Barbara Starmyst was alone in her inner sanctum, breathing in the jasmine and vanilla mixture she called Code White. She only used Code White when Code Purple— her Lavender and Patchouli mixture—didn’t work. But not even Code White could make her feel better. Her Aroma Arts were failing her! Why?

She was so close, inches away from Triple S Class, and that meant godhood. She could leave behind this inane little game, but not before getting her Vengeance. Then, she could turn whole worlds into spas, and yes, fix the dumb reality that they’d be given.

And yet, Audit Team Six was ruining her fun. She had to focus on them, those accountants and those dang breakroom cores, and the gadgetry that gauche Gwenivere woman had created with the annoying Gadget Gnome.

Barb had sent her most loyal minions into the first floor to deal with Perkle. He and Amorfo would not stand a chance against Cardi and the Senior-Level Taurseuses, Deisel and Dietrich, as well as a whole squadron of her centaurs, including the Taurpuncturists, the equine form of the Acupuncturists.

Her normal Acupuncturists weren’t doing well against Team Six, not at all, but the Exfoliator was about to murder that homely elven accountant in the Skin Dome.

Yes, they weren’t flesh, but the Exfoliator could still tear them apart with her telekinesis. And there was her six arms, the knives, the claws, the blades. Yes, the Exfoliator was a very powerful minion.

Cardi was in constant contact with Barb, and that put the aromatherapist on edge because Cardi was running a dungeon and not enjoying the experience. Cardi was the structural engineer for the AT1, and she had all sorts of concerns.

Barb was safe in her inner sanctum. She wouldn’t start worrying, unless Cal and his team made it past Acapulco. That was unthinkable, so Barb didn’t have to think about it. One of the tricks of having good mental health was to only dwell on the positive and let go of the negative.

Barb sent her Aroma Form up to help out Cardi, who had lost two of the Taurseuses—not Deisel or Dietrich, thankfully—to the filing room trap. And those javelin machines.

Barb coalesced into the strong smell of ylang ylang oil. In her Aroma Form, she was like one of her Perfume Elementals, but with her normal shape, a beautiful centaur with solid hooves and lusciously thick hair. Aroma Form was one of her new S-Class powers, and she wasn’t super comfortable using it yet.

Like the Fragrance Gate she’d opened to bring Cardi and some of her minions from the fourth level to the fifth. The portal had nearly collapsed, which would’ve killed her friend. That would’ve been very traumatizing, but not the worst thing that could happen. What was far scarier was the things she saw on the edge of the portal—Void Lords, like from a Decaisy Apocalypse. She wasn’t going to use the Fragrance Gate again until she had more practice. She’d heard how Team Six had used the Void monsters to defeat their enemies. The same wasn’t going to happen to her.

It was all so frustrating! She had to get that first level sanctum back! With all five cores, it would only be about twenty minutes, tops, before she ascended to Triple S Class. With only four cores, it would take hours and hours, which was risky. The Quatros had found a way in, and while Cardi had wiped them out, someone from the Arcandor Initiative, Ji-Soo for example, would be a lot harder to deal with.

Besides, Team Six might reach her inner sanctum first. She couldn’t believe they had the gall to invade her dungeon! Couldn’t they just wait like good dungeoneers to be murdered when she became a god?

Barb flew in her Aroma Form through the back channels of her dungeon, through the mud room (now a disaster), through her koi pond room (also a disasters) and through the Null Arena. She flew up behind her centaur herd walking behind Cardi’s minions in the first-floor dungeon. Normally, that many horses would create quite a sink in nature, but not Barb’s. Each smelled very good, and not like horses at all. Actually, each had his own particular cologne, variations on Dragon Dusk Musk.

Barb flew over the Sweater Wraith’s army of Untreated Undead, BULLies, and Mean Ghouls. She found Cardi at a juncture. Two glass doors were in front of her. A cheap wooden door was to her left.

