Lacey was still near the entrance when Hughe showed up again, and while Adam wasn’t happy about that, she was the god and he did what she asked for the most part. The guard goblins shuffled their workers into the cave entrance as soon as Hughe was seen coming up the mountain to their little entrance. Two goblins used the woven ropes to pull two tall tree trunks up to block the entrance.

“You can’t hide in there forever,” came Hughe’s voice.

“I’m not hiding,” Lacey called back out, Adam having to hold her back so that she didn’t charge the entrance and poke a stick at Hughe’s ugly face as it peered through the logs.

“It’s child’s play to move these logs,” Hughe asserted, using his sword to try to lever them out of the way.

“Why do you keep coming back anyway?” Lacey demanded. “There’s still no treasure here for you.”

“That may be true, but I’m not coming back for normal treasure anymore,” Hughe’s face was suffused in red as he growled through the logs over the entrance. The logs were little more than a decoy, but it was stalling him long enough to get information. It also gave the skilled workers some time to get down the ramps and alert the guards to come back up.

“Then why?” Lacey asked again.

“I asked around and found out that if I can wipe the dungeon and kill the dungeon masters, I can cash out the dungeon value in coinage,” he grinned at her like he was Jack Nicholson in a ski lodge.

“That doesn’t sound like much,” Lacey tried to reason with him. “We’re just a baby dungeon after all.”

“Who’s fault is that?” Hughe yelled, resorting to hacking at the logs in frustration. “Your monsters are too low to give any more experience to me and the treasure isn’t enough to get other adventurers to pay for admission, so this is my best play. It’s your own darn fault for being such a shitty dungeon master.”

“And you could do better?” Lacey snorted derisively to goad him.

“Yeah, I could do better! Anyone could do better,” he taunted her back and she had to work to shrug off the insult. “You need adventurers to come out here and work the dungeon in order to level up. If there’s no one for your minions to kill, you just stagnate anyway.”

And that hit Lacey like a fist to the stomach. Here she’d been thinking that she needed to keep people out of her dungeon, but they had only leveled up to a measly level one because they’d managed to kill Hughe the previous day. He was right and that was annoying. She’d stayed up to try to taunt information out of him and she was getting it.

“I’ve half a mind to take over the dungeon and prove I could do it better, but it’s not my style,” Hughe huffed and returned to battering the logs.

“You can’t do that, or you’d have done it that first day,” Lacey threw at him, not sure at all or of anything anymore.

“I didn’t know I could kill you both and take over that first time, but I know it now,” Hughe laughed as the log rolled away. Hughe hadn’t needed to get all the logs pulled away to push his way into the entrance. Lacey felt a trickle of worry as he worked his way in, but Eve was behind her casting already.

“I don’t think you can take us this time, Hughe,” Lacey tossed out. “You did your research, but we’ve had time to make some upgrades.”

“But your funds have to be getting low with no new adventures bringing in new resources,” Hughe grinned as he was hit by a poison dart. “I came prepared this time.”

The information was great, but now that Hughe was in the dungeon, Lacey was forced back by goblin guards that hustled her through a few rooms to give it some space. Hughe didn’t even stagger at the poison dart. He must have had some remedy to be so sure of himself. Lacey bit her lip as they all jumped over the third pit trap they’d covered with the mats and some gritty limestone dust.

“Poison resistance won’t be enough, Hughe,” Lacey promised as he gave chase through the tunnels.

A garbled holler came from behind them and Lacey smiled. “You bitch!” Hughe was swearing and Lacey giggled, working her way back to watch. Had he really fallen into the very first pit trap?

“We’re just protecting ourselves,” Lacey shrugged, peeking over the lip of the forty foot drop. “You are the invader here.”

“This won’t do any good,” Hughe said around a dozen more swear words. His leg was at an awful angle that looked incredibly painful. The stake through his thigh would probably bleed out before he stopped swearing. “Next time I’ll just come back with a bigger party and settle for a smaller finder’s fee. A dozen guilds would love to just wipe the dungeon and put someone competent in charge.”

“What are you talking about?” Lacey frowned down into the darkness. The swearing was slowing down.

“You don’t offer enough treasure for this level of challenge,” Hughe whined again around a mouthful of softer swearing.

“Why would I reward you for killing my minions?” Lacey defied his claims. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Why did I end up finding a totally stupid dungeon?” Hughe cursed some more, but he was fading. “Look, adventurers want treasure, and they’ll risk their lives for it but only if they have some chance of winning. I’m not spending another 10 hours in a respawn cue for nothing. You don’t get anything if you don’t have adventurers brave the dungeon for treasure.”

“Damn that makes sense,” Lacey hated to agree with him. “But, like, what kind of treasure?”

“Too late to get smart now,” his voice was fading and Lacey had to swallow back guilt.

“Like gems?” she tried again. “Jewelry? What?”

“I’m coming back with a whole team of adventurers over level 15,” he growled out.

