large domesticated animals. There were crowds walking along badly congested streets, shops and stalls that sold all kinds of merchandise…which I could barely make out from here.

While Beleran Dungeon was situated in the middle of the city, there was a fairly large exclusion zone around it.

I stood and stared dazed at the surroundings, until Resh walked over to me, she grinned softly and used her small hand to close my mouth, which I had subconsciously dropped open in shock; for some reason, when I looked over at her, she winked at me and poked out her tongue.

This woke me up from my daze, and I looked at her for a second before nodding, “Can you lead the way?”

Resh nodded and stepped back from me, then she turned and walked off with her hands linked behind her back. I followed along--she seemed to know where she was going.

The Dungeon’s exclusion zone was surrounded by a massive stone wall that was covered in incredibly complex zones which glowed brightly.

As she was leading the way, Resh had pulled her hood up again, but this time she had tucked in her hair and hid her pointed ears--from behind her, even I couldn’t tell that she was different from a normal person; well, if I looked from the front, with my eyesight, I could.

I was curious as to why Resh kept her hood up. Maybe she didn’t like her ears, or there was some form of discrimination against whatever species, or mutation, that she was.

Of course, there was a gate which allowed access into and out of the exclusion zone, which was our current destination.

When we arrived at the gate, Resh took a card-shaped piece of metal out of one of her many pockets and showed it to the guards. The guards let us through without asking any questions, so we left through the metallic gates and followed a wide road which lead deeper into the city.