Egbert watched the pile of lumber and building supplies grow over the course of a few days in interest. Max hadn’t been joking about how all in on this new venture he was. He had mostly been carting it in himself, trip by hobbling trip, since getting a work crew all the way into the village had certain “difficulties.”

  Egbert had caved and made Max a small path along the side of the loot pit since it simply wasn’t practical to make him cart lumber up and down the steps while homing claws shot at him and oil attempted to send him spiraling back down. It was utterly hilarious for the first three trips, though. He had even gotten Max to turn off the oil and claws a couple times for a tidy profit before the man had gotten so mad he nearly had a stroke.

  Egbert looked at the back wall of the mimic village; another metal door was set into it, and his boundary actually stopped a few feet shy of the wall. He sure hoped there was another cavern at least this big on the other side; he needed to start working on an actual dungeon floor.

  The kind of place with respawning monsters and challenges he could seed throughout that would be utter bastards to deal with if you didn’t turn them off with a coin or two. He also had a few fun ideas about hazards people could turn on from the safety of the inn, but that was a much later plan.

  For now he would settle with a place to draw in people for an extended period of time. He already had a simple, easy idea to make some coins off such a room. VIP areas, of course, and loot rooms naturally. Mobile treasure rooms that fought back...eventually he wasn’t sure how he would pull that one off, but he wanted to.

  Egbert had been a stingy bastard for nearly a week now, not spending a dang coin, well, except for a few bits and bobs like a mimic or four and some more loot objects. But mostly Egbert had been a stingy bastard! He hoped it was enough to fund a grand expansion; he figured this was going to be the tipping point where making the dungeon bigger would quickly start spiraling into ungodly expense.

  [Copper 8] [Silver 5] [Gold 9]

  Egbert pushed his view against the boundary and began throwing coins by the handful at it. His view rolled forward strides with every “toss,” bringing him right up to and then through the door. It led to a small chamber.

  The room was beautiful in a long-abandoned kind of way. The floor was a latticework of nearly rusted-through metal grating that had an entirely unnecessary amount of engravings forged into the metal. Egbert could only guess at what they once were. Trailing from the ceiling was a collection of pots suspended on some kind of gorgeous silvery chains that looked like they were shined yesterday. Egbert’s inspection paused for a moment at the chains.

  Oh, hello there, you beautiful dainty things. What are you doing in a place like this? If I'm not mistaken, you, my dear rare beauties, are pure mithril. Let's get you somewhere safer. Egbert was just starting to activate [Gimme The Gold!] when he paused to look at what was actually in the pots someone had decided to hold aloft with a precious metal.

  Egbert was glad he did; they held curious, simple-looking blue flowers that glimmered like faint starlight, and they turned slightly as he passed by as if they sensed his presence. Huh…you look valuable…glad I didn’t…well, just drop you…I’ll put some ropes or something up, but I’m still one onehundred percent eating your fancy supports, sorry.

  Egbert quickly bought some cheapo ropes and used them to roughly suspend the pots before going ahead and starting to absorb the mithril chains; he practically salivated as his gold total started ticking up. Only then did he survey the rest of the room. The grating on the floor led straight into a gently running river of some kind, probably feeding from the village room.

  The walls were adorned with ancient mason jars made of a thick glass—hundreds of them. Most of them held a fine dust that carried the same sparkle as the flowers. Oh please be some amazingly valuable healing tincture I can use to goad adventurers into doing stupid things to attain and not some rare, highly illegal drug. I mean, if you are drugs, I'm still going to make a killing off you; I just won't feel as good about it.

  Beyond the jars, plants, and random floor-accessible river, there wasn’t much of interest in the small room. There also wasn’t another door, so Egbert “crossed his fingers” and began pushing out through the back wall, going down at a slight angle after making sure there wasn’t a hidden room just behind the stonework. Oh please be a giant cave overflowing with gold and diamonds and not just miles of bedrock.

  Egbert growled in frustration as the first stride he traveled through was just stone. Then the next was the same, just darkness and bedrock. The third stride made him stop short. "YESSSS! Thank all the gods above and a couple of the ones below!" He had just popped out of the ceiling of a truly massive cavern; it stretched off as far as he could see in every direction but one. He had exited right next to one of its natural curving walls.

  The river exited the wall just below him in more of a sideways geyser than any classically calm or beautiful waterfall. The massive deluge of water had eroded the cavern floor here into a crazed, snaking mess of small streams that branched away from the wall like a web of veins.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  There was one pool slightly to the side that had formed into an oblong underground lake, and Egbert could see radiant fish darting around in its ever-swirling waters. The way the geyser-fall sprayed water into it ceaselessly added damn near a permanent whirlpool effect; the entire lake was madly trying to escape from its stone divot constantly. Whoah…I can’t wait to put loot at the bottom of that and charge for water-breathing potions.

  Past the vortex of a lake along the branching streams was a wonderfully treacherous cavern floor with a truly dizzying array of short tube-like caves that just barely stuck above the cavern floor; many of them were tunnels of rock that wound for a few strides before opening up again. Some dove down into short, smooth crevasses; others had formed into sheltered pits. Literally all of it was at least a bit damp, and most was covered in a veritable rainbow of cave moss. Oh my gods, it’s beautiful. I can’t even imagine how much it would suck to try and navigate this if I still had legs.

