Her eyes were golden.
That was the first thing Dominic noticed. Not the dark hair that cascaded beyond her shoulders as if it were liquid. Not the white garment that had constituted with her and was doing a mediocre job at best keeping her covered. Not the gold choker at her throat, the intricate band around her upper arm, or the sandals tied around her calves.
The eyes first. Because they opened and immediately found him. It was a gaze so steady and intentional it made him feel like she had never cast a casual glance in her life.
He was stunned.
She was tall. That was the second thing. Taller than he'd expected, though it wasn't like he had expected anything specifically. She stood with the easy stillness of someone who had never needed to make themselves look comfortable as if discomfort was an alien concept to her. The white garment draped from one shoulder, belted at the waist with a wide gold clasp, and fell to mid-thigh on one side. The other side was longer. It didn't matter much either way. She was the kind of woman that you could say the garment was lucky to be on.
Dominic was nineteen years old and had spent the last thirty seconds processing a near-death experience and the arrival of a supernatural system of unknown origin.
He was having some difficulty focusing, especially with the lady before him.
She looked around the dungeon once, slowly, and deliberately. The wrongness of the air where the wraith dissolved. His torch still burning on the stone floor. The dark ceiling. The empty corridor where four sets of boots had gone. Then back to him.
"You're the summoner," she said, her voice was low and even.
"Dominic Kane," he said. It came out steadier than he felt.
She took a second to really look him over, sizing him up like someone does before deciding what clothing item to buy.
"Theresa Moon," she said. "I already received relevant information on what happened" A pause. "You nearly died."
"Yeah..."
"The ones who left." Her golden eyes moved briefly to the corridor again. "They did this intentionally."
It wasn't a question either. Dominic was starting to understand that very few things she said would be.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him with a kind of grim, cold understanding.
"I see," she said.
That was all. Two words, and somehow they landed like she'd said considerably more.
The dungeon made a sound.
Both of them turned. Down the corridor the dungeon monsters were already starting to reconstitute, they always respawned after a certain amount of time had passed. Dominic knew that, but had simply been in no condition to care about it until now. The air was thickening twenty meters away, dark mana pulling itself back together with slow, patient intent.
Two wraiths this time.
Dominic took a step back.
Theresa did not.
She raised one hand, almost lazily, and he felt a warmth that settled over his skin like a second covering, dense and solid, pressing in from all sides without being uncomfortable. His clothes felt heavier. The air around him felt closer.
"I just amplified your defense," she said, without looking at him. "Stay close, we are leaving."
Then she stepped forward.
What happened next lasted approximately four seconds.
The first wraith reached her and she used her amplification. There was no other word for what happened next. Her body simply became more. The air around her arms compressed visibly, light bending slightly at the edges of her skin. She caught the wraith's strike on her forearm and it dissolved on contact, the dark mana scattering like it had made a significant error in judgment.
The second one tried to flank her.
She turned, already moving, and her open palm connected with it at a speed that shouldn't have been possible for something her size. There was no sound of a physical hit, just a violent crack as the air itself split open. The kinetic force didn't even stop when the wraith dissolved; it punched right through the empty space, carving a fractured line across the stone floor behind it.
Both corridors went quiet.
Theresa lowered her hand and looked at the floor near her feet. There was a faint scatter of dark mana dissolving into nothing. She stepped to the side of it, deliberately, and adjusted the fall of her garment at the shoulder.
Dominic stared at her, realizing that the spell she'd used to coat her fist was a low level spell Ghost touch that on its own shouldn't have even been able to deal any significant damage. Not even with her physical prowess.
She glanced back at him. "They'll reconstitute soon. We shouldn't keep standing."
He nodded in agreement and they started moving.
They went through the second floor faster than he'd covered it in any previous run. Theresa walked slightly ahead, no rush or urgency in her step, almost like the dungeon was only just a mild inconvenience. They met more and more dungeon monsters. And each time she handled it in the time it took Dominic to register it as a problem.
One time she amplified a low-level flame spell Candlelight, something anybody getting into magic could cast, but what came out was not a low level flame so condensed you could only call it plasma. It instantly vaporised the group of goblins she threw it towards and shattered the stone in a two-meter radius from the point of impact, flash melting the ground into black obsidian. She hadn't even raised her voice.
Dominic even in awe, was taking notes objectively, including her mannerisms.
She didn't speak while they moved. Neither did he. There was something about walking behind her that made conversation feel unnecessary. He watched the gold band on her arm catch the torchlight. Watched the easy way she moved, unhurried, weight shifting with the kind of confidence that came from a body that had never once doubted what it was capable of.
He thought about the ceremony hall. The quiet. The card in both hands.
F-rank Summoner.
He thought about his father.
He thought about Victor Harwick.
The first floor cleared in six minutes, mostly because that's how long it took for them to walk out at their pace. The dungeon entrance appeared ahead of them, light spilling in from outside, and Theresa slowed as they reached it and stopped just before the threshold.
She turned and looked at him fully for the first time since they'd started moving. The gold eyes did their thorough thing again.
"From what I understand you have a list of people to get back at, correct?" It was more of a statement than it was a question.
Dominic looked at her. "The system told you that?"
"The system told me what I needed to know." A pause. "The rest I inferred."
He held her gaze. "Does that change anything for you?"
She considered the question seriously, which he appreciated. She didn't seem like the kind of woman who gave answers she didn't mean.
"No," she said finally. "I have nowhere else to be."
She stepped through the entrance and into the light outside.
Dominic stood at the threshold for one more second, alone in the dungeon that had almost finished him twenty minutes ago.
Then he followed her out.