Disaster. Disaster!

  It only took Matthew a look to confirm that the Major Chicken’s entrance had indeed been booby-trapped by a Dungeon reeking of Green and Orange Flux. A dozen patrons crossed the threshold without realizing the danger they were putting themselves in.

  “This is really bad, guys,” Kari echoed his concern. “There must be hundreds, thousands of people frequenting this establishment every day.”

  “I’ve already informed Crypto,” John said after texting on his phone. “She says she can quickly arrange an emergency health inspection and temporary closure, but it’ll only buy us so much time.”

  The situation was even worse than they thought. This was the closest Major Chicken to school, with the second closest being in Little Brussels. If the disappearances piled up enough to lead to a permanent closure, then bucket runs would take hours!

  “There’s no time to waste,” Matthew declared as he seized the gate and ripped it open in a wild display of sorcery. He felt no resistance whatsoever; this Dungeon gladly welcomed visitors.

  Reality shifted around the trio as they left the restaurant’s doors behind them for a vast expanse of orange dust. A vast, seemingly endless desert covered in clouded orange skies surrounded them from all sides, but that was a mere set piece for the bulk of the Dungeon itself.

  A massive castle loomed over the wasteland, topped by a capped chicken-themed tower of gold.

  The sight of the structure gave Matthew pause. He was no stranger to weird Dungeon architecture, but this one put all the others to shame. Crimson brick walls set with chicken gargoyles rose from concrete foundations. Battlements looked down from sleek towers with modern glass windows. A giant Major Chicken logo shone with bright colors atop a massive set of sliding doors while moats of frying oil filled the air with the smell of fries. A single wooden bridge merged with a drive-thru lane linked the building to the desert, complete with a speaker and a window where nonexistent clients could take their orders.

  However, Matthew cared less for the Dungeon’s appearance than for those slight pressures in the fabric of space he sensed all around him. He had only experienced that feeling a few times in the past, but never forgot it. From the pale look on her face, Kari had noticed it too.

  “There’s more than one entrance,” she said with a wavering voice.

  “It can’t be,” John replied in disbelief. “I only sensed one around the building.”

  Matthew used his Key to poke holes in those entrances to peek through them. He immediately received a glimpse of two very familiar restaurant thresholds.

  “There are two more entrances,” he warned his teammates after closing the portals. “One leads to the Little Brussels Major Chicken restaurant, the other to the one in Old Town.”

  “How could you tell?” Kari squinted at him. “Did you visit them all?”

  “Of course I did, I had to check which one was the best!” Matthew defended himself.

  “You’re saying all the Major Chicken restaurants in Evermarsh are infected?” John stroked his chin with a frown on his face. “How could that be? The entrances should be too far apart for a Dungeon to sustain them all.”

  “Could it be some sort of spatial resonance?” Kari theorized. “Maybe the Dungeon perceives all these separate restaurants as part of a single structure to infect.”

  Matthew’s heart skipped a beat in his chest as a terrifying thought crossed his mind. “Do you think it could parasitize the entire Major Chicken restaurant chain given time?”

  John’s nod inspired more dread than any monster. “It’s too early to say yet, but it’s a possibility.”

  This was a national emergency! Not only were many lives on the line, but Matthew’s favorite fast food chain risked closure at this rate!

  He furiously observed the castle and let out a sigh of relief upon sensing the core deep within the structure. The natural progression of Dungeons was to create more levels, then more entrances, then new cores. However, a few evolved to mess with that order. This specific Dungeon invested more of its power to reach out to other places over the extra security a new level would provide.

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  On one hand, it meant it could secure a vast amount of victims over a shorter amount of time; on the other hand, it meant Matthew’s crew would reach the core quickly.

  Something feels weirder than usual about this place, Matthew thought. His Doom Sense hadn’t triggered at all, not even with a distant background noise. As far as his spell was concerned, he was entirely safe. No welcoming committee either.

  “Same procedure as usual,” John said after grabbing a gun from his bag. Kari imitated him by taking out her rapier. “We evacuate the victims and then aim for the core.”

  His teammates nodded without complaint, and the three of them walked up towards the bridge. Matthew could almost taste the tension in the air alongside the smell of boiling fries. They walked up to the speaker, each of them expecting an attack, yet Matthew didn’t feel so much as a blip on his Doom Sense radar.

  He stopped in front of the speaker and studied it for a moment. It looked identical to those on a Major Chicken drive thru lane, with a single microphone and a small screen giving a simple command: ‘Please order.’ He leaned closer to the device and heard a static on the other side of its line.

