“Ferns and now moss. I’m feeling a theme here,” said Teri.

“Same room type, same formation we’ll go with,” ordered Franc.

They slowly explored the room killing any moving moss before they had a chance to release spores, except for a couple that were used to test the spore attack out. With the whole room explored, they found nothing besides the forest of moss. As such, they moved onto the only corridor and the next room. Once again, a room filled with creatures appeared. This time it was mushrooms.

They quickly encountered another earth spike trap and had Lyra disarm it. The ankle biters attempted to bite them but were slashed and exploded aparted with barely a thought. Two more puddles sat up against the wall across the room from each other, but a new trap in front of the right corridor caught their interest.

“Is it another activation formation, Lyra?” asked Franc.

“It is,” she answered. “So, the other formation should be on the ceiling.”

“There it is,” said Peter pointing somewhat in front of the activation formation on the ceiling.

Lyra levitated up to it and came back down soon after.

“A light formation. Still can’t tell what it does though,” said Lyra dejection in her voice.

“Normally, I’m gungho about trap triggering, but I don’t want to be vaporized by a dungeon proficient in light magic,” Duzzig spoke up worriedly.

“I detect even less danger than the earth spike trap, so stop complaining Duzzig,” Peter lightly said.

Duzzig growled, “I can complain as much as I want boy, but I’ll trust ya.”

He stepped onto the activation formation, the test dummy he knew he was, and a bright flash of light lit up the room. The other five had blocked their eyes just in case, but Duzzig left his open to see how bad the trap was. After around ten seconds his eyesight came back to him.

“Not too bad. Only a couple of seconds of blindness. I will have to get some healers to check for long lasting damage. Stupid dungeon,” muttered Duzzig casting a light healing spell on his eyes.

Franc caught their attention and ordered, “We’ve explored this room, so down the left of the two corridors we go.”

The group headed away from the right corridor that the flash formation was in front of and headed down the left corridor. As they did so a jelly leaped towards them and was sliced by Duzzig’s axe.

“Try to not kill the next jelly, please,” said Charles. “I haven’t gotten a sample of those yet.”

“I’ll try buddy,” sighed Duzzig.

However, as the corridor slightly curved to the left they came across another trap. The circular activation formation stood in the center of the corridor while other formations lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Lyra went over, examined them, and quickly came back.

“Water formations,” said Lyra.

Duzzig’s prepared smirk turned into a large frown, “You better have your damn dry spells ready, Lyra, or you’ll be tasting my metal axe against that metal body of yours.”

Lyra groaned, “I know, Duzzig, just get it over with already.”

With gritted teeth he stepped on the activation formation. The formations on the wall sprayed water at Duzzig doing no damage to him, but making him extremely wet. Lyra quickly cast a dry spell on him, but his frown wouldn’t disappear for a few rooms.

Before they could move on, three spiders attempted to leap on Lyra’s and Duzzig’s head. Lyra caught two of them with her hands, but Duzzig smashed the third one into the wall with his fist. Lyra handed the two spiders to Charles and went to pick up whatever the third spider dropped.

After two steps Lyra jumped as Charles exclaimed, “Elemental Spiders?!”

“Depths Charles, you scared the shit out of me,” said Lyra with her hand on her heart.

“Sorry, Lyra, but I’ve only seen high rank elemental spiders. Low rank elemental spiders will be great for tamers!”

“Why?”

“Well-”

“Don’t get started, Charles. You can explain to her later,” interrupted Duzzig as he tossed the spider’s mana heart that he killed to Teri to appraise.

“What attribute was it, Teri?” asked Charles.

“Space,” replied Teri.

“What?!” exclaimed Charles.

He stared daggers at Duzzig and said, “You better not kill the next one.”

Duzzig laughed noncommittally, “I’ll try.”

Lyra asked, “What are the attributes of the two I gave you?”

“Water and wind,” replied Charles.

“All right. We’re moving on,” Franc ordered.

