The party popped back into the trailer, the Roomba already floating above them. “Please retake your seats immediately. You go live in 5, 4, 3.”

The studio reappeared around them before they could even react, the audience wildly chanting ‘Die!’ as three frontliners prepared themselves to fend off an angry Big Bad Woolf. They cheered, laughed and booed when the Woolf died, mostly disappointment and anger from the anticlimactic finish turned to ridicule when the woolf fell over Darryl like a blanket and toppled him.

“And our ‘champions’!” The Maestro declared as the party being teleported out of the dungeon matched up perfectly to them appearing in their seats. He sat back on his lavish throne, waving at the screen as he scratched his chest absentmindedly with his other hand.

Darryl looked at the screen, which showed the stats of the boss battle. Their party was shown, with the French party listed as 'assist'. Jean was greyed out, and surprisingly enough Gunther was there. The screen switched to a leaderboard of the fight, with Death Watch’s style all over it.

Ben was listed first, having dealt almost a third of the damage by himself. Despite being the lowest ranked in almost everything else, that put him at the top. Darryl came second, his damage surprisingly high but the deciding statistics being defending, assists and aggro. Then came Raphael and Elise, the Frenchman beating her out thanks to the damage he took and blocked, and the two spellcasters were at the bottom with Thomas dead last. Gunther wasn't even listed, it seemed.

“Well, that certainly was a slugger of a match, wouldn’t you agree?” The Maestro said. “A few good moments, a few bad ones, but I’d say these crawlers made quite a show of it. And defying expectations, I must say!”

The leaderboard shifted to a graph showing two bars, a large red one titled ‘Die!’ and a smaller green bar that said ‘Live!’. The title changed to ‘Live or Die, betting pool. 1:5’ and the green bar shrunk a bit further.

“I hope you’re proud of yourselves, crawlers.” The Maestro said coyly. “You cost my piglets a lot of credits by surviving, how selfish of you. Way to endear yourself to your fanbase.”

The audience jeered in agreement, some of them actually sounding like they blamed the party for not dying for their profit.

On the screen the bars split into several thinner bars with small labels, ranging from ‘Total Wipeout!’ to a thin highlighted sliver called ‘Perfect victory!’ with the bars in between giving every variation of the participants dying by name or number, and outcomes like ‘Fled!’ and an option ‘Diplomacy!’ that got 0% of the votes and cash. It seemed like even amongst the bets claiming Live!, few expected no casualties.

“Well, what can I say? We just defied your expectations, piglets! Except for the… 2.1% that knew we’d pull through, thankies for your trust!” Elise said, addressing the audience directly. “Be sure to choose that we’ll live and win in the future, I’ll be sure to make that a safe bet!”

“Yeah, we would’ve absolutely trashed that granny if we had some prep time!” Ben said with a voice just a bit too shrill from the excitement. “You all saw it, just a minute and I turn from killer to absolute nuker!”

The audience had mixed responses to that, a few obscenities and angry shouts mixed with cheers of approval and mostly glurps that sounded either ridiculing or noncommittal.

“The party survived the first floor, surely that shows that they’re a bunch of badasses to be reckoned with!” The Maestro said, reaping quite some chuckles and glurps of agreement. “We’ll see whether they get far, but don’t get cocky! The dungeon has only begun!”

“But enough about that!” The Maestro belched loudly, interrupting Elise before she could say anything. “You won, and thus this little bugger is now yours. Don’t get it killed too soon, you hear?”

The Maestro snapped his fingers and the demigriff appeared, clawing at the spokes of the bird cage it was in.

“Aw, it’s sooooo cute!” Elise fawned over it. “It wasn’t this cute before, was it?”

The demigriff had changed, growing from the size of a small housecat to a slightly above average housecat. The cow side remained the same, but the ugly duckling head of thin white fluff had turned into a poofed up blue and white fluff feather coat with streaks of yellow that looked absolutely adorable.

“I’m glad, because pets are notoriously difficult to keep alive during the stage that they won't listen and can't take a hit in the dungeon. It’s going to need a good mother to survive.” The Maestro smugly mansplained. “At this age they also still like to be fed by regurgitation, but I know you'll be up to the task.”

The screen showed a super-slomo of Elise puking, the Woolf’s heel slowly pushing itself further into her stomach as she was thrown back. Darryl looked away from the ultra-high definition scene in disgust as the audience laughed and jeered.

“And you, our resident deadweight!” The Maestro said to Thomas before Elise could formulate a response. “Couldn’t float your watch to distract the Woolf!? Guess smart doesn’t make much of a difference without guts!”

