Dungeon Master (Karma System)

The orc breaker destroyed the training door exactly as instructed. But he caused too much damage and the door frame collapsed after he passed through and trapped the dwarf engineer on the wrong side.

Quin ended the exercise before the rest of the breach group tried to fix the problem by destroying the surrounding wall.

”The door was the fastest route.” The orc said.

”It was.” Quin agreed. ”Now the person who could identify the damaged mechanism is separated from you, and after the noise of it all collapsing, everyone beyond the corridor knows you are coming.”

Merrik, the dwarven engineer, examined the fallen door before. ”The hinge supports were marked. We should have removed the upper one and turned the door into cover.”

”You should have told him before he charged.” Quin explained.

Dagna, the dwarven runesmith, accepted the correction without blaming the orc for performing the role the catalogue gave him.

Max watched from the edge of the plain stone training hall.

The twenty elite units had spent three days working in rooms never designed for the abilities they brought. The pursuit group ran out of distance before its trackers reached full speed. The dryad could produce roots through cracks in the floor, but the empty chamber offered no varied terrain to control. The elven ward mage had no way to practice separating hostile portal magic from an allied route because both doors opened normally.

Their standard equipment created similar limits.

The orc bulwark’s armor protected him without providing secure points for attaching a wounded person. The quickling scout carried tools built for ordinary hands and lost time whenever she needed to manipulate them. Dagna possessed a strong runic hammer and six prepared plates, but no portable surface for building a larger ward away from a wall.

The creatures were elite.

Max opened the equipment project.

He did not replace every weapon merely because he could. The dwarf’s shield already matched his anchoring abilities. The elven archer’s bow was designed around his long-range detection Skill. The healer’s field kit contained the materials her class recognized.

Max paid to connect those individual tools to the work the unit would perform.

The command group received linked communication tokens. Aderic, the human commander, could send short directions through them without preventing other members from reporting what they saw. Each token recorded which group issued a boundary alert and continued carrying that alert through private routes.

The orc bulwark’s armor received reinforced rescue straps and a protected space for carrying someone unable to move. The human healer received compact supplies divided among the four groups instead of one large case that could be separated from everyone who needed it.

The pursuit group received route markers visible only to registered members of the unit. The quickling’s tools were rebuilt for her hands and distributed across a belt that would not tear apart at her full speed. The dwarf crossbowman received modular bolts for armor, flying targets, and enchanted barriers rather than carrying one ammunition type into every assignment.

Dagna designed the breaching equipment herself.

Her portable runic frame folded into four sections across her back. It could brace a damaged portal, support a temporary barrier, or give her a stable surface for a ward where the surrounding material would not hold one. The dwarf engineer received compact structural probes and marking spikes that every group could recognize.

Max spent 240,000 DP across all twenty equipment sets.

The communication equipment required rules as much as enchantment.

During the first test, twenty people reported at once.That meant that Aderic heard every report at the exact same time.. He divided the network into group channels, emergency priority, and direct reports from the four leaders. Any member could break into the command channel for an immediate threat, but routine movement stayed within the relevant group.

Siv, the quickling, tested the priority system by crossing three training rooms and reporting hazards faster than the communication enchantment expected. Dagna adjusted the relay plates until the quickling’s second warning no longer arrived before her first. The elven ward mage tested the same tokens inside hostile magic and found that a strong suppression field reduced them to be only capable of sending short pulses and no longer being able to transmit words. Aderic established simple pulse meanings for retreat, hold, found target, and injured ally.

Max approved those changes with the equipment rather than assuming the most expensive version was automatically suitable.

The larger expense was the training complex.

He placed it behind the elite unit’s temporary barracks and connected it to controlled private routes. The facility contained no audience galleries or public entrance. It existed for the people training inside it.

One section reproduced narrow underground passages with changing elevations, false walls, shafts, and confined turns. Another contained a ruined street, occupied buildings, roof access, and open intersections. A forested section offered living terrain for the dryad and trackers. The defensive section included gates, walls, damaged bridges, and portal frames that could be configured around different kinds of failure.

An open chamber allowed aerial attacks and long-range detection without requiring the unit to leave the mountain.

Movable barriers changed routes between exercises. Training constructs could act as intruders, trapped staff, civilians, hostile creatures, or objects requiring protection. The facility could interrupt communication, obscure a map, or present one group with information the others did not receive.

It also contained an observation room connected to Sanctuary security’s training records. Gnome investigators could build an exercise from the kinds of reports they actually received without revealing active cases. The elite unit would learn what an uncertain security warning looked like.

A separate medical area allowed the human healer, dryad, and orc shaman to train with injuries created for their different abilities. Rescue routes connected that area to every terrain section. Max did not want the healing specialists left in a safe room while the rest practiced reaching people they would later need to carry out.

Max approved the 300,000 DP construction.