The corridor they were on was much longer with curves, and a branching pathway. Before the branching pathway they went past an earth spike trap and an illusion pitfall trap. Charles got his jelly along with a slime and a distorted web spider. Its ability to shift size without changing weight interested him enough that Franc had to yell at him to snap out of it. Additionally they all had to roll their eyes when Charles had exclaimed ‘Ooh, a centipede’ at a perfectly normal centipede.

After a puddle, the path branched into three, and they took the leftmost one. At the end of the long corridor was a small room with an earth spike in the middle. After clearing out the room of monsters except for the ones near the ceiling, a spider nearly caught Teri off guard. However, like the previous spiders she caught it before it touched her.

“Hey, Charles, here’s an odd spider,” she said tossing the transparent spider towards him.

Charles’ eyes went wide as he analyzed the spider, “Attributeless?”

“That’s what you have to convert your mana to before using a spell of a different attribute,” Lyra interjected. “Never heard of a monster having that before.”

“Neither have I,” replied Charles.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Looks like you’ll have a lot to study when we get out of here,” Lyra said with a smile.

“Y-Yeah,” Charles stuttered as his hand shook while turning the clear web spider into a small ball.

Charles requested catching as many spiders as he could in this room, and Franc reluctantly agreed. Lyra levitated him to the ceiling where he found a fire and earth spider along with non-monster spiders. He was happy for more elemental spiders, but the most intriguing find was the normal spider.

“Why do you have such an intense look on your face, Charles?” Lyra asked. “Isn’t it just a normal spider?”

Charles responded, “Exactly. A normal spider with the exact same coloring as the monster web spider.”

Lyra’s eyes widened slightly, “But, that would mean….”

“Yeah, it’s pretty damning evidence,” Charles muttered while his whole body shivered. “I’m really starting to like this dungeon.”

As he pocketed the normal spider, the group went down the only corridor and entered the largest room yet. They looked around the cavernous room, and Peter spotted something to the right, near the corner of the room.

“Hey, I think that might be a treasure chest,” he pronounced.

The group followed his vision and immediately agreed with him. Although it was shaped like a rock, the gap between the top and bottom along with the hinge gave it away. The party started to walk towards the treasure chest fighting slimes, jellies, constriction ferns, ankle biters, moving moss, and the occasional spider. Charles kept his eyes out for new spiders. They closed in on the treasure, but suddenly it wasn’t there anymore.

Peter, back in the lead, halted the group, “The treasure’s gone.”

Duzzig growled, “The first treasure, and it just up and disappeared? Lyra did you detect anything?”

“Sorry, Duzzig, no,” Lyra answered, the look on her face more confused than the rest.

“Peter, do you remember where the treasure was?” Franc asked.

“Yeah, you still want to go there?” replied Peter.

“Yes, lead on.”

About a minute of fighting later, they reached the last location of the treasure. Lyra was tasked with examining the area for magic, and Peter was tasked with looking for traps. After ten minutes, Peter shrugged his shoulders while Lyra sat up against the wall in exasperation.

“Nothing?” asked Franc.

“Nothing,” replied Peter and Lyra.

At that news, Teri started to look around the room and smirked at what she saw, “Hey, guys, you should look at the center of the room.”

All five of them turned to look.

“Did I miss that when we first came in?” queried Peter.

Duzzig grunted, “Doubtful, I didn’t see it when we entered either.”

“Well, hopefully the dungeon isn’t playing a practical joke on us and makes the treasure disappear right before we reach it again,” joked Franc.

He got a chuckle out of the others, and they made their way to the center of the room. Before they reached the treasure chest, an earth spike had to be disarmed, and Charles came across a glowing spider and a dark spider. He started having a discussion with Lyra about the dungeons use of light and dark magic, but Franc quickly put a stop to that. Upon reaching the chest, it did not disappear, and Peter was tasked with opening it.

Seeing and sensing no traps, Peter lifted the lid off of the treasure chest and took out what was inside. Some stone coins, G- mana stones, G- mana hearts, and a wooden sword with something inscribed into it.

“Seems to be pretty normal treasure. Except this sword. I don’t know what to make of this sword,” said Peter as he tossed the sword to Teri.

Teri’s eyebrow shot up as she read the item’s information, “It’s a balsa wood sword.”

