Oh, this was going to be fun. Twenty early F-Ranks, and by early, Thomas meant that they were standing at the very beginning of having any powers, but they weren’t nervous at all. Or at least not in any way he could recognize.

They were experienced in whatever they normally did, but new to magic, if his reading of the situation was correct. And hopefully, that would lead to some amusing fuck-ups.

And the Inspec- … no, the Deputy Director, was wearing what looked like her agency’s uniform, which looked like something straight out of … Thomas wasn’t actually quite sure where he’d ever seen the likes of it before, but it wouldn’t have looked out of place in any urban fantasy setting which included a government that policed the supernatural.

Everyone there had a gun, but only two people had actually drawn them. The others were either hefting a stick that looked like it had been picked up somewhere in the woods at random, or wielding nothing at all.

The unarmed group could be using the same Class as Abrams, but what on Earth was the other one meant to do? What was the logic there?

Either way, Abrams led the way into the Dungeon, obliterating any critters that leaped at her from the water with well-placed punches or kicks that utterly annihilated whatever she hit. If Dungeon monsters didn’t disintegrate soon after death, she’d have made quite the mess.

As it was, all that covered the ground were scraps of sharkskin or crocodile leather, which were soon distributed across everyone. Or rather, the people who’d brought the sticks. Weird.

But a pattern was starting to emerge. A group who was equipping themselves with truly random crap, when they obviously had access to proper gear, including guns. Thomas was still struggling to come up with an end goal that wasn’t completely harebrained. Were they just trying to see how well one could equip oneself just with stuff found in the Dungeon?

Abrams immediately began to organize the group of twenty into four equally-sized groups and sent the first into the “Cradle”, the room Thomas had set up for such low-Level people to gain their first bit of XP in. If their System used XP, that was.

Two guys with sticks, two guys without, and one of the gun users. Should be fun.

They filed into the room in a manner that looked professional, though Thomas was only familiar with how that was supposed to look via the television. Real room-clearing tactics might look very different.

So yeah, the guys with sticks went to the left and right of the door, making sure there was nothing there, the bare-handed fighters advanced straight down the center and the guy with the gun followed behind, clearly preparing to shoot whatever moved while being very careful to not point at any of his comrades.

That was when the first creature attacked. A truly massive oryx antelope that startled the delvers due to its sheer size, but a single gunshot rang out and the creature stumbled and fell.

Thomas frowned. The gunshot had been … louder. Way louder. Was that a magic gun?

No, it wasn’t, he realized when he absorbed the bullet without even paying attention. Just magically empowered, with the empowerment slowly fading. Somehow, that felt like cheating, even with the handycap. But at least it looked like only one person could use that trick.

Then, two oryxes charged. One went down to a bullet while the second charged at one of the two bare-handed fighters, a lithe man who easily dodged at the last second while kicking the antelope’s knee, making it stumble, perfectly setting it up for his far larger comrade to lash out at the other front leg, shattering it.

And then, the nearest stick-wielder lashed out.

It should have been pointless, a random length of wood that looked more like something a little kid would wave around, pretending it was a sword, than something that a soldier would use … but it wasn’t.

There was a loud “crunch” and the antelope’s skull broke.

So, that’s what the sticks did. Huh.

The delvers waited for a few seconds and when no further attacks emerged, began to advance. Until the next critter jumped from a bush and suddenly, everyone was on very high alert as the wolverine lunged for the speedy pugilist’s legs.

He leaped over the attack, landed on the creature’s other side, and kicked it, achieving precisely nothing. A wolverine might not have the seemingly invulnerable hide of a honey badger, but it was bigger, stronger, and all around more dangerous than its smaller cousin and could still take quite the beating. A kick from a still mostly-human bare-handed fighter was nothing.

A glancing blow from a stick elicited a growl of pain but the creature charged forward nevertheless, clamping its jaws around the leg of its attacker. But the man jerked his leg back, the bit of shark leather he’d had there somehow coming free in its entirety, saving him from injury.

