“The third arena level just cleared,” Colt reported. “It looks like they’re going up from that level to the previous arenas.”

  “How far along are we on the trap level resets, Ginger?” Lacey asked, scratching out the first few lines of the third map since the invasion began a little more than 3 hours before. She wanted to be on her desk screen monitoring progress too, but it was busy projecting the progress of the nearest adventurer to the control room. The maps were basic, and they couldn’t input them until the dungeon was clear, but it was something to do that would get them closer to their goals.

  “Spunk teams got first 3 levels done,” Ginger replied, her eyes glued to the pedestal screen. “They work now on levels 4 and 5.”

  They’d decided to randomize the traps, but that took time when the Spunks were doing it by hand. With the dungeon occupied by adventurers, they couldn’t just slide things around from the pedestals. Lacey itched to go out there and do some of it herself, but she and Colt had agreed that she was better off in the control room, directing the process. She knew that the Spunks knew what they were doing. Really she did, but it was tough sitting there drawing mundane maps while the adventurers were getting closer much faster than she could draw enough to complete the quest they’d eventually need for the ultimate protection.

  “I wish I’d put those collapsing Manchester rooms in between the levels,” Lacey ran a frustrated hand through her hair.

  “You’ve got them between the lower trap levels,” Colt reassured her distractedly. His eyes were glued to his screens, where he was reading into the help documentation. Just looking at that stuff made Lacey’s head spin. They were written like tax codes. “It’ll be enough.”

  “I should have put them after every trap level,” Lacey grumbled.

  “Then they might be ready to dig through them,” Colt’s eyes lit up at something he was reading, and he quickly swiped through a few screens. “Got it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he grinned at her. “Ta-da!”

  With a little flourish, Colt pinky-clicked and scrolled so that his screen was projecting the third arena party. He then swiped his screen without changing the display on the wall. It wouldn’t look like much to anyone else, but she’d been stuck drawing maps of new levels because he’d needed his screen to keep track of the adventurers in the levels and her screen was projecting the progress of the group that was nearest to their control room. He’d been flicking back and forth between the dungeon progress of the other groups and those help docs.

  “Finally,” Lacey tossed her pad of graph paper onto the dining table and tucked the stubby pencil she’d been using between her teeth.

  “I know you hated being blind during all this,” Colt darted to her desk to do the same series of odd swipes and multiple odd-fingered clicks on her pedestal monitor. Lacey watched the maneuver so that she could repeat it herself.

  “There’s just no way I can draw enough dungeons,” Lacey started, sitting and flipping through her screens, relaxing now that it no longer changed the display on the wall.

  “I’d need to upgrade it to get it to project more screens, but it’s a start,” Colt ran a hand through his hair and moved to the pedestal where Ginger was focused on her screen.

  “That’s 2 more screens than we had before,” Lacey swiped between the different levels to see the progress of the invasion for herself, sighing with relief as she realized that there were several levels that were only halfway through. The arenas were finishing faster than the average, but at least the Bluebeard and Hall of Horrors levels were still holding at the normal pace. They didn’t have as many puzzles or traps that could be quickly bypassed.

  “Three more screens,” Colt professed as a new screen joined the wall. It showed the progress of the Spunk teams.

  “Nice,” Lacey felt some tension leak out of her shoulders. Being blind had affected her more than she cared to admit.

  “Ginger no watch?” their best goblin asked him. She’d made a lot of progress on reading, and it had increased her dexterity with the system screens, but she still needed relatively simple instructions.

  “Let’s put you on watching the levels,” Colt told her. He spent some time showing Ginger how to swipe between the adventurer level screens. “The arena groups are going to clear a lot faster with that team going back to help the previous groups.”

  “That isn’t a bad plan,” Lacey admitted. “But we’re only 3 hours into this and they’re joining up already. That could be problematic.”

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  “Uh-oh,” Colt projected a new screen on the wall from the pedestal.

  “They’re getting through the one-way doors,” Lacey stared at the screen.

  The group that had gone back to “help” the previous arena adventurers weren’t joining up to get through it quicker. They were prying their way past the one-way doors and into the leveling mechanisms they used to feed the adventurer rooms.

  “If we didn’t know they were going for a dungeon wipe before, we know it now,” Colt nodded.

  “They’d have to kill the breeders to stop the monsters from just coming back out into the arenas,” Lacey squinted at the wall projection. “Did they get lucky in finding it or did they know?”

  “They could have gotten lucky in a previous dive,” Colt didn’t look like he believed it, but he was the optimist. Lacey didn’t believe it either. There was only one person that had found those one-way doors before, and no one had accessed those corridors since.

  Lacey gave Colt a look with a quirked brow. He rolled his eyes.

  “Yeah, probably not,” he conceded.

  “He’s back,” Lacey’s mouth twisted.

  “Yeah,” Colt mirrored her look and added a long blown out breath to it.

