Chapter 105: Thirty Days
The message remained when Max opened his eyes the next morning.
[Champion Establishment Period Remaining: 29 Days, 18 Hours, 43 Minutes.]
The number continued falling.
Max had spent most of the night searching every dungeon menu available to him. The words Champion and Establishment Period did not appear in his contracts, purchase records, dungeon settings, or stored messages. DC found no matching information in the market or the knowledge included with the dungeon core.
There was no option to reject the challenge.
There was not even an option to ask what it involved.
Anna entered his office carrying breakfast and found the same pages open that she had left there hours earlier.
"Did you sleep?"
"Yes."
She looked at the untouched side of the bed through the open doorway.
"A little," Max admitted.
Anna placed the tray on his desk and closed the dungeon ledger. "Then you can eat before you search the same menus again."
"I was checking whether the notice changed."
She pushed a plate toward him.
Quin arrived before Max finished eating. He had spent the night inspecting the Sanctuary entrances and confirming that no unfamiliar person or object had entered the dungeon when the countdown appeared. The search produced nothing.
"DC already confirmed the message did not originate from the dungeon," Max said.
He turned toward the floating notification. "DC, does the word champion identify me?"
[The notification is attached to the Dungeon Master’s system interface.]
"That was not my question."
[Insufficient information.]
"Does First Challenge refer to a dungeon battle?"
[Insufficient information.]
"Will it occur inside my territory?"
[Insufficient information.]
"Can it harm Anna?"
The answer took longer.
[Insufficient information.]
Max’s hand tightened around the edge of his desk.
Anna covered it with hers before he damaged the wood.
"We know one thing." She said. "It waited until thirty days remained before warning you. That suggests the period was established before last night."
"Without telling me."
"Yes."
"I dislike agreements I do not remember making."
"Then we prepare without pretending we know what we are preparing for."
Quin nodded. "We confirm the safe zones, emergency portals, and every route into the dungeon. We keep the reserve instead of spending it because the countdown makes us nervous. And we train."
The last suggestion earned Max’s attention.
Quin had seen him fight during the battle with Hizon. Anna knew he continued training, even though she preferred not to watch the more reckless sessions. Neither treated him as someone who needed to hide behind the dungeon core.
"I was already training." Max said.
"Then you train with someone who can tell you when you are relying too heavily on speed."
"You volunteer?"
"I am the only person in this room who will not hesitate to hit you because Anna is watching."
Anna smiled. "I appreciate that about you."
Max leaned back. The unknown still bothered him, but Quin’s answer gave it limits. They would not empty the dungeon’s remaining DP on defenses aimed at an enemy they could not describe. They would not frighten everyone in the Sanctuary with a warning that contained no useful instructions. They would inspect what already existed, correct real weaknesses, and remain ready.
"Only us for now." Max decided. "If the notice gives us information that affects the people here, we tell them. Until then, I am not starting a panic over two sentences."
Anna and Quin agreed.
"Good." Anna reopened her clipboard. "Then we are still taking Mira to Corathen."
Max stared at her.
"We planned it yesterday."
"There is an unexplained challenge approaching."
"In thirty days. Mira has been waiting since breakfast."
Quin stood. "I will inspect the western portal."
The traitor left before Max could ask for support.
Mira and Garrick waited near the Level Five entrance. Garrick carried a pack large enough for a week. Mira had brought a small notebook and nothing else.
"We are returning before dinner." She told her grandfather.
Mira looked toward Anna for help. Anna took Max’s hand and led the group through the portal without joining the argument.
The campground outside the starter village had become more orderly since the previous evening. The mayor had divided the field into marked sections. New arrivals had expanded the waste pits, built more stone fire rings, and posted a schedule for the public water barrels. Farmers sold hay and food from wagons. A carpenter charged dungeon coins for the use of benches and tools beneath a temporary roof.
Every change had been made by people using local materials.
Mira ignored the campground after confirming the church remained visible above the rooftops. She checked her resurrection estimate twice. Garrick checked it after her and made her select the starter village churchyard again.
"I was already assigned there." She said.
No system message would defeat her grandfather’s need to verify things personally. Mira accepted that and started toward the village.
The Sanctuary was enormous, but its boundaries were understandable. Forest surrounded one section. The lake ended at a shore. Undercity roads reached walls and gates. Even the Skyyard circled a place she could eventually walk across.
Corathen did not end anywhere she could see.
"The mountains on the map are real?" She asked.
"Yes. Everything is as real as it gets." Max answered.
