It was late spring, or so the NASA software said, which meant that days were about seventeen hours long, while the nights were about fourteen hours long.

While Bob had woken up a bit earlier than everyone else, it was clear that it would take some adjustment to get used to the longer days and nights. By the time everyone was up, dressed, and fed, they were still facing another four hours of darkness.

"Well, I don't see any reason to wait for daylight," Bob said once the group had gathered in the center of the camp.

"I'm super keen to see what these natural Dungeons are like," Jessica agreed.

Bob looked around, but found no dissent. He opened a portal and stepped through it, arriving on the far side of the river. The Dungeon was a hundred feet ahead, and he could see the glow.

The System hadn't hidden the Dungeons, but rather had formed them as glowing ovals of white light, which was a contrast as the rest of the planet was bathed in red.

Everyone else arrived, and they walked through the tall grass, arriving at the pillar a minute later.

"Give it a poke," Elli suggested.

Bob hesitantly reached out his hand to touch the pillar.

Dungeon 801972G610N497ISS6PM18D.

Capacity 28%

Estimated time until overflow 179 solar cycles.

User tier seven, semi-evolved. User grouped with eleven other sapient beings, tier six.

Dungeon set to Tier Eight, Level Thirty-Eight.

The System notification appeared as his vision flared white for a moment.

New Quest!

The tunnels beneath the great city of Krestor have become infested with uncontrolled magma elementals! They threaten to destroy the foundations of the city, causing it to fall deep into the planetary mass!

Destroy ten of these elementals to receive a reward!

Discover where the elementals are coming from to receive a reward!

Discover why the elementals are attack the city's foundations to receive a reward!

Stop the elementals from destroying the city's foundations to receive a reward!

New Quest!

You are the first user to enter this Dungeon!

Clear this Dungeon to receive a reward!

(All Quest goals must be completed during the users first entry)

"Damn," he heard Mike's voice from behind him.

Bob turned around and found the group behind him, with the faint glow of the portal leading in and out of the Dungeon behind them. It provided just enough light to see his friends, but not enough to see the walls or ceiling.

He blinked as sunlight suddenly filled the area, courtesy of a ball floating above Erick's head.

He could see now, and based on pictures in nearly forgotten textbooks, he was pretty sure they were in a lava tube. It was circular, and about thirty feet across.

"Thank you," Bailli said sweetly to Erick, kissing him on the cheek.

"Yes, thank you," Jack said, moving to kiss Erick's other cheek before he was intercepted by a scowling Bailli, who waved her finger at him.

"Mine," she said possesively, linking her arm through Erick's.

"We all got the Quests?" Bob asked.

Jessica displayed her notifications, which were identical to what Bob had received.

"Well, the good news is that we know what we're going to be fighting," Bob sighed. "The bad news is I'll have to cast the fire protection spells free style."

"Just give them to the beacons and off beacons," Erick said.

Mike and Jack shuffled up to stand next to Bob, along with Wayna and Elli.

Bob began the process of delicately weaving the spell, but stopped quickly, frowning.

"Everything all right?" Jessica asked from beside him.

"The mana is... odd," he muttered.

"Odd how?" she pressed.

Bob continued to inspect the mana around him, carefully separating it. "There is a lot more fire aspected mana than there should be," he mused. "It's acting almost like neutral mana in terms of saturation."

"Well, we're in a lava tube," Mike said, "and it's lava, so, fire makes sense?"

"I suppose," Bob agreed reluctantly. "Although I'm pretty sure that it's going to result in more powerful fire effects."

"Ah," Amanda sighed. "So this Dungeon basically has fire themed monsters, and it provides a buff to all fire spells. Is there a correlating debuff to other elements?"

"That's a good question," Bob replied, "let me look."

Part of his pinnacle and paragon progression had been significant increases to his ability to sense and manipulate mana. The rest of the group didn't have the second half of those advantages, so they had agreed early on that part of Bob's job was to handle any manipulation issues.

After a few minutes, Bob came to the conclusion that there was a debuff in place. Attempting to manipulate water or cold aspected mana was significantly more difficult.

"Definitely a debuff for water or cold," he stated firmly.

"There is also a slight buff for earth or acid," he continued, "not as significant as the fire buff, but it's there."

