“It’s a coupon for an extension of the dungeon diving time limit,” Colt frowned over the envelope that Adam had brought back. “Prick.”

  Dom had drawn a scoreboard on the envelope with his name on one side and Colt and Lacey’s names on the other. Under their column, he’d put a two, an admission that they’d scored points. Under his column, he’d written a one, probably for the coupon he could have played. Seeing as they hadn’t even known such a coupon had existed, Lacey was willing to admit he’d scored one of his own.

  “We’re scoring on how many times we could kill him,” Colt groused.

  “I’m willing to admit that his coupon was at least close to equal to ours,” Lacey dropped the envelope and coupon on the table between her and Colt. “Our closure of the dungeon wouldn’t have killed him, but it would have stopped the coup. His coupon might not have handed him the victory, but if it negated or somehow blunted our closures, it would have put a kink in our plans to just wait him out.”

  “Barely,” Colt sneered at the stupid envelope.

  “It would depend on whether he has as many of those coupons as we have of ours,” Lacey shrugged and got up to give the Enlarged Adam a hug. Adam wasn’t normally this big, but Eve had helped buff him up in size with a spell they’d given her from a previous Mage Gauntlet.

  “Adam scare,” the Goblin puffed up his chest.

  “You did a great job, Adam,” Lacey patted him on the shoulder with a grin.

  “If he’s going to count stuff like that, how are we going to keep ahead on the scoreboard,” Colt waved a hand at the envelope.

  “Colt, don’t be silly,” she laughed, getting up to go back to her desk. “We just proved that we knew he was here, that he’s behind it all, that we could have kicked him out or killed him over and over right now, and that we were the bigger people to allow him to continue.”

  “I guess I just wasn’t ready for him to have a counter to any of our stuff.”

  “That was optimistic,” Lacey chided him. “He came prepared. He’s scouted the dungeon for days at least and he planned for what he knew of us. He doesn’t know as much as he thinks he knows.”

  “Aztec Tomb clear,” Ginger broke into their conversation.

  “That’s the second group to finish a level,” Colt got up to swap the Spunk monitor to the group that had just finished up the Aztec Tomb. The Spunks had moved forward another two trap/maze levels, and now that they weren’t changing the whole layout anymore, they could move quicker. They still had to increase the lethality of the traps on the lower floors.

  Lacey glued her eyes to that wall display. This was the first group to finish that might still turn around and leave. She didn’t think that was their plan, but it was possible. They were levels 30-33. They’d breezed through the puzzles and traps of the level, obviously well-informed, but they were also too high of a level to likely be players. What they did would tell her a lot about the overall plan. She’d been thinking about it since they’d seen Dom’s group go back into the previous level to clear the hidden rooms.

  The only hidden rooms in the Aztec Tomb were the trap corridors. This group hadn’t tried to breech those corridors, yet. The previous level was the Coral Reef. If this group was equipped with water gear, then they could go to the level 29-31 Coral Reef and meet up with the group that was about two rooms from the end of it, or they could do what Dom’s group had done and try to breech the trap corridors. Dom knew the arenas, but he shouldn’t know that the Coral Reef just didn’t have the corridors because Spunks couldn’t swim. Would they go looking for them?

  On the other hand, if the group headed down to a lower level, they could meet up with the group that was doing the Haunted House. It was only a level or so above the group. Either way, they were in for a surprise. According to the clock, they could just breeze through the first sections of the Haunted House level. The other group had already cleared the graveyard outside the house and were almost to the attic, which would give them the finale and an option to exit or go up a level.

  All the levels worked the same way. If a group got to the end of one level, there was a safe room and passage to the next level. At the beginning of that level was an entrance that they’d use to exit the dungeon on a normal dive. Dom’s group had had to go all the way back to the beginning of their level to go backwards to a previous level. This group opted to go to the Haunted House, or at least they went that direction and stopped near the entrance.

  “Turn up the sound on that one,” Lacey instructed Ginger, who had gotten the hang of the system much quicker than she was learning writing and reading.

  Al and Bob waved their group to sit and regain mana and health, not that they needed much. They took ten minutes to eat and patch up their Mage, but they weren’t as guarded in speech as Dom’s group had been. Lacey and Colt only knew the names because they’d been talking to each for a while.

  “Experience is good,” Bob told Al, dropping his pack at his feet before letting himself lean against the wall.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Yeah,” Al grunted. “Just like he said it would be. Makes the night sessions worth it.”

  “Too bad we’ll forget it all again when it's all over,” Bob fished a ration out of his pack.

  “It’s a good solid place,” Al sat, his back to the wall. “I just hope we don’t get banned for this. It’d be a shame to lose out.”

  “And miss out on the opportunity to be the first to wipe it?” Bob shook his head, talking around the chunk of dried fruit in his mouth. “I hear the rewards for first wipe are enough to buy a title or two.”

  “I don’t know if I believe all that,” Al waved the guy off.

  “Shut it,” hissed the Mage. “We’re supposed to be pretending to be a normal wave.”

  “If we were fooling anyone, we wouldn’t be now that you’ve spilled it,” Bob snapped at the Mage.

  “Boo!”

  The wall opened behind Bob and three huge Gossowaries lunged out of the hole. There were screams at first, but the Mage was pretty quick to try to ramp up a spell. This group had gotten one of the Elite Goblins, Enlarged the same way Adam had been. The Reject pulled hard on the leashes, but one of the Gossowaries still managed to take a bite out of Bob’s hind end as he scurried away from the wall he’d been leaning on.

