Chapter 6: Manager on Duty

The break room door had not been there a minute ago.

Mason knew because he had been counting exits the way other people counted bullets. Two swinging double doors to Grocery, one employee-only steel door with a keypad that had tried to bite Priya’s fingers, three emergency exits painted on the walls but not existing in the walls, and an escalator down into a darkness that smelled like wet cardboard and old blood.

Then the fluorescent lights flickered. The aisle shelves shuddered. A row of cereal boxes turned their smiling mascots toward the party in perfect unison.

And there it was.

A beige door with a crooked plastic sign screwed into the front.

EMPLOYEES ONLY
BREAK ROOM / MANAGEMENT OFFICE
Unauthorized entry will result in disciplinary action.

Rook lifted the crowbar he had been using like a sword and exhaled through his teeth. His leather jacket was torn down one sleeve and dusted with powdered sugar from the donut mimic that had nearly taken his hand. “That doesn’t look like a break room. That looks like where hope goes to fill out a form before it dies.”

Priya wiped a smear of blue potion gel off her cheek with the back of her glove. The gel sparkled faintly, crawling toward her knuckles before the enchantment on her bracer burned it away. “All rooms in this place look like that.”

“No,” Mason said.

They all looked at him.

He was staring at the sign.

Not the words printed on cheap plastic. The words beneath them, the layer the Ledger System painted over reality like a transparent invoice. The letters floated in his vision in stern black type, crisp and condemning.

SUB-AREA: MANAGERIAL OVERSIGHT NODE
Recommended Party Level: 4–6
Current Occupancy: 1 Acting Manager, 18 Associates, 3 Probationary Trainees
Compliance Risk: Severe
Warning: Workplace Policies Enforced Beyond Threshold

Mason’s fingers tightened around the bent metal clipboard he had claimed from a slain shelving imp. The thing was dented, blood-flecked, and had become a conduit for his class skills in a way that still made no sense to any reasonable universe. He could feel numbers breathing through it. Debits. Credits. Accrued penalties. Little hooks of obligation waiting to snag flesh.

“Boss room,” he said.

Lena’s face lit up with the sort of grin that made Mason worry for structural integrity. She rolled her shoulders, and the borrowed riot shield strapped to her forearm gave a heavy clunk. She had found it wedged behind a customer service desk under a sign that read For Aggressive Refund Requests. “Finally.”

“You say that like we weren’t almost murdered by a pallet of discount soup,” Mason said.

“That was foreplay.”

Priya made a strangled noise. “Please never refer to canned goods that way again.”

Cal, who had been quiet since the price-tag curse slapped a seventy percent markdown onto his stamina, leaned on his mop spear and swallowed. He was the youngest of them, nineteen at most, still wearing the green apron he’d had on when the supermarket became a dungeon. The name tag on his chest said CALVIN – HAPPY TO HELP! The exclamation point had a drop of blood on it.

“Management office,” he whispered. “Mr. Gribbs used to sit back there.”

“Gribbs?” Rook asked.

Cal’s mouth twisted. “Assistant store manager. Human before. I think.”

That put a hush over them.

The dungeon had worn the shape of the supermarket Mason remembered from boring Tuesdays and exhausted Sundays. But every aisle had been wrong. The bakery breathed. The frozen section whispered names from behind frosted glass. Employee motivational posters showed smiling people with too many teeth beneath slogans like Teamwork Makes the Screams Work.

If there had been people here when the Ledger descended, not all of them had died cleanly.

Mason looked at the beige door. It pulsed faintly at the seams, as if something on the other side was breathing coffee breath against it.

“Cal,” Mason said, keeping his voice even. “Did Gribbs have any habits we need to know about?”

Cal barked out a humorless laugh. “He wrote people up for bathroom breaks. Called unpaid overtime ‘loyalty hours.’ Made us clock out and then restock shelves. If a customer screamed at us, he gave us a warning for damaging store satisfaction metrics.”

Lena’s grin vanished. “I take back my finally. I want to break his kneecaps slowly.”

“Get in line,” Cal muttered.

A tremor passed through the floor. The beige door bulged outward once, then settled. From behind it came a muffled squeal, a wet cough, and the scratch of many claws across cheap linoleum.

Mason’s vision sharpened. His class was waking up without being called, smelling fraud like blood in water.

System Auditor Instinct triggered.
Irregular authority structure detected.
Available Action: Inspect Contractual Hierarchy.

Mason inhaled slowly. The air tasted like old receipts and fryer grease.

“Give me ten seconds when we enter,” he said.

