The door closed behind Lacey. She immediately turned to open it back up, but all that was there was the hotel room accommodation that had been there before her and Colt’s trip back home. Colt stuck his head over her shoulder and grinned. The dungeon control room, complete with goblin minions, was a welcome sight. The pedestal stood in the middle of the floor, with their dining/picnic/work table off to one side. The floor was smooth stone with two exits, one to the stairs to the water cavern below them and one that led directly out into the goblin tunnels. The height of the cave was well over 20’ but it was still a little oppressive to Lacey to consider that they were housed beneath a mountain. Beyond the goblin city of tunnels was their dungeon.

“That’s pretty sweet,” Colt crowed in delight, pushing past Lacey and into their inner sanctum.

“It’s good to be home,” Lacey admitted. With the tutorial over, Lacey was ready to make this the best dungeon in their new game world. No more training wheels, no more outrageous questlines to complete just to survive. After a single day and night back in the real world to take care of reality, she and Colt could focus. No more slapping shit together just to keep from getting wiped. They had one full week to build something truly amazing from scratch. It was better than her dream to create escape rooms in the real world.

“Masters back!” Ginger ran to Colt and hugged his leg. As head of the workers, she was their favorite and easier to deal with than some. Adam was the head of the warriors, an elite group of 10 fighter goblins, and supposedly the chief of the tribe. Eve was the shaman, with her own troop of 10 mini-shamans, and the only goblin they’d blessed with magical abilities. But in the end, it was Ginger, the leader of their hundreds of worker and crafting goblins, that did most of the work.

“Yep, and we’ve got work to do,” Lacey rubbed her hands together and approached the pedestal. The control room had been cleaned up from the party of the night before, a testament to the efficiency of goblin workers. The hundreds of industrious workers lived in a warren of caves deep in the mountain around the control room. The dungeon itself was arranged in layers of protection so that the control room and their goblin tribe were safe from adventurers trying to take over their domain. They also had a menagerie of about 45 monsters, 4 of which had been gifted to them at the beginning and the rest of which Lacey had drawn up in their recently desperate efforts to keep their baby dungeon from getting wiped by a ruthless guild. Those monsters currently wandered around the dungeon levels, but while the dungeon was closed, Lacey meant to make sure that they had a better set of habitats for their menagerie.

“Let’s see these new tools we have now that the pedestal is unlocked,” Colt approached the pedestal, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. The pedestal was mostly unlocked. The tutorial was over, so they had access to all the tools of dungeon masters, but some special stuff was reserved for higher levels, locked out behind technology trees that they had yet to discover, or just too expensive.

The dungeon had leveled again. They were now level 25 dungeon masters of a level 25 dungeon. Lacey got busy making a new level of arenas and summoned 8 beetle breeders at their highest levels to feed into those arenas. The lower-leveled system that they’d dubbed Arena Levels 1-3 fed smaller beetles into larger beetle arenas, leveling up enough for fighting adventurers and training up some of their new menagerie. She drew and added in another Arena Level 4 that added a new herd of higher leveled beetles into the mix. They could have just copied one of the older levels and made some adjustments, but for new stuff, drawing them in detail made them a lot cheaper to implement.

Colt summoned 10 of each of their menagerie while Lacey created dwelling rooms for them that were perfect for their type. They had a modified bat cave for the mini-dragons with little cliff-like caves that they lived in. That was a huge room compared to the Chrews domain (those little spies made up of a cross between a crow and a venomous shrew) that was a tiny hamster habitat, not that the Chrews remained there often unless they were breeding, which they did a lot. Chrews constantly flew or scurried throughout the levels in search of bugs that they ate. The corral and meadow for the Gossowaries was a medium-sized room. Each of the creatures had their main habitat attached to a central hub, where some goblins were specializing in creature care.

Most of their creatures learned relatively quickly that fighting only happened in the Arenas and dungeon areas. With Lacey, Colt, and the goblins, most of the creatures were playful rather than aggressive. Some had rivalries against each other, but the goblin handlers mediated the disputes. The exception to that was the beetles who were ultimately aggressive to everyone, including Lacey and Colt. The beetles were smart enough to only attack creatures equal to or weaker than they were.

