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After another trip to the local store for Molly and lunch, the group made their second run for the day. After the boy took the time to shower and apply the lotion Molly had gotten.

This time they managed to avoid getting dumped into a pit from the plant room, but the riddle about the letter M appearing in the words minute once, moment twice, but never in a thousand years took them a bit to figure out. They were also disappointed in there being no money for a prize.

Iris brought up the fact that since the money I was making had serial numbers that I was picking out, sooner or later they would be spotted as fakes and tracked back to the stores they were spending them at. So either they had to stop spending the money, or I should start using smaller bills that would be less monitored.

After the other two went home, the old woman spent the rest of the afternoon on her computer researching the best way to spend counterfeit money. Occasionally mentioning out loud what she was finding out.

What it amounted to was that the more fake money I made and they spent, the greater the danger that it would be tracked back to them, and that would lead people to me.

Twenties were as carefully monitored as hundreds and fifties. And paying for things entirely with smaller bills would make people suspicious, at least for any major purchases.

Gold would be harder to move, and according to Iris, they would be cheated on the value by anyone they could find to buy it.

I finally send Kelvin up with a note. "Is there anything you can buy that I could remake for you to sell?"

The old woman thought that one over for a bit. "It's not like I need money. My biggest expense is food and you're covering most of that. But if you want me to buy stuff for you..." She got up and headed into her bedroom, and came back with a bracelet from the box she kept her jewelry in. I had seen the bracelet before but hadn't bothered with it.

She handed it to Kelvin. “This was my grandfather’s watch. It’s all mechanical, but if you can make more, don’t make them with the same scratches. In fact, try to copy them without making them look brand new either. We should be able to get at least three hundred a piece for them."

“And if you can make old stuff that doesn't look the same, I can spend the money on rare coins. I can buy one, sell ten, and then get you all the stuff you need without sending out little lizard guys on midnight raids."

She sat down and stared off blankly for a while after my champion ran off with her watch.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I've seen the difference in how much experience we get from you changing things up, and making things tougher. But it's the boy taking the worst of it. Dumping him down a hole with water is bad enough. But stop doing things like the poison ivy. No more things that he has to deal with after he goes home."

She started to say something else. Then shook her head and went off for her nap.

I guess she's right. The poison ivy was a bit too much. Planting the stuff was more about me feeling clever with another way to push them than a way to improve them. I removed the ivy from the plant room.

Then I put the drop ramp in the first five feet of the room rather than the middle since they had tried to just jump over it the second time they crossed the room. Iris had okayed dropping the boy down and I still needed to keep them on their guard.

Their next trip ended with the soaking wet boy opening a box filled with ten copies of the old woman's grandfather's watch. As well as an eleventh with a note saying it was an exact replica.

After their first run, Molly showed the other two a tiny crossbow she had brought along with her. “It shoots toothpick, so I figure they won’t hurt that much. And we’re all wearing eye protection.”

After a bit of debate, the boy asked to see it and then shot himself in his other hand to test it, much to Molly's anger. They agreed to leave it in the dungeon along with a penny made of zinc, and what they called a baseball card that would sell for a few hundred dollars.

It appeared that I had missed a conversation between the two women. Another thing they could do with computers.

That night the evolution rooms gave me a rat the size of the raccoons, which I switched them all out for since the raccoons had never been all that dangerous, or scary. But there was something about a rat that just made people want to kill them, while some people wanted to pet chubby scavengers with masks and ringed tails

I also got a version of an electrical kobold that was quick instead of using electricity, and a roach about half the size of a squirrel that was slow and unable to fly. Apparently, not all evolutions were useful.

Especially hybrids. But I decided to try anyways. A mouse and spider in room one. A sparrow and cockroach in room two. Then a slug and ant in room three.

According to my manual, hybrids failed two out of three times. But I had three rooms, so the odds were that at least one of them would work. However, with hybrids nine out of ten times, I would end up with something useless. But I didn't have a drastic need for slightly better creatures. I wanted something new and creepy.

Or was this me just trying to show off again like the poison ivy?

Eh. At least a new critter wasn't going to send the boy home itching. At worst he would get bitten by something new. I would just have to remember not to put in anything that ended up with a dangerous poison.

But then with Molly's Remove toxin ability, most poisons weren't all that dangerous.

I switched things up a bit over the following week to keep things fresh.

The salt pit was replaced with a five foot deep pool of water with aggressive fish called perch thanks to Molly trying to get the boy to try new foods. They weren't all that dangerous but it was fun watching the old woman trying to punch fish.

The dropping floors in the plant room got replaced with covered pits filled with slime from garden slugs, which in addition to being nasty to step into up to your knee was incredibly hard to get off. Only the boy got slimed but Molly slipped and fell on one of his slippery footprints. They skipped their second trip that day out of protest.

But they did get experience for it without even fighting anything.

All of this almost kept me distracted from obsessing over the fact that soon my wife would be on her way here.

Almost.

Getting a working computer from the research room, and accessing the internet. That did the job.

The copy in the core worked, but couldn't access the internet. So I had to direct Kelvin to type in the words on a copy in the dungeon.

Username: Irispirate. Password:workalready.

Google search. Dungeon design

Forty one million, eight hundred thousand results.

...this might take me a while.