“I have an idea for a new level,” Colt shoved a paper onto her desk and tucked a pencil behind his ear so that he could use his hands to explain. “It’s actually a new kind of level.”

“Looks like a mirrored dungeon,” Lacey frowned at the paper, shoving her notepad to the side. “Why are there 2 main doors?”

“It would be a race,” Colt spread his hands and held up one palm each to represent the doors. “Two groups go in, one into each door, and the one who gets through the level with the highest score wins.”

“Who’s going to run through all these little rooms if the goal is to get through quickly?” Lacey asked, but she liked the idea. It would solve a few problems for them in that they wanted to put as many groups through as possible without the groups complaining about a lack of content.

“That’s why it’s got quests in them too,” Colt slid another page toward her. “Now that we found the quest options for the levels, we can make it so that they get extra points for doing stuff like finding the holy symbols of the entire monk population of the Ruined Temple.”

The Temple Run started like all the new levels they made with the goblin sign-in sheet at the beginning and the menagerie overflow trap for those that didn’t want to respect the rules. A grand hallway led into a cathedral area with several off-shoots, one of which led to 13 living quarters for the priests or monks. There was a kitchen and dining room at the end of the chapel. Beyond the cathedral was an odd stairway that led down into catacombs, complete with a very confusing maze.

“I’m loving the catacombs, but why have a kitchen and dining room?” Lacey asked. “And what is the stairway there?”

“This spiral staircase leads to a balcony with the church library,” Colt pointed. “I’ve got this idea for a book quest that should be fun.”

“Libraries are great for that, but messy to clean up if someone sets it on fire or something,” Lacey squinted at the page.

“That’s why this is a great place to do the library stuff because wrecking rooms actually costs them points in the race,” Colt explained. “The kitchen and dining room are a great little quest to feed the ghosts, like maybe a little like a diner mini-game thing.”

“How long do you expect to this race to take?” Lacey nodded, already imagining some ghostly figures they could use, like right out of Haunted Mansion stuff.

“I don’t know,” Colt rubbed the back of his neck. “I figured we’d let Kat go through it to set a par for the level. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea!” Lacey flicked the page with a grin. “We could do a few themes of this, like stuff we did for the escape rooms?”

“We should test it first,” Colt hedged. “We don’t even know if the adventurers will like this sort of thing.”

“I think they will,” Lacey jumped up to race to the pedestal, only to remember that they were in the middle of a run. “More than that, this would solve a few problems. I mean we could easily rerun the race with another 2 groups as soon as the first race ends. As is, some of our levels are empty for half the time and we can’t just tell them to send in another group just in case they don’t finish in a reasonable time.”

“The modules should help with that too,” Colt used the screen on Lacey’s desk to scroll through the half dozen modules he’d added to their repertoire. “I’m already thinking we should add a module to the arenas. They go a lot faster than the Aztec Tomb, which is easily the longest run.”

“It’s weird because it’s a smaller space and yet it takes more time because of the nature of the puzzles in it,” Lacey tapped her pencil on her lip and scrolled back to a picture of the Aztec Tomb. “Do you think we could make this into a race?”

“Why would we?” Colt protested. “It’s the longest run and the races are more for shorter levels, don’t you think?”

“Kat took almost the full 6 hours to complete the Aztec Tomb, but she was by herself,” Lacey explained her thoughts. “Full groups take a little less time, but even they take 5 hours. If we ran it as a race, we could easily run 2 groups at a time and they’d learn that those with rogues in the parties win more often, timewise, than a party without them.”

“How long would it be before they ran it with all rogues?” Colt mused, taking his drawings from Lacey. “I want to make a few notes before we drop these in.”

“Do you think that all rogues would really be faster?” Lacey went back to sit at her desk again, casting a quick glance at Spark. Spark was fussing with a Dustapp, learning to use her sparking ability to attack it from a distance rather than her previous closeup attacks.

“Now that we have the Spunks to man the TMCs, I’m not opposed to running side-by-side Aztec Tombs,” Colt nodded to Lacey as they turned from Spark, both assured that the kitten was acting normally.

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After some thought about the glitch, Lacey and Colt had decided to watch Spark a bit more closely. They hadn’t talked about it outside, but when they’d gotten back to the control room, Colt had remarked that Spark might not have been playing with a Dustapp during the previous run. Lacey thought that Shadow was having a bit of fun with them, but Colt was more suspicious this time. He thought it might be something like Shadow, but that Spark didn’t act that way with Kat’s pet. Spark had been fluffed up and careful instead of the playful way she interacted with Shadow.

Colt had pointed out that there had been a Dustapp under Lacey’s desk when they’d seen Spark playing in the corner of the room. After glancing through the rooms where the system had shown them the location of the adventurer still in the dungeon, they could see where it could have been a person or creature making its way back out of the dungeon. Lacey thought the system would have announced an imminent wipe, but Colt countered with the idea that it was just as likely that the glitch would have been to not announce the intruder.

They’d decided to only talk about it when the dungeon was closed, but to watch Spark closely until they figured it out. It was incredibly disconcerting to know that Kat didn’t think the system glitched. They knew it didn’t like them much, but the system had been treating them a lot better since they’d burst through the tutorial. Was there something or someone else out there that didn’t like them?