The Sweater Wraith wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, look at that. A glass door in a dungeon that doesn’t shatter? It’s so amateurish. This whole place is so ugly, and the layout is so weird. and weirdly laid out. And the filing cabinet trap was my fault. But, Barb, we only lost two centaurs. We still have forty-eight left. So not bad, girlfriend, not bad.”

Deisel and Dietrich bowed, muscles flexing. Both were armed with tinglers, short rods filled with Fulgur Apothos. In close-quarter combat, they would break bone and electrify flesh. As a ranged weapon, they threw electrical vibrations, which were powerful enough to break stone. She was pleased she could provide S-Class weapons for her best bosses.

Deisel spoke first, his accent thick. “Hallo, Master Vanilla, we are so glad you are joining us. Master Cardi doesn’t know which way to go.”

Cardi gasped. “Oh, sure, throw me under the bus.”

Dietrich frowned. “You are not a minion, but an independent sentient entity. I would have thought you would have the mental capacity to take charge.”

Cardi made a face. “Whatever. I have more mental capacity than you, horse brain, okay? Let’s just go straight. If that’s okay with Master Vanilla, who shows up after one trap where I lost only two centaurs. But it’s okay. It’s fine. It’s all just fine.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Barb knew it wasn’t fine. Cardi was feeling micromanaged, which was the appropriate response. She should be micromanaged. “We need to hurry, Cardi. Let’s just go through the glass doors. I’ll go first because I can’t be hurt, but I can still hurt. If good mental health tells us anything, it’s that sometimes the correct response to a difficult situation is extreme violence.”

Cardi laughed nervously, glancing away. “Whatever you say, girlfriend.”

Barb’s Aroma Form pushed through the glass doors then floated down a short natural cavern and across ugly gray carpet, dark with damp. It wasn’t a stylistic choice, Barb knew, it was just sloppy design. Probably Amorfo’s idea. He was the worst. The aromatherapist centaur did have some appreciation for Helga Kneebash, who had a very good eye…for a barbarian from Harknuckle. Amorfo had probably ignored all of her advice.

Cracking Amorfo’s core would be sad, and Barb knew she’d grieve a bit, but in the end, his sacrifice would be worth it. After some time, his murder would be in the past, and Barb had trained herself to let go of the past. Take Weavelord’s murder, for example. She hardly remembered his death.

The aromatherapist floated into a natural cavern that had one of Amorfo’s insipid fountains in the middle, surrounded by more damp carpet, some parts black where the water had soaked through. It created such a moist stink. Of course, the headpiece on the fountain was a statue of Amorfo, hands out, palm raised. Water dripped from his hands as well as from the mouths of his snake hair. It was too much, way too much.

Barb tsked him loudly. “Either the palms or the snakes, Amorfo, but not both.” She lifted her voice. “This is why you’re going to fail, Amorfo! No sense of style!”

The statue spoke. “Nuh uh, Barb. I’m totally gonna win.” The voice sounded like a child’s, which was a bit strange and unsettling—a bold choice. Then again, Amorfo always did excel at music and sound design in his dungeon design classes.

There were other statues in the room, all wearing armor and holding a variety of swords, spears, axes, and even some crossbows. Barb knew this was one of the storage rooms where the leftovers and cast-off items from former audits were kept. She didn’t fault her enemies for using whatever they could get, but the whole thing felt off.

It felt like a trap.

Barb flew through the room, smacking down statues of Amorfo and Team Six. The swords clanged off armor, helmets went rolling onto the carpet, and several statues fell against the walls.

Cardi, Diesel, and Dietrich entered the cave, but they stayed near the glass doors, while the other centaurs filtered into the room. Barb liked they had an army, but she didn’t like that they were grouped together. They needed to put some space between each other, so they weren’t taken out in an Area of Effect attack.

Barb knocked down more statues, but none of them came to life.

Cardi sighed. “It’s just like in the Null Arena. It’s all just for show. What the heck, Amorfo? Talk about lame!”

Barb didn’t think the Dudusa was smart enough to come up with this strategy. He might have come up with the stink, though. The place reeked of moldy carpet.

