There were far too many enemies for us to face on the field, but then again I did ask Ignis to train us well, so perhaps making us face impossible odds was her way of doing it.

As I attempted to think of how to potentially break up the massive student and Elemental congregation, Nessy tilted her head, her nostrils flaring as she took in several deep breaths. Her eyes narrowed.

"Something's not right," she whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"That chest." She nodded toward the elevated platform. "It smells... empty. It's too obvious, too prominent."

"A decoy?"

"Pretty sure, yeah," she confirmed. "The real treasure is..." She closed her eyes, sniffing and spinning in one spot. "This way!"

She tugged me back the way we'd come, then down a dark and narrow, root-covered opening I hadn't noticed before. This new path twisted sharply downward, leading us deeper into the innards of the earth. The walls here were damp, glistening with moisture, and the air felt cooler, heavier.

"Are you sure about this?" I asked, struggling to maintain my balance on the sloping, slippery path with prad wolf legs.

"Absolutely." Nessy nodded. "I can smell it now. The real treasure has this... unique scent. A genuine magic artifact with mana potency to it."

The passage finally leveled out, opening into a small, unremarkable clearing. Unlike the grand space where Fern waited, this area was plain, unguarded, and seemingly insignificant—just another dead end in an underground maze.

"It's here," Nessy declared, dropping to her knees and beginning to dig at a patch of earth that looked identical to every other patch around us.

I joined her, bigger hands and wolf claws making the work easier. We dug in silence for several minutes.

Finally, my claws struck something solid.

"Yes!" I grinned, brushing away the remaining soil and unearthing a small, plain steel lockbox. No runes, no elaborate decorations, no magical glow. Just a simple, mundane container that could have been found in any office supply store.

"This is it?" I asked skeptically. "It looks so... normal."

"The best treasures often do," Nessy replied. "It's what's inside that matters."

I was about to figure out how to open the lockbox when a deep, jovial, female voice echoed from the earthen tunnel behind us.

"What have we here?"

We spun around to see an absolutely massive, gray and black spotted seal pradavarian emerging from what I'd assumed was a solid earth wall. She was very tall and curvy, with intelligent dark gray eyes and a far too happy expression.

Her spotted face pattern defined her as a harbor seal and she wore a silver and black hexasuit, black dreadlocks swaying with gold and silver rings. She moved with that peculiar seal waddle-walk that somehow managed to look both adorably cute and intimidating, white whiskers twitching.

"Oh my!" She clapped her gloved hands together. "Two little wolves found our super-secret treasure! How absolutely wonderful!" Her voice carried the kind of excessive enthusiasm typically reserved for discovering unexpected birthday presents.

"And you are?" I asked, evaluating our titan prad of an opponent.

I knew that some prads had gigantism, but seeing a live example of such up close was truly unnerving. I thought that Addie and Kristi were quite tall and fit, but this woman was on a whole other level of body density.

"Advanced Dungeoneering Teacher's Assistant Marlena Shashorth," the sea lion declared with a theatrical bow, making her dreadlock rings jingle. "Level 47 Hydromancer, and today's special surprise boss encounter!" She straightened up, still beaming. "And I'm afraid you two adorable little puppies aren't getting out of here alive with the treasure! Mwa ha ha ha har arf!"

"Uh," I uttered, still clutching the lockbox. "Surprise attack team - go!"

Our backpacks suddenly burst open as Adelle and Kristi exploded out in a blur of orange and emerald-violet.

"Nobody threatens my Alpha!" Adelle roared, launching herself at the seal with fists flying.

Marlena's eyes widened with delight. "Ah?! Unexpected delvers inside dimensional bags! How wonderful!" She clapped her large hands together, then immediately had to dodge as Adelle's punch whistled past her snout.

What followed was possibly the most bizarre prad fight I'd ever witnessed. Marlena fought like, well, like a giant seal. She'd suddenly drop to her belly and torpedo-slide into Adelle, bowling the cheetah over, pop back up behind her with a happy bark, then dive sideways again when Kristi tried to rake her with raptor claws.

