The planned loadout cost more than a month of hoped-for dungeon profit.
Marco reached that conclusion before breakfast Monday and spent the rest of the week failing to make it less true.
The county's public-site portal listed Dry Creek entry at thirty-eight dollars for a Saturday block, including Marco's share of the required trail warden. One-day outing insurance added twenty-one. Licensed processing took a percentage or a minimum counter fee, whichever hurt more. Bait, wire, chalk, fuel, and damaged arrows remained his problem whether the dungeon produced anything worth selling.
Above the fee schedule, the site card separated the letters people usually compressed into one.
REGISTERED DUNGEON HAZARD GRADE: G. Rough clear estimate based on known loops and recent sightings. PUBLIC LICENSES: SCHEDULED GROUP ONLY, four to eight entrants with a licensed F-rank trail warden. Quarry and Cedar accepted beginner groups in normal conditions. West Flood and inner harvest blocks required a composed F-rank team with a combat lead. Known individual hazards included G-grade beetles and rats, F-grade crawlers, and whatever had moved since the last patrol.
The note beneath the card was longer than the rank: Site classification does not guarantee the grade, number, location, or condition of individual threats.
His new license permitted him to enter with the equipment named by the site. It did not provide any of it.
Emma sat across from him at the kitchen table with her laptop, continuity notebook, and an expression Sarah normally reserved for insurance representatives.
“You put expected arrow loss at zero,” she said.
“I hope to miss economically.”
“You broke one shooting a beetle that wasn't trying to eat you.”
“It was moving.”
“The crawler will also be moving.”
Marco changed the cell to two arrows.
The projected first-run profit turned negative.
Lucy looked over from a bowl of cereal. “Are you doing dungeon math?”
“We're discovering that monsters charge admission,” Emma said.
“That's rude.”
“Write the county.”
Lucy pointed her spoon at the route card. “What if you find babies?”
“I back out and tell the warden.”
“Even if they're expensive?”
Marco closed the cost sheet halfway. “Especially then. A nest means there may be a mother I haven't seen.”
Lucy accepted the answer and returned to her cereal. Emma quietly added abandoned route beneath possible losses.
Then she checked the time. “I leave in twenty minutes. The auditorium light board keeps dropping channel twelve, and rehearsal will continue without your arrow budget.”
“I can finish the sheet.”
“Good. Send me the final version tonight. Not during cues.”
Sarah came in carrying a basket of folded laundry. She set Marco's work shirts on the table and looked at the route map beside them.
“Which day?” she asked.
“Saturday, if the gear checks out.”
“That wasn't on the sheet yesterday.”
“I hadn't picked a block.”
“You had picked one in your head.”
Marco closed the portal. “Saturday.”
Sarah nodded once. “Then we discuss Saturday after you know where Saturday is.”
Dry Creek occupied an old limestone quarry forty-two miles south of Blackridge. Its registered entrance opened beneath a collapsed aggregate shed, close enough to the county road that the visitor center sold coffee and far enough underground that rescue response varied by route. The public map showed three active loops, two seasonal closures, four hardened refuges, and a gray section labeled UNMAINTAINED ACCESS — ENTRY PROHIBITED. The refuges had doors, alarms, and independent air. The county map warned that each was a delay position, not a safe destination: a monster could wait outside, damage the door, or cut the route back to the entrance.
Marco printed the map twice.
One copy stayed clean. On the other he began marking costs.
Pritchard Sporting Goods sold new dungeon gear beneath lighting designed to make debt look professional.
Jackets occupied one wall in ranks of black, gray, and tactical green. The cheapest new model rated for Dry Creek cost $489—the same one Marco had seen through the window on Awakening morning. Helmet prices began at $176. Boots made his old work pair feel personally accused.
Mr. Pritchard did not lead him to any of them.
He took Marco through a curtain into the used section, where cleaned equipment hung with inspection tags wired to every zipper and strap. Some pieces came from people who had upgraded. Others came from insurance liquidation and contractor turnover. Marco did not ask which category a dark stain inside one jacket belonged to.
“Dry Creek?” Pritchard asked.
“Public loops. G stripe.”
“First scheduled group?”
“Saturday Quarry block.”
Pritchard looked at him over his glasses. “Good. A trail warden is not armor, but at least somebody watches while you learn which direction not to stare.”
“Mercer? Then you have received the deluxe lecture.”
He selected a charcoal jacket with reinforced shoulders and a patched seam at the right hip. The inspection tag showed abrasion testing, ward-conductivity testing, and a repaired tear that had passed both.
“This won't stop a crawler bite,” Pritchard said. “It may keep a scrape from opening you to the elbow. It may also tear somewhere the test didn't cover.”
“Comforting.”
“Comfort is new-gear money.”