Rook snorted. “Every time you say that, something tries to chew my spine.”

“That’s because you have a chewable personality.”

Priya adjusted the strap of her satchel, vials clicking like glass teeth. “What are you looking for?”

“The way the boss controls the minions. This dungeon has rules. Bad ones. Rules leave paperwork.”

“And you eat paperwork for breakfast,” Lena said.

“No. I choke it down with coffee and regret.”

Rook stepped up beside the door. “That’s the spirit.”

They formed up the way they had learned through pain. Lena front-left with the shield. Rook front-right, crowbar low, eyes restless. Priya in the middle with her pharmacy fire and emergency bandages. Cal behind, trembling but gripping his mop spear so hard his knuckles were white. Mason slightly back, clipboard raised, not because it could block anything bigger than a stapler, but because the System seemed to respect props.

Lena kicked the door.

The beige slab exploded inward in a shower of splinters and laminated policy notices.

Heat rolled out, damp and sour. The break room beyond had grown far larger than any supermarket should allow. Rows of folding tables stretched across a cavernous office bullpen lit by buzzing rectangular lights. Vending machines lined the walls like armored sentries, their glass fronts packed with pulsing organs instead of snacks. Time clocks hung everywhere, dozens of them, each punching cards by itself with a steady ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk.

And in the center of the room, on a throne built from office chairs and crushed water coolers, sat the manager.

Mr. Gribbs had become a goblin the way spoiled meat became a smell.

He was enormous, bloated to the size of a delivery van, with green-gray skin stretched glossy over rolls of fat. A white short-sleeved dress shirt strained across his belly, buttons embedded like trapped teeth. A tie patterned with tiny shopping carts hung from his thick neck, stained brown and black. His head was bald on top but ringed with greasy wisps of hair, and his ears jutted long and sharp beneath a headset microphone grown into his cheek.

His name tag gleamed on his chest.

GRIBBS
Manager on Duty

A dozen smaller goblins scurried around him in aprons, carrying clipboards, box cutters, and staplers sharpened into claws. Their eyes were red from fluorescent light and fear. Some had human features twisted beneath goblin skin. One still wore braces.

Gribbs’s tiny eyes fixed on the party. His lips spread in a smile full of square office-white teeth.

“Late,” he said.

The word boomed out of the ceiling speakers, distorted by corporate cheer.

Every time clock on the walls punched at once.

KA-CHUNK.

BOSS ENCOUNTER INITIATED
Bloated Goblin Manager Gribbs – Level 7 Elite
Role: Workplace Tyrant / Minion Buffer
Dungeon Policy Domain Active: Corrective Action Plan

Objective: Defeat Manager on Duty
Optional Objective: Rescue Remaining Associates
Penalty for Failure: Wage Garnishment, Soul Garnishment, Death

Rook squinted. “Soul garnishment feels redundant after death.”

“Take it up with payroll,” Mason said.

Gribbs lifted one sausage-thick hand. A brass bell appeared between his fingers, the kind used on old service counters.

He rang it.

The sound was bright, cheerful, and vicious.

Manager Skill: Shift Briefing
All Associates gain +20% Attack Speed and +15% Obedience.
All Associates must engage unauthorized entrants.

The smaller goblins jerked upright. Their expressions twisted, not into rage but panic. Their limbs moved before their faces caught up, rushing forward with staplers snapping and box cutters flashing.

“They’re being forced!” Cal shouted.

One goblin leapt onto a table and hurled a sheaf of papers. The pages spun like blades. Lena stepped in front of Mason, shield raised. The paper knives hit with sharp cracks, slicing shallow white cuts into the riot shield’s surface.

“Nonlethal if we can!” Mason called.

“You say that to the stapler biting my leg!” Rook yelled.

A goblin had indeed latched onto his boot, hammering a stapler into his shin with mechanical fury. Rook swore, flipped the crowbar, and hooked the creature by its apron. Instead of smashing its skull, he swung it into a folding chair. The chair collapsed with a clang, and the goblin went down groaning.

Lena drove forward like a riot line condensed into one angry woman. Her shield crashed into three associates and sent them skidding across the floor. She followed with a kick that folded a goblin over a table but pulled the strike at the last instant, enough to drop, not kill.

Priya uncorked a vial with her teeth and spat the cork aside. Blue mist sprayed from her hand, freezing the linoleum in a slick fan. Two goblins hit the ice and pinwheeled into a vending machine filled with twitching hearts.

Mason did not watch the fight the way a fighter would. He watched the connections.

Every associate had thin red lines running from the back of their neck to Gribbs’s headset. Each line pulsed with symbols.

