Alice measured two snakes and did an unexpected: jumped up and climbed on the closest sufficiently wide rock. Traveling above the ground considered tasteless in the dungeon, the girl had noted long ago. She saw several good reasons, yet all of them had been tossed right into a bin after monsters began to call to arms their nearby kin.

The snakes wavered on their tails, already bloated a bit for a sonic attack. With no direct line, their hisses only struck stones.

It's still problematic. How well would her newfound inner protection fare against several sound missiles at once? Alice wondered while hiding her small frame behind a steep. Newcomers snakes joined the crew, surrounded her cover together, except for one. The girl 'listened' through her feet and a palm touching the rock.

At a calculated moment, Alice swept her blade horizontally, cleaving an animal slithering on a stone tree nearby. The air shook, the staff in her hand vibrated strongly, being hit scarcely. The girl shook it off and vindictively slashed down, the two-meter glaive's reach covered the distance to the ground with ease.

Something squishy and soft was cut and Alice hurriedly pulled her hand back from the edge. There was no kill notification, even the marvel of superhuman perception and Observation skill had its limit.

High ground superiority, the girl was enjoying it to her fullest in the next minutes by standing just beyond the direct line of sonic missiles and poking down with the glaive. The snakes were dominated mostly by old instincts, Alice only had to cover once when new reinforcements came.

Her impunity didn't last: the snakes might have failed to dispatch a few shooters at first, but soon the girl noticed them taking over stalagmites and big boulders where she couldn't reach. Her fingers touch the bow briefly.

No. They can evade arrows.

That was something she had discovered when fighting through the labyrinth before: you don't go for a monster with a small head and liveliness of a reptile with a bow. Alice estimated her chances to hit evolved snakes from such a distance as no more than 25%. Waste of arrows.

But what if they huff up?

First, the girl needed a suitable place. No use in caring at all if unspooked monsters might spot her: the snakes already had used their communication network of infrahisses. She showed herself to the whole dungeon by leaping on another rock, narrow and rather slick, than jumped off and ran.

Her pursuers Alice almost saw with her back. Another funny fact: it wasn't quite possible to outrun snakes in a stone jungle and its twists and turns for they had much better maneuverability than someone with legs.

The blade swooshed behind, threatening the forerunner into retreat, without looking at it Alice circled a boulder and slew the second place in two moves, then sliced the third snake climbing the obstacle with a drawback motion. A sonic hiss hit her upper legs, the girl stumbled and dived behind a cover. The glaive wavered, hit my another missile, drops of blood falling from the edge.

She was yet to use her blood boost or blast. Sonic snakes were mildly annoying, not too dangerous just yet.

Her left calves were a bit rigid.

Some abs weaker than others.

Back muscles more developed than lower ones.

Tendons to fingers unevenly firm.

Soles both soft and insensitive.

Сapillaries torn.

Ligaments of the right ankle flimsy.

Bones structure unsymmetric.

Ribs with microcracks.

Vertebras dislocated.

Skull fragile.

One word. Imperfections. They inundated the girl with every second she moved closely to the top of her abilities, making themselves strikingly clear to her self-awareness. Some of them were the consequences of sonic missiles and would disappear in due time, some were her own cultivation exploits results, some remained from hormonal treatment after her childhood disease, some were genetic. The rest just signified she was a teenage girl who hadn't had a god-send training regime.

Ignorance was a blessing truly. Those imperfections, small as they are, were as easy as to ignore as tooth pain. None-specialist Alice could only skate on the surface and the possibility of being ridden with problems was making her head dizzy.

A sound missile knocked Alice out from her scrutiny trip and she swerved, pointing her glaive down, and stubbed a too smart for its own good snake. The girl spun her weapon, tossing the body from the tip, flourished and attacked in the opposite direction, killing another detoured monster meaning to surround her.

Ducked, avoiding a hiss, rushed away over a twitching post-mortem reptile, further into the labyrinth, counting turns, climbs and jumps, never closing either to the anthill with its hounds or her Node's tunnel system and open space there. The landscape was presenting her immense advantages and she was gladly taking them all.