"What does that mean for the fire protection?" Jack asked, tapping the metal plates on his chest.

"Well, as I use fire aspected mana to form a shield that absorbs fire aspected mana, it should be stronger," Bob replied.

"Great, because I was not looking forward to being roasted in this," Jack grinned.

"Yeah, you might still get roasted, just not quite as charred," Bob muttered as he began to weave the spell.

The ambush caught them completely by surprise.

They'd finished putting up their persistent effects, and had begun moving down the lava tube. They'd made it all of fifty feet when suddenly a dozen Magma elementals had fallen on them from the ceiling and the upper walls.

It was the fast reaction from Erick that had saved Amanda from being burned to cinders, as he pumped Anima Blast after Anima Blast into her. Eddi had been knocked aside at the last moment by one of his rexettes, while Bailli, in her lightning elemental form, had been fast enough to dodge.

The beacons had ultimately saved the group, as the elementals had converged on them immediately, with the attacks on Amanda, Eddi, and Bailli being almost accidental as they charged towards the front liners.

Bob sent Jake in to help Wayna. She was in a bear form, fighting two lava elementals, and was suffering from having to get a mouthful of magma to successfully bite the enemy. Jake would suffer the same issue, but Jake had a regenerating shield and heal.

Elli and Harv were working like a well oiled machine, holding off two elementals with ease as Elli smoothly moved between them, trusting in Harv to raise a sudden spike of Earth to cover his flank.

Mike was working his short spear and shield, tanking blows from the elementals only when he couldn't parry them.

Jack was dual wielding bucklers, moving the small shields into place gracefully, demonstrating a remarkable degree of ambidexterity.

The elementals themselves were amorphous blobs of magma, which had a number of unexpected and unpleasant effects. First, if they stopped moving, they quickly solidified an outer covering as the magma hardened, which was how they'd been able to ambush the group so easily. Second, they attacked by lashing out with tendrils of magma that were eight to ten feet long, which gave them greater reach than the group, forcing the beacons to continually advance in order to score hits.

Bailli, Amanda, Dave, and Eddi were piling the damage on to one of the elementals that was attacking Wayna. Lightning bolts, acid blasts, a massive wolf and a t-rex made short work of the elemental, allowing Wayna to fall back for a moment. Jake was clearly not happy about fighting the elemental, and expressed it by savagely tearing into it, trying to dismantle the creature that was hurting him.

"We're good, start alternating them off of the Jack and Mike!" Harv shouted.

The four damage dealers did exactly that, dropping one of Jack, then one off Mike. Both beacons were being healed by Jessica and Erick, although Mike had tanked quite a bit of damage while Erick had worked to save Amanda. Both of them were taking damage, but as the elementals were killed, the healers were able to get them back up to full health.

When the dozen elementals had been reduced to four, with one each on Jake, Elli, Mike, and Jack, they attempted to pull back. The party was able to keep up with them, keeping them in range as they fled, and soon the last elemental had fallen.

The whole battle had taken just under a minute, but the group was panting, looking around carefully for another ambush.

Quest advanced!

You have destroyed ten Magma Elementals!

You have been rewarded with one energy crystal!

New Quest!

Destroy one hundred Magma Elementals to receive a reward!

Bob checked the original quest.

New Quest!

The tunnels beneath the great city of Krestor have become infested with uncontrolled magma elementals! They threaten to destroy the foundations of the city, causing it to fall deep into the planetary mass!

Destroy ten of these elementals to receive a reward! Complete.

Discover where the elementals are coming from to receive a reward!

Discover why the elementals are attack the city's foundations to receive a reward!

Stop the elementals from destroying the city's foundations to receive a reward!

Another notification was waiting for him.

Quest Advanced!

"I bet you can't kill just one."

Disperse ten manifestations of equal or greater level than yourself. Complete.

Disperse one hundred manifestations of equal or greater level than yourself.

Reward : Ten energy crystals.

"Well, it looks like that new quest is separate from the original," he said.

"I'm not looking forward to eight more of those fights," Amanda shuddered.

"I'm not interested in risking our gear, but it might be a good idea to get out a drone and use the thermal camera to scout ahead," Dave suggested.