“Even for players like Kat, races may make levels more repeatable,” Lacey sat at her desk. “I think you’re on to something here. We can do it with The Zoo, too.”

“Now that our levels are ramping up, we can populate higher levels of these dungeons,” Colt took out his pencil and tapped it on the pages. “The Zoo is a beast, though. I’m not sure we could make it a lower level with all the different domains.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking by making it house aquatic animals,” Lacey grumbled. “Are low levels even going to be able to handle burrowers, flyers, and aquatic animals? That doesn’t even mention the fire lizards and their ice, fire, acid, and poison attacks in the grand hall.”

“It’s a good training ground,” Colt shook his head at her. “I said it’s a beast, but that’s good. We can let leaders like Benny know where their people are weak.”

“Still, we should keep it for the highest levels,” Lacey frowned at her own screens. “Do you ever wonder what level Bernard is?”

“It seemed rude to ask,” Colt answered, his head down and his pencil scratching out notes.

“I wonder if he’d make it through The Zoo,” Lacey considered the idea. “If we could get it near enough to his level, he’d give it a try, right?”

“You don’t think Kat can do it?” Colt looked up, offended on behalf of his girlfriend.

“Sure, Kat can do it, but Kat is as much of a beast as The Zoo,” Lacey admitted, not daring to challenge Colt’s rose-colored view of Kat. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about the arenas and the fact that we keyed them for beetles, but beetles die out after 3 days. The other mobs we’ve created don’t die out that quickly. Do you think we could try to level up some Gossowaries to something high enough to challenge even Bernard?”

“I worry that we’d be creating beasts that even we couldn’t control,” Colt gave her a look. “I mean, wouldn’t the goblins have levelled up past our dungeon level if given the chance?”

“Goblins not level past dungeon master,” Ginger asserted herself into the conversation. Now that she had a Clean spell, she had taken to trying to learn to read and write so that she could pass on her knowledge of the hedge witch spells to her minions. She sat at her own desk in one corner of their room, her chair tipped back like Colt liked to do. She had her little green feet propped up on the desk and a young reader book in her lap. “Rude.”

“Rude?” Colt raised an eyebrow at her.

“Adam and Eve decide early,” Ginger nodded with a surly frown. “Not out-level dungeon masters.”

“This is just a decision of leadership?” Lacey chuckled at Ginger’s expression of distaste for her leaders. Ginger had been levelling up a lot since getting a spell. Casting it had given her experience in ways she’d never been able to get it before.

“Ginger not agree,” Ginger waved her goblin hand around like a teenager told she had a curfew. “But not listen to Ginger.”

“If I told you that I would like you to level past the dungeon level of,” and Colt checked his display for their current level, “31, would you do it?”

“Is dungeon master ordering Ginger to level past 31?” Ginger’s eyes narrowed at Colt.

“Hypothetically,” he hedged, and Lacey held her breath.

“Ginger not know word,” Ginger wagged a finger at him. “Dungeon master need be clear.”

Colt quirked a brow at Lacey, who frowned. Did they want goblins higher than them?

“Ginger,” Lacey redirected the little goblin’s intense gaze, “Could goblins attack dungeon masters?”

“Hah!” Ginger barked out a laugh, her chair smacking forward so that all four legs were on the ground. “Goblin no attack dungeon master because then goblin no regenerate on death.”

“There is that,” Colt twisted his mouth to the side.

“But could they?” Lacey insisted, ignoring the logic since goblin logic didn’t always parallel human logic.

“Dungeon masters worry about goblin rebellion,” Ginger nodded, her feet hitting the floor with a light splatting sound. “That wise. But not need worry. Goblins love Lacey and Colt.”

“Not all of them and not all the time,” Lacey pushed her.

“We could just look it up,” Colt suggested, his fingers flitting across his screen.

“Pedestal,” Lacey interrupted Colt’s inefficient actions. “Can our minions rebel against us?”

“Most dungeon-created monsters cannot attack their masters,” the system voice echoed in the room. “The beetles and their descendants are the anomaly in that they will mindlessly attack anything lower leveled than them.”

“That seems a bit random,” Colt squinted at the pedestal.

“Beetles are mindless insectile creatures, incapable of understanding or fearing death,” the pedestal explained. “Thus, beetles and any creature that is incapable of understanding or fearing death will attack dungeon masters.”

“What about the ants in The Zoo?” Lacey asked.

“The Ants are hive animals and capable of fearing and therefore trying to avoid death,” the system replied.

“Do we have anything other than the beetles that would attack us?” Colt asked, before Lacey had a chance to go through a very long list.

“Yes,” the pedestal answered. “The Velcrabs, if summoned in a quantity of less than 40, would lack the intelligence to avoid death.”

“That’s unnerving,” Colt admitted, his hand running over his throat.

“Especially since we need to summon 100 of the things to complete the quest,” Lacey nodded.

“That should be okay,” Colt reasoned.

“It’s okay until we kill 60 of them,” Lacey rolled her eyes.