Dungeon Master (Karma System)

Max did not accept the request.

The golden window remained above the breakfast table without changing. No countdown appeared beside it. Kincaid did not send a second message or attempt to open the connection himself.

"DC, identify Kincaid." Max said.

[Kincaid is the registered patron associated with Champion Max.]

"Since when?"

[The patron designation was attached before the dungeon core entered the Prime Universe. Patron information was restricted until completion of the First Champion Challenge.]

"Can he access the dungeon?"

[No.]

"Can he alter the core through this communication?"

[No. Patron communication permits the exchange of information. Additional patron actions require separate authorization under the champion system.]

That answer was better than learning a god could enter his core because Max accepted a call over breakfast.

It was not enough to make him comfortable.

Anna placed her hand on his forearm. "The request can wait until you are ready."

Max had never heard Kincaid’s name. The first challenge notice referred to patron restrictions, but he had been more concerned with the army attempting to capture his core than with the unknown person prevented from calling him.

Now that person wanted contact.

Max finished breakfast.

The request followed him into the office.

He could have accepted it alone. He did not. Anna took her usual place beside her smaller desk. Quin stood near the wall where he could watch the room and the communication window at the same time.

"This is unlikely to become a physical fight." Max said.

Quin rested one hand on the sealed weapon at his side. "Then my presence will cost nothing."

Max selected accept.

The golden border expanded across the space above his desk. A room appeared inside it. Deep chairs, dark wood, and shelves holding objects Max could not identify surrounded a man seated with a glass of wine in one hand.

Kincaid smiled.

"There he is. Congratulations, little guy."

Max looked behind him to confirm the man was not addressing someone else.

"Do not call me that."

Kincaid’s smile widened. "I have been calling you that for six months."

"You have not been calling me anything. We have never spoken."

"I was speaking. You simply couldn’t hear me."

"That does not improve the situation." Max said with a frown.

Anna rested a hand on Max, subtly hinting that he should calm down.

Kincaid noticed her. His expression brightened with recognition rather than surprise. "And Anna. It is good to finally meet you as well. Quin too. I have watched all three of you accomplish some remarkable things."

Quin did not respond.

Anna inclined her head without offering more. "You have an advantage over us."

"Several, technically."

"She means you know who we are." Max said. "We know nothing about you."

Kincaid set down his wine.

"Fair. My name is Kincaid. I am a minor god and one of the Elder God’s apprentices. For the purposes of the competition, I am your patron and you are my champion."

"I did not enter a competition."

"No."

The simple agreement removed the next argument Max had expected to make.

"Then why am I in one?"

"Because I chose you."

The room became very still.

Max leaned back in his chair. "Explain that sentence carefully."

Kincaid glanced toward his abandoned wine as if considering whether the conversation required it. He left the glass where it was.

"A little more than six months ago, the Elder God summoned roughly a thousand of his apprentices. Each of us was instructed to select a champion and prepare a dungeon core. The champions would be released into the Prime Universe, given six months to establish their dungeons, and then face a first challenge without our assistance. Passing that challenge would allow patron contact."

"How many passed?" Anna asked.

"I only know that Max did. Individual results remain private until the Elder God summons the surviving patrons. Some challenges may have ended before yours and others at the same moment, but the patron restrictions prevented us from comparing them."

"So there may still be hundreds of other dungeon masters in this competition." Max said.

"There may be. There may also be far fewer. The First Challenge was intended to eliminate anyone who could not keep a dungeon standing without a god’s help."

Max did not like the idea of hundreds of unknown champions any more than he liked the possibility that most of them had already died.

"And failing?"

"Elimination from the competition."

"What happens to the champions?"

Kincaid did not answer immediately. "That depends on how they fail. The Elder God did not explain what would happen to every defeated dungeon master. In your challenge, losing the core would almost certainly have killed you or severed you from the dungeon. I was not willing to find out which."

Max thought about the diviner standing one sealed junction away from the protected territory. Four people had come closer than the system’s final PASS made comfortable.

"Did you create the challenge?"

"No."

"Did you select the city?"

"No."

"The reward offered to the attackers?"

"The Elder God created the trial. I could watch, but the restriction prevented me from warning you, contacting you, or influencing anything inside your dungeon."

"You could only watch."

Kincaid nodded. "Breaking that rule would have disqualified you. Whatever I did to help would have become the reason you failed."

"Were the attackers real?" Anna asked.

"Every one of them. The Elder God did not create an army for your benefit. He opened a path, offered a reward, and allowed people to decide whether they wanted it."