Ok, that power was cheating, Thomas decided. It had certainly done a good job fucking over his creature, which was now being worn down by a barrage of kicks and stick blows until its spine finally broke under a stomp from the big, bear-like, fighter.

Oh, these mustelids… all of them were, to a one, nuts. Terrifying critters, one and all.

And Thomas hadn’t put just one of them in the room.

The wolverines attacked in ones and twos, with the occasional antelope charging out to keep everyone on their toes.

No casualties yet, but plenty of scratches and shallow bites. And they weren’t even at boss yet.

The bear-man was the first to reach the pond at the end of the room, looking at the water apprehensively, with the others carefully spreading out behind him.

But when the hippo raised its head from the water, even these veteran combatants flinched.

The gunslinger emptied his gun into the creature immediately … or rather, he tried to. After four shots, though, the gun detonated, shrapnel tearing into his palms and even his forehead, while the hippo kept charging even with several bloody holes in its body.

Oh, so there was justice in this world.

One of the stick-wielders turned around to tend to his injured comrade while the bear man took over the role of matador, distracting the hippo while his lithe comrade advanced behind the creature, ready to empty his gun into the monster’s back at point-blank range.

And he did get a couple of shots off … except when a wolverine snuck up from behind him, chomped down on his ankle, and yerked its head from side to side, he went down with a scream. Sure, he managed to shoot off the monster gnawing on his leg, but if that hippo turned around, he was done for.

Sadly, that didn’t happen, as the bear man and the second stick wielder managed to wear it down, blinding it with well-placed punches and whacks with the stick, then finally bringing it down by firing their guns into its throat at point-blank range.

Wait, sadly? Since when was he that bloodthirsty? He wanted to build cool Dungeons, and people dying might be a side-effect of that, but why did he want that? Why was he so focused on ending human lives?

And yet, was it wrong to feel this upset over his new mindset? Without it, chances were he’d break the first time he murdered someone.

What was he supposed to do? Where the hell was he supposed to go from here?

Ignore it, bury it deep, try and find other stuff to focus on, repeat until he managed to forget until he finally succeeded in repressing the existential crisis. Hopefully, that’d do the trick again.

“Bloody Dungeon,” the big guy muttered as he walked over to his injured comrade, checking the injury. “Yeah, ankle’s busted. I’ll carry you.”

So that was how they left the easiest part of the Dungeon, one melee fighter having the second lean on him, an injured gunner stumbling along behind that pair, while two men with sticks in their hands and random bits of animal hide armoring their legs all but jumped at every little noise in the brush. Clearly, they weren’t coming out of this unscathed even if they were physically healthy.

***

Well, that was certainly an ominous omen. The first group had just returned, and they'd been torn to shreds.

Evans was leaning on Henderson, ankle twisted and bloody where something had chomped down on, while the bigger man looked like he’d been in a fight with an alley cat, and unless she very much missed her guess, Holmes’ gun had blown up in his face.

“Everyone alri- …” she was about to ask before cutting herself off. It was a stupid question. “How bad is everyone?”

“We’ll live,” Henderson grunted, depositing Evans on a nearby bench. “There are some antelopes with damn sharp horns in there, and enough wolverines that I never want to see one again for as long as I live. Boss monster’s a hippo, it waits in a pond, but you can still get attacked by the other critters.”

That was … useful information, but not what Jaclyn was concerned about right now. She had one of the medics come over with bandages and some concoctions made by Harper to patch up the group of five, all the while trying to maintain some dignity and not look like a worried mother hen.

Then, she headed over to the others and took a position between them and the entrance.

“You all heard the report. Stay clear of the underbrush as much as possible, clear the entire area before you challenge the hippo, make sure nothing sneaks up on you.”

It should have been their plan based on what they’d all just learned. But she’d decided to share her thoughts nevertheless. And with that, she sent in the next group.

***

Oh, that had been fun.

Thomas would have been grinning ear to ear if he’d still had a body. Aside from that, the whole affair had been highly entertaining.

