“Just one more,” Lacey fiddled with displays, trying to get the layering right for the secret dungeon levels that would put them over the top.

  “Lace,” Colt laid his head on his desk with a groan. “If I don’t get some rest, I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “I’m almost done,” Lacey sighed in sympathy, but made herself keep working. They just had to get to the next step, then they could take a break. “Go to bed. I’ll finish up.”

  “It’s not going to stop there, and you know it,” Colt’s voice was muffled by the papers on his desk. “We’ll get to Tier III and then there’ll be another quest.”

  “I’m not touching another quest after this,” Lacey grumbled, erasing a bit. “After this, we’re going to bed and then we’re going to your mom’s for dinner.”

  “No,” Colt complained wearily, and Lacey had to look up at the uncharacteristic tone from him. “It’ll open up a whole new system, and somehow it won’t have coupons anymore and we’ll be plunged into another chaotic mess of shit. All I want is a beer, pizza, and a video game that isn’t this one. I want to sit on a couch for a month and watch TV.”

  “Ginger fix,” came a small voice at Colt’s elbow.

  Lacey and Colt stared at Ginger. She stood there with what almost looked like a bouquet of crumpled papers.

  “What’s this?” Colt took the papers gingerly, trying not to make the mess worse.

  “Ginger make maps, like Lacey and Colt,” she shuffled her big webbed feet on the stone floor.

  “You made maps?” Lacey set her pencil down and crossed the room to Colt’s desk, where he was trying to press a few of the pages flat.

  “Want be my own dungeon master someday,” Ginger declared.

  “These are pretty good,” Colt laid out 6 maps, and Lacey leaned over his shoulder to examine them with him.

  “Eve say Ginger a goblin,” Ginger turned up her lower lip. “Say goblin can’t run dungeon.”

  “Eve is stupid,” Colt told Ginger, stern and supportive as always, even to a dungeon creature. “Ginger is too smart for Eve.”

  “These help Lacey finish quest?” Ginger beamed at Colt and pointed at the maps on the desk.

  “They need a few adjustments,” Lacey nodded. The maps were a little crude, and some of the techniques looked a little too close to what they already had, but they also had things Lacey wouldn’t have dreamed up by herself. “We only have 3 maps left that we need. This at the very least saves me a ton of time. I could finish in about an hour, with just a couple finishing touches.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Colt scooped the papers up into his arms and backed away from Lacey. “I want sleep and rest!!! You are not finishing that quest tonight. I’m not getting dragged into the next mess of chaos before we get some REST.”

  Lacey stared at Colt as he backed toward his bedroom with Ginger’s maps.

  “See?” Ginger scolded Colt, breaking Lacey’s concentration completely. “Colt not need silly adventure girl. Colt be Ginger’s second husband. Ginger take care of Colt.”

  “What!?” Colt exclaimed over Lacey’s laughter.

  “Last call,” the bartender called out into the little corner of the barracks that Bernard’s men used as a tavern/canteen. It served a bit of food late at night and as much ale as someone wanted to spend their earnings on.

  “Then set me up with a bottle,” Kat demanded from her seat near the fireplace. It should have been cozy, but Kat’s mood was too sour to enjoy it. Most of the soldiers and adventurers had already retired to bed or headed out for night guard duty. Those that had retreated from the dungeon incursion had been arrested already when Kat and Bernard had emerged into the daylight. Those that had died were in the respawn queue, probably back in the town, at least that’s where Kat would have respawned if she’d been one of those jerks.

  “Here you go,” the bartender set a cup of coffee on the table and then sat down.

  “I didn’t order that,” Kat stared at the cup like it was full of hair instead of liquid caffeine. It was easier than looking up at the person across the table from her. “I don’t need you to take care of things here. I’ve got this.”

  “Agreed,” the bartender nodded, bringing to her lips a second cup of the milk and cream diluted coffee. “Is it a crime to want to have a cup of coffee with my daughter?”

  “You didn’t come here to have a cup of coffee,” Kat muttered, her buzz dissipating as quickly as her alcohol tolerance kept up with almost anything she threw at it.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Nope,” the woman smiled into her cup, then lowered it back to the table. “I came to spend time with you.”

  “If you’re here to fix things, don’t,” Kat insisted, pushing her cup across the little table.

  “I gave you as long as I could, but eventually I’ve got to talk to them,” Karma said gently. “But I’m not checking up on you. I think you did fine.”

  “I screwed up everything!” Kat threw her head back and ended up banging it on the wall. “Ow!”

  “Need to talk about it?” Karma’s lips twitched with a suppressed chuckle.

  “Dad!” Kat said by way of explanation.

  Karma bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling. “I doubt it will help, but he wasn’t here for you.”

  “Thanks for busting him down to my level,” Kat grumbled, trying to find a way to not be a spoiled brat or sound like more of a lunatic than she already felt she was. “But you didn’t need to protect me. I can fight for myself, even if I am a hundred levels below him.”

