“That same lone adventurer is going through the arena,” Colt tapped his screen.
“Level 12 Assassin,” the pedestal informed them. He might look like a mage, but the pedestal knew the difference.
“I say we use a coupon to close the dungeon,” Lacey raised her brows. “Not because I think he’s a threat, but because we don’t have time for his shit. We have summoning to get done before that quest times out and I’m not chancing failing it on account of a jerk who shouldn’t be in here to begin with.”
“He was part of the original group to go through, but when they all exited, he turned around and came back in,” Colt riffled through their treasure chest, where they kept their coupons filed away. “He thinks he’s being slick, but he doesn’t realize that the pedestal doesn’t lie.”
“We’d only need a 12-hour coupon,” Lacey’s hoarder heart cringed at the thought of using one of their precious coupons, but it was worth it. They needed the time and the uninterrupted sleep once they got all their summons done.
“Got it,” Colt held up a slip of paper. “And before you ask, we have more of these than you might think. Thanks to the guild following the rules, we haven’t had to use any, but they’ve been dropping in the forest, so Bernard’s guys have been using them as entry fees.”
“Makes sense,” Lacey felt herself relax a bit at that. “I’m dying to see how they work when someone is inside the dungeon.”
“Some part of me is hoping he gets tossed out on his ass,” Colt winked at Lacey as he dropped the slip of paper on the pedestal.
“Closure coupon accepted,” the pedestal announced, and Lacey found that she was holding her breath. “One adventurer left in dungeon. Please choose method of expulsion.”
“What are our options?” Lacey asked.
“Oh, this is awesome,” Colt rubbed his palms together then read off the pedestal. “Notify parties and give time limit for departure. Teleport all parties to nearest exit. Immediate expulsion with prejudice.”
“I’m feeling prejudiced, aren’t you?” Lacey flipped her screen at her desk to watch and follow Kat’s dad. She didn’t want to miss this.
“I’m feeling it, for sure,” Colt quipped, hitting the choice. “Though my mother will be appalled.”
One moment the guy was working his way through a trap and the next he was gone. It was a bit anticlimactic. Lacey looked at Colt and he looked back at her. The dungeon turned green.
“That was underwhelming,” Colt huffed.
“I’m imagining he was shot out of the dungeon like being shot out of a canon,” Lacey let her eyes close for a moment.
“That’ll have to do,” Colt scowled at the screens.
“We have summoning to do.” The countdown for the closure appeared at the corner of Lacey’s vision. “I want to get some sleep tonight.”
“I’ll sleep better knowing he can’t sneak back in during the night,” Colt nodded at her and picked up the stack of drawings they’d made for the day.
“Me too,” Lacey admitted, sliding through screens to rearrange levels, rooms, and whole floors of both the active dungeon and the residential areas.
“I’m going to the residentials you just slid into place,” Colt ducked to grab a backpack on his way out of the control room. “It’ll be quicker if I summon them from the rooms they belong in.”
“If you see Ginger on the way, send her up here,” Lacey told him. Ginger was often running for the stairs as soon as the dungeon turned green, but they didn’t blame her. A whole six hours was a long time for the little goblin to spend sitting at a desk, even if they did bribe her with energy bars. “I want her help in directing a new breed of goblins. I figured I’d summon a few of each just to see what we can do to enhance the skills.”
“Sure,” Colt waved at her, his back already disappearing into their elevator.
Lacey had enough to do in rearranging their levels. The first 6 entrances were still going to have their arenas for levels 5-20, not only because they were good cheap options for the low levels, but also because they helped to feed excess leveled-up beetles and big cats into the upper levels. Each of the arenas were layered with Mage Gauntlets. They’d found that to make the levels run quickly, they would accept a group of 5 mages, who would then split up and compete against each other for bragging rights and prize chests. This way, each level could run 5 mages through at a time.
After that, Lacey queued up 2 Aztec Tombs, 2 Temple Runs, and 2 different versions of The Zoo, 2 West Side Story levels, 2 Snow White levels, and 2 of the newest Haunted House levels. That made 6 total arenas and 6 gauntlets, taking up 6 of the existing entrances. The Temple Runs each used 2 entrances, and that would have used up their existing entrances except that Lacey had agreed to splurge to buy an extra 10 entrances.
This meant that they were expanding their entrances to a total of 20 of them, but that wasn’t all. They were also expanding the residential area to almost twice its previous size. The entire residential area, along with the control room was being barricaded behind what Lacey was calling the Spunk levels. Each of the 12 Spunk levels consisted of no less than 50 traps all woven around in a massive maze that forced an intruder to pass each and every one of them. At least half of those traps were alive.
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“Let’s see him get through that batch of traps in the time limit,” Lacey muttered to herself.
The mazes themselves were almost random in their layout. There weren’t any puzzles at all. They weren’t trying to keep out NPCs who could be fooled by the same puzzle several times. Until they unlocked some type of randomizing maze creation mechanism, this was the best Lacey could do to stall a player from reaching the heart of the dungeon. If 600 traps didn’t slow them down enough, the next fifteen levels of residential areas could do it. Each of the races had their own methods of blocking intruders, but that was enhanced by caverns with murder holes in the ceiling, rope bridges that could be cut, and deep chasms full of stalagmites.
