The trip through the portal was instantaneous. One second Waverly was in the damp, cluttered chamber, the next she was in a damp, cluttered entrance chamber. At least this side had been cared for a little bit better. The tables and chairs had been shoved to the side to allow for a direct path towards the interior of the dungeon. The walls were concrete, stark, but the door leading out of the room showed the telltale signs of one of those fake doors that looked like rocks or whatever from the other side. The side facing them was all wood, surprisingly well maintained, and had a little spyhole that you could peek through to see if there were some other people on this side.

She stepped aside to allow Victor to come through, but to her surprise, he was already standing inside the room, being talked to by a Kobold. Unlike the receptionist earlier, this was the scaled kind that looked a little bit like stunted dragons without wings, walking on two legs. He was wearing a leather apron, its pockets stuffed with various tools, and it was all dirty, full of machine oil and all that kind of stuff, which told Waverly that he was probably one of the maintenance crew, running the show behind the scenes.

“Ah!” the Kobold said, nodding eagerly. “There you are! Sorry, fixing the time dilation portal is still on my list, but it works good enough right now, so why bother, right?”

“Uh, hi!” said Waverly, and gave him a small wave.

The Kobold lifted a nonexistent hat. “Hi there, my name’s Kevin, nice to meet ya. I was just talking to Victor here, saying that we need to hurry, so I can give you the briefing while we walk. Debbie-Corinne—oh, that’s our dungeon core, by the way—just told us that there’ll be some new bigwigs coming in today, and she wants everyone to meet up at the dungeon altar so she can prep us.”

“Uh, actually,” Waverly began, but Kevin cut her off.

“Sorry, no time for chitchat. Grab some gear from the Loot chamber, lose the street clothes, and meet me outside, I’m gonna fix the door in the meantime. You!” He pointed at Victor and pushed a wrench into his hands. “Help me out, we need to get this fixed ASAP.” The Catboy grabbed the wrench as if he’d never held a tool in his life, but Waverly attributed that to confusion and stress more than anything.

The time dilation must be totally out of whack, because Victor was already dressed in some very low-level equipment, matching the dungeon level. It was around 5, if Waverly remembered correctly, but neither she, nor Victor were attuned to the core yet, so their levels weren’t being suppressed. They’d probably need to get that done quickly, thinking of which, she also needed to hurry up.

Before Waverly could say anything, Kevin was already making his way to the exit. When he passed Victor, the cat boy looked back at her, shook his head, and made a cutting gesture at his neck with his fingers, just before Kevin grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him outside. The Kobold just pulled the door open and stormed through. He didn’t even bother to look through the spyhole, which was still kind of weird. What if there had been a human outside and they’d caught a glimpse behind the scenes? The fines for that would have fed Waverly’s family for two months. That had been one of the questions on the mock exam she had done two days ago, which reminded her that she still needed to do two more of those, just to be sure, because she only had about seven weeks left until the final exams, and also there were like two papers she had to write? She had to check her calendar, but not right now.

She squeezed between a few tables toward where she suspected the Loot chamber to be. That would become really annoying, to push herself through that mess every day just to get to the loot chamber. Why had no one cleared a path? Was there another one she hadn’t seen? No, the door was actually kinda stuck, and when she pulled on it by force to wedge it away from its frame, it only opened about a quarter of the way before slamming into the edge of a table that stood in its way.

The Loot room itself had no shelves, just a giant pile of stuff in the middle where the arcane fabricator spat it out. Well, she assumed it was the fabricator, because she couldn’t even see it under the mess. Wouldn’t it break if it got clogged up like that? As the Dungeon Master, it would be Victor’s job to control the output of the device, and which loot disintegrated upon death, but it would be her duty to make sure people actually stacked it on shelves so they could equip themselves correctly…

…if they even had shelves.

With a quiet sigh, she started rummaging through the huge pile of loot, grabbing whatever looked decent enough. As Dungeon Boss, she would need to drop better items than the rest, so she at least tried to find some rares, but she only managed to find a single one, on accident, as she shoved two pieces of leather armor aside. A leather chest plate that increased the strength of its wearer. She pulled it on, still rummaging for a matching set of pants and boots. She didn’t even bother with a helmet.

