The count was thirty-seven minutes. 37 minutes was the count.

  I had spent hours making the bone golem. It was another experiential notch in the idea that time went faster for me when I was working on the dungeon. But I didn’t have time to deal with that.

  There were many things that still needed to be done, but I had to prioritize things immediately.

  The first task was obvious. “Quinn, there’s little more than thirty minutes left until the dungeon opens. You need to go back to the castle now.”

  Quinn’s back stiffened and she frowned. “We still have plenty of time and I can still help,” Quinn clearly did not want to be shunted to the side at such a critical time.

  I understood her; really, I did. And if I had died a young man, I would sympathize with her gumption and let her stay. I could see how it would play out. She would help until the last minute, then there would be a desperate scramble to retreat as the clock ticked its final seconds of its countdown.

  But I hadn’t died a young man. I had died a middle aged man who had a daughter–a daughter he had raised for years, through thick and thin. Rebellion was inherent to teenage existence, but sometimes a parent just had to put their foot down. The risk was too great, and completely unnecessary.

  “No! Just No!” I text-shouted.

  Quinn tried to protest, “But–”

  “--We cannot risk you getting caught in the Holding when it instances, what with evil goblins coming who are all likely much higher level than you. And, can you really trust me not to zone out while working? No. We do this right and get you to safety first. I will try to talk with you as I work so you can contribute, but there is no reason to delay retreating.”

  Quinn flashed a brief spark of defiance, prepared to argue further. But suddenly, fortunately, she buried her opposition with a capitulating sigh. “Alright. Alright. I’m done making bone castles anyways,” she huffed. But she picked herself up and started heading towards the grate that led down.

  I quickly went back to work.

  Actually, with so little time left, I needed to assess my priorities. Fortunately, the most immediate job was obvious: the damn keys. I had originally conceived them to be fundamental to the floor’s concept, adding in a bit of procedural generation to keep the delver’s guessing. But with all the changes, particularly the addition of the new room, they needed to be fixed. Plus, I felt I could make the changes quickly, hopefully quickly enough.

  Since the first floor, the “Necromancer’s Abattoir," was basically done, insofar as it didn’t need more expanding, I decided to work backwards. Therefore, the first decision point was where keys would be needed. The sewer grate was absolutely necessary and I had just added the arena’s portcullis trap. That made an obvious two.

  The door at the end of the bridge was a third key point, but now it seemed counter to the floor’s design. Before, the bridge over the pit had been just another trap, but now the basement was part of the floor’s natural progression to the next area via the sewer. If delvers went straight down to the basement, half the dungeon would be skipped. That would be very inefficient. So that door (and the connected trap) would be out, literally.

  Key locations. The skeleton in the dart trap room, the pool in the mushroom grotto, and the iron box were still the best options. And . . . ah . . . I laughed–Quinn! When coming up, I had opened the grate for her, but she had closed it when she came up. Apparently, she had quickly realized this and already gone back to the arena, gotten the key off the Skeleton Knight, returned back down, and opened the grate. Also, as a result, she had left the key in the keyhole. Whoops.

  Anyways, that meant there was a fourth option--somewhere in the arena. While I debated placing the key in the stands or in the VIP box, I decided to keep its location on the Skeleton Knight for now.

  There would be three keyholes: the portcullis entrance to the arena, the sewer grate in the basement, and the door in the floor hidden under the iron box set in the former skeleton fighter room. I determined that the keys could be found in the grotto pool, one in the iron box, one with the skeleton in the dart trap room, in addition to the one hanging around the neck of one of the Skeleton Knights in the arena.

  Thinking about the randomization method for the keys when it comes to matching them to the specific keyholes, I realized my concerns about preventing delvers speed-rushing the floor were moot. There was no way I could absolutely prevent its possibility, not with a lot more time and mana to put the first floor on rails. So, I gave up on trying to force the progression. Any combination of keys to keyholes was on the table.

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  That didn’t mean I didn’t want to put something there–an incentive, a nudge. The dark goblins didn’t seem to care about going through the entire floor or material rewards, but the Dwarves or others might.

  I pulled my attention back and checked on Quinn. It had only been a couple minutes and she was nearly all the way back to the castle. I sent a brief message telling her what I planned then returned my focus to the task at hand.

