Hughe entered an entirely different dungeon after the 3-day hiatus. The bats in the first room gave a jump scare before evacuating the dungeon altogether, probably to look for food on the outside after being rudely awakened. Lacey and Colt laughed over the console at the look on Hughe’s face, which was more freaked out than the druid, who barely flinched. It helped that Hughe had gotten hit with bat droppings. The druid tried to hide a smile as the mage slipped in some of the stuff and seemed to be swearing. Lacey knew because Colt was giving a blow by blow of what he was generously applying as the druid’s charms. He had a crush. Lacey rolled her eyes, but the girl was growing on Lacey too, even though they’d never met.

Now that they’d placed the main bat cave near the top of the dungeon, the bats were going in and out all the time for a variety of food. They had expanded their worm caves so that they had enough of a farm of glowing worms to feed the bats and the beetles, but the bats liked a more varied diet, so they went out to find fruit and insects that weren’t in the dungeon. The only reason Lacey knew about the diet of the bats was that when the bats brought the stuff back to the dungeon, the pedestal added the diet to the options.

Hughe swung at a bat on its way out, but those bats were higher level than they looked at first glance and easily dodged the swipe. The other fighter had to duck Hughe’s sword, but didn’t complain. There was an eye roll that made Lacey think, maybe wishfully, that the four lower leveled adventurers were just putting up with Hughe for access to the dungeon.

The bats weren’t fighters, at least Colt and Lacey hadn’t figured out how to make them aggressive. The beetles were easy to avoid, though they’d eat a bat that they could catch on the ground. The bats just flew over the top of them, sometimes dive-bombing the beetles with a little glowing bat dung.

The party had leveled up, but only one level. The fighter was now level 4, the rogue level 3, the druid level 4, and only the mage was still at level 2. Hughe had leveled back up to 5, still the highest of all of them with the bonus he’d gotten from clearing the dungeon before. It wasn’t much of a bonus but if Lacey considered that he’d killed mostly level 0 mobs throughout, it was a wonder he’d gotten that much. The beetles had died out before Hughe had gotten there and nothing else had been combative at all. Even the bats hadn’t leveled up, so they’d been easy too.

The rogue was fiddling with the door, probably looking for traps, but the dungeon’s traps were now rated much higher than the level 3 rogue. They’d leveled. On traps. Turned out the traps gave a lot when they sold them, and they’d sold a lot to level up without Hughe’s help. The dungeon was now level 3, but their traps were rating higher. For every two traps they made, they sold one and installed the other. With two goblin troops, consisting of ten workers each, and those goblins leveled up as they made the traps, their dungeon was stacked with traps on all the levels higher than 4. The trap troop weren’t combatants. They were more like the bats in that they brought value to the dungeon rather than protected it.

That was okay because they had figured out how to train the goblins to higher levels by letting them fight some of the beetles. Eve, Adam, and an elite set of guards were allowed to test the dungeon before the adventurers arrived, and that had leveled them up too. Lacey was almost jealous at how easily the goblins were gaining levels compared to Lacey, Colt, and the dungeon as a whole.

The rogue finally cleared the door, but only because Colt had convinced Lacey to let level 1 be trap free. He’d said it was only fair, but she had figured that it would lull them into a sense of complacency. Colt and Lacey had smiled at each other knowing full well what the other was thinking on the subject.

“I told you that the second room should have at least level 2 beetles,” Lacey commented to Colt as the party decimated the level 0 beetles, probably not getting much but the small shiny shells for their effort.

“Okay, you were right,” Colt gave Lacey the words she wanted. “Level 1 next time?”

“Level 2, at least,” Lacey complained. “I doubt anyone but the mage got any experience from it.”

“Yeah, but it also gives shells for any lower levels that might come through,” Colt argued. “We want the dungeon to be well-rounded for all the different levels and they should have to work for the shells a little.”

“You’ll glut the market,” Lacey reasoned as the fighter stepped on the last of the baby beetles.

“Nah,” Colt shook his head. “Those shells are softer than the larger beetles give. It’s like giving out sample tiles or paint swatches at the hardware store.”

“It’s a waste of beetles if you ask me,” Lacey grumbled, but they both knew she didn’t mean it.

Lacey fidgeted, wanting to see what they did with the next room. The rogue took forever clearing the door and the skin along the edge of Lacey’s nails paid the price. Colt flicked to the room she was waiting for. There was a cupcake on the table. It was a lovely chocolate with buttercream frosting by the smell of it and it went to the one of them that won the bet on the room.

Hughe crashed into the room, sword drawn and eager for blood. The mage held the door until they were all inside, looking around. The next door was locked, something the second fighter figured out right away. The druid was looking around at the walls, where they’d moved some of the goblin cave paintings. They’d added a few of their own to the murals.

“The rogue is going to pick the locks,” Lacey worried.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“There are five level 7 locks on that door, all of which cost more than fifteen level 3 goblins,” Colt complained. In this bet, he was on the side of frugality, but not by much.

“He’ll still just pick the locks,” Lacey said even though that was not what she really wanted him to do. She wanted it for the cupcake, but not for the dungeon and what it would mean for them as dungeon masters.

The rogue did move to the door to examine the locks when the fighter called him over. He looked over the locks and pulled out picks, as expected.

“By the time he picks the locks, someone will have figured out the puzzle,” Colt shook his head at the rogue fumbling at the lowest lock. “Look, she’s looking at it.”

“Did we make it too hard for beginners?” Lacey worried some more. She wanted that cupcake, but more than that, she wanted the room to work and be worth the effort.

