The morning session went smoother than Lacey had dared to hope. With 21 entrances, they were easily running every single unique dungeon they’d created. They had three arenas for the very lowest levels, and each of those had five gauntlets attached. Once the arena level cleared, the 15 gauntlets opened up, with three copies each of the Fighters, Rogues, and Mages; two for healers; and one each for crafters, Knights, Rangers, and Bards. The longer running levels like the Zoo, the Catacomb Crawl, and the Three Monkeys each had their own entrance. It was a lot to oversee, but the Spunks took care of the traps, the Goblins were in charge of treasure and puzzles, and the Rejects wrangled the mobs into and out of their target zones. The adventurers, even the new ones, followed the rules and kept to their own sections and mostly cleared their dungeons with few casualties and no full wipes.

  The dungeon itself was swarming with the chaos of each component doing their own jobs, just as they should be doing them. Looking over the results of all that chaos were Lacey and Colt, each at their desks and monitoring the integration of that chaos into a working machine. They’d moved Lacey’s desk just inside the glass wall so that they could discuss the dungeon happenings. Lacey hadn’t been able to concentrate on her drawings except to doodle some basic shapes, but she’d barely noticed the mountain pressing down on her with the glass wall right next to her and the new levels being run for the first time. There were more components than they’d ever had going at once and they were busy swiping through the rooms and levels on their little screens.

  “Mac and Cheese just cleared,” Colt reported. “I think our next upgrade should be a wall of monitors that some of the elites could monitor to do this job.”

  “Like a security control room?” Lacey nodded as she swiped screens through the gauntlets. Colt was watching the main dungeon, while Lacey kept an eye on the gauntlets. “Did you find an upgrade like that in the system?”

  “No, but with the system being reactive to our ideas, I thought I’d bring it up,” Colt sent a wink at her over his desk.

  “In that case, I think we need a scoreboard like we have outside, only for dungeon level completions, status, and clears,” Lacey grinned.

  “Oh, yeah,” Colt nodded eagerly. “Like they have at a sports book at a casino?”

  “Yes!” Lacey mirrored his enthusiasm. “And it should be simple enough for the Goblins to update. That would work really well, especially if we could put one up outside too so that everyone could see what’s happening inside!”

  “You don’t think maybe that would ruin the immersion for some of the players from the real world?”

  “Nah,” Lacey waved Colt’s half-hearted worry off. “Benny could build a whole bar around it, just like the casinos and even offer betting. It would be awesome!”

  “If,” Colt said in an unnecessarily louder tone toward the room at large, “the system had an upgrade like that, we’d be jamming on that quest, right Lacey?”

  “Like gangbusters,” Lacey chuckled at his theatrics. “Mage Gauntlet two just cleared. That only leaves the Knight Gauntlet. We might have made that one a little too long.”

  “I don’t know,” Colt flipped through his screens too. “We still have folks working their way through the Hall of Horrors and the Black Knight. The groups that went into those dungeon levels were ranked a little low for the levels, but they’re almost done.”

  “Losses?” Lacey put her chin in her hand as she watched the Knights try to climb a ten-foot wall in full armor. Lacey and Colt had banned the horses from the main dungeons, but they were allowed in the Knights’ Gauntlet. After all, they couldn’t joust without their mounts. They were trying to use their mounts to help climb the walls, but it was awkward and almost painful to watch. The plate armor was incredibly heavy and unwieldy. They were little more than punching bags in the regular dungeons as the creature-like mobs couldn’t penetrate the shiny cans of meat. Lacey was considering adding a few Rust monsters to the dungeons to even the playing field.

  “On those two dungeons?” Colt asked.

  “Yeah,” Lacey replied.

  “Hall of Horrors is taking longer because they did lose a party member in one of the doors,” Colt answered her. The Hall of Horrors was the dungeon where each party member had to complete a mini dungeon on their own. The door had a riddle on it, and they could pick the person they thought had the best chance of defeating that challenge. If a party-member failed, another member would have to do a second challenge. “They were smart, though. They are letting the Fighter rest after running the first door’s challenge while the rest of them run their own. She’ll likely have an easier time than the Ranger did on the first door. He was too low a level for the dungeon level, and they realized that a little too late.”

  “Do you think players would do better?” Lacey mused, fidgeting with a pencil, itching to draw the Rust monster as another Knight clanked onto the other side of the ten-foot wall. “With their ability to remember?”

  “Sure,” Colt reasoned, kicking back on two legs of his chair. “I would think so.”

  “Do you think maybe we should make it so that players have to complete the dungeon from top to bottom before repeating levels?” Lacey flipped a page open in her drawing pad, but she was only doodling. She could pencil in the basic outline while distracted, but for the fine-tuning, she’d need to focus on it completely.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “The Black Knight just cleared,” Colt winced at his screen. “Only one of them survived the final mob, but like the Hall of Horrors group, they did take on a level too high for them. On the players, how would we enforce that?”

  “Maybe the system has a solution to that too,” Lacey figured it was worth a try. “How many more quests do we have before the next Tier?”

  “It’s still four,” Colt rolled his eyes at her, and got up to stretch his legs. “Just like it was an hour ago.”

  “Ugh,” Lacey grunted. They were mostly side quests that annoyed her. She liked the rewards, but now that they only needed a few monsters and levels for the Tier completion, the system had come up with quests more like the laundry list of the tutorial. If Thieves in the dungeon picked 4,000 locks, they would get an ever-full pizza box. If they used ten one-hour lunchbreak coupons, they’d get two free ones. If the Goblins made 3,000 gold rings, they’d get 100 upgraded crafting tables for them. If the Spunks reset 400 traps, they’d get special Spunk headsets that provided x-ray vision through the trap corridor walls. It was all little stuff, though.

