While the [Excavation Crawlers] worked on clearing out the rest of Crestheart’s fourth floor, Vee worked on redesigning the dungeon with Alforde and Reginald. The trio sat around the table in the office, combing through the thicket of Vee’s haphazardly filled notebooks, trying to glean useful dungeon insights from the scribbled mess inside their pages. Some of the notes, like a complex arrangement of trap tiles that would force adventurers to basically play a game of hopscotch to get across safely, were great. Or at least serviceable. Others, however, were clearly half-baked and impossible to understand now that the moment of fevered inspiration that had spawned them had passed. Frost Fish – BIG and G H O S T W A L K were some of these.

Still, Vee and his companions waded through them all one by one, discussing potential combinations and trying to come up with a cohesive flow for the dungeon.

“Alright, first floor,” Vee said. “Most of the adventurers who come to Crestheart don’t make it past the first floor, so I think we should include as many elements there as we can. Let the adventurers who won’t make it to the lower levels get a taste of everything we offer, you know? That way they’re excited to come back when they get a little stronger.”

“Agreed,” said Reginald. “Retention and repeat business are going to be crucial now that we’re somewhat established.” The hat’s expression was serious, and for once, he wasn’t filling every spare moment with idle chatter. Vee wondered if hats could get sick. “The only problem with a little sampler floor right now is that we don’t have enough minions for proper packs. How are we going to handle that?”

“We’ll have to be trap and puzzle heavy until we get our next minion shipment, whenever that may be,” Vee said. “Use some of the crystals from Hanako to make the walls and floors dangerous, do more with the slimes, and utilize the skeletons and elementals sparingly until it’s easier to replace them. In the meantime, I’ll try to whip up a couple hundred low level ghosts to fill the ranks a bit too. It won’t be perfect, but it’s the best we can do.”

Reginald shook on the table, and Vee looked over at Alforde.

“What do you think, Alforde? Do you have any ideas?”

The armorsoul shifted in his seat, looking up from a diagram of wall-mounted ghost arms punching a stick figure before shaking his helmet.

“Sitting around and planning isn’t my forte,” he said, “but I don’t think that’ll be enough. I think we’ll need to hide the fact that we’re running low on minions. After all, it’ll be weird if adventurers are just running through empty rooms without any challenges.”

“Hide the shortage? How do you propose we do that?”

“We could use the fog machine,” said Alforde. “You know, fill the rooms with hazy clouds and tighten up the walls a little bit so that it’s harder for adventurers to maneuver. That way, the minions they do face seem like comparatively bigger threats. It’s tougher to fight in a closed room than it is in a big open space.”

Vee hadn’t really considered that before, but it was a good idea. A little sleight of hand, so to speak, to disguise the fact that they were hopelessly light on actual threats. Picking up his pen, Vee began to sketch out a rough concept for a constricted first floor with input from Reginald and Alforde. His pen flew across the page as he added extra walls to his drawings, turning each room into a micro maze that would need to be navigated.

“This gives us more space for traps too,” he said as he filled in a room with walls that would descend from the ceiling in a pseudo-random pattern.

It didn’t really matter that his drawings were messy, Do and the [Dungeon Maintainers] were quickly becoming experts at deciphering the intent of his scribbles and delivering something that exceeded his expectations.

In fact, it was almost as if they could sense the image in his mind’s eye as clearly as he could, building what they found in the deep, dark recesses of his thoughts.

To be honest, it was a little unsettling.

With the idea for the first floor roughed out, Vee and his friends moved onto the second floor. The overall plan for it was simple enough: design another obstacle course utilizing ramps that could vary in height, platforms that moved back and forth, traps with different methods of activation, and other elements Vee could control from up in the office. Instead of fighting minions, adventurers would simply have to endure ranged attacks from the handful of skeleton mages they had left – who would all be protected from counterattack by a series of walls and other barriers Vee had to have built – while collecting a trio of orb keys from places around the room and bringing them to the forge in the center. It was a simple but effective design, taking the best parts of the race dungeon and the iterations on it since and putting them to use once again.

“It’s still too sparse,” Alforde said. “We should add some baubles or little treasures too. I’m telling you; adventurers aren’t going to be happy if they just walk through a couple empty near-empty hallways and leave without anything to show for it. Let’s go talk to Thien and get some stuff.”

“It’s fine. It’s a little light, but I don’t think adventurers will mind.” Reginald said. “If we give away too much treasure, the extra revenue from adding the floor won’t make any difference, since we’ll be paying it all out as rewards.”

“What’s the margin on zero adventurers? I’m telling you: if the dungeon isn’t stocked, it won’t matter how much –“

Hearing the way his friend’s voice was rising, Vee decided to interrupt before the conversation devolved into an argument. “It’s a fine line for sure,” he interjected, giving Alforde a pointed look.

The armorsoul drummed his fingers on the table, but nodded and fell silent.

“I’ll go visit Thien tonight,” Vee said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been to her shop, and I like the idea of adding a few trinkets here and there. It’ll add a little flavor to the dungeon.”

