Chapter 120: Thirteen Days
The countdown reached thirteen days while Max was trying to hit Quin.
[Champion Establishment Period Remaining: 13 Days.]
The colorless notice appeared at the edge of his vision without interrupting the training chamber. It provided no explanation, no list of rules, and no indication of where the First Challenge would occur.
Max ignored it for half a second too long.
Quin’s sheathed sword struck him across the ribs.
The force sent Max sliding over the stone floor. He caught himself with one hand, shaped the ground beneath his feet, and changed direction before Quin’s next step.
Max vanished.
Phantom Strike carried him behind his opponent. The blunt training dagger in his hand moved toward Quin’s shoulder.
The swordsman turned without drawing his weapon.
The sheath stopped Max’s wrist.
"You looked at it." Quin said.
Max pulled away before the counterattack. "It appeared in front of me."
"An enemy will appreciate your willingness to read during a fight."
Earth rose between them in three angled ridges. Quin cut through the first with the sealed sword, stepped around the second, and discovered that the third was not intended to block him. It changed the position of his rear foot long enough for Max to enter from the side.
The dagger touched Quin’s coat.
Quin’s elbow touched Max’s chest.
Both stopped.
"Better." Quin said.
Max dismissed the stone ridges. Sweat darkened the collar of the simple training shirt he wore instead of one of his enchanted suits.
The chamber beneath the manor no longer contained the metal dummies he had purchased during the dungeon’s first weeks. Max had outgrown them long ago. Some had been moved to the public training halls. Others remained in storage as reminders of a time when ten basic machines felt like useful opponents.
Quin had become his most reliable training partner. Not because Max couldn’t defeat him, but because Quin was exceptionally good at identifying every shortcut and habit Max relied on too often.
"Again." Max said.
"You have a meeting."
"In twenty minutes."
"Anna said its in ten."
Max looked toward the door.
Anna stood there with her clipboard tucked beneath one arm.
"I said fifteen." She corrected.
Quin lowered the sheathed sword. "Then he is late in five."
Max suspected the two of them had planned that exchange.
Anna entered after the training chamber deactivated. She handed Max a towel and waited until his breathing slowed before opening the clipboard.
She did not ask him to stop training. The unknown challenge worried her. Watching Max prepare worried her less than watching him pretend nothing might happen.
"The emergency route test is complete." She said. "The Sanctuary hospitals can accept redirected resurrections from every Level Five graveyard."
"At the same time?"
"Not millions at the same instant. Nothing we possess can test that without actually killing millions of people."
"Let us skip that test." Quin said.
Anna continued. "Normal Level Five deaths still use the selected graveyard if the person can pay the resurrection cost. Anyone without enough dungeon currency is sent to the Sanctuary hospital. If a graveyard is unavailable, the system attempts the nearest active location and then uses the hospital."
The rules were already in place. The test had confirmed they worked when a graveyard was deliberately disabled.
Max had not built new wards across the Sanctuary or spent DP preparing for an attack he could not describe. He had inspected the systems that protected people every day.
Quin had done the same with entrances.
"Level portals close properly." Quin said. "The surface gate, stables, and public connections can be restricted independently. If something attacks through one route, we do not need to close the others."
"Unless the challenge overrides my control."
"Then we learn that when it happens."
The notice did not originate from DC. It did not appear in the dungeon records. No market search identified the Establishment Period. Max could not dismiss it, reject it, or ask who had decided he was a champion.
DC still provided the same answer.
[No relevant information is available.]
Max believed it.
The Dungeon Core had never identified a sponsor, opponent, or competition because it knew nothing about them. Searching harder could not retrieve information that was not there.
Preparation had to begin with what they actually knew.
During the first week, Quin had attempted to find an unseen entrance by treating every boundary as compromised. He inspected the surface approach, the Crag Mountain stables, the public portals, the Level Five arrival gate, and the private connections used by Max’s people. Nothing had changed when the countdown appeared. No hidden arch waited behind a wall. No foreign mana clung to the dungeon barriers.
Anna tested communication instead.
The gnomes at every major attraction already had procedures for fires, damaged portals, missing children, and visitors who collapsed outside the hospital. She gave them neutral evacuation drills without explaining the unknown notice. Arena crowds could be moved through four exits. Skyyard vessels could be recalled to the nearest dock. Masquerade Castle could clear its ballroom without allowing hundreds of masked guests to block the bridge.
The first Map Room drill failed.
Too many visitors tried to leave by the same door while still arguing over whether an emergency instruction applied to them. Anna changed the floor markings and assigned gnomes to each terrace. The second test emptied the room in less than half the time.
None of those changes assumed an enemy would attack.
They were useful corrections to real weaknesses in a dungeon that now welcomed thousands of people each day.