Compliance. Attendance. Performance Improvement. Final Warning. No Call No Show. Loyalty Hours.

The boss was not merely inspiring them. He was binding them through policy.

Mason raised his clipboard.

“Inspect Contractual Hierarchy.”

The room stuttered.

For half a heartbeat, the battlefield became an office chart drawn in blood-red ink. Gribbs sat at the top beneath a bold header: MANAGER ON DUTY. Lines descended to SHIFT LEADS, then ASSOCIATES, then a miserable box labeled PROBATIONARY TRAINEES / EXPENDABLE. Mason could see clauses hanging from every connection like hooks.

Authority Source: Emergency Retail Continuity Charter
Acting Manager Appointment: Clause 9(b), Crisis Leadership Escalation
Buff Engine: Mandatory Morale Enforcement Addendum
Disciplinary Damage Conversion: Corrective Action Plan, Section 4

Then a stapler hit Mason in the shoulder.

Pain flashed hot and stupid. The metal jaws bit through his shirt, teeth punching skin. A goblin associate clung to him, eyes wet, mouth snarling around words it clearly did not want to say.

“Company policy requires full engagement with security threats!” it shrieked.

Mason stumbled back, slammed into a folding table, and almost dropped the clipboard. The goblin raised the stapler toward his face.

Cal screamed and thrust his mop spear.

The mop head struck the goblin in the side with a wet thwap, discharging a burst of gray cleaning foam from the enchanted fibers. The associate flew off Mason and skidded under a table, cocooned in suds.

Cal stared at what he had done, panting. “Sorry! Sorry! I mean—good? Sorry!”

“Good sorry,” Mason gasped, ripping the stapler from his shoulder. Blood warmed his sleeve. “Very good sorry.”

Across the room, Gribbs chuckled. His belly shook, rattling the water coolers beneath his throne.

“Team members who fail to meet expectations,” he said through the speakers, “will be coached.”

He pointed at the fallen goblin beneath the table.

Manager Skill: Performance Improvement Plan
Target Associate receives +50% Strength, -50% Free Will.
Duration: Until objective completed or employee termination.

The suds-covered goblin convulsed. Its limbs lengthened. Its apron straps snapped as muscle bulged beneath mottled skin. It rose, foam sliding off it, eyes blank and terrified.

“Oh, hell no,” Lena said.

The empowered associate lunged.

It hit Lena’s shield hard enough to drive her boots furrows through the linoleum. The impact cracked the riot shield down the center. Lena grunted, teeth bared, knees buckling.

Rook vaulted a table and smashed his crowbar into the associate’s elbow. Bone cracked. The creature did not stop. It backhanded him into a bulletin board covered in Employee of the Month photos, sending thumbtacks and glass shards raining down.

Priya threw a red vial. “Duck!”

Lena dropped.

The vial burst against the associate’s chest, releasing a sticky blossom of scarlet flame. The fire crawled over its apron and skin but burned blue at the edges, controlled, alchemical, seeking System enchantments instead of flesh. The red line from Gribbs to the associate flickered.

For a moment, its eyes cleared.

“Help,” it whispered.

Then Gribbs rang the bell again.

Ding.

Manager Skill: Mandatory Overtime
All Associates regain 10% Health.
All Associates accrue Fatigue Debt.
Fatigue Debt may be collected by Manager to restore Health.

The blue flame snuffed out. The associate roared and swung both fists down at Lena.

Mason saw the numbers ripple. Health moved from the smaller goblins to Gribbs and back again, a sloshing pool of stolen labor. The boss was not fighting yet because he did not have to. He sat in his chair-throne, weaponizing hierarchy.

“Mason!” Priya shouted.

“Working!”

“Work faster!”

The words hit him with such absurd familiarity that for one terrible second he was no longer in a dungeon. He was in a climate-controlled conference room at 11:43 p.m., staring at a spreadsheet while a partner with dead eyes told him the client needed revised findings by morning. He was hungry. His shirt collar was too tight. His inbox had eighty-seven unread emails. Someone had written quick question in the subject line, and he had wanted to walk into the sea.

Mason blinked blood out of his eye and laughed once.

It was not a nice laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know the type.”

He shoved his pain aside and focused on the contract chart still ghosting in his vision. Clause 9(b). Crisis Leadership Escalation. Acting Manager Appointment.

Authority did not appear from nowhere. It had to be granted. It had to comply with its own governing terms.

Mason jabbed the clipboard with two fingers, dragging the floating text closer as if scrolling through a document.