Goblins were both inexpensive to summon and adaptable, so they ordered a whole new platoon of workers (100 in total). The adaptability came in that if you handed a goblin a tool, they became proficient and focused in a specialization focused on that tool. For example, if you gave a goblin a pick, they became miners, a hatchet would make them lumberjacks, or a broom would make them cleaners. Lacey and Colt had decided to implement Colt’s newest idea to allow the newest goblins choices of tools. Lacey didn’t mind that they had too many jewelry crafters this time because they only named the top 10 producers in any category and only named goblins could be resurrected by the pedestal if killed in accidents or by adventurers.

Colt designated feeding schedules for the beetles so that they knew which beetles were bred on which levels by feeding them different colored worms. The worm habitats had to be expanded and increased so that their newest breeds of the garbage eaters could thrive in their own spaces. Worms were the primary protein used to feed a lot of their meat-eating monsters, but dried worms could be mixed into herbivore food too. They’d discovered that Eve’s different colored worms made some of their monsters develop different characteristics. Purple worms imbued the beetles and their shells with bonuses to magical abilities. Yellow ones increased strength and/or dexterity depending on their levels. Blue ones had the ability to fly short distances, and green ones burrowed. They had to be careful not to mix and match too much or they got very random results. Every once in a while, they got a rainbow of colors, but those were always super-aggressive and tended to wipe out whole arenas.

It only took a few hours to breed a batch of beetles, a mob with the fastest life cycle of only a few days, and another few hours to whittle those beetles down in the arenas to level the best of the best. Those Colt sequestered in with the breeders to produce the next batch. Colt was fascinated with the handling and care of their critters and had introduced a new specialty of critter-handler for the goblins by offering leashes to goblins newly spawned by the pedestal. Lacey was content to design new monsters and their habitats. They worked together to create a place that could grow and maintain creatures without the need to order them up on the pedestal all the time.

“Mas- Colt and Lacey!” Ginger came into their control room to bounce excitedly. They’d given Ginger permission to call them by their names, something that had elevated her ranking in the tribe. “Big baddies have left!”

“Are you sure?” Lacey put down her newest sketchpad. The big baddies were a huge guild that had camped on their doorstep during the tutorial. They’d managed to kill off the leader and his party, but the guild had still been camped out there for the past two days of rebuilding. Even though the dungeon was officially closed for repairs (and therefore magically sealed against incursions), the guild had remained.

“Sent worker out to gather wood and not get killed,” Ginger nodded her head quickly.

“Give me a ride to the surface?” Lacey asked Colt.

“Sure,” Colt agreed. The pedestal used a touchscreen that allowed them access to dungeon building tools, menus, and camera views of any room in their dungeons. From the pedestal, they could move rooms around, copy and paste working rooms for credits, and redesign with a click and drag method. The rest of the controls used finger taps using fingers other than their index fingers so that a middle finger click gave access to menus, a ring finger tap opened minute options, and a pinky finger the help menus.

“Ginger go with,” Ginger hopped into the “elevator room” that Lacey had finally agreed to once she started to see how very huge their domain was getting. “Only single person outside now, but she not attack worker.”

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Lacey and Colt exchanged raised eyebrows and shrugs.

Their million-credit budget that they’d earned for completing the tutorial was being spent in judicious spurts of creation. They spent it on new rooms, functionality, and creature development. They’d also splurged for a few indulgences like a kitchenette that Ginger wouldn’t touch. They also had a few executive office chairs, and they had used a coupon to add a miscellaneous upgrade to the control room which had resulted in a pair of executive desks, each with pedestal access. The desks were more like gaming setups made of old wood with slanted tabletops and a curved monitor set in stone to view into the dungeon. Colt had been wheedling for the 3-screen display upgrade, but Lacey was holding back on it in case they needed that 50,000 credits for something more practical. She actually had every intention of getting it for Colt before they reopened the dungeon in 5 more days, but she was hoping it would come down in price before then from some tech upgrades she was working on in her drawings.

