Solo dungeoneering

"I'm not sure about this, Lullaby..." Salmonberry stood outside the entrance to the mostly empty solo dungeon. A passing adventurer shoulder checked her brusquely on his way in, not sparing her a second glance.

"Come on, it could be fun!" Lullaby leaned comfortingly into her, reassuring but determined. "You'll prove those jerks wrong, I just know it!"

"I mean, are they even wrong?" Salmonberry muttered, careful not to let Lullaby hear her. Not careful enough, though.

The fur on Lullaby's head and along her tail puffed up with indignance. "Yes! Absolutely and definitely yes! Don't worry about it, you're going to be okay, I promise! Worst case scenario, I'll be there to help out, but you're not even going to need it." She gently nudged Salmonberry to the entrance, taking a single small step to match a dozen of her mate's smaller ones.

Sighing, Salmonberry stepped into the dungeon. The solo ranking board beside the entrance didn't go low enough to even show her name. Ideally, she would change that today. She wasn't too hung up on that though, not like Lullaby was. She appreciated the encouragement, but sometimes it flustered her too much for her to focus. And in dungeon's like this, she needed quite badly to be able to focus. There were monsters everywhere, you literally couldn't swing a sword around without hitting one. The dungeon didn't require much skill, just damage capabilities, so Salmonberry cleared it pretty quickly. It wasn't particularly popular, and she had Lullaby with her, so she was confident she would be safe.

The final room of the dungeon was packed full enough of monsters that only Salmonberry could enter, so she left her audience of one behind, stepping in alone. The moment the door closed behind her, though, every single creature in the room vanished. They were reasonably easy monsters to dispatch normally, but the invisibility was a massive pain. Eventually, there were few enough left that she pulled out her Hook Pickaxe, relieved that she had enough room to swing it. Salmonberry nearly fell over when she ended up facing behind her though, because she saw that the wall, while still tangible, had turned invisible as well as the beasts. Lullaby and even a few other adventurers watched with wide eyes as she killed off the last of the beasts.

A storm of applause greeted her as she stepped out, even from the adventurer that had shoved her on his way in. Salmonberry hid her wild blush in the lapels of her coat as she stowed the item drops in her bag of holding. Nothing worth keeping except as a souvenir, but they would sell for a pretty good price. Lullaby was unreasonably concerned about her few small cuts, though she was unable to heal them until they were out of the dungeon. More than a few violent curses about the rules of solo dungeoning were muttered on the way up, but largely forgotten about once outside.

"Salmonberry." Lullaby began, already nearly running circles of excitement, "Salmonberry, that was amazing! You're so incredible, it's just unbelievable!"

"It was really nothing special..." Salmonberry tried to begin, but was cut off by a look from Lullaby.

"You got the best time on record and most kills in a single run on that dungeon! You are definitely incredible, and you'll be shooting up the rankings in no time at this rate!"

Salmonberry didn't roll her eyes. Salmonberry very deliberately did not roll her eyes. She loved the encouragement and the praise. She just didn't think she deserved it. "Sure thing." Before Lullaby could get on her about "loving herself" again, she added, "I love you, Lullaby."

Lullaby, who absolutely knew what she was doing, answered, "I love you Salmonberry, and you should too."

Hand in hand, or rather hand in paw, Lullaby and Salmon berry walked together from dungeon to dungeon. Most were the same as the first, with Salmonberry setting an incredible record and then understating her own achievements. The drops were both plentiful and valuable thanks to Salmonberry's ability as an Item Leech and to the difficulty of the dungeons. A few adventurers tried to block her from entering at first, as did a few guards standing outside of dungeons. Lullaby scared off the first few, and pointed out Salmonberry's name high up on the ranking boards to the later challengers.

The most memorable dungeon was certainly the last one. It had an extremely high difficulty rating because it was filled with puzzles and riddles alongside traps and ambushes. That hadn't been the problem, of course. Both Salmonberry and Lullaby were fantastic at riddles. The problem was that by the rules of solo dungeons, Lullaby couldn't help Salmonberry with the riddles. That was fine most of the time, but at one point, Salmonberry got stuck, and on instinct turned to ask Lullaby for help. She found Lullaby with massive paws clamped around her snout, nearly shaking from the effort not to blurt out the answer. The answer, which had been "silence", became apparent then, and Lullaby let out a significant sigh of relief, blowing Salmonberry's hair into a mess.

Salmonberry climbed the ranks unnaturally quickly. She had plenty of practice in dungeons with Lullaby, but none of them had ever counted for solo rankings. In the span of three weeks, she raced to the top of the leaderboards. She hadn't really expected to care, because the whole thing had been Lullaby's idea, but the rush was like something she'd never felt before , a mix between the rush of when she had killed her first monster and the exhilaration the first time Lullaby had told her she loved her. It was a very good few weeks.

The funniest thing, of course, was the reactions of other adventurers entering the dungeons. Salmonberry didn't get to see them much, but traffic jams became a serious problem at dungeon entrances. Crowds would form around the leaderboards, blocking actual dungeon rooms. Adventurers would cry out in disgust upon seeing an Item Leech at the top of the leaderboard, certain it was a glitch, demanding to speak with someone in charge. Upon seeing it was Salmonberry, many set their hearts on creating conspiracy theories as to how her mate had helped her cheat, or how their places on the leaderboard must have gotten switched somehow.

The most priceless reaction of all, of course, was when the previous number one walked up to the leaderboard. Generally a detested figure, Ragger was a barbarian who relied on sheer spite to take him through battles. He threw a violent temper tantrum when he found out that the Item Leech he occasionally bought from had surpassed him in the rankings, hitting the leaderboard so hard he broke it. He was charged an extensive fee both for damages and for the noise complaints, and he was permanently banned from the dungeon. Lullaby nearly killed him when he tried to attack Salmonberry the next time they entered a dungeon together. He... left them alone after that.