The plan Team Ninja eventually landed on was to sneak out and avoid the demons camped outside before the next team, Achmed’s Legion, arrived. The stealthiest of them was going to go first and scout, the rest would wait for a signal to follow. Given they were the aptly-named Team Ninja, it was a solid if predictable plan. Too bad it was doomed to fail within the first few seconds.

  They opened the door enough for their scout to slip through and sent a flare of flame jetting up into the sky to distract the demons, but right away they were pulling the unfortunate Player back into the dome with an arrow stuck in his leg. And this was the problem with teams focused on a single tactic. If only they had a tank like Sigrid or Galahad, or even just something to hide behind. Alas, not everybody had an extra-dimensional space of unlimited storage capacity containing any number of things that would’ve been handy right about then.

  Their next idea was to open the doors wide so at least they’d be able to peek out and fire back. The doors opened outward, and one of them had the good idea to take some of the thin black ropes they all carried as part of their standard issue ninja kit and tie them to the handles so they could pull the doors closed if need be without having to risk venturing into the line of fire.

  “This is pretty neat to watch like this,” Lianna said.

  “You mean like lab rats?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t phrase it like that, probably, but...yeah. Kinda. All we need is some nice buttery popcorn. Got any tucked away in that magic storage of yours?”

  “I wish. Some popcorn would be nice.”

  “What good are you anyway?” she sighed.

  “Now you’re teasing me too?”

  “They’re right. It’s fun.”

  I didn’t have popcorn, but I’d been teaching the elves how to slice, season, and fry the fleshy tubers the Beastfolk cultivated into something resembling potato chips. I blinked us out of bee-vision, then pulled some chips out so Lianna and I could crunch on them after we blinked back in to watch the show.

  “What would you do if you were down there trying to get out?” I said as we watched them mass behind the walls flanking the door and started pushing the doors open.

  “I’d ask you to put up a force field then I’d blast them with my guns until they stopped shooting back.”

  “Simple, but effective. And if I wasn’t there?”

  “Well, probably try something like they’re doing, using the wall beside the door as cover. Is that right?”

  The door had been flung open and Team Ninja was trying to return fire against the demons who kept them pinned down with their creepy-assed armbows, but only a couple of the ninjas had bows and the shuriken they all carried weren’t effective at their range, so they were stuck in a bit of a standoff.

  “There’s no single right answer,” I said, “but there’s probably something better to do than engage in trench warfare. Remember, you wear on your finger an arrow-proof get out of jail free card.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, twirling the ring around the base of her finger. “I don’t need you there to raise a force field for me, you’ve already done it.” She started chuckling.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “You keep giving me all these presents and teaching me all these skills. Pretty soon I won’t even need you around at all.”

  “That’s the dream,” I said.

  Team Ninja was cycling through all the possible ranged attacks they had, trying various powers and affinity effects, but they were still thoroughly bottlenecked at the door to the dome.

  I turned off the bee-vision. “They’re going to be there for a while,” I said. “Let’s go see Alice.”

  I’d been preparing a surprise since I took over the Light Dungeon and now seemed like the perfect time to make it happen. There were also a few other tasks I needed Alice to do, so I gave her instructions for everything and she gave me a big grin.

  “Will do, boss,” Alice said. “Anything else?”

  “That should do it, but I’ll call you if anything changes. Thanks a ton, Alice.”

  “Of course.”

  “Actually,” I said, “there is one thing.” I reached out and cupped some of her long hair in my hand. “What’s up with this?”

  Back when Alice had manifested her appearance as a beautiful human woman she’d been a shoulder-length brunette, and had remained like that since then. Until now. Now her hair went down to her lower back and was a reddish shade of orange. It wasn’t just her, either. I’d noticed a few of the Doppels had undergone a bit of a makeover, each one changing their look to something flashier than usual.

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

  Alice grinned at me. “Sorry boss, that’s a hush hush secret. Can’t tell you yet.” Then she winked at me playfully.

  This was new. I’d had my head so far up into my own business I hadn’t really considered what NPCs like Alice and the Doppels did in their spare time, or that they had spare time at all. Yet here was proof that they had a life outside their role as my obedient minions, a life I knew nothing about.

  As much as I waxed on about how named NPCs all seemed more human than human and should be treated like anyone else without prejudice, I realized that deep down part of me still considered them less worthy of consideration than real people, whatever real people were. This realization came with a sudden flash of guilt and shame.

  I could do better. I could be better.

  “In that case,” I said, “I’m really looking forward to when you can.”

  Alice beamed at me. “Me too!”

  Was it me, or was she wearing glitter makeup?

  From there, Lianna and I went to the elf village. I also had a task for Petal. We went into my tree house and got comfortable, then I used my Dick Tracy Communicator to ask Petal to come by when she had the chance.