The helmet had scratches along one side and a current impact scan. The boots fit after Marco changed to thicker socks. Their soles held better than his work boots on the shop's wet-stone sample, though the left heel had more wear.
Pritchard priced the jacket, helmet, and boots together at $390.
The mana alarm cost $135 used. It was a gray box the size of a deck of cards with a sensor bead on a retractable lead. A green light meant its immediate reading stayed within the calibrated band. Yellow meant leave and ask questions somewhere else. Red meant Marco had already spent too long looking at the light.
“Battery?” Marco asked.
“New. Calibration is sixty days old. County standard allows ninety.”
“Why did the previous owner sell it?”
“Upgraded.”
“You know that?”
“I know he bought a better one here.” Pritchard turned the case over. “I don't know why he wanted a better one.”
Marco added it to the counter.
A used work hatchet with an undamaged synthetic handle cost $42. Twelve personal dungeon-rated arrows cost $168. The first-aid refills, forty feet of rope, two chalk sticks, light utility wire, and a small sealed bait pouch filled the remaining $74.
Eight hundred nine dollars.
Marco counted the cost in more than money. The gear represented regular wages he had not put toward the clinic balance, credit card, or rear brake line. It represented thirty-six hours at base pay before taxes and ordinary expenses. It represented twenty-one public outings that earned the $34 he had projected and never damaged anything else.
He still needed the gear to discover whether the projection meant anything.
Pritchard ran the card.
“Try the jacket with your bow,” he said.
Marco drew against a safe cord while Pritchard watched the shoulder. The patched side pulled but did not bind. The helmet rim stayed clear of the string. The quiver rode badly against the jacket's reinforced hip, so Marco shifted it higher and added quiver repair to a later list rather than today's bill.
He counted the twelve new arrows before they went into his case. Ridgeway's work arrows remained in Ridgeway's cage. These were his because the permit, harvest, loss, and possible profit were his.
Pritchard handed him the receipt. “Bring the alarm back if it drifts. Bring the jacket back if the repair opens. Do not bring me either one covered in material and call it a warranty question.”
“What counts as material?”
“If you have to ask, decontaminate it.”
Dry Creek's visitor center had been built from concrete block and optimism in the early Dungeon Era. A newer steel awning protected the entry queue. The old quarry office now contained a permit desk, rescue board, gear-check lane, vending machines, and a wall covered with photographs of prohibited creatures.
Marco went there Wednesday without his bow.
The desk clerk checked his active public license and Rank G marker, then placed a matching yellow-striped visitor badge on the counter.
“Scouting perimeter only today?” she asked.
“Maps and route conditions.”
“Smart. Less exciting, but smart.”
She gave him the current closure sheet. West Loop's lower pocket had reopened after flooding. Quarry Loop had crawler activity near marker Q-Seventeen. Cedar Loop showed mana-beetle swarms and bluecap fungus depletion. The unmaintained gray section remained closed.
Marco copied the information onto his marked map.
He studied the rescue board next. Green magnets showed teams available on site. Yellow showed callout status. Estimated reach times ranged from eleven minutes near the entrance to forty-three on the far side of West Loop.
Forty-three minutes was not rescue. It was a report submitted while events continued.
Outside, the registered entrance sat beneath the quarry shed behind two steel gates. Between them, a translucent field filled a rectangle in the rock. Cold air flowed through whenever the inner gate opened, carrying wet limestone, fungus, and the metallic scent of active mana.
The site map made the entrance look like the top of a page. Standing there made it feel like the last place where paper had authority.
Marco walked the permitted surface perimeter. He checked the marked assembly points, ambulance access, and where the county radio lost ordinary signal. He timed the drive home at legal speed. Forty-nine minutes without traffic.
At Ridgeway the next day, Ray reviewed both map copies.
“Why Quarry Loop?” he asked.
“Shorter rescue times. Recent crawler sign. The first two resource pockets are inside my turnaround limit.”
“Why not Cedar?”
“Beetles are easier, but the fungus is depleted and the loop has three blind junctions before the first refuge.”
“West?”
“Recent flood. I don't know the footing.”
Ray tapped Q-Seventeen. “Crawler was logged Monday. Means what Friday?”
“It may be gone. It may have a den. It may have followed food and come back.”
“Means Monday happened Monday.”
Marco drew his planned path with a pencil. Entrance, first pocket, high ledge, second pocket, return. He marked a primary retreat through the main route and a secondary retreat to Refuge Two if the entrance side closed. The second line bought a hardened door and a radio call, not safety; if the route remained open, leaving the dungeon was always the better retreat.
Ray circled a narrow connector between them. “You use this?”
“Only if the main path is blocked.”
“Then walk it before you need it. A route you haven't seen is an opinion.”
Marco added an early check of the connector.
“Baited choke?” Ray asked.
“At the stone pinch before the first pocket. Wire low, bait beyond it, shooting position twelve yards back.”
