Chương 36: “The Thing That Is Sending Them”

He worked it out on a Thursday night, alone, in the fourteenth floor he had just cracked open. It was not a Seeker. It was not a rival dungeon. It was not a god, the gods that knew his name were long dead, he had made sure of that. It was one of his more time-consuming projects. It was the Ledger. He sat in the fourteenth floor and thought about the Ledger, which was the closest thing his world had to a bureaucracy of cosmic consequence.

Not evil, precisely, not good either, a system, old and impersonal and committed to the idea that things which existed must be properly categorized and things which could not be categorized must be retrieved and processed. He had been uncategorized for three thousand years. Loose, unregistered. They had left him alone because he was sealed and dormant and the Ledger did not waste resources on things that were not causing problems. He was causing problems now. And not because of the Seekers he'd destroyed.

The Ledger did not care about its Seekers, they were instruments not individuals. Because of the bond. Because a dungeon core at eighty-three percent bond strength and climbing, reclaiming floors, growing minions, protecting a certain small family in a small house, was a dungeon core that had chosen, and the Ledger had no category for a dungeon that chose something rather than consuming it. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

He sat in the fourteenth floor. He thought: they would not stop sending things. He thought: eventually they would send something he could not handle in eleven minutes in a garden. He thought: he had fourteen floors reclaimed and a ward from Cecile's grandmother and Gerald in the walls and a nine year old who had named him on a water glass. He thought: he had been in worse positions. He went back upstairs. June was asleep. He sat on the windowsill.

He did not tell anyone what he'd worked out because there was no action to take tonight and worry, he had found, was not a thing he wanted to put in June's house. He would think of something. He always had. System: Bond Strength: 85%. Floors Reclaimed: 14 of 31. The Ledger. Of course. We knew. We didn't tell you because you needed to work it out yourself. Also because watching you work things out is, frankly, one of the more interesting things we do. You're going to be okay, Vorrath. We don't say that lightly.

We say it because we've seen what you do when you have something worth fighting for. We've seen it for the last thirty-five chapters. You'll be okay.