You have found: 11 gold coins, 2 Uncommon Health Potions, 1 Uncommon Mana Potion, 1 Uncommon Endurance Potion.

  You have gained 17 Unbound Essence, 2 Lieutenant Monster Cores (F-Grade, Might and Vermin Affinities).

  That was all Roland got from his six loot bags. Each party member got personalized bags with random drops. Of the group, only Dahlia got an item, an Uncommon Ring of Regeneration that let her accelerate her normal Health recovery, turning recovery times from minutes to seconds. The effect lasted for one minute and could be used once a day. That could be a lifesaver, especially because it didn’t trigger her Death Affinity penalty.

  Dahlia was happy with it; she kept showing it off for Bloodykee, who kept acting excited. It was like a game of peekaboo between vampires.

  Everyone’s Essence (but not gold) rewards got nerfed, thanks to Roland’s overpowered status. Barton and Dahlia got six Essence each; everyone else had to settle for three points. Looked like the System rewarded participation and risk. A couple of them got a Monster Core, but only the ones who had done some damage during the fight. Since not even Roland was sure what those were good for, they just tossed them in their inventories. Gold rewards seemed completely random, ranging from seven to thirteen gold coins apiece.

  “I’m up a hundred and sixty grand, between this and the Challenge reward,” Bob noted, sounding as thrilled as if he knew the money belonged to a drug cartel about to send a guy with a pneumatic gun to reclaim it.

  “We’re filthy rich,” Barton said more enthusiastically. “I always thought I was born to be a trust fund baby. Now I’ve got my own trust fund.”

  “Too bad the world’s about to end in two weeks, trust fund Dorko,” Dahlia reminded him.

  “But we can live like kings until then.”

  “You can’t walk up to a store and plonk down a fistful of gold coins, Barton,” Bob added. “Even moving Roland’s few coins yesterday took some work to stay under the radar. If you try to sell off a hundred grand in sus gold coins, people will start asking questions.”

  Barton looked down at the handful of coins he had taken from his inventory. “Then what good are these?”

  “The System has its own economy,” Roland said. “Eventually, those coins are going to be the only money that counts. Greenbacks won’t be any good by the end of the month.”

  “They never were any good. But there’s always booze and cigarettes,” Bob replied. “And bullets.”

  “There is a System store that takes gold and Essence. Gold is for consumables and mostly nonmagical stuff, from what my Guide told me.”

  “What about copper, silver, platinum, you know, the other coinage types?” Barton asked.

  “System doesn’t use those. Just gold. My guess is, a gold coin doesn’t go as far as it does in the modern world. Or the ancient world, for that matter.”

  “Seems highly inflationary.”

  “It’s not rocket science, Dorko,” Dahlia said. “One gold piece is one dollar. Get used to it. You just made like forty bucks in this run.”

  “Better than minimum wage, I guess,” Barton muttered.

  “Everybody ready to continue?” Roland asked.

  They had only taken a ten-minute break, but he was itching to go on. Raven had said that at the end of this level, they were going to take a detour somewhere else.

  He said it’d be just him and me. Does that mean he wants the others to finish the Dungeon on their own?

  They had gotten way tougher now that they had Classes. He didn’t think they could have handled those six lieutenants on their own, though.

  Roland watched them as they got up from the ground. Roland had packed some plastic sheeting in his inventory for situations just like this, and they had laid it over the muck.

  Josh seemed to have calmed down about his sister; it helped that Wendy had used a Perk to make herself look human again. Maybe he’d forgotten that she wasn’t human anymore or was pretending nothing had changed. From brief acquaintance, the guy didn’t strike Roland as a deep thinker.

  The gamers were back to their own selves, mostly. They all looked more confident; the extra stats and their first taste of combat had helped a lot. Even Barton was acting more like one of his game characters, which was probably the best way to go about it. Unless he or the others got overconfident.

  Which took him to Dahlia. She alternated between petting her Fiend and sending glances at Roland. And played with her hair whenever their eyes met.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Before all this crap started, I would have performed a retrograde evolution at flank speed, to quote a Marine friend’s version of run away, run away! But it’s different now.

  If things went further than flirting, it was going to be a hell of a ride. Sometimes you did things because you knew you’d live to regret them.

  But first, I got to decide if fixing my Dantian is more important than her life. All of their lives. Of course, I may be worrying for nothing. Maybe we can take the side quest together.

  “Here you go,” Bob said, handing him the folded plastic sheets.

  They were still covered in muck, but Roland didn’t mind. He had discovered that storing items into his Inventory only took the items themselves and not anything extra, like dirt. Cheaper than Cleanse, not that the Skill wasn’t useful in plenty of other ways.

  “Good to go,” Bob said. Everyone voiced their agreement.

  Roland nodded. “All right. Wendy, Barton and I will check the door. We’ve got the best chance at detecting any traps or issues there. The rest of you, set up at the intersection and keep an eye on both sides.”

  They had checked the intersection. It led to a longer tunnel that ran fifty yards, twenty-five per side from the junction. Each end was blocked by a door identical to the one his element was about to inspect. They planned to start with the door closest to the ladder, then move on to the other two.

