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Damage control.

First off. “Kelvin. Bring me the dragon.”

“The one you used on the lock across the street. No. No one is calling for you… Bring me the dragon.”

I make a spiked orange kobold and named it Mandarin who used a copy of Iris's only hammer to smash the dragon swarmling into a pile of mush.

"There. Now bring me the other dragons… Don't give me that look Kelvin, I know you're a planner."

With a sigh, my champions fetched three more swarmling from two other locations. Both were outside the dungeon and neither of them had been dug out by my orders. I created ten roach scouts and begin mapping out the Kobold's network.

By dawn, I had ended up creating several hundred feet of boards and several more kobolds to go to work shoring up the tunnels before we got sinkholes. Then I set up a to do list for myself to gather up any of the little lizard people who are unaccounted for at least twice a day.

Second off. I send the folding computer to the third research room along with two newly assigned researchers. The research timer required two weeks to understand and replicate the machine. But I also get a notification that the time may be reduced when the TV research is done.

Third off. Hector.

A few dozen ant scouts in his house revealed a very nervous looking man looking out of his windows for the next few hours between typing at his computer to make it show images of various lizards, lizard people, and finally some larger kobolds with horns on their heads. Some of the images showed them worshipping dragons.

Kobolds are associated with dragons? That would have been nice to know!

Hector seemed to be looking at information drawn from some collection of lore called Dungeons and Dragons. Which seems to be a broadly researched book of lore since it was in its fifth edition. It must be hundreds of years in the making. I shall have to ask the old woman for a copy.

Besides a construction project for the kobolds, dawn also brought the results of research room one.

Capsaicin powder.

I considered testing on a kobold, then a rat, but ultimately I just recreated the stuff inside the dungeon core and flicked a pinch of the stuff into the face of my spiritual body…

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Which I then immediately dismissed as it feels like my eyeballs are melting away. Yowch! Yeah, that is going to discourage a lot of the things I don't want in my dungeon. I create some nooks and crannies throughout the dungeon to stash some for future use. Then I firmly inform Envoy that they are not for use against normal adventurers.

He seemed to be disappointed, but I'm guessing such limitations will only serve to inspire him.

I am distantly aware of Iris waking up and wandering around her house but it's when she yells "Tark!" that I notice that she is in front of the partially disintegrated screen of the window. And looking back and forth from the window to the holes the dragons made in the floor on their way down into the basement.

Heh. I guess I should have fixed that up last night. Oops. But then I can't do anything to the house while she inside anymore, even the edge of my reach covers an entire floor now.

Since Kelvin is having a "time out" in the core while he thinks about what he did, I have to send Envoy up with a note.

For once he hands it to the old woman with an evil grin on his scaly face rather than ball it up and throw it at her.

The old woman gives him a suspicious look but takes the note and reads it. Before crumpling it up into a ball herself. "Short version. Dragons."

She stomps over to look down the holes in her floor. Manderin looks back up at her. And waves.

She glares down and him and then seems to realize something as she pokes at the holes with her foot. "Awfully small for dragons. Going to need more information here Tark.'

I send Mandarin up with the next note as Envoy hops down the steps. As they pass each other I realized Mandarin is a good three inches taller than the older kobold. In fact, all the Kobolds that I summoned since I made copper third are as big as Kelvin.

...Who counts as two ranked higher than the base creature which was copper one kobolds and I'm now summoning copper three ones. A check on Kelvin shows me that he will be a copper three when I resummon him and then count as a copper five as champion.

Meanwhile, Iris has finished reading the full page note giving her the longer version of some of the previous night's events. She has sat down in her five wheel chair as she read the note and is now flopped back with her eye shut. "Right. Got it. Lovecraft stuff going on in my house."

She took a deep breath and sat up. "But it's going to go after the dungeon, not me. So, I can live with that, or I guess I'm going to have to."

Iris looked down at the floor. “And I got to leave my house for you fix stuff up here now. Fine. I’m taking a uber to Walmart. Don’t do anything to… You know what I’ll just take the note with me to make sure Molly and the boy get a chance to read it.”

As she finished eating, bathing, and getting dressed she had one last word before she headed out to meet the car that pulled up in front of her home. "Next time wake me up. I need to be in the decision loop when it comes to the important stuff."

I wonder if that would include Hector seeing a three on one fight between the kobolds and a horny owl.

Moving my core up a few levels I am able to fix up the house and take the chance to put some steel plates inside the walls, floors, and roof. It won't stop dragon fire, but it will take them a few more seconds to annihilate their way through a denser substance.

I consider diamond plates for the window panes, the diamond being from one of Iris's rings, but the stuff is a lot heavier than glass.

With my chores finished I consider ideas for the third level down.

I was thinking of some kind of themed level. Real plants, non-hostile animals mixed in with hostile ones. More pits to drop people down to the forty foot across floor down below where the current pits bottomed out for a flooded level.

Then another boss battle on the twenty foot floor below that. This was going to take me some time to build but my current and only group of adventurers had only been doing levels two and three for less than a week. They could focus on grinding them for a while for now.

The old woman beat Molly back by an hour. Walking into the house she shot a few dark looks down at her now fully repaired floor as she carried in some groceries into the kitchen after dropping off a few bags in her living room. My scouts mainly found clothes inside before they have to make a run for it as Iris heads back out into the living room

“Tark. My niece called me while I was out. She said she turns eighteen in three weeks and wants to come stay with me while she figures out her next step."

“I need you to tell me what she already knows."

Well, at least this conversation should be easier than telling her about the dragons invading her home while she was asleep. I wonder if I should mention Hector before or after the part about her niece getting one of the still rare mage classes in three weeks.