The smoke hung heavy in the chamber like a funeral shroud.

  The heat from the lava still pulsed, low and steady, but it no longer roared. It flickered now, quiet and dim, its strength spent in the firestorm that had ravaged Golem’s Gambit.

  The battle was won. But victory had a terrible cost.

  Stone lay broken. Entire sections of the obsidian track had been crushed beneath the stomping feet of titanic brutes. Sections of the walls bore blackened scars from corrupted magic, deep grooves where vines had split the foundation and tried to root themselves into the very bones of the dungeon.

  The magma channels would need rerouting. Traps had been obliterated. Runes cracked. Corridors collapsed.

  Dozens of constructs had fallen, their shattered forms littering Ignarok’s chamber in twisted heaps. Their cores flickered dimly—those that hadn’t already been harvested by the enemy.

  And worse still—not all of the true minions had survived.

  Caldron sat silent, hunched in the far corner of the room, repairing himself by hand. A crude patch of metal had been hammered over his chest. He worked with slow, meticulous care, speaking to no one.

  Ferron leaned on his axe like it was a cane, armor dented in three places, one eye shattered—just a soft orange glow behind cracked glass. He hadn't said a word since Tradez fell.

  Zyrris, even now glowing faintly with lingering starfire, had collapsed into quiet meditation. His floating form hovered above the floor like drifting ash. His wounds were numerous, his breath slow.

  Kagejin stood at the edge of the battlefield, cloak torn, one blade snapped at the hilt. He watched the sealed corridors in silence, like he was waiting for someone to betray them.

  And in the far shadows, by a ruined stone spire, lay the broken remains of Tradez—the diligent, loyal Item Counter Golem who had never once failed in his duty. A shattered ledger lay at his side, still open to the last page he’d been updating. A soft glow flickered in his core. Then dimmed.

  The room was silent for a long while.

  Then came the footsteps.

  Soft. Controlled. Familiar.

  Shadow stepped into the chamber.

  He moved like smoke, slipping through a half-collapsed barricade, stopping near the edge of the scorched battlefield. His cloak was torn. His armor scorched. One of his shoulders bled freely. But he stood tall.

  The reaction was immediate.

  Ferron straightened, eyes narrowing. Caldron stopped tinkering and turned his head sharply. Kagejin’s hand readied his remaining blade. Zyrris opened one eye—bright, cold, unreadable.

  No one spoke.

  Then Emil’s voice cut through the silence from the overlook above. “You have a lot of nerve walking in here.”

  Shadow tilted his head. “Probably.”

  Kagejin’s voice was quiet. Dangerous. “Give me one reason not to take your head.”

  “I gave you the only one that matters,” Shadow said calmly. “Victory.”

  The silence stretched longer. Until Brent’s voice pulsed through the chamber.

  “Stand down.”

  All eyes turned upward.

  Brent’s core glowed steadily once more. Not bright. Not boastful. But steady. Certain.

  Emil turned toward him. “Brent—he betrayed us. He fed the enemy everything.”

  “No,” Brent said. “He fed them exactly what we wanted them to see.”

  Confusion rippled across the room.

  Brent continued, “We knew they were coming. We knew we couldn’t win in a straight fight—not against something that old, that prepared. We needed leverage. A lie they’d believe. A mole they wouldn’t question.”

  He pulsed slowly.

  “Shadow volunteered.”

  The silence broke into motion—Zyrris’s eye widened. Ferron’s jaw tensed. Caldron tilted his head sharply.

  Emil stepped forward. “You planned this?”

  “We planned something ,” Brent replied. “Shadow made the plan work. He knew the Verdant Depths’ kind. Knew how to earn their trust. And he gave them exactly what they wanted: confidence.”

  Shadow gave a slight shrug. “They were so sure of themselves, they never even looked twice at me.”

  Zyrris floated lower, his voice quieter than usual. “You let them believe you betrayed us.”

  “I did betray you,” Shadow said. “To them. And then I betrayed them harder.”

  Ferron’s voice was gravel. “You could’ve told us.”

  Brent pulsed slowly. “And if the Verdant Depths were watching us? Listening through magic Shadow didn’t even know they’d placed? We had to let it be real. Even to you.”

  Kagejin’s hand lowered. He turned away without another word.