"What reward?" Max asked.

"I still don’t know. Whatever was offered was valuable enough to attract national armies by the final days. The contribution system belonged to the trial. Patron observers could see participation and progress, not the private reward table."

That matched what Max had witnessed. Nothing about the invasion had felt like an artificial enemy force. People competed, argued, cooperated, disobeyed, retreated, and changed their minds. Some entered for fame. Others worked for guilds, nobles, or countries. The Elder God had not needed to make them hate Max. He had only needed to make reaching the core profitable.

"Was every champion given the same challenge?" Max asked.

"We were not allowed to observe champions other than our own during the active trial. I know all first challenges began from the Elder God’s authority. I do not know whether every dungeon faced an invasion, whether the seven-day limit was universal, or whether the conditions were tailored to what each champion built."

"How much did you know before mine started?"

"That a First Challenge would follow the six-month Establishment Period. Nothing else."

Max looked toward the archived countdown record. "I received thirty days of warning, not six months."

"The establishment period began when the cores were released. The Elder God never promised the champions would be told they were being measured."

"Convenient for him."

"My master considers ignorance part of some tests."

"I already dislike his teaching style."

Kincaid’s mouth twitched. "You are not alone. Most of us learned to avoid saying that where he could hear."

Quin looked at the divine window. "Can he hear this?"

"Not through a private patron channel unless he chooses to inspect it."

"That was not a no." Anna said.

"With the Elder God, a definite no would be dishonest."

Max added that uncertainty to the growing list.

"Did every champion begin unaware?" he asked.

"Not necessarily. Some were already dungeon masters. Some came from Prime and understood more about cores than you did. Others were rulers, soldiers, monsters, craftsmen, or people carrying systems of their own. The only common condition was that each patron selected one champion and released one core."

"And you selected someone from another universe."

"The rules did not forbid it."

The satisfaction returning to Kincaid’s voice made it clear this distinction had impressed him long before he knew whether Max would survive.

"You sound as though you want credit for following a rule."

"I want credit for not finding a clever way around it. That required unusual restraint."

Max stared at him.

Kincaid held up both hands. "That was a joke. Mostly."

Anna placed her cup on the desk. "Why were the patrons prohibited from contacting their champions before the challenge?"

"The Elder God wanted to judge what the champions could establish independently. He was evaluating us too. Choosing someone who needed divine instructions to survive the first test would mean we chose poorly."

"What is he selecting them for?" Anna asked.

"I don’t know."

Quin spoke for the first time. "You selected a champion for a purpose you were not told."

Kincaid shrugged. "My master has never believed that apprentices need every answer before beginning a lesson. We were promised the next instructions after the First Challenge. He has not summoned us yet."

"You attached a thousand people to dungeon cores without knowing why." Max said.

"I selected one. I will not assume responsibility for the judgment of the other apprentices."

"One is enough."

Kincaid’s smile faded slightly.

Max noticed. He did not soften the words.

"Were all the champions from the Prime Universe?" Anna asked.

"Almost all."

Max understood the importance of the answer before Kincaid continued.

"You were not." The minor god said. "I found your soul beyond Prime, waiting to enter reincarnation. Your Karma System made you... unusual."

The name struck harder than the challenge explanation had.

Max had not seen the Karma System since opening his eyes beside the dungeon core. It belonged to his first life, when every good act accumulated toward a promised reincarnation. On the night he died, the system told him what he had earned. Wealth. A long life. A family. A loving wife. Children he would have the time to raise.

Then he woke inside a cave with a dungeon core and none of the promised answers.

"You saw my Karma System," Max said.

"Yes."

"What did you do to it?"

Kincaid’s attention shifted briefly toward Anna. That was enough to tell Max the answer involved more than placing his soul into the core.

"The dungeon core required a champion." Kincaid said. "Your system contained an extraordinary amount of power. I used that power to prepare you."

Max stood. He did not raise his voice. The stone beneath the office did not move. Nothing in the Sanctuary responded to his anger because he did not allow it to.

"That was not the question."

Kincaid remained seated, but the humor disappeared from his face.

"I altered it."

"Without asking me."

"Yes."

Anna moved beside Max. She did not touch him or tell him to calm down. She stood where he could see her and waited.

Max looked at the god who called himself his patron.

"You took the future I earned, changed my system, and placed me inside a dungeon core because you wanted a champion."

Kincaid did not try to hide behind the word technically.

"Yes."

"Then start at the beginning," Max said. "Tell me exactly what you changed."

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