The worst of it was how long it would take a single goblin to traverse the whole thing. Lacey had done the best she could by creating a pulley-driven elevator shaft that disengaged from the system during operational hours. It only ran through the residential areas, but until they knew a better way to repel unwelcome invaders, it would have to do. Bypassing the Spunk levels could only be done via Georges, and only the top Spunks were equipped with them. Spunks would only allow dungeon creatures through the shortcuts and even then, only when the dungeon was green.
The whole thing was cumbersome, but Lacey and Colt had decided to try it out and see if their dungeon creatures could adapt to it. Once Lacey was done with the expansion, she moved the overflow monsters down into the stable areas and habitats, a chore that would have to be done manually by Lacey and Colt every day.
“Ginger here.” Lacey nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound. It had been so quiet, and she’d been so focused that she hadn’t noticed Ginger come in.
“I wanted to ask you about the upgrades we just got access to,” Lacey told Ginger, noting that Ginger was stuck in a half yawn. “It shouldn’t take long. Are you too tired? I could ask Eve or Adam.”
“Ginger here,” Ginger repeated.
“There are new upgrades for goblins,” Lacey started to explain, pointing at the pedestal as if Ginger could read it.
Ginger gave Lacey a sullen look.
“I mean, new goblins that we summon can have specific skills,” Lacey flipped into some pictures that didn’t illustrate it all that well. “Like new goblins could automatically be good at crafting, administration, or fighting. Would something like that interest you?”
“Ginger already good at bossing,” Ginger shook her head at Lacey.
“As soon as Colt is done summoning, we should get the ability to upgrade current goblins,” Lacey tried again. “Would you maybe like to see what kind of upgrade you could get?”
“Give Ginger able to read and write?” Ginger poked a finger at the pedestal.
“I’ll look, but Ginger are you okay?” Lacey asked.
“Ginger tired,” she responded on a sigh. “Changes in caves give Ginger head pain.”
“Like real pain?”
“Rooms move,” Ginger waved her green hands around. “Whole levels move. Ginger okay with dungeon moving, but home caves harder. Get lost two times on way here.”
“I could have routed you here faster,” Lacey felt bad for not having offered. “I can get you to any cave if you need.”
“Ginger sleep here, so here good,” Ginger pointed at the bunk beds.
“Right,” Lacey watched Ginger trudge over to the beds.
There had to be a better way, but Lacey didn’t know one yet. She slid through menus of potential upgrades until she found something interesting. In the store, they almost had access to stable teleport pads. To unlock the teleport pads, they had to unlock Tier III, whatever that was. Once they did that, they’d have access to dungeon-only spells that would enhance their dungeon design capabilities.
“Pedestal, what tier are we right now?” Lacey asked the pedestal, Ginger’s light snores playing background music to her queries.
“The dungeon is currently at Tier II, a stage that was automatically achieved at the end of the tutorial,” the pedestal explained, not that Lacey felt like that told her anything.
“Where are the tier help files in this mess?” Lacey mumbled to herself.
She’d only found the information about tiers by following the rabbit holes of links that went from wanting to solve the transportation problems all the way down to Tiers. It was a lot like finding a word on a WIKI that you didn’t understand and clicking on the link to that page, only to find a dozen more words that didn’t make sense either. By the time you looked up several hours later, you’d made your way from a frosting recipe to an explanation of vampire cults in Santa Barbara. Lacey pulled up the screen of definitions.
Tier I – Tutorial – So, you think you want to be a dungeon master? Fine, start here. This is where we spoon feed you hundreds of silly quests that eventually lead you to be able to use your control systems. Summon monsters, set up habitats, and basically fiddle around with options that are mostly harmless.
Tier II – Training – Now that you know how to navigate the dungeon controls, let’s try a few parameters to expand your dungeon enough for visitors. In this stage of dungeon building, you’ll have access to more of the physical controls that allow you to customize your dungeon. You’ll need to build more levels, reach the surface, expand your entrances, and fill that dungeon with waves of monsters that can protect your home base from invasion.
Tier III – Magic – Okay, so maybe you can build a basic dungeon, but can you manage your resources to fill it with the magical tools necessary to manage all that space? In this stage, you’ll need to balance mana, health, and spells in such a way that you can double the size of your dungeon without toppling it on top of yourself. You’ll be blessed with a dungeon character sheet, a spell list to choose from, and solutions to all your transportation problems.
Tier IV – The information on this tier is locked until you can manage previous levels.
Tier V – The information on this tier is locked until you can manage previous levels.
“Huh,” Lacey fiddled with a pencil. “How do we get to Tier III?”
Tier III Requirements: 20 Entrances, 50 Unique Dungeon Levels, Dungeon Progress Level 40, 100 Monster Types, 100 Dungeon Incursions Repelled, 5,000 Dungeon Denizens, and 50 Unique Monster Types.
“But pedestal, I just made the 20 entrances, and you didn’t say a thing,” Lacey argued with the text on her screen.
“Tier II consists of a combined impetus of both quests and Tier goals in an effort to induct candidates slowly into the system. As the dungeon masters were focused mainly on quests, the Tier goal notifications have been suppressed. Would you like to turn on Tier goal notifications and rewards?”
“No!” Colt answered for her, and she turned to see him walking back into the room.