“I’m just saying it’s something to consider,” Lacey argued, grimacing as Colt took another sip of the apple cider.

“We’re supposed to be building a level that even Hughe could defeat, not blowing ourselves and all our minions to kingdom come,” Hughe argued, patting Ginger on the head as she brought him a new mug of the stuff. “I don’t think it’ll work that way in this place anyway.”

“Why do you say that?” Lacey took the mug and set it on the table, giving Colt a stern look that should have worked.

“Do you remember that story we read on Royal Road?” Colt’s long arms reached around Lacey to pick up the apple cider.

“We read a lot of stories on Royal Road,” Lacey complained, trying again to grab the mug that he easily held up over her head.

“Yeah, but this one was about a gal that took over a game engine and then said that anyone who left a comment, a rating, and then also answered some poll at the end would get an invite to their very own world,” Colt took another sip of apple cider as Lacey gave up trying to stop him with a grunt of disgust.

“I vaguely remember it,” Lacey admitted, heading to the pedestal to order another meat pie. “Cute trick, but ridiculous.”

“Yeah, anyway,” Colt muttered around the mug, his eyes alight with something that almost always got Lacey in as much trouble as she got him into with her mouth. “We’ve been swept into a game…”

“Wait,” Lacey groaned, waving her new meat pie in the air. “You think we’re in a game because we read some book on Royal Road?”

“Stranger things have happened,” Colt suggested, snagging her meat pie and taking a steaming bite.

“Hey!” Lacey groused, pulling her meat pie back before his second bite took half of it up. “You like the stew. You should eat that. Not that you’ll have any taste buds to protest after drinking that moo-apple cider. And stranger things haven’t really happened except in your ridiculously paranoid-conspiracy mind.”

“Okay,” he shrugged, and Lacey hoped he was done with it.

“I’m just saying we should figure out where their still is and see if we can reproduce the mechanics,” Lacey went back to the point, blowing on her pie. “I’ve been looking, but I can’t find it. I even asked Eve, but Adam shushed me before I could finish. I think he’s hiding it.”

“I doubt Eve would approve,” Colt nodded, then changed the subject. “And I’m just saying that I’d like to be able to deliver treasure in snarky little loot boxes, but what we’d like isn’t necessarily how the system works.”

“Ooooh, like in that one series where the dungeon collapses,” Lacey grinned. “I loved that. Can we do something like that?”

“Lacey,” Colt held up a warning hand, sitting on the table with his feet up on the chairs (yeah, Colt’s mom, read that part). “If we collapsed our dungeon, we’d be buried underground again. I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

“If we had that still,” Lacey returned to her initial argument, knowing that if Colt kept drinking the apple cider, he’d give in to her crazy idea before she gave in to his.

“I’m not telling you where the still is,” Colt set down his mug next to him, almost daring her to snatch it back up.

“So, you do know where it is!” Lacey pounced, on the words, not the apple cider. He could have it, especially if it helped Lacey get her way.

“I didn’t say that,” he waved his hands in front of him with a laugh. “But you already got poor Ginger in trouble. Don’t make it worse is what I’m saying. And we are supposed to be herding beetles right after dinner, so don’t get sidetracked again.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Lacey took a cooled bite of the meat pie, savoring the flavor that seemed to be getting better every day. Maybe someday she’d get tired of sumptuous beef stew in a flaky pie crust, but that seemed as unlikely as getting tired of Metro Pizza. It just didn’t happen.

Lacey and Colt were the only ones who could transport the beetles because they were the only ones the beetles didn’t attack. Lacey could carry two of the little ones and Colt could carry one big one. The problem was that they were transporting them up exactly 42 levels of stone stairs. The fifteen trips up and down had made Lacey appreciate the meat pie and had her eying the pedestal like she was considering another one.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Colt wagged a finger at her. “You’ve either got to get used to the goblins’ stew or figure out how the goblins can cook something else. We can’t keep squandering our cash on fast food.” That was an old argument and in their old life Lacey had been on the other side of it. Then again, in her old life, a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich was available 24/7 and cheaper than fast food.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“I got them pine nuts and little berries,” Lacey dusted the remains of the flaky crust off her hands and onto her jeans. “They made apple cider with it.”

“What did you expect?”

“Pizza?” Lacey shrugged and gave up on the thought of another meat pie, at least until Colt was in bed.

“I can imagine the bat or boar meat being turned into sausage with some spices maybe, but pepperoni and crust are a long way off, civilization-wise,” Colt shook his head at her. “Not to mention how we’d grow tomatoes.”

“And yet the pedestal can make a meat pie,” Lacey raised her eyebrows at him and waved at it. “I’ll bet there’s bread in town. Hughe had crackers and cheese. How far could pizza really be out there?”

“We’re not out there,” Colt scolded. “We’re in here and all the whining in the world isn’t going to change that. Nor am I going to change my mind about making bombs out of still components.”

“But-“ Lacey tried to interject, resenting his casual sip of apple cider.

