Cat Core

Florence Valentine never expected a mundane errand to end in cosmic reassignment, but after an abrupt death outside a pet store, she wakes up as a dungeon core with no memory of how to be one. Stranded inside a mysterious underground domain she now controls, Florence must figure out the rules of her strange new existence while waves of adventurers keep barging in, looting her halls, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Her greatest advantage turns out to be exactly what she loves most: an inexhaustible ability to summon cats, which she deploys with escalating creativity against every trespasser who dares cross her threshold.

Andrea Parsneau brings Florence to life with sharp comic timing and a warmth that makes the protagonist's curmudgeonly charm impossible to resist. Parsneau navigates the tonal balance between cozy slice-of-life humor and LitRPG progression mechanics with ease, giving each cat companion a distinct personality without losing the narrative's momentum. At just over eleven hours, the pacing stays brisk, and Parsneau's delivery keeps the dungeon-building sequences from feeling like dry exposition.