Dungeon Exploiter

The invitation was printed on thick card and smelled faintly of money.

SECTOR ONE — PRESTIGE RAID. You are invited.

Party size: 40. Pay: DKP system (see attached).

Attendance is considered a strong cultural signal.

"Sector One," Joe said. "The first dungeon. The famous one. People put this raid on their resumes."

"People put dying on their resumes?"

"The survivors do."

Rob read the pay system twice and went pale in a way I'd never seen before. DKP turned out to mean raid points — you earn them for performance, they convert to money, and you LOSE them for breaking rules. The rule list was four pages long. Dying was on page one.

"It docks you for dying," Rob said. "Fifty points. You die, and your final paycheck gets SMALLER."

"Death inconveniences the raid," I said, reading over his shoulder. "It's in the handbook."

We went anyway. The CEO had signed the invitation personally, rent was due, and Tim's mom decided a famous raid sounded educational. She approved it in writing. With conditions.

* * *

Forty raiders stood in the staging hall, and the whole thing looked like a trade show. Banners. A stage. A Vice President of Raid Operations with a whistle and a headset. Above everything, a giant screen kept flashing the same slogan: YOUR EXPERIENCE IS YOUR EQUITY.

Think about that slogan for a second. It means: we keep the money, you keep the memories. Somebody got paid to write it.

The safety video was eleven minutes long and you couldn't skip it. The dungeon doors stood wide open the whole time. Things moved in the dark past them. Forty armed adults stood and watched a cartoon shield explain the buddy system. There was a quiz after.

Kayla found us in the crowd — she'd been invited to stream it. "Chat says hi. Chat also says you're all going to die. Chat's been right before."

The VP blew his whistle. "LISTEN UP. Follow your companion's calls. And REMEMBER —" he pointed at the room with both fingers, "— the floor tells you where the fire will be BEFORE the fire comes. If you are standing in fire, that is a CHOICE. And choices cost points."

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The boss was a worm. A huge worm that lived under the floor and set patches of that floor on fire. And it warned you first — the floor glowed bright orange for a full three seconds before it burned. All you had to do was not stand on the glowing part.

People stood on the glowing part. Constantly. For forty-five minutes I watched trained professionals stand in clearly marked fire, because their companions were all shouting different advice.

Half the raid's AI said STACK — group up. The other half's AI said SPREAD — scatter. So twenty people ran inward, twenty ran outward, and they met in a big confused ring, right in the fire. The worm ate the ring.

RAID STATUS: 32 of 40 alive.

There was a man named Dave two spots over from us. I know his name because his gear said DAVE. Dave was a numbers guy — his damage score floated over his head, and it was beautiful, and when the floor under Dave started to glow, I grabbed his shoulder and pulled.

He lifted my hand off, gently. Like I was the dangerous thing.

"I'm at a ninety-nine," Dave said. "Personal best."

The fire took his whole square. His score posted to the leaderboard automatically. It was a ninety-nine, and it stayed at the top of the board for the rest of the raid with a little crown on it, over a name that no longer had a person attached.

Nobody else even looked at it. That's the part I carried home. A man traded his life for a number, and the room thought that was normal.

* * *

We survived the way we always survive. In the corner, doing the obvious thing. When the floor glowed, we stood where it wasn't glowing.

When the worm surfaced, I read its real entry — it goes blind for forty seconds when it comes up — so we hit it hard for exactly forty seconds, every time, with Tim counting down off my watch like a kid doing homework in a war zone.

Rob looted bodies "for the families." Joe stapled a stranger's arm shut and apologized that he wasn't covered by insurance. Gobi held my chips.

It didn't look impressive. It didn't score points. It just worked, over and over, while the leaderboard celebrated bigger numbers attached to deader people.

At the last fire phase, a drone found me through the smoke. It carried a small velvet box. Inside the box was a rank badge.

RANK: S — assigned to you. Accept? [Y/N]

Forty floors up, behind glass, there was a private viewing box. I couldn't see him. I didn't need to.

The floor next to me glowed orange, wide and bright, three full seconds of warning. Very considerate, that fire.

I dropped the badge in it.

Kayla's stream clipped the moment before I'd even turned around. By that evening the clip had a name — THE BASTARD DECLINES — and eleven million views. Somewhere in a tower, a man who is always calm was slightly less calm. I knew I'd pay for it. I did it anyway, and I'd do it again.

RAID COMPLETE. Deaths: 9. Within acceptable limits.

Your pay: $61. (Deductions: gear damage, one unauthorized rescue, one act of insubordination, one badge.)

Rob read my pay slip over my shoulder and made a sound like a kettle someone forgot about. Sixty-one dollars. Four hours. Nine funerals.

On the way out, the big screen in the staging hall had a new banner on it. A shiny chrome robot with a sword, standing in fire, not burning.

COMING SOON: ROBOT RAIDERS. Because people are the most expensive part.

"They're not wrong," Rob said quietly.

It was the first moment all day that nobody had a joke.