The elevator took her to the entrance room, where Lacey stepped out with Ginger on her heels. Lacey didn’t mind working long hours, knowing that she was creating something that was more sustainable and that wasn’t going to kill her anytime soon. She crossed the rejuvenated bat cave that served as an entrance room for their dungeon trying not to disturb the slumbering bats and paused near the opening.

Outside was a tall young woman dressed in black leather, studded with daggers. She lounged against a nearby tree eating something out of a bag. She seemed to be talking to herself until Lacey noticed a small creature that peered out from the woman’s curly hair. Lacey might not have noticed the creature except that every third bite of whatever the woman was eating went to the creature instead of into the woman’s mouth. The young woman didn’t look aggressive, but she didn’t notice Lacey’s timid wave from inside the dungeon.

“Ginger go get?” Ginger pointed out the door and Lacey reluctantly nodded. The main drawback that Lacey had with dungeon building was that she and Colt could not go outside the dungeon. The goblins could make brief forays into the forest beyond for supplies, but the workers were vulnerable, not only to adventurers, but also the natural denizens of a fantasy wood.

Lacey had a moment of worry about Ginger’s safety, but if the woman hadn’t interfered with other worker goblins, she wouldn’t mess with Ginger, who didn’t look important at all, or in fact any different than any other worker. Ginger’s status was entirely from her standing with Lacey and Colt.

Lacey watched Ginger poke her head out of the dungeon carefully, then walk toward the stranger. Lacey had another moment of trepidation as the woman noticed the little goblin girl, but it melted away as the woman raised a hand in greeting with a warm and almost awkward smile. They had a quick conversation and Ginger then rushed back to the cave opening.

“Woman is Kat,” Ginger said primly. “She formally requests audience with dungeon masters.”

“But she can’t come in and I can’t go out,” Lacey shrugged, sending a silent smile to the woman outside.

“Kat give Ginger this,” and Ginger handed two small pieces of paper to Lacey.

“Day pass,” Lacey read the coupon carefully. Lacey and Colt had discovered coupons at the conclusion of the tutorial as a special coupon had allowed them to go home to visit Colt’s mother for Sunday dinner. It was the main reason both Lacey and Colt were much more relaxed that they’d been since getting dropped into his world. These two little coupons allowed for her or Colt to leave the dungeon for a single day. The dungeon would stay in stasis so that no time would pass inside the dungeon while they were gone, including the closed-for-repairs timer. Lacey had learned to read the fine print.

Lacey raised her gaze to the woman who smiled and gave a pointed look at the sun rising over the tops of the trees, as if to say, daylight’s burning. The coupon would expire at sunset, at which point, they would need to return to the dungeon or incur a 1000-credit penalty per hour outside the dungeon.

“Colt, you might want to get up here,” Lacey sent to Colt via their text interface that they still hadn’t upgraded. “Someone out there gave us a day pass to go outside.”

“Is that safe?” he replied, and his words scrolled across a small text box at the bottom of Lacey’s vision.

Lacey replied by holding up the coupon’s fine print for him to read if he so desired.

“On my way,” was his response after he’d taken the time to read it. The interface took their subaudible words and projected them without the need to speak out loud.

“I’ll see you outside,” Lacey told him and summoned the pedestal to the entrance so that she could input the coupon for herself. Summoning a temporary pedestal to any room was a new upgrade they’d unlocked by completing the tutorial. She left the other coupon on the floor next to the pedestal.

“Wait for me,” Colt protested, but she only saw half of it since the communication and her display changed completely as she stepped outside of the dungeon. Lacey ignored the new screen by swiping it away. She didn’t want anything interfering with her view of the sky outside.

Colt hadn’t felt the oppressive pressure of all that dirt over the top of him during their time in the dungeon. Lacey didn’t mention it but, given a chance at a free breath of air that would only last until sunset, Lacey wasn’t going to waste a second of it. The job of designing and managing the dungeon had been worth the pressure on her chest at being confined under a mountain, but time spent underground hadn’t gotten easier with the weeks they’d already spent locked in the dungeon. It was only that Lacey tended to slough off the feeling as a cost of living the dream.

