"Hell yeah! Let's rumble."

They proceed, and the dungeon is, indeed: a pain. It's organised in a very simple basic pattern lots of new dungeons tend to follow before they grow and specialise and get smarter, of a number of different "rooms" connected by short hallways. Some rooms look like the should've been visible through the fog from other rooms, but of course they weren't because that's not how any of this works. Some of the hallways are hidden by fog, like Chris feared. Chris, Elisabel, and Tom are not aquatic reptiles or amphibians, which means that the terrain is working in favour of their enemy.

Their enemy uses this fact to its advantage.

They're attacked by frogs and alligators and snakes, harrassed by giant fireflies and mosquitoes, and this is even one of the dungeons that has the occasional group of hostile fairies (although those are more annoying and inconvenient with small irritating spells than properly dangerous on their own). As Chris predicted, they don't get a lot of time to collect monster parts from any specific wave of monsters. The dungeon seems to favour crowd control strategies, trying to either split the three of them up or conversely box them in and pin them down.

The loot compensates for it a little bit. Tom finds some enchanted cartridges in one of the loot chests that don't fit his current pistols but he has a bunch at home, and this isn't one of the dungeons that's gotten the Good News Of Fiat Currency yet so they find a few golden coins of the peculiar currency new dungeons occasionally reward people with.

(Why do dungeons reward people with loot chests at the same time as they relentlessly try to kill them? Add it to the pile of mysteries.)

Yeah it's weird. Elisabel toasts bugs and lightnings monster-infested pools and breezes aside mist. She reports when she's down to fifty percent MP.

Eventually they reach the entrance to the boss room, a large set of double doors framed by enormous trees to either side. There's something engraved in a similar script to the sigils used by magic on an arch above the door, which lots of people take to be the name of the boss monster. Since no one knows how to read those sigils out loud, there are many interpretations of how one would pronounce those names, but it doesn't matter for any practical reason.

"Finally." Tom hasn't been actively complaining per se but it's very, very clear he's quite over fighting in the muck. "If there's a second level it better be dry."

"Wouldn't count on it." She snaps a picture of the sigils.

Chris renews the tank buffs on herself and the party, drinks a strength potion and, when the other two have done whatever pre-battle preparations they may have, she pushes open the door to the boss room.

The boss monster is an enormous two-headed serpent—no, not like that, both ends are heads. One of the heads has smoke coming out of its nostrils and the other's mouth is slightly frosted.

"Oh, fuck me," curses Chris.

The snake(s) look(s) up and charge(s).

As a necessary secondary superpower, at least the heads are resistant to at least their own temperature of choice; safest to assume the whole thing can shrug off both. But that leaves lots of options. It moves kind of unpredictably, being as it's a snake coming and going - that seems like it wouldn't work yet here it is - and she'd like it to do less of the moving around. Slow spell to kick things off.

The version of the spell Elisabel is using, modified to be effective against opponents as large as this snake, takes longer to cast, and the dungeon is by now wiser to her tricks. The snake targets her, if only to interrupt the cast.

But this is nothing out of the ordinary, and Chris is already standing between her and the snake and calling, "Bulwark!" as she causes a barrier of energy to appear in front of her. Saying the word doesn't actually do anything by itself, but many adventurers take to picking something to do or say associated with their skills in order to create a subconscious association that strengthens the mental state they need to occupy to use skills that aren't regular wizard spells.

Also, it makes it sound like you're in a video game, which a sizeable minority of adventurers consider a plus.

Tom has no defensive capabilities to speak of, as his survival strategy is mobility. Since he can't help with this, while Elisabel casts he focuses fire on the head that isn't taking point in this particular attack, as usual aiming for the eyes.

The snake crashes against the forcefield, shattering it, but its momentum is sufficiently halted that it does not get close to Elisabel at all. The other head—the ice one—engages Tom, trying to dodge his bullets as it casts some kind of ability at him.

"Fuck," he cries in response, dodging... nothing at all, apparently? Or at least, it's not obvious what made him curse and run the way he just did.

...get the slow spell off FIRST ask questions about that LATER.

It goes off, and the snake obligingly slows.

But Tom is on the move again, looking kind of like he's in pain but not letting that stop him as he continues to try to harass the ice head.

Chris... also looks kind of like she's in pain? She's panting a lot more heavily than it looks like it makes sense, given how fit she is and her performance in the rest of the dungeon, and even as she also starts to attack the snake directly she seems—clumsier, somehow.

"What is it doing to you two?" Elisabel demands, taking advantage of the slowed snake to take up a slightly better position to aim a lightning bolt.

"It's—"

Spitting fire in Chris's direction is what it's!

Hopefully Chris can tank that or at least turn around to get the rear-shield to absorb it. Elisabel gets underway on a lightning spell.

She blocks it with the flat side of her axe, which somehow manages to block all of the fire, but it seems to be taking quite a lot more out of her than it by rights ought to.