“I normally like Bernard, but is Dom right? Did they tame us into a leveling machine?” Lacey asked into the welcome silence. A small group of Elites was escorting Kat to her dad, with a befuddled Bernard trailing behind.

  “That man has a slick way of warping stuff to sound reasonable, but he has a few good points,” Colt kicked back in his chair, the front legs dangling. “The extra entrances are dangerous to us. The risk is entirely based on the fact that we trusted Bernard to protect us.”

  “I’m just sick of other people telling me how we should run the dungeon,” Lacey shrugged, propping her chin on her palm.

  “Technically, this invasion seriously complicates our contract with Bernard and his kingdom,” Colt hooked a foot around a leg of his desk to rock back further. “He might not have been behind the incursion, but he didn’t stop it and that constitutes a serious breech. We could push it into breaking the contract if you want.”

  “I don’t know,” Lacey rolled a pencil across her desk.

  “You think we can’t protect ourselves?” Colt frowned at her.

  “Oh, I know we could, especially after seeing how effective the Manchester room turned out to be,” Lacey picked up the pencil. “It’s more that Bernard gives us a lot of experience, gold, and other loot, but I can’t help but feel like it’s all been a little heavy-handed, you know?”

  “I think so,” Colt spread his arms. “But what do we want?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Lacey pointed with the pencil for emphasis. “If Kat and Bernard hadn’t come along with these handy-dandy contracts, would the system have still given us a bunch of quests with all those extra entrances? I mean, sometimes it feels like even the system is trying to railroad us into a path they think we should take. Why’d they even hire us if they didn’t want us to do it our way?”

  “Dom did say we have a kick-ass dungeon,” Colt let himself smile.

  “I still think that man is a complete ass,” Lacey shook her head.

  “He’ll get his,” Colt’s smile grew.

  “And he’ll be back,” Lacey pondered it, but it didn’t worry her and that was better than before.

  “We can handle it,” Colt’s eyebrows rose.

  “I know, but he’ll come with bigger armies, and he’ll have solutions for the challenges that screwed him up this time,” Lacey tapped the pencil on her forehead, trying to jolt loose her point.

  “Let him try,” Colt countered.

  “Oh, I’m not saying he’ll win,” Lacey said, and Colt grinned at her confidence. “I’m already deep into how to stymie that asshole next time and the time after that. He’s so out of his depth.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “Bernard gives us good stuff in return for this leveling venue, but what if we could run a dungeon just for people like Dom?” Lacey posited the idea, surprised even as it slipped off her tongue. “Yeah, like another entrance somewhere else where we’re more like the dungeons people might be used to?”

  “I could like that idea,” Colt leaned forward, the legs of his chair thumping. Ginger cast a mending spell on it almost automatically. “We could even move that entrance and drop some maps to the secret entrance.”

  “Sure,” Lacey nodded, liking the idea of there being a secret super-level out there. She could picture it now. The map to the secret entrance would allow a smaller group into a true dungeon, one with all the levels. Some poor shmuck would either sell it or try to use it or both. “Or we could drop puzzle pieces of the map. Spread it around?”

  “Even better,” Colt mused, leaning over his desk display. “We have the funds to create a mirror of our main dungeon. I’ve got a good spot for the entrance. We could semi-hide it in the bushes, around a little bend of rock.”

  “Send the map to me and I’ll start on the puzzle,” Lacey rubbed her hands together, feeling back in control at last. “If we move fast, we’ll have something to drop on Dom before he leaves.”

  “We aren’t really letting that guy leave alive, are we?” Colt looked up dubiously.

  “Hell, no,” Lacey gave an evil laugh. “But if we give him a puzzle piece just before he dies, it’ll haunt him.”

  “That’s more like it,” Colt returned her smile with a grin of his own. “He’ll lose the piece when he dies and if he hasn’t memorized it yet, it’ll drive him nuts!”

  “That’s the plan,” Lacey nodded. “It’s not like they’ll stop bickering in the next hour or so and that’s all I’ll need. And while he’s working on gathering and figuring out the puzzle, we can make some significant changes to the deeper dungeon. He might think he knows what to expect, but I assure you, he will not be waltzing through it.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “What do we do with the bicker bunch in the meantime?” Colt waved to the display on the wall that was showing that Kat and Bernard were closing in on Dom’s position.

  “Let them argue?” Lacey suggested.

  “I’m not the pushover you thought, huh?” Kat ground out through her teeth as she lunged at Dom. Her short sword danced like it knew the tango.

  “I never thought you were a pushover,” Dom insisted, parrying awkwardly. The edge of the ledge was literally at his heels and that put him at a disadvantage. “I never said that!”

  They’d been trading blows long enough that each was bloodied. She might have been a few levels above him, but he didn’t give ground easily. The dungeon denizens watched on in bored silence even as Bernard pleaded with them both to stop. Dom dove sideways again in another feint to try to get away from the edge, but Kat wasn’t falling for it this time any more than she had the last several times he’d tried the ploy.

  “Family needs not bicker,” Bernard tried to reason with them. “We can discuss this in a more rational way outside the dungeon.”

  “Once I get outside this dungeon, your people will arrest me,” Dom lunged for Kat’s overextended ankle.

  “You broke the law and should be arrested,” Kat slid her short sword down to block his attack, but she pressed forward rather than retreat.

  “I’ll take my chances in the dungeon,” Dom shouldered forward, using his left hand to push her right shoulder back and put her off balance.