“Actually I could’ve made it float, I do have the spell. But what would that do?” Thomas said calmly, ignoring the rest that the Maestro said.

The Maestro was silent for a moment, not knowing how to respond to a blatantly normal answer to his rhetoric question. Then he snorted and spat at the table, the phlegm in front of him making Thomas scrunch up in disgust despite there being no actual pig fluids in the trailer. The audience laughed and considered it a win for the Maestro.

“Alright, and with that I think it’s time, piglets.” The Maestro said. “Be sure to tune in next cycle!”

“Glurp glurp!” The audience chanted before they all simultaneously disappeared.

The Maestro sat back in his throne, sighing and allowing part of his persona to wash off him. He didn’t change much, but when he looked at the party the look in his eyes was different like night and day. Where there had been provocation and vicious amusement before, there was now a calculated look behind a thick layer of disinterest.

With that one look the orc immediately radiated the nobility he claimed to be, studying them with distant disregard as if he was looking at objects rather than people. Objects he had use for, but inevitably just objects he studied to decide how much he was willing to pay for them rather than putting free will and ethics into the equation.

“Wait, s-”

“Shut up and listen, crawler.” The Maestro interrupted Ben, gesturing at the Roomba as it appeared again. “We’ve got an offer for you lot.”

“Before we start, let me break the illusion that you crawlers always seem to have these first few floors. No, your lives don’t matter and we don’t care about any ethical laws or the sanctity of intelligent life that you dirt-dwellers agreed upon amongst yourselves.” A deep gravelly voice said instead of the female voice that the Roomba used before. “We can buy your lives and your deaths, and it’s as simple for us as it once was for you to buy a batch of eggs. Especially us royalty and company holders can buy whatever we want in this dungeon.”

“So let there be no mistake about this, we are not negotiating as equals here.” The Roomba leaned in intimidatingly as it spoke. “To survive this dungeon past the first few floors you don’t need skill or guts, but the popularity and endorsement of the audience. And much more important, the sponsorship of actual companies. Those billions of fans aren’t going to scrape together much coin, much less in a pool that gets you the stuff you'll actually need, and in the end support matters little if there’s no financial foundation to it.”

“But you’re in luck. The AI has given your resident red an item that makes you mildly valuable to the Skull empire. That’s us, of course.” The Maestro said.

“You mean the crown, or more specifically the Barony attached to it.” Thomas said.

The Roomba snorted in disgust, and the flying drone actually wobbled a bit to simulate the sound that the guy on the other end made. “A real Skull empire barony is the size of a continent, and the patch of dungeon land we’re talking about here would be too small even for your history’s baronies.”

“But when we’re talking value, it would still be an extremely valuable piece of land.” Thomas said.

“Which has to be conquered first, then held and which for all we know lies in the heart of another faction’s territory or holds no strategic value. There are quite a few baronies, too.” The Maestro said. “And every faction has a claimant item for it, don’t overestimate the value of what you’ve got.”

“The moment you put it on, you reduced its value significantly. We would’ve paid well for a direct trade, but right now we need to include your likelihood of survival to the equation. Dying counts as taking off the item too, after all.” The Roomba said. “We threw you to the wolves, literally, to see if you even stand a chance of surviving that far. Your ability to not die has shown that it’s not a futile hope, but we’re still sceptical that you’ll make it that far down.”

“So we are going to make you an offer, and you are going to accept it.” The Maestro said. “There won’t be any haggling and there won’t be any rephrasing. You say yes and thank you.”

The table glowed and a non-transparent contract appeared.

“We will give you the demigriff, a hundred pet biscuits and twenty pet healing scrolls to keep it alive, a potion that will immediately bump it up to level 5 and a collar that makes it consider you its owner.” The Roomba summarised the contract. “In exchange you will be contractually bound to fight for the Skull empire and seek to conquer the barony however we tell you to when you reach the ninth floor. You will waive any rights and means over controlling the Barony to us, serving only as its warden. You will remain in the Barony to protect it until the dungeon is but 6 hours away from collapse. You will not speak ill of the Skull empire while in the dungeon or on shows. And of course you will not take off the tiara or lose it by other means. Failure to do so will result in us immediately taking away the rewards we are giving you and breaking off any contact.”

“And no need to discuss it amongst yourselves, we only care about her answer. The rest of you are just her meat shields as far as we care.” The Maestro said.

“No.” Elise said.

“Meat shields, party members. Whatever you want to call them.” The Maestro shrugged.

“Not that, you oaf. The contract. No.”

“We already told you, there will be no haggling.” The Roomba growled.

“Which means this is a yes or no question.” Elise said. “And I say no.”

“Well, then fuck off.” The Roomba said.

“Wa-”