"While the discovery bonus for dungeons is extremely valuable, it comes with the cost of extremely increased risk, as without knowledge of what kinds of creatures or environmental challenges exist within, it is very possible to find yourself fighting against creatures highly resistant, or even completely immune, to your fighting style, leading to a much greater challenge than the level would suggest, naturally resulting in a much higher chance of death."

-Quote from Baccus Carlyle, renowned dungeoneer

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After getting over the familiar feeling of teleportation, I looked around at my surroundings, finding myself standing in a lush jungle, the very air itself exuding life as I saw the various shades of green and brown, the dirt underfoot almost invisible even under the thick canopy formed from the trees, none quite as tall as the ones in the forest where we found the portal but still quite large, there were also sheer cliffs towering over us encircling the jungle, likely the dungeon boundary. After a quick look around, I pulled up the System message that I felt when we entered, relieved at the message that I saw.

You have entered the Verdant Forest dungeon Congratulations, as your party are the first sentient beings to enter, EXP and monster drops will be doubled until you leave the dungeon and monster drops will be increased by 33% for 30 days after you leave

With the System message proving that we were indeed the first, we convened to make our plans for how to proceed.

"You know, this is really more of a jungle than a forest."(Mason)

"Yeah, plus it seems that we are in the center of it rather than the beginning, probably oriented like the tutorial was, farther in we go means the higher levelled the creatures."(Arnold)

"Speaking of, any tracks or energy signatures that might give us a hint?"(Roxy)

"Nothing from me."(Mason)

"Same"(Amy)

"Damn, we'll have to go in blind, keep your guards up, the treeline is way lower and thicker than what we're used to, would be surprised if something drops from them."(Roxy)

With Roxy drawing attention to the treeline, I decided to make a cheap hawk out of Lightning, hoping that it would take the initial attack of any ambushes instead of us, in addition to a Crystal anaconda that was about six feet long out of 100 mana, as both bears and hawks were unsuited to fighting in the dense vegetation. While I did that, Amy buffed both Roxy and Jordan with her skills, Arnold just looking towards the jungle as he had no preparations to make. Once we were all done, we grouped up with my hawk taking point, slowly circling the small clearing with the exit portal, the eerie silence of the jungle grating on us as we walked, the only noise coming from our movement, alerting anything with good ears of our presence as we travelled.

It wasn't until nine or ten minutes of walking later, the clearing now fully obstructed from view by the thick vegetation, that something happened, a vine from one of the trees we passed flashing towards the hawk as it passed, quickly wrapping around its body before small thorns emerged, rapidly draining the energy from my construct and causing it to dissipate almost immediately, not even giving me a chance to see the level of it before it darted towards Roxy, who barely managed to get her shield up in time to intercept it. Before the rest of us could do anything to help, a shout from Amy drew our attention to the tree the original monster had come from just in time for us to see four more green blurs streaking through the air towards us, and without any time to think I sent out a wave of Lightning with 50 mana, stunning them for barely a second and causing them to miss, unable to wrap around us as they passed, and letting me get a good enough look for the System to tell me their species and level.

Snakevine - Level 10

With their initial jump letting them bypass the frontline, I wasted no time in sending my anaconda forward as I once again started to call upon my Lightning, not confident in being able to hit them with the much slower Crystal due to their small size and high speed, and I managed to hit one of them with a bolt for 50 mana, charring it far more than I expected, and halting its movements as I took a quick look to the others, the few seconds that it took the snakes to regroup from their failed lunge giving them enough time to precess, minus Roxy who had thrown her shield after the snake started wrapping around it to get to her, the remaining three snakes slithering forward as a group towards Amy, who was barely able to get a shot off before they reached her, the arrow missing the snakes entirely and my own anaconda too slow to intercept them. As the snakes started their lunge, a pale white silhouette interposed between them, barely lasting a second before dissipating, but still managing to stop the first snakes lunge and causing the others to pause at the change, giving me enough time to erect a crystal wall for 20 mana between them as Arnold went to help Roxy, and as the snakes started to circle around my wall I made use of the abilities I had been practicing to explode the wall in a rain of shrapnel towards them, using another 20 to blast if forward, the wide range of my attack making it impossible for them to dodge as shallow cuts appeared all along their body, oozing a bright green fluid that was far more viscous than blood should normally be. Seemingly as soon as I exploded the wall, Jordan appeared and started slashing towards them, managing to bisect one of them with his first strike before using an echo to dodge a lunge from another, the last having wrapped around my anaconda, which was too slow to stop it, the thorns emerging as it tightened around my construct, making it bleed energy fast enough that it only had a few seconds, which was far longer than I needed to activate my [Detonate Construct] skill, ripping the snake to shreds from the explosion of shrapnel caused by the remaining energy in the construct rapidly expanding as I made the shell collapse, giving Amy enough breathing room to draw her own sword, which was notably lower quality than Jordan's, and land a deep cut on the snake that Jordan was fighting, the sneak attack almost killing it and creating an opening more than big enough for Jordan to finish it off, and looking over to Roxy and Arnold showed that they had already finished theirs off, bright green rivlets adorning Arnold's blade, and as if in recognition of me seeing everyone's fight end, I felt the System ping me with a message.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Congratulations, you have defeated a level 10 Thorned Snakevine x5 and gained 500 EXP

