Twitch eyed the collection of banner bugs standing as wardens to the gate. They had hammers held at the ready, and right behind them a figure darted onto the battlements, winging a dagger at Twitch as he went.

  Twitch hissed, jolting to the side. The dagger Resh had thrown pinged off the stone of the bridge and spiraled down into the moat below. Then, like a demented bag of uppers and legs, he charged. It was a reckless, headlong charge that trailed a comet's tail worth of zip dust behind him.

  Everyone braced, Twitch flipped them the equivalent of a buggy middle finger and took a hard right at the last moment and just scampered straight up the wall next to the gate. Everyone looked around with a “well, what now” expression as the little demon flung himself off the top of the wall past another pack of bannermen and simply started scaling the side of the castle itself, going straight for the prize high above.

  Resh threw a couple halfhearted daggers his way, but none really came close to the little psycho as he zigzagged straight up the sheer castle walls. “How is he even doing that? I want to be able to do that…” He mumbled jealously.

  Bubba looked down, practically vibrating in wrath as his brother streaked upwards towards him. Thick colorless mana swirled around him as he prepared to cast down his brother to the hard stone below. Twitch met his eyes fearlessly as the distance between them closed.

  Bubba sent a shockwave roiling down the side of the castle that zigzagged cracks down the brickwork, flinging debris into the air as the shockwave reached out towards Twitch. Twitch hissed madly, rushing even faster, and simply scuttled sideways around the other side of the wall. Bubba looked down blankly and let out an annoyed huff.

  Twitch suddenly appeared on the roof in a blaze of blue, rushed right up the flagpole, and snatched the jar of zip dust in his jaws without slowing. Every one of the defenders looked at him highlighted above, waiting for their chance to fight him when he came back down.

  Twitch’s red-rimmed eyes scanned the defenders and then the battlement walls below. He took a few steps back to get a running start.

  Egbert watched in fascination. Is…he seriously just going to jump off the top of the tower? Even if he lands on the wall, that’s, well, that’s a hell of a jump. I know he survived yeeting from the second story of his own apartments, but…still, that’s a whole lot higher than a second story, and that jar of zip dust has to weigh more than he does. Man…he must be high as balls right now… Well, honestly, he's probably always going to be high as balls with that evolution.

  Twitch flew forward, practically galloping to the end of the flagpole and flinging himself into space, the jar of zip dust still squarely held in his mouth. He flew like the most majestic of golden eagles on and on through the air, a curtain of Zip-Dust cascading behind him. He cleared the top of the walls with strides to spare, and then his flight began to arc down into a fast-paced fall. Twitch spread his legs like stubby wings, letting him angle the fall into a graceful glide.

  A row of glittering magic missiles arced up from the ground and smashed into Twitch one after the other, splattering him and his cargo of zip dust all across Bubba's castle walls and into the air. The whole battlefield turned in shock towards a knight with a wand in hand and the biggest shit-eating grin imaginable.

  “BOOM, every single one HIT! Goddamn, these wands are worth every copper!” Ben loudly shouted to the stunned defenders around him. Then, seeing everyone's expressions, his smile faded a bit. “What?” he asked a bit meekly as a fog of zip dust settled across all of them.

  “Oh, OH, THAT’S WHAT,” Ben said with newfound energy as everyone got a surprise pick-me-up.

  Back in the tavern people were going wild. Ales were being thrown; one man was standing on his table, a beer in one hand and a bag of gold in the other, just roaring incoherently about how he had won. Others were crowding towards the betting machines to claim their ill-gotten gains.

  The blocky simple machines had a neon glow above them, flashing Bubba's image with a gold coin symbol next to it. Winners were walking away with small and sometimes large bags of gold. That fell out of a laughably heavily reinforced slab of metal.

  The losers were busy drowning their sorrows back at the actual bar. Max was swamped right now, shuffling back and forth, taking coins, and placing drinks at a mind-boggling pace. Egbert was honestly shocked at how fast he could move with his highish-level stats and doubly so that he could do it that fast without shotgunning ales across everyone in the room.

  Max rushed to a frazzled-looking woman with a bun of tightly woven red hair and a floral dress who was currently snotting all over the bar as she blubbered at a very captive-looking adventurer next to her.

  “You…you don’t get it! She slurred, “My husband is a worthless wastrel! Doesn’t do a thing for his family other than put bread out for me and young ones. This was my chance! My chance to be free and go live in a villa!”

  The man next to her was edging away farther with every one of her words. Max arrived like a rickety knight in shining alcoholic armor. “Marge! Leave the damned man alone; it's not his fault you bet so much on a drug-addled horde and are so shocked when the strung-out leader flings himself off a tower to his doom.” Max waved at the man inconspicuously that now was his chance to flee.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The adventurer snatched his drink and bolted as her wobbly gaze settled onto Max. “Bah, you are just saying that because you won! You bet on the boar-headed bastard, didn’t you!”

  Max slid another drink forward and collected a coin from a small precipitous tower of silver on the bar right in front of her. “Well, not exactly. I waited to see what team adventurers joined and then bet on the side that had a fucking squad of knights; it seemed a safer bet than some of my drunkest patrons and a pyromaniac child being followed by a brain-popping spider.”