  His behavior unsettled Kari. “What are you doing, Matt?”

  “Doing what we set out to do,” he replied with utmost seriousness, before gathering his breath. Here comes nothing. “I want a Major Chicken bucket, with a set of Private Tenders and two Sergeant Fries with curry sauce!”

  Silence answered his demand for a second, quickly followed by an inhuman gnarl. The screen’s words shifted into a whole new and very familiar sentence: ‘Please proceed to takeaway!’

  “The hell, Maruki?” John growled in exasperation. “We’ve got God who knows how many civilians caught in this place, and you’re ordering food?”

  “I have a plan,” Matthew replied sternly. “Just watch.”

  He walked across the bridge without hesitation, with his confused teammates following closely behind. He reached the takeaway spot right next to the castle’s entrance without incident.

  Its window opened to unveil a monstrous, rooster-like animatronic around Matthew’s size. A Major Chicken employee cap sat atop its head of yellow plastic. It stared at the trio with glass eyes devoid of intelligence and hostility.

  Matthew heard John clock his gun behind his back and quickly raised his hand to stop him. “Wait, I’ve got this.”

  “What possible reason could we have to spare a mon–”

  The mechanical chicken monster interrupted John with a parody of an animal cry, then handed a red and black bucket to Matthew. It didn’t wait for payment before snapping the window shut again. Matthew observed his new prize with apprehension, the warmth of its fried meat flowing through the cardboard.

  “It didn’t attack us?” Kari asked in surprise. Monsters always assaulted humans on sight. “What’s going on?”

  Matthew stared at the bucket for a moment, then turned to his teammates. “What are the odds that this is a mimic?”

  “Extremely high,” John replied flatly.

  Matthew would have usually agreed with him, if not for his Doom Sense spell being utterly inactive and the delightful smell of fried chicken coming from it. He slowly opened the cover to unveil its contents.

  A pile of fried chicken cooked with industrial love; sweetly prepared tenders harvested from young birds who died before their time; crispy golden fries that gleamed like the sun; and sauce so sweet that its ingestion guaranteed diabetes.

  Matthew slowly grabbed a tender and bit into it. It tasted like any standard Major Chicken offering: exquisite.

  “I don’t understand,” John admitted. “It’s a normal bucket? No poison, no sleeping drug, no hidden parasite?”

  “My Key doesn’t see anything wrong with it,” Kari replied with a mix of exasperation and annoyance. “And Matthew, seriously? Are you so hungry you would eat food coming from a Dungeon?”

  Matthew had a theory for these weird happenings, but it took crossing the sliding doors leading into the Dungeon’s ground floor to confirm it. The pervasive smell of fried chicken overwhelmed him as he walked into a fast food restaurant’s hall. The layout and décor was everything he had come to expect from Major Chicken, from the red plastic chairs to the white polished table facing posters of the eponymous mascot and his Meat Brigade. The place lacked a counter or obvious waitstaff, but apparently didn’t need those.

  Dozens of people were sitting there, ravenously eating burgers, fried chicken, fries, sundae and all the unhealthy wonders of the Major Chicken menu. Matthew noticed businessmen in suits greased with food stains, couples, and even families. They shoveled tenders after tenders into their mouths without stopping.

  Kari gulped and dared approach a table. “Mister?” she asked its occupant. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m better than alright!” the man replied with an enthusiasm that neatly contrasted with his empty and soulless gaze. “I’m not full yet!”

  John frowned at him. “How long have you been here?”

  “Since today!” the man replied without looking away from his meal. “There’s a promotion today! Free refill, cashless! You should sit down and enjoy it too! It’s not everyday you can eat for free!”

  “It’s like he doesn’t even hear us,” Kari said with a worried expression.

  “None of these people have a Key, Matsumoto,” John assessed. “The Dungeon is messing with their minds. I don’t think they even realize where they are or how much time they spent in this place.”

  Matthew found an empty table and sat there with his bucket without a word. His teammates followed his lead and swiftly tensed up when another animatronic chicken showed up out of nowhere with a plate full of drinks. It served the trio a set of pepsi cans and then walked away without a single word.

  “These monsters aren’t attacking anyone,” Kari said while shifting on her seat. “That’s… that’s not normal at all.”

  John squinted at Matthew. “You have a theory in mind, Maruki.”

  It wasn’t a question. Matthew wondered how to put his theory in very simple words, then took a deep breath.

  “Do you think it’s possible to become so dedicated to a role,” he said, “that you forget you were an actor in the first place?”

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