Clause 9(b): Crisis Leadership Escalation
In the event of Store Manager absence, incapacitation, undeath, transmutation, extradimensional displacement, or managerial vacancy exceeding fifteen (15) minutes, the highest-ranking qualified employee present may assume Acting Manager status, provided said employee:
(i) has completed Leadership Essentials Module;
(ii) has not received Final Written Warning within prior ninety (90) days;
(iii) maintains satisfactory Customer Devotion Score;
(iv) accepts fiduciary responsibility for revenue, inventory, staff morale, and sacrificial shrinkage.

There.

His pulse kicked.

“Cal!” Mason shouted. “Did Gribbs complete leadership training?”

Cal, currently fending off a goblin with a mop handle while apologizing each time he jabbed it, gave him an incredulous look. “What?”

“Leadership Essentials Module!”

“He made me take it for him!”

Mason’s grin sharpened.

Gribbs noticed.

The bloated goblin manager leaned forward, chair-throne groaning under him. For the first time, irritation creased his greasy face.

“Unauthorized review of internal documentation is prohibited,” Gribbs said.

The ceiling speakers squealed.

Manager Skill: Closed Door Meeting
Target: Mason Vell
Effect: Isolation, Intimidation, Verbal Damage Over Time

The lights above Mason snapped off.

The rest of the room blurred behind frosted glass walls that slammed down around him in a square. Sound muffled. The fight became distant shadows thrashing beyond translucent partitions. Mason stood alone in a little office that had not existed a second ago, carpeted in gray, smelling of burnt coffee and toner.

Gribbs was suddenly there, wedged behind a cheap desk, filling the chair with obscene bulk. His headset crackled. Behind him, framed posters declared WE ARE A FAMILY and OWN YOUR OUTCOMES.

Mason’s shoulder throbbed. Blood dripped onto the carpet and was immediately absorbed, leaving no stain. Of course not. Companies loved hiding blood.

Gribbs folded his hands on the desk. His nails were yellow and thick. “Mason Vell,” he said, voice softer now, intimate and oily. “Your performance today has not met expectations.”

Letters appeared in the air between them.

Verbal Warning Issued.
Morale Damage: 3 per second
Confidence Resistance: Contested

A pressure settled over Mason’s chest. Not physical. Worse. Familiar. The old gravity of being told calmly, professionally, that exhaustion was a personal failing.

“You lack initiative,” Gribbs said. “You question process without offering solutions. You disrupt team alignment. You are not a culture fit.”

The words cut. Tiny red numbers ticked in Mason’s vision.

-3 Morale
-3 Morale
-3 Morale

Outside the glass, Lena slammed into the partition shoulder-first, mouth moving soundlessly. Rook hammered it with his crowbar. Priya’s fire splashed over the surface and crawled away.

Mason adjusted his grip on the clipboard.

“I’ve had scarier meetings with senior partners who used moisturizer,” he said.

Gribbs’s smile twitched.

“Deflection. Lack of accountability.”

“Funny word, accountability.” Mason stepped closer to the desk. “People like you only use it downward.”

Gribbs’s eyes narrowed. “You were late to the shift.”

“I don’t work here.”

“Everyone works here.”

The office walls pulsed. For a moment Mason saw cubicles stretching forever beyond the glass, endless desks under dead fluorescent light, humans and goblins typing until their fingers bled onto keyboards. A cosmic office. A civilization converted into workflow.

His stomach turned.

“Not for you,” Mason said.

He activated his skill.

“Audit Trail.”

The clipboard grew hot. Pages erupted from its clip, flipping themselves so fast they became a white blur. Receipts, training logs, disciplinary forms, payroll records, digital signatures printed in black ink across the air.

Gribbs slammed a fist on the desk. Coffee mugs jumped. “This is confidential!”

“That usually means incriminating.”

Audit Trail initiated.
Subject: Acting Manager Appointment – Gribbs
Searching supporting documentation…
Discrepancies detected: 7
Material discrepancies detected: 3
Fraud indicators detected: 2

The morale damage slowed.

Gribbs stood. The desk scraped backward. His body seemed larger in the enclosed office, his bulk pressing into the corners of the world. “Team members who create hostile work environments will be terminated.”

He opened his mouth wide.

Not like a person. Like a trash compactor.

A blast of hot coffee breath and shredded memos roared across the desk. Mason dove aside as the torrent struck the wall behind him and etched words into the glass.

INSUBORDINATE. DIFFICULT. NEGATIVE. NOT PROMOTABLE.

Each word crawled toward Mason like a brand.

He slapped his palm against the floating audit record.

