Chapter 111: Backlog
Max had built an entire country, and somehow the first thing waiting for him the next morning was a broken chair.
It sat beside the Sanctuary hospital with one leg tied in place by a strip of cloth. Someone had propped a note against the seat asking whether the dungeon could repair it.
Max stopped long enough to read the note, then looked toward the carpenter’s shop across the square. Its doors were open. Three finished chairs stood in the window.
"That one is not yours." Anna said, referring to the fact that the chairs origin did not originate in the dungeon.
"Everything in the Sanctuary is technically inside my dungeon."
"That does not make every loose chair leg your responsibility."
Max lifted the chair and carried it across the square. The carpenter accepted it with the long-suffering expression of someone who had already explained the same thing to several customers.
"Two dungeon coins if the joint only needs glue," the carpenter said. "Four if I have to replace the leg."
Max set the note on the seat. "Charge whoever left this."
"Of course, Dungeon Master."
The small exchange answered a question that had appeared more often since Corathen opened. Max could solve almost any ordinary problem inside his territory by spending DP. That did not mean he should. If someone wanted a chair repaired, a fire ring built, or a leaking roof patched, there were people capable of doing the work.
His power was better reserved for things no carpenter could make.
Anna walked beside him toward the Undercity. "How many requests were waiting this morning?"
"One hundred and fourteen."
"How many required you?"
"Seven."
"And how many claimed they required you?"
"All of them."
The Sanctuary had changed after each of the first four levels opened. The arena, Skyyard, Masquerade Castle, Grand Map Room, and other attractions gave adventurers places to train and compete without entering a dungeon level. Corathen had changed the scale of every request. People no longer asked only for another tavern room or a larger equipment shop. They wanted roads to distant cities, portals beside their favorite hunting grounds, additional graveyards, guaranteed monsters, private guild compounds, and direct routes to every settlement marked on the map.
Some requests were reasonable. Reasonable did not mean urgent.
Quin waited in Max’s office with four stacks of paper placed across the desk. He had labeled them with wooden tiles.
NOW.
SOON.
LATER.
NO.
The last stack was the largest.
Its top request asked Max to place a private graveyard inside a guild compound in Corathen. The next asked him to refill every monster territory within a day’s walk of the starter village each night. A third proposed moving the country’s capital closer to the arrival gate because several merchants considered the current journey inconvenient.
Max returned all three without opening a menu.
A graveyard was part of Level Five’s resurrection network, not a guild furnishing. Wild monsters reproduced according to the territories he designed. The capital had stood beside its rivers for centuries of invented history and would not move because new visitors disliked the road.
The requests were not foolish because people wanted convenience. They were foolish because they treated an entire country as if nothing inside it mattered until an adventurer arrived.
"I thought the dungeon menu was supposed to save paper." Max said.
"It does." Quin tapped the NO stack. "These are the ones submitted on paper after the menu rejected them."
Anna took the chair behind her smaller desk and opened her dungeon clipboard. "What actually needs the dungeon masters attention?" She aasked.
"The defense dungeon reservation, the runic tablet trial, and a party waiting outside the eastern entrance to the Orc Highlands."
Max glanced at the time. "Perrin’s group?"
"Yes. They asked for no assistance. They only notified the hospital that they intended to use the alternate route again."
That was not a request Max needed to answer. Perrin’s party had discovered the hidden escape from the arena preparation room weeks earlier. They had freed the prisoners, crossed most of the camp, and died at the eastern gate while fighting the Warchief’s Brother. Since then, they had returned to the standard route to improve their equipment and practice the skills their failed attempt exposed.
They had not forgotten the hidden route.
Neither had Max.
"Leave the viewing record available." He said. "I want to see whether their changes work, but I’m not going to hover over them from the first minute."
Quin moved the top page from NOW to an empty space beside the piles.
"Golden Axe reserved the defense dungeon for tomorrow." He continued. "They submitted a roster of twenty-five, six replacements, two command diagrams, and an inventory so long that Hizon accused them of attempting to move into his fort."
"Are the replacements entering?" Anna asked.
"No. They are available if someone is unable to participate before the event starts. Once the gates close, the roster is fixed."
Golden Axe’s previous record stood at thirty-four hours and fifty-six minutes. They had completed ten waves and still had seventeen adventurers alive when the merchant died. Surviving had not mattered. The defense dungeon had one absolute failure condition. If any of the six merchants died, all twenty-five participants lost.
The guild had spent the weeks since that attempt studying the record instead of blaming the scenario.
"Hizon can choose his waves?" He asked.
"Within the existing rules," Quin said. "He cannot change the total strength budget or invent new forces after the event begins. He can decide when to use the giant insects, where to pressure the walls, and which periods include the merchants’ supply windows."