With the System announcing the end of the fight, we all let out a breath of relief as we examined the creatures as we waited for them to dissipate. Now that I was able to get a good look at some of the more intact corpses, I noticed that they were actually far more vine than snake, lacking eyes, mouths, nostrils, or even scales, their blood as thick as sap, only the one that Arnold fought actually having blood pour from its wounds due to his curse of bleeding, even the ones that were bisected by Jordan only bled a little bit. With only a few minutes until they shattered into light, one of them leaving behind a small vial of bright green liquid called Lifesap, the System only telling us its name and common rarity, we were unable to do any deep analysis of them, but we did come to the conclusion that they were almost certainly plants mimicking animals, as opposed to the other way around, so we continued our trek with most of our focus on the vegetation around us, specifically the hundreds of vines that wove between the trees and hung from every branch, once again having a cheap hawk fly in front to catch any ambush, though I didn't make another expensive construct as my anaconda had proven less useful than the mana it cost and I didn't know of any animals that would be able to fight effectively in this environment, or at least none that I had enough understanding of to make with any efficiency, though I did consider making a number of cheap hawks to use as suicide bombers, but I hadn't practiced controlling multiple constructs very much, and having more than two would sometimes cause me to tangle up my commands and send them to the wrong one, so I decided against it.

Now aware of at least one type of monster, and the only one other than bosses if my and Jordan's previous dungeon experience held up, the next encounter with the snakevines went far more smoothly, though the fact that this time there were only four also contributed, and we were able to take them out with much more ease, this time prepared for the snakes to launch themselves from the trees, Jordan managing to slice one in half as it flew while the others were stopped by a wall from Roxy, gaining us another 400 EXP and a spool of vine about 10ft long and as thick as my finger, though it was much more resistant than normal vine as even Roxy, who had the highest STR stat by a good amount, was unable to tear it with her hands. As we walked in an ever expanding circle around the exit portal, always making sure we knew where it was in case we needed to make a hasty escape, we managed to get one encounter every 20-30 minutes, the density of creatures much higher than the forest outside, the fact that it seemed the snakes always attacked the closest one first, which was always a construct, meant that the danger from them was majorly reduced, as while they were fast and dealt high damage, they were clearly acting on instinct more than intelligence and were as such very predictable. That wasn't to say that they weren't dangerous, as when one of them managed to latch on to Roxy's leg it managed to leave deep gouges in her metal boots, almost cutting through them entirely in the few seconds it took to get it off. By the time we had finished our fourth encounter, gaining a total of 900 EXP from the latter two, each fight having four and five snakes respectively, we were all low on resources, and unwilling to risk running out during a fight. Even then the 1,800 EXP gained over the course of just a few hours made us unwilling to leave the dungeon when we were still capable of fighting the monsters within, so we decided to camp next to the portal while we waited for our mana to recover, as stamina recovered much faster, the sun overhead still in the same position as when we first entered, meaning we wouldn't need to worry about loss of visibility during the night.

Since Jordan volunteered for first watch, I quickly slipped into meditation, letting my skill guide me into the trance that connected me with the world around me, and was disappointed to find that while there were some incredibly faint wisps of what I recognized to be Earth coming from below, it was too thin for me to grab with my current skills and there were no other energies within my range, in line with what I had seen using [Elemental Sight], but still disappointing, leaving me with nothing other than the mana control exercise to do while I waited, as any other kinds of practice would cost mana and it was still too early to sleep, running through the exercise with both pure mana and the two forms of elemental energy that I had available to me until I was tired enough for a quick nap, having won the rock-paper-scissors tournament for last watch. After everyone regenerated all of their mana, we once again set off, using the markers we left on trees to quickly get back to where we were, thankfully not running into anything on the way despite our worries that the more open style of this dungeon meant that the creatures within might move more freely than the more linear dungeons that Jordan and I had run in our tutorials.