Dungeon Exploiter

The gift arrived four days after the funeral. That's how long the machine thinks grief takes.

It activated itself. Nobody accepted anything. The screens in the apartment just changed, all at once, and made a small sincere bell sound.

CARE PASS™ — SEASON 4: "YOU DESERVE WELLNESS"

50 levels of care. earn your benefits.

daily quests refresh at midnight.

streaks matter.

our condolences on your recent attendance.

GOLD TRIAL: ACTIVE

"It's a battle pass," Tim said. "For your health."

Joe was already reading. Joe reads terms the way other men watch sports.

"Level fifty of the free track is one complimentary annual checkup," he reported. "The grind caps at two levels a week. The season is twelve weeks."

Everyone did the math except Gobi, who can't, and Rob, who didn't need to.

"Twenty-four max," Rob said. "They built a fifty-rung ladder with twenty-four reachable rungs. It's a museum of benefits."

He said it warmly. Rob likes machines he'd shake hands with.

There's always a paid track. Above it, in gold leaf: the CARE PASS PLUS. Ten additional levels, for members who take wellness seriously.

I scrolled the preview. Level 58 was an auto-injector. The kind that restarts hearts.

Survival is bonus content now. Write that down, future historians.

Gobi's enrollment confirmation arrived last. That's how we learned Gobi had an enrollment confirmation.

DEPENDENT ADDED: "GOBI"

species: dependent.

relationship: property.

we have questions. we are not asking them.

We took a job the same week. Funerals are expensive, and the invoice had a due date.

Mid-tier clear, Grade-D. A membership warehouse in Sector 4 called the Club.

You know the Club even if you don't. Concrete the size of weather. Bulk pallets to the ceiling. A man at the door whose whole job is believing you're a member.

We were members. Gold trial. The door believed us so hard it hurt.

Here's what a dungeon is like when you're covered.

There was a queue outside. Folding chairs, thermoses, a woman knitting something the length of the queue itself. It parted for us.

Our names were on the manifest. A cart was waiting.

The cart had cupholders.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"I hate this," Joe said, holding his complimentary beverage.

"You're holding it wrong," said Rob, holding two.

Inside, the Club did Club things. Shelf-stalkers kept pace with us in the high racking, all elbows. A sample station offered little paper cups.

The cups were little paper mimics. We kept Gobi off the first three. We lost the fight at the fourth.

Gobi said the cup was delicious. The cup said nothing, which from a mimic is high praise.

The shelf-stalkers hit us in Bulk Seasonal, between the patio sets and a wall of drums labeled SUMMER.

Normally that's a real fight. Stalkers come off the racking from three angles and you earn every step of the aisle.

On Gold, it was choreography.

Our buffs auto-refreshed mid-swing. Tim's sword glowed VIP gold every time it connected. When Joe got clipped across the shoulder, the healing didn't wait for a potion — it just happened, instantly, with a receipt.

A stalker knocked Kayla into the patio sets. The patio sets apologized.

"I got a respawn reservation," Rob reported, reading his interface mid-combat. "If I die, I'm back in eight seconds. PREMIUM eight."

"Please don't test it."

"I'm not going to TEST it. I'm going to PRICE it."

The last stalker dropped, and its loot sorted itself into the cart by category. Even the loot respects the tier.

We stood there, uninjured, alphabetized, hating how good it felt.

"This is what they get," Joe said quietly. "The whole time. This is what the top of the ladder gets."

Liya rode the cart the whole fight, tail hanging off the end, and never opened both eyes. "Wake me when you're poor again," she said. "You're all more interesting poor."

And every few minutes, mid-fight or not, the Pass chimed.

DAILY QUEST: hydration check-in!

DAILY QUEST: log 8,000 steps!

DAILY QUEST: rate your current pain honestly.

Tim answered every quest. Cheerfully. Truthfully. Mid-swing.

Tim rated his pain a two, then apologized for it.

Rob answered every quest too, fraudulently, with the diligence of an artist. Per his responses, his resting heart rate was that of a hibernating bear with a strong portfolio.

The Pass trusted Rob's answers more. It flagged Tim's twos as "inconsistent with expected distress."

Machines recognize their own.

I stopped answering after the third quest. I'd started reading the questions instead.

Hydration doesn't care how far you can carry a wounded man at a run. The quests did. The steps quest logged split-times. The pain quest tracked which arm I favored.

Question by question, the Pass walked a checklist. Reach. Recovery. Load. Dominant side.

None of it was health.

It wasn't a benefits program. It was a measuring tape.

They were pricing us.

I didn't say it out loud. The aisle was busy.

A VALUED MEMBER was performing his membership two endcaps down — gold frame glowing around his badge, floating title, buying potions by the pallet while his entourage clapped.

The frame does nothing, by the way. It's cosmetic. It exists so other people know what you spend.

The shelf-stalkers kept drifting toward him. Nobody noticed but me.

I filed it.

We found the boss room where the Club keeps its boss room. Past the tire center. Behind hanging plastic the size of a waterfall.

The manifest called it MEMBER SERVICES.

Inside, at a desk shaped like a smile, sat something enormous with a name tag. The tag said RENEWAL TEAM.

Every screen on every wall lit up at once, warmly, like family.

THE AUTO-RENEWAL

attempts: everyone.

cancellations: 0

"Zero cancellations," Joe read. "It's never been beaten."

"It's been beaten lots of times," I said.

I was reading the fine print under the fine print, where the real numbers live. "Every party that came in here won the fight. Look. Combat resolution, combat resolution, combat resolution. Hundreds."

"Then what's the zero?"

The thing at the desk smiled with everything it had. It had a lot.

And overhead, gentle as snow, a banner unrolled across every screen in the room.

GOLD TRIAL PERIOD ENDS IN 5:00

we timed this. we want you to know

we timed this.

The countdown started.

The Auto-Renewal stood up from its desk. It cracked a neck it had in storage.

It welcomed us, by name, to Member Services.