"Good. If Golden Axe prepared for the last sequence, he should be allowed to give them a different one."
Anna looked at the next item. "The tablet workshop sent test results."
Quin’s expression brightened. Of the projects waiting for attention, the damaged runic tablet was the one most likely to occupy him for an entire day.
Lessa Vorn still owned the device. Gibble-Hammer had repaired its bronze frame, replaced two copper keys, and stabilized the crystal that projected archived runic patterns. The thirty-day trial allowed the workshop to test the device with Max’s trainer, shielded room, and materials. It did not allow them to sell anything created with it.
The condition for success had sounded simple when Max set it.
Reproduce the same pattern ten times without variation.
The warming rune had behaved properly on a single copper plate. The second attempt contained a slight change near one corner. The third produced an identical visible shape but pushed heat unevenly through the metal.
The tablet could display a rune. It had not yet proven it could be used for repeatable work.
"They completed seven copper plates yesterday." Anna said. "The inspector rejected the sixth. Lessa wants to begin again this afternoon."
"She doesn’t have to start from the beginning every time she makes a bad one," Max said.
"She says she does. The agreement requires ten consecutive copies."
Max reread his own wording and found that Lessa was right. He had wanted proof that the device produced stable results rather than one good plate among a pile of failures.
"Then let her continue."
Quin slid that page aside. "That leaves the transportation problem."
The model of Corathen appeared above the center of Max’s desk. Light spread across mountain chains, forests, roads, rivers, and cities. Most visitors still occupied a relatively small southern region. Even there, distance had become the most common complaint.
The trip from the starter village to Redbrook took hours. Reaching the capital required days by ordinary wagon. Dwarven strongholds, elven forests, orc cities, and the northern forts were much farther away.
Max had intentionally avoided placing portals everywhere. If adventurers could jump between every marked location, roads would lose their value. So would inns, caravans, roadside villages, patrols, airports, and most reasons to explore the land between cities.
That did not mean everyone should walk.
"The large dwarven airships already have fixed routes between major cities." Max said. "They can carry people who pay the fare."
"Once the passengers reach an airport." Anna pointed out. "The closest one to the starter village still requires a week of travel."
"And the airships will not leave their routes to land beside someone’s quest." Quin enlarged the southern road. "Corathen’s residents have horses, wagons, riding lizards, riverboats, and several regional animals. Visitors can buy the same things, but the system does not currently recognize any of them as personal dungeon mounts."
A personal mount needed rules that an ordinary horse did not.
If an adventurer purchased a real animal from a Corathian stable, that animal remained part of the persistent world. It needed food, shelter, and care. If someone rode it into a monster’s jaws, it could die. Max would not quietly restore it under a new identity unless it was one of the eternal souls governed by Level Five’s population rules, and even then it would not return as the buyer’s property.
A dungeon mount could work differently. It could be summoned when needed, dismissed when travel ended, and protected from permanent death by disappearing after taking damage.
The idea solved distance without turning every road into a meaningless stretch between portals.
It also created questions that need to be answered ahead of time.
"No instant escape." Max said. He didn’t want people to be able to instantly summon a mount and run away from whatever situation they were in. Retreat and fleeing were all sound tactical decision but he couldn’t make it too easy.
Quin nodded. "Summoning fails while the owner is combat-locked."
"And it should take long enough that someone cannot break line of sight for two seconds and vanish on horseback."
"Thirty seconds?" Anna suggested.
"For a basic land mount. Longer for anything that flies."
The summoned creature would disappear after one or two meaningful hits, depending on its quality. It would not fight. Once dismissed by damage, it would have a cooldown before its owner could summon it again.
That made it transportation, not an extra party member or a shield someone could repeatedly place between themselves and danger.
Max added the framework to SOON.
He did not activate it.
Quin noticed where Max was looking on the model. "You were waiting for someone to unlock it."
"The same way I waited to deploy the Arena and Skyyard. An attraction means more when adventurers understand where it came from."
Anna smiled. "And if Perrin fails again?"
"Then the mounts wait."
The unexplained notice appeared at the edge of Max’s vision.
[Champion Establishment Period Remaining: 21 Days.]
It offered no new information. The Dungeon Core still knew nothing about it. Searching the dungeon menus revealed no competition, challenger, sponsor, or condition that explained what would happen when the number reached zero.
Max shifted his attention away from the notice. It remained at the edge of his interface.
Then the eastern entrance to the Orc Highlands activated.
Perrin’s five-person party passed through the portal and entered the stone preparation room they had escaped once before.
The arena wall had not yet begun to rise. The mage placed one hand against the scratched section of stone. The scout knelt beside the seam and slid a narrow hook toward the hidden metal pin.