Anika chilled outside the gate to the first dungeon they had ever visited, back resting against the gate post. Lily napped in her lap, occasionally eliciting an adorable sleepy chirp or twitch of the legs, likely due to a fantastic dream. Anika had told Leka that she wanted to have more independence, so they had arranged to meet the trainer and Sinaya at the dungeon after lunch. They had made it to the dungeon gate faster than Anika planned, so now she played with the thick grass, anxiously breaking off the wide blades and ripping them apart as she tried not to think about their first time in the dungeon without Philip and Epona.

  The dark green, wavy leaves made a satisfying tearing sound, like slicing several pieces of paper with one of those old paper cutters with a big handle that opened and closed like the cookie monster of paper. Anika shredded each piece until she couldn’t tear them anymore before ripping another piece off to begin again. Absolutely no one would think she was nervous. Nope. Not at all.

  She had a plan for the day. They would work their way to the back of the dungeon behind the groves of trees that held the Scurry Captains and their minions. They might run into some lidoks, but Anika knew they would fare better against them than they would the rabid squirrels. The back of the dungeon held several other monsters that tended to spawn in smaller packs, some of which had elemental powers. She wanted to see how they looked and fought in person before making the final decision on what to use Lily’s new clone ability on.

  Hearing a noise, Anika looked down the road which winded slowly down hill from the temple. Some parts of the road rose up in small waves, the uneven terrain of the foothills preventing a clear sight line too far back toward the temple. She saw Leka and Sinaya cresting the closest hill, which put them within shouting range. She raised a hand to wave and then turned her attention to the sprawling capybara in her lap.

  “Lily, time to wake up!” Anika leaned closer to her companion and spoke softly while scratching behind her ear.

  Lily yawned and stretched. She started to roll over, as if ignoring the wake up summons to go back to sleep. Her half-asleep state miscalculated, however, and she rolled off of Anika’s outstretched legs, and landed on the ground, waking with a surprised snort.

  “Are they here?” Lily, having transitioned from sleepy to caffeinated toddler in the time it took her to sit up, looked up at Anika, then spun to look back towards the road.

  “Yes, so we can go meet them if you want…” Anika barely finished the sentence before Lily zoomed off towards the approaching women, shouting their names happily. Anika sighed, slowly standing up and brushing remains of her grass extermination project from her armor. She decided to just wait until the group made it to the gate. No need to go chasing after her companion. She wouldn’t get a word in edgewise while Lily told them all about their earlier short walk to the dungeon.

  As they approached, Anika decided to take the time to examine Sinaya in her armor. Her gear looked similar to what Anika wore, but with lighter blue armor that matched the light blue shades of her hair and contrasted her dark green skin. The metal plates reinforcing the gear had a deep blue-black sheen that looked like blued steel, and it looked like her armor had more areas reinforced than Anika’s armor. Her legs had mixed leather and metal greaves with articulated knees, and around her hips hung a scale mail skirt.

  Sinaya wore her swirling blue, green, and gold hair in a tight bun that kept it away from her metal pauldrons. Her arms, surprisingly, had minimalist armor under the pauldrons, with light and flexible vambraces similar to what Anika wore on her draw arm. In her dark green leather gloved hands she carried a weapon Anika had never thought anyone would legitimately fight with outside of a Kung Fu movie.

  “Is that really a meteor hammer?!” Anika called in shock as the group turned down the short path from the road to the gate.

  “Yes. Vok says it is my most proficient weapon, so I will start with it this week. Next week he would like me to bring the rope spear, if it is appropriate for the dungeon we visit. They have different uses with different monsters. Finally I will also fight with more traditional swords as well, as sometimes it is required to have the ability to slash or pierce a target.. I carry a dagger like you have as well.”

  Anika just gaped at the smaller Mizeta woman.

  “Wow Sinaya, you know a lot of weapons!” Lily ran ahead of the pair of women, her excitement clear in the tippy taps she performed in circles around Anika’s feet.

  “The temple has a thorough training program. Vok requires students to learn the basics of multiple weapon types before specializing.” Leka commented dryly.

  “I will endeavor to do well as part of your party,” Sinaya nodded at Anika, and she remembered that she needed to invite Sinaya to her party as well.

  Anika quickly sent Sinaya a mental invite to the party, noting her slightly higher level at 13. When Anika had asked Leka more about training here, it sounded like they often started visiting the dungeons at level 10 in structured classes that involved more show and tell than actual fighting. They started to engage monsters in combat as they approached 17 years of age, when they became adults in Etalan society, but then would still have supervised dungeon sessions, like Anika and Philip had. Supervision continued for about a year, though once they demonstrated their ability with all monsters in a dungeon, they could return on their own without supervision. Anika approved of their method, as she had no interest in dying in a dungeon, or willingly sending teenagers to fend for themselves in dungeons, and these tactics kept fatalities low.

  “Let’s head inside, we will need to travel to the far side of the dungeon to reach the monsters you would like to see, Anika.” Leka opened the gate and gestured for the younger women to precede her.

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  Anika walked into the dungeon and abruptly halted a few steps inside, staring at the system message inside.

  You are entering a dungeon.

  Advanced status reporting available by default:

  Personal reporting, party reporting, buff display, debuff display

  New reporting available: mini-map

  Would you like to customize reporting?

  Lily tumbled into Anika’s legs when she stopped abruptly.

  “Owww - Anika why did you stop?”

