Barbara Starmyst was so tempted to use her S-Class Fragrance Gate to bring more minions up to the first level, but she couldn’t risk unleashing the Void Lords. However, they’d lost a few more centaurs and all of Cardi’s minotaurs in some stupid electronics storage room that soon flooded. Luckily, Deisel and Dietrich had survived.

It had been terrible. That Perkle fellow and his gadgets had created a real death trap. Harpoon cannons had hit the horse men as other guns fired red tape, ensuring the bull men in crimson wraps. Thus anchored, those unlucky minions drowned when the room flooded. Then Perkle’s Gadget Gnomes leapt onto the skeletal students and Mean Ghouls and sank the undead down to the bottom of the room until they were so water-logged they couldn’t move.

Barb had seen that coming, and yet, hadn’t been able to stop that dumb Perkle.

She and Cardi needed reinforcements.

It was risky, and Barb only kept the Fragrance Gate opened for a few seconds, enough to bring in Courtney Cortisol, the Crypt Counselor, and as many of Cardi’s undead minions she could until the Void Lords started reaching through her portal with graying, many-fingered hands. Ugh. So gross! They smelled so bad that Barb almost lost her serenity because of the trauma. Lucky, when she ended the Fragrance Gate, no Void Lords had made it through.

Here serenity was intact. Except for Courtney Cortisol.

Barb hated the Crypt Counselor, but she had to play nice with the floor boss because Courtney was powerful. They didn’t bring Nurse Wrequel Wretched over, since she had to breathe, and breathing in the Halls of Red Tape had proven to be a challenge because of all the water.

Courtney hadn’t breathed, ever, and she was annoyingly proud of the fact. Somehow, though, the Crypt Counselor still had complained that Barb’s perfume was cloying.

Well, Barb’s perfume had to be strong because it created a copy of her body. Being in two places at once wasn’t easy.

Ugh. Courtney was the worst.

The Mean Ghouls and the Untreated Undead weren’t as skilled fighters as Barb’s Taurseuses and Taurpuncturists, but they weren’t bothered by water. They didn’t breathe. Even better. The Mean Ghouls floated when they died, at least for a time, and that saved their remaining centaurs in the Long Hallway.

Well, saved most of them. One centaur got his skull crushed by a falling filing cabinet. What was with the falling filing cabinets? One nice thing about Courtney, she was able to bring the skeletal students back to life. She’d shame them for being dead, they’d feel bad, and come back to life with a fresh hatred for the living, so it all worked out.

Barb’s strike team finally emerged from the Long Hallway to find a square room with junk, trash, and broken furniture strewn across the floor. A chemical smell reminded Barb of toilet cleaner. She was a bit embarrassed that she’d included a Toilet Elemental in her dungeon, but it fit, thematically, in the Locker Room of Shame. It should’ve taken out Cal and his dumb team, but they had that sink. Who brings a sink to a dungeon crawl?

She was just glad that no one made the we’re-attacking-this-dungeon-with-everything-we have-including-the-kitchen-sink joke. That very well might’ve snapped her sanity.

Barb surveyed the room at the end of the hallway. There was junk strewn across the floor. The ceiling was a chessboard. Why put a gaming board on the ceiling?

And where was the fountain? There had to be one. Amorfo loved his fountains.

Barb pointed. “There’s my old chair with no padding. Cardi, remember I had that chair? We put up with so much malarkey over the years. Well, not anymore.” Barb lifted her voice. “Give up, Amorfo! You picked the wrong time to get in my way! The wrong flippin’ time! So just turn on the water, okay? We already know you’re going to flood this whole room. Chessboard on the ceiling. Whatever!”

Cardi motioned to her worst, most annoying minion. “Okay, Courtney. Why don’t you take some of your Untreated Undead into the room? Look for the fountain. But be careful of the ceiling.”

Courtney gave Cardi a long, withering look. The giant woman then adjusted her perfectly coiffed counselor brown hair and adjusted the jacket on her business suit with long, cold, dead fingers.

Cardi titled her head in an understated warning. “Remember, before you say one word, I can unmake you in like two seconds. Just. One. Word.”

