Next morning dawns with a group of six people standing outside of Doyle’s dungeon. This reminds Doyle that he hasn’t set up his berry bushes. In a rush he just cuts the number of bushes down to six with two of each berry option for his shrubs. He needn’t have worried though. This group does much worse than the last one. Their power levels aren’t too far off but the coordination and general ability to use skills was like night and day. They make it through the vine room purely by chance and stop after completing goat row.

Luckily for Doyle, despite not much happening he still comes out ahead. With only goats dying the cost to refill the dungeon is below what he received from the group’s presence. Though it helps that the group doesn’t even try to harvest any herbs. In fact, they don’t even seem to pay attention to them except to point them out. They just loaded up on meat and left.

Outside the group confers with a guy who seemed to stand guard at the portal or maybe just waiting for them to come out. He nods when they report their haul but his stoic mask cracks with the mention of the sage bushes the group had seen. The man waves the group off towards a small covered area with a variety of cooking pots.

Once the group is gone, the man breaks into a full-fledged smile, almost maniac, and he runs off towards a small knot of people. Doyle shrugs at this and focuses on his dungeon. Outside though the group breaks up as the man rushes through, revealing a few of the founders at the center.

One of them would be familiar to Doyle as she had just been in his dungeon yesterday. Specifically it is Ruby, the person who had suggested leaving food in the dungeon. When she sees the man rushing over with a giant grin, she gestures people out of the way and smiles herself.

The man slows down and as he reaches the inner ring of people Ruby asks, “so what are the results of last night’s experiment? As if your smile wasn’t enough to tell me it at least partly succeeded.”

Coming to a stop the man nods, “The first group just came out. They where loaded down with what I am sure will become the standard haul of meat. Besides that though they mentioned that some of the bushes had been flowering.”

Ruby claps her hands and rubs them together, “purple right?” When the man nods she laughs, “Wonderful! At the very least we now have access to sage. That will be good news for all the women in our town. While it wasn’t ever proven people liked to believe it helps with the pain during” One man nearby turns bright red as she starts to talk about the uses and covers her mouth at this part.

She glares at him but he just smiles, “yes it is believed that it helps when aunt flo comes around. Now we have a number of younger men here who prefer to avoid such topics. As the only trained doctor and one of the three healers I promise to look into this further.”

Most of the other men in the group pick up on what is being talked about and show various levels of embarrassment but over all the topic is glossed over as the man continues. “Besides that though there is a more important property in our new world. In mysticism, sage is connected to longevity, wisdom, and protection. Don’t give me that look, everyone goes through a magic stage in their life. Though I guess with the world how it is, that isn’t so much a stage anymore than it is life but whatever.”

“We need to harvest it so our magic users can experiment with it. I wish Jim was around as he seemed to have some form of herb lore but that’s life. We have a couple in our group who like to grow their own organic food and managed to get a harvesting skill which might be important. You”, he points at a young man nearby, “go get the Barrai couple. We need them to continue this talk further.” The man runs off towards what is clearly the start of a garden.

Five minutes later the couple saunter over. The man steps forward, “Well hello Doctor, Ruby, and company. Doctor, I still can’t believe you changed your name to that but I guess you didn’t call us over to debate your name choice. My name is Jeremy and this lovely lady is my wife Susan. How may we be of service?”

Doctor steps forward, “ahem, yes. The name is just from another phase I went through. Moving on we need one of you to go into the dungeon. Last night Ruby here left a small bag of food and herbs in the dungeon. To the surprise of our first group through the dungeon today that has resulted in some sage bushes appearing in there. You can stand back and let the group we send you with do the fighting but we need to know more about those plants.”

Susan rolls her eyes, “You think we can’t handle a fight? All those idiots crowing about their levels have nothing on us. Still, we will take you up on that. Let them rush ahead in levels while we sit back and plan for the future.”

Doctor waves his hand, “Don’t care, just get in there and harvest some sage and anything else you can find. That can’t be the only thing in there. Actually, Ruby! Gather a full party you can work with and take them all the way through. Yesterday your group didn’t complete the floor. We don’t even know if there is a second floor or not. Oh, and I’m coming with you. Jan might be a good healer but she is a horrible doctor and our other healer is too skittish.”

Hands on her hips Ruby raises an eyebrow, “Do we get a choice in the matter?” Doctor glances over at her and responds with a single word, “No”.