Disgusted ‘Huhs’ emanated from the other five, but she raised her hand up to silence them, “First of all what did you expect, it’s a G- rank floor. Second of all, the sword's enchanted.”

Franc’s look of disdain for the sword turned into one of interest, “What does the enchantment do?”

“For ten minutes the sword will become just as sharp and heavy as a regular iron sword. After the ten minutes is up, the enchantment disappears, and it becomes a regular balsa wood sword.”

“That doesn’t seem great.”

“G- rank, Franc.”

“Alright, alright. Could you recreate the enchantment, Teri?”

“I won’t say no, but it will take a while even if I can succeed. However, even if I can’t copy it, simply studying it will help me and other enchanters.”

“I know I’m repeating myself, but for something so simple it can’t be that complicated?”

“Maybe if it just included the sharpness and heaviness part, but even that comes with preinstalled mana and doesn’t require mana stones or personal mana.”

With a sigh Franc continued, “Okay, you know your stuff. I’ll let you give a longer explanation when we give our final report.”

With the treasure chest emptied, the six finished exploring the large room. It was shaped like a cube with relatively straight walls and ninety degree corners. Other than the treasure chest and earth spike, they only found one other earth spike. Of course, the room was filled with the creatures they had seen in the previous rooms and corridors, and Charles found two more spiders: a regenerating spider and a illusionary spider. Each new spider he found made his eyes and note writing fiercer.

There were four corridors on each of the four walls, and they would usually enter the left passage from the corridor they entered. However, Franc questioned Peter about their relative location compared to where they had been.

“The passage to the right heads in the direction of the moss room. The passage to the left heads away from where we’ve already been. The passage straight ahead could possibly intersect with the other four corridors from the first room,” answered Peter.

“Let’s go right and see if connects to the moss room,” ordered Franc, “Peter, keep me updated if the corridor starts to diverge.”

“Okay.”

As they headed down the passage they came across another water trap, and Lyra quickly disabled it before Duzzig’s frown turned into a scowl. They kept moving forward and reached the moss room quickly. Satisfied with filling out the map, the six returned to the square room and continued into the passage straight ahead, the left corridor from the original corridor. A water trap and an earth spike trap were deactivated before they arrived into another large room.

They spotted a treasure chest straight across the room near a corridor opening. Teri was tasked with keeping an eye on it while they explored the room. The room was separated into five large, rounded alcoves which Peter said might look like a clover with too many leaves from above. Between them and the treasure were two illusion pitfalls, but otherwise the only other feature in the room was a pond in its center.

The pond had new creatures that delighted Charles: snails, salamanders, and fish. He quickly turned a snail and salamander into small balls and then grabbed a fish. His taming magic injected into the fish but nothing happened. The fish was infused with Charles’ taming magic a few more times, but still nothing happened.

“What is going on?” Charles muttered.

Peter strolled over, “What’s the matter Charles m’boy?”

“My taming magic isn’t working on this fish.”

“Why not?”

“If I knew why, I wouldn’t be so frustrated,” spat Charles.

Peter raised his hands in front of him, “Don’t take it out on me.”

“We’ll see,” said Charles with a smile, “Anyone else want to take a look at this fish? All my creature appraisal says is that it’s a normal cave fish.”

Lyra skipped over and snatched the fish out of Charles’ hand, “Maybe it’s a magic that tricks your appraisal.”

“I hope not.”

“Why?”

“You want to be inside a dungeon that can trick the system?”

“Maybe your skill level is just too low.”

“If my skill level’s too low, you don’t want to be holding that fish.”

“Fair point.”

After several minutes of study, she gave the fish, which was now lightly gasping, back to Charles, “Just seems like a normal fish to me.”

He took the fish back and plopped it inside a waterskin. It slowly started to swim faster, and with that Charles was satisfied and tied the waterskin around his belt. He killed one to be sure, but it simply disappeared like other normal creatures in dungeons.

Charles thought about it for a bit and brought it up to Franc, “Hey, Franc.”

“What is it?” replied Franc.

“I think we should at least try killing the normal creatures.”

“What brought this on?”