For a moment, my mind skipped on that quirky thought. For some inexplicable reason, what I pictured in my head wasn't a pradavarian seal at all. I shook my head and returned to watching the fight, ignoring the transient thoughts of non-prad seals.

"Arf! Arf!" Marlena barked merrily as she evaded the cheetah and raptor attacks, her hexasuit-wrapped body undulating in smooth, flowing motions. "This is so much fun! You're both very good at this violence thing!"

"Stay still damn it!" Adelle growled, ineffectively trying to punch the seal. "Shadowstep!"

The TA flopped and rolled, using her powerful tail and legs to propel herself in an unexpected direction, evading the cheetah's teleporting powers with ridiculous effectiveness for someone so large.

"How are you so damn slippery?!" Kristi growled as the blackjack she wielded failed to knock out the TA, simply sliding off the side of her neck.

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"Natural seal advantages!" Marlena chirped, popping up behind a confused Kristi. "Plus I may have applied some hydro-slickness enchantments this morning to my suit! Always be prepared, that's my motto!"

She honked and rolled right over my packmates, her hands blasting streams of water that made the ground treacherous. The raptor and cheetah were crushed with indignant cries, failing to stop the elusive seal.

"You're no match for my wrestling skills, cuties!" She laughed as water dripped from her knuckles.

Adelle shadow teleported from under the seal, only to receive a tail swat to the face.

While Adelle and Kristi continued their slapstick battle with the merry seal, I noticed Nessy creeping around behind Marlena. Her figure was hard to focus on, nearly invisible. I realized that she was binding her paws to the slippery ground with flashes of silver so as not to fall over like our heavy hitters.

"Oh, this is delightful!" Marlena chortled as she somehow produced a live fish from her pocket and started juggling it with her hands while dodging Kristi's increasingly frustrated claw swipes. "I haven't had this much fun since the last time Professor Terrimoff let me design a water trap for my thesis to test it on other students!"

She laughed, swatting Kristi into a wall and swallowed the fish snack whole in one swipe of her mouth. "Did you know that if you flash-freeze someone's feet to the ground, they make the most amusing—"

The TA's cheerful rambling was cut short as Nessy-Candace leapt at her from behind, pressing her paws to Marlena's temples.

"Unbind Mobility!" Nessy commanded, silver light flaring from her hands.

"Oh my gosh!" Marlena said. "I am paralyzed! That's quite impressive binding work! Very clean application of—"

She toppled forward, completely rigid, rolling sideways and nearly crushing Adelle.

The effort of binding such a large, high-level opponent seemed to drain something vital from Nessy. She stumbled, her body flickering like a dying hologram. The silver light that had been dancing in her left eye suddenly winked out, and she too collapsed.

I felt a sudden wrenching sensation as I was yanked back into my own human body, tumbling out of one of the no longer extra-expanded bags in a disorienting heap.

I groaned, my human limbs feeling strange, short and awkward after hours in a wolf's body. The tunnel around me was pitch black and I could no longer smell everything everywhere. I dug into my pocket and pulled out the plastic prad repellent keychain, turning on the led flashlight so that I could see. Everything looked bigger.

I saw that Candace had rolled out in a tangle of limbs from the other bag. The knocked out wolf girl was expelled as well, and our supplies and extra weapons were scattered everywhere like the contents of an overturned toybox.

The wolf boy came to, blinking at us with confused, wide eyes. Addie appeared behind him with a shadowstep and smacked him in the head with a fist and he toppled into the mud.

"Ow," Candace voiced from where she'd landed. "That was... definitely not how I planned to return to my body. Taking out that damn seal ate all of my mana."

"I'm pretty hard to take down," the TA agreed jovially. "I'm impressed that you managed it at all!"

Nessy sat up slowly, rubbing her temples. "Wah. Everything hurts," she mumbled. "And I feel... empty? Like someone scooped out half my thoughts and energy."

"The binding overextended our shared mana," Candace explained, slowly untangling herself from the mess of supplies. "Forced separation. Not dangerous, just... uncomfortable. Bleh."

"Wowza!" came Marlena's cheerful voice from where she lay paralyzed on the tunnel floor, "that was absolutely lovely! Did you develop that technique yourself, Miss...?"