  They stared at each other for a moment before Max tried to excuse himself. “Now if you don’t mind, I have a lot of other folks trying to drown their woes…”

  As Max walked away, Marge wailed after him, “You just don’t get it either!” Before trying and failing to stand up from her stool

  Max Have you ever cut a customer off? Good gods...well, overall that event was a roaring success. I'll wait until everyone is paid out and I've repaired the battlefield before I see what my god tally settles at. But by any metric, getting people drunk and encouraging them to try and beat the stuffing out of things for money is in fact a viable business strategy. Now once everyone comes back in, I can hand out the prizes for the winning team.

  What Egbert hadn’t counted on, although he should have, was the post-battlefield looting. The banner bugs were still loot bugs after all, and they did have gold in their shells. So all the remaining adventurers were scouring through the corpses like money-hungry vultures. Filling sacks with limp bugs and tossing aside swaths of tiny worthless weapons.

  Contempt thankfully seemed to take no umbrage at this. Egbert was worried for a bit he was going to be a prick and descend on the battlefield over the desecration of his fallen brethren, but apparently even he considered them free game after everyone engaged in the war.

  The few Banner bugs left returned to their respective territories. This floor was going to feel pretty darn desolate until the fallen respawned. But that was okay with Egbert; he was planning to use the next few days to massively expand this floor into somewhere adventurers could actually explore instead of just an event location with a creepy fairy forest on one end.

  Finally everyone filed back into the tavern laden with bags of dripping loot bugs and more than a few scrapes and cuts. Now Egbert understood why the tavern had drains installed in the floor. The losers saddled up to the bar in small groups to drown their woes, except for the yokels; they joined Jeb on the edge of the whirlpool balcony for some fishing.

  They seemed too happy for having just lost it, which was making Egbert nervous; they were all toothless smiles and fishing lures dangling carefree into the whirlpool. And he still hadn’t seen Tammy all day.

  Hmm, they are up to something. I'll have to check out what evil bullshit the “Puppy” has put them up to after I give out prizes, but for now!

  The winners were clustering around Egbert's pet rock on the balcony, waiting for him to give out his promised prize. Including the MVP of the entire event, Ben’s wand. Egbert settled his view just over the heads of everyone and got to giving his victory speech.

  “Everyone fought well today! Bets were made! Fortunes made! And lost…” He finished quietly as Marge’s sobbing wafted from the tavern.

  “But I know you are here for what really matters: the winner’s prize!” He let the adventurers squirm a bit as they excitedly waited.

  “Every single one of you! Forever has my best hopes, wishes, and appreciation. Isn’t that great? Even better than coins!” You could have heard a pin drop over the sudden angry shocked silence that fell like a pall of death over the crowd, immediately followed by an angry clamor as everyone began talking over each other.

  Orlock hefted his giant sword. “Alright, where’s his core? I can find somewhere else to live.”

  Joe leaned on a table, still in visible pain. “SEE, this motherfucker is pure evil, I swear he is harvesting our sorrow or something!”

  Ben looked at the evil rock as he slowly leveled his wand towards it.

  “I’M JOKING! Jeez, calm yourselves, everyone, hahahahah…” Egbert shouted out to interrupt his imminent murder. Well, I had to at least try. I didn’t think it would go over well, but I didn’t think the village folks would pick up their pitchforks with quite that much zeal.

  “Everyone on the winning team gets to open a fancy treasure chest!”

  Egbert popped open the store to a loot item he had been avoiding because it was expensive as hell and didn’t respawn, neither of which endeared it to him, but it was perfect for a dramatic public reward, assuming whatever god was in charge of luck didn’t decide to fuck him over.

  [Random Loot Box] (1 Gold)

  You know that sense of pride and accomplishment you get after a hard-won fight. And how can you buy absolutely nothing with it? Yeah, this is actually something tangible that has at least a modicum of real-world value inside. This chest can be opened once to reveal a random item. It ranges all the way from gems that have the potential to destabilize local economies to an old pair of well-worn but still usable shoes! Lock it behind coin-gated areas for extra fun with your more gambling-minded Delvers.

  A chest popped into existence at the feet of everyone that had fought on Bubba’s behalf. They were beautiful pearlescent things that the tavern's torches glimmered off of enticingly; each one had a simple clasp and handle.

  Egbert flinched at the cost and grumbled to himself. There better be some darned gold bars in one of those or some way for me to actually taste donuts again at that kind of highway robbery price.

  Joe was the first to pull his open; leaning down with a painful grunt, he flipped the clasp and practically flung the top open, his eyes growing wide. He stared into the chest wordlessly for a moment before looking back up at the other knights.

  “I may…may…have been hasty in my unkind word towards the dungeon.” Joe said with a slowly building grin. Egbert wanted to see what the hell was in the chest too, so he zoomed over to get a look. It was a steely grey shield with the emblem of a broken hammer engraved into the front and enchantments flickering like blue lightning along the edges.

  WOW, that is a nice-ass shield…can I examine it? Technically it’s still dungeon loot, right? Egbert was pleased when the ID worked not on the item but on the chest itself. That happiness led to concern.

  [Random Loot Box Opened]

  [Contents]

  Illusionary armor breaker shield, A handle with a very well-crafted illusion of a popular anti-armor enchanted shield that can be bought from dwarven smiths.

  Joe is actually going to finally snap one of these days… I need to hide my core somewhere deeper.