A long silence followed Matthew’s declaration, quickly followed by the sound of John’s hands rubbing his temples out of sheer frustration. Kari simply gave Matthew an unblinking stare for a few seconds as her logic-riddled brain struggled to accept the absurdity of their situation.

  “So, you’re saying…” Kari raised a finger, quickly lowered it in her hesitation out of fear of saying something stupid, and then finally found the courage to ask. “You’re saying that… that this Dungeon is so dedicated to mimicking a real Major Chicken restaurant… that it forgets to kill people?”

  “Oh no, it’s definitely trying to kill us,” Matthew replied, waving his chicken tender in front of her as proof of the attempt on his life. “Just with strokes and diabetes rather than monsters.”

  “And if they keep eating like this, it’s only a matter of time before these people choke to death too,” John said after calming down. “That’s… not a bad hunting strategy, actually. Visitors come in while in a delusional state and eat beyond their fill without resisting until they die.”

  “And with no need to spend resources on creating powerful monsters to hunt down frightened captives, the Dungeon can allocate Flux towards opening new entrances instead,” Matthew said before chewing into his tender. It tasted so good. It would be such a shame to blow up the place. “It baits us with chicken, fattens us, then waits for the harvest.”

  “Some people must have already died in here to power up the additional entrances,” Kari said. She observed an animatronic serve a bucket’s worth of nuggets to a couple with uneasiness and concern. “So… what? The monsters will ignore us so long as we pretend to be customers?”

  “Or until we try to evacuate their clients,” Matthew replied in between tender bites. There was no way he was walking into a Dungeon brawl on an empty stomach. “I don’t think they’ll take it well.”

  John crossed his arms. “That could work in our favor. If this place won’t attack us until we make a scene or save the hostages, we could simply walk our way to the core without issues, or at least do some recon.”

  “Wait,” Kari replied. “Matthew, you said one of the entrances led to Old Town?”

  “Yes, and to Little Brussels too,” Matthew confirmed, before quickly guessing what bothered Kari. “Oh right, the Old Town team was busy with a Dungeon!”

  John raised an eyebrow. “Do you think it could be this one?”

  “That’s what I was wondering,” Kari replied. She opened up her bag and grabbed one of their new navigators. “Let’s see if we can call Crypto to check.”

  Matthew and John quickly imitated her by taking out their own devices. Matt heard a jingle in his ear as it triggered, followed by the echo of Kari’s voice. “Hello?” she called out into the void. “Crypto? Can you hear us?”

  “Roger that, Crit,” Crypto answered on the other end of the line.

  “Whoa, it’s actually working!” Matthew rejoiced. The quality of the call was quite poor and carried electronic interference, but merely contacting the outside world was a huge achievement in itself. “Awesome!”

  “Julia’s work always exceeds expectations.” He could almost hear Riley’s chuckle on the other side of the line. “From the static, I assumed you’re calling from inside a Dungeon? Do you need backup?”

  “No, not yet,” Kari apologized. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  They proceeded to recount everything to Crypto. Much like her fellow Blue, their poor manager remained silent for a while once they finished their explanations.

  “That’s quite the odd Dungeon you’ve stepped into,” Crypto finally said after recovering her bearings. “The Major Chicken fast food restaurant in Old Town is indeed the Dungeon that Blight’s team last reported. I haven’t received any word from them since they entered it and skipped the Sunday meeting. Truthfully, I was about to send the standby team to check on them.”

  Kari’s expression darkened. “You think they’re inside?”

  “I can’t check,” Crypto replied. “As I’ve said, they skipped the Sunday meeting and thus stepped inside without navigators. They considered this Dungeon too much of a priority to wait for them.”

  “They have to be inside,” John said with a scowl before stating the obvious. “Whether they’re still alive is another matter.”

  Matthew’s jaw tightened and he swiftly set his bucket aside. The Old Town team were a bunch of tough cookies. If they hadn’t cleaned up this place within a day, then they had encountered unexpected danger inside the Dungeon.

  Matthew unleashed a Flux Pulse as he did in the church’s Dungeon on Saturday. His power rippled around him in a wave that briefly startled the animatronic monster waiters. If the Old Town team was on this floor, there was no way they didn’t sense it.

  No other Pulse answered his own, which was a terrible sign.

  Kari bit her lower lip. “This is bad. Either this Dungeon has a hidden second level or the Old Town team isn’t in a state to respond.”

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  “Let’s go look for them,” Matthew replied. Saving fellow Crawlers was always a priority in his mind.

  “Agreed,” John decided upon standing from his seat. “We’ll check if any of the hostages need immediate medical help and then do a recon.”

  “I’ll use the Navigators to record your movements and map out the Dungeon,” Crypto said. “It lacks an affinity with Violet sorcery, so its layout should not change. I’ll also do my best to close down the restaurants and block the entrances, but that’ll take time.”

  With the plan set, the team quickly moved into action. Matthew quickly cast Peak on himself to supplement his existing passive spells, as did Kari. They quickly confirmed that the Dungeon’s ‘customers’ lacked any obvious medical conditions and could be left to their own device for a time.

  It wasn’t too hard to find their way into the complex; the team simply followed the animatronic waiters through a door at the back that led them straight into a fully modernized kitchen. Stainless steel grills, fryers, and prep stations stood next to crimson stone walls. Arrow slits provided ventilation for its occupants, a bunch of piggish, goblin-like humanoid chefs grilling chicken and filling buckets for clients to consume. One of them barked unintelligible words at the Crawler crew upon noticing them, with animatronic waiters swiftly surrounding them and pointing at the exit.