  “I didn’t do that for you, either,” Karma admitted with a wince as she leaned back in her chair. “He wanted to be at a level that could really enjoy the dungeon.”

  Kat stared at her mom for a long minute, then lowered her head to the table to bang it a few times.

  “I’m not defending him,” Karma went on to say as calmly as could be. “He’s always been an asshole, but he’s not wrong about the dungeon. It’s not a leveling machine. We could have done that with an AI. I mean it could be, but that would get pretty boring, don’t you think? At least for the players, if we ever let anymore of them into the game again.”

  “So, you’re going to go down there and tell them that they need to change it again?” Kat’s tone got hot. “Maybe you’d like to send another dozen asshole players in there to take it over from them.”

  Karma blew out a breath, even though what it looked like she wanted to do was get just as hot back. “Everybody thinks they are the hero of their stories, but only assholes think they are the only hero.”

  “Great,” Kat threw her hands up, hating that she probably looked like an angsty teenager throwing a temper tantrum. “Now I’m just as much of an asshole as he is because I tried to protect my boyfriend from my idiot father’s overprotective streak and a psychotic AI system that resents anyone who does its job better than it does.”

  “No, you’re an asshole for treating the guy like an NPC who couldn’t take care of himself,” Karma snapped at her daughter. “And maybe for assuming that everyone’s focus in life is to ruin or serve in yours.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Kat deflated.

  “Let’s just hope they still like their job enough to stay,” Karma looked down and unsure of herself.

  “They’re leaving?” Kat asked.

  “If so, it’s as much my fault as anyone else’s,” Karma wouldn’t look up from her coffee. “I just hope that when I go down there, they don’t want to just kill me and quit on us.”

  “That was really satisfying,” Colt leaned back in his chair, his feet propped up on the circlet of stone around their fire pit. He had a cup of coffee and powdered donuts balanced on his stomach and a book in his hand. How he read said book and made idle conversation, Lacey did not know, but he managed it.

  “You were right, dinner at your mom’s was good, but are you maybe avoiding dealing with a certain someone?” Lacey worried at a pencil she used to smudge a few lines on one of Ginger’s dungeon ideas. Lacey had copied it onto clean graph paper and added a few details, but it had been pretty good to begin with. If Ginger couldn’t become a dungeon master, she’d still make a great assistant for them at the very least.

  “Lacey,” Colt sent her a stern look. “Can you enjoy the moment just a little?”

  The dungeon was closed for another 2 blissful hours. They could have been sleeping in, but instead, they were celebrating quietly. Lacey stared at the quest for Tier III details and nibbled at her lip. What she wanted to do was get those last levels and complete the quest, but Colt had a point about holding off until they were sure they were ready. A good night’s sleep and dinner at his mom’s had done the trick.

  Just making the new secret dungeon would finish up the unique dungeon levels if she just did it right. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the finished maps with a contented sigh. She wanted to dump them all into the pedestal and be done with it, but Colt was insistent that they take every last minute of their coupon break before submitting the maps. That invulnerability spell was right there, but Lacey was okay with waiting.

  Their dungeon level had popped all the way up to 62 during the last incursion with a dozen side quests completing too. The goblins had finished the arrows and the gold rings, giving them 100 new crafting tables, and the ability to designate people as friends of the dungeon. That ability to designate friends of the dungeon visitation rights had come a little late, but they had it. Lacey wasn’t quite sure what to do with it now that Colt and Kat were fighting.

  “Seriously, Lacey,” Colt’s smile was a little forced. “Just take the win and relax for a bit. We have this wonderful endless continental breakfast here on the side of a mountain and you’ve got a whole new series of books to read. You know you want to do that.”

  They didn’t have the ever-full pizza box yet as traps didn’t count as locks. The thieves had only munched their way through about a third of that quest so far. They’d have to pick another 2500 locks for them to earn that reward. The Spunks had their new headsets from the trap reset quest. They got to play with their stuff.

  Most of the dungeon denizens were messing around with new toys. Ginger was out ordering around minions to set up the crafting tables. Adam was teaching an archery class in the glen. Beka and Spark were playing chase with the squirrels in the forest.

  “I can’t focus on relaxing until I can finish those last 3 levels!” Lacey complained, setting down her drawing stuff on the patio stones. “Don’t you want to see what the invulnerability spell will be like?”

  “Nope,” he declared, licking at the powdered sugar around his mouth. “Have some donuts or something. I’m not budging from this spot until the dungeon turns red.”

  Lacey picked up the book that he’d placed purposefully next to her spot on the firepit circle. For 2 hours she pretended to read. He’d avoided speculation about Kat, Bernard, or anything else that might happen when the dungeon’s coupon ran out. They had plenty of coupons, so he could have dragged it out, but Colt seemed content to just run down this clock. He’d only said that they’d wait and see what came in.