  The main quests that got them closer to completing the Tier had the big rewards, like expanding the back yard. The newest one was to finish 50 unique dungeon designs and would give them limited building capacity for the backyard. Lacey had mixed feelings about leveling up to Tier III. She wanted that invulnerability spell, but once again, the dungeon system would change how it worked. She was just getting used to how this Tier worked.

  “Want one?” Colt held up a packet of chips he’d pulled out of a kitchen cupboard. That had been another recent award for having more than 100 adventurers through the dungeon at the same time. It was a snack cupboard that would provide snack-sized packets of crave-worthy foods. All you had to do was think of the snack you wanted and open the cupboard.

  “I’m good,” Lacey shook her head.

  Beka gave a low woof and sat up from her spot near the door. Colt had ordered up a very comfortable and huge bed for the puppy. The cupboard also gave out treats for the pets and Beka had learned the trick of it quickly.

  “I got you, Beka baby,” Colt cooed to the puppy, opening the cupboard to get a pet treat.

  “How are we not fat?” Lacey wondered and then could have kicked herself. She didn’t really want the system to start adding pounds to them.

  “It’s still a game,” Colt shrugged and tossed a crunchy milk-bone to Beka. “Being able to eat like a teenager and not gain weight is a perk of the system that we can all enjoy.”

  “I’m still sticking to diet soda,” Lacey lifted the drink off her desk to toast the system.

  “Noted,” Colt smiled, pausing to pat Beka on the head.

  The dungeon went green, causing Lacey to sigh out in relief. There was always just a bit of tension on her that released once the dungeon was clear. She glanced at her screen to note that the final Knight was being slowly dragged out of the trap he’d fallen into. The gauntlets automatically expelled the last place participant rather than force them to complete the gauntlet. That had turned out to be a very good thing as many times someone got stuck on a challenge. If more than one got stuck, they sent an elite Goblin in to get them unstuck once the competition ended.

  “Are you coming out today?” Colt asked her, popping a cheese puff in his mouth.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Lacey stretched her back as she stood. “I want to see how the new folks felt about the experience. If they had complaints, Benny would know.”

  “They did seem a bit jerky at the picnic, but I don’t get why,” Colt backed toward the elevator, Beka on his heels.

  “They weren’t rude, but they were cold,” Lacey bent to scoop up Spark from where she waited at the elevator door.

  “I thought Bernard said that the folks back in Hamburg were excited or at least happy about the new dungeon and I would think he’s only had good things to say in his reports back to the king or whoever,” Colt leaned against the elevator wall. He called up the pedestal, but when he noticed that his fingers were coated in cheese puff dust, he shrugged at Lacey to take over.

  “That’s been bugging me too,” Lacey swiped at the pedestal and moved their elevator to the lowest dungeon entrance. “I’ll ask Bernard. He’s had time to talk with them. Maybe he knows.”

  “Thanks for doing all that politicking stuff,” Colt crumpled up the empty chip bag and tucked it into his pocket, leaving a smudge of cheese dust on his jeans. He didn’t wear the leather that much, but Lacey did. If he’d worn the leather, the cheese dust would have just fallen off, but he preferred the comfort to the look. He was a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, and now that he wasn’t having to impress Kat, he had gone back to his norm rather than gussy up for the girl. “If you think I should be doing more, I can meet Kat at night and stay with you and Bernard today.”

  “Kat might not like that,” Lacey looked sideways at him.

  “Kat would understand,” Colt raised his eyebrows. “Besides, I think we’ve both been feeling like we’re shirking our duties a bit.”

  “A bit?” Lacey’s mouth twitched. “You mean by always running off together to do your kissy-face stuff?”

  “Kissy-face?” he protested with a mild blush.

  “And whatever else gets you both all hot and bothered when you finally show back up,” Lacey teased him, “with only minutes to go before we have to go back in?”

  “You know I’m not that kind of guy,” Colt squirmed, the tips of his ears getting brighter.

  “She did look a little rumpled,” Lacey pressed, a fake frown creasing her brow. “What would your mother think?”

  “Rumpled?” Colt stammered but then recovered. “She was not rumpled. And how would you know anyway since you didn’t come out yesterday?”

  “So, she was rumpled yesterday?” Lacey persisted, pressing her lips together.

  “Was not!” he snapped. “And leave my mother out of it!”

  “And now you’re getting all ruffled!” Lacey gave up suppressing her smile as she dropped her coupon onto the pedestal.

  “I’m not ruffled,” he denied it with an almost pout. Beka whined up at Colt.

  “Rumpled and ruffled,” Lacey quipped, darting out of the elevator and toward the entrance.

  “You keep that to yourself, or, or,” Colt was back to stuttering.

  “Or what?” Lacey was the one walking backwards just to watch his face.

  “Or you’ll regret it, is what!” he was saying as she backed out of the dungeon entrance. “And don’t you dare say any of this to Kat!”

  Colt hit his nose on the entrance. He’d been so distracted by her teasing that he hadn’t dropped his coupon first. He was darting back to the pedestal, his face aflame when Kat walked up behind Lacey.

  “Don’t tell me what?” Kat asked, frowning at Colt’s retreat from the entrance. “Is something wrong with Colt?”

  “Not a thing!” Lacey replied, innocently.

  “Uh, huh,” Bernard commented wryly.