  Kari’s grip tightened on her rapier. “I don’t think they want us here.”

  “Well, this is the kitchen,” John pointed out. “Most places don’t like random customers walking into them.”

  “I’ve got this,” Matthew said as he grabbed his leather wallet and brought out a crimson, silver-plated plastic card with Major Chicken’s face on it. “Return to your post, soldiers!”

  The waiters studied the card for a moment, their mechanical body language swiftly changing from threatening to passive. The monsters stepped out of the Crawlers’ way and swiftly stopped paying attention to them.

  “What the hell is that?” John asked upon checking the card himself. “Major Chicken's Colonel Experience?”

  “This reward is only awarded to the chosen few who have eaten three-hundred and sixty-five times at Major Chicken,” Matthew replied with pride. It took a lot of effort to earn it. “It grants me the honorary rank of colonel in the fast food world’s hierarchy, alongside a twenty percent discount.”

  A confused Kari blinked a few times, while John recovered quicker. “You ate a whole year’s worth of food at a Major Chicken restaurant, Maruki?” he asked with a hint of judgment in his voice.

  “Not a continuous year, and I’m still over a hundred meals away from the Army General Experience Card,” Matthew protested at the implications. “What kind of person do you take me for? Some no-life Saturday chicken cartoon fanatic?”

  His teammates stared at him in silence.

  “I don’t judge you for your hobbies,” Matthew said. “Don’t force me to court-martial you both. I have power here, Junta power!”

  “We’re lucky that this Dungeon is as stupid as you are,” John replied dryly. “Let’s move on.”

  The kitchen led to many adjacent pantry rooms which the team checked one after another. Cold storage full of frozen beheaded chicken—which likely had never been alive in the first place—and fries, shelving units filled with sacks of flour and crates of produce, and larders filled with condiments, trays, and napkins awaited them behind each door.

  They looked almost normal at first glance, until Matthew picked up a tomato and found it staring back at him with two eyes and smiling with sharp teeth. Pickles barked, potatoes moved on their own, and one beheaded chicken attempted to run when he touched it. At least they hadn’t encountered a mimic yet.

  Kari’s disgust grew with each new passing discovery. “Is every single kind of condiment a monster in this place?”

  “What did you expect, Matsumoto?” John replied after a bag of flour hopped away from him. “Maruki probably ate a few.”

  “I admit it bothers me,” Matthew admitted as he checked another pantry room. “Because now I want to try them all.”

  John glanced at him full of disgust. “You’re even worse than Auguste.”

  “I’m just saying that if all monsters are edible, then I’ve missed out on a lot of flavors over the years,” Matthew complained. “This pantry is another dead-end.”

  “Guys, over here!” Kari called out from another room. Her teammates quickly followed her voice to a family restroom artfully blending medieval decoration with modern plumbing. Kari stood in front of a large hole in the wall leading to the outside, studying its edges. “Look.”

  Matthew studied it and quickly noticed the presence of orange particles in the air. “The Dungeon is trying to repair this spot.”

  “So it’s not a natural feature?” John stroked his chin. “Did the Old Town team open it?”

  “I think so,” Kari confirmed with a nod. “It was blown up with a homemade explosive, likely Bomberman’s work.”

  Spencer ‘Bomberman’ Hobson would always have Matthew’s respect for choosing his call sign after a video game character. He hoped he was alright.

  Matthew stepped through the hole to find himself in a vast, courtyard-shaped patio space paved with cobblestone. Unoccupied picnic tables and umbrellas occupied much of it under Major Chicken-themed banners and the alien, crimson fake sky above. There was no sign of battle, which meant the Dungeon either failed to stop the intruders here or didn’t attempt to. A set of doors on the far end led into another castle wing, while flights of stairs could allow the crew to reach the upper floors. Kari studied the floor with her Key, trailing dust marks that Matthew’s eyes could hardly see.

  “They went up,” Kari said, her expression darkening. “The trail is at least a day old.”

  A short and heavy silence followed, eventually broken by Crypto’s voice. “I see.”

  Matthew could read between the lines. Their odds of finding the Old Team alive and well continued to lower.

  A sharp pressure suddenly erupted at the back of his head.

  Matthew’s head snapped towards the fast-food castle’s rooftops and his hand pointed at the feeling’s source. He fired with a finger-gun and nailed a brick with holes, startling his allies.

  “My Doom Sense’s picking something up!” he warned his teammates.

  John quickly drew his gun. Kari, more hands-on, used her Wallcrawl spell to run up the vertical wall. She stood at the rooftop’s edge and looked around, her body more tense than bowstring.

  “Do you see anything?!” Matthew shouted to Kari as his Doom Sense grew quiet once again.

  “Cobwebs!” she replied with her sword drawn. “I see cobwebs and traces of Blue Flux!”

  Blue Flux? In an Orange and Green-themed Dungeon? Matthew pondered that mystery until he remembered the spider nest that they found at school… and the fact his Doom Sense continued to trigger after they’d destroyed it.

  He immediately checked his navigator. “Crypto?”

  “Already checking the city plans,” she replied, having guessed what was on his mind. “The sewers connecting your school to the waste plant do pass through the Temple Alley Major Chicken’s area, and the Old Town one too.”

  A shiver ran down Matthew’s spine.

  Did something from the school Dungeon make its way here?

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