  “Uhh… have the dungeons ever had ‘new’ things show up?” Anika stepped further inside the gate so the other women could enter. She had almost dismissed the message, assuming it contained the same static message they received when entering every dungeon. But then she noticed the new line of text. “New reporting available: mini-map.” The exact thing she had wanted multiple times in the dungeon and now, suddenly, it actually existed?

  “No, the dungeons are static. We would not expect any…” Leka trailed off as she stepped inside the gate and read the message for herself.

  “What is new in the dungeon?” Lily asked, looking up at Anika.

  “You should’ve gotten the message too, Lily.”

  “Oh I just make it go away as soon as it pops up, I don’t want to read it over and over!” Lily flopped onto the ground, rolling in a patch of grass covered in tiny purple flowers.

  “Well the message says that the dungeon now has a mini-map.” Anika went through the customization screen and there it was, an actual mini-map, showing a white dot in the center, one white dot in front of her, and two blue dots behind and beside her. The white dots clearly represented herself and Lily, while the blue dots corresponded with Leka and Sinaya. She thought about the mini-map in different positions in her vision, and finally settled on a placement in the bottom right of her vision. It looked just like any game she played, and she was able to keep track of the dots out of the corner of her vision without needing to direct her full attention to it. Awesome.

  She normally wouldn’t complain - never kick a gift-horse in the mouth and all - but how had the dungeon given her exactly what she had wished for?

  “Ohhh… a map.” Lily stopped rolling and stared into the sky, concentrating.

  “Well… isn’t that exciting.” Leka finally commented. “It seems the growing Chaos magic may be manifesting new capabilities. The ambient magic isn’t strong enough for more reporting outside of the dungeon, so it seems sensible that the dungeon could manifest additional powers as the magic grows stronger.”

  “I’m not crazy that it’s a little weird that it manifested exactly what I said I wanted multiple times in the dungeon, right?” Anika spun to give the other women a look desperately asking for confirmation.

  “We do not fully understand how the dungeons work and manifest magic. The gods have not chosen to provide us additional context. We believe they had some influence on how magic manifested in the beginning, at least, but our limited understanding implies that the Chaos magic manifests all the beasts, magical herbs and plants, and other magic in the dungeon without divine influence. Perhaps this was influenced by our own desires in the dungeon.”

  Leka shrugged and continued walking into the dungeon. “For now, it is a feature you believe useful, so let us experiment and determine how to use it.”

  “It will take some time to become comfortable with it. I am not used to seeing it and keep thinking there is something near me!” Sinaya’s voice conveyed some anxiety at this sudden change as her eyes flicked back and forth, adjusting to the minimap.

  “Oh yay! I figured out how to turn it on. I like it!” Lily jumped up and started running to catch up with Leka.

  Anika shrugged and took up her spot in the rear. The entrance area of the dungeon was mostly open fields. The forested area on the left held the lidoks, and the stands of trees on the right that dotted the fields held squirrels. To reach more interesting monsters, they would need to walk to the back side of those areas. There, the scenery would change and they would find another four new monsters, with the possibility of some bosses. Anika would love the experience they received for killing a boss, but she didn’t know if they could handle a boss without Philip. They would have to see how they worked with Sinaya and how much their new spells helped.

  It only took about 15 minutes to pass through the front section of the dungeon where they passed by many Scouring Slimes. As the monsters didn’t threaten them, they didn’t stop to kill them, focused on getting to the higher level monsters in the north of the dungeon. Where stands of the wispy trees that reminded Anika of Christmas trees had previously dotted the fields to the east, trees grew more sporadically rather than in clusters. The grass grew taller, with shades more similar to a prairie in gold and brown. The flowers that grew frequently in the front of the dungeon grew more sporadically, until they no longer appeared. Instead, thorny bushes appeared in clumps, and the terrain had more rocks.

  The forest to the west became darker and more jungle-like, with thick greenery and a dense canopy. The greens of the plants had more variety than the lidok forest to the south, and the area contained vibrantly colored vines and flowers. From where they stood, they could see birds flitting through the trees and sucking nectar out of giant flowers. They looked like hummingbirds, but easily ten or more times the size of the birds Anika knew from Georgia. They had the same vibrant markings of hummingbirds she remembered, with blues, greens, and reds decorating their feathers.

  The Giant Hummingbirds, according to the book, attacked by diving down at their victims, attempting to stab them with their long beaks. The beaks, perfect for sucking nectar from a flower, also doubled as a syringe, piercing the skin to inject a soporific poison. At first, you would fight and move slower. If they injected more into you, you would slowly drift into sleep. Too much poison, and you would never wake up.

  Anika would rather avoid that fate. Their armor would prevent the piercing attack on most parts of their body, but Lily’s unarmored body put her at risk. Additionally, they moved very quickly, and Anika doubted her ability to keep up with her bow or her magic. All in all, she thought she would rather avoid fighting the birds if they could get into the forest without encountering them. One of the contenders for Lily’s new clone, however, required venturing into the jungle.

  The prairie, on the other hand, held monsters that mostly moved in small packs or solo. Several of them had potential as a target for Lily’s clone ability, but she couldn’t see any of them from their current vantage point. Anika assumed they would need to walk further into the area to find them, as some may be hiding in the grasses or in the scrubby bush. At least the minimap would help them find the monsters before they found the party!

  “Well,” Leka turned to look at her trainees, “You would like to see the monsters in both areas, correct? Where would you like to start?”

  Anika looked at Sinaya, who gestured that Anika should choose. Before Anika had a chance to answer, however, Lily made the choice for them.

  “Let’s go to the jungle!” And she took off towards the hummingbirds, practically skipping with excitement.