“Fine!” Courtney said, then smirked. “Or is that the wrong word?” The Crypt Counselor then walked into the room, with her skeletons following her. Several of the Mean Ghouls stayed back, eyeing their mistress nervously.

One ghoul squinted. “Uh, Cardi, mistress, as long as robots don’t, like, jump on us, we can float. So, just so you know, if you were wondering. Just to let you know.”

Cardi motioned for them to get into the room. “Yeah, fine, whatever. And the word ‘fine’ is not one that will get you killed. The word ‘no’ certainly will.”

Courtney was nearly to the exit door when suddenly water bubbled out the top center drawer of a desk. Then the other drawers shot out, one striking a centaur in the chest, as more water followed. In a flash, the room was covered in a foot of water.

Diesel and Dietrick looked at each other nervously, but Barb used her Aroma Form to shove them forward. “Get in. Get across. The Mean Ghouls will help you float.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Diesel said.

“Master!” Dietrick shot back.

And then both of them were cantering into the room, avoiding the broken furniture as much as they could, but the second they were in the room, other desks exploded with water. More hapless centaurs followed, and soon they were all being buoyed by the Mean Ghouls, whose bodies had expanded with air, becoming pontoons. Other skeletons pushed them from under the water with their bony arms.

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Courtney was completely under water at this point, walking through the water, to get to the other side, but the door was sealed shut. Some kind of magic stopped the water from draining out into the Long Hallway. Barb flew up into the room above the water. Her Aroma Form would dissipate if submerged. For obvious reasons.

She knew those chessboard squares were going to do something bad to her poor equine darlings, and she thought about creating another Fragrance Gate, but no, using that magic again would surely bring the Void Lords.

The centaurs on the undead teenagers had their heads above the water. Their hair shined in the light of the white squares of the chessboard above them. Then it happened. A few black squares in the ceiling slid open to reveal paintings, murals of Amorfo as various mermen, all holding tridents.

Barb was there, her head and torso fully formed, while the rest of her body was perfumed smoke. She knew what was coming. “Dive down! Diesel! Dietrick. Those paintings are going to come alive.”

And that’s when the tridents came shooting down out of the paintings, as the various Amorfos started spearing the centaurs.

Deisel and Deitrich managed to dive down out of reach, but now they were underwater. More centaurs died, as well as Mean Ghouls, speared in the head. This was a massacre!

Then she realized something. The paintings had come alive, and how do you fight a painting? You ruin it!

“Fling water into the paintings. Cardi, Courtney, get your minions to swim to the surface and soak those murals!”

The ghoulish cheerleaders and the skeletal students managed to get to the surface, and they started splashing water up into the paintings. The tridents couldn’t emerge from the smeared pictures.

The room started to drain.

The Crypt Counselor had ripped open the exit door. The water was gushing out, and soon, they were back down among the junk. However, they’d taken some grievous losses.

Courtney Cortisol laughed huskily. “Well now, we have six centaurs, but I do not find them impressive. My former patients, the Untreated Undead, are much better, however pathetic and ugly and dumb they are.”

Several of the skeletons moaned and gave Barb a pleading look.

Courtney was terrible, and yet they needed such a weapon, and Amorfo would completely come undone once they sent the Crypt Counselor to torture him. Always such a braggart, Barb knew about the Dudusa’s underlying insecurities.

They made it out of the chessboard room and splashed down another hallway. The murals of the Sangretta sunset was ruined, which was a mercy. It was so ugly anyway.

Barb knew they were close.

She was going to see how close. She went flying down the hallway, and through another door, and into a room filled with books, strange, steel bookshelves, and broke pool tables. There, in the corner, stood a shattered foosball table. On the other side of the breakroom sat a microwave and an empty, unplugged refrigerator. The door was open, and it stank up the place. Nothing smelled as bad as an old fridge. If the breakroom cores hadn’t been helping Team Six, Barb would’ve assumed they’d be in the room.