"That's a great idea, although I may be able to save us the drone," Bob agreed. "I'm going to try and alter the Mana Sight spell to detect either heat, or fire aspected mana. Either one should let me see the Magma Elementals when they're sitting still."

"I'm going to switch to a boar, I'll still have my face way too close to that magma, but at least I can tear at them with my tusks without getting a mouthful of it," Wayna said shakily.

It took almost half an hour, but Bob managed to work out a variation of Mana Sight that focused on heat and fire aspected mana. It had been easy to create a weave that only saw heat and fire aspected mana, but that had left him blind to everything else.

With his new weave locked in place with persistent effect, the party was ready to move forward. The lava tube they were in didn't travel in a straight line, but turned from side to side, as well as sloping up and down. It was as they reached the bottom of a slope that Bob spotted a group of heat signatures.

They were clustered against a wall this time, and Bob counted twelve of them.

"Twelve of them about sixty feet ahead, clustered up on the left hand wall," Bob whispered to the group.

"Think there is twelve of them because there is twelve of us?" Jessica asked.

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action," Jack replied. "If the next group is twelve as well, I'll agree."

"Let's get our Beacons lined up, we should be able to lay some damage on them as we pull them to us," Dave suggested.

The group was almost in position already, with exception of Jake, who was walking behind the group, ostensibly to provide a rear guard, but mostly because no one wanted to walk to closed to the hungry-eyed UtahRaptor.

Bob pointed out the section of wall where the elementals had layered themselves, and Dave and Bailli attacked simultaneously, Bailli with a blast of Lightning, Dave with Eldritch force.

The elementals tumbled off the wall, their obsidian skin shifting to the angry yellow, orange, and red of magma as they flowed down the tube towards the waiting party.

Dave and Bailli struck again, and one of the elementals staggered. A third volley collapsed it, and a fourth damaged another, then the elementals were in range. Tentacles of searing hot magma lashed out as the Beacons drew their attention. Mike had been standing closer to Wayna, ready to pull one off of her if it ended up being too much, but her squeals when a tentacle landed on her flank were more angry than anything else, and her six foot tusks tore chunks off the elemental.

Jake had picked up the add next to her, leaving her to face only one.

Much like the previous battle, Harv and Elli worked together like the seasoned duo they were, while Mike and Jack both had the advantage of not needing to fight off as many elementals for as long, Jack starting with one fewer, and Mike losing one almost immediately as it was torn apart by a giant wolf, a t-rex, a bolt of lightning, and an eldritch blast.

Jessica and Erick were under less stress, and Jessica was able to keep Jack and Wayna healed up between blows. It took forty-five seconds, and the elementals once again attempted to retreat, to no avail.

"That was much better," Eddi grinned.

"Definitely," Wayna agreed. "No magma in my mouth."

"It sounded like it really hurt when you got hit thought," Jessica said.

"It did," Wayna admitted, "but the whole squealing thing is sort of an innate reaction." She shook her head. "When I shift to an animal form, I get the animal's instincts. It makes it easy for me to fly, or swim, or run on four legs, but it also means I get their reactions too. Boars do not like it when something smacks them in the side. They get angry."

"Well, our team work is making the dream work," Jack said with a grin. Just seven more fights and we'll complete the second kill quest."

"I bet that quest is never ending," Dave said.

"Not taking that bet," Mike replied. "It probably just keeps going up. Next will be a thousand, then ten thousand, etc."

"Hopefully the reward goes up," Amanda said. "I mean, it was great that we picked up twelve mana crystals for the first part, but if we only get another twelve, for ten times the kills, I'll be disappointed."

"Would be nice to get ten mana crystals each," Jessica agreed. "A hundred and twenty crystals would be a nice reward for the group."

"Anyone else seeing this pile of maga elemental chunks glowing?" Harv asked.

Bob looked around at the fallen magma elementals, but saw nothing but rapidly cooling chunks of rock.

"I don't see anything," he admitted.

No one else in the group did either, so Harv approached it carefully. He reached out to touch it, then his eyes widened and he grinned.

He showed the group his System notification window.

Manifestation remnants contain resources. Would you like to use your Harvesting Skill to collect resources?