  Egbert threw even more coins at his barrier, pushing out past the insane array of caves and tunnels. They carried on for nearly thirty strides from the geyser before the cavern floor smoothed out again, and Egbert ran smack into an underground forest. Huh...that can’t be normal.

  A wall of crystalline pine trees reached towards the ceiling, gently tinkling as creatures moved within their boughs. Something moved a bit too fast, and a collection of branches near him simply shattered like tinkling glass, turning into nearly sharpened dust by the time it reached the ground. Egbert pushed on further; his gold was starting to get precariously low. and the bonus mythril funds had already been spent.

  [Copper1] [Silver 5] [Gold 4]

  Below the almost ethereally clear pine trees, the ground was a carpet of fine crystal dust; cave mushrooms stubbornly sprouted through here and there, adding flashes of dark color to the otherwise almost ghostly white forest. Egbert finally saw what was running around in the trees. Small evil eyes, a thin humanoid body devoid of any features except for butterfly-like orange wings flapping behind it and clawed hands and feet. Oh hells. [Deep Pixie Tier-1](lvl20).

  I swear I'm going to be unreasonably upset if I find a portal to the Fae realms down here; that is a level of chaos I do not need to add to my dungeon! Egbert watched the pixie for a while longer; they were cunning, mean little bastards with a penchant for some actually dangerous offensive magic and the ability to turn invisible. At least the aboveground versions were. I'm sure the below-ground version is even meaner.

  Egbert stopped pushing forward after he had traveled another ten strides into the forest; his gold was darn near out, and he needed to at least save enough to make Max a pathway down. And to make some dividing walls in the cave..at least for now until he could expand out more. Basic stone walls shouldn’t be terribly expensive, and he really didn’t want whatever awful thing was out there just wandering on in to his halls all willy-nilly.

  A malevolent presence stepped onto Egbert’s porch, and he jolted in fright. It was like someone had just stepped on his tombstone somewhere in the distance. He rushed back into his main halls and flew to the porch to see what creature could cause such a reaction. He understood why his instincts had cried out in fear immediately.

  A man of unimpressive height and slight build stood upon Egbert's porch. His weedy face was pinched in disapproval as he read the inscription above the door. His clothes were simple and businesslike—tan on brown—with a small golden pin stuck to his breast pocket like a badge of office.

  He pushed his glasses further up his face in obvious distaste as he whipped his clipboard from his side like the most dangerous of great swords. A quill snapped into existence in his fingers, and he began furiously scribbling details.

  “Entryway patently unsafe! Falling hazard high.” His eyes went to the inscription above the door again.

  “The property owner thinks a dungeon theme is fun and appropriate.” He licked his lips angrily. “Children would have to walk nearly three leagues and up a decrepit, MOIST staircase to gain entry to the mountainside hovel,” he continued as he scribbled down what he was monologuing about.

  Oh Gods! The Inspector! Egbert turned the door tolls off in a panic and zoomed around his rooms looking to see what he could do to make the place look a bit less like a deathtrap. He turned traps off and tried with mixed success to cajole Remorse and Boo into going and sitting in a dark, out-of-the-way corner.

  Boo happily skittered off into the far dark corner of the ceiling. Remorse made a half-assed sideways shuffle and changed from a bright red outhouse into a butcher's meat stall. That's almost worse! I don’t have time for this right now!

  “Hello! Hello, is anyone there? This is Fred from the unwanted children’s bureau. You submitted a request to open an orphanage. We are quite prompt with these follow-ups; as you can imagine, we don’t have an overflow of new orphanages.” There was a nervous chuckle. “But there are quite a few things already we need to discuss.” gods...hes with the bugs!

  Egbert flew back. Fred was looking around the lootbug playroom in sheer concern. “Sir, please come speak with me. This is not the way a playground should be designed! I'm certain that ceiling violates at least eight building codes…is that a pit? Why is there a pit?!”

  The inspector was peeking over the edge of the pit in sheer bafflement as a few of the loot bugs edged towards him angrily. “Ah yes, over here, sir!” Egbert tried to say it very politely, but it hissed demonically from the pet rock throughout the room. The inspector nearly fell in the pit he jumped so high. Damn you, evil talking rock!

  He turned towards the source of the voice questioningly, then realization dawned on his face. He took a few shuffling steps forward, scribbling frantically on his notepad. “This, uhh...this actually is a dungeon, isn’t it? Not a strangely themed abode but an honest-to-gods dungeon?”

  “Yes, it is. I am Greed, and I wish to start an orphanage.” Greed said hopefully, this was already going utterly sideways.

  “You, you can’t do that; you are a dungeon! What do you even want them for—to eat them? Feed them to the monsters?!” Fred sputtered out, already looking like he was about to bolt.

  “Hey, that’s prejudiced, Mr. I’m just trying to do my part to make the world a better place!” Egbert retorted, more than a little offended. Tax exemption, here I come!