Call pulled up one skill after another, gazing at the various abilities he now had. Never in his wildest dreams would he have thought he’d be so powerful. But there he was, in Perkle’s hideout in the ductwork, reviewing powerful magic that he could use to stop a madwoman from destroying over a thousand worlds to become a god.

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Intermediate Dungeon Meld: As long as you’re within a mile of your host dungeon buddy, you’re good. This means you can be connected to a dungeon core and go out for milkshakes.

Note: Like with most things, if your soul is entangled with something, you don’t want to yank it away recklessly. So don’t test the range. If you get too far, your Funk Soul might get damaged.

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Enhanced Conference Call: Back when DUDE tried using the Electronic Abacuses, sometimes during a conference call, one person would take control of another person’s machine and “drive.” In the Enhanced Conference Call, when a Dungeon Meld is active, the lethal comptroller can take over the actions of one of the dungeon core’s minions and “drive” that monster. This is not unlike a skill that fungaloids have. But unlike fungaloids, there are no smelly spores involved in the process.

Note: Please disengage from the Enhanced Conference Call before the minions dies as this will be easier on you and on the dungeon core. This limits the amount of screaming and gnashing of the teeth that many experience with death. Premature death has caused comptrollers in the past to irrevocably damage their Funk Souls

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Micromanage: With the Enhanced Conference Call ability, you can control a friendly minion and experience what they are experiencing. With the Micromanage ability, you can take control of someone (enemy minion, rogue dungeon core, drunk dungeoneer) your level or lower and control their physical actions. You can make that pesky ogre sit down and shut up. Or you can force the slime chicken to stand and pay attention. You can’t control their voices or their spells, just their bodies. Because even in a toxic work environment, your mind should be free.

Note: There might be huge consequences trying to use this ability on dungeon guardians or dungeoneers that are more powerful than you are. Be careful. Trying to Micromanage your own boss has gotten people killed.

Additional Note: Micromanaging friends and family often lead to a condition called social isolation. Don’t be “that” guy. It’s super lonely.

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Bullet Points: For some odd reason, much of the multiverse hasn’t truly embraced the idea of the bullet. Yes, Helga has her musket, and there are guns here and there, but unlike some monkeys on some worlds (I’m looking at you, Urothlings) the bullet is underused. But not for the Lethal Comptroller. They can punctuate their audits in the most brutal of ways. They can outline the information on their deadly agenda using bullets points. That’s all a fancy way of saying these are magic missiles. You can change the font of your bullet points, though. Make them spikey. Or make them as round as the lead cannonballs that Pirate Ship Familiars use.

Note: Avoid using these on dungeon core guardians. This is an offensive weapon, but in the end, you don’t want to offend anyone. The Middle Middle Manager should stay in compliance, which means they need to foster a non-violent workplace. You really, really, really don’t want to be that kind of “that” guy.

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Bored Meeting: Most people wake up, get to work, drink some coffee, and are ready to take on the day. They’re wide awake and ready for action. Until the afternoon rolls around. Known as the arsenic hour, three PM can drop even the most hyperactive Toddlerish Skinnamarink (That’s a super creepy and barely literate dungeon core ghoul – avoid if you don’t like a lot of long hallways, shadowy bedrooms, and disappearing doors).

Casting Bored Meeting on your targets will fill them with those afternoon doldrums. Yes, you now have the power to make multiple monsters super sleepy.

At higher levels, not even a trip to the breakroom for one of Fullgeer’s bone-rattling espressos will save them from dropping into a coma like state from which they might not ever escape.

Note: The higher the intelligence and the more the ambitious, the less effective the Bored Meeting spell will be. But stupid dungeon cores, dungeoneers, minions, who don’t like their job in the first place, will drop into REM sleep at the drop of a hat.

Additional Note: This is a combat ability. Make no mistake about it—meetings are a type of psychological warfare, even in the best environments.

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Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

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Data Storm: Remember that one time where you showed Mistress Night, a.k.a. Evelyn Bloodworth, the true nature of the universe? You beguiled her with your amazing data. Data Storm is like that, but now it’s an Area of Effect spell. You can bring the charts and graphs to an entire audience! Anyone in a thirty-foot radius will be affected as long as they are at or below your current level. And kinda dumb. The longer you keep them enraptured, the more confused they will be, until there is a chance that confusion will throw them into a murderous rampage. As the confusion clouds their minds and shatters their sanity, they will turn on anyone—friend or foe—and start attacking them, driven insane by the data.

Note: The chance of going crazy during a Data Storm is a combination of the victim’s intelligence, their power level, their ability to read a graph, and how invested they are into absorbing the knowledge. In essence, this is going to work on most creatures in the multiverse.

Additional Note: Keep in mind, there is no way of forcing the victims of a Data Storm to attack those you want them to. This is inviting in chaos, which is kind of ironic. By inviting large groups of people to look at your data, which should bring order to the universe, you are triggering their instinctual desire for entropy. The multiverse bends toward entropy rather than order. Chaos is easier than law. Like any storm, you’re only going to be able to control it for so long. Then the multiverse is gonna do what the multiverse gonna do.