“I’m too fond of the product that is produced by what you want to blow up,” Colt handed his cup to Ginger, who took it away with a giggle. “How many more trips with these beetles are we going to make?”

“That depends on how many small ones that big one ate while we were taking a break,” Lacey groaned out.

“We locked him in that back room, right?” Colt followed Lacey down corridors to the beetle pen.

“You were the last one out,” Lacey told him, and he frowned.

“I don’t think I was,” Colt argued, but his frown said he wasn’t sure.

“You were,” Lacey asserted, because she could. She’d locked the door, but it would do to remind Colt that he needed to keep his wits about him this close to dawn. Hughe would be back. They might have filled in the traps in the first level so that Hughe could have the satisfaction of fighting something, but if there weren’t enough beetles to fight, he’d be whining again.

“How much would it cost to make the beetles show up near the top instead of at the pedestal?” Colt wondered out loud.

“If you can find it in the menus, go for it,” Lacey shrugged, grabbing the lip of a little beetle’s shell. Her hand clamped over the edge of both the exoskeleton and the wing segment, making the beetle little more than a bunch of wiggling legs under an upended turtle shell. Just because they couldn’t attack Lacey or Colt, didn’t mean they couldn’t try to get away.

“I’m going to spend a few hours trying to chase down a female beetle,” Colt complained, needing both hands to hold one of the big ones.

“You’d have an easier time scooping up a pile of those eggs in a basket,” Lacey suggested.

“None of the gathering goblins will give their baskets up,” Colt marched the beetle to the first of the stone bookcase spots where goblins had piled up some limestone blocks that they were using as mostly solid stairs.

“I’d make you one, except I’m too busy lugging beetles,” Lacey followed behind him with her two beetles, held out from her like they were bowls of goblin stew. Lacey was pretty sure that the crunchy bits in that stew were beetle legs.

“There’s got to be a better way,” Colt muttered, ducking his head through the trap door that had been propped open but was still too low for Colt to walk under without slouching. “But at least we have stairs now.” They had stairs because they’d spent even more credits on more workers.

“If you know what to order that will turn a basic goblin into an animal wrangler, let me know because I’m tired of handing stuff to them only to get scowled at,” Lacey griped.

“They do seem to be getting picky now that there are so many jobs available,” Colt mused, tromping up the next set of stairs.

“I’m half tempted to just let them choose their tools, like Eve did,” Lacey admitted, more to complain than as an actual suggestion.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Colt belied her disregard of the notion.

“Mass hysteria,” Lacey warned him, repositioning her hand as one of the beetles got a bit slippery. “You’ll have no control over how many of each type there is. What if they all want to be gatherers? Then who is going to fight or mine or yeah, because who would want to be a miner?”

“You don’t know that,” Colt was just too naïve sometimes. Lacey blamed his upbringing in a nice loving home. “We could set out all the tools and let a new goblin choose off the table of tools.”

“Why don’t you just take all the tools off of every single goblin worker we have, throw all the tools in a pile and let them fight their way through the throng to get what they want,” Lacey suggested sarcastically, giving a horrid shudder. “It would be like Christmas shopping at the mall on Black Friday!”

“Maybe not like that,” Colt frowned back at her as she emerged from another trap door behind him, walking backward in a way that made Lacey snatch her nearest beetle back so that the big one didn’t get it. “But some kind of ceremony or something. We could test them for aptitude, like you did with the swords. It’s only the sword holders that don’t go back to being workers.”

“Once again, it’s setting up a civilization like we should be creating the religion or something,” Lacey shook her head as Colt turned back forward to keep his beetle in line. “I didn’t have a great experience with religion, so I certainly don’t want to set one up.”

“But we could create it perfectly from the ground up,” Colt stooped through another trap door.

“Colt,” Lacey dropped her tone into her serious voice like she’d watched Colt’s mom do at least twice a day during family times. “I’m sure every religious leader thought the same thing and they killed most of them.”

“Not Smith,” Colt protested.

“Jones, Manson, Applewhite,” she listed them off.

“Applewhite?” Colt turned around again, holding the beetle to the side to avoid fighting. “Now you’re just making stuff up.”

“The comet was the key to Heaven’s gate,” Lacey shook her head at him.

“Oh yeah,” he admitted, walking backwards up the first few steps.

“Koresh, Asahara,” she continued.

“You might know a little too much about this stuff,” Colt gave her a worried look.

“Agreed,” she answered quickly. The few times Lacey’s dad had deigned to spend time with Lacey between girlfriends were filled with more than a few self-righteous lectures about Colt and his family’s religious background which included a deep dive into cult mentality. It was one of many reasons Lacey had kept Colt away when her dad was home. She could have invited him to dinner. Her father had tried to suggest it a few times, but Lacey was a little less trusting of people than Colt, and her father was one of the reasons why. “But if you want to keep up this conversation, you’ll need to get me to drink more than two mugs of apple cider, and access to the still.”

“I’ll pass on that,” he turned back around, nodding.