Serenity’s eyes flicked from the words “Growth Available” to “Contained”. This was a disaster waiting to happen. “Well, hell.”

Morwen’s “What’s the matter?” overlapped with Doyle’s “What?”.

“It’s a contained dungeon, growth-contained at that. They’re one of the few dungeon types that is routinely destroyed. The plant and animal specialties aren’t normally too bad, but -” Serenity stopped and shook his head. “I don’t like the idea of killing a dungeon, but I’m not sure what else to do with it. We’d better get ready to head in.”

He pulled his hand back and shifted to his chimera form. He’d be more comfortable in it, especially with his armor; he simply hoped that the maze was big enough to allow room for his wings.

“Nice special effect for your multiform.” Morwen had clearly watched the entire process.

Serenity was grateful for a moment that his shapeshift basically looked like him turning into semi-solid black smoke before solidifying again as his new shape. “Thanks. I didn’t get to pick.”

Echo put her hand on the corn stalk. “I hope this is a fun maze. Meet you guys inside!”

She disappeared.

The others quickly followed.

The entrance to the dungeon looked like a corn maze. There wasn’t a better way to put it; green walls made of mature corn plants were on either side, while a more-or-less smooth dirt path led forward. There was a wooden arch behind them; the road showed through it, though the pickup wasn’t visible.

Echo stood a little ahead of the others and turned back to face them. “Forward or through the corn?”

“Forward,” Serenity stated. “Dungeons tend to get annoyed when you break the implied rules. I doubt anyone’s been in here before so it might well work, but if we went through the corn, we’d encourage the development of hidden plant monsters. Among other things. We don’t know where we’re going anyway, so following the path’s as easy as anything.”

Serenity could remember some of the things he’d seen in dungeons used by rulebreakers. Trapvines that would move from plant to plant, pretending to be one of the surrounding corn plants, then reach out and try to strangle you were only the beginning. Giant beetles were the next-most-likely option, and giant beetles could do anything if the dungeon found the right variant.

The group headed forward. At the first intersection, Echo turned right.

As she reached the intersection herself, Morwen turned to Serenity. “Why is she in front? Shouldn’t it be the tank or the scout?”

Serenity smiled. “I guess I didn’t tell you what Echo does, did I? She’s another scout - detection-based instead of actually scouting ahead, but she’s good at what she does. Ranged for her attacks, so she’ll be back with you when we get in a fight.”

“Who’s the healer, then?” Morwen looked puzzled.

Serenity hadn’t realized she’d assumed Echo could heal. “Should be Rissa, but she’s not here. We’ll mostly be depending on my self-healing, but we all carry some potions, just in case.”

Serenity made a note to himself to pick up some more in the next Tutorial; having a good stock of potions could be useful.

A loud noise from ahead made Serenity pick up his pace and hurry ahead of Echo. She stood waiting for him right before a bend in the maze.

When Serenity rounded the bend, he saw a minotaur. Like many of the modern depictions, it had the head of a bull - golden-brown with a short pair of horns that stuck out on the sides of the head. Unlike most modern depictions, it was muscular but completely human from the shoulders down.

Serenity was quite confident of that, because it was also completely naked and unarmed.

The minotaur roared again and charged.

Serenity was still wondering if that’s a thing cows do as he reflexively dodged to the side and threw his axe at the minotaur’s unguarded chest.

It went right past him and into the corn. When Serenity recalled his axe, the minotaur didn’t get up. He paced up to it and made sure it was dead before checking it for a monster core. There was a core; it felt weak, but he looted it anyway.

“That was fast.” Morwen looked at the minotaur, then at Serenity.

Serenity shrugged, not sure what she’d expected. “It should be, with as much as we outclass this dungeon; I’m well into Tier Two and I know both Echo and Doyle are on at least their second Tier One Path; the dungeon said it was Low Tier One, so probably first Path at the most. I didn’t ask, are you Tier One?”

“Barely.” Morwen grimaced. “No one wanted to duo with me in the Tutorial dungeon; no healing spells and I can’t take the aggro. We did great as a group of four, but that was it.”

Serenity looked at the evaporating corpse of the minotaur, then back at Morwen. “Hopefully we’ll have a chance for you to fight a little. One-on-ones like that can be hard to drag out, but most dungeons have a variety of enemies.”

Naturally, the next four encounters were all single unarmored minotaurs that immediately charged Serenity and died. They seemed to appear randomly in the maze; he’d turn a corner and there would simply be one ahead of him, preparing to charge. Most of the time, Echo was able to give some warning, but not always.

They wound their way through the maze, continuing to take the right-hand choice when turns appeared. So far, there hadn’t been any visible bridges or other tricks that would make the maze insoluble by that method.

The sixth encounter started with music. It sounded like a flute to Serenity, but he wasn’t certain; it could just as easily have been something similar. He and Doyle halted, waiting for Echo to tell them what she heard, but Echo put her hands over her ears and lowered her head, shaking.

Morwen kept walking forward.

When Morwen got to where Doyle was, he put out a hand to get her attention. She simply kept walking, so he grabbed her arm. She didn’t fight back, but she did keep trying to move forward.

Serenity looked at the two women, then at Doyle. “Hang on to them, I’ll check it out.”