There was no mirror, so she couldn’t check how she looked, but she hoped that the ensemble wasn’t too bad, mostly dark leather with a few strips of red cloth. Alright, now for a weapon…

The only weapon she could find were crossbows. Hundreds and hundreds of crossbows, but not a single dagger, fist weapon, or even bolts for the damn things. This was quickly getting really friggin frustrating. She’d have to organize this place from the ground up, which was going to be hard, but not impossible. If she could wrangle twenty adolescent werewolves, she could get a couple of people organized at the place where they earned their money, right?

Dragging her mind to the present, she pushed her way back outside and followed Kevin and Victor out of the room. She entered a long corridor of rough-hewn stone just as Kevin pushed his tools back into his apron, nodded at her, and pointed at the door. “Try and close it, please?”

It shut with some effort, which was not a good thing. It should just automatically like the regulations said it should, and that was totally not some pencil pushers getting dumb ideas. If the Portal didn’t close right, Adventurers could find their way into the loot room, or worse, into Hell itself. That would be a total fiasco.

“Ahhh, fuck it,” Kevin said. “I’ll fix it later.” And without another word, he started down the tunnel, clearly expecting them to follow.

Perhaps Victor was right and this was completely doomed.

But when she met his eyes, and he gave her his smirk and shrug combo, she relaxed a little bit and focused on what was really important. If he believed this was going to be fine and didn’t stress out, she wouldn’t, either.

As she followed Kevin deeper into a maze of tunnels, she tried to get a feel for their new place of work. The design looked to be some sort of mine, or something, with torches burning in these metal holders every three or four coffins or so. That was so old-school, but not necessarily a bad thing because it was always encouraged to go with the classics when you were starting out, right? One thing that became obvious though was why the Kobold hadn’t checked for Humans before opening the doors. Despite them walking for a few minutes, and the Kobold not even slowing down to check for adventurers once, they didn’t encounter anyone but Monsters also making their way to the Dungeon Altar. Some of them looked a bit grumpy, kinda as if they’d been woken from a nap. She also spotted a few who still wore their street clothes, and that was really concerning. Sure, not many adventurers visited this dungeon, but if they did, they would break immersion within seconds, with all the catastrophic consequences.

She had so many questions she wanted to ask, or at least discuss with Victor, but she didn't dare ask him anything, not even as a whisper, because Kobolds had such good hearing, and so she just tried to keep up while questions collected inside her like water behind a dam.

After another two turns (she would probably never be able to find her way around this place without a map) they entered a large grotto of some kind, probably styled after some main mining shaft, even though there was as little detail as in the tunnels, so they lacked some clear visual indicators that would tell the players what was what. Waverly wasn’t very good at visual storytelling herself, but even she knew that this interior design wouldn't win any prizes, no matter how utilitarian it was.

About 40 monsters already loitered around the middle of the room, many of them looking up at them as they entered.

“Hey guys, these are the replacements for Ogun and Jeannie, so be nice to them, OK?” Kevin asked, but he didn’t wait for any response, and just hurried straight into the crowd, squeezing his way in.

Waverly glanced at Victor, but he wore that bland expression he used when he was planning some sort of prank, so he probably had some sort of plan, and so Waverly kept her mouth shut, waved at the monsters, and gave them her most beaming smile. She just super hoped that she wouldn’t have to say anything, because she kinda really, really, really sucked at lying. For realsies.

Fortunately, all the other monsters, mostly orcs and goblins, (but also some giant bats, and even two frost giants,) just waved and smiled back, and didn’t ask any questions. At this point, Waverly realized what had been bothering her so much. Sure, everyone was kind of in a hurry, but there was no real sense of urgency in what they were doing. They all moved like kids being dragged to school. That didn’t make sense at all. Working in a Dungeon was an amazing gig. Shouldn’t they be way more enthusiastic?

Just at that point, a small stone disc that Waverly would totally have missed if it hadn’t started to glow, rose from the ground. Its surface rippled like it was made of water, then it extended and flattened in one liquid motion until it was about as wide as one of those trampolines they used for PE class at school. Runes appeared clockwise along its rim, each cycling through a green, and blue, then red glow as they appeared one after the other. When the last one was burning with crimson light, a crystal about as tall as Waverly in wolf form, and maybe 1 1/2 times as wide, started to materialize out of thin air. This was probably the dungeon core. What had Kevin called her? Debbie-Corinne?

With a shudder and the loud crack of displaced air, the dungeon core finally phased in. Inside its red crystalline matrix, Waverly could almost discern a humanoid shape, wrapped in bands of gold covered in skittering runes. An elf, perhaps?