But Amorfo’s dumb Monster Girl Manuscripts trap was there. As long as they didn’t look at the books, the dumb monster girls would stay inside. Barb lifted her voice. “Amorfo, you’re such a moron. The books were a bad idea for minions. I told you that when you first chose them as your Mid C- Upgrades.”

She motioned for her team to come running through the room, and the minute the collection of centaurs, skeletons, and ghouls came hurrying in, robotic arms expanded out from the metal shelves, throwing the books in front of the faces of Barb, Cardi, and their minions.

Only Diesel and Dietrick were faster with their tingler rods. They threw the crushing energy into the metal arms, snapping them at their joints. Books went flying to the floor. One single orc woman appeared, in full armor and a sword.

She alone was there, while the rest of the monster girl books lay on the floor, totally useless.

The orc woman snarled. “I was born for battle!”

The she-orc went running at the centaurs, until Barb flew up behind her, grabbed her head, and twisted her neck. The monster girl vanished in a puff of Apothos. “Whatever. Born for battle. Killed in battle. Such a cliche.”

Diesel and Dietrick smirked, tapping their tingler rods in their palms.

Barb wasn’t sure they were out of the woods yet. She sent Courtney and her skeletons, and her ghouls forward, with the last of the centaurs following up.

Things were fine until the microwave exploded, splintering skeletons, and blasting Diesel into a broken Aldaleeran foosball table. The handles had been removed from the metal bars to turn them into spikes. There was no saving him.

Another foosball table, along with an Aldaleeran pool table, shifted into cannons, and started firing foosball players and billiard balls into the ranks of the centaurs. The results were blood and devastating.

The Mean Ghouls and Untreated Undead surged forward. Several lost their skulls until they managed to destroy the gaming table cannons. However, the damage had been done.

Diesel let out a howl of pain. “My friend! No!”

Courtney marched over to the grieving Taurseuse. “Let me handle this. Diesel, your friend wasn’t simply unlucky, he was chosen by the gods to die. You were chosen to live, even though you’re not as talented. And in the end, you’re just a minion, and not that important. Do you really think that you’ll survive this? You’re going to die one way or another. If our enemies destroy your master’s core, you will cease to exist. It’ll be like you were never born.”

Cardi snapped her spiked jewelry whip right in Courtney’s face. “Not helping, Courtney. Save your toxic counseling for the enemy, okay?”

“I will fight!” Diesel roared. “I will get revenge!”

Barb liked the sound of that. “We all want revenge. I’ll scout ahead.”

She flew her aroma form through the door, down another waterlogged hallway with water dripping down the walls, and into the inner sanctum. She’d lost most of her centaurs, and one of her best floor bosses, but now, they were here, and she surveyed the cubicle maze.

It was easy enough to fly over.

And with all that they had faced, Amorfo couldn’t have many defenses.

A little gorgon boy came out of the maze, with juvenile snakes on his head and an overly large pair of sunglasses on his small face. They wiggled as he giggled. “Hey, Barb. Look at us. You’re all smokey, and I’m just a kid, but I can still do this.”

He raised his sunglasses. A second later, Barb was back in her core gem, back in her inner sanctum. That little boy had been Amorfo, and he’d turned her Amora Form into stone.

It didn’t matter. Cardi, Courtney, and Diesel were going to run that cubicle maze. Amorfo seemed to be alone there, and so it would be easy to crack his core.

With all five nodes, Barb would ascend to Triple S in twenty minutes or less. She could stop sucking Apothos from those one thousand, two hundred, and seventy-three worlds, and they would probably be okay, probably, but the resulting explosion of power would destroy all five Celestial Nodes, which would destroy the Department of Universal Dungeon Efficiency, and probably a good portion of Tedium.

Barb would finally get her Vengeance. Then she could focus on Project Aroma, which was really her life’s work. Always had been. Always would be. That mysterious executive she was worried about wouldn’t stop her. She didn’t know who he was, but when she became a god, he wouldn’t matter. Nothing would matter except for Project Aroma.

The aromatherapist centaur switched her consciousness to see how Cal was fairing against her charming CBD minion.

Ah, Acapulco. He was dealing with Cal handily. As it should be.

At least the homely elf would feel very calm and comfortable before he died.