Past the yellow tape, carrying maps that lead the way to where the dungeon entrance is thought to be, they don't need to walk very far for the magical effects to start appearing. Elisabel, being a trained witch, is able to feel it earlier and more keenly than the other two, but any adventurer who's gone on more than a couple of dungeon raids can recognise the feeling of magic in the air. It feels... nice. Quite unlike anything else, of course, but people who have tried to describe the feeling relate it to stepping out into the late spring sun after spending a while in a cold house, or taking a deep breath after your nose was blocked for two weeks, or waking up refreshed without an alarm to a day off work. It's relaxing, and it feels a bit like you're more alive, like this is where you're meant to be, that you're getting into your element.

And the environment agrees. Even before they're magical, the plants and animals in the periphery of dungeon entrances are more alive, healthier, more energetic, their colours more vibrant, their smells crisper, even the sounds are clearer. In a new and presumably-small dungeon like this, it's not overwhelming, but many adventurers report not wanting to leave the vicinity of the more powerful dungeons because the rest of the world just feels kind of drab by comparison.

Then the magic starts. A single tulip, which should not exist here, grows almost as tall as the trees around it. A pair of green and golden bell frogs looking at each other, both as big as a poodle, occasionally chirping at each other and calmly ignoring the party. A little pond whose water glows faintly where a couple of fairies no bigger than thumbs that from a distance look like balls of golden light with butterfly wings. Things that didn't use to exist on Earth, five years ago, but which now do.

She takes a couple pictures on her caged phone. That tulip is gonna be hers on the way out, it'll be amazing for spells.

And finally, the monsters, differing from the merely fantastical fauna and flora by not being, well, any existing fauna or flora.

(Technically the fairies are monsters, too? But they are typically harmless outside dungeons, and often travel so far from their parent dungeon that they're no longer being controlled by it at all, and they're nowadays considered to be magical animals rather than monsters.)

But take that frog over there, for example. It looks at a glance like a regular frog, kind of, other than the fact that it is as tall as Chris. But then you look at it again and you realise it has an extra pair of feet, a third eye in the middle of its forehead, and when it notices them and starts to open its mouth they can see a set of very sharp teeth.

Right before it shoots its tongue right at them, the bulbous part at the edge the size of a basketball.

"Look out!" calls Chris, jumping to intercept the attack and blocking it with her axe. It's enchanted to resist most forms of taking it from Chris's person nonconsensually, but she still has to hold fast onto it to not be pulled towards the frog when it pulls its tongue back, making a wet squelching sound as it gets detached from the metal.

Elisabel got up to "not disabled any more", with the Dexterity upgrades, and then she got magic.

Mostly.

She drops under the path of the tongue and sketches a sigil in the air and she's up again as soon as the tongue - well, most of the tongue - retracts.

Tom's got substantially more Dex than that, and more specialised besides. He jumps up high enough to grab onto a tree branch with one hand while unholstering one of his pistols with the other, and when he's up and has enough visibility he shoots one bullet per eye.

The frog can dodge the bullets fast enough that they hit its thick hide rather than its eyes, which still hurts it but far less than it would.

What it can't do is dodge Elisabel's spell at the same time, once she completes her sigils, and the lightning bolt that strikes it from out of nowhere doesn't fry it but does paralyse it, at least for the moment.

A moment is all Chris needs to press the advantage and jump ahead with an overhead swing of the axe, a single leap covering the fifteen or so metres between her and it and landing a cut in the middle of its head.

Which also connects, sinking three inches into its skin. It oozes black ichor but doesn't quite die yet, and starts recovering its ability to move as it tries to shake her off and open its mouth.

Elisabel doesn't really want to go for another lightning strike with Chris in such close quarters. How about a brief slowdown, enough to let Chris press the advantage -

Works, too, and Chris can pull the axe free from the frog's head and stomp on it so it doesn't get to open its mouth—

"Move!"

—she kicks off the frog into the air.

And Tom, who has spent the last couple of seconds firing a few rounds into the air where they stopped in their tracks and hovered in front of him, releases them all at once into the hole opened by Chris's axe.

And that's enough DPS that it starts to die.

"Parts?" Chris calls to Elisabel as she unsheathes a sharp-looking blade from her hip.

"Solid chunk of skin off the back, any teeth you can knock out, and toes."

She peels as solid a chunk of skin off the frog's back as she can while the frog dissolves into nothing but she only manages to get two teeth before it's too insubstantial for her to be able to cut anything more. The pieces she cut don't dissolve, though, and also a small crystal the size of a grape is lying on the grass where the frog was just a moment ago. It's a clear yellow and looks almost like it's a liquid that forgot it was meant to spread out and spill.

"Ew," Tom observes of the body part cutting.

"Yeah, it's not great." She's got sample bags.

"Gotta take our opportunities when we can, probably have too many critters inside to grab anything from most," Chris says, grinning from ear to ear.

"Sometimes I get lucky but yeah." Bag bag bag.

"This part is much better in video games. The disgusting body parts just neatly appear in your inventory pre-cut and don't actually make any messes."

Chris grabs the crystal, then, and peers at it. "I think that's one of yours," she says to Tom.

He looks. "Oh, neat, thanks," he says, accepting it and pocketing it. "Didn't even see it, it's so tiny."