“What does it say?” Jason asked.

I silently passed him the slip of paper, and looked around. There was nothing on the platform that looked like a treasure chest.

“This thing sounds smarter than your average monster,” Jenny said, reading the tape in Jason’s hands. “Think it can hear us?”

“Yeah, I see an old-style microphone in the control panel. Dungeon, what are the rules on looting?”

The great machine whirred to itself for a few seconds, and then the tickertape printer burst to life again. This time the tape it spat out read:

RULE 3 EXPLORERS MAY CLAIM AS LOOT ANYTHING THEY CAN CARRY OUT OF THE DUNGEON

“So there’s an official list of rules? Interesting. I suppose there would have to be, if the System wants to make something that resembles the dungeons in an RPG. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell us the rest of the rules?”

This time the response was brief.

NO STOP COMPLETE LOOTING OPERATION AND LEAVE

“I get the feeling it doesn’t like us,” Jason commented.

“Big surprise there,” Jenny agreed. “But what would we even want from a place like this? It’s just a bunch of clunky machinery. Even if we could carry it, what good would it do us?”

Jason looked around carefully. “Maybe the loot boxes aren’t ready yet either?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe the System is being subtle. Come on, I see a couple of things I want a closer look at.”

I headed for the workshop section first, figuring I’d have the best odds of spotting something out of place in a machine shop. Big as this complex was, it was nowhere near big enough to hold an entire supply chain for every kind of manufacturing the dungeon might need. There must be some sort of System-mediated shortcut in place, and that meant there might be something worth taking. Items that conjure up raw materials, magical metal-shaping tools, something along those lines.

Instead, I found a bunch of startlingly advanced robotics. There were automated lathes cutting metal blanks into parts, robotic assembly bays building cyborg body parts and sections of conduit, and even a compact little refinery setup turning crude oil into a variety of lubricants and flammable liquids. Towers of bins between the workstations held spare parts, metal ingots and various small subassemblies, while robots that looked rather like mechanical spiders scurried around servicing the machines.

I studied the workflow for a minute, trying to understand how it all fit together. Each individual step seemed logical enough, but even with the high level of automation it seemed far too small to do the job it seemed to be doing. I’ve designed automated assembly lines. I know how many steps there are in making something as complex as those tentacle arms the cyberbear sported. If humans had built this place it would sprawl across dozens of acres, and they’d still need to import parts from other facilities.

Despite that, I could sense an underlying logic to the layout. Some organizing principle that determined which steps were implemented normally, and which ones were somehow glossed over. Something about the way the machines this workshop built were designed, and the parts they used…

The moment of realization was so distinct, it felt like there should have been a light bulb appearing over my head. A System notification arrived at the same moment.

Title Earned!

You have plumbed the fundamentals of engineering to the limits of human ability, combined your skills with magic, studied the remains of bronze-tier monsters and witnessed the inner workings of a bronze dungeon core. Your accomplishments have earned you the title Steam Engineer.

I didn’t have to ask what the title did, because suddenly everything I saw made sense. The dungeon didn’t need half the complexity of human machinery, because it had access to so many special materials. Thermal superconductors and frictionless lubricants. Anti-wear coatings, and alloys with impossible strength or flexibility. Crystals that dissipated waste heat, controlled mechanical forces, and transformed kinetic energy into esoteric rays. An entire toolkit of wonders, all deriving from the same source.

“Tom, are you alright?” Jenny asked.

“Yeah. I just got a new skill for figuring out this weird tech, that’s all. Wait, the System notice says it’s a title, not a skill. How does that work?”

“Another one? This is getting interesting,” Jason put in. “I’ve been all over the net looking for information about the System, and the only mention of titles this morning was a doctor claiming to be an Oathbound Healer. What does this one do?”

“It’s called Steam Engineer, and apparently it unlocks the tech tree this stuff uses. Let me see if there are any details.”

I opened my status screen, thinking the title would be listed somewhere, but I was immediately distracted by a major change in the display. Everything I’d seen before was now enclosed by a tab labeled ‘Standard’, and there were three new tabs. One was labeled ‘Bronze League’, while the others were ‘Dungeon Delver and ‘Steampunk Engineer’.