Sure, he was just watching a constant parade of people walking into the Cradle, coming out more or less in one piece, and applying their gains before going straight back in. He was wishing they’d do more than poke their heads into the panacea run and shoot a few monkeys, though.

But this felt like what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to be.

A place for people to challenge, thereby demonstrating how well or how badly he’d designed everything.

And having trained soldiers wind up running from a tub of lard on legs was damn amusing to see. Admittedly, if they’d been using heavier weaponry, it might have been a different story, but said weaponry was rapidly going to become obsolete as they grew in power. And sure, they did have that “temporary upgrade” power, but that wasn’t particularly perfect, now was it?

Although there was one thing Thomas was looking forward to above all else. The time when night fell, the regular trainees would leave, and Abrams would challenge his Dungeon properly. Sure, he’d be pulling his punches on the “final blow”, they had a contract to that effect, but he wanted to see that happen so bloody badly!

***

And now, for the personal training Daedalus had promised.

She was currently ten Levels from D-Rank, which was where she felt she had to be to beat Alaxia, and Jaclyn would do whatever she needed to do to remove that dragon as a threat. Even making a deal with an inhuman being for power.

Granted, it wasn’t an actual deal with the devil, and literally, the only thing she’d given up was the ability to directly attack Daedalus, the contract literally stated that she could use her subordinates to do the job if she felt it necessary, but it still felt off.

Like she’d given up some of her autonomy. It was stupid, she knew that, but it was how she felt, and no matter what, she was unable to rid herself of the feeling.

Oh, the rumors that would start in the morning …

Jaclyn had decided to stay in the Dungeon overnight, despite how terrible an idea it seemed. The official story would be that she’d been trying to hammer out another deal to optimize the training experience in this Dungeon. She’d brought everything she needed to stay overnight, including a change of clothes, a mattress for Daedalus to replicate, and evne her toothbrush.

And negotiations were a part of why she was here, true, but for the most part, she wanted to take full advantage of the deal she’d made with Daedalus and see if it was something worth bringing the others in on. Her delving team, specifically.

Just how would this work in practice? She could likely survive if Daedalus was slow in pulling the final blow, a fragile caster probably couldn’t.

“So, how is this going to work?” she asked after a long moment.

“You decide what you want to fight, fight it until you’re about to die, I’ll stop the creature, give you a few drops of healing potion, and you can go right back to it. Over and over again. Until you want to stop or can’t gain any more power. That simple.”

She grinned despite herself. No need to watch over people taking their first few steps into the realm of the supernatural, no need to carefully evaluate the situation before stepping in, just … power. Power, and a chance to cut loose, to use the strength she’d already earned and was going to earn without needing to worry at all.

“I’ll just go with the standard area,” she said. “That’s still the one with the dinosaurs, right?”

“Yep,” Daedalus said, his voice sounding odd.

Jaclyn looked around, seeing the monkey leaving the museum behind her.

So she looked around some more, until she eventually spotted an incredibly fluffy velociraptor creeping out behind a column, raising an eyebrow.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Yeah, these things are cute, aren’t they? They’re going to be my main avatars when Jan is out.”

“Jan?”

“Oh, the monkey,” the raptor made a little motion that Jaclyn belatedly recognized as a shrug. “I name all my boss monsters. The sabertooth’s Cheshire, and the Giant Sloth’s Dexter.”

“Giant Sloth?”

“Right, you haven’t met yet …”

The raptor trailed off ominously, grinning a grin filled with oddly blunt teeth.

“So anyway, have fun.”

Two boss monsters, one of which was deeper inside the Dungeon than she’d ever gone. Her greatest challenge ever, if she discounted Alaxia. But really, that bitch was what stood at the end of this road, the path to victory lead through the monsters in this Dungeon.

Jaclyn began her first delve without fear.

The same small sharks and crocodiles that had beset her when she entered once again attacked, leaping at her and trying to bite her, but they weren’t any more of a threat to her now than they had been this morning. She had one and a half ranks’ worth of power on them, and at that point, they literally exploded under her strikes.

