The quill snapped in Allen's fingers around midnight. He stared at the splintered feather, then at the scattered pile of parchment covering half the tavern's common room. Twenty-three pages. He'd written twenty-three pages of pure, unadulterated bureaucracy in a world where most people couldn't even read.
"You're actually enjoying this," Lina said. She sat by the fire, oiling her bow string with methodical strokes. It wasn't a question.
"It's documentation," Allen said, reaching for another quill. "You can't scale without documentation. Right now we're running on tribal knowledge. Brundi knows how to patch armor because he's been doing it for forty years. But if he takes an arrow to the throat tomorrow, that knowledge dies with him."
He tapped the top sheet. The ink had finally dried on the title: Thornwick Dungeon Safety Manual, First Edition. Subtitle: Standard Operating Procedures for Subterranean Asset Recovery Operations.
Lina set down her bow. "You named it."
"Everything needs a name. Branding matters."
The manual had grown from a simple checklist into something resembling actual regulatory literature. Allen had structured it like the compliance docs he'd hated back in his IT days. Sections A through F. Mandatory safety protocols. Prohibited activities. Incident reporting workflows.
Section One: Pre-Dive Requirements. Every contractor had to check four boxes before descending. Gear inspection by a qualified smith—Gray or Brundi. Medical clearance from Ella. Minimum potion loadout: three health, two mana, one status cure. No exceptions. Not even for "quick runs" to Floor Two.
Section Two: Solo Dive Restrictions. This one had caused arguments. Allen had flat-out banned solo operations below Floor Five. Period. The upper levels were cleared and mapped, sure. But the Seal instability meant mob spawn patterns were shifting. A Level 8 runesmith could still get cornered by three goblins with bad luck and worse timing.
"You're treating us like children," Brundi had complained that afternoon.
"I'm treating you like assets with depreciation schedules," Allen had replied. "Your labor has value. Dead labor has zero value. Basic economics."
The dwarf had grumbled, but he'd signed. They all had.
Section Three covered communication protocols. Check-ins every thirty minutes via the system interface. Emergency extraction signals. The "stop work" authority—any party member could halt the dive for safety concerns, no votes, no democracy.
Section Four was pure OSHA transplanted into a fantasy hellscape. Mandatory five-minute breaks every hour to prevent fatigue-induced errors. No spell casting while physically exhausted. Maximum carrying weights to prevent back injuries. It even specified proper lifting technique for loot chests: bend at the knees, not the waist.
Tilly had looked at that page like Allen had grown a second head. "You want them to stretch before fighting demons?"
"Muscle strains reduce combat effectiveness by twelve percent," Allen said. He'd pulled the number from thin air, but it sounded authoritative. "We're preventing workplace injuries."
By dawn, the manual was complete. Allen bound it with leather cord and presented it to the morning standup. The contractors—Brundi, Cass, and Elias—flipped through it with expressions ranging from bemusement to horror.
"Page seven," Elias said, looking up with wide eyes. "You wrote a procedure for 'Proper Bloodborne Pathogen Exposure Response.'"
"If a zombie bites you, sanitize the wound immediately," Allen recited. "Infection vectors don't care about magic levels."
Cass was stuck on Section Four. "No climbing on unsecured scaffolding? We don't even have scaffolding."
"You will," Allen said. "We're building infrastructure. Infrastructure requires standards."
He posted the manual on the Guild Hall notice board, right next to the quest listings. Then he had Elias read it aloud to the group, line by line, while they ate breakfast. It was painful. It was tedious. It was exactly what a safety induction should be.
The system chimed halfway through Elias's monotone recitation of the "Potion Rationing Guidelines."
[Knowledge Management Protocol Established]
[Organizational Learning: +15% Efficiency]
[Skill Unlocked: Bureaucratic Efficiency]
[Passive Effect: Material costs reduced by 15% via optimized procurement workflows]
Allen felt the skill settle into his consciousness like a spreadsheet auto-calculating in the background. He could see the savings immediately—the mental math on potion costs suddenly showed better margins. Waste reduction through standardization. Beautiful.
"What's the verdict?" Allen asked after Elias finished reading.
Brundi stroked his beard for ten seconds. "It's... thorough."
"It's ridiculous," Cass said. But she was smiling. "No one's ever cared whether we lived or died before. Just whether we brought back the loot."
"Welcome to Thornwick," Allen said. "Where your survival is a line item on my balance sheet. And dead employees ruin my quarterly projections."
They finished breakfast in silence, but the manual stayed on the board. By noon, Allen spotted Brundi checking his gear against the checklist on page three, grumbling about "administrative overhead" while doing it.