Dungeon Master (Karma System)

For three heartbeats, nothing came through them.

Max stood beside Anna in the empty dance hall while white light filled every portal arch around the Sanctuary. He had expected an attack, an announcement, or some impossible creature stepping into the room.

Instead, the interface already open in front of him changed.

[First Champion Challenge]

[Objective: Prevent the capture of your dungeon core for seven days.]

[Participation in the opposing force will remain open for the duration of the challenge.]

[Dungeon Defense State Active.]

[Normal combat-floor instancing has been suspended. Registered attackers will enter one complete defensive territory through the outer boundary of Level One. The Sanctuary and all civilian arrival routes are excluded.]

[At midnight, defeated registered attackers and defeated dungeon entities will be restored.]

[Personnel restoration will not reverse structural damage, terrain alteration, consumed supplies, secured positions, discovered routes, or acquired knowledge.]

[Patron communication and assistance remain prohibited until the challenge is complete.]

[Victory Condition: Dungeon core secure when the seventh day expires.]

Anna read the notices over his shoulder.

"That is unusually clear," she said.

"I don’t think that makes it friendly."

The portals changed again. The white covering thinned until their usual destinations returned. Redbrook appeared through one arch. The Crag Mountain arrival hall appeared through another. Travelers waiting on the far side stared into the Sanctuary with the same confusion Max saw on the faces of the gnomes nearby.

Normal access had not closed.

A new window opened beside the challenge notice. It showed a stone arch standing in a broad square beneath an unfamiliar skyline. Towers crowded both sides of the square. Bridges linked some of their upper floors, and a dozen styles of roof rose behind them. Humans filled much of the plaza, but they were far from alone. Max saw dwarves, elves, beastkin, goblins, and several races he could not name. Wagons had stopped in the streets. People leaned from windows. Bells rang from three different towers.

White fire occupied the new arch.

Its other side stood in Fey Nights.

Not the visitor entrance used by adventuring parties. The temporary gate had appeared in a clearing beyond the Sanctuary routes, at the true outer edge of Level One. The fog forest stretched behind it as one continuous territory. There were no separate copies waiting to divide the crowd into manageable groups.

"Can they reach us from there?" Anna asked.

Max checked every connection before answering. "Not through the Sanctuary. If they want anything beyond Fey Nights, they have to cross Fey Nights. Then the Orc Highlands, Level Three, the Dread Fort, and the Dead Lands."

"And Corathen."

"If they get that far."

The bells in the distant city stopped together.

A voice spoke from the white gate. Max heard it through the challenge window even though no sound crossed the portal itself.

"A dungeon has been opened for conquest. Reach its core and claim it before the seventh day ends. Exceptional rewards will be granted according to contribution. Those who fall will rise at midnight while the trial continues."

The words rolled across the square and into the surrounding streets. They did not command anyone to enter. They did not accuse Max of a crime or call his dungeon evil. They simply promised an exceptional divine reward to anyone willing to take his core.

For several seconds, the city remained still.

Then everyone began talking.

Some people backed away from the arch. Others pushed closer. An armored woman touched the white portal and pulled her hand back unharmed. A mage cast three spells at the opening before the crowd around him objected. Two city guards tried to clear a space while a man in a green coat shouted that entering an unknown divine gate without scouts was suicide.

The first attacker was a young man carrying a spear and no shield.

He stepped through alone.

He appeared in Fey Nights, looked into the silver fog, and smiled as though he had already won.

The young man quickly ran into the forest ahead of him. A red cap dropped from a branch behind him.

The young man lasted eight seconds.

His defeat did not discourage the square. It proved the gate worked.

Six more people entered together. Then twenty. Then the armored woman returned with four companions and walked through in formation. Within minutes, the guards in the distant city had lost any hope of keeping the plaza clear.

Max closed the view and opened his territory controls.

"Anna, take control of the command room for now."

She had already begun moving. "I will coordinate reports from there."

"Use the protected route."

Max opened a Sanctuary-wide announcement before she reached the door.

"The first dungeon challenge has begun. The Sanctuary remains open, but all access from the Sanctuary to combat levels is suspended until further notice. Visitors arriving through Crag Mountain are not part of the challenge. Please follow gnome instructions and remain clear of restricted portals."

The first replies came from staff rather than visitors. Portal attendants confirmed the normal arrival halls were stable. Sanctuary guards placed barriers around every combat-floor arch. Medical staff prepared for ordinary injuries even though the challenge’s defeated attackers would not be sent to the hospital. Merchants began demanding to know whether the temporary restrictions included deliveries.

Anna handled those questions while Max moved his attention to Fey Nights.

Sigmund had already gathered the satyrs.

The four-foot commander stood on a moss-covered stone while fairies carried reports from the outer forest. Quicklings waited in the ferns. Fey hounds moved in and out of the fog without disturbing it. Farther back, dryads woke the trees bordering the most direct trail from the gate.

"More than three hundred have come through." One fairy reported.

"Seven hundred." Another corrected before she landed.

Sigmund looked toward the white glow in the distance. "Then stop counting and start misleading them."

The first arrivals did not behave like an army. They behaved like thousands of people who had each been promised a reward. This was the perfect time to spread some fey brand chaos.

Parties fought for space near the gate. Treasure hunters sprinted ahead to claim the first discoveries. Several experienced groups stopped to study the forest, only to have less patient attackers shove past them and trigger whatever they were examining.