“I hope you enjoyed that,” Daedalus called after her. “I got enough to upgrade both patterns, tomorrow, it’s going to be all kinds of raptors in the entrance hall.”

Jaclyn grimaced. There was no good interpretation of that statement. Be it birds of prey or various two-legged dinosaurs with sickle claws … that would be a hell of a lot more dangerous than the original aquatic critters.

And as she left the entrance hall for the dinosaur section, a grinding sound rang out from the main door. She whirled around, heart hammering like a jackhammer, but it wasn’t a trap, the doors were still open, and everything else was still fine. But the ground was shifting, becoming dry and sandy while a forest of petrified wood sprang up.

She sighed, internally debated whether or not to ask him to not startle her like that again, and settled on “no”.

The short corridor leading to the next monster room was beautifully decorated, every surface covered with either exhibits or information plaques on the world before dinosaurs. Those were some impressive critters.

Insectoid horror shows known as sea scorpions, each as large Eve.

Giant fish who, in place of teeth, had sharp plates of bone that were extensions of their jaws and could bite through chainmail. Well, would have been able to, had chainmail existed at the time.

Huge octopus creatures whose size matched the mythical Kraken.

And more besides.

But she didn’t linger, advancing into the dry land filled with ferns and shrubbery.

Only two steps in, the first creature jumped out of a shrub, a largely featherless velociraptor that spat fire straight at her face. She ducked down and to the side, then drove her claws through its ribcage, killing it instantly.

Jaclyn flicked her wrist, throwing the creature off her hand just in case she needed to have said had free in the handful of seconds it took for Dungeon monsters to dissolve. She didn’t.

She continued deeper, carefully paying attention to her surroundings, but she would have been the first to admit that she was moving a hell of a lot less slowly than she would normally, when everything was out to kill her.

Another raptor attacked, choosing to try and grill her over getting within striking range, but she threw herself to the side, rolled back to her feet, and crushed the monster under her fist … and then, the ground trembled under her feet.

Jaclyn whirled around, coming face to face with a tyrannosaurus rex. The standard kind, short arms and all, but when she instinctively triggered Inspect, the feeling she got was one of parity. Of her being face-to-face with an equal. A fellow E-Rank?

It roared at her and Jaclyn found herself flying backwards, feeling as though she’d been hit with a bloody tsunami. Some kind of shockwave power. Urgh.

She started to rise to her feet but the monster charged, the power she’d already known about causing the ground underfoot to feel like she was standing in a paint shaker.

That was an evil combination. One to hurl people off their feet before they could ever engage, and a second to keep them on the ground while the predator approached to devour them.

Jaclyn decided to not even fight the quakes directly, simply hurling herself into the air with all the power she could muster, aiming for a nearby pillar. And when she hit it, well, she kicked it too, hurling herself into the dinosaur’s face.

Its jaws opened, preparing to either swallow her up or unleash another shockwave, that one at point-blank range, but it was too slow. She planted one foot on a sharp tooth, grasped some available skin folds on the monster’s face with both hands, and yanked herself clear before the jaws could clamp shut.

What followed were the most absurd thirty seconds of Jaclyn’s life. She managed to sit astride its neck, legs clamping down on either side of its neck as she tried to simultaneously hold on and squeeze the life from her “mount”, while the monster tried to throw her off. The massive dinosaur charged all over the place, trying to crush her against walls, or have other dinosaurs attack her, but none of them seemed to care, instead diving to the side to avoid their frenzied comrade.

Slowly, Jaclyn could feel the creature growing weaker and was able to stop holding onto it with her hands, leaving her free to start throwing punches at the base of the monster’s skull. No manifested badger claws, no fancy tricks, just a Cross punch with her back hand, the full power of her body behind the blow, until the monster finally fell.