Serenity moved forward slowly, then peeked around the corner. He could see a wooly sheep standing on its hind legs, holding not a flute, but something that came forward instead of to the side. A recorder, maybe?

If a satyr was a goat-man, then this was a sheep-man, with large ram’s horns on the sides of its head. Contrary to the minotaur, it was humanoid only in the fact that it stood on two legs and had human-like arms; other than that, it looked like a ram.

It stood in a wide area in the maze, where several different paths came together. Unlike the minotaurs, it looked like the sheep-man didn’t wander the maze. It waited for its prey to come to it. Serenity was confident that if he checked it out, it wouldn’t have the teeth of a herbivore.

Serenity glanced back at the people behind him; Echo was still fighting the music and Morwen was still enthralled. Serenity shook his head and threw his axe at the sheep-man, who didn’t even seem to have noticed him.

He fell and the music stopped. Echo came back to normal almost immediately, but Morwen took about a minute to recover.

Echo might have been able to fight, if she’d had to; Morwen wouldn’t have been able to. On the other hand, Serenity didn’t think Echo was thinking all that well during the fight. “Echo, why didn’t you counter the sound - you have an ability to do that, don’t you?” Serenity wasn’t certain she did, but it would fit the rest of what she did well enough that it was likely.

Echo started to say something, then stopped. She looked away from the still slightly groggy Morwen and stared at the ground. “I do. I didn’t think of it. The music sneaked up on me; I thought it was just music, then it wanted me to walk forward and - well, I fought it, but it didn’t even occur to me to counter it.”

“That’s still better than I did.” Morwen sounded bitter about being shown up by a girl less than half her age. “I didn’t even notice it until it went away.”

Serenity couldn’t let either of them beat themselves up over it. “Do either of you have Mind resistance? Or anything that works with music or sound?”

Morwen’s expression didn’t look any happier. “I do now. Now that it’s too late. Only one point.”

“One point is actually significant. It’s what lets you try to resist. It means you were trying, even if you didn’t succeed. That’s one of the reasons to do dungeons in groups; especially at low Tier, you’re likely to run into things that you simply can’t deal with. You know that as well as I do; how many firsties should take on a dungeon alone?” Tier One wasn’t really equivalent to first level in a roleplaying game, but it made the point he was trying to get across.

“As for you, Echo. I know you have some capability with sound. That’s probably why you were able to resist at all; it’s good, this would’ve been a lot harder if we’d needed to hold you back as well. Okay?” Serenity waited for Echo to nod before turning towards the dead sheep-man.

Two minotaurs later, they ran into another sheep-man. This time, Echo countered the music and Serenity had Morwen go up and attack it with her magic.

The sheep-man almost immediately fell over, smoking. It didn’t have any defense against lightning magic and seemed to have put everything into its music-based mental attack.

Serenity was growing tired of the monotony of dodging charging minotaurs when the dungeon decided to add a new monster. As Serenity dodged to the side with his axe flying towards the minotaur, something grabbed at his neck from the wall of the maze.

It hit his windpipe directly and painfully and Serenity didn’t wait to see if it had the strength to directly snap his neck. Healing from that would be a pain, probably similar to healing perforated lungs, and he didn’t want to go through that again. Instead, he triggered his shapeshift and evaporated into black smoke.

A Void Sovereign couldn’t be choked, after all.

Once the minotaur was past, Serenity floated to the middle of the maze and solidified himself, watching the wall that had attacked him. “Stay in the middle of the maze. There’s something in the wall. Morwen, could you throw a lightning bolt right there?” Serenity pointed at the spot where he thought the assailant was.

As the lightning hit the wall, Serenity could see something wound around the corn plant vaporize, while the corn plant itself was untouched.

“What the heck? Why didn’t it do anything to the plant?” Morwen stared at the undamaged plant.

“It’s the dungeon wall,” Serenity explained. “It just looks like a plant. You could probably get actual corn off it if it were ripe, too, but it’s reinforced like a dungeon wall. The dungeon’s Tier One, so the walls will generally stand up to anything a reasonable Tier One can do and most things a Tier Two can manage, even as corn. More traditional walls are generally a bit tougher, but I’m not surprised it’s not damaged. Hit over there, would you?”

Serenity pointed at the wall opposite of where the first trapvine was. When Morwen threw another lightning bolt, he saw another trapvine blacken and fall to the ground.

“Why’re you having her shoot the walls if they’re immune?” Doyle stared at the two spots, but he must not have realized what he was looking at.

“Trapvines. I’ve gotten too complacent in how I’m managing the minotaurs and the dungeon decided to increase the difficulty. One of them grabbed me and tried to break my neck when I jumped to the side.”

Serenity was beginning to think that this dungeon might be one of the ones that had to go even if it weren’t a contained-growth dungeon. He didn’t object to dungeons learning and increasing the difficulty level, but most people at Tier One would have been in trouble if they were grabbed around the neck without a weapon to sever the vine. Serenity could have used his claws, but there’d been no need when he could just evaporate.

Come to think of it, he could probably have teleported out of the trap with his boots. Also, it wasn’t like there weren’t ways to deal with trapvines; once upon a time, he’d kept a neck-guard in his kit for any dungeon that had them. It was likely that no one really had that sort of equipment yet, but it wasn’t really inappropriate for Tier One.

Maybe he was overreacting.