The entrance to the cave was larger than Karl had expected, not much of a "hidden cave" and more of an "obvious natural feature" sort of place.

If you could walk five people shoulder to shoulder through the opening, or let Rae walk through in spider form, you were not keeping much out of your safe space.

However, once they got a bit further in, there was a choke point, just wide enough for one person to pass through.

It was small enough that Rae would have struggled in spider form, if she didn't have the ability to simply pass through the stone, or teleport past it. That would keep out some of the larger monsters, at least.

Enough that the groups hiding in here could rest a little easier, and small enough that they could set a barrier to block the door if necessary.

Their group didn't bother, they didn't want to alert others to the fact that they were in here, if someone came to the entrance looking but didn't enter. Mark wasn't sure that there would be any more trouble, as long as the Elder was recovered mostly intact.

"Does anyone have reliable light magic? Or should I use a lantern?" Mark asked. "I think we do? I never use it, since I don't need light to see. Dana, did you have a light spell?" Karl replied.

Dana laughed and lit the cavern with a dim glowing orb that she set to hover over Mark's head like a beacon.

"Very funny. But you've got a point, it really does serve as a beacon.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough light in here that I can see where I'm going without it. So, I need something"

He led them deeper into the cavern, then stopped and pointed to the right. "That's where the water runs. If you need water, you can get it there."

Dana tapped him on the shoulder and turned him around.

"The water is that way."

Mark blinked, then looked at the marks on the wall.

"It clearly says that the water is this way. I'm sure that it was there."

Jim rushed off to see what Dana was sensing, then came back a moment later. "There is a spell of disorientation on the room. I ended up back at the exit." "Shit."

Karl laughed. "Would you like me to lead for a bit? Or I can break the illusion, and we can go about our day."

"You can break the illusion? I didn't even realize that there was one."

Karl shrugged. It was extremely subtle, he barely noticed the sensory output that didn't match what his eyes showed him.

But he had [Nullify].

"Actually, don't break it yet. That will alert whoever set it. Just lead us out of it." Mark decided.

[Opal, do you want to do it?] Karl asked, knowing that the butterfly would not be tricked by an illusion that both Karl and Dana could sense was not perfect.

[Alright, but you have to cast nullify on the right side exit. That's the way that we want to go, and there is something blocking the way down the stairs. I don't think that we're going to get anywhere except toward the other exits or the dead end that is the underground river unless we do.]

Karl nodded and cast the spell in the indicated direction.

And then, they were all pulled off the ground, sucked into whatever was unleashed by the nullified barrier.

Karl caught Dana as they flew, and transformed into a Tengu for easier flying.

However, a second later, they landed inside a trial instance of some sort, a lush forest setting with no monsters in sight.

"Oh, I get it. The reason they put the illusion in place was because there was a thing here sucking people in. It was a safety measure." Cara noted as she came out to explore.

Nate sighed. "We should have likely considered that someone might have hidden an instance. This is the first time that I've had one forcibly pull me in, though."

Cara looked up at him with an excited smile. "Oh, this isn't a trial. It's a broken separate space that's collided with the caves. That's why it sucked us in, there was an imbalance between it and the Immortal World we were on.

Now, should we start exploring? Or should we do a scanning spell to see what is hiding nearby?"

The Berserker stared at the transformed badger.

"Of course we should scan. How else are we going to find out what the threats are in the space? For all we know, it might be full of hostile Immortals who are just as trapped here as we are."

Cara frowned. "What makes you think that I'm trapped? I can just step into the Chaos Plane and walk right out."

Mark stared at the badger for a second, unsure if she was joking.

"Alright. Just like the thing with the light, I might be the only one who is not capable of leaving a separate space with no physical exit."

Cara laughed and patted him on the shoulder. "But there is an exit. It's over there. I can feel the magic of the portal. The problem is that it doesn't necessarily lead to your home world, it leads to wherever the creator of this space had it set to last.

We just happened to enter at the interference point between it and the caves. So, someone else should have started from this point as well, or they wouldn't

have blocked it.

Now, there are a lot of plants, and I can tell that Sister Remi is getting excited about searching through them for the good stuff.

So, should we get started?"

"Right. We were on a trip to get plants. We will figure out how to get home

later."

"That's the spirit."

The two ninjas laughed at their interaction. Cara knew just how to guide a conversation, and Mark hadn't even realized that her comforting pat was actually to check his pockets.

She hadn't kept his pencil, but he did have something on him, so he didn't get the poverty consolation cupcake.