“Anchor?”
“Rock horn on the left.”
“What if the horn breaks?”
“Trap fails. I retreat to the ledge.”
“What if the animal comes from behind?”
Marco marked another chalk check and a place for the alarm bead.
Ray made him explain the route until every answer became shorter. When they finished, he wrote his work number on the clean map and slid it back.
The booking listed six entrants and a licensed F-rank trail warden named Graham Vale. Marco would not know the others until check-in. Vale controlled movement and retreat. Each entrant still chose what to harvest, when to lower a weapon, and whether to leave before the group limit.
They tested the plan in Ridgeway's empty loading bay.
Ray used pallets for walls, traffic cones for route markers, and a mop bucket for the crawler. Marco wore the full pack and jacket. The first problem appeared before the imaginary dungeon began: the rope on the right side caught the bowstring when he turned.
He repacked it beneath the first-aid kit.
The alarm bead's clip opened when his sleeve dragged across it. He replaced the clip with a locking carabiner and added the extra four dollars to the loadout cost.
Ray moved the mop bucket after Marco passed the first cone.
“Route changed,” he said.
Marco backed toward the painted loading door, found a pallet blocking the secondary line, and realized his chalk lived in a pocket he could not reach with the bow in hand.
He moved one stick to his left chest.
On the second run, Ray told Cal to shout a false direction from behind him. Marco looked before remembering that Cal was not the declared trail warden.
“Information has a source,” Ray said. “Underground voice doesn't become help because it uses words.”
The dry exercise took forty minutes and found five failures without a creature, fee, or broken arrow.
“This is why teams cost less than funerals,” Ray said. “A scout sees the branch. Frontline holds space. Ranged hand gets time. Medic keeps a mistake from becoming a body. Your public group has one experienced guard and six beginners. Don't mistake that for six covered roles.”
Marco's active public license made a place in the Quarry group legal. His Rank G set the route limit. Neither gave him four jobs' worth of competence.
He shortened the route again.
“I am not your site contact,” he said. “County station is your site contact. You call me after.”
“Understood.”
“And if you find something worth more than your plan?”
“I leave on schedule.”
“If it is worth more than the truck?”
Marco thought about the clean brake pedal. “I regret leaving on schedule.”
Ray nodded. “Might come back, then.”
Sarah put the clean map in a plastic sleeve.
Friday night, the family sat around the kitchen table while Marco laid out the plan. Entry at 7:30 Saturday morning. First check-in at 9:00 through the site kiosk. Turnaround at 11:00 whether or not the second pocket paid. Exit deadline noon.
Sarah wrote each time on the whiteboard by the refrigerator.
“If you miss nine?” she asked.
“The station calls me. If they can't reach me in ten minutes, they flag the route.”
“When do I call?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“No. If they have ten minutes, I call at nine-ten.”
“They'll still be running procedure.”
“Then the procedure can tell me that.”
Marco looked at Emma. She kept her face carefully neutral.
“Nine-ten,” he said.
“If you miss eleven?”
“Same rule.”
“If you exit early?”
“I text from the station before I drive.”
Sarah folded her arms. “And if you're hurt?”
“I tell you I'm hurt.”
“Not that you bumped something. Not that the clinic is being dramatic.”
The shallow palm cut and bruised ribs sat between them without needing a name.
“I tell you what happened,” Marco said.
“How bad?”
“How bad.”
She looked down at the route. “I don't approve.”
“I know.”
“Helping you plan is not approval.”
“I know that too.”
“Good. I need both things to remain true.”
Lucy drew a small skull beside the missed-noon line. Emma took the marker away and replaced it with CALL COUNTY.
Marco packed the gear after they went to bed. First aid accessible from the top. Rope along the right side. Chalk in a chest pocket. Alarm clipped where he could see it without taking his eyes off the route. Twelve arrows counted twice. Hatchet secured. Water, food, spare batteries, map sleeve, permit.
The one-day insurance policy arrived by email at 10:14 p.m. Its premium assumed a G-grade dungeon, the named Quarry group, and a licensed F-rank trail warden. Leaving the group, entering an inner block, or remaining after the warden called retreat would suspend coverage. The fine print mattered less than the practical fact: beyond Vale's spear, Marco would be alone even while surrounded by people.
Marco downloaded the certificate to his phone and printed a copy for the map sleeve.
He added footing to the top of the route card.
The secondhand jacket smelled faintly of disinfectant and someone else's sweat.
At dawn, he drove the repaired truck south.
The brakes held through every curve. The mana alarm remained dark in its case. The bow lay beside the pack, no better than it had been the day before and no worse.
At Dry Creek, the desk clerk inspected his warning-striped license and pointed him toward the gear lane.
Beyond the gates, cold air breathed from the registered entrance.
Marco put on the used helmet, joined the line, and waited patiently.