Did titles do more than just giving some specific buff? Was that promotion notice from the System worth more than bragging rights? Making them tabs implied they gave us new things to spend points on, didn’t it?

Sure enough, the Steam Engineer tab held a whole list of skills and abilities related to cinematic engineering. If I bought the right skills I could make massive steam-powered battle robots, or cybernetic limb replacements, or a variety of strange devices that ran on ‘esoteric rays’, whatever those were. That was kind of cool, although the fact that it was all priced in mental points dampened my enthusiasm. Very few monsters gave those, so unless I wanted to become a serial killer it would be hard to scrape up enough to get anywhere. Still, it opened up some interesting options.

“Apparently a Steam Engineer is supposed to be a guy who can make weird science gadgets to equip a party,” I said. “If I bought the right skills I could build big stompy meat shield robots, or cyborg arms with hidden weapons, or a bunch of other stuff along those lines. But making it work requires scavenging parts from bronze-tier dungeon monsters, plus spending a whole bunch of mental points.”

“Ah, so that’s why the cyberbear gave mental points,” Jason mused.

“It did?”

“Oh yeah, I guess you were kind of busy. The cyberbear’s XP ball was orange, and pretty big. I’d guess three or four mental points, and around ten physical.”

“Bob was kind of eying it, so Earl bottled it for later,” Jenny added. “He did that with Anthony’s ball, too. Said maybe we should pass it on to his family?”

My mood fell. “Yeah. That seems like the right thing to do. Damn, telling them is going to suck. If we’d just had better armor, or a little more mana…”

Jenny put her hand on my arm. “Hey, no point in beating yourself up over it. You did the best you could. Honestly, it’s a miracle any of us made it this far.”

“I’ve been kind of expecting it,” Jason said, his voice more somber than usual. “He was a great guy, always ready to step up for anyone. But in games he was the guy who always gets the party into trouble, you know? He was just so gung ho about everything, and he… he just didn’t think things through… sorry.”

He took his glasses off, and wiped his eyes. Then he took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. “We can morn later. Right now we’ve got a chance to find something that might save someone else’s life in the future, right? So we’ve got to stay focused, and see what we can find.”

“Right,” I agreed. “I think I see our first find, too.”

I strode across the workshop to a compact device connected to a series of conveyor belts. It was firmly attached to the wall by heavy steel bolts, which took some kind of exotic star-headed screwdriver instead of a normal one. Not that I let that stop me. It took only a momentary effort of my metal shaping spell to sheer through each bolt in turn, and then I was able to remove the device from the wall.

It weighed about twenty pounds, so lugging it around wasn’t going to be fun. But it would be worth it.

“What’s that?” Jenny asked.

“The single most essential tool for any steam engineer. It’s called a token forge. See these things?”

I pointed out a stack of bronze disks in a rack on the top of the machine. They almost looked like coins, except that they were covered in abstract patters that vaguely resembled a difference engine’s logic arrays. My companions nodded.

“Those are bronze tokens. They’re a System currency that you’re supposed to get by exploring bronze tier dungeons. The token forge redeems them for a couple dozen different kinds of magic crystals, which are what makes steamtech possible. That stack is enough to make half a dozen cool devices, or maybe one that’s really impressive.”

Shasa finally spoke up at that. “Will it let you make me better armor, Tom? This one’s getting kind of broke.”

“It really took a beating today,” Jenny agreed. Then she smirked. “Can you see her in a huge, clanking suit of steam-powered armor? Maybe give it giant punchy fists, or a rocket launcher on one shoulder? Oh, or rocket fists!”

“Let’s try and keep our expectations in check,” I said. “It does look like that kind of thing is possible, but it would take a huge investment in skills and resources. There are bound to be more efficient options. Although now that I think of it, I should replace that broken mace before we leave.”

“Oh, good,” Shasa said. “I feel kind of useless without a way to bash things. Could you make this one bigger? Like, maybe this long, and a lot heavier?”

“Sure.”