Alice's pace was becoming faster and faster, steps lighter and lighter. In every next skirmish, she was a bit better. Hindrances in her body she had never even known of she learned to bypass. Some of the small muscles even her weapon skills had never taught her to use she was utilizing now.

How to calm inertia. How to transfer power. Everything seemed clearer.

 

Alice pinned down a snake, sliced along its body and coldly watched it giving out its last hurtless hiss. The girl was breathing heavily herself, the whole body beaten up by sonic attacks and life energy nigh depleted. There were cracks on her little bones and minute inner bleedings here and there. The teeth hurt like hell and the head was full of white noise – the girl had caught a very bad hit at last.

"I did it. How much? Fifteen?"

This was about that number of dead sonic snakes all over the labyrinth, fully subjected to the 'struggle' category as Alice checked the logs. When the girl had shot ants to plunder them, it wasn't a struggle enough, with which she more or less agreed. It was exhausting, dangerous as always, but easy.

[+18,800 EXP, +7520 BP]

Plus first patrolsnakes and the poor neighbor snake, all without double battle reward, of course, and...

> Level up!
> Hunter lvl. 8 -> lvl. 9
> +5 Skill Points
> Attributes being adjusted…
> You reached level 9 in one of your templates! System's rewards being adjusted according to encounter difficulty.

Alice skipped over the very familiar system's messages and closed her eyes for a moment, embracing the rejuvenating infuse of power.

Status.

"So much for my fear of grinding," the girl said, yet a glance at the next experience goal provoked a sad smile from her.

Dexterity and Perception really don't use decimals anymore... should be true for other attributes over the limit.

I can break it now. Or in a safe zone, with no monsters around.

For a few seconds, Alice was rooted by indecisiveness, but then looked down, blinked and hastily opened the dead snake's skull with the glaive. Thoughts later, her bloody loot was all over the place! The snakes were dead, she basically cleared the stone jungles for any number of predators and therefore had to hurry up before her prey got stolen.

Alice gazed to her left, glanced to her right and headed to the center of her labyrinth track. The magic core she employed on refilling her veins with one hand, with the other she fetched a life potion, drank it and observed inside herself with great interest.

The life potion was, in fact, life energy as a material substance. However, if Alice had a disorganized stream of water in her veins, then life potion (and the dungeon itself, to be fair) was an ice palace with statues, arcs, and flowers in a frozen garden. The next level of complexity, far beyond the girl's abilities to reproduce.

It seeped through her stomach into the bloodstream and passed by Alice's sefl-inflicted cultivation bumps, much to her disappointment, and concentrated around injuries. Slowly, gently it connected bones through cracks, closed torn capillaries and started to mend them.

Interesting... 

Again, Alice rejoiced the power of her awareness. If not the potion itself, then would she be able to reproduce the results? The girl wondered, yet refrained from actually trying.

Meanwhile, in the labyrinth full of dead snakes Alice was diligently gathering magic stones.

One stone, another one, here are two, here is nothing and there is nothing...

Her memory regarding exact places was a bit blurry.

After the tenth stone Alice prepared to call it a day when she noticed something. It was in the air.

Smell, yet not smell. Shaking ground, maybe? No.

Strange chill called out a raid of goosebumps onto her arms and shoulders.

It was drawing near.

Alice trembled when her legs finally sensed the vibrations. Too close! She twisted her body and watched with silent horror a monster creeping out.

[Alpha Chimeric Wolf Lvl. 9]

Like a small bear, it was big. It had long scorpion tail, black fur and enormous maw capable of biting small Alice into halves, towering legs. The craziest thing, the beast was quiet. Even after noticing the girl staring at it, the wolf walked out with no sound at all, keeping its head high and proud. Not caring she would run, that she could run.

The ground trembled again. In what seemed hours, Alice crackled her neck slightly.

Another wolf grinned at her. It was grey, but otherwise possessed the same name, same level, same tail.

The girl clenched her glaive in desperation, her mouth opening and closing in a heavy pant.

Her mind blank.