Waverly really wanted to know, but it was probably totally rude to ask something like, “Oh hey, I’m Waverly, nice to meet you! So I kind of noticed that you are about this tall, so I suspect you must have been some sort of elf before you got imprisoned inside a mana battery, and anyway, how’s that going for you?”

Waverly had to bite her lower lip to not blurt out the question anyway, or worse, giggle or something. She did that sometimes when she was tense, but that would have been so rude, because like what would the others think?

The crystal hummed, and Waverly got the distinct impression of a soft, pleasant feminine voice speaking directly into her mind.

A very stressed, soft, pleasant feminine voice.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Everyone here? Oh good, good.” Debbie-Corinne paused and Waverly felt the Dungeon Core’s attention settle on her like a fuzzy blanket. “Wait, you two are new, right?”

Kevin gave Debbie-Corinne a thumbs-up, and the dungeon core went on. “Right! Welcome to the Broken Minds Dungeon—well, Elite Zone I should say.”

There was a bit of a murmur that ran through the crowd, but it wasn’t nearly as downcast as Waverly would have expected. Just a few resigned smiles and shrugs. Even a giggle or two! So perhaps they weren’t super heartbroken about sliding down the ladder, that was actually kind of good! She didn’t know as much about motivating people as she did about dungeonomics—that was more Victor’s field—but she figured that if people weren't depressed, maybe they could be easily inspired.

Unaware of her train of thought, Debbie-Corinne went on, “I would love to give you guys a real welcome but we’re kind of on a schedule so let’s huddle everyone! —Oh wait, you don’t actually have to huddle.” That last part was aimed at Waverly when she went to drape her arms over the shoulders of two orcs.

She smiled at them sheepishly, but they just waved her concerns off with knowing grins. “Happens to everyone, especially the eager ones. Don’t worry, it’s a pretty chill gig, and you’ll get used to it in no time,” said one of them, the slightly shorter one.

When everyone quieted down, Waverly felt Debbie-Corinne’s attention shift from Victor and her to the entire crowd.

“OK, so corporate just sent down a memo about half an hour ago or something, I didn’t really check, but apparently they are going to send down a new Boss, and a new Dungeon Master.” That, finally got a reaction from the crowd, even though Waverly would have preferred literally any other over the sort of low rumbling that was happening.

The Werewolf did her best not to directly look at Victor, but still stared at him from the corner of her eyes. He stared right back, sporting a frozen sort of grin that was probably a pretty good mirror of her own.

“Don’t worry, guys. I’m sure they’ll be cool, and they’ll get promoted out of here in no time. But!” Debbie-Corinne paused for dramatic effect, “I need you to be on your very best behavior for the next two weeks. That means no playing on your hell phone on shift, always carry all your loot with you, and we're going to have to rotate the role of monster napping in the mine cart. We probably also have to remove the signs from the front door, and someone has to clean up the altar in the antechamber.”

More annoyed murmurs from the crowd.

“Yeah, yeah,” the Dungeon Core said, half placatingly, half as annoyed as the other Monsters. “I know it’s much easier for you just to jump into the lava stream and wake up in your bed, but on the off chance that any adventurer is stupid enough to actually come down here, you need to respawn quickly or I’ll have to write you up and it's going to be super awkward for both of us.

“So, last but not least, just saying it one more time for the people in the back, Ogun and Jeannie quit last week and, as Kevin has already said, we already got their replacements. Can someone show two of them around real quick? Kevin is going to be busy fixing whatever he can in the time we have left before the new bosses arrive, and I need to somehow find a way to make the books look like I cared about them in the last couple of months.”

The two Orcs that Waverly had tried to huddle with earlier both raised their hand and there was a distinct feeling of relief from Debbie-Corinne.

“Thanks, Olaf, Oren, you’re cool. See ya later, guys!” And with that, there was another clap of air as the dungeon core slowly faded into nothingness.

“Hi,” said the left Orc as the crowd began to disperse. “I’m Olaf, and this is Oren. We’ve been here for a while, so we figured we might as well show you around.”

“Yeah,” said the other Orc, Oren. He was the one who’d spoken to Waverly earlier.

“I already said it before, but it’s a pretty sweet gig. You get full pay, but you can just kind of do whatever unless corporate decides to do another crackdown. Kind of sorry about it, but the next couple of weeks are going to be way harder than usual. Believe me, though. Afterward, it’s going to be way more chill. Debbie-Corinne is very relaxed and lots of fun to hang out with, which I can’t say about any other boss I’ve ever had.”

