The levels were completing faster now, just as they did in a normal run. The groups that completed their levels were moving forward and meeting up with the next group, except for the Arenas that were still being cleared by Dom’s group. At the end of each level, the groups would be met by the Elite assigned to hand over the envelope and puzzle piece, along with the score tally. Colt had stopped announcing the score, since Dom didn’t even know what it meant, not really. Dom hadn’t gotten the envelopes yet.

  The groups, surprisingly, didn’t try to open the envelopes. A few of the more curious compared notes on the outside and/or felt the bump of the puzzle piece on the inside, but they didn’t open the envelopes. Lacey wouldn’t have been able to resist.

  Making a puzzle was easier than people thought. Lacey had drawn two images and pasted them on either side of a clean part of an old pizza box. She’d then used a very sharp dagger to cut the uneven square into jagged pieces that could be fit together in only one way. Each image was a rebus puzzle.

  “The lowest dungeon is clearing,” Colt prodded Lacey to look up at the screen showing the closest group to them. “Do you think they’ll head into the traps or wait for the rest?”

  “Actually, I’m more interested in the group that just cleared the Coral Reef,” Lacey had her chin propped on her palm as she stared at her own screen. “They aren’t as smart as the other groups in accepting the Elite’s envelope.”

  “That’s the level 40-42,” Colt flipped through screens to watch the scene playing out. “Are they really going to fight the Elite and Gossowaries?”

  “Maybe they think they can take them,” Lacey mused, knowing that the group was way outclassed. Colt and Lacey had sent Adam with that one, and he had five Gossowaries between the levels of 50 and 53.

  “They were wrong,” Colt winced as one of the Gossowaries took a very large chunk out of the side of their leader’s neck, causing an impressive spray of blood. The Reject holding the leashes let go and the other four Gossowaries attacked the remaining adventurers.

  The Knight of the group tried to step between the soon-to-be-dead leader and the Gossowaries, thinking that his armor would save him from the tooth-filled Gossowary beak. Adam took that moment to step up and ring the Knight’s helmet so intensely that the guy stumbled back from it. With a hard shove, Adam toppled the Knight as the Gossowaries surged forward eagerly. The Cleric and Mage were casting but they’d be too late.

  The leader fell just under the Knight, whose full weight toppled onto the now-dead leader. Gossowary beaks were sharp and vicious, but their plate-sized feet were even more dangerous. The full weight of a Gossowary stomping was enough to begin to crush the armor of the Knight. Gossowaries were only ever happy when they could attack things and eat. This Gossowary was tap dancing on the tin can that used to be a Knight, using its wings to keep balance as it used its full 300 lbs. bulk.

  Meanwhile, Adam slid deftly around the Gossowaries to stab into the belly of a Mage, whose spell sputtered out as his eyes glazed over. The Cleric got a heal off on the Knight only to compound the suffering of his friend. Healing a body that was being crushed inside a tin can wasn’t the best use of his mana. The Cleric joined the Mage on the floor, but Adam had been smart enough to slice the head off the Cleric. Leaving the gutted Mage to bleed out and get trampled by the Gossowaries, Adam gleefully ran after the Rogue that was trying to escape back into the water of the dungeon they’d just exited.

  “Should we save the little guy?” Lacey’s hand paused over the intercom button that would allow her to tell Adam to let the guy go.

  “Don’t you dare,” Colt grunted out, his grin reminding Lacey of the Gossowaries.

  Lacey winced, but she’d paused long enough for Adam to hoist the spry Thief up onto his sword, the body squirming as it slid down the long blade to halt at the crossguard. From there, Adam took a bite out of the man’s face like he was eating a kabob. Lacey switched back to the Gossowaries, but it wasn’t any better there. Stomping and squawking gleefully, they made quick work of the whole party.

  “Shouldn’t they have had more health points than that?” Lacey tried to get herself to imagine that the puddles were rainwater and that the Gossowaries were just playfully dancing in the aftermath of the storm, but she was pretty sure she’d see that gruesome image in a few nightmares in the future.

  “They were NPCs for sure at that level,” Colt watched the massacre with a smirk. “They tend to be weaker than the players.”

  “Still, they seemed weak for that level.”

  “The Gossowaries are crazy underrated,” Colt’s eyes were glued to the screen. “And Adam is super-buffed.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  When Lacey looked back down, the Reject was trying to gather up leashes soaked with blood. Adam was snacking on his limp kabob with a gleam in his eyes. It struck Lacey that they hadn’t been doing Adam and the rest of the monsters of the dungeon any favors. These were monsters that wanted to play, and from the way the Gossowaries were still dancing in the puddles of blood, this was play to all of them. Adam was beaming with prideful power, twice his size, and three times his normal agility and strength from Eve’s buffs.

  “Adam looks so happy,” Lacey wondered softly.

  “Well, yeah,” Colt laughed out. “He was made for this shit.”

  “They all were,” she looked up and smiled too.

  It occurred to Lacey that she’d been trying to protect them all this time. Adam had grown fat with even the Elites getting lazy, but underneath these were mobs that had worked hard to level up their skills and abilities.