  Ferron crossed his arms and nodded once. “Still don’t like you.”

  “I wouldn’t respect you if you did,” Shadow said.

  And just like that—the tension faded. Not gone. Not forgotten. But shifted.

  They had survived.

  Together.

  Even if it meant letting one of their own become the villain—for just long enough.

  The fires had died down. The walls no longer groaned with pressure. The battlefield had gone still.

  But the damage remained.

  Rebuilding began not with grand plans or sweeping gestures—but with quiet work, done one piece at a time.

  The entrance to the Jungle Room had collapsed entirely, its vibrant foliage now scorched black and twisted into skeletal remnants. Ferron stood at the edge, calculating the best path for clearing rubble. Constructs—repaired, recharged—followed his every command as they began the slow process of excavation.

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  He didn't complain. He didn’t talk much, either. Not now. But when his axe wasn’t in his hands, a chisel was.

  And he carved the names of the fallen into a growing stone near the magmafall. The first name carved deep and clean:

  TRADEZ

  The Clockwork Chaos Cavern had to be fully restructured. Gears no longer turned. Belts had snapped or melted under the surge of wild mana. Mechard, the dungeon’s eccentric construct engineer, re-emerged from his hidden lab days after the battle, mumbling to himself about “rot-resistant casing” and “adaptive flux shielding.” No one understood what he was saying, but the repairs began. Slowly. Methodically.

  Caldron, wrapped in a new outer shell hammered together from scrap metal and painted with jagged lightning bolts, helped him rebuild the polarity fields—even if his limbs occasionally sparked and rebooted mid-sentence.

  The Magmaflow Channel had cracked. Lava still moved, but its flow was wild—unpredictable. Vulcanis spent every hour dragging slabs of heat-resistant stone into place, reshaping the pathways, muttering about "recalibrating the heart of the forge." He worked alone, mostly. But if you looked closely, his hammers moved slower when passing by where the fallen lay.

  Ignarok hadn’t moved much since the battle. He knelt in the center of his chamber, silent, head bowed, as if listening to the heartbeat of the dungeon. Perhaps he was. The others let him be.

  In the Core Room, Brent pulsed quietly, channeling what mana he could into structural restoration. Some corridors had to be sacrificed—sealed off to redirect power into more essential areas. Rooms were darkened. Shortcuts removed. A dozen race features were dismantled, their energy reallocated to keep the dungeon standing.

  The game was paused. The race was postponed. But the heart still beat.

  Emil moved among the minions, helping where he could, coordinating repairs, translating Brent’s instructions, reminding everyone—gently, but firmly—that they were not done yet.

  Even Shadow worked.

  He did it without being asked. Slipped from one broken trap to another, resetting triggers, rewiring enchantments, drawing chalk lines and illusion wards over weakened doors. He never apologized. Never explained.

  But he stayed.

  And no one asked him to leave.

  The Gameroom, once a place of cheers and rivalries, stood dark and silent. The leaderboard flickered, untouched. The crystal had dimmed. But one day—it would light again.

  When the racers returned, they would never know how close this place came to dying.

  ? Only that it stood.

  Because they rebuilt it.

  Stone by stone. Gear by gear. Together.

  One month.

  That’s how long it took to rebuild what was lost. One month of ash, of stone, of solder and spell. One month of aching limbs and overdrawn mana pools. One month of silence where laughter used to echo.

  But they did it.

  Golem’s Gambit stood whole again.

  The System, in its infinite neutrality, had locked the dungeon from public access the moment the invasion began. A failsafe to prevent adventurers from stumbling into annihilation. But now, it had marked the dungeon as officially “Defended with Honor.”

  And the best part?

  There were penalties for failed invasions.

  The Verdant Depths had paid the price. A hefty chunk of its Dungeon Points—nearly a third—was siphoned and delivered directly to Golem’s Gambit, awarded as part of the system’s adjudication. A cold, impartial justice.

  Brent used every bit of the points to restore what mattered. He didn’t build new wings or flashy rooms. Not yet. He rebuilt the old ones.

  Exactly as they had been.

  And now—on the eve of reopening—the dungeon breathed again.