And because it didn’t dissolve, Jaclyn used her claws to tear out its throat, suddenly finding herself forced to hurry when a second t-rex charged at her. One she recognized as the same model she’d found in the panacea area. Heavy green scales, actually useable arms tipped with massive claws, oh, and apparently, it could also breathe fire.

Dodging the attack proved difficult when the ground was shaking underfoot, but she managed it, only to have to duck under a claw swipe.

Right, with this thing, there was no “safe spot” under its torso.

The other claws swiped at her side, which she took as her chance to step past it, drawing up next to its elbow. Her right hand clamped the arm to her side, then she reached over with her left hand, grasping the dinosaur’s elbow. And then, she pulled.

Bones broke with ugly crunches while the dinosaur roared and she felt herself practically go deaf even though the roar had been perfectly mundane, non-magical, exclamation of agony.

Somehow, this creature managed to pull off kicking her despite its body not being set up for it, and Jaclyn just thanked her lucky stars that this creature’s claws weren’t designed for optimal kicking damage as she flew through the air.

Jaclyn stumbled to her feet, then charged straight back at her foe, slowly growing used to the tremors.

This time, the rex tried to bite her but she sidestepped and caused one of its eyes to burst in a spray of horrid liquid under her fist. But when it jerked its head back with another roar of agony, it sadly took its throat out of her striking range.

And when it whirled to further take its vitals away from her, its tail came whipping around, forcing her to leap over it. Or try to, her horrible footing fouling her leap, causing the tail to catch her in the shins, which promptly resulted in her bellyflopping onto the ground.

The rex completed a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, was once again facing her, and tried to swallow her whole.

But Jaclyn was able to roll towards its legs, away from its jaws, and managed another pathetic leap straight for its upper thigh. Humans had the femoral artery somewhere around there, did dinosaurs have something similar?

She decided to try, and was practically blinded when blood sprayed into her face, but she stubbornly clung onto the massive leg, continuing to rip into it.

It should have been a safe spot, somewhere the big creature couldn’t reach, but as it turned out, she was wrong about that.

A huge continuous stream of fire hit the ground and rebounded, scorching the dinosaur’s feathers while singing her pants after just a couple of seconds.

Cursing internally, Jaclyn let go and started to run, past the tail. She had to duck as it tried to smack into her head, but she was out of range, cleaning magic burning away the crimson liquid stinging in her eyes as she turned.

Her foe now looked like some beast straight out of the depths of hell. Limping, leg covered in blood, feathers ablaze, half its face streaked with what used to be the contents of its eyeball, the whole scene illuminated by the flames the monster was stalking over.

Another plume of fire flew straight at Jaclyn’s chest, but she dodged. If these flames had been faster, like something out of a flamethrower, she might have been in trouble, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

So she charged, yet again. With a bum leg, that thing’s vibration power triggered less often and she managed a perfect flying leap under the beast’s throat, lashing upwards with her claws, ripping long gashes with her claws.

Already dying, the monster tried to chase her, vicious jaws snapping shut just behind her, before it whirled in the other direction, tail smashing Jaclyn from the air. But even while she was trying to suck air back into lungs that were refusing to cooperate, the rex was done.

While she got back to her feet, breathing heavily, the monster’s corpse hit the floor with enough force to cause the ground to quake in an entirely natural manner.

So, were those the mini-bosses of this room, or had she missed a whole bunch of other big monsters?

As it turned out, she hadn’t.

Instead, she was coming face to face with multiple versions of the big sauropod that used to be in the entrance, and several tiny dragon-raptors. And five more of those tiny ankylosauruses.

Jaclyn could tell her ribs weren’t broken, but they weren’t perfectly fine either, so she decided to go for it. This part was easy.

When the big suckers used their tail whips, she caught the attacks on an arm while ducking to get her head and neck out of the line of fire, then, when the tail had wrapped around the offered limb, she pulled it as taught as its current elasticity allowed, and ripped it off with the claws on her other hand.

The raptors were easy, and the monsters with the tail clubs were also fairly simple to take down. She just needed to dodge the first attack, then trap the lump of bone under her foot so she could go straight for its owner’s skull.