“Take out the fountain.” Barb called out. “That has to do something.”

She floated in the air at the other end of the room. She saw the secret door, cleverly hidden in the rock. So it wasn’t a dead end. Generally, following secret passageways cut off time in a dungeon. It could also be a trap because the passageway wasn’t well hidden.

Diesel lifted one of his short rods and threw a tingler vibration at the fountain, which made the whole thing explode. Water gushed out of the fountain, rising high into the air, and coming down on the wet carpet, which made the room smell worse.

“You can’t win at odor warfare, Amorfo! I can suffer through any smell you throw at me!” Barb flew her Aroma Form around the room again, but nothing was happening, nothing moved. “Oh, I get it. This is just a ruse to slow us down.”

Barb motioned to them from the other side of the room. “Okay. Start across. But go slowly. At the first sign of trouble, turn around. Cardi, Diesel, and Dietrich stay back near the entrance before we know it’s safe.”

There were the Taurseuses, the big burly centaur men, and most were armed with staves, with weighted ends. Then there were the Taurpuncturists, in masks, gloves, and carrying the satchels of needles.

Most of the herd of centaurs was past the ruins of the fountain, almost to the secret passageway, when the miniature statues of Amorfo started falling out of the ceiling. Barb hadn’t seen them. They’d been shoved into the rock, not like stalactites, but like bombs in bomber bays.

They were only about half the size of the statues that Barb had knocked down. Then she realized they were sculptures of Amorfo as a child.

The stone children fell onto the centaurs, just as the carpet under their hooves gave way. The centaurs were plunged down into pools, weighed down by the stone children.

All the while, more and more water was gushing out of the ruined fountain, raising the levels of the water in the cavern, so when the centaurs tried to swim out of the hidden pools they were still up to their chests. And more statues continued to fall. They were going to lose dozens of the horse people. It was a sad fact. Centaurs weren’t made for swimming.

Barb could send more, but that would empty out Serenity Stables, which was an important part of her dungeon. No, keeping the dungeoneers out of her inner sanctum was more important.

Barb tried to lift one centaur out of the water, but she wasn’t strong enough. At least her Aroma Form wasn’t strong enough. At Triple S-Class, she could easily have done everything her normal guardian form could do, but in gaseous form. It would make her omnipresent and omnipotent, completely unbeatable.

Cardi forces—her Mean Ghouls, BULLies, and Untreated Undead skeletal students—picked their way through the cavern, finding solid ground under the carpet. None of them were very good swimmers. And being undead was one step removed from being an actual water-logged corpse, so…

From the dry ground on the edges, Cardi was able to use her whip to pull centaurs out of the water.

Dietrich and Diesel had formed a chain. Dietrich held onto the wall, while Diesel used his big muscles to haul other centaurs to safety.

By the time it was over, they only had a dozen centaurs left. She wasn’t going to chance the secret passageway. They’d try that wooden door back at the juncture.

Barb flew over her drowned army and through the glass doors. “This way. And so help me, if we encounter any more water features, I’m tempted to have you all go after Cal and his raiders yourself. But Amorfo doesn’t have the Apothos to flood the dungeon, so what is happening?”

Cardi had a mirror out, and was looking at her makeup, touching up her mascara. “Amorfo couldn’t be sharing power with those guys, could he? Like with your Remote Odor Control, but only, different. Like, ugh, a fungaloid?”

“Let’s hope it’s not a fungaloid. I hate how they smell, Cardi. I hate mushrooms. I know, I know, they’re supposedly good for you, but I can’t help but hate them so much!”

Barb flew on through the wooden panel door. There she stopped, as she saw the next room, one filled with all that old Electronic Abacus equipment.

She took a minute to glance back at how her Exfoliator was doing.

She wasn’t doing well. It wasn’t fair, it was totally strange, but she wasn’t doing well at all. The Exfoliator was only facing Cal—what the heck? Wasn’t he just some low-level accountant with hardly any magic?

No. That wasn’t the case. It wasn’t the case at all.