This particular dungeon is a two-and-a-half hour drive from Sydney, but her party members are not from there so she'll meet them there. It's a new one, only noticed when a couple of hikers in Wollemi National Park saw and reported a monster last week. After scouting the area, the entrance was found hidden in a grotto, and Elisabel's party will be doing the initial recon.

She and her party meet up where Putty Valley Road meets Putty Road, them having come from Newcastle together, and from there they're being driven in a truck to the dungeon location.

"Hi! Nice to meet you, I'm Chris," says a muscular woman who had been leaning on an axe as tall as she is just before Elisabel arrived. She extends her hand for Elisabel to shake.

"Elisabel." Shake shake. "I'm the witch." She pats her binder of scrolls and pouches.

"I'm the tank!" she replies, cheerfully.

"I'm phys. ranged, hi, Tom," says a mousy guy in a white shirt with two holstered guns, offering a hand to shake.

Shake shake. "You look the part." She will pull out her hat so she can too.

"And I think it's just us, right, we're not getting a healer for this one?"

"I don't know about you but I'm not shooting for dungeons that need those yet."

"I am! Let's hop on, then, and share our tragic backstories with our witch while we ride the rest of the way."

Onto the truck.

"I'm not a dedicated healer but I can hold you together long enough to get to a hospital. Tragic backstories?"

"Don't ask me."

"I'm just joking, we've had time to get to know each other on the way here but you're new. But I'll start! I'm from Newcastle, I got a super-strength personal which I discovered when I accidentally bruised a boy who was bullying me five years ago, and I wouldn't have thought I liked this but actually I do! Oh also I'm nineteen and my parents wouldn't let me out for dungeons until I was eighteen otherwise I totally would be going to dungeons that need dedicated healers."

"I guess that's a little bit tragic for the boy you bruised, now that I think about it."

"Nah, he deserved it."

Charming. "And I started studying magic the instant that became a thing and I'm in the research department at U Sydney but sometimes I itch for more MP."

"Research? Like... inventing potions and stuff?"

"And spells, and enchantments, and improving existing ones, and doing language analyses on the scrolls... I hear U Sydney's magic dept is pretty good."

"Yeah! And electronic sigil display, that was what I did my thesis on."

"Thesis? Like, Ph.D. stuff? How old are you, you look barely older than me—"

"22 but if you're very fast and magic has only just started existing you can get a jump on some things. The distinguishing characteristic of a Ph.D. is the original research requirement."

"Yo shit our party's witch is a genius that's awesome. Uh, pardon my French."

"What were you guys doing when you saw the vid?"

"'The vid'?"

"You know, the one five years ago. That went viral, the first one that everyone saw that was on TV all the time."

"Oh. I dunno, I think I was having dinner with the fam?"