Ten minutes later, she was standing in the middle of the prehistoric plant life, breathing heavily, blood and other liquids slowly vanishing off her face, fists, and clothing.

What was next?

She found the exit with little issue, another short corridor that explained the end of the dinosaurs before it let her into another room, one that looked very familiar, and contained a massive sabertooth tiger.

Normally, this was the part where she turned around. While the loot from a boss was no doubt fantastic, bosses were also insanely dangerous.

But she’d made a deal. She’d live through it even if she risked it, and the only negative consequence she had to fear was psychological trauma. But she’d already been stabbed, had her internal organs ruptured by a dragon in a human body, and cut up by more claws than she could count. And that had just been the last month!

Jaclyn was about to step into the room before pausing as a familiar smell reached her nose.

Had the ground always been covered in oil and she’d just not had the senses to detect it at that point, or was that a new development?

Either way, if she didn’t manage to win this time around, she’d come back with the lighter she’d packed and turn that cat into bloody barbeque!

Wait, actually, if it had been oil instead of water last time, she’d have definitely noticed, it wouldn’t have just dried off her clothes, and that would have been obvious when doing laundry. So yeah, this was a new thing. But could she win without resorting to tricks?

Once again, she was about to go inside, but a small monkey scampered over from deeper inside and handed over a small bag of sand.

Huh. She was supposed to use that to create areas where she could stand, Daedalus had mentioned something like that a long time ago, hadn’t he?

But that wasn’t how she was going to do this.

She dropped down into a sprinter’s pose, then slid her forward foot onto the oil before pushing off with her back leg.

Jaclyn rocketed through the boss chamber, straight at the big cat, hurling the bag of sand into its face.

The bag tore in an instant, blinding the monster, and her fist was already rocketing straight at its throat … and then it was elsewhere. Two powers triggered as one, enhanced claws digging into the marble so it could launch itself away while its ability to use super-speed in short bursts made the whole process blindingly fast.

And at the same time, the soles of Jaclyn’s shoes hit the patch of sand that had formed beneath where the monster’s head had been, and came to a screeching halt while the rest of her continued onwards, leading to her pitching forward, falling over.

She managed to catch herself with her arms, making sure to aim for sand so her hands didn’t slip away, but that hadn’t been enough. Because before she could roll back around to face the monster, her left side flared up with a burning pain and both her left arm and leg went slap, causing her to fall fully to the ground and inadvertently roll onto her back, coming face to face with the big cat.

It stared down at her dispassionately before chuffing and slowly padding away, its right front paw leaving behind bloody footprints.

She’d almost died just there. Jaclyn Abrams had come within an inch of dying, failing to live up to what she’d wanted to achieve, leaving her daughter without a mother, and quite possibly costing England the fight against Alaxia, barring a nuclear response.

But she hadn’t. She was still here.

A monkey’s face popped up in front of her, upside down since it was sitting at the top of her head.

“Wh-” Jaclyn was about to ask just at the same time as the creature poured something into her mouth, causing the liquid to go down the wrong pipe. Her head jerked up as she curled up in the midst of a coughing fit, headbutting the monkey with a loud crunch, but she soon realized that the liquid had been the promised healing potion, and apparently, it didn’t even need to properly wind up in her stomach to work.

She sat up straight, looking around, seeing the body of the monkey dissolve.

Jaclyn flinched. Accidentally killing an utterly replaceable Dungeon mob was fine and all, no permanent consequences, but if that happened to another person, let alone Eve … yeah, she needed more practice controlling herself when she wasn’t paying attention.

Sighing, she picked herself up, once again flinching when she saw the sheer amount of blood that covered the ground underneath her.

That … it hadn’t happened, she hadn’t died. She was fine. But then again … fingering the massive gash in her clothing, she could tell just how bad it had been. If she’d taken that hit head-on, she’d have been gutted like a fish.