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Cal tried to pull up his new Ultra Audit skill’s subcategory, Dharmic Direction, which if it was anything like this Karmic Korrection, might be more powerful than all of his other abilities combined. However, he got a simple error message, something that was eerily familiar.

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Dharmic Direction: Description pending. Notice that nothing is misspelled, so we have that going for us. Still putting the final touches on it. But have you tried on the Weavelord’s tie yet?

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Cal was disappointed.

Perkle, though, grinned. “You have the boss’s Armored Tie? Oh, goody, it’s very powerful, Cal. Put it on! Put it on!”

Cal fished it out of his pouch. “I, uh, don’t know how this works…”

Helga hurried forward. “Yer family should’ve done less singing and taught you the skills you need. Let me help ye.” She threw the tie around his neck and in seconds had it hanging down his chest. An instant later, the robes were gone, and he was in a suit, with khaki pants, white button-up shirt, and a brown houndstooth blazer with tiny red and blue accent lines. Instead of boots, he wore newly polished brown wingtips.

Helga stepped back, nodding. “Aye, the slight red in the coat matches the tie, though you could also go with a blue shirt, and it would also work. Bravo, Calcannis! Even your Spirit Llama sweater vest matches. But are ye too warm and itchy?”

“I’m not,” Cal said. ‘I feel very comfortable.”

Perkle pointed. “And the suit has interdimensional pockets. Golly, but you can hold a ton of stuff in there. The suit suits you, Mr. Cal. Sure it does.”

Amorfo rolled his eyes, but when everyone gave him dirty looks, he looked sheepish and gave Cal a thumbs up. He kept quiet, which was a blessing, given the state of his vocabulary.

Gwen grinned at him. “You finally don’t look so dorky, Cal. Truly. You were destined for the suit.”

Cal reached into his pocket and brought out the rock polisher and the two pairs of eyeglasses. He went to give the glasses to Gwen, but she put up a hand. “No. You should keep them.”

Cal put on the Spectacles of Awareness, and suddenly, he could see around himself, three-hundred and sixty degrees. He also could see the Apothos flowing, and he thought the spectacles might be channeling his Identify Apothos ability. So that’s how Dave could see him and Gwen when they’d used their sneaky abilities. The disruption of Apothos would’ve been easy to detect.

Cal changed his perception to focus on what was in front of him. The magic was very intuitive. He tossed Gwen the Tortoiseshell glasses. “Here, Gwen. You don’t have any armor, and these will help you.”

Gwen slipped them on. The glasses flashed, and surprise, surprise, she looked amazing, kind of like an Eritrean hipster but in a good way. She got out a compact mirror and appraised them. “Wow. Thanks, Dad. I really like ‘em.”

Perkle sniffled and had to wipe his nose. “Back to the Armored Tie, Mr. Cal, you can change the clothes if you need to, and while they might get ripped or torn, they’ll repair easily. That tie will block most attacks, if it can.

Cal felt so honored to have such great magic. He’d thought the Ruby Staff was cool, but in some ways, getting Dave’s stuff was cooler. He stuck the rock polisher back into his suit coat and hoped that Inke didn’t die or go insane. They still had another twenty-four hours before they could open the orb to fish out his core gem.

Suddenly, the entire HVAK ductwork shook, and dust rained down.

Perkle glanced around, with fear in his eyes. “Oh gosh! Harvey is having some issues with Barb’s magic. Her Node work isn’t something we could’ve anticipated. How she got those new nodes—and created all these dang dungeons down there—is anyone’s guess.”

The metal around them crinkled.

Gwen started yelling. “Thanks for the info dump, Perkle, what does that mean?”

“Must get out of the ducts now, ma’am. Our best bet is the secret archive room on the first level, just outside the inner sanctum. Might still be secret, though I’d bet donuts against doohickies that’s it’s not secret no more.”

But it was too late to worry very about that.

They raced out of the junction as large parts of the wall crinkled before being crushed completely. But the room was so packed with gadgets, they were keeping most of Perkle’s equipment from being crushed.

The Gadget Gnome led the way down a metal chute on the sled carrying Kronke’s body. Amorfo, Cal, and the rest of Team Six chased after him.

They reached the vent, but Perkle had fallen into a panic. “How can we get everyone down to the floor? I don’t want to drop the troll down. Not sure he can regenerate rock that’s shattered!”

Cal took over. He squeezed himself to the front and kicked open the vent.

Then he lifted himself down to the floor of the secret archive on the dungeon level with the Ruby Staff. Even though he hadn’t checked it, he knew that he had a ton more poundage he could move with his TK Oh! ability.

Cal easily lifted both Kronke and the sled down from the crinkling ductwork and onto the floor. Boxes of files surrounded them, since they’d used most of the big metal filing cabinets in traps around the dungeon.

Above all, Cal didn’t want to lose any of the files in the archive. They had the history of DUDE to protect.

He was about to start lifting down more of his friends when the air around him boiled. The stench of a heavy perfume threatened to suffocate him. He felt the breezes of the perfume elementals spinning up around him, already destroying boxes and whipping files and folder into the air.

The elementals were a special delivery from a certain aromatherapist who longed for godhood. And Barb’s fragrance monsters weren’t alone. The Sweater Wraith, Cardiganna Lowhand, was flooding the secret archive with minions of her own.