Mike's Workshop now included a number of huge floating islands with different biomes from Earth on them. Mike was willing into existence different animals from Earth to see how they stacked up against what the other Dungeons had to offer. Unfortunately, it seemed that in terms of threat level, Earth creatures tended to rank relatively poorly. Most Dungeons were sub-divided into floors based on the threat level of the challenges found within and on an individual basis even the most powerful animal from Earth wouldn't survive an encounter with a generic Mob from beyond Floor three of any random Dungeon.

That is not to say Earth was harmless, far from it, just that when taken as individuals and ignoring other factors Earth animals weren't assessed very highly. Mike suspected that a big factor in this was the fact that the threat assessment only took into account a single individual and did not include behavior or intelligence. Many animals on Earth hunted or defended themselves in packs or swarms based on instincts formed over countless generations, whereas as a Dungeon Master Mike would have to create and program the behavior of each individual when he created them as Mobs. In addition to that, Mike figured that a huge part of the relatively low assessment was due to the fact that Earth didn't have any magic. There were creatures from other worlds that could literally teleport or breathe fire, and although Earth animals could do some very impressive things, when comparing them to creatures that could break the laws of physics it was easy to see where they were lacking.

To bridge the gap Mike could always just create factitious creatures. Such creations wouldn't get as much of a discount as things that actually existed on Earth, but so long as they were creatures from the legends or myths of Earth they would count. Generally speaking, the more well-known something from Earth was the greater the discount, so something like a Unicorn which a huge percentage of the population of Earth would be able to recognize and identify would receive a much higher discount than more obscure or little-known creatures.

There were plenty of fantasy creatures that Mike could select from that would make great Mobs in a Dungeon. Just off the top of his head Mike could think of a dozen. He spent some time creating various types of Dragons, a flock of Griffins, a herd of Centaur, a couple of Minotaur, a giant Hydra, and a Phoenix. It would be easy for him to build a powerful Dungeon with creatures like these, and they certainly seemed impressive, but they didn't really seem like the best way to represent Earth. Cali wanted the Dungeon Masters to build Dungeons that showcase the trials and challenges of their home worlds, and it seemed like sort of a copout for Mike to fill it entirely with creatures from works of fiction.

Mike tried to think of what kind of Dungeon would showcase the actual Earth the best. Realistically, rather than magical creatures, the greatest threat on Earth would just be regular people armed with modern weaponry. Mike could picture how it might go if a party of Challengers walked into his Dungeon to find themselves on a modern day battlefield facing an army of Mobs armed with guns and rocket launchers and such. The problem with that was how hard it would be to scale the difficulty of an encounter. Guns were designed specifically to make otherwise harmless people extremely lethal, so designing a Dungeon which gets progressively more difficult for a party of Challengers would require a lot more planning than simply sorting Mobs by threat level and putting the highest ones at the end. Mike wasn't sure the payoff would be worth the effort.

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Besides which, Mike didn't consider himself to be a very violent guy. This was going to he his Dungeon. He wanted to build a place that offered more than just fighting. Cali had hoped that the Dungeons would bring new ideas to her world, and Earth had a lot more to offer than just people killing each other. The question was how to go about setting something like that up. From what Mike had learned from watching the Dungeon App he needed to strike some sort of balance. If he wanted to survive Mike could neither be too strong nor too weak. Any Dungeons that were considered so deadly that they could threaten the world were destroyed by the strongest forces in the Kingdoms, and any Dungeons which were too weak or lacked sufficient defenses also seemed to be systematically taken out by some unknown force. His best bet for building a successful Dungeon was to build something of moderate scalable difficulty which offered something of value to the Challengers who visited him.

Mike floated back to his old leather chair as he pondered what his Dungeon could offer and what kind of Loot he would set up. It was hard to say what from Earth would be considered valuable by the people of Calimandao. As far as unique raw materials go Earth seemed to have a lot more Tin and Aluminum than Calimandao, which would allow him to provide that as Loot for a considerable discount, and Earth had also gotten much further in the development of plastics which could potentially be useful. But Mike wasn't sure if any of that would be highly sought after or valued more than materials from other Dungeons.

He could offer technological innovations as Loot, but most high tech things required an entire infrastructure to go along with it. Cars were great but impractical without a bunch of gas stations set up across a Kingdom. Cell-phones seemed nice but would be hard to charge in a city without an electrical grid and not very useful without a satellite network in place. A lot of high tech gadgets were unless just on their own. Alternatively, if he went with lower tech options for Loot they may be able to function on their own but it seemed like they would be inferior to the magical products already available on Calimandao. Plus there was another problem with anything electronic. In order to prevent a Dungeon Master from collapsing the economy of Calimandao, Cali had added a rule which made Gold, Silver and Copper extremely expensive to produce as Loot. Mike could easily imagine exactly what some other Dungeon Master must have done do prompt adding such a rule. Gold and Silver didn't bother Mike to much, but the restriction on Copper was a little frustrating as copper was a very common material used in lots of things he might have produced as Loot.

Mike was at a loss, and switched his television to the Earth app to try to get some ideas for what he was going to do with his Dungeon. As he flipped through randomly looking for something interesting something caught his eye and suddenly inspiration hit. It was a stupid idea. No doubt people would say it was a waste of the awesome potential of a Dungeon. But the more he thought about it the more he loved it. If he could pull it off... well at the very least his Dungeon would be unique.

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Almost two full years passed for Mike in his Workshop but when had finished up his final check and initiated the connection no had time at all had passed on Calimandao. It was just after midnight on January 1st in the year 300AD (Age of Dungeons). In the city of Cibus Creek people were drinking and laughing and celebrating the new year. On a corner of a street in one of the less populated districts, what used to be a vacant lot now housed a brand new building. Huge crystal clear windows revealed a brightly lit interior with what appeared to be a bunch of tables and chairs. Everything was painted with bright primary colors, with a giant plastic burger on the roof, and a big neon sign saying [Dungeon Burger] lighting the whole area in a florescent glow.