The fog separated anyone who lost sight of their companions.

Satyrs called from false trails. Fairies stole map cases and replaced trail markers. Quicklings struck exposed healers and disappeared before guards could turn. Fey hounds blinked between trees, attacking from directions the crowded invaders thought were secure.

The attackers were real people with real skills. Some were strong enough to kill defenders. A broad-shouldered dwarf shattered a red cap’s iron boot with one swing. The armored woman who had tested the portal organized nearly fifty strangers around her and drove a dryad away from the first stream crossing.

Their victories did not make them coordinated.

A mage burned away the fog in front of his party and blinded three other groups. An archer loosed an arrow at a fey hound as it vanished, striking a mercenary behind it. Two guild parties argued over a narrow bridge until the tree supporting it pulled its roots free and dropped both groups into the ravine.

Max watched the forest absorb them.

Not an instance designed for five adventurers. Not a copied boss encounter that waited for the next group after the first finished. Every attacker occupied the same forest. Every felled tree remained down. Every fire spread until someone stopped it.

That last part required his attention, he didn’t want his forest to burn down after all.

An hour into the challenge, three competing fire mages tried to clear separate paths from the gate. Their spells joined in the undergrowth and became a single front. Dryads diverted the flames away from their groves, which pushed them toward the outer boundary and the growing crowd.

Max sent rain over that section of the forest.

The downpour saved hundreds of attackers who never realized he caused it. It also left the ground deep in mud. Sigmund immediately sent satyrs to lure the next advance through it.

"You helped them." Quin observed.

He appeared beside Max on a ridge overlooking the central forest. His weapon rested across one shoulder.

"I stopped them from burning down half of Level One on the first morning."

"Those can both be true."

Max looked at the challenge gate. The flow had not slowed. People continued entering from the distant city, some in polished guild armor and others carrying equipment purchased within the last hour.

"Stay mobile." Max said. "If something breaks through that the level cannot contain, stop it. Otherwise let the defenses work."

Quin nodded. "And you?"

"I want to know what ten thousand people do to a floor built for parties of 5."

By noon, he had an answer.

They clogged it.

The most dangerous attackers could not use their full strength without striking their own side. Narrow trails became crush points. Ravines that challenged five people became walls against five hundred. The forest’s deceptions grew more effective as conflicting directions spread through the crowd.

Defeated attackers vanished from the battlefield in pale flashes. Their surviving companions learned that the promised midnight restoration did not mean immediate reinforcements. Parties that lost a healer stayed without one. Groups that spent all their potions did not receive them back.

The dungeon lost defenders too.

The armored woman’s growing column defeated two dryads and a pack of fey hounds. A guild group brought down the first of the ancient treants by pinning its roots beneath conjured stone. Elsewhere, a team of beastkin scouts found a route through the upper branches and crossed nearly a third of the forest without touching the ground.

Those were exceptions.

Most of the invaders died within sight of a place another attacker had already died.

The DP notifications became so constant that Max combined them into a single total. He read it twice.

"That seems excessive." Anna said through their communication link.

"There are a lot of them and I am not losing DP to revive them. Every time we kill one, it is pure profit."

"There are more waiting in the city than there were when this began."

Max reopened the distant view. News had spread beyond the square. People packed every street leading toward it. Vendors sold rope, food, cheap shields, and handwritten copies of advice brought back by those who retreated before dying. Guild representatives occupied balconies overlooking the gate. City officials had finally established barriers, not to stop entry, but to separate those entering from everyone trying to watch.

Max returned his attention to the forest.

He had spent six months building a route through four defensive levels, an army of more than a hundred thousand undead, and a country where the core could be hidden beneath an entire horizon.

The people entering on the first day could barely cross a forest.

This was the challenge?

He did not say it aloud. Whoever organized this had given them seven days for a reason. Still, as the total number of armed combatants continued rising and Sigmund’s forces drove another disorderly charge away from the central path, Max found it difficult to feel threatened.

Late in the afternoon, the first group reached the far threshold.

They did not do it by defeating every creature in Fey Nights. The beastkin scouts in the canopy found the correct direction. The armored woman combined their information with three surviving maps. Two guild parties agreed to stop competing long enough to protect the same advance.

Less than forty attackers remained when they saw the path into the Orc Highlands.

Sigmund met them there with every satyr he had held in reserve.

None managed to make it past him.

But one scout escaped the fight. She ran back through the forest carrying a marked map while other attackers sacrificed themselves to keep the route open. When a fey hound finally caught her near the burned clearing, she threw the map through the white gate first.

Someone in the distant city picked it up.

At midnight, silver light passed through the dungeon.

Every defeated fey defender returned. Red caps climbed from beneath roots. Fey hounds appeared beside their packs. Dryads opened their eyes in restored bodies, and the ancient treant stood again among trees still blackened by the day’s fire.

White lights answered throughout the territory held by the attackers. The young spearman who had entered first reappeared near the challenge gate. Fallen guild members returned among their companions. The armored woman’s column filled out around a camp built from cut timber beside the first stream.

The restoration repaired no bridge.

It did not raise the trees the invaders had felled, erase the broad trail burned through the eastern forest, remove their camp, or take the map from the hands of the guild representatives studying it in the distant city.

Beyond the gate, thousands of new participants waited beside everyone who had just returned.

[First Champion Challenge Remaining: 6 Days.]

Max looked at the road the attackers had made on their first attempt.

The second day would not begin at the beginning.