“We need another dungeon entrance,” Colt’s fingers flashed over the screens on the pedestal.
“The cost,” Lacey winced, but she knew he was right. They’d gone over the idea before and decided that the goblin workers were busy enough without having to tunnel out yet another opening. The new entrance also cost them in resources that they needed to have set up in treasures, which was something neither of them wanted to fork out. They could only hope that the treasure that they gave out would balance out with what they earned from the first few groups that came through. “More number crunching. That’s your job.”
“We have 9 of the arena dungeons,” Colt pinned papers to their wall with some sticky substance that Ginger had found for them. Lacey didn’t even want to know what it really was. “We’re only using 2 of them with the new dungeon as the 4th and highest level, and the Aztec Tomb as the second highest. We can copy the Tomb or use another one of the arenas. I think we should split the first dungeon entrance so that we have a lower level.”
“I thought we agreed that combining the lower levels made the most sense since most adventurers can’t even get out here without at least getting to level 5,” Lacey argued.
“I’d say we could wait and see what levels are coming, but then we’d have to delay folks coming in,” Colt ran a hand through his hair. “You don’t think they showed up early, do you?”
“You’re the one keeping up with Kat on the dmails,” Lacey bounced it back to him with a raised brow.
“I didn’t think to ask her what levels were coming,” Colt admitted, his voice low.
“I’ll bet,” Lacey teased him.
“We talk about business, just not as much as about other stuff,” Colt actually blushed with a soft smile that made Lacey sigh. Poor guy. She hoped she wasn’t as hopeless as Colt when she finally met someone.
“I don’t want to know, Colt,” Lacey held up a hand around an indulgent smile.
“It’s just that she’s in transit,” Colt gave back a sheepish smile. “Until we can upgrade the dmail system, folks have to be in a settlement of some sort to send and receive. We could go check the entrance.”
“And do what? It’s not like we can waste a day pass just to…” Lacey started, but Colt stopped her.
“I could get Ginger to take messages in and out,” Colt swiping through screens to move their control room near an entrance.
“Do we even have time for this?” Lacey demanded as her stomach gave a little lurch that told her they were already moving.
“We can’t afford to screw this up and I’ll keep it short,” Colt replied seriously. “I’m invested in our success. I screwed up and didn’t ask the right questions, so I can take a few minutes to make sure we aren’t wasting resources. I’ll get a set of workers digging a new tunnel to the surface, so we don’t have to pay for the extra opening while I’m out there. You just get the levels reorganized.”
“Say hi for me too,” Lacey waved him out the door and took up a position at the pedestal. She couldn’t really get much done until she knew what levels to make, but she could power through the math on the treasure that he’d left for her to do.
If 50 gold bought a horse, then the chests should hold a total of around 1 horse per 5 levels of adventurer for a party of 5. That’s what made sense to Lacey. She replaced the chests from the old dungeons. The old dungeon chests had been designed to frustrate the bullies that had tried to take over the dungeon before it really got off the starting blocks. She and Colt had filled them with tons of coal that were impossible for the NPCs to carry. Player characters might have huge backpack capacity, but they couldn’t count on Kat bringing only players. This was why they needed to close the dungeon during the night, something Colt just didn’t want to believe. They needed the downtime to recalibrate, so they were able to meet goals. Then they needed to sleep.
To anticipate the needs, Lacey created and saved tiered levels of treasure that they could quickly move into dungeon chest areas. She tossed in some semi-precious gems for the higher levels so that adventurers could carry more currency without taking on too much weight. She’d kept a small supply of the gems they’d started getting from the digging expansions. They were pretty crystals mixed in with some relatively crude jewelry that the goblins had started making. She might have paid $20 for it at a Renn Faire back home. Here, she didn’t know what they went for gold-wise, but she figured it was more than the credits they could get for them.
What she ended up with was a series of chests that tiered off of the idea that if a party successfully completed the level 10-15 dungeon, they would find up to 5 chests that would hold a combined value of about 100 gold in coins and jewelry. Not bad for a day’s work for an adventurer considering that leather armor ran 20 gold. A week’s work in the dungeons could get a party enough to chip in for some good chainmail for the tank with enough left over for room and board for a week in town. It was the best that Lacey could do with the information Kat had provided about the local economy and the worth of gold and general equipment. For the higher levels, Lacey sprinkled in a bunch of semi-precious gems and the better jewelry.
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“You want the good news or the bad news?” Colt charged into the room saying.
“The bad news,” Lacey felt her stomach drop, but Colt’s face didn’t reflect the doom and gloom of another siege, so she braced and tried to believe it was going to be okay.
“The bad news is that we need more entrances,” Colt grinned like an idiot.
“How many groups did she bring?” Lacey put a hand on Colt’s chest to stop him.