“That weird fish simply reminded me how this dungeon is abnormal, so maybe it did something with the normal creatures that usually drop nothing.”

“Good point.”

Franc brought his greatsword down onto a medium sized red cap mushroom. Charles’ and Franc’s eyes widened as a small mana heart was left behind compared to the usual nothing. Franc glanced at Charles and picked up the tiny object.

“Teri, catch,” said Franc as he tossed her the mana heart. “What is it?”

As Teri stared at it, as both her eyebrows shot straight up, “A tiny nature mana heart?”

Peter interjected, “It doesn’t have a rank?”

“Odd,” Duzzig muttered.

“What use is a mana heart even smaller than a G- rank mana heart? Those barely last any worthwhile amount of time,” Lyra waved dismissively.

“I don’t know,” said Franc, “but it’s something that drops from normal creatures, so it gives a little extra incentive to kill them. Also, with that loot collection, adventurers won’t have to worry about picking up every one.”

“Most adventurers don’t have space bags, so they are usually overloaded with stuff anyway. I doubt any of them would want to take the tiny mana hearts worth barely anything.”

“The problem with low grade mana hearts and mana stones that I have,” Teri vented, “is how often I have to switch them out. They’re in abundance and cheaper than the high grade versions, but I don’t want to run out in the middle of battle.”

“I know I’m the one that brought it up, but let’s move on,” said Franc with a raised voice. “Teri has the chest moved?”

“Nope.”

“Let’s get it then.”

They were disappointed with the reward as the claymore inside had the same enchantment as the previous sword. With a choice between the corridor right next to them and the corridor in the alcove to the right, they chose the one right next to them. As they continued down the passageway, they started killing the normal creatures as well as the monsters. Two more earth spikes were deactivated before they entered a small room with a corridor to the right and a door to their left.

“Boss room,” grunted Duzzig a small smile forming on his face.

“The mushroom one is glowing,” observed Peter.

Charles mused as he approached the door, “There seems to be a portrait for each type of monster on the floor. Well, except for the spiders, they only have one.”

“Anyone know why the mushroom one is glowing?” asked Franc fully knowing the answer.

The other five answered in monotone, “It’s the boss we’ll have to fight.”

Franc gave them the side eye and asked a more important question, “Anybody know how it determined what boss we would fight?”

Four of them answered, ‘Nope’, but Charles had a hypothesis, “Since the boss is based on the floor monsters, it should be related to them. We interacted with the floor monsters in two ways: we killed them and I captured them. I’m doubtful the dungeon decided the boss based on my captures, so that leaves killing.”

“Did we kill ankle biters the most then?” asked Franc.

“I mean I didn’t keep track, but they did seem more abundant in that room compared to the ferns and moss,” answered Charles.

“So, are we going to kill the boss now, leader?” interrupted Duzzig.

Franc shook his head, “Not now. We need to finish the map. We’ll finish our first day with a boss fight. Sound good?”

“Maybe not good, but I can deal with it,” snorted Duzzig.

Leaving the boss door behind, they headed down the other corridor. An earth spike trap along with a puddle with snails and a salamander passed them by, before they reached a small room with another earth spike trap and two new corridors.

The left passageway led past a water trap and a flash trap before leading into the third large room even larger than the last two. They entered the room on what seemed to be the large side as the walls narrowed in the distance. They spotted a treasure chest to their right, once again imitating rock, and decided to open it immediately rather than wait until fully clearing the room like they did last time.

Inside the chest was a wooden mace with a new enchantment along with stone coins and G- rank mana stones. Teri was intrigued by the mace’s ability to become a flame mace for ten minutes, but the rest didn’t care about an essentially useless weapon. They got back in formation and began to explore the room.

However, their pace slowed as the monsters in the room became much more aggressive. Whenever a spider dropped, Stacy, freshly summoned, would catch them and bring them to Charles. After he discovered they were weren’t new species, he smashed them in his grip.

In front, jellies and slimes lept at Duzzig, and he made it a game to see how far he could get giblets of slime and jelly to fly by shield bashing them. The slimes and jellies that approached from the back were slashed apart by the Black Panther, Ciel. Besides slashing with his claws, Ciel would smash them apart with his tail.

