Esteemed Journal,

  The only way to control fate is to bully it into submission. Nothing—and Lionel meant nothing—can be left up to chance.

  The bribes were paid. The information gathered, cross-referenced, annotated, and colour-coded upon his System interface. And there were the charts. Oh, the charts.

  He had data on viewer numbers, on which Delvers had been delightfully squashed last season, and what kind of screaming attracted the most sponsors. He even had graphs comparing Delvers’ mortality rates to audience retention curves—because, as every entertainment executive knows, a little bit of blood goes a long way, provided it’s someone else’s.

  And the data all pointed in one glittering, neon direction: this season was going to be spectacular. The forums whispered. The sponsors preened. The money murmured sweet nothings in the dark. Even the System—usually about as emotional as a toaster—was humming in anticipation, as if it knew something Lionel didn’t.

  All he had to do was find the right Dungeon—the perfect one, the one that would let him catch the tailwind of fortune and ride it all the way to stardom, or at least to a tax bracket where stardom could be safely outsourced.

  Everything had to be perfect. And if perfection refused to cooperate, well—he was fully prepared to bribe it too.

  ***

  "Alphonse!"

  The young drow was absorbed in his checklist as Lionel approached, gloved fingers flicking through his own System interface with the precise disinterest of someone paid to care, but not too much.

  Unlike the cramped, oil-slicked tunnels that had brought Lionel here, Launch Pit C was the picture of busy opulence—if your picture of opulence included goblins in impeccable tuxedos balancing trays of shrimp, strawberry, and cheese canapés alongside bunnygirls wielding bottles of sparkle liquor the size of their torsos. An occasional ogre bouncer lumbered past, stepping onto carefully marked pads on the floor and promptly vanishing upwards with a muffled whumph! as they were catapulted through the ceiling to the auction hall above.

  There was clearly some sort of theme to this year’s Grand Auction. Lionel just hadn’t figured out what it was yet. Possibly Excess with a Chance of Violence.

  Alphonse didn’t look up. His stylus flicked, marking off yet another name as a particularly massive orc butler was flung skyward in a graceful arc. “Your shift already finished?”

  "I let Mira take over," Lionel said, waiting for his colleague to take the hint.

  Alphonse’s stylus paused. His deep-set eyes flicked up, sweeping Lionel over with the practiced scrutiny of someone who had long ago stopped expecting good news.

  No longer wearing the usual red-tinted overcoat of the elevator operators, Lionel’s black pants and white shirt left him stranded somewhere in the fashionably ambiguous zone where he could be mistaken for either a well-dressed servant or a particularly underdressed noble. His pale complexion tended to point most toward the latter.

  “Oh.”

  That single syllable carried the weight of entire conversations. It was the universal acknowledgment of Ah, I see, things have reached the ‘bold and stupid’ portion of the evening.

  “Is it time?”

  Lionel gave a short nod, trying to feel good about it. He did, sort of. Besides the “No matter what previous experience may indicate, the universe isn’t spiteful enough to conspire against you… right?” part of his mind, he was at least confident that waiting any longer wouldn’t do him any favors.

  Alphonse sighed. He flicked through his clipboard, plucked the bottom-most sheet from the stack, and handed it over.

  “Here. Three different sellers you’ll want to keep an eye on. Unless, of course…”

  “I’m buying a Dungeon,” Lionel said, pointedly taking the paper from Alphonse’s fingers before he could finish that sentence.

  The drow shrugged. “Just saying. You’d do great as a—”

  “I’m buying a Dungeon.” Lionel repeated, more firmly this time. “Dungeons are predictable. Trustworthy. Delvers are not.”

  Alphonse’s eyebrow arched, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly—a rare sign of amusement from the typically gloomy man. “And yet, you somehow managed to predict the exact outcome of this year’s newbie rankings?”

  Lionel’s jaw tightened. He knew where this was going.

  “I’ve earned quite a bit of spare change listening to your predictions, you know? Fine silver.”

  The drow grinned, an expression that might have been friendly if not for the general abundance of sharp teeth involved. Possibly why he didn’t smile often.

  Lionel exhaled through his nose. “Just a lucky guess.”