“They can always just wait for the rogue or back out with their baby beetle shells,” Colt patted Lacey.

“What if Hughe just tries to break down the door?” Lacey fretted, shifting from foot to foot as they watched.

“You worry too much,” Colt teased her.

“You worry too little,” she bantered back at him, but at least she’d stopping nibbling on her fingernails.

The druid pointed at the walls and while Hughe and the rogue ignored her, the other fighter came up beside her. Lacey ran the room over in her mind as if she was in it and trying to solve it. There were seven words scratched on the wall above the mural where the druid was pointing. The first letter of each word could be rearranged in an anagram of the word pottery. Arranged on the wall nearest to the door entering the room were eighteen urns full of moss and glowing bat shit. Each urn had a Roman numeral on it. If one stuck their hand into the one with the number seven on it, there were only glowing worms instead of the bat poop, and it had a single key at the bottom of the urn.

Who would get the first puzzle first? The rogue, who did seem to be having trouble picking the lock with Hughe a hulking shadow of pressure and probably grousing looming over him, or the druid who was counting on her fingers. The rogue was working on the lowest lock, but the puzzle would open the top one. Hughe yelled toward the second fighter and pointed at the door, but the fighter waved him off, still staring at the puzzle with the druid.

“Maybe the mage isn’t so dumb after all,” Colt pointed at where the mage had given up on keeping the door open in favor of searching the room for treasure.

The mage had wandered, as if bored, to the other side of the room where there were one hundred cups on a wall in a 10 by 10 grid. Each cup was covered with thin paper, with some of them glowing. The mage poked a finger at a glowing piece of paper, snatching his hand back quickly, as if nervous of a trap.

“We’d have solved this whole room by now,” Lacey complained. Colt only got the cupcake if the adventurers solved more riddles than the rogue picked locks. Lacey won if the rogue got more locks or Hughe busted down the door. They would split the cupcake if anything else happened.

“These aren’t veteran escape room people,” Colt eased back from the pedestal to stretch his back. “Besides, if you were the one with the lockpicks, you’d be through two of them by now.”

“I still think that was worth learning,” Lacey relaxed into the old argument. “I still think I should be allowed to pick locks if I have the skill, and they give me the materials to make a pick.”

“You are the reason they don’t leave soda cans as ambiance, at least not if they aren’t glued down,” Colt reminded her. “You are also the reason they search people for lockpicks at tournaments.”

“I can’t have been the only person to think of it,” Lacey eyed the cupcake greedily as the rogue got the bottom lock undone with a smile and moved to the one above it.

“The rule about lockpicks did not exist in any games in Vegas until you tried them in three rooms,” Colt shook his head. “We were banned from Escapemania because of it.”

“I still say that a dozen of your mom’s cookies would have softened them on it,” Lacey grimaced as the druid smacked her hands together and pointed at the urns.

The mage watched as the druid looked back and forth between the urns and the words on the wall. The second fighter tipped an urn to peek inside and put it back with a dainty sniff that belied his bulk but made Lacey smile. The druid tipped over two urns before she did the one with the seven on it. She tipped the one next to it and then the seven urn twice before she gingerly stuck her hand inside it. Within seconds, the druid was whooping and it was so clear that Lacey imagined she could hear it. Colt grinned.

“It’s a key,” Lacey said, mimicking what she thought the druid would be saying.

“A key?” Colt said in a dull, idiot voice like he was Hughe.

“Yes,” Lacey replied to the lip-moving of the druid. “Probably to one of those locks.”

“Probably the lock we already have open,” Colt played Hughe as Hughe turned from the druid to loom at the rogue again.

“We should try it,” Lacey played the rogue too, but in a small voice.

The druid rushed the key over to the door and tried it on the topmost lock, which clicked right open and the druid turned to high-five the second fighter, who smiled at Hughe smugly. The mage, emboldened by the druid’s success, poked harder at one of the glowing papers during the celebration.

“One to one,” Colt told Lacey. The rogue went back to working on the next lock up from the bottom.

“But now they know the puzzles will solve things,” Lacey was torn between the happiness of seeing her puzzles being worked and wanting the cupcake to herself.

The mage poked harder as the druid turned to the grid of cups and stepped back. The druid didn’t have a clear view of the pixelated mini-graphic they’d made because the mage was standing in front of it. She turned to another puzzle and Lacey relaxed a bit. It was a puzzle for the lock that the rogue had already opened. The mage finally punched into the glowing paper hard enough to break through and pulled out a fist covered in glowing goo. The rogue lost his shit laughing as the mage was obviously swearing and basically hopping around like a lunatic.

Hughe got mad at the rogue for stopping and had the nerve to cuff the kid like he had a right to. The second fighter pulled away from the new puzzle the druid was working on and confronted Hughe, who sneered back. The rogue went back to picking the locks, but now the fighter stood over him, pushing between Hughe and the rogue. Lacey liked the second fighter a little more for it. Not as much as Colt was crushing on the druid, but she didn’t want to drop him in the 100’ pit they were holding in reserve for the next time Hughe pissed them off.

“Dang, I wish we had sound,” Colt objected.

“Yeah,” Lacey commiserated with him. “Maybe it’ll be an upgrade when we finally get the pedestal to open up and work.” If they ever got it to unlock, she thought to herself.

The mage backed away from the grid of cups to look over the druid’s shoulder and Lacey thought things were swinging in her favor as the rogue got the next lock undone.

“Two for the rogue and one for the puzzles,” Lacey nodded, and she could taste that cupcake.