After the trapvine, they all tried to stay near the center of the cleared area of the path, where the vines couldn’t reach. It was all too easy to get close enough to one of the sides, though, and they quickly found out that this dungeon really liked trapvines, at least in this section.

Fortunately, no one else was caught by the neck, and a grabbed arm or leg was easily freed.

Echo’s music-countering ability was clearly not effortless; indeed, it seemed to be the hardest effect that any of them were using. After each sheep-man, she was obviously tired. She didn’t ask for a rest; when Doyle proposed stopping for a breather, she told him she didn’t want to give the dungeon more time to come up with more surprises.

Perhaps because they didn’t stop or perhaps because the dungeon was only Tier One, the worst surprise they had was when they ran into a minotaur and a sheep-man at the same time.

The sheep-man didn’t enthrall anyone; Echo countered its music the moment she heard it, well before it affected anyone. The way she countered sound was interesting; she didn’t make it inaudible or try to drown it out; she simply hummed in an irregular counterpoint and the magic formed by the music fell apart.

When Serenity waved Morwen forward, he caught a glimpse of movement where he wasn’t expecting any. He assumed it was a trapvine, but as Morwen came even with him, Serenity saw the minotaur. It wasn’t charging yet, so he tossed his axe at it and prepared to move Morwen out of the way.

It turned out not to be necessary. The minotaur fell without charging and Morwen’s lightning easily took care of the sheep-man.

Two hours after they entered the maze, the light level was still appropriate for mid-afternoon. Serenity knew that had to be a result of the dungeon; by this hour, the sun was going down outside. It was one of the many ways in which dungeons didn’t reflect the outside world, and one Serenity both appreciated and disliked, depending on how it affected him. In this case, it was helpful.

As Serenity was considering the light level, Echo held up a hand and called the others forward. She whispered, “There’s a larger open area ahead. It’s hard to tell since the walls are all corn, but it’s at least twice as wide as the areas where we’ve been seeing sheep-men. Probably more. I’m hearing something moving in the clearing, but I can’t tell what. Several somethings.”

Serenity glanced at Doyle. Doyle just nodded and seemed to vanish to Serenity’s eyesight (camera-vision?), though he was still clearly present to Serenity’s Eyeless Sight. Doyle clearly had a visual cloak of some sort, and it seemed to be quite a good one for a Tier One. Serenity could see ripples in the air that looked like heat shimmers when he watched Doyle move, but if he hadn’t known where Doyle was, it wouldn’t be obvious. It wouldn’t help against anything that wasn’t vision-based, but it was still a very good start for a stealthy Path.

Doyle vanished around the corner. Less than a minute later, he walked back to the group and reappeared. “There’s about a dozen tiny minotaurs. I don’t think they saw me. Lots of room to work with, fortunately. The only exit’s on the far side; if I had to guess, this is the level’s boss. Morwen, Serenity, do either of you have an area attack? Echo and I don’t.” Doyle sounded irritated at the lack of an appropriate attack.

“Minitaurs?” Echo snickered.

“There’s probably only one level,” Serenity noted. “I think we’re the first people in here, and it takes time for dungeons to grow, especially without visitors. At Tier One, it can’t have more than two levels, and it said it was low Tier One.”

“I can make my lightning take on a cone shape,” Morwen offered. “Or an arc, but then it’s close to me. The cone is pretty much just me pushing the arc farther away.”

Serenity nodded. “You can repeat that, right?”

“As long as my mana holds out.” Morwen’s right hand tapped her leg. “Which may not be long, it takes a lot of mana.”

“In that case, I’ll try to anchor them in place. I’ll only get to cast the spell once, but I can hold it for a while. It’s a proper spell, not a Path Skill, so it’s slow.” Serenity would normally have gone for a Plasma-based spell, but with someone else who could do offense, it made sense to try to control the fight instead. He was getting a lot of mileage out of that gravity spell.

His goal this time was to drive the minitaurs into the ground. It might not work, but all it really had to do was slow them down. If he combined that with Evoking a Quickness spell on the group and a Slowness spell on the minitaurs, it should be enough to prevent the group from being swarmed.

Serenity built the spell. He wanted to spend more time practicing, but however useful his gravity magic was, it was already at the point where his existing knowledge was enough to build a very good, useful spell. It simply wasn’t worth the time where there were bigger impacts he could make in other ways.

Making it affect an area was going to be hard on his mana, so Serenity didn’t expect to be able to do much else. Fortunately, he’d already paid the mana cost for his infused spells, so he could still use them. Everything else would need to use stamina or Essence, and he didn’t have much that used Essence.