Garrick adjusted the pack on his shoulders. He had not said anything since entering.
Mira stopped beside the nearest fence. The wood was gray, split in several places, and repaired with a peg cut from a different tree. She touched the newer section and used the appraisal skill from her course.
The skill remained at its earliest stage. It did not provide a complete description or price. It gave her impressions she still had to interpret.
"The peg is harder than the fence."
Garrick examined it. "Ash peg. Pine rail."
"Why use different wood?"
"Because soft pine moves with the weather. A pine peg would loosen."
Mira wrote that down.
They entered the village through the southern gate. Anna showed Mira the bakery, smithy, school, and market while Max walked with Garrick. Neither man carried the conversation for the first several minutes.
At the market, Mira found more unfamiliar materials than her instructor had shown her in a month. An orc trader sold cured hide from a six-legged grazing animal raised on the western plains. An elven woman displayed thread spun from bark fiber without making it feel like rope. A human potter used red clay that retained a faint warmth after firing.
Mira listened to all of them.
She purchased one legal sample of the bark fiber and compared three pieces of red clay before admitting she could not sense a difference.
"Good," the potter said. "There is not one."
"Then why did you give me three?"
"To see whether you would invent something."
Mira added that lesson to her notebook with enough pressure to nearly tear the page.
The village school released its students while they remained in the market. Children crossed the square carrying slates and lunch baskets. Some were human. Others had pointed ears, small horns, or the heavier builds common among young orcs.
One child asked Mira whether the Sanctuary truly contained flying ships small enough for children to race.
"They are not for children." Mira said.
The child looked disappointed.
"They are for teams of five." She added. "And the ships are more dangerous than people claim, even with the safety magic."
Garrick gave her a look.
"I watched." Mira said. "I did not pilot one."
The gray lines of her curse remained visible beneath her wrists. After an hour of walking, she sat beside the village fountain without being asked. Garrick immediately offered water, medicine, food, and the bedroll.
"Why would I need a bedroll beside a fountain?" Mira asked.
"You said you were tired."
"I sat down before you could tell me to sit."
Max purchased four cups of fruit water from a nearby stall and handed one to Garrick.
Garrick looked toward the church hill. "The curse will still progress here."
"Yes." Max answered. "And if it kills her, she wakes in that church. If she has enough dungeon coins for the local resurrection cost. Otherwise, she wakes in the Sanctuary hospital."
Mira lifted the coin pouch tied beneath her belt. "I have enough."
Garrick had checked before they left.
He looked beyond the village. Roads disappeared into hills. Farmhouses stood far enough apart that the people living in them would never hear the arrival gate. Beyond them were towns, cities, forests, rivers, and enough land that Mira could spend years traveling without seeing all of it.
The Sanctuary had saved his granddaughter’s life. Corathen gave that life somewhere to go.
At the top of the first hill, the country opened before them. The road continued north between fields before entering a line of dark trees. Smoke marked two villages beyond it. The mountains Mira had seen in the Map Room remained beyond the horizon.
Anna leaned against Max’s shoulder. He placed an arm around her and watched Mira turn slowly, trying to fit the view into the idea of a dungeon.
"I could live here." Mira said.
The statement did not mean she wanted to abandon the Sanctuary. Her lessons and friends were there. It meant that staying within Max’s influence no longer reduced her future to a collection of safe buildings.
Garrick closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, there were no walls in sight.
"You could." Hhe said.
On the walk back, Garrick stopped outside a woodworker’s shop near the southern gate. A board offered bench space and tool rental to visiting craftsmen. Across the road stood an empty building with wide doors and a faded furniture sign.
Garrick read the rental price twice.
"You already have work in the Sanctuary." Mira reminded him.
"I am only looking."
"You measured the doorway."
"It is too narrow for moving finished wardrobes."
The woodworker heard him and began defending the doorway. Within minutes, the two men were discussing local lumber, wagon access, and what it would cost to remove part of the front wall.
Mira sat beside Anna and opened her notebook.
"He brought a bedroll but not a measuring cord." she said.
"He used the strap from his pack." Anna replied.
"That means he was planning this."
Max watched Garrick examine the empty building. "He was planning for plans to change."
They returned to the Sanctuary before dinner. Garrick carried three wood samples, the unused bedroll, and the rental price for a Corathian workshop written on the back of his hand.
The countdown remained at the edge of Max’s system interface.
Twenty-nine days.
For the first time since it appeared, he managed to look at something else.