Colt clapped his hands in front of him and then rubbed his palms together. “Back to work,” he grinned at her.

“But before the dungeon goes red, we should talk,” Lacey sat at her desk.

“Ugh, not more talking,” Colt rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling.

“You know that mage that was going solo?” Lacey picked up a pencil and twirled it in fingers.

“Don’t tell me,” Colt closed his eyes.

“Benny didn’t authorize a solo run for anybody,” Lacey delivered the news.

“Just, how?” Colt plopped down onto his seat. “And he’s Benny now?”

“He’s growing on me,” Lacey admitted.

“Unlike Kat’s dad,” Colt’s smile was gone.

“I know it’s a stretch and I didn’t want to believe it, but,” Lacey started.

“But it’s just too many coincidences to ignore,” Colt finished for her.

“It’s just got to be him,” Lacey said.

“He sneaked into the Benny’s camp, then into the dungeon as a mage, and he’s slinging spells?” Colt banged his head on his desk. “What is this guy anyway? I can barely manage dungeon building and this guy’s dual-wielding classes and juggling skills like he has Santa’s bag of everybody’s gifts all rolled together!”

“He’s still level 10,” Lacey tried.

“Probably not anymore,” Colt grumped. “How many levels did Kat get in her first days in the dungeon? He’s probably level 20 or something already.”

“Probably not 20,” Lacey winced, knowing that his exaggerations were just born of frustration. “Then again, the guy was in alone on maybe a second run and our dungeon is pretty awesome at leveling people.”

The dungeon turned red, and Colt blew out a breath. “Okay, okay,” he started. “We just have to find him and throw the whole dungeon at him. Let’s see what he does with 50 level 23 gossowaries!”

“Well,” Lacey took a breath, then thought better of it, letting Colt figure it out for himself.

“A magic-user, wearing a robe,” Colt fumbled for more information and found the problem quickly enough. “Lacey, what did he look like?”

“A magic-user in a robe,” she replied unhelpfully.

Colt stared at her blankly for a moment, his eyes hopeful. When she didn’t expound on that, his head hit his desk again.

“Even if we did know what he’d looked like before,” Lacey pointed out, “that doesn’t mean we’d know what he looks like this time. That magic-user didn’t look at all like the guy we met outside. If the magic-user was him, then the only thing we know is that he’s between level 11 and 15?”

“Seriously?”

“I was talking with the magic-users out there in Benny’s crew, and they said they didn’t notice anyone new,” Lacey shrugged, having had just a little more time digesting all this crap than Colt. “What we’re dealing with is a very practiced assassin with the ability to change his looks enough that no one really notices that he’s there at all.”

“We could watch for mannerisms or something,” Colt popped his head up with the idea and began to flip through screens. “He’s got to have tells. Maybe we look for a mage with unnatural dexterity, or a … or a…” he sputtered out.

“And what would we do if we caught him?” Lacey spread her hands.

“There are 11 groups, with 13 mages between them all,” Colt wasn’t ready to give up yet. Lacey just didn’t want to spend the next two dungeon dives wasting time scrutinizing every group for a guy that wasn’t actually trying to kill them. She understood Colt’s frustration, but it wasn’t based in something real. It was based in something that Lacey had more experience in than he did. Helplessness.

“Who’s to say he’s still a mage?” Lacey propped her chin on her hand.

Colt looked up, bewildered.

“I’m just saying, that if I had his skills, I’d have switched it up,” Lacey explained. “And I’d have studied my marks. And I’d have…”

“But you’re brilliant,” Colt frowned at her. “He can’t be all that and a bowl a chips.”

“Thanks,” she ended the word in a question. “It’s just…”

“What?”

“I’m just thinking that we’re better off doing what we’re good at,” Lacey tried again. Colt closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. “We could spend our time obsessing over the guy, and best-case scenario, we kill him in the dungeon, but then what? He respawns and comes right back with new tricks.”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“Are you saying we do nothing and just let him get away with breaking all the rules?” Colt couldn’t seem to see it the way Lacey did. “You? Lacey? Maybe you’re him and are just fucking with my head.”

“Colt,” Lacey clucked at him. “I’m not giving up and I don’t think he’s getting away with anything.”

“Except barging into our dungeon,” Colt muttered.

“And giving us experience as he tries to catch up with Kat,” Lacey pointed out.

“And plotting our demise!” Colt rubbed his forehead.

“But is he?” Lacey tapped the pencil on her chin, surprised to be the reasonable partner for once.

“What?”

“Plotting our demise?” Lacey took a single piece of blank paper and began to draw. “I mean, if he was doing that, he could have killed us over and over again. He was in this very room, at level 77, and he didn’t kill us.”

“But…” and Lacey could tell that Colt’s sense of injustice was starting to peter out.

“And isn’t this between him and Kat?” Lacey pulled out her trump card.

“Yeah, but,” he struggled to find the point.

“And I’m just thinking that even if we do have to defend ourselves, you already said it yourself. We’re going to have to use the dungeon, not our physical bodies.”

“I know I said that,” Colt looked to the ceiling.