  “Anything that’s ten levels above one of these groups is going to wipe the floor with them,” Colt tilted back on his chair, his grin one of play instead of malice.

  “Maybe I just didn’t realize how much we’d grown,” Lacey let herself smile a little, wondering if maybe she was getting a little too ruthless for her own good. Colt was okay with it.

  “Kat!” Ginger pointed at her pedestal screen, the one that wasn’t projected on the wall.

  “Where?” Colt sat up with a thump of his chair legs.

  “Coral Reef,” Ginger bounced.

  “She’s too low for that level,” Colt frowned, standing as if he could run out there to save her.

  “It’s cleared anyway,” Lacey reminded him. “Most of the levels are now.”

  “Kat!” Colt had triggered the intercom so that it only echoed into the entrance of Coral Reef.

  “Colt?” Kat spoke to the room. Kat stood on a beach that seemed to stretch into the distance on either side in a dungeon-illusion way. Beside her were four others, a full group and Benny was one of them. Other than Kat and Bernard, there were three of Bernard’s best guards, all ranging in level from 60-63.

  As Lacey realized that Bernard himself, the highest level in the camp, was near to their own top levels, she was hit with the fact that Bernard would soon be delving into the dungeon in a way that would get him experience. Had they really leveled that far?

  “Yeah,” Colt’s cheeks got flushed as he transitioned from bloodthirsty dungeon master to flustered boyfriend just as his girl shows up to where he and her dad are duking it out. “What happened?”

  “We came in as soon as a level cleared!” Kat professed, running a hand through her hair. “A full group had to die for us to push in, but we’ve been testing the barrier for hours. Are you guys okay?”

  “Well,” Colt grinned like a kid, finding words slowly. “Yeah, yeah we are. You didn’t think we could get wiped this easy, did you?”

  “I swear to you that we were not complicit with this invasion,” Bernard said. He was in full armor, something Lacey had never seen before. He looked good in glimmering leather studded with lethal-looking metal spikes. He held a long sword in one hand and a shield in another, with a set of flutes hanging from his neck and a drum strapped to his back.

  “Benny, baby,” Lacey decided to join the conversation a little more playfully than Colt. “You are looking good. What brings you to the dungeon?”

  “We heard of the invasion just after breakfast, but they broke into the dungeon before we could stop them,” Bernard remained formal, but Lacey thought she saw his shoulders relax a bit at her teasing. “My men have been pressing the barrier since we figured it out. As soon as one of them passed the barrier, I gathered the best of my men to come help defend the dungeon.”

  “We never thought you were part of this,” Colt assured them all. “Not even for a minute.”

  Lacey had considered it for a moment, but she was glad her pessimism had not born fruit.

  “Good,” Kat grunted out. She had her sword drawn already and both she and Shadow were obviously fuming. “Now where is my idiot father?”

  “Uh,” Lacey tried to stall, not sure why.

  “He’s in the second Arena,” Colt threw up his arms as if they could see his indignation. “Clearing out the hatcheries behind the one-way doors.”

  “He’s moved into the first Arena with the group from the second Arena,” Lacey said quieter. “He’s about half wiped it out, but…”

  “I’ll kill him,” Kat ground her teeth and started pacing toward the previous level.

  “Kat!” Colt called frantically, but Lacey was saying the same thing at the same time.

  “Kat, you can’t go through that level,” Lacey took over, letting Colt catch his breath. “It isn’t clear yet and the mobs are at 39-41.”

  “That’s why I brought Bernard and his crew,” Kat didn’t stop.

  “Kat, stop!” Lacey tried again.

  “When I find him, I’m going to blind him, fill his ears with plaster, cut his tongue out, and remove his limbs. Then wrap him in heavy chains attached to big hunks of stone and metal and dump his carcass into a bottomless well!”

  “That was,” Lacey paused, wondering if she felt that vehement about her own father, “vivid.” Having never felt that passionate about her dad, she realized that she just didn’t care enough about the man. Sure, there was resentment, but it was as mild as their lack of relationship had been cold. “Kat, wait.”

  “Kat!” Colt called to her again as Kat stomped toward the final room of Soft Earth where 20 buried Trugs were just waiting for anyone to step foot on their soil.

  “We’re okay here,” Lacey changed tactics as Kat stomped toward certain death with Bernard barely keeping up with her. “I swear to you. We got this!”

  “She’s right, Kat,” Colt jumped on the bandwagon eagerly.

  “He’s got weird coupons that you might not know about,” Bernard tried to say as he and his men chased Kat. “But Kat, they are correct in stopping you.”

  There were so many words that Kat made it all the way to the door to the Trug level. Bernard had to grab her hand to keep it off the doorknob. Kat turned to swing at him, but being less than half his level made dodging her child’s play.

  “I’m not letting him fuck all this up just because he’s an asshole,” Kat balled up her fists and grudgingly kept them at her side as Bernard stepped between her and the door.

  “We don’t need to do their dirty work for them,” Bernard pointed toward the door with a stern look. “If that room is not cleared, then we shouldn’t clear it for the enemy.”

  “Oh,” Kat frowned, her teeth clicking together audibly, even over the sound system.