  The Gameroom sparkled with soft light, every crystal display humming smoothly. The leaderboard had been reactivated, its surface gleaming with new polish. Gliders were cleaned. Decorations rehung. Even the prize chests had been restocked—plus a few bonus trinkets, just because.

  The halls were filled with laughter again. Not battle cries. Not war drums. Laughter.

  Caldron spun in lazy loops across the ceiling, shouting something about “celebratory sparks” and accidentally blowing out a chandelier.

  Ferron chased him with a new broom.

  Zyrris floated above the gathering crowd, his robes shimmering with stars that pulsed in rhythm to a silent celebration only he seemed to hear.

  Vulcanis manned a forge-station near the back of the hall, handing out “commemorative ingots” he insisted were totally useful and not just shiny metal bricks.

  Even Ignarok loomed at the rear of the chamber—watching. Not moving. But present. The fire in his eyes burned warm. In the rebuild, Brent had increased the size of some of the corridors to accommodate the large minion.

  Shadow stood off to one side, arms crossed, watching it all unfold. He didn’t smile. But he didn’t leave either.

  Kagejin perched near the rafters, relaxed in the way only someone expecting a fight could look, but at peace.

  Emil stood among them, Brent taking his usual position in the dungeon vision above it all.

  “You should say something,” Emil said quietly. “They’ll want to hear it from you.”

  Brent’s glow pulsed softly. “I’ve never been great with speeches.”

  Emil gave him a sidelong look. “You literally monologued at a thousand-year-old vine tyrant.”

  Brent let out a pulse that felt suspiciously like a chuckle. “…Okay. Fair.”

  He reached out through the mana lines and activated the intercom rune, his voice flowing gently through every crystal in the dungeon.

  “Hey. Everyone. Just… take a moment. Look around.”

  The noise in the Gameroom quieted, the laughter dimming as eyes turned upward.

  Brent’s voice continued, steady and warm.

  “We built this place with the idea that people could come here and have fun. Compete. Laugh. Push themselves... and maybe a bit of danger and death.”

  “We didn’t know we’d be fighting for our lives. That we’d lose good friends. That we’d have to stand together, not just as a team, but as a family.”

  A pause. A glow. Sincere and soft.

  “I want each of you to know… I see what you’ve done. What you gave up. How hard you fought. I know we’ve all been tired. Hurt. Even angry. But you stayed. You kept going.”

  “You built this. Not just the dungeon. The dream.”

  A long, resonant pulse.

  “Thank you. All of you. For your strength. Your fire. Your faith. Golem’s Gambit stands because of you. ”

  There was a long, quiet moment. No one spoke.

  And then Ferron raised his axe, grinning.

  “TO THE GAMBIIIIT!”

  A roar of voices followed.

  And deep below, Brent’s glow pulsed bright as the final system notification chimed across the dungeon:

  Public Access Restored. Welcome, Challengers.

  The doors began to open.

  The ground rumbled with power, the main gates parting slowly. Sunlight spilled in from the outer world—Marshalldale’s adventurers already waiting beyond, their cheers echoing down the entry corridor.

  The music began to play again.

  The gameroom flickered to full light.

  The race was back.

  And this time, the world would know—

  Golem’s Gambit doesn’t fall.

  End of Book 1

  Thank you to everyone who made it this far and joined me on this journey. I truly hope you enjoyed the ride that is Starting Line. I’ll be taking a short break to focus on Book 4 of Grand System Vending, but I fully intend to return soon to dive into the next phase of Dungeon Grand Prix. I’ve got three books planned in total, and I can’t wait to share what’s coming next!

  If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review. It helps others discover the book and gives new readers insight into why it resonated with you. Your comments, feedback, and suggestions have meant the world to me. I’ve read every single one—and many of them have influenced how I plan to refine and edit the book. You’ve been amazing.

  If you’d like to stay connected, you can find me on Patreon and Facebook, where I’m very active and always excited to chat with fans of the genre (I’m one too!). Whether you have questions, comments, critiques, or just want to talk shop—I’d love to hear from you.

  And if you’re eager for more, Book 4 of Grand System Vending is already live on Patreon! I’ve posted 26 chapters so far, and I’m writing more nearly every day. It’s going to be a fun, wild ride—and I hope you’ll come along for it.

  May your journey be as grand as your imagination allows,

  —MaxwellAuthor