“So, maybe, just maybe,” Lacey plucked out a fresh sheet of paper, “we need to be working on that as hard as he’s working on gaining levels.”

“That… sounds…” Colt paused, staring at Lacey as she set pencil to paper. “Logical.”

“That would be my brilliance talking there,” Lacey raised comic eyebrows at Colt. “Benny is out there working his side of things and beefing up his defenses, which is exactly what we should be doing down here.”

“Benny? Really?” Colt hissed through his teeth in frustration.

“He’s growing on me,” Lacey repeated. “Speaking of growing, let’s grow the dungeon even more.”

“What?”

“Wow, this infatuation thing really does slow down your brain,” Lacey teased him with a theatrical look of confusion. “You’re slipping buddy. Keep up. Let’s build more levels. You had more ideas when she was breaking your heart. Sheesh.”

“You know that I can see what you’re doing here, right?” Colt challenged her, but she could see his eyes gaining clarity.

“Do I?” Lacey feigned ignorance, her attention more on scribbling some maze traps. “All I know is that we need more levels. I want to level faster than Kat, or her dad. And to do that, we need those mage gauntlets you suggested. Benny’s mages are riled up and ready for them as soon as we have the chance to que them up. Do you think you could scratch out that level for us or are you too busy mooning over Kat?”

“Mooning?!” Colt’s back straightened as he took offense.

“Well, you aren’t summoning up all those monsters we need to complete that quest,” Lacey looked up to point her pencil at him.

“I can’t summon anything while there are groups in the dungeon,” Colt cocked his head to the side and eyed her out of the side of his eyes.

“Then maybe you should be drawing up those gauntlets now, so we can have 4 levels ready to drop into the pedestal by the time the dungeon clears,” Lacey bent back to her trap designs. Now that they’d made mimic-like trap mechanisms, Lacey was ready to line every hallway between their control room and the lowest dungeon with enough animated traps to choke a level 77 assassin. “We’re going to be pushing it to summon all those mobs for the quest before we go to bed and then there’s housing for them and making introductions. It’s going to be a shit show if we aren’t fully prepped.”

“Even knowing what you’re doing doesn’t help me not fall for it,” Colt wondered. “How do you do that?”

“I learned it from you,” Lacey looked up again, this time to smile.

“I was a good teacher,” he shook his head and bent over his own set of graph paper. “Four new gauntlets coming right up.”

“Bout time,” Lacey heard him chuckle and slid the scribbled mess in front of her to the side. Surreptitiously, she slid out another piece of paper and began a real design. She might have been able to cajole Colt back into work even in his worst moods, it still took all her attention to do it, not that she’d let him know that. “Can you handle the planning for the housing and such or do you need me to do that so you can watch your girlfriend?”

“Don’t push it,” he responded, but it was half-hearted, his attention on the new gauntlets. “I still want to work on the haunted house design too.”

Lacey shuddered. Now that they didn’t need new monsters, they had decided to pull on their extensive knowledge of undead baddies they’d gleaned from multiple binging sessions of the Winchesters’ greatest hits. His graveyard idea wasn’t quite the weeping angels, but it was close enough that Lacey didn’t want to visit the level anytime soon. The statues on the tombstones all housed revenant-like ghosts. When an adventurer walked over a grave, the ghost would awaken and attempt to possess party members that would then turn on their cohorts.

Lacey let Colt channel his angst about Kat’s dad into his haunted house design for a few hours before she goaded him into the gauntlets by threatening to take them over. He grumbled, but his brow was creased in concentration as he detailed notes for the trials in the margins of the graph paper. Quests were new to them both, but they hoped to be able to drop those in as easily as they did new monsters. Lacey had 5 new trap hallways complete with hundreds of mimic traps. She checked the system cost and was satisfied with the layout.

Tired of doodling, Lacey began to dive into menus. They might be grayed out while the dungeon was active, but she could still research the options. They’d been so intensely focused on the quests and dropping additions into the dungeon that Lacey hadn’t had a chance to go through their newest options in the menus. They’d leveled several times in both actual levels and in evolutionary trees.

The goblin excavations not only provided plenty of soil and rock for Benny’s projects, but also new gems and minerals that had opened up new resources like sapphires and platinum. Goblins were working on jewelry for the treasure chests, but that had opened up new crafting trees like smelting and sculptures. Spunks were always tinkering on new gear designs, but their efforts were rewarded with surprising new food options from a water wheel that could grind the grains that Benny gave them. Weaving goblins had advanced to the point of making elaborate rugs on the Spunk’s looms and Lacey was so glad that the two races were getting along so well.

But more surprising things were happening out there in their dungeon. The worms advanced to a point that a new breed could be summoned that could spin silk. New goblin breeds allowed for specializations in crafting, administration, or fighting. Somehow a few Gossowaries had become domesticated to the point that the Spunks were riding them, with the help of the Rejects, who had an uncanny hand at turning wild creatures into tamer ones that could be used for farming or herding. Lacey made a list of projects and summons for when the dungeon went green tonight, then spent an hour prioritizing.