Olaf nudged Oren with his elbow. “Easy there, professor, let them introduce themselves before you start a lecture.”

“Hi, I’m Waverly,” said Waverly, trying hard not to ask any of the 10 million questions she had which would totally give her away.

“Yo,” said Victor with his patent smile. “I’m Victor.”

“Stoked to have you both,” Olaf said. “We’ve never had a Catboy down here, and only one other Werewolf. He was our last boss, but I’m kind of happy that he’s gone. If he’d been any more of a hardass, he would’ve shat diamonds.”

“Yeah, remember that one time when he actually tried to make us all exercise? To get our level up to save on Mana costs or something?” Oren said. “I didn’t get that. If he wants to save on Mana costs, just lower the average level of the dungeon to whatever is here, right?”

Olaf snorted. “Kid had some grand ambitions of expansion, or whatever. Thank Satan, corporate took ‘im off of our shoulders after two months.”

“Thanks, Debbie-Corinne, more like.” They both laughed, but when they saw the insecure smiles of both Waverly and Victor, they just smirked and nodded toward one of the tunnels.

“Don’t mind us, let’s show you around. I promise we know where all the best spots for napping on the job are.”

The two Orcs definitely delivered on that, and way more. They led Waverly and Victor around the complete maze of tunnels, which absolutely no one seemed to have designed based on absolutely no pattern whatsoever. It took Waverly less than a minute to get completely lost, and that was with two very experienced guides, who insisted that she would get used to it. She couldn’t even imagine what adventurers would say after they tried this dungeon. The ratings had to be absolutely abysmal, which kinda made sense given how the Dungeon was almost as low in the rankings as you could get.

So while their two dungeon tour guides showed them all the nooks and crannies where they could hide and laze their shift away, Waverly stole a few glances at Victor. To her surprise, he took it way better than she would have thought. He nodded and smiled, even laughed along at some of the jokes. Waverly totally knew that Victor was a very good actor, but even he couldn’t be that good, right? When the orcs pointed out a net that hung from the ceiling of one of the tunnels, he even went up to try it out, and for a second Waverly feared that all these nap places must be like catnip for him, but when the Orcs moved on and he jumped down to land in a smooth crouch, he looked at her with eyes wide open, glittering with warm, yet steely intent.

She just hoped it would be as simple as she had suggested. Chances were though, that they would fail, and hard. She worried about Victor when that happened. He’d just started to build up his mojo, and she totally liked him when he was like that. He was way more relaxed, and just being around him made you feel like you could do anything because he had that sort of enthusiasm they called infectious, she guessed.

Waverly, though, was a realist, no matter what people might think about her. She’d been absolutely sincere when she told Victor she’d gladly walk away from the offer if it made him feel better, just because she never expected to succeed anyway. The entire dream of becoming a dungeon boss before she even hit level 20, much less as her very first job ever was nice and all, but in the end, it was just that: a nice dream. When someone gave her a task to do, she would do everything she could to get it done, but as a girl from the Dregs, she had learned early and often that dreams were for people who lived in the higher Circles. It had been taught to her at home, in school, and even on the street. If you wanted to be happy in life, you kept your head down, did as you were told, and let other people worry about silly stuff like dreams and ambitions. Sticking your neck out would only get it chopped off, and when you inevitably failed, people would just blame you for the mess you made while trying to be smart.

So, she’d do her best for Victor, and be there for him when it all came tumbling down. And as long as she didn’t consider what could have been, she would always be content.

So she pushed hard against that whistling teapot feeling building in her chest and tried to see the world as it was. She knew the trick to Vent that pressure. Focus on the basics. As long as Victor was alright, and it looked decent on her CV, Waverly would be alright, too.

After all, which other Werewolf could say to have had even a few months’ stint as a dungeon boss in a Von Katzer dungeon?

Their tour ended after about twenty minutes. After seeing the few highlights of the dungeon, (which were basically an old smithy, and an industrial ore smelter that ran on magitech) the Orcs told them it was time to check out the mineshaft that led down from the dungeon’s main entrance. Apparently, you could also come in from the top, and there was an old-school-style dungeon in the back that led to the first raid wing of the old, broken von Katzer castle, but they’d sealed that years ago.

They stopped in a tunnel that looked to be haphazardly boarded up at the other end, and the Orcs stopped, putting their fists on their hips, content with their touring duties almost over.

“Actually, since you’re the newbies,” Olaf said with a self-satisfied smile, “you have the honorable duty of dismantling all the signs.”