“Or healing potions and, and, magic swords?” she called down into the pit.

“Like your baby dungeon could make stuff like that,” he countered, and Lacey winced as he had a point.

“But you could get low level adventurers to try out the dungeon if we could offer, what?” Lacey pressed him harder.

“When I come back, I’m bringing enough to clear it all,” Hughe swore again, and she knew she was losing him.

“But if you got treasure, you would go back out of the dungeon without clearing it, right?” Lacey tried a different tack.

“If I couldn’t carry it all, like last time,” he said softer.

“So big treasure that you could sell for what? A few gold?” Lacey wracked her brain for what she could offer. Other than huge buckets of coal, there wasn’t much here.

“Or I thought I was going to die if I kept going,” Hughe barely whispered this time.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Dungeon invasion repelled,” the system told them, but this time Lacey wasn’t celebrating. “Dungeon experience awarded. 1 room defeated.”

“So much for talking to Hughe,” Lacey rolled over to stare at the ceiling of the tunnel. The goblins cheered at the system message, but Lacey wasn’t so sure they’d really won.

“What’s bigger than a breadbox and worth more than a few gold, but cheap enough that it won’t break our bankroll?” Lacey asked Colt, who was only now starting to stir out of bed.

“Isn’t it too early in the morning for riddles?” Colt complained, running a hand over his two-day’s worth of scraggle on his chin.

Lacey swiped to the dungeon reset portion of the map system and reset the entrance so that the dungeon was all green again. Then she flicked over to the store and scratched at her head. “It may mean the difference between another total wipe and being able to level up to a point that we can truly defend ourselves.”

“What?” Colt was still blinking awake, not that Lacey expected much from him for the next hour or so. “What time did you wake up?”

“It was dark,” Lacey told him, scanning through a lot of newer options, none of which answered the riddle. “Thanks for sending Adam to watch over me. We had a great night. Did you know that the minions can go outside to gather stuff?”

“Uh, what?” Colt wasn’t awake, so Lacey just shrugged off his question. She’d wait for him to wake up enough to be useful. Until then, she was better off asking questions than answering him. Colt answered truthfully to almost anything when he was sleepy. Then again, he was that way when he was awake too. He just knew when to shut up better when he was fully awake.

“What did you find out from fiddling around with the pedestal?” Lacey gave up trying to find something on the pedestal. You didn’t find a ring at the Renn Faire to sell for less elsewhere and all the pedestal prices were outrageously overpriced. Whatever she found in there to dole out as treasure would surely cost more than it would gain her in experience.

“Uh,” Colt was at least moving over to the table to sit with Lacey to talk things through. The worker goblin girl that took care of their room rushed out and back in with a couple of earthenware bowls of food by the time Colt settled into answering. “There’s a bunch of stuff that we’re locked out of, including any treasure options. I upgraded the mining stuff to include a sorter and the goblins on the level above us are working on learning how to sift out something other than coal from our mining operation.”

“Diamonds maybe?” Lacey eyed Colt more hopefully than she eyed the food in front of her. She really didn’t want to think too hard about what was in the bowl of stew.

“Hardly,” Colt scoffed, stuffing a spoonful in his mouth without much thought. Lacey watched his face for a reaction to the food before sniffing at her first spoonful. “We’ll be lucky to pick out limestone that would make for good tablets.”

“I found the limestone wall with the artwork,” Lacey told him, blowing on the already cool stew just to stall having to eat it. Was it glowing? Were there worms in it? Lacey tried not to gag. “It’s safe to say we won’t be selling goblin art for big bucks.”

“What’s the obsession with making a quick buck?” Colt asked, stuffing another spoonful in his mouth without a single flinch.

“So Hughe came back,” Lacey admitting, putting down her spoon into stew and pushing away the bowl. Knowing that there were worms in it was something she couldn’t unsee. Lacey explained what Hughe had said while ordering a meat pie for herself. Hughe ate her stew without comment until she was done explaining.

“Not much different than an escape room then,” Colt tried to look on the bright side. To Lacey, the bright side was the fact that she was eating a meat pie while he finished her stew. “We have to make it challenging enough to make people want to come back, but not so easy that they’ll solve it the first time.”

“I don’t know,” Lacey sighed. “We weren’t ever trying to kill or be killed in the escape rooms we created.”

“But the business model is one we can relate to, right?” Colt reasoned, stacking up the stew bowls even as the goblin worker girl was reaching to take them from the table.

“Which brings us back to the original question which is what’s bigger than a breadbox and still worth enough gold to go cash out rather than brave deeper levels?” Lacey reiterated.

“Sounds like we need to make that top level relatively easy until we have a decent clientele,” Colt sounded so rational, but he obviously couldn’t answer the question any easier than she could. “If we make the second level too tough, they’ll cash out on what we can offer up there.”