  I wanted to make the keys out of Silverium. The existing stash of Silverium would work perfectly because it would be mana free. However, since the second holding was much smaller than the first, its mana cost to reset was also much less. It had already instanced. So I simply made four new Silverium keys in each of the chosen locations.

  Now I had to transfer the connective elements of the original keys to the new keys without breaking anything in the process.

  I used Interface to create a status screen then connected it to the already existing trap system that governed the keys, while also connecting it to all the key pieces (namely the doors and keys). Manipulating the screen’s information and inputs, I created a way to adjust the features of the trap by editing the information displayed in the status screen. I tested it on the sewer grate key, which was not included in the existing system, by adding it to the list of keys contained in the status screen. It worked. Then, I selected the same key where it was listed on the screen and deleted it as an input. That worked too.

  Then I tested it on one of the keys that was part of the extant system. It again worked, the status screen acted as an intermediary, keeping the connection valid but open. The screen itself showed an empty text box waiting to be filled in. Plug-and-play achieved!

  I streamlined the entire arrangement, removing all the old keys–and a door–and replaced them with the correct Silverium keys in their proper locations. In the end, there were four keys with three keyholes.

  I forced myself to take a pause.

  Quinn was safely lounging in the grand staircase room, already sporting a look of boredom. The clock showed seventeen minutes remaining until the dungeon opened.

  “Quinn. The problem with the doors and keys has been fixed. It’s all very basic now, but should function properly at least. Plus, I made it a little easier to adjust for the future,” I explained.

  Quinn blew a raspberry, “So that’s it then? Now we wait?”

  “We have a bit of time left. I’m going to make one final change.”

  The former skeleton fighter room was gnawing at me. It was now empty of monsters and traps, containing naught but an iron box with a key in it, and a trap door in the floor hidden by the box. I didn’t have the time or mana to make a new monster or trap.

  But I could make it stupidly annoying.

  I rebuilt the iron box to be an actual lockbox, including a proper lid with working hinges and a lock on one side. Of course, I made it so the lock was actually locked, too. I got into some detailed work and made a few simple teeth inside the lock. Using a very small trap, I set it to randomize which teeth, when pushed up, would open the lock.

  I didn’t make a key for it.

  Delvers could pick the lock mechanism, probably fairly easily, or bash open the hinges or box lid to force open the box. But looking for a key for the box? A fruitless search.

  Six minutes.

  There was still one more element to the key system I wanted–and the reason I used Siverium–but I knew I wouldn’t finish in time.

  So I looked at the fake core in the hidden room, which–as Quinn had pointed out–looked exactly like a fake core made of stone. There was nothing else in the room. It looked bad; the room was pointless.

  I absorbed the fake core, plinth and all.

  Five minutes.

  Quinn and I had discussed keeping the room as a sort of treasure vault. That was still a decent idea, but making treasure now would only be useful if it could incentivize the dark goblins to leave my dungeon with their loot. That seemed implausible.

  Four minutes.

  I stopped and pulled back to rest. I was very anxious but not to the level of panicing. There was not much value to acting like a TV chef in the final minute of a cooking competition. What was done was done.

  The clock ticked down.

  With no fanfare, the clock hit zero. The Holding instanced. The dungeon opened again to the world.

  . . .

  And nothing happened.

  A dozen minutes later and a low-level goblin came into the lobby. The goblins had been staying far enough away from my entrance that I wasn’t getting any feedback, but had sent a low level grunt to check on the door like clockwork every twelve hours. They too knew the rules.

  The goblin must have seen that the portal was open, because he scampered quickly back outside.

  Mr. Crazypants and his gang would soon be here.

  Any minute now.

  Any minute.

  “What’s happening?” Quinn fretted. “What do the goblins look like? Tell me!”

  “They haven’t entered yet,” I answered.

  “What? Really?”

  “Yeah. really.”

  We waited.

  “Argh!” Quinn stamped her foot lightly in frustration. “The wait is really bothering me!”

  The wait didn’t bother me. However, staying idle during the extra time afforded to us by the goblins seemed like a waste.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as they come,” I reassured her. “In the meantime, let’s work on other parts of the dungeon.”

  It took more than an hour for the dark goblins to arrive. There were dozens of them, but almost all of them were fairly low level. A half-dozen were stronger though, including Mr. Crazypants.

  Five of them entered. The portal shut.

  Game on.