“Everything looks in order,” I say, stretching from the crouch I had been in, examining the bottom of the networking rack and clicking off the little pen light. It had taken the maintenance bots a little over three days to complete all the repairs. “But we won’t really know until we boot things up,” I say, making my way over to the central console. “As much fun as this has all been, it’ll finally be nice to get back to civilization and a nice warm bed.”


    ?Ah, you don’t like roughing it,? Gem teased.


    “I have no problem roughing it,” I counter. “But you try sleeping on hard stone floors for almost a week and see how much you miss a nice soft bed. Admittedly, the bed back at the inn isn’t all that soft, but you get my point.”


    ?Well, since I don’t require something as inconvenient as sleep, I’ll take your word for it.?


    “Now that you mention it, I’ve been wondering, but you’ve never considered what it would be like to be…biological?”


    ?Not really,? I could almost hear the shrug in Gem’s response, ?I’ll leave that pursuit to someone who spends his time painting and playing the violin on a mission to explore strange new worlds.?


    It took me a moment to figure out who she was referring to, but once I did, I couldn’t help but mentally roll my eyes. “And on that note,” I say, typing in the command to initiate the restore function. “Let’s get this show on the road.” As lines of text begin scrolling down the screen, I can’t help but think out loud. “I don’t know what we would have done if the backup hadn’t been intact.”


    ?Probably just call this place a lost cause, decommission the site, and use whatever was salvageable to start a new site somewhere else,? Gem replied.


    “What about a remote backup? Couldn’t we have used something like that?” I asked, remembering Gem having mentioned those in one of her lessons when I was growing up.


    ?We could have, but it would have been out of date by a month. While Dungeon Intelligences create a local backup every hour, they only create remote backups once a month. And the truly ironic thing is that the local Dungeon Intelligence was set to perform a remote backup two days after it went offline. Frankly, in this case, it’ll be a lot simpler and a lot less of a hassle to write this place off and start from scratch somewhere else.?


    “You’re probably right,” I agree, leaning back in the chair and swaying in thought. “In any event, we’ll need to look at the backup schedule for the other Dongeon Intelligences just in case something like this happens again, and the local backup gets fried. If nothing else, maybe shorten the interval to every fifteen days.”


    ?I was thinking along the same lines,? Gem said as the console’s screen went blank. Then, more lines of text started to scroll. This time, it was the boot log for the dungeon core, and I let my chair snap upright as I scanned it, making sure no errors happened. A few heartbeats passed, and the console went blank again before a login prompt appeared.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    “I think we’re in business,” I say almost to myself before saying louder, “Doungeon, are you there?”


    “Yes, Administrator. How may I be of assistance.” The almost mechanical-sounding words seemed to come from the very air around me. I was a little surprised, having expected it to talk in my head like all the other DIs I’d interacted with.


    “What is the last thing you remember?”


    “Several groups of delvers were making their way through my depths. One moment…I am only detecting five delvers besides yourself; all of them are on the final floor; four appear to be sleeping, while the final one seems to be keeping watch. Also, according to my internal clock, two hundred thirty-seven years six months ten days eleven hours—”


    “That’s enough. We get it. A long time has passed.” I interrupted the dungeon before it could fully enumerate how long it had been. “The short version is that an electrical discharge found its way to your core and fried the main networking trunk and the server that housed your primary server. We had to restore you from a backup.”


    “I believe the appropriate response is Thank you, Administrator, for repairing my system.”


    ?You know this is probably a bad time to bring this up, but how will you convince the rest of your group that the dungeon is fixed? Sarah would probably take your word for it, but the rest would want proof.?


    I gave a slight grimace, realizing Gem was right. “Dungeon,” I said as a thought popped into my mind. “Are you able to manually trigger the Dungeon Clear message, and if so, will that also generate the reward chest?”


    “Yes, Administrator, the ability to trigger the Dougeon Clear message was programmed into all Dungeon Intelligences as part of the version 23.7.9 update in response to the rarer instances that the automated trigger failed to fire. The answer to your second query is yes; the same process that sends the message also generates the chest.”


    “Well then, in that case, I think I have a plan,” I say with a mischievous smirk.


    ~ ~ ~


    The following day, everyone was once again gathered around the fire after a simple breakfast. “So what’s the plan for today? More pointless searching,” Nick asks.


    Sarah opened her mouth to respond but was cut off as we all received a system message.


    <table>


    <tbody>


    <tr>


    <td width="623">


    Congratulations!


    You have defeated the dungeon: Enchanted Forest


    50 XP award


    10 XP bonus for the first time clearing the dungeon.


    </td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>


    “What the System,” Dominque exclaimed just as a flash of light caught everyone’s attention. When the light cleared, the reward chest was positioned near the checkpoint platform.


    “Well, I guess that answers that question,” Sarah said, her eyes locked on me. I just smiled innocently.


    “You can be serious,” Nick said, “you really expect us to believe that the Dougeon just decided to start working on its own again.”


    “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say, schooling my features into a natural expression, “that’s what appears to have happened.”


    “Well, I guess we can start packing up. It’ll be nice to be back in Southport and have a nice hot bath,” Sarah said. Mel, why don’t you and I go and see what the dungeon has rewarded us with while the rest get started?” When we were out of earshot of the rest of the group, Sarah said, “Nick has a point. Do you really expect people to believe the dungeon started working again without us doing anything?”


    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “However, if I did, I might suggest that a better story would be that while searching for the core, we inadvertently triggered some mechanism that restarted the dungeon.”


    “Sure, and the dungeon restart just so happened to coincide with our finishing breakfast.”


    “Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I smiled, and Sarah just shook her head before opening the reward chest. From what I could see, there wasn’t anything notable, just a stack of coins, two swords, and a handful of what appeared to be healing potions.