When Serenity finished building the spell, Morwen was fidgeting in place. He ignored it and glanced at Doyle and Echo. Doyle was standing watching their backs while Echo was obviously listening. He tapped Echo on the shoulder, then whispered. “Any changes?”

Echo shook her head.

Serenity nodded decisively. “Okay, then, everyone get ready. I’ll cast the quickness spell, then we’ll all rush the corner so we can see. Doyle will keep going while I weigh down the minitaurs and Morwen starts throwing lightning. Morwen, you need to stay on the main group while Doyle, Echo, and I pick off stragglers. I’ll be between them and you, while Doyle will circle around. All good?”

As plans went, it was simplistic, more or less “get ‘em” with extra steps. The extra steps were important and useful; they were what would hopefully prevent injuries. Serenity was confident they’d win without too much trouble even if they took another approach, but that didn’t mean they could afford to be dumb. If anyone other than Serenity was injured, they’d likely be knocked out of the fight, and death was always possible. Especially from a swarm.

“Oh, and stay away from the walls. I don’t trust this dungeon not to have lined them with trapvines.” It wasn’t really a fair move, and most dungeons wouldn’t trap the final area, but Serenity had seen it happen.

“Everyone ready?” Serenity looked around and made sure that each person acknowledged they were ready, then started the countdown. “In 3 … 2 … 1 … GO!”

Serenity triggered the Quickness spell as he called 1 and started around the corner as he said Go.

The minitaurs were even smaller than Serenity had expected; since the original minotaurs were seven or eight feet tall, he’d expected the small ones to be roughly waist-high, but these were more like knee-high. Well, knee-high on a human; they wouldn’t even reach Serenity’s knees in his chimera form.

If anything, there were even more of them than the dozen Doyle estimated.

He had to shape the gravity spell quickly to cover the group of minitaurs, and he didn’t want it too close to the walls. He’d have to leave a few out of the effect; well, that was to be expected. It was too bad he couldn’t easily indicate to Doyle where the edges were; he’d have to remember to add that in the next time he built an area-gravity spell. Doyle would have to find the edges by watching for where he felt heavier.

As the spell hit, most of the minitaurs in the affected area fell to their knees or tripped and landed badly. The ones outside the area kept charging.

“I’m going right!” Doyle yelled as he angled towards the group of three on the right that had been too close to the wall.

A blue-white arc skidded along the ground towards the middle of the group of minitaurs, leaving a loud CRACK-BOOM noise behind it. It was much louder than the individual strikes Morwen had used against the sheep-men.

“I’ve got left!” Serenity ran towards a pair that were too far left and back, pulling the Slowness spell as he ran.

The two minitaurs clearly didn’t know where the spell was; when they crossed into it, they both tripped and landed snout-first on the ground. Serenity stopped directly between them and the two ranged fighters as he tried to hold everyone he wanted the Slowness spell to affect in mind. The ones outside the region of increased gravity were the most important, so he glanced over in Doyle’s direction, only to see that Doyle had already taken one out and it looked like Echo had gotten the farthest back of the three. Serenity mentally tagged the one remaining one of the group and all of the other minitaurs, then released the Slowness spell.

It was even more effective than Serenity had expected. All of the surprised minitaurs were struggling to stand again, and several managed to tip themselves over as they tried to stand with their reflexes disturbed by the Slowness spell. Only the ones that had somehow managed to not trip were moving forward; Serenity was sure the one that wasn’t in the gravity field would have as well, but while Serenity watched things develop, Echo threw out a sonic bolt that caved in its side. It wouldn’t be going anywhere.

On top of the interaction between the increased gravity and Slowness, Morwen’s lightning sometimes made the minitaurs twitch. More than once, one of them got part of the way up only to fall down again as an arm or leg moved wrong.

Serenity started throwing his axe. He didn’t need anything else, and the axe was unaffected by the lightning. He had to be careful and throw it at the minitaurs on the edge; the one time he cut across Morwen’s lightning arc, the axe cut the spell and the lightning dissipated.

It was an easy, if gruesome, cleanup process. The only minitaur that came close to hurting anyone was the first one Doyle killed; the others didn’t even get within three feet of anyone.

Once they were all down, Serenity quickly swept the group of minitaurs looking for monster cores. There weren’t any.

The other exit to the room led down a short path between corn rows to a small circular room with a corn stalk at the back that was shorter than the others and mounted with a green crystal. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be a second exit.

As Serenity walked towards the dungeon core, Echo snapped out, “STOP.”

Serenity froze and waited for Echo to tell them what the problem was.

“I heard something moving in here other than us. In the corn.”

Serenity started examining the “walls” looking for something that could have caused what Echo heard.