Before it can go further Jeremy steps in, “I think the plan is good but we can wait till tomorrow. Not everyone can just drop what they are doing. Ruby, you can go and ask four other people you think would get us through the dungeon. Me and Susan need to make sure our helpers know what to do if this takes longer than expected. And you Doctor, you need to learn some manners but that might be a lifelong struggle so you might as well make sure you’re ready for tomorrow. I advise we don’t start this early, maybe heading into the dungeon around noon.” With that the couple saunters off towards the farm area.

Inside the dungeon Doyle is laughing at the shocked look on Doctor’s face. Ally just rolls her eyes, ‘well we better be ready for them. What do you need to get your second floor up and running?’

Doyle’s core bobbles, ‘way more energy than I have or could gather between now and tomorrow. I should have already started putting some overflow towards it already but I had focused on strengthening my walls. The way it works is there is a pool at the center of my core that I have to fill with energy from sentients outside of my control before the next floor can form. It actually feels like if I didn’t use the overflow the system would channel it into that pool. My guess is that is to prevent something like Flisle where he sat around at sub ten floors for multiple forevers.’

Ally nods, ‘so how much energy do you need? Oh wait, tutorial to the rescue again. It costs the floor number to be made times a thousand. So the second floor costs a straight 2k. That doesn’t seem right though? If it was that simple why are dungeons with a thousand floors or more so rare? That’s only five billion or so world energy to get there. A lot for us at the moment. When you have archmages roaming around your dungeon, it won’t be that extreme of an amount.’

Doyle shifts his core side to side, ‘probably because once someone gets to the level of being an archmage they don’t die so easily? You do get some energy from them just being in the dungeon but not quite the boost we get when one of the idiots die. Also, while the cost to create the floor isn’t that much, don’t forget you have to fill the actually floor. More floors doesn’t strengthen me from what I can tell. It is what is in those floors so creating a spiral staircase directly down to the thousandth floor wouldn’t do anything except make people walk a lot.’

Ally shrugs, ‘fair enough. So I assume from what you said you don’t have any energy in the pool?’

Doyle nods, ‘completely empty at the moment and I don’t think their visit tomorrow will give me much at all. They will probably do a full clear. Hopefully more people are sent through today.’ Then he turns his attention to the portal for a moment, ‘nevermind the hope. It looks like they plan to send teams through spaced about an hour apart. At least that is what I am assuming as the next team is getting ready right now and it would line up with about that sort of schedule. Anyway, just so we can keep track of it here, let me display the total. [System, display how much energy I need to form my next floor on the wall for me and Ally]’

{0/2000}

Ally glances over at the wall. ‘Convenient that. Now though we need to talk about a more important matter. Mainly our available monsters. There are three and I don’t see that increasing anytime soon without outside help. Getting a town is always good for the dungeon in the long run. Short term though it will prevent other creatures from wandering in. We did get some insects but that won’t help too much.’

Doyle dims for a moment, ‘that could be a problem. Goats will be our bread and butter for a while but being limited to just them as our main defense isn’t something I am keen on. Is there some kind of dungeon shop I can buy from?’

After taking a moment to read another tutorial page Ally rubbed her temples. ‘Technically, there is. When you get a new floor, you can buy an extra random monster. Think loot boxes but limited. Still gambling though so not really dependable. We could pull a fish when we don’t even have a pond yet. Though that is a good point. Why don’t we have a water pattern yet?’

Doyle freezes when she asks that. ‘Huh, that is a good question. I might be able to cludge something together but my guess is that I haven’t ever specifically deconstructed some. Doesn’t look like it is going to rain anytime soon so we might go a while without it. Our dungeon just isn’t long enough for people to bring water with them. Anyway, the next group is here so lets watch them.’

Outside the dungeon six people are ready to enter. It is almost hard for Doyle to tell it is a new group though. It seems they only have a limited selection of armor and weapons because they are wearing the same stuff the last group had. If it wasn’t for there being three ladies instead of the last groups two, he might not have been able to tell right away.

They enter the dungeon and make their way through the first couple rooms easily enough. Doyle has for the most part given up on those first rooms being a challenge but every time a group strolls through he can’t help but feel disappointed. In the vine room things are a bit more exciting as they stumble upon one of the vine assassins which cuts their delve short. While they do in the end defeat it, two of the members have been hurt something fierce. On their way out to make up for it they try and grab the sage in the first room. Of course none of them have a harvesting skill so only three of the sprigs actually stick around. The rest of the plant fading away like the monsters do when defeated. This angers them a bit but without any recourse they just exit the dungeon and go to report their failure.

Doyle sits back and shakes his core. The death of the assassin vine had put him back in energy as it was the most expensive monster in the dungeon.