  “Not kill you, dumb ass,” the Elite Goblin laughed out. “But I could.”

  “What the hell?” Al stuttered out, his meal in the dirt at his feet.

  “Those things are level 50!” the Cleric warned them, and Bob slid his sword back into its sheath, a sudden sense of the situation dawning on his face in a satisfying way.

  “Give to Dom,” the Elite Goblin announced, shoving the envelope at them.

  “Who’s Dom?” the Mage tried to pretend.

  “No open until Dom,” the Goblin pulled the envelope back and glared the warning at the only one brave enough to reach for the envelope.

  “Yeah, okay,” Al nodded, but he was obviously not a rule follower.

  The Goblin held onto the envelope while grinning into the face of Al, the Rogue. Al tugged and the Goblin didn’t move, showing that the Goblin was far stronger than Al. The staring match was interrupted by a Gossowary snapping at Bob, who had bent to pull a dagger from his boot, thinking to stab the Goblin in the back. The Goblin didn’t even flinch.

  “No open until Dom,” the Goblin repeated, reaching out to poke Al on the forehead.

  The Goblin let go of the envelope and laughed as Al fell on his butt. Al was not amused but rather gained some gumption as the Goblin backed into the opening behind him. Al lunged to try a left hook at the Goblin’s sharp teeth. He lost a finger when the Goblin playfully snapped at him. The Goblin was chewing as the wall closed.

  This envelope held a piece to a puzzle. It was a puzzle they weren’t prepared to solve yet. There were another 18 pieces to find. It also held an updated scoreboard for Dom that gave them credit for another point and acknowledged his one measly one next to it.

  “That’s three,” Colt announced throughout the dungeon, making it echo on the walls. With a flick, he turned the sound back off. They hadn’t had much use for the audio system since they’d won it back in their first few quests.

  Most of the groups had no idea what it meant, but they watched Dom roll his eyes at them. The remaining groups, those that weren’t too distracted by a fight, huddled together for long minutes trying to figure out what it all meant. Lacey and Colt couldn’t listen to them all, but they could watch several and the paranoia was real.

  “Cleric leaving,” Ginger announced, pointing at the screen with the group they’d just taunted on it.

  They turned up the sound to hear an argument between the Cleric and Al. The Cleric had decided that the operation was blown, and he wasn’t going to stay and lose the experience he’d just gotten. Al was gripping the Cleric’s arm.

  “I’ll take my chances with the Count,” the Cleric said as he jerked out of Al’s grip and through the entrance.

  “He’ll ban you,” Al called out, but the Cleric was gone.

  The number of intruders went down by one. That also meant that they’d actually gotten someone to voluntarily retreat. They could wipe the whole incursion now. Lacey knew that somewhere in her head, but it was hard to believe they’d won just yet.

  “Dom’s not going to like this,” Bob said in a low tone to Al.

  “He’s also not going to like that you’re dropping his name all over the place,” the Mage shushed them again.

  “You want to join him?” Al snapped at the Mage, pointing to the entrance.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she snarled back, and they glared at each other for a while, but nothing came of it.

  It was the first time that they’d heard anything about what was happening outside the dungeon. Lacey wanted to know, but she had enough to keep track of without worrying about things she couldn’t change or help with. At least it was a clue that Benny was okay and probably not on the invader side. Lacey hadn’t thought that Benny had turned on them, but knowing was better.

  “We knew that already,” Colt muttered, then turned to Lacey. “You were right, this way is better. It’s at least more satisfying.”

  “Did you see that?” Lacey pointed at the screen with the time on it.

  “What?”

  “The time jumped,” Lacey glared at where the wall screen showed Dom’s group.

  Dom stood there with two fingers held up on one hand above his head. The time for the invasion had gone up by three hours. He’d used a coupon. The result was different than they’d expected because as Lacey scrolled through a few dungeons, several groups stopped their chatter and went back to work as if Dom had snapped at them to shut up.

  “And they all know what it means,” Lacey told Colt.

  “What does it mean though?”

  “It’s not like they can talk to each other, but they probably see it as a sign from Dom that the plan is still moving forward,” Lacey’s brow creased, and she waved at her screen. “See? They’re buckling down.”

  “If I was down there,” Colt nodded his head as he too flipped from screen to screen. “I’d be watching the timer for how long we had to complete the mission. And a jump up on that timer would mean a lot to me.”

  “Yeah,” Lacey agreed. “It would mean that the plan was still going, and maybe that stealth wasn’t necessary anymore. It would also mean that Dom’s still alive and in charge.”

  “Killing him would have been easier,” Colt complained, but he held up a hand when Lacey would have defended the decision. “No, I still agree that this way is better. Harder but more satisfying for sure.”

  “How did it affect our ability to use a coupon to close the dungeon?” Lacey blurted out the thought that had been worrying at the back of her mind.

  “Looking,” Colt didn’t panic, but he was reading some kind of fine print that would have made Lacey’s brain hurt so she didn’t push him. She really wanted to do so, but she pressed her lips together to keep from saying anything to distract him. Lacey distracted herself from distracting him by pessimistically planning for Dom having dozens of these coupons. The one he’d sent in the envelope had been for an hour extension.