“Signs?” Waverly asked, still not trusting herself to be able to stop talking once she started in earnest.

Oren smiled at her, showing his impressively well-maintained teeth, including two pierced tusks. Hell had a really good dental plan. “You know what I like about you, Waverly? You’re a woman of few words. I can appreciate that.”

Next to her, Victor sounded like he was choking on a canary.

Now it was her turn to shove him into a wall, not breaking eye contact with the orc.

“Yeah, so they keep telling me,” she said with an innocent smile. “What signs though?”

The Orcs looked at each other as Victor tried to stop his giggling fits, but in the end, they just shrugged.

“Those up there,” Olaf said, pointing at what Waverly had thought was a nailed-shut mine entrance. Now that she paid close attention she could see it was actually an opening, covered in dozens and dozens of signs. As she watched, the Orc went over and ripped one of them away. On its other side, the sign was bright yellow, showed an orc with a pickaxe looking at a smoking pile of indistinguishable stuff, and read ‘Under Maintenance; Please Pardon our Dust!’

“We placed them all the way down the path to the dungeon, too. They do a good job of keeping the adventurers out, which is nice. Not just because it gives us peace and quiet, but also because it’s only kind of fair.”

“How so?” Victor asked, arching an eyebrow and flicking his ears.

“Oh shit, has no one told you?” Olaf asked, his face an embarrassed rictus grin.

When no one answered, he exchanged a glance with Oren, who just shrugged and motioned as if to say: “You started it…”

“The dungeon’s bugged,” Olaf said with obvious chagrin. “Something with the level cap? It lowers everyone’s level to five, alright, but when adventurers die in here, their level gets stuck there. Permanently.”

Waverly sucked in air through her teeth, and Victor said, “Ouch!”

The embarrassed silence between them stretched on so long that it became foreboding, and then Olaf added, “Yeah, and uh… it kind of makes ‘em wait to respawn for the amount of levels they’ve lost, in hours. No one knows who enabled those settings, but uh, yeah, we don’t really have enough Mana to disable them, so…. Yeah.”

When he saw the looks on their faces, Oren tried to save the situation by saying, “I get it, you’re young and probably ambitious, and the Broken Mines are maybe not what you were thinking of when you got your first dungeon assignment. But I promise, we still have some good XP triggers, if you want to level up quickly. You’ll see! You’ll earn level 10 in no time, and then you can always transfer out. Just do yourself a favor and don't worry about the issue with the bug too much. That’s something for the new Dungeon Master to lose sleep over, not two non-elites.”

Olaf nodded, agreeing with Oren. “I’m sure they’ll fix it at some point… once we've somehow gotten enough mana to run a check over the settings…” he trailed off, leaving unspoken the fact that without any adventurers to come into the dungeon, there would be no mana coming in, either. “Anyway, why don't you go and take down all the signs? After that, you can even wander around a little, check out the area.”

“Oh yes!” Oren added. “One of the benefits of not being in a dungeon! No instancing! There’s a cool little lake close by. Just be sure to avoid the humans, okay? I mean, in a pinch, I guess both of you can pass as players if you really need to, unlike us two. Hey, you can even try and talk to them if you want! I’ve always wanted to hear what they think of the Game!”

Olaf threw him an annoyed glance. “Why don't we wait a few days before we tell the newbies to breach health and safety guidelines, hmm?”

Oren winced and Olaf went on after a roll of his eyes and a sigh that made his tusk piercings clank against the bone.

“Anyway, the signs shouldn’t be too much work and Oren’s right. Because you can just pretend you’re players and leave if you get spotted, you’re better suited than any of us for outside jobs. Just don’t talk to them, or we’ll all get sued so hard, you wish they’d still use torture instead. Pretend you don’t have any voice coms, or you’re mute, or kids playing in their parent’s rigs, or whatever.”

He put an arm around the other Orc's shoulder, turned both of them back the way they’d come, and marched off. Before he vanished around the bend, however, he looked over his shoulder and yelled, “Remember though, any humans you see the Dungeon, you have to kill, alright?” and then they were gone.

In the silence that followed, Waverly hesitated to look at Victor, but when she did, she found him smiling his quiet smile.

“I don’t even know what I was worried about. If I had known the people here loved naps as much as I do, I would have started here years ago.”

Then, his ears flicking as he strained to listen, he mouthed ‘Double Devil Damned, this is going to be a ton of work.’