It was a bit worrisome that there were stacks of what looked like cannon balls of various sizes in bins here, but there was nothing to be done about that. I consulted with Shasa about what size felt like a comfortable weight, located some bar stock that was the right size for a handle, and with a few minutes of cutting and merging parts Shasa’s new weapon was ready.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The thing must have weighted fifteen pounds, which was absolutely crazy compared to historical weapons. But she handled it like it was weightless, giving it a few test swings and grinning at me.

“Thank you, Tom! This will be much better for bashing those big monsters.”

“Remind me when we have time, and I’ll make it a lot better,” I said. “A round ball like that really isn’t the best shape for the head. Something with flanges or knobs will be more effective against armor.”

Shasa gave me a blank look, obviously having no idea what I meant. Then she shrugged, and sidled up to press her side against mine. “If you say so, Tom. You’re the smart one, so I’ll trust you. Now what?”

“The biotech area might have some kind of healing potion,” Jason suggested. “There’s got to be something to speed up surgery recovery, right? Unless the monsters all have regeneration.”

“It’s worth checking out,” I agreed. “Also, everyone keep an eye out for these things,” I said, pointing out a row of small bins holding a neatly organized assortment of crystals. “Those are what you buy with the tokens. Everything this dungeon builds is going to need some, so there should be little caches of them spread all through the manufacturing areas. Probably more token forges, too, but we don’t need more than one of those. Although more tokens would be good.”

“I bet the dungeon will be pissed about us taking them all,” Jenny said. “Hey, is it just me, or do all the steam lines converge on that big machine over there?”

She pointed, and I say that she was right. “Looks like a big steam generator, but I don’t see the power source. They certainly aren’t burning coal in a sealed environment like this. Could be worth checking out, and it’s on the way to the biotech area.”

We headed in that direction, pausing occasionally to loot more tokens or crystals when we found them. Jenny scrounged up a couple of empty water bottles to hold the crystals, which were about the size of a marble and slightly fragile. The tokens were more durable, so we just dumped them in Jason’s backpack. We were building up quite a collection by the time we reached the steam generator.

There was still no sign of more normal treasure, though. Nothing that would be useful to a party without a steam engineer. That seemed really strange. What was the point of dungeons without treasure? Why else would anyone ever go into one?

Maybe we were just too early, and the dungeon was planning to seed the rooms and hallways between here and the surface with something valuable. Although I wasn’t sure what that would be. Gold, for buying things from other people? Steam tech equipment for people to scavenge? Come to think of it, if the monsters all gave mental points that might be enough of a lure.

Or maybe the System was anticipating a complete collapse of civilization. If the System’s arrival typically killed off most of a planet’s people in a matter of weeks, the survivors would have a hard time maintaining any kind of industrial base. Looting dungeons might be the only way to get the parts they’d need to keep their equipment working.

Jenny’s voice broke me out of my thoughts. “Okay, I’m officially confused. Tom, what does this thing run on?”

I could see why she’d be confused. The steam generator I’d pointed out wasn’t connected to boilers, a furnace or any other conventional source of heat. Instead there was a bundle of what looked like high-voltage electrical wiring, connected to an industrial transformer station that emitted a distinct smell of ozone. Smaller cables ran up to the lights overhead, but there didn’t seem to be an input cable. Was the System directly providing power for this thing somehow?

I pointed it out as I walked closer. “Looks like the steam generator has an electric heater inside, and the power comes from there. Interesting that this is the only thing we’ve seen that uses electricity. I wonder if it plugs into the System somehow, or… huh.”

As we approached I spotted a bank of smaller objects that looked like they were plugged into the transformer station. Each one was a cylinder about the size of a fire extinguisher, made of heavy steel with a handle inset into the end. It seemed like they were the power source, which mystified me until I got close enough to read the writing on them.

The handle evidently rotated, because there were markings engraved in the steel to identify different positions. The current position was labeled ‘1 Mw’, while the others were ‘750 kw’, ‘500 kw’, ‘250 kw’ and ‘Off’. Above that, a neatly stenciled label proclaimed that the device was a ‘Radium Core’.

“That can’t actually be a radiothermal battery, can it?” Jason asked.

“I’m a mechanical engineer, not nuclear,” I replied. “But I don’t think so? I’m pretty sure the energy density of radium decay is too low, and there’s certainly no way you could adjust the output. It’s not like you can just tell the radium atoms to decay faster.”