“4,” he gave her a cheeky waggle of his eyebrows, “guilds.”
“What?” Lacey’s stomach clenched in panic.
“I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t another siege, I promise you it isn’t,” Colt held up his hands at the shock on Lacey’s face.
“You can’t promise that,” Lacey fumed at Colt.
“I can because, look,” Colt held up a few coupons. They were coupons for free dungeon closure. “I made a deal that we won’t use them, but Kat handed them over as a token of faith. She hadn’t been ready to tell me about all of them right off, but once she realized that we had quests to do, she opened the flood gates.”
“If we use those, we’ll lose out on all the quests in the queue,” Lacey stammered out.
“We won’t have to use them,” Colt took Lacey’s hands in his and grinned. He was too much of an optimist was what Lacey was thinking. He wanted to believe the best about people. She shook her head back and forth angrily. “I swear. She started to spread the word, and 10 guilds wanted access almost right away. She vetted the best of the best, the most honorable guilds. And…”
“Colt…”
“And…” he stopped her protest with steadying hands on Lacey’s shoulders. “She told them they could only send the lowest levels to try out the dungeon. They sent waves of adventurers, but not to take over. They sent extra groups and said that each group would only go in once and only if there was room in the queue. There’s a queue. And a waiting list. They aren’t here to take over. They’re here to grind a dungeon. There are just NPCs for now until we get solid and then Kat says she’ll bring in some players.”
Lacey looked down at the coupons and read them again, careful to read the fine print.
“I told her we wouldn’t use the coupons as long as they respect the dungeon rules, and she said that was fine,” Colt grinned like an idiot. “Kat wants to run the dungeon at all the levels available and then she’ll send in players after giving us feedback.”
“There’s got to be a catch,” Lacey sighed and shook her head some more. The fine print was almost non-existent. If they wanted to break whatever deal Colt had idealistically made, there were no repercussions.
“Okay, maybe one tiny catch,” Colt hedged, but he was still grinning. “We might have to let her cat come into the higher levels…”
“That monster would wipe the dungeon in a second,” Lacey protested hotly.
“So that he can keep the higher levels from breaking the rules,” Colt finished, and Lacey snapped her teeth together with a click.
Silence hung in the air as Lacey ruminated on what looked like good luck. She took a breath and held up a finger only to close her mouth the next moment. Her racing thoughts stalled Lacey while Colt patiently gave her his sincerest look. It wasn’t the look he gave his mom when he swore he didn’t drink anything stronger than apple cider. It was the look that he’d given her when she’d quit college, and he’d offered his place for her to crash.
“We need more entrances,” Lacey gave an almost brave smile, though her gut told her that she was being naïve.
“I figure we can double up on the levels and let 2 groups of each level gap in at a time,” Colt jumped toward the pedestal. “There isn’t enough time for the goblins to dig them all out in time, but we’ll make the cost back within a week, because…” and he held up a finger. “The guilds are paying an entrance fee on a per diem basis. Not in useless gold either. They’re paying in magic spell scrolls, sample loot, and Kat got them to throw in 10 each of cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, and I think the other one was goats. You’re going to get your little community out there in the back yard. They are paying in seeds for farmers, stupid stuff like nails, and springs that cost us a fortune in the pedestal.”
“That’s a lot,” Lacey’s eyes got wide.
“Every single level one adventurer has a handful of nails, or springs, or seeds,” he crowed. “You should start drawing elves for running farms out back. Like maybe some kind of elven centaurs with goat features or something. You draw. I’ve got this part.”
“Are we even ready for all this?” Lacey muttered.
“We just had no idea how starved this world was for new and challenging dungeons,” Colt told Lacey even as he swiped and moved things around, including her treasure chests. “These are great. Love the scalability.”
“Kat did all this?” Lacey whispered, nearly jumping out of her skin as a tiny kitten batted at her heels.
“Ginger and her teams can dig out 5 new tunnels,” Colt was saying more to himself than her. “I’m going to put most of her teams near an outside wall. Some of the adventurers are helping to build some scaffolding for entrances higher up the mountain. I’m buying 2 entrances for the lowest levels at the end of the line.”
“We can copy some tunnels from down below,” Lacey tried to get enthusiastic, but she felt like that kid on the back of the train in the Polar Express. Things just didn’t work out for her. Everything worked out for Colt though. Maybe she was skating by on his coattails. “Let’s layer them so that 0-15 go up and 15-25 go down.”
“Lace,” Colt stopped to look at her with concern, and it said something that he only did that once she tried to get onboard. Lacey wasn’t sure what it said, but it said something. If all this worked out, maybe she could change the part of her entrenched in failure. “You okay?”
“Ask me that tomorrow, after the grand opening,” Lacey put on a smile, but her jaded heart muttered, “if we’re still alive at that point.”