“Compare signature on Leadership Essentials Module completion certificate to employee time clock access logs.”

The System hesitated.

It actually hesitated.

Mason felt the resistance, a grinding bureaucracy somewhere far above the dungeon deciding whether a level-three exhausted accountant with a bleeding shoulder had the right to ask that question.

Then his class answered for him.

System Auditor Privilege asserted.
Comparative review authorized.

Leadership Essentials Module: Completed under User ID GRIBBS.MGR
Training Terminal Location: Back Office Terminal 2
Timestamp: 02:14:33 AM

Time Clock Record: GRIBBS.MGR clocked out at 21:02:11 PM prior evening.
Badge Access: No entry recorded.
Camera Record: Corrupted.
Alternate User Present: CALVIN.ASSOC

Finding: Credential Misrepresentation Likely.

The glass walls flickered.

Outside, sound rushed back in for a second: Lena bellowing, Cal screaming, metal crashing, goblins shrieking policy slogans.

Gribbs lunged across the desk.

He moved impossibly fast for something so large. His hand closed around Mason’s throat and slammed him into the wall. The impact drove air from his lungs. The branded words on the glass crawled onto his jacket, burning through fabric.

“You think paperwork saves you?” Gribbs hissed, no longer using the speakers. Up close, his breath smelled of spoiled creamer and rotten gums. “Paperwork is the cage. I am the hand that closes it.”

Mason clawed at the thick fingers around his neck. His boots kicked uselessly above the carpet.

Black spots speckled his vision.

The clipboard lay on the floor beneath him, just out of reach.

Gribbs squeezed. “You are a poor fit for this organization.”

Final Warning Pending…
If accepted, target suffers Authority Suppression for remainder of encounter.

Mason could not breathe. Could not speak. His eyes watered. The System prompt blurred.

Accepted.

The word hovered, waiting for fear to click it.

He had seen people accept worse in conference rooms. Accept blame for impossible deadlines. Accept unpaid nights. Accept heartburn and panic attacks and the quiet theft of their lives because saying no felt like professional suicide.

Mason’s fingers brushed the clipboard’s metal edge.

Not enough.

Gribbs’s thumb dug under his jaw.

“Nod,” the manager whispered.

Mason’s hand slipped. He caught the dangling chain of Gribbs’s name tag instead.

Cheap plastic. Sharp edge. The word Manager burned with borrowed authority.

Mason pulled.

The chain snapped.

Gribbs blinked.

Mason drove the jagged corner of the name tag into the manager’s wrist.

It did almost no damage. One point, maybe. A ridiculous little cut.

But blood welled around the plastic, and the System loved symbols.

Mason rasped one word through his crushed throat.

“Evidence.”

The clipboard flew into his hand.

Evidence Seized: Manager Identification Badge
Chain of Custody established.
Associated Authority Token temporarily reviewable.

Mason slammed the badge against the clipboard.

“Review promotion clause.”

Gribbs roared.

The office shattered.

Mason hit the break room floor on his back amid exploding glass that evaporated into shredded policy memos before it landed. Sound returned as a wall. Screams. Bells. Table legs screeching. Lena’s shield breaking apart. Rook cursing like a man personally offended by physics. Priya shouting his name.

Gribbs was back on his throne but hunched forward, clutching his bleeding wrist. His name tag was gone from his chest, leaving a pale rectangle on his stained shirt.

All the red authority lines flickered.

The associates faltered mid-attack.

Lena seized the opening. With a roar, she rammed the empowered goblin backward into Gribbs’s chair-throne. The impact made the bloated boss wobble, fat rippling. Rook hooked a table leg with his crowbar and yanked, sending three goblins sprawling. Priya tossed a vial at Mason’s feet; green vapor washed over him, sealing the shallow cuts and turning the deeper bruise around his throat from agony to merely awful.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Performance feedback received,” Mason croaked.

Cal slid beside him, eyes wide. “Did you—did you take his badge?”

Mason held up the cracked plastic tag. It wriggled between his fingers like a live insect.

“Temporarily seized pending review.”

Rook staggered over, blood running from his hairline. “Can you pending review him into a coma?”

“Working on it.”

Gribbs dragged himself upright. Without the badge, he looked less like an institution and more like a monster pretending to be one. That made him angrier.

“Theft of company property,” he thundered.

He rang his bell so hard the brass cracked.

Manager Skill: All Hands Meeting
Compulsory attendance required.
All Associates gain Desperation.

Continue Reading

You are reading a free preview (50%). Log in to unlock the full chapter and join comments.

Log In to UnlockCreate Account