Dungeon Exploiter

The dungeon smelled like a flooded office, because that’s what it was.

Sector 7, Grade-F, my first day. Ten of us rode down in a freight elevator with a camera drone filming the whole thing for “onboarding content.” The carpet was soaked, the computers were dead, and a vending machine was lying on its side in the hall.

A screen lit up in the air.

WELCOME TO SECTOR 7

Grade-F (Beginner Friendly!)

Sponsored by NexoDrive — “Dungeons, Delivered.”

Clear Condition: reach the exit.

Survival Rate: 61% ↑

“Sixty-one percent,” I said.

“Up three points from last quarter!” the drone said. “Let’s give it up for the team!”

Nobody gave it up for the team. Everyone was staring at their AI companion, letting it explain, one more time, the optimal way to not be in the thirty-nine.

There was a girl near the front with a ring light strapped to her chest and a little drone orbiting her head. She had her back to the dungeon so she could face the drone.

“Okayyy what’s up guys, welcome back, it’s ya girl, live in a Sector 7 clear — this dungeon is SO underrated, the drops are insane —” She threw a peace sign at a monster she hadn’t seen yet. “Smash that follow, we’re going for a solo highlight —”

She was not going for a solo. There were ten of us. I decided not to bring it up. First day.

Our team lead was an S-Class named Brennan, who wore gold gear worth more than my apartment and had told us his clear-time ranking twice on the way down, in case it faded from memory between floors.

“Plan’s simple,” Brennan said, reading off his companion. “Class-2 Devourer. Burn it down, exit unlocks, we go home.”

I read the screen again. It didn’t say anything about killing a Devourer. It said reach the exit. I figured he’d read it too. He was the S-Class.

He had not read it.

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We turned the corner and the Devourer stood up. It had too many arms and a mouth in the wrong place, and it made a sound like a garbage disposal eating a phone.

“CONTACT!” Brennan roared. “Burn it!”

They burned it. Fire, lightning, whatever their companions had told them to buy at the gift shop. All of it hit the Devourer square in the chest.

The Devourer got bigger.

“...Huh,” I said.

Here’s a fun fact about a monster called a Devourer: it devours, and that includes magic. Every spell it ate, it grew. Brennan’s companion started flashing red — DAMAGE INEFFECTIVE, DAMAGE INEFFECTIVE — and Brennan, a man who had reached S-Class by never once questioning a plan, kept running the plan.

“MORE damage!” he screamed.

The influencer was still live. “Guys it’s getting kind of big?? Anyway use code RINGLIGHT for ten percent off recovery serum —”

A kid with a rented spear died first.

I want it on the record that I tried.

“It eats the magic,” I said. “You’re feeding it.”

“Shut up and DPS, temp.”

“There’s a door.” I pointed. “That’s the actual win condition. We don’t fight it. We leave.”

“Stay in your lane,” Brennan said.

So I stayed in my lane.

Then something hit me — the monster, a stray fireball, the sheer stupidity in the room, I couldn’t tell you — and everything went white.

When I woke up, there was a tiger sitting on my chest. She was small and orange and cartoon-bright, and she didn’t seem surprised to see me at all.

“Well,” she said. “That was humiliating.”

“...Am I dead?”

“No. You hit your head. I’m Liya. Get up — everyone’s about to die and it’s going to be very stupid.”

I didn’t own a tiger. I put her on the list of things to deal with after not dying.

I got up and saw the second screen. Nobody else was looking at it. It had no sponsor and no survival rate, just two lines sitting under the big loud one.

TRUE CLEAR CONDITION: Reach Exit.

Threat Engagement: OPTIONAL.

Optional. The whole time.

“They don’t have to fight it,” I said.

“Nope,” said Liya. “I’m not helping, by the way. I just narrate. Go.”

The exit was fifty feet away, a green mark glowing over a door nobody had looked at twice, because the fight was where the AI said to look.

I walked to it, around the Devourer, past Brennan screaming into his headset for a manager, past the influencer, who was getting eaten and monetizing it — “guys if we hit ten thousand follows I’ll do a face reveal, oh god, oh god it’s got my —” — and then the cheerful little outro jingle her drone played automatically when a stream ended.

I stopped at the door and turned around.

“It’s right here,” I said, one more time. “You just walk out.”

Two of them looked at me, and for a second they almost moved. Then Brennan yelled that backup was coming, and their companions told them to hold the line, so they held it.

I went through the door.

Upstairs, a bored woman with a clipboard was waiting by a vending machine.

“Name?”

“Jon.”

“Sector 7’s a team dungeon. Where’s your team?”

I thought about it.

A screen answered for me.

SECTOR 7 — CLEARED.

Clearing Party: 1

Method: [UNRECOGNIZED]

Her clipboard beeped. She looked at it, then at me, then at it again.

“That’s not possible,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I get that a lot.”

Somewhere in a building I’d never seen, a man with a very nice view leaned toward a screen that had just told him something impossible.

“Find out who that is,” he said.

Somebody wrote my name down.