Teri dealt with the ankle biters and moving moss. She had started only shooting the close ones, but the monsters had started releasing spores even a fair distance away, so she started to clear a much large portion of the room with quick shots.

Lyra used flying spikes to tear the constriction ferns aparts at distance. However, every once in a while she’d let a leaf get close, coat her arm in metal, grab and uproot the monster, and smash it into the ground.

Compared to the rest who were trying to find some enjoyment out of massacring G- rank monsters, Franc was doing nothing and exceptionally bored.

Whenever there was a lull in the fighting, Charles had Stacy kill as many moving moss as possible before having her return to his shoulder. He tried to do it sneakily, but the combination of Charles never being sneaky, and the fact that S+ adventurers would never miss a hawk flying around a dungeon sealed his future fate: pointed looks.

In the center of the room was a large pond with a stream pouring into it. Like the last pond it contained snails, salamanders, and fish. Unlike the last pond, this one had four earth spike traps surrounding it that were quickly disabled by different members of the party. It seemed it didn’t matter what attribute of mana was infused into the formation.

After exploring the wide area of the room, they headed towards the narrow area. An illusion pitfall and two earth spike traps greeted them before the narrow portion of the room turned into a new corridor. There were a total of four corridors in the room: one on each side of the stream, the corridor that the room narrowed into, and a corridor off of the narrow portion of the room.

Using their left turn rule, the entered the corridor to the left of the stream. They quickly reached a dead end with nothing besides a couple monsters, plants, and fungi. The party waded through the stream and entered the passageway on the right. Unlike the last one, this dead end had a treasure chest.

When Peter opened it, they all sighed as only a couple stone coins and mana stones appeared. They left the dead end and exited back into the largest room.

As they did so, Teri noticed something, “The treasure chest we opened in this room is gone.”

“Do you see it anywhere else in the room?” asked Franc.

After a quick glance, Teri gave a negative response, “No, but I can’t see down the narrow area.”

“Let’s take a look then.”

The party headed down the narrow area and found nothing. They agreed to continue searching the room to get a better understanding of the teleporting treasures. Around fifteen minutes went by before Peter spotted something at the bottom of the pond. With Franc’s permission he dove into the pond and got a closer look. As soon as he reached the treasure chest, Peter turned around and swam back up.

“Why’d you swim back up so fast?” asked Franc.

“*gasp* Because it was the same chest we opened earlier. It was empty,” replied Peter climbing out of the pond.

“At least we know they don’t refill after a teleport,” added Teri.

With a loud voice Franc ordered, “Alright, let’s go to the room turned passageway.”

The group headed down that way and almost immediately encountered a split path. The passageway they were on continued straight ahead, but another pathway went almost straight backwards and to the left. Going into the backwards corridor, they entered a medium size room with an earth spike trap immediately upon entering, a illusion trap to the left, and a flash trap to the right. In the back of the room was a pool of water with snails and a salamander. With nothing of interest, they headed down the only other available pathway in the room.

While walking down the pathway Duzzig spoke up, “You know, having these caves lit up as bright as day is extremely convenient. I’m not sure I can go back to the normal dark and dreary caves that most dungeons have.”

“Don’t Dwarves have night vision?” asked Charles.

“Yeah, level one,” scoffed Duzzig.

“You’re telling me a dwarf prefers the bright light of day over the darkness of a cave?” grinned Lyra.

“Of course not,” firmly stated Duzzig, “I will always choose a cave over the wide open sky, but being able to see inside a cave is also extremely important. I might have to call some dwarven scholars to improve our lighting situation.”

Duzzig and Lyra discussed the dungeon lighting as they walked down the pathway. An intersection with four corridor options including the one they came from appeared as they were doing so. In the middle of the intersection and also up against a wall was a puddle with snails and a stalactite dripping water into it. Based on Peter’s map, the corridor to their immediate right headed back towards the narrow portion of the large room. They quickly came across another passageway on their left but continued down the corridor towards the large room. After a water trap, they arrived back at the largest room.