Max had considered closing Corathen until the countdown ended. The thought lasted less than a minute. Shutting the gate would strand caravans on both sides, separate residents from trade, and create panic without making the unknown challenge less likely to arrive. Closing all outside connections would be worse.
If the notice eventually warned that visitors were in danger, Max would act. Until then, he would not punish everyone in his dungeon because someone else had placed two unexplained sentences in his vision.
He also refused to build a fortress around Anna and call that preparation.
The Sanctuary already made violence against her impossible. Her dungeon privileges let her use emergency portals and enter protected rooms. Anna knew the routes as well as he did. Treating her like something to hide would make both of them less capable when the challenge began.
They prepared together.
"DP reserve?" Anna asked.
"Held."
Less than two hundred million remained after Max created Corathen. It was an enormous amount by the standards of his early dungeon and a small fraction of what Level Five could eventually consume. He had continued spending on planned content such as Deepvein Mine, but he refused to empty the reserve on imagined defenses.
If the challenge required DP, he would have it.
If it involved combat, he would be ready to fight.
If it endangered the people in his dungeon, the safe zones, hospitals, and resurrection routes would matter more than a wall built against the wrong enemy.
"And if it is none of those?" Anna asked.
Max took the clipboard and looked through the completed checks. "Then we have thirteen days to discover a fourth possibility."
Quin leaned against the inactive training barrier. "There are more than four."
"You are not helping."
"I am preventing false confidence."
That was why Max kept him close.
They left the manor and crossed the Sanctuary together. The dungeon had not paused while its master watched a number fall.
The Dawnhoof Riding Grounds had a waiting line outside the beginner fields. Perrin’s alternate clear drew more parties into the Orc Highlands, but anyone could use the riding lessons whether they intended to find Prison Break or not. Teams practiced spacing on the hill route. Individual riders learned to mount without pulling their saddles sideways.
Near the central square, the Hall of Achievements displayed Golden Axe’s defense clear beside Perrin’s Elven Road record. The defense entry drew guilds studying how twenty-five organized people survived an event designed to exhaust them. The alternate route drew secret hunters carrying sketches of the Orc Highlands preparation room.
Several adventurers bowed as he passed. One thanked him for the new riding grounds. Another asked a gnome clerk where to register for the next trail race rather than stopping the Dungeon Master for ordinary instructions.
The Grand Map Room showed new travel requests toward Deepvein. Adventurers were not the only people interested. Miners wanted access to the material rewards. Craftsmen wanted to purchase crystal from returning parties. Merchants were organizing wagons toward the nearest dwarven road.
Corathen’s capital still attracted the largest flow.
It no longer attracted everyone.
Max, Anna, and Quin entered the Undercity through the broad lower road. Gibble-Hammer’s display case stood near the workshop entrance. Ten copper plates rested inside beneath Lessa’s careful description and Hammer’s less careful promise that nothing had caught fire.
The runic tablet had not transformed the workshop overnight. Its successful test created more work, more questions, and one reliable result.
That felt appropriate.
Max’s meeting concerned Deepvein and the material share returned to the settlement. Ketta Ironpick attended through a communication panel from Corathen. Lessa joined for the portion involving mana crystal samples. Hizon arrived because the Undercity’s merchants wanted to transport supplies toward the mine.
None of them knew about the countdown.
Max kept it that way.
He listened while Ketta refused to let visiting adventurers carry unstable crystal through her settlement. Lessa proposed sealed transport cases. Hizon offered carts at a price that made everyone accuse him of taking advantage of the route.
"Of course I am taking advantage." Hizon said. "There was no route yesterday."
They settled on inspection rules, approved carriers, and a small trial shipment.
Max did not use the meeting to distract himself. He conducted it because the dungeon still needed decisions unrelated to whatever happened in thirteen days.
Afterward, Anna remained in the workshop to review Lessa’s extension. Quin returned to the entrance checks.
Max walked alone toward the Sanctuary.
The colorless notice remained visible whenever he focused on it.
[Champion Establishment Period Remaining: 13 Days.]
[First Challenge will commence upon conclusion of the Establishment Period.]
He stopped at the upper bridge overlooking the central square.
Portals surrounded the fountain. Adventurers returned from the first four levels. Travelers entered the Grand Map Room carrying plans for Corathen. Gnomes directed traffic. Dwarves argued over airship parts. Elves led horses toward the riding grounds. Healers moved between the hospital and market while children chased one another beneath the false sky.
The challenge might concern Max alone.
It might concern everything below him.
He could not know yet.
Kindness did not require helplessness. Building a Sanctuary did not mean he had forgotten how to fight. The man who opened his territory to strangers was still the Dungeon Master who crossed into Hizon’s mine at the head of an army and hoped something strong enough to challenge him waited inside.
Max had become more careful since then.
He had not become weaker.
The thought brought a small smile to his face.
Thirteen days was not enough time to prepare for every possible threat.
It was enough time to make certain he met the unknown standing up.