“Maybe the System can,” Jenny pointed out. “I’m more worried about whether they’re radioactive.”

“Radium decay only puts out alpha and beta particles,” I said. “That won’t penetrate tinfoil, let alone heavy steel. As long as the case is sealed it shouldn’t be a problem. Which is a good thing, because I think we just found another treasure.”

I took hold of the handle on one of the radium cores, and rotated it. There was a distinct click as it passed each of the labeled positions, and an authoritative thunk when it reached ‘Off’. Then I pulled.

The device came out of the power station easily, but it turned out to be even heavier than I’d expected. I set it down, and inspected the business end. Sure enough, there was a neatly labeled electrical connector.

“Excellent,” I said. “The output is 440 volts, just like a lot of normal industrial equipment. I bet there’s an electrician in town who can wire this into the hotel’s junction box.”

“So we’ll have our own power? Awesome! I’ve been dreading the A/C going out.”

“Could we take more than one?” Jason asked. “Everyone has been worrying about the power situation.”

“They’re awfully heavy,” I said. “Getting one of them up those stairs is going to be a chore, not to mention the walk to town. I’m not sure we could manage two of them, considering everything else we have to deal with. Tyler’s going to need a stretcher.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

There weren’t any convenient carrying cases for the radium cores, and I didn’t want anyone touching those leads in case they weren’t completely safe. So we had to cast around for something to wrap it with, and deal with the fact that it was just a little bit too big to fit easily in a backpack.

After the excitement of our first two finds, the biotech center was a disappointment. Oh, there was plenty of impressive mad science on display. Cloning tanks, automated surgeries, healing baths, chemical processors churning out strange drugs, even something that looked suspiciously like a hypnotic conditioning system. The way Jenny squeaked and blushed when she figured that one out was adorable.

But there was nothing like a convenient healing potion. Using the drugs safely would take a heavy point investment in exotic medical skills, and everything else was either useless to us or far too heavy to move. We weren’t going to haul off a healing bath meant for cyber-bears unless someone figured out a way to get a truck down here.

Jason was a lot more stubborn than I was about finding something we could use, and Jenny seemed weirdly fascinated by the whole setup. So even after I’d given up on it I let them continue poking around, while I focused most of my attention on my status screen.

The stuff on that Steam Engineer tab could have all sorts of far-reaching implications with the right investment. Were the other two new tabs equally important?

The Dungeon Delver tab held all sorts of goodies that looked useful to a group that made a career out of looting underground death traps. Several different options for finding dungeons, a collection of skills for recognizing and avoiding their dangers, and quite a lot of spells and abilities that were specifically optimized for fighting these steampunk cyborgs.

There were some tantalizing hints there about how the System expected people to use their points. Sorting through the options it listed, it seemed like there were at least three different paradigms for special abilities. The most common type were abilities that cost magic points to unlock, but consumed physical stamina when used and could be upgraded with physical points. Second were powers that ran off some kind of internal energy pool, and worked more like Eastern martial arts magic than spells. Finally, there were spells that cost magic points to buy and consumed mana to use, but didn’t have the modular flexibility of my own spells.

I’d definitely have to dig into that some more. Apparently I’d stumbled into a pretty exotic form of magic somehow. Maybe because I’d been thinking like an engineer at the time, and asking the help system for modular parts instead of discrete spells? At any rate, the way I could mix and match spell effects and overload the damage output definitely didn’t seem normal. The ones I was looking at here were a lot more like Jason’s lightning bolts, with a near-instant casting time but much more limited customization of the effects.

Maybe I’d still have two hands if I’d figured that out sooner.

Well, live and learn. There was too much healing available for the injury to be permanent. One way or another, I’d find a way to get it fixed.

So if all the specialized dungeon exploration stuff was on the Dungeon Delver tab, what was Bronze League for?

I switched tabs, and browsed the list. Then I stared. Then I cursed. If only we’d had access to this sooner.

“Tom?” Jenny asked. “Everything okay?”

“I just got around to looking at the Bronze League tab. Have you seen this stuff?”

“Oh. Yeah, the timing kind of sucks, doesn’t it?”