  “These guys behind me are just waiting for their turn,” Kat leaned sideways and then forced both swords up between them to nick his exposed underarm.

  “They don’t work for you,” Dom winced, turning his sword to the side to lessen the impact of her hit and shove his shoulder into her chest.

  “They don’t need to work for me,” Kat grunted, but didn’t give an inch. She used both hands to shove his shoulder back, nearly taking off his ear with her sword. “They just need to not like you!”

  “I’m off to respawn either way,” Dom threw both his hands up, pushing her sword arm up and out to try to stab in close with his offhand dagger.

  “Then just die already,” Kat brought up her knee to block the dagger, then brought both hands down on either side of his head with a loud clap of one open palm from her off hand and dull thud of the hilt of her sword on the other side.

  Dom shook his head a little, his ears ringing, and almost missed her lunge. As it was, even blocking her sword, he lost the war he was waging with the ledge. Arms windmilling for a brief moment, he only had time to see her victorious smile before falling over the edge. He instinctively curled into a ball where his shoulder could hit the ground first, and then allowing the roll to take him end over end down the slope. Even ducking his head, he lost another chunk of health before coming to a stop at an almost level patch of soil. If the soil had been firm, he might have been alright, but it wasn’t. Dom sank into it up to his shins. At least the softness of the ground had cushioned some of the 20 foot fall.

  “Not dead yet,” he called back up to where Kat leaned over the edge and swore at him. It was a bravado that his body didn’t feel, but he’d be damned before he’d let her see him weak.

  “Is patricide necessary here, Kat?” Bernard tsked at her. “The dungeon will reset soon anyway, and we’ll just take this up outside the dungeon.”

  “It’s the principle of the matter,” Kat grit out, obviously trying to find a way down to Dom to finish him off.

  “Normally, I would applaud your stubbornness,” Dom muttered.

  “Get me a rope,” Kat ordered anyone behind her that would do as she commanded. No one moved. “Seriously?”

  “I can’t condone this,” Bernard insisted, hands on his hips.

  “Don’t any of you have ropes?” Kat asked the Elites behind Bernard.

  “Orders not say to help,” Adam replied, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Colt would want you to help me,” Kat tried to smile, but it came out more of a grimace.

  “Adam not think Colt say that,” the goblin grunted.

  “For the love of smartass system creatures,” Kat grumbled, pushing herself up and looking around for another solution.

  An echo of a low chuckle came from Dom below. “You might not want to piss off your boyfriend much longer. He isn’t the NPCs you’ve been able to push around before. I warned you that they weren’t good for you.”

  “Are you really telling me you told me so now?” Kat’s fists got white at the knuckles, she was clenching them so hard.

  “Colt did say to give you this when it come,” Adam stepped forward and Kat nearly knocked the offering out of the goblin’s hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Puzzle map,” Adam gave Kat a look like she wasn’t as bright as most of the dungeon denizens.

  “What are you doing?” Kat screeched as Adam flicked the puzzle piece over the ledge. Kat lunged for the piece as it spiraled out of sight, missing horribly and nearly toppling herself off the edge she’d pushed Dom over.

  “Colt and Lacey say puzzle not for you,” Adam sniffed at Kat and stepped back.

  “You gave my dad a gift?” Kat boggled at the goblin, stomping up to him. “COLT!!!”

  “Sort of,” Adam grinned with huge pointy teeth and Kat recoiled, reminded that Adam was more than twice her level.

  Even as Kat leaned back away from the goblin’s flicking split tongue, Adam was jumping off the ledge like it was hopscotch. “What are you doing?!” she called out again.

  Adam didn’t reply. Adam landed deftly on Dom, knocking another dozen health points off the man’s dwindling supply. Dom sprawled in the soft earth, unable to stop his fall due to boots stuck in the dirt. He’d managed to catch the puzzle piece out of the air but had dropped his dagger to do so. Dom lay back as Adam leaned down close enough that Dom could smell the goblin’s breath.

  “You see puzzle piece?” Adam asked, easily batting away the sword that Dom tried to bring between them.

  “The puzzle piece?” Dom stalled.

  Adam gripped Dom’s left wrist and used it to bring the puzzle piece into Dom’s line of vision. “Dumb guy see puzzle piece now?”

  “What?”

  Adam gave up at that point and dropped Dom’s left hand to grab the right, sword and all. It wasn’t a struggle for the goblin to pluck the sword out of Dom’s hand. Adam was 3 times Dom’s level. It was like a slightly annoyed father with a small child, only Dom wasn’t a child. Dom jerked his hand, but it was no use. The last thing Dom saw before being booted to the respawn queue was the goblin’s wildly flicking tongue sticking out through a huge pointy grin.

  “Yes!” Kat crowed from the ledge 20 feet above Adam. “Finally. Thank you, Adam.”

  “Colt say you should leave now,” Adam glared up at Kat.

  “What?” Kat scowled at the statement.

  “You human intruders say that a lot,” Adam’s eyes glittered in a way that made Kat’s gut clench. “You need bigger ears to hear better. Adam say that Colt say that you should leave now.”

  “We can’t get back through all this?” Kat waved at the collapsed room around herself.

  “Maybe should have thought about that before dismissing us,” Colt’s voice came over the audio.

  “We’ve got you though,” Lacey’s voice came next. “Dungeon closing in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”