"Candace Rhinehart," the fox supplied.

"Marvelous, Miss Rhinehart! And might I add, excellent tactical thinking. Using my focus on your companions to create an opening to bind me—textbook asymmetric warfare!" Marlena's wholesome enthusiasm was undimmed by her complete inability to move. "Professor Fern will be ever so pleased with your performance! She did warn me that you guys would be devious but I didn't expect so much advanced magic use from students!"

Adelle walked over to the seal and sat directly on Marlena's back like she was a particularly comfortable bench.

Kristi began collecting stuff the bags expunged into a single pile.

Nessy joined the raptor girl, pulling out bagged sandwiches from our scattered supplies. "Anyone hungry?" she asked. "I feel like we should eat something before... we start heading back."

The other girls and I nodded in agreement. Candace found a bottle of muddy mana-restoring wine, wiped the top and chugged it, passing the rest to Nessy. The husky sipped the wine slowly and offered Marlena bites of sandwich, which the seal accepted graciously.

"This is quite good!" Marlena commented after chewing thoughtfully. "Is that herb-crusted turkey? Lovely! You know, most students would probably just leave me paralyzed and rush off. It's refreshing to encounter such polite young delvers."

"You're taking this pretty well for someone who's been defeated," I observed.

"Oh psh, 'defeated' is such a strong word!" Marlena bark-laughed. "I prefer 'tactically repositioned'."

We were just finishing our impromptu meal when one of the earth walls beside us suddenly... parted. Soil and roots shifted aside like a curtain being drawn, revealing Professor Fern standing in the newly created opening. Her burning eye surveyed our little scene—the paralyzed seal inhabited by Adelle, the pair of knocked out wolves and us nomming on sandwiches and sharing wine.

"A job well done, delvers," she said. "As it is twelve PM, the simulation is paused for lunch!"

I nodded, wary of potential trickery.

An earth Elemental flowed behind her, a sphere of rolling earth and rocks, barely fitting in the tunnel opening it had created.

"Hello, Professor!" Marlena called out cheerfully from beneath Adelle. "These students have been absolutely wonderful! Very creative problem-solving, excellent teamwork, and they shared their sandwiches!"

Professor Fern stepped fully into our tunnel, noting the lockbox in Kristi's hands. "You found the real treasure."

"Yes ma'am," I replied.

"And defeated my TA," she continued, nodding toward Marlena.

"We did," Kristi confirmed.

Ignis fell silent for a moment, the unburned side of her mouth twitching into a smile.

"Very well. I'm going to give you a choice," she said. "One that will determine not just your grade for today, but your future as delvers."

She gestured to the tunnel opening behind her.

"Option one: You can come with me now. I'll escort you safely back to the gymnasium. You'll receive full marks for the simulation, praise for your creativity and teamwork, and continue your education in Advanced Delving with more simulated dungeoneering."

Her burning eye fixed on me with uncomfortable intensity.

"Option two: You attempt to escape the dungeon and reach the gymnasium on your own." She paused. "However, if you choose this path and if even one of you is 'killed' in the simulation—you all fail the class."

"And if we succeed?" I asked.

"If you succeed... I will advance your entire team to Practical Dungeoneering. Real dungeons. Real dangers. Real rewards. Entry tickets to Birchwood, Denver Cascade and the Infinite Superstore courtesy of the school administration."

She stepped closer. "Know this—the path you choose here will echo through everything that comes after. Safe passage with guaranteed success, or risk everything for the chance at something greater."

The tunnel fell silent except for Marlena's cheerful humming.

I glanced at my packmates. Candace looked half asleep. Nessy was chewing her sandwich. Kristi clutched the treasure box with a frazzled look of wet, muddy feathers, and Adelle sat atop our captured TA like she owned the place. The cheetah gave me a thumbs up.

Then I turned back to Ignis. "Time limit?"

"You have till 3:30 to escape this labyrinth." She said.

"Are you going to throw everyone at us?" I asked.

"Naturally," she answered. "I will lead an army of every 'monster' and Elemental to crush you."

"When?"

"After lunch," she half-grinned with sharp raptor teeth.

"We accept." I smiled back at her.

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