  Roland Analyzed the metal surface. Barton was using one of his bizarre Rules Skills, and Wendy tried (and failed) to cast Extended Senses on the other side of the door.

  Dungeon Door (F-Grade)

  This Door can be destroyed (Damage Resistance: 30, Durability: 500/500.

  This Door will bar all attempts to observe or move to the other side (D-Grade counter-scrying and counter-travel capabilities).

  This Door is locked and trapped. You lack the Skills needed to unlock the door or study and remove the trap. Untrained attempts have a high likelihood of failure.

  “And nobody picked a Rogue,” Roland grumbled. “Well, Josh did, just a useless type.”

  “Rogues suck,” Barton said. “Anyway, I ran System Analysis on the door. It’s got a neat trap attached to it. Well, neat and gross.”

  “What does it do?”

  “If the door takes more than a hundred points of damage, or if you fail a Lockpicking check, openings will form there, and there,” Barton said, pointing at spots on each side of the wall, near the top. “There is a river of raw sewage running on both sides of this tunnel. The openings will send it pouring down on top of us. The water pressure will hit like firehoses, so anyone near the door will get pummeled.”

  “Gross,” Wendy said.

  “Like I said. But still neat.”

  “Neat? This place wants us dead,” Wendy told him. “I can feel it, coming from the walls. It wants to kill us. It wants to grow, spread its spawn, and kill anything that isn’t its spawn. Evil.”

  “Dungeons are basically murder factories,” Barton said. “I don’t know if they are truly evil or just single-minded. Killing outsiders and reproducing are basic biological imperatives, after all.”

  Wendy just stared at him like she’d encountered a type of bug she’d never seen before. And the bug had started talking.

  “Anyway,” Barton continued, nervously making the gesture of pushing his glasses back even though he no longer needed or wore them. “As far as traps go, it’s pretty humane. It’s not insta-kill, you just get drenched in sewer juice and banged around a little, then you have to run to one of the other exits and try to get them open before the tunnel is completely flooded.”

  Wendy glanced up at the – far too low – ceiling. “Flooded?”

  “Well, yeah. The way the trap kills is not by the sudden inrush of sewer water. It’s drowning after the tunnel fills up with it,” he smiled, and Wendy shuddered.

  “We could batter down one of the doors before we drown,” he continued. “Even then, we’d get chased by the flow. Water likes to go everywhere. All fluids do, really, even those with high viscosity. They just take longer.”

  “I... I see,” Wendy said.

  Roland thought that what she saw was the reason why nobody invited Barton to normal social functions, at least not more than once.

  “Fortunately,” Barton added, sounding just as if he was about to argue with Bob about some obscure gaming rule. “I’m here. And I’ve got a plan.”

  * * *

  “You sure you got the math down?” Bob asked as the party got ready.

  “Bloh-dee, Dee?” Bloodykee added, because that crap never got old.

  “Yes,” Barton said.

  “Hope it was worth it, spending half an hour to get your Skill leveled up.”

  Barton had spent that time casting Rules Exemption at other Party members, disrupting their Skills and abilities for up to one second. After about fifty repetitions, the Skill ticked up to Beginner 2, giving him two seconds to deactivate a System effect.

  Twenty minutes of trying to raise it to Beginner 3 did nothing. Even when Barton had them target him with hostile Skills, he didn’t get there. Practice could only get you so far, it seemed.

  “Two seconds should be enough,” Barton said. “Now I can deactivate the trap trigger long enough to blow it up.”

  A pound of C-4 was duct-taped to the door, right over the handle. Nobody was sure if it would be enough, but a pound sounded like a lot. The alternative would have been to try to destroy the door with a volley of their Skills, but after running the numbers, they didn’t know if they could inflict five hundred points of damage over two seconds, especially with the attacks being reduced by the door’s Damage Resistance.

  On paper, it looked doable, but the risk wasn’t worth it.

  Everybody gathered at either side of the intersection, out of the path of the explosion. Except for Barton, who peeked around the corner to keep the door in his sight. Bob was right behind him, holding the remote detonator, a civilian version of the RAMS used in the military.

  They had tested it to make sure the Mana levels hadn’t messed with the electronics, and it seemed to be okay so far. Maybe F-Grade Dungeons weren’t strong enough to damage electronics, or maybe the effect was cumulative, and things would get worse the longer they were inside. Roland didn’t know.

  “On my mark,” Barton said, sounding as authoritative as the occasional times he took over DM duties.

  “Ready,” Bob confirmed.

  “Now!” Barton shouted.

  Roland stepped out and dragged Barton out of the line of fire.

  He was pretty sure they were far enough from the detonation. After being at ground zero of one of those, however, he didn’t think there was such a thing as too safe.

  The explosion was loud enough to make anyone thankful they had hearing protection, but all they felt from where they were standing was a strong wind. The fading echoes of the explosion were joined by the sound of something heavy and metallic hitting the ground.

  “I think the door is gone,” Bob said.

  “I love it when a plan comes together,” Barton said.

  Bob shook his head. “Don’t be jinxing us, bro.”

  “Hey, I’m just quoting from a classic TV show.”

  “Doesn’t matter. A jinx is a jinx.”

  Bob turned out to be right, of course.