Dungeon Master (Karma System)

Max and Anna stepped out of the shower and got dressed for the day. Max wasn’t the type of person to demand his wife always wore dresses or skirts, even though she did. He would be fine if she wore pants, but he was quite happy she didn’t. Max enjoyed seeing her legs.

He made a mental note to make sure the temperature in his dungeon never got too cold and required her to bundle up.

Lately Anna had taken to wearing business skirts and blouses while working. The attire was foreign to this world, but Anna knew that it was what most working women in Max’s old world had worn. He was glad that she had gravitated to the tighter fitting variety instead of the plain kind.

She was off to check on the different creatures today. She wanted to touch base with them since the dungeon battle had been conducted yesterday. She also had to meet with the gnomes to account for what had been taken from the stores and was used during the battle.

Max threw on some sweats and slippers since he would be building today.

After talking it over with his wife they decided to budget 600,000 for the dungeon today. That didn’t include the instance talisman that Max would eventually buy once Hizon had enough eternal souls to man the dungeon.

Appearing in the monitoring room, Max asked the gnomes in charge of keeping an eye on things what Quin was up to.

”He has bought a new sword and has walked through both versions of the third level boss.” The gnome replied.

”Good. Has he made any reports yet?”

”He hasn’t submitted anything, but we have observed him taking several notes.”

Max nodded. ”Okay, once he submits a report send it to both Anna and me. I am looking forward to an outside perspective.”

”Will do.”

”Where has Hizon set up his home?”

”The plot of land he chose is on the outskirts of the territory, here are the coordinates.”

”Thanks.”

Max created another portal and appeared at the edge of Hizon’s property.

He found a nice 2 story house deep in the woods. Walking up to the front door he alerted the hobgoblin to his arrival.

A minute later, the man in question stepped out.

”Boss.” Hizon said with a bow.

”There is no need to bow. Do your job well and we won’t have any problems.”

Hizon nodded.

”Are you ready to get started?” Max asked.

Hizon nodded again.

”First, we need to decided what type of terrain would be best. Any ideas?”

”I don’t have anything particular in mind, but I do know that I don’t wish to be underground anymore.” The hobgoblin said.

”Fair enough. I think it will be better to have our arrangement in a wide-open space so outside works well. Now let’s see... we need a good amount of space but too much would just be a waste. Any alternate challenge you wish to build can be built on different levels we don’t need to keep it on a single dungeon floor. So let’s go with 4 square kilometers.”

”I think we need to decide on how many people we will let in. That will play a big part in how we set it up.”

”That’s true.” Max said while rubbing his chin. ”Any thoughts?”

”With the numbers we talked about. If everyone is wiped out on my side, after a week I will have 5,922 people under my command. If we have 20 adventures that means each will have to kill almost 300. If we go with 50 then they will have to kill almost 120.”

”That is quite a lot.” Max said.

”It is, but if we are planning on having the event last multiple days it becomes a bit more manageable.”

”Hmm, yes... how about this. Let’s set the limit at 25 people. They will be 5 parties of 5 coming together for this raid. I will help bump up your numbers to an even 6,000. And we will set up the waves so the event will last 2 days.”

Hizon did the math. ”So each person will have to take out 120 people a day.”

”That’s the average. With each wave getting harder, they will most likely have to face more the second day compared to the first.”

”What sort of place are they going to defend?” Hizon asked.

”I was thinking about that last night. My first instinct was that they would defend a small village. But that comes with drawbacks. We would need to supply villagers and then there is a chance they would get the villagers to help them defend.”

Hizon’s eyes lit up. ”I got it. What if they have to defend a couple of merchants with a broken wagon in an abandoned outpost while waiting for reinforcements. They wouldn’t be able to move away from the area without failing and we can ensure there is nowhere else for them to go. And the best part is that we can have the merchants sell them things they need.”

”That’s not a bad idea.” Max said with a grin. ”We can even put the adventures to work between waves. They can cut down trees and sell it to the merchant. We sell it off through the dungeon menu and then give them barricades or something while making sure you earn a profit. They can do certain tasks that will earn you money and in return they get improved defenses.”

Hizon chuckled. ”Se devious, I like it.”

”Okay, so we need at least a forest, and the outpost should be in a large clearing. We should make sure there is fresh water nearby with fish or something incase they don’t bring food or want to buy any from the merchants.”

”We will also have to build a place for my people to live in the dungeon.” Hizon reminded.

Max had other ideas. Since they were not a part of his main dungeon, they earned him DP by being in his, even if it was a smaller amount since they weren’t from the real world and belonged to a sub dungeon.

”Don’t worry about that, they can live in your dungeon for a few days until I get the undercity up and running. But I do want you to work on upgrading your goblins and ants to eternal souls as fast as you can. Once you do that, we can turn your dungeon into an instance and then get more people into it. Once they are eternal souls, they can go into my dungeon and start earning coins to cover their own upkeep. It will let you earn more and keep costs down.”

Hizon liked the sound of that.

Once they had the basics of the dungeon decided Max paid for the land in his sub plane and the pair got to work setting things up.

They had the terrain and scenery completed by lunch. They managed to keep the spending fairly low. The rest of the budget was dumped into eternal souls.

Hizon was amazed at the creatures that were available to him. Since he was operating under Max, he now had access to a fully unlocked dungeon core.

Even though the hobgoblin had always been able to buy different goblin species he hadn’t had all of them unlocked. He was now picking out a well-rounded group to cover his own weaknesses. On top of that he was making sure that every eternal soul he purchased had their skills fully unlocked and maximized.

Once he learned that every single soul Max purchased was maximized unlike his most basic goblins that barely knew anything it was easy to understand why the dwarves and elves cut through his numbers like a farmer cutting through wheat.

Once the area was set, Max brought back the creatures that served Hizon and then left to start on the undercity.

It was going to take the hobgoblin a few days to get everything organized and design the waves of creatures that would be attacking the outpost. After that Quin would do a walk through and look for anything that may be a concern.

The sanctuary village already had a decent amount of land underground, Max only had to pay a little to make it even deeper. Then he got to training using his earth manipulation abilities.

He had always planned on making a large underground city. If his goals were met the dungeon would gather more and more people. The sanctuary village would one day grow into a huge city, and they would need all the space they could get. There were several races that preferred to live underground. He would be foolish if he wasted the space when there were plenty of people who would want to purchase property there.

And who knows, one day he may even be able to have floating islands in the sky and charge crazy prices for people to live there.

Max had to calm down his inner greedy businessman. He needed to take it one step at a time. Right now, he needed to focus on the undercity.

It was slow and boring work, but the repetitive actions were slowly increasing his proficiency with his earthen magic. Plus, it was free to do and that would make Anna happy.

He had already cleared a large area when he received a message from his lovely wife. The monitoring department informed her that they now officially had 500 adventures inside their dungeon.

They were slowly getting closer and closer towards his dream. After replying to her message Max put in a few more hours of work before he went home for dinner.