Quin used it immediately.

The first complete exercise began with three made up reports to test the systems in place.

[Restricted portal measurement detected in administrative route.]

[Four staff members missing after boundary failure.]

[Possible core hunter observed entering ruined-street sector.]

Aderic received all three. The pursuit group received only the hunter sighting. Containment received the portal alert. Breach received the missing-staff record. The command group did not know which report represented the primary threat.

No report was false.

That did not make them equally important.

Aderic sent Siv, the quickling, through the ruined streets before moving the command group. The quickling crossed three intersections and found a cloaked training construct carrying maps toward a visible exit. It was designed to be found.

She reported its route without attacking.

The elven ranger divided pursuit. The redcap and orc hunter followed the visible target. The human infiltrator examined the route it came from. The dwarf crossbowman took a position capable of covering both.

Containment reached the damaged portal first.

The dwarven shieldthane anchored the main corridor while the magebreaker and ward mage examined the threshold from opposite sides. The orc shaman detected hostile magic attached to the measurement attempt. The dryad blocked two adjoining passages without sealing the responders inside.

The portal appeared to be the center of the exercise.

Then the human infiltrator found the second track.

Three intruder constructs had entered a service passage while the visible hunter drew attention toward the ruined street. Their route led toward the sector holding the missing staff.

Aderic changed assignments before the visible target reached its exit.

The redcap and orc hunter continued the pursuit. The elven ranger and dwarf crossbowman moved toward the service passage. The command group approached from the opposite direction, placing the orc bulwark between the intruders and the trapped employees.

Dagna’s breach group had already found them.

The four staff constructs stood behind a collapsed passage beneath a damaged portal frame. The orc breaker could have opened the debris quickly. Doing so would have dropped the portal support onto the people beyond it.

This time, he waited.

Merrik, the dwarf engineer, marked the load-bearing sections. Dagna placed the portable runic frame beneath the portal. The satyr used controlled sound to identify a hollow space where one employee had fallen behind the others. The elven spellblade cut the marked debris instead of choosing his own path through it.

The service-passage intruders arrived before the rescue finished.

Aderic did not order Dagna’s group to abandon the staff. He placed the command group across the approach. The orc bulwark intercepted the first construct. The elven ward mage closed the magic around the second without blocking the healer’s route. Siv, the quickling, carried the portal warning from containment to Dagna in time for the runesmith to recognize that the damaged frame contained the same hostile enchantment.

Containment remained at the original threshold.

The visible core hunter attempted to return toward it after pursuit cut off the exit. The dwarven shieldthane held the corridor. The magebreaker removed the construct’s last escape token, allowing the trackers to take it intact.

The rescue group freed all four staff constructs.

The command group contained the intruders without allowing them to reach the collapsed route. The pursuit group captured the distraction. Containment prevented the measured portal from becoming an escape path.

Quin ended the exercise.

No group had completed every task alone.

Aderic gathered the four leaders before Quin called them. He began with the delayed message between pursuit and breach, not the number of constructs defeated. Dagna identified that the runic frame needed a second set of connection plates. The elven ranger admitted he had sent too many people after the visible target before the infiltrator found the hidden trail.

Quin allowed them to complete the review.

”Better.” He said when Aderic finished. ”You responded to the problem you discovered.”

He opened the complete exercise record.

The pursuit group had reached the visible target fastest. That was not the most important time on the page. The trapped staff remained without protection for forty-two seconds after the hidden trail was discovered. Aderic reduced that delay by assigning the command group before waiting for pursuit to confirm every intruder.

The orc bulwark had taken three attacks meant for the healer and remained capable of moving a staff construct afterward. The dwarven shieldthane never left the measured portal, even when the visible chase moved away from him. Dagna’s group completed the rescue without using the orc breaker’s strongest ability because destroying the obstacle would have injured the people behind it.

The records showed cooperation as decisions rather than twenty creatures standing in the same room.

Aderic requested that the next exercise place the command group somewhere without direct access to the others. If the entire force depended upon him seeing every problem, separating one human would undo the DP Max spent on the rest.

Quin scheduled it.

Max opened the Champion Challenge roster.

Twenty names remained available. He did not need to introduce all of them to the Elder God’s record. The challenge group required the widest set of answers it could carry in ten positions.

He made the first selection provisional.

[Human commander]

[Orc bulwark]

[Dwarven shieldthane]

[Human field healer]

[Elven ward mage]

[Orc shaman]

[Elven ranger]

[Quickling scout]

[Dwarven runesmith]

[Elven spellblade]

The ten could defend, heal, detect, pursue, breach, and operate against magic. The other ten remained part of the elite unit and available if a new challenge condition required a change.

Eight days remained before the designated deadline.

Max left the roster provisional and ordered the entire twenty-member unit back into the training complex for the next exercise.