The Demon King's meeting room was a throne hall with one small table in it.
Kenji placed the wooden box on the table and opened it.
"Three hundred and twelve staff," he said. "Three months. Unpaid."
Mora sank deeper into her long coat.
"I know," she said. "Do you think I don't know?"
"Every month I open that box, and every month I close it again. It is my least favorite exercise."
"Then let's fix it," Kenji said. "Show me the money. All of it."
Grib carried in the dungeon's records — three notebooks and one sock full of coins.
Kenji read for ten minutes without a single word.
Then he asked, very quietly, "You buy the treasure?"
"Of course," Mora said. "A dungeon needs treasure. Adventurers expect it."
"And then the adventurers take it."
"Yes."
"For free."
"Yes."
"And then you buy more treasure."
"...Yes."
Kenji put the notebook down and looked at the wall for a while.
"Your Majesty. In eighteen years of retail, I have never seen a store pay its customers to shoplift."
"It's !" Mora said.
"It's ," Kenji said.
Grib raised his hand. "Manager, what is ?"
"It is the final boss of every owner," Kenji said.
Grib wrote it down with a very serious face.
"Does it have weak points?" he asked. "Yes," Kenji said. "Us. Working properly."
"So what do we do?" Mora asked. "Fight the kingdom? Eat the sock?"
"We do what every store in the world does," Kenji said. "We charge at the door."
"An fee?" Mora sat up. "They come here to rob us, and you want them to pay for it?"
"People pay to climb mountains and to read about monsters," Kenji said. "Adventure is a product."
"And the treasure they win is not a loss. It is a prize. We plan it."
He drew a circle on the board. "Loot rotation. Small prizes near the door, big ones deep inside."
"Like the claw machine at the shopping center," he added, mostly to himself.
"What is a claw machine?" Grib whispered. "A dungeon for toys," Kenji said. "A very profitable one."
Mora stared at the circle for a long time.
"If this fails," she said, "we have lost nothing, because we have nothing."
"That is the spirit," Kenji said. "Roughly."
The next morning, a desk stood at the dungeon gate.
Behind it sat Grib, wearing a name tag that said TRAINEE.
The first party of adventurers arrived at nine.
Their leader, a big man with an axe, stopped and read the new sign out loud.
"': five silver. Includes map, safety rules, and one free potion.'"
"Is this a trap?" he asked.
"It is a ," Grib said proudly, holding out a small paper.
The man paid, deeply confused, and his party walked in, reading their maps.
By evening, the sock had friends — three whole bags of silver.
Grib counted them four times, and then hugged the sock, for old times' sake.
And then came the part Kenji liked best.
Payday.
The monsters lined up in the great hall, quiet and nervous.
Mora handed each one a small and said an "thank you for your work."
An old goblin opened his and just held it, saying nothing at all.
A slime kept its coins inside its body, where everyone could watch them shine.
The skeleton spent his whole pay on a hat, then wore it to bed.
"It is for my day off," he explained, although days off had not been invented here yet.
"Was payday always this loud?" Mora asked, watching the hall.
"It is the best sound in retail," Kenji said. "Second only to the door chime."
That evening, Kenji called Grib to the office.
On the desk lay a brand-new clipboard, polished like a shield.
"Grib. You are Trainee Number One of this dungeon."
"You take notes. You care about rules. You came back every day, even unpaid."
"Those are the bones of a great store."
The skeleton, passing by the door, looked deeply moved.
Kenji held out the clipboard with both hands.
Grib received it the way knights receive swords in the old stories.
"I will guard it with my life," he whispered.
"Please just guard it from the mimic," Kenji said.
"Yes, Manager!"
For one week, the new dungeon ran like a young, machine.
Adventurers paid, fought, won small prizes, and left tired and happy.
Some of them even waved at the desk on their way out.
Grib recorded everything: sales, visitors, and "smiles observed (7)".
Mora started sleeping at night, which honestly shocked her.
"I dreamed about bread," she reported in the morning, sounding personally offended by it.
Then, on the eighth day, a bird arrived with an official letter.
The heavy wax belonged to the Adventurers' Guild.
Mora opened it, read it twice, and passed it to Kenji with a strange face.
"A ?" Kenji asked. Complaints were an old friend of his.
Some managers feared complaints. Kenji collected them, the way sailors collect weather.
"Sort of," Mora said. "Read it out loud. I want to hear it again."
Kenji read: "To the so-called Demon King's dungeon."
"The Guild has received reports that your dungeon has become... polite."
"Adventurers describe maps, receipts, and a goblin who thanks them for robbing you."
"This behavior is not traditional. Explain yourselves."
Kenji slowly lowered the letter.
In the silence, Grib raised his new clipboard. "Should I write them a thank-you card?"