Jaclyn closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths before carefully leaving the room through the same entrance she’d come in from.

“Shower, clean clothes, catnap, then I’ll be right back,” she announced before proceeding to do just that.

And thirty minutes later, she once more tore her way through the dinosaur section, having managed to at least somewhat learn to deal with the tyrannosauruses’ vibrations, only to, once again, stand at the entrance to the big room.

“Bye, kitty,” she growled as she ignited a bundle of dry grass she’d grabbed from the Cradle, ignited it, and then thrust the whole affair at the ground, straight into the flammable oil.

And then, she legged it.

***

Oh. Oh shit.

That … that could have gone better. No, actually, Thomas was having a hard time imagining how that could have possibly gone worse.

He’d thought he’d been oh so clever when he’d made the change only for that to happen, so convinced of his own brilliance that he’d missed the obvious.

Fudge.

Thomas decided to, once again, change the topic for now.

“So, are you going to bring others for the personal training?” he asked. “And what kinds of Classes do they have?”

Abrams took a moment to think before replying.

“Two kinds of magic users, another anima monk, but he’s an orc, and a healer-herbalist,” she finally said. “The fighters can probably do with what I have, but maybe you could make a herb garden or something, with creatures for him to heal? Would that be possible?”

“Maybe, but I think I’ll put a bit of a twist on the idea,” Thomas replied after a long moment as he began to change around the old gem vault. “Tell him to be careful, there are monsters inside.”

Basically, the entire room was going to be a living infomercial for why one should be careful going through the underbrush in the tropics. Plenty of snakes around, with varying degrees of power and venom potency, with the danger increasing the deeper you went.

Plenty of herbs were inside that could be used by a magical herbalist to cure themselves, and anyone who went inside could gather as much as they wanted as long as they were willing to risk it. And after thinking about it for a moment, he added temporary summoning tokens as loot for the serpents, except these summoned already injured creatures and would function in the Dungeon.

Not to mention that since this healer of hers was apparently going to take the same deal that she had, he’d be fairly safe using what would be a death trap for almost anyone else.

And while Abrams returned to the metaphorical starting line, Thomas threw up an “under construction” sign before Cheshire’s boss room and dove into his core to look for something to replace the frustratingly flammable cooking oil with.

By the time he found something, his “guest” had already run the dino room a third time and gone to sleep for good, only intending to wake up in the morning if the mechanical alarm clock she’d brought was any indication.

It was a silicone-based lubricant that had been used on the inside of an antique clock. But because Thomas was feeling rather paranoid about fire right now, he spent much of the night seeing if he could ignite it using the lighter he’d had one of his monkeys steal from the Director.

And just like that, he’d found an adequate replacement. Oh, this would likely be quite fun.

***

They came right back. In the morning, everyone who’d been here the last time returned, accompanied by some newcomers who seemed to be magic users.

The “advanced” groups made brief forays into the dinosaur section, killing a handful of dinos before retreating, while the new guys tried to use magic to fry their enemies … emphasis on “try”. Apparently, magic was hard, who’d have thunk?

But Thomas found himself wishing for a different group of delvers. A stupider, less cautions, one. Not military officers trying to farm his easy rooms for power, but, honestly random people.

Was he going to have to give everyone these “deathless” contracts before someone dared to dive deep?

Given all the people who wound up on the news for the dumbest reasons, it seemed like there was an infinite well of idiots out there, why couldn’t some of those idiots get enough power to not die the instant they entered his Dungeon, and then make their way to his construction?

Maybe he should open up the way, make it easier for people to reach him by killing Alaxia and all the other big monsters?

A project for later, certainly.

And until then, he could wait. Wait until night fell, and the bravest people would arrive.

***

The lineup was basically just Abrams’ delving group, with the addition of a bulky orc who could transform into some kind of steel-clad alien rhino, though Thomas recognized him. Harjaz, the guy who’d been escorting Granger on the day before the treaty.

Oh, this would be glorious. Well, torturous for them, but for him? Oh, the fun he would have.