  He kept his tone neutral, though the familiar flicker of irritation stirred in his chest.

  He had seen the winning reel of the recent pre-season preperations. Repeatedly.

  Cassandra, standing triumphantly before a freshly cleared dungeon core, flanked by her annoyingly photogenic band of newbie adventurers. The hardest Second Layer dungeon in years, defeated with flying colors. As expected.

  She had sent him the footage. Dozens of times.

  Always with the same infuriatingly cheerful message: So, how’s things going on your end?

  Lionel took a deep breath, rubbed his temples, and forcibly redirected his thoughts before they could spiral into another Cassandra-related headache.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "Anyway," he said, scanning the Launch Pit. "Which pad will take me where I need to go?"

  Alphonse didn’t even look up as he gestured over his shoulder, pen pointing at a pair of launch pads. “C-13 or C-14, whichever you feel like.” He paused, then added, “Just avoid—”

  His words trailed off. Both of them turned as the unmistakable pitter-patter of frantic bare feet echoed through the chamber.

  A wild-eyed gnome was sprinting toward them at a speed usually reserved for rodents fleeing kitchen fires.

  Behind her, two massive ogres rounded the corner, their thundering steps making the floor tremble. One of them bellowed, "STOP RIGHT THERE!" in a voice that Lionel could feel in his ribcage.

  The gnome did not stop.

  She did, however, leap onto the nearest launch pad.

  “You’ll never catch me alive!” she cried, spinning around mid air to raise both middle fingers towards her pursuers.

  For one glorious second, she soared in gleeful mockery.

  Then she hit the ceiling with an audible splat.

  A moment of silence followed, filled only by the faint, sticky noise of a gnome slowly peeling off a surface she was never meant to reach.

  “Just avoid the red-marked ones,” Alphonse finished, groaning. “They are currently not in use.”

  To his credit, he barely paused as he strode forward to take control of the situation. “There’s a mop and scoop in the broom closet, Brashk,” he called to the closer of the two ogres, who now looked more sheepish than anything that size had any right to be. “And I thought I warned you about chasing people in here, you big, lumbering—”

  Lionel tuned the rest out as he quietly turned in the opposite direction.

  C-14, he thought, briskly making his way over.

  Let’s stick to lucky number C-14.

  ***

  For as long as the Nexus had existed, so too had an alarming number of locations where legality was less of a rule and more of a polite, but largely ignored, suggestion.

  Nowhere embodied this quite as flamboyantly as the Neo Nexus Auction Hall. (Totally unaffiliated with the Nexus itself, of course. For tax purposes. And to avoid any unpleasant conversations with rights groups that might take a dim view of their more morally flexible business practices.)

  It was a glittering, chaotic palace of high finance, low morals, and absolutely no refunds. The golden ceiling stretched so impossibly high that even the rules of architecture had been forced to acknowledge the sheer amount of wealth being flung about. Chandeliers hovered lazily in midair, as though gravity had been taken aside and given a firm warning. The carpets were so thick and luxurious that lesser beings had been known to vanish into them entirely, only to re-emerge days later, dazed but oddly relaxed.

  It was, in short, the sort of place where fortunes were made, lost, and—on at least three documented occasions—stolen mid-transaction. For those who preferred a more predictable form of financial ruin, there was a casino next door.

  Standing in alcove C-14, marked with the signage for: “Servants Only!” in five universally recognized languages, Lionel took a moment to carefully smooth out his shirt and correct his hair—being launched through the floor wasn’t exactly a graceful experience—before stepping aside just in time to avoid being impaled by the goblin butler that shot up behind him.

  The butler, an elderly and distinguished gentleman by goblin standards, gave him a sideways glance, suggesting Lionel’s mettle had been measured and found lacking, before striding purposefully into the auction hall. His silver tray was piled high with freshly loaded accoutrements, every clink and clir it let off sounding like a brave challenge ready to battle an endless tide of peckish, interdimensional travelers.

  Lionel, not wanting to risk being forcefully joined with any other servants, followed after him, but the goblin butler had already vanished into the bustling crowd, much like a pickpocket at a banker’s convention.