“You could say that,” I replied suddenly feeling ten years older.

Right there at the top of the list was a respawn system.

I don’t know why I was even surprised. I’d already heard that the System included a spirit realm and some kind of afterlife, so why wouldn’t there be resurrection options?

Only, you had to set it up in advance. Someone had to spend points to create a soul beacon, and you had to touch it and spend a point to register with it. Then if you died within a certain radius of the beacon it would collect your soul, and your buddies could spend points to bring you back. Without gear, and you’d lose a bunch of points too, but still. Respawns.

It was too late for Anthony. But for the rest of us? That changed everything.

I’d been worrying about our chances of surviving in the long run, because real life isn’t like a video game. If you make a habit of getting into fights your luck is bound to run out eventually, and then you’re dead. But if one moment of bad luck doesn’t end your career, suddenly it becomes a lot more feasible to live like an adventurer in an RPG. As long as deaths are rare enough that the point loss doesn’t cripple you, and someone always makes it back to town to respawn the casualties, you can chase power as long as you want.

The other options on the list were only slightly less game-changing.

There was a way to make exclusion zones where monsters couldn’t spawn or establish lairs. It was expensive enough that covering the whole town wouldn’t be feasible, and there was nothing to keep predators from wandering in to hunt before leaving again. But still, the ability to set up enclaves with a drastically lower risk of monster attacks made it a lot more feasible to protect a civilian population. I’d been worried that raising children on Earth might be impossible now, but with an exclusion field and good fortifications a well-defended town might actually manage to be safe.

There was also a way to make teleport pads. Oh, sure, they cost points to build and maintain, and they had to be enchanted in pairs, and the range and weight limits were significant. But still, you could use them to bypass long stretches of otherwise impassable wilderness. For a country as populous as America it would be entirely feasible to set up a continent-spanning fast travel system, to move elite combat teams where they were needed.

After that list, I was half expecting to see a game-like inventory system or party chat option, but thankfully for my sanity there was nothing like that. Just some miscellaneous options for dedicating shrines to a System god, adjusting some details about your interactions with soul beacons and exclusion zones, and displaying a subset of your status screen to other people. That last option mostly seemed geared to proving that you have a title, although it could also show skills and spells.

Oh, and there was a ‘System statistics’ button that showed information about my personal points collected and monsters killed, along with a link to the bronze league leaderboard.

The fact that such a thing existed was one of the few concrete bits of evidence I’d seen that the System really was originally created to be a game. It was formatted just like you’d expect. Apparently the System awarded scores based on monsters killed and treasure looted from dungeons, although it didn’t bother to explain the scoring system. The leaderboard had sorting options to show ‘players’ broken down by region, but there was no need to bother with that.

My name was number six. Sheryl had taken the number four spot, while the rest of the group wasn’t far behind us. But there were less than a hundred names on the list.

It seemed an absurdly low number, until I remembered these were the people who’d managed to ‘clear’ a dungeon before the things were even supposed to be active. Then it seemed absurdly high. Even in a world of seven billion people, what were the odds of that many groups stumbling on an incomplete dungeon at random? Let alone surviving the experience.

No, that seemed deliberate. I could see how the System might keep an eye on especially capable monster hunting teams, and place dungeons in locations where we’d have a good chance of stumbling on them early. It didn’t have to work every time, just often enough to get you a decent collection of early Dungeon Delver titles. Only, why would the System bother?

If there was a Bronze League, that implied that there were others. Silver and gold, at least, if the labels followed common conventions. What new options would they unlock? Resurrection spells? Actual safe zones? Portals, maybe?

A detail I’d glossed over at the time nagged at me.

“System, what determines a user’s access to information about you?”

All System functions are organized into tiers and subsets, with access granted based on titles and league standings. This includes informational functions.

“So there are higher leagues than bronze, and getting into them might unlock more information… wait. All System functions? Including administrative functions?

Details about the System’s administrative functions are not available to Bronze League users. Advance your standing to unlock additional information.

That sounded an awful lot like a yes. Like there actually was some kind of administrative interface for the System. Like there might be a way to unlock it.

Like there might be a way to fix this broken System, and put an end to the apocalypse.