“You want to let them kill off twenty to thirty goblins, give them a bag of gold or whatever, and pat them on the back like they haven’t just cost us thousands of credits?” Lacey shook her head. “Once again, all the options here just don’t seem sustainable.”

“I don’t think we should use the goblins at all for it,” Colt raised a finger and motioned to the pedestal. “Guess what doubles in population almost overnight?”

“What?” Lacey gave him side-eye.

“The beetles,” Colt offered it up. “They cost less too.”

“You want to populate the upper level with cockroaches?” Lacey wanted to believe it could work.

“Kind of, yeah,” Colt flipped through screens until he could zoom in on the beetle habitat. “These guys actually battle each other to level up and have been since we remade them. What was it? Last night?”

“Night before,” Lacey said.

“Even better,” Colt snapped his fingers just as Eve and Adam arrived with a passel of goblins in tow. “They’ve doubled in number twice since then and started fighting each other.”

“Like the goblins probably would have if we hadn’t stabilized their societal balance?” Lacey considered it.

“Some of them have leveled up from it,” Colt explained. “They don’t level as fast as if they were fighting the adventurers like Adam and Eve did, but two winning fights made the big guy level up. Then the other beetles didn’t want to fight him until another one leveled up too. I think one or two might be level 3 by now, but it’s hard to catch them on the screen long enough to tap on them.”

“Slippery little suckers, huh?” Lacey joked, watching Eve line up her goblin workers while Adam was playing with his hand like he wanted to learn to snap like Colt had. “That still doesn’t solve the problem of loot. If we don’t offer loot, Hughe’s going to sell out his rights to the dungeon and let a guild wipe us out.”

“But what we consider important or valuable may not be what they find valuable,” Colt held up a finger and then took Lacey’s hand. “This is why you need to venture out into the rooms and not just stare at the screen.”

“I don’t want to go see a bunch of cockroaches,” Lacey protested, pulled back against him as he tried to lead her down one of the corridors. “Eve, save me!”

“Eve save,” Eve rushed forward to lightly smack at the air near Colt’s hand. “Lacey name.”

“Wait, what?” Colt paused.

“Oh yeah,” Lacey nodded toward the line of goblins. “I think the ones we name can be resurrected, so I’ve been naming the smart ones and arming the dumb ones.”

“That’s…” Colt tilted his head and smiled. “That makes sense. Good job, Lace. Seriously.”

“I just hope it works,” Lacey nodded at the goblins in line, then winced. “I’m running out of good names though.”

“Can I?” Colt offered, giving a flirtatious wave at the blushing goblin worker girl on the end.

“As long as you never do that again, yes,” Lacey nearly gagged at the sight. The flirtation wouldn’t bother her in the slightest as she’d watched Colt go through college girls like beer at a keg party when he’d been working there. What bothered her was that it was with a goblin and that just seemed wrong somehow.

“You will be Georgia,” Colt named the first girl after his mother and Lacey realized she’d made a huge mistake. He named more after his family and Lacey swallowed hard. When he got to Dougie, Lacey tried to distract him.

“Why do I need to see beetles?” she asked him, finding the insects less cringeworthy than his naming scheme.

“Back when we were playing DnD, sometimes the monster parts made more money than the typical treasure, so I visited the bats, beetles, and worms and tried to use some parts to turn in like we do with the coal,” Colt explained, dragged her along behind him.

“Do I have to go in?” Lacey whined.

“No, I guess not, but look,” Colt picked up something off a stack near the door. “I went in and there were a ton of these things inside. However long we were asleep, the beetles were born, fought, and died.”

“What is this, the shell?” Lacey turned it over and it glimmered in the low light of the hallway, almost glowing but not quite as bright as the worms had.

“Yeah,” Colt looked very pleased with himself. “The goblins didn’t go in there because the beetles could kill them, but the beetles don’t go past any doors, so they just built up. They don’t live long even when they win all their fights. The males fight and the females get fertilized by the winners. I think maybe the whole nest might have died out before Hughe got her, because the shells were stacked like waist high, but the new beetles had trouble getting around them all until I cleaned out at least one room.”

“And they die after a few days anyway?” Lacey marveled at the colors of the shells, banging on it to see if it was brittle.

“Yeah, so we might as well throw them at the adventurers,” Colt nodded, also tapping the shell a little harder than Lacey had done so. “The shells are hard. Really hard. Probably hard enough to make armor.”

“Then why not sell them ourselves rather than arm our foes?” Lacey said aloud, wondering to herself more than considering it.

“They don’t’ sell well in the store,” Colt shook his head at them. “Still I’m thinking that would make sense that it might be worth more to the adventurers who wouldn’t have access to anything like this unless they go into dungeons.”

“Part of that give and take of an ecosystem,” Lacey mused. “I suppose we won’t know until we offer it up as treasure.”

“Think it’ll appease Hughe and his low-leveled buddies enough to make us worth cultivating?” Colt asked.

“I guess we could ask him,” Lacey gave a malicious smile.