  The bustle outside the alcove hit him like a living, breathing thing.

  The sheer level of activity inside Hall-Carmius was staggering, and not in the polite, "Oh my, what a lively gathering" way—more in the "Someone has spiked the punch with something that may or may not violate interdimensional trade laws" way.

  To his left, a cluster of clattering skeletons in immaculately pressed bowler hats were locked in a cutthroat bidding war over a vintage 13th-era Dungeon Core. The listing assured potential buyers that it was "only slightly haunted," which, in the world of dungeon real estate, was about as reassuring as "mostly non-cursed" or "absolutely no longer sentient (probably)."

  To his right, a pair of floating eyeballs were deep in contemplation over a collection of Antique Death Traps, advertised with the proud declaration: "Tested (but not Approved) by Professional Delvers!" There was also a smaller sign beneath it reading, "Survivors Recommend: Don't."

  Further along, a particularly well-groomed demon was inspecting a squadron of goblin butlers—similar to the one Lionel had just encountered. They stood at rigid attention, their expressions the very picture of professionalism—though the picture in question looked suspiciously like something drawn by an optimistic child who had never met an actual goblin. Their description boasted: "Polite, Well-Trained, and Only a 3% Chance of Treachery!" which, in fairness, was a statistical improvement over most political candidates.

  Leftovers from this year’s staff? Best not to think about it.

  Especially as, in his brief moment of inattention, a lumbering troll nearly knocked him over to a grunted, “Watch it, asshole,” before plowing further through the dense crowd.

  Lionel adjusted his cuffs—the kind of small, dignified motion that implied such encounters didn’t bother him, even as a fireball roared past his head and removed a good deal of the surrounding air’s confidence.

  But he wasn’t here for novelties. He wasn’t here for sightseeing, no matter how combustible the local scenery was proving to be. And he most certainly wasn’t here for the so-called “relics,” even the ones labelled 100% Guaranteed Not to Contain Any Remaining Cosmic Horrors!

  He was here to start his lucrative life as a Dungeon Master.

  So, as a trio of cackling wizards zoomed overhead on what appeared to be stolen janitorial supplies—a broom, a mop, and, most alarmingly, a pair of toilet brushes wobbling dangerously beneath a set of high heels—he just pressed forward through the chaos.

  Nearby, a squad of scorched security guards attempted to assert order, moving with the desperate precision of men who had already failed at least twice today and who had long since given up on the idea of hazard pay.

  ***

  Not long after Lionel reached the heart of Hall-Carmius, the grand stage floating above the crowd’s eager heads lit up.

  An announcer, bedecked in garments so aggressively fashionable it was outlawed in at least two dimensions, spread his arms wide, beaming like a man whose bank account had just received a suspiciously large deposit.

  “And now, what you have all been waiting for…”

  A breath of anticipation hushed the hall. The kind that fell over crowds when history was about to be made, fortunes were about to change hands, and at least one out of three participants were about to realize, far too late, that they had spent all their money on the wrong thing.

  “The freshly harvested dungeons of the Surface Layers are now…”

  The crowd inhaled as one.

  “…UP FOR SALE!”

  There was a pause. A collective intake of sheer, unfiltered capitalism.

  Then, chaos.

  The bidding war ignited like a fuse in a fireworks factory, complete with shouting, wild gesturing, and at least one enchanted paddle smacking its owner in the face in an overenthusiastic attempt to raise itself. System Credits, soul contracts, and exotic currencies began changing hands at speeds that suggested several financial crimes were being committed in real-time.

  But Lionel was already gone.

  Anything going up on that stage was far beyond his current financial situation—which, at present, could be best described as "aspirational." To him, this was the time to slip away and do some bidding of his own, in places where things were a little less…competitive. And a lot less likely to require selling one’s own name to afford.

  He glanced down at the paper clutched in his hand, taking in the three names scrawled across it:

  Achim’s Pavilion of Surface-Layer Wonders!

  Bac’s Brutal Stoneworks (Finer masonry you won’t find at this price. No, really, try.)

  The third one seemed almost like an afterthought, written hastily and a bit off-center:

  Iv & Ix’s Stall of Good Deals!