Outside their main entrance was a small clearing of stubby green grass before the whole vista was obscured by towering pine trees. Lacey had only ever seen it from having her face pressed against the transparent barrier between the dungeon and the outside. Being outside lifted all that pressure off Lacey’s chest and, when she breathed in the forest air, she closed her eyes. She could smell the grass and the sap of pine trees, a hint of something musty, and clear fresh air that would choke a city dweller. That was all the reaction she allowed herself as she approached the smiling stranger. It wouldn’t do to show weakness to the newest curveball Lacey could practically feel being lobbed their way.

“Hi, I’m Lacey,” Lacey matched the woman’s friendly smile and reached out a hand in greeting.

“Kat,” she countered and matched Lacey’s handshake in firmness. “I’m the dungeon inspector.”

“There are dungeon inspectors?” Lacey’s eyes widened, a moment of panic causing her to imagine all the ways she and Colt could be screwed by a whole new set of parameters they weren’t ready to implement.

“No,” Kat’s face broke into a laugh as she waved her hand around. “But it sure sounds good, right? Will your partner be joining us?”

“He’s on his way,” Lacey frowned. This woman knew to ask about Colt? Lacey realized that people outside their dungeon probably knew a lot more about them than they did about the world beyond the dungeon. Was there talk about the dungeon? Was news or gossip being spread and if so was it good or bad? How far? Lacey made a note to herself to keep enough money aside to close the dungeon at any time.

“Relax, I’m here to help, not screw you over,” Kat planted her hands on her hips in a no-nonsense pose.

“I’m here! I’m here!” Colt practically tumbled out onto the grass of the clearing’s floor. He must have taken the shortcut of moving the entire control room to the entrance. There was a moment of something that sparked between Colt and the new girl. It wasn’t unusual for Colt to instantly fall completely in love with the newest female near his own age of 26. It happened so often that Lacey almost didn’t react at all except to smile and roll her eyes. Normally he was a bit more suave about it, but Colt was crushing on the gal already. Hopefully, this one was more his type than Helluna had been. “Hello beautiful. I’m Colt.”

Kat pressed her lips together under dancing brown eyes. “Nice to meet you, Colt,” she said as he walked up to them with his most charming smile. “I’m Kat and I’m here to get some paperwork squared away and help you folks get settled into the world.”

“We could have used that a few weeks ago?” Lacey started to say, but Colt cut her off.

“What she means is that we have been looking forward to you, to meeting you, I mean,” he held out his hand to shake hers like he was some schoolboy with no wit at all and Lacey gave Colt a weird look.

They shook hands and met eyes, and Lacey had to resist giggling. “Yeah, that’s what I meant.” Lacey didn’t even know how to be jealous of his infatuations anymore. She and Colt weren’t suited to each other romantically anyway, so it didn’t make sense to get fussy because he flirted with someone other than her. Colt might practice his flirting on Lacey, but even his mother had given up on them being a thing. That didn’t stop most of Colt’s love interests from misunderstanding their relationship, but Lacey wasn’t the one with jealousy issues.

“I’ve been sent by the Adventurer’s Guild,” Kat turned her attention to Lacey to avoid the awkwardness that was Colt being a dolt, almost like she was sidestepping a particularly nasty trap. “The Adventurer’s Guild oversees all the other guilds and would like to extend our services to your dungeon. Would you like to sit down?”

With that, Kat took a large oak table out of her backpack and placed it in the middle of the clearing like it didn’t weigh anything. The table was followed by a set of three comfortable-looking chairs, padded with black velvet and studded with brass rivets. That was followed by three pads of paper and folders that Kat set down on the table at each place setting. After a brief rummage in the magical pack, she also brought out a pair of crystal decanters, one with clear liquid and one with red, and three matching goblets of crystal.

“Please,” Kat motioned to the table, “have a seat?”

“I want one of those,” Colt stared at Kat with wide eyes.

“He means the backpack,” Lacey tried to cover for him as he was generally much more subtle with his charm.

“That too,” and Lacey rolled her eyes as Colt recovered with an infectious grin designed to melt the moon into a puddle of cheese.