  “Let’s see what’s happening at the Citadel,” I said, then went back to bee-vision.

  First we checked in with Pinky’s mapping progress. The little atrocity had already finished exploring nearly 20% of the interior, moving through the entire complex in an organized, efficient manner. It may have been grotesque, but it was smart. I’d expect nothing less of a being that had been the eyes, ears, arms, and everything else of the Great Sage Cagliostra.

  The Citadel looked like something alien, but its layout was recognizably castellar. The largest structure, the one impaled by the black tower, was effectively the main keep. The secondary buildings were set up with the sorts of ancillary functions you’d expect, with areas clearly meant to be barracks, workshops, storage, living spaces, and so on. With the wall, the moat, and all the other trappings, it would make an excellent base for a team.

  The golden orbs were strategically placed throughout, each one floating in the middle of a significant room. This was a challenging game. To win an orb, someone had to remain in the room for an hour. Teams could split up and try to take lots of orbs at once, but that would leave them vulnerable to teams who stuck together. You wanted to leave enough Players that they could defend the room while trying to get the orb token, but not so many that you weren’t taking enough rooms. The dynamic was similar to many board games, such as Risk. Asset management was important.

  There was another strategy a team could use, and that was to forget about taking rooms and focus on taking out other teams. They’d get any orbs the other teams had while reducing the competition to conquer new ones.

  But there was also the demon threat to consider. Many of the orb rooms were populated by demons, usually in small groups, and there were more demons moving around in patrolling packs of various sizes, meaning that any effort made to take rooms must also take into consideration the likelihood of having a group of demons stumble across you. And since you must remain in a room continuously for an uninterrupted hour to take the room, running away was an unappealing option.

  But, and this is an even bigger but, remember that everything is a game and things are not always what they seem. When Annabelle had explained the rules to us, she had clearly said that the quest was to liberate the Citadel from demonic control, and the quest notice had echoed that same language.

  Nowhere did the quest notice talk about orbs or tokens or conquering rooms.

  It would be easy to assume that by taking and controlling rooms we could be liberating the place from the demons, but I’d learned to pay close attention to how things are worded. Annabelle had said that liberating the Citadel was the quest, and she also said that the game we would be playing was to get the most tokens. She never once said they were the same thing.

  As well, where was the secret hidden quest? Was it to take all the tokens? I mean, I could do that, but did I even want this dungeon? Why did we need a Fortress when we had the Labyrinth? And if for some reason the Labyrinth became unsafe, we always had the Void. Nobody’d dare mess with us there, if they could even get in.

  Yeah. Somebody else should get this one.

  I switched my vision to the bee in the dome, and managed to get an idea of the demons’ strength watching Team Ninja fighting to escape the dome. The grunts didn’t have much to do, it was mostly up to the archers. Half of them hid behind the battlement merlons or on one of those pod-like balconies, while the rest used their bat-wings to swoop around and fire arrows from their surprisingly effective armbows.

  They weren’t that tough, probably about equal to the cultists, maybe a bit stronger. Cannon fodder. There was that one Occifer that was bigger and stronger than the others, but still not that tough for a mini-boss. Any team should be able to get past them. Certainly Lianna and I would’ve had no problem, and Team Maple Leaf would’ve been able to waltz through the challenge. But watching the Ninjas struggle made it clear that not all teams were on an equal footing.

  Lianna and I snacked on some melon while watching the action. I had to give the Ninjas credit, they didn’t give up. When one thing didn’t work they moved on and tried something else, testing all their abilities. Their most effective strategy was using summoned creatures as distractions. They sent the summons out in one direction, then a couple of Ninjas tried to sneak out while the demons were busy with the summons. A good plan in theory, but only one of them managed to escape. While the Ninjas had an advantage over the demons at close range and could use their stealth to assassinate, just one Player wasn’t enough to take down all twenty demons one at a time.

  At the fifteen minute mark, five minutes before Achmed’s Legion was due to arrive, another group of twenty demons came and took up positions to greet them. The original twenty demons had been whittled down to sixteen, but adding twenty more flipped the momentum firmly back onto the demonic side.

  When the Legionnaires bamfed in there were some tense moments as the two teams felt each other out. Neither was keen on fighting each other in the enclosed space of the dome where there was nothing to take cover behind, and no way to retreat.

  “Are we going to go help your friend?” Lianna said.

  “Nope. Not unless things go poorly, anyway. They need to figure some stuff out on their own.”

  It was Achmed, bless his soul, who negotiated a temporary alliance to get both teams out before the next one arrived.

  Luna's glorious influence will be felt. (Yes. I cannot resist a good gyaryu or guild receptionist...and when the receptionist is also galish, well, we're getting into best girl turf.)

  Up next: They're gonna get massacred