  “At least we know who we’re up against now,” Lacey turned back to her screens to flip through the adventurers. Would she know him? He was so good at disguises. Still, he had to be among the lower levels. The arenas were levels 3-5, 6-9, and 10-15. “If he’s in the arenas, he’d have been in that last group. He was what level when we saw him last?”

  “Had to have been around level 12 or so, but that was weeks ago,” Colt rubbed the back of his neck, staring at his own screens and leaving Ginger to monitor the other levels. “Kat’s only level 23 and she’s been working the dungeon this whole time. She should still be at least 2 levels ahead of him. My thing is that we haven’t heard a thing from him in weeks. Why now?”

  “If he’s been dungeon diving this whole time, he’d be at least level 20 or so, maybe even 23 if he’s been sneaking into twice as many dungeons as Kat has?” Lacey reasoned. “There’s no one in that third arena group over level 17.”

  “But we’ve had peace for weeks,” Colt protested. “Why wait so long?”

  “There,” Lacey pointed at her screen. “That’s the guy who found the one-way door and he’s only level 16.”

  “It couldn’t be him, though,” Colt tapped his fingers on his desk and sat back in his chair, trying to work out the problem.

  “Pedestal, what are the details on that player?” Lacey asked the air.

  “Level 16 Assassin/Mage,” the system replied to her.

  “Pedestal,” Colt prodded the system again. “Can you give any further details on that player?”

  “Identity disguised,” the system answered him.

  “He’s an assassin,” Lacey frowned, annoyed. “What else do we need to know? It’s him.”

  “Then why isn’t he higher level?” Colt didn’t doubt her, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to Lacey either.

  “Pedestal, are there any other assassins in the dungeon?” Lacey asked, knowing that they had better things to do than try to chase down Kat’s dad. Still, she asked because she couldn’t really resist going down that rabbit hole. To herself, she reasoned that knowing their enemy would help them.

  “There are 4 assassins in the dungeon at this time,” the pedestal announced.

  “Pedestal, what are their levels?” Colt asked.

  “Level 5 Assassin/Cleric is in Arena 1,” the pedestal reported the information without intonation. “Level 16 Assassin/Mage is in Arena 2. Level 23 Assassin/Mage is in 3 Monkeys. Level 24 Assassin/Fighter is in the Floor is Lava.”

  “He isn’t the level 5,” Lacey flipped through the screens on her desk to switch between each of the 4 adventurers. “And he isn’t the fighter, so he’s either the level 16 or 23.”

  “It’s much more likely he’s the level 23 one in the 3 Monkeys,” Colt’s brows lowered. “So why do I think he’s the level 16 one?”

  “I don’t know, but I think so too,” Lacey nodded to Colt. “The level 16 is the one bypassing the one-way doors. I know he could have been told the locations, but I really think he’s that one.”

  “I’m with you, but you’d think he’d be higher level by now,” Colt sighed at the display.

  Their wall displays held the furthest adventuring party, the furthest Spunk team, and now the level 16 Assassin/Mage that they thought was Kat’s dad. The one with the furthest adventuring party also had a timer on it that showed how long the invasion had been running so far, which was 3 hours and 28 minutes. Ginger dutifully watched the other levels for progress. With their biggest threats on the wall, Lacey and Colt could focus on their own screens without losing sight of the race. Lacey flicked a pencil nervously between her fingers. In 2 hours and 32 minutes, the conquered levels would reset with their full complement of monsters and in another 4 hours, the invasion would be expelled.

  “How does he think he can run the whole gauntlet of all levels in another 6 and a half hours?” Lacey wondered at the screens in front of her.

  “He doesn’t know how deep those trap levels go, or that we have another whole other half of a dungeon full of the menagerie to throw at him,” Colt answered speculatively, his chair tipped back on the back legs. “He’s thinking that as long as he empties the first arena levels of everything before the clock hits the 6-hour limit, that they won’t count against him when the dungeon respawns. It’s what I’d be thinking.”

  “But you know the dungeon rules,” Lacey pointed her pencil at him.

  “He’s married to the god of the machine,” Colt lowered his chin to give Lacey a long look, his chair teetering. “Is there anything he wouldn’t know about the rules?”

  “Maybe, but that goddess of the machine demoted him down into a level 10,” Lacey tapped the pencil on her own chin. “I think she’d try to make it fair.”

  “Honestly, it’s not fair to him even with his 105 thieves,” Colt spread his arms and hooked a foot under his desk so he could lean back further.

  “One less,” Ginger popped a single green finger up in the air.

  They glanced at Ginger and then swiped their screens to note that one of their invaders had died in the Hall or Horrors.

  “We should display the number of invaders on one of the screens,” Colt said, adding the number to the wall display that showed the guy they thought was Kat’s dad on it.

  “And number of dungeon monsters,” Ginger pointed to herself with pride. Colt added that number to the final screen with the Spunk teams.

  “Pedestal, save screen setup as War Room display,” Colt told the room with a grin.