Dheart continued to hum away while they bounced around ideas for the third floor. Unlike the physical construction of the new floor, progress on the design was slow. Vee was pretty sure that he wanted to lean into puzzles for it, but they were surprisingly hard to come up with when starting with nothing.

Reginald and Alforde kept bickering. The hat was needlessly vicious, and Alforde was sulky. After another hour in which they accomplished little, the armorsoul stood up.

“I’m not cut out for this,” he said. “I’m going to do some hammer practice with Slammy.”

The tone in his voice was clearly not happy, and so leaving Reginald on the table, Vee followed his [Dungeon Champion] out to the stairs.

“You okay, buddy?” he asked once the door shut. “You, uh, seemed a little snippy in there. What’s up?”

The armorsoul shook his helmet. “I feel…antsy,” he admitted. “Cooped up. I want to get back to business, you know? I’m bored. I’m itching for a fight. Being idle like this doesn’t suit me.”

“I know it doesn’t,” Vee said. His friend had never been one to sit around doing nothing all day. “We’ll reopen as soon as we can. Do’s crew should have the new floor built pretty quick, and then you’ll be right back in the swing of things.”

Alforde’s eyes sparkled at the pun, and his foul mood seemed to pass. In fact, he chuckled as he headed down the stairs. “If it’s dark when you finish up at Thien’s, I’ll meet you back at the boarding house, okay?” he called up.

“Sure thing! See you later!” Vee called before he turned around and went back into the office.

Reginald looked reserved as Vee picked him up.

“Is the big guy okay?” he asked as the [Dungeon Master] put him on. “He didn’t seem like himself.”

“Alforde just needs to fight a couple adventurers and he’ll be right as rain.”

The hat’s brim tightened around Vee’s head.

“I…see,” he said quietly. “Look, I wasn’t trying to start anything, but you know that we can’t just go filling every room with treasure.”

“I know, I know,” Vee said. “But we do need to make sure that people have a reason to come to Crestheart. Let’s go talk to Thien and see what she can do,” said Vee, putting on his jacket and heading down the tower steps.

Do and the rest of the [Dungeon Maintainers] buzzed around the dungeon like bees around flowers in early spring. The fiends brought in materials from all around abandoned Westown, having been able to collect them thanks to Vee’s [Recycle Materials] skill.

The [Dungeon Master] passed them with a wave as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. He stopped and turned around as Do passed.

“How much longer until you’re done?”

Do paused for a moment, deep in thought. “I think that we can have everything finished in another three days, Master. Or we could cut a few corners and be done a little faster if time is of the essence. Would you like us to do that?”

Vee frowned at the thought of Alforde having to keep waiting, not to mention the lost fleurs from another three days of no business, but shook his head. Things that were worth doing were worth doing right.

“Take all the time you need,” he said. “I want everything to be as good as you can make it.”

“Understood,” Do said with a deep bow. Vee nodded to him and the fiend got back to work. Through their bond, the [Ghost Maestro] felt a flicker of something – satisfaction? – and he smiled.

[Leadership +1]

Vee headed back into the city and made his way over to the [Goldsmith]’s shop. The alleys and side streets weren’t as clear from snow as the main roads, and his progress was slow. Especially since he kept looking at the windows of the buildings along his route. His eyes were drawn to the various stained glass squares in each shop’s corner that indicated which of the two underworld powers – Sacre or the enigmatic Don – they paid protection money to. It was fascinating, a map of the city that no one would ever bother writing down, since the borders were fluid and tended to change.

Seemingly oblivious to the cold, a man sat outside his shop carving a piece of wood. It was Brice Gilbert, the [Toy Maker] who’d set up a stall for Crestheart Day. He was a wiry man with dark hair and a thick beard, and he carefully shaved splinters away from the chunk of wood in his hands to reveal the form of an elkin. Or at least, Vee thought it was an elkin. It seemed to have antlers, at the very least.

There was a small table beside him, and a bevy of unpainted figures adorned it. Clearly, Brice had been hard at work for some time, if those were all his creations for the day. The figures themselves were small, expressive things, in action-packed poses: kitrekin [Warriors] swinging swords almost as big as their bodies, salamander [Mages] raising staves and wands to cast devasting spells, and human [Archers] taking aim at enemies only they could see. In a way, they looked like game pieces.

Brice raised his head as Vee stopped to stare and smiled. “Ah, young Vales,” he said in his booming voice. “A good afternoon to you indeed. What brings you by? Planning another event? Perhaps a city-wide snowball fight?”

The [Toy Maker] laughed at that, though Vee wasn’t entirely sure why. Shaking his head, Vee explained that he was heading to Thien’s shop to order some new rewards for the dungeon, and Brice’s good humor faded almost instantly.

“I don’t know if you’ll have much luck,” he said. “It’s been getting tough to get materials these last few weeks.”

“You seem to be doing just fine,” Reginald said. Brice shrugged, not in the least bit bothered by talking to a top hat.

“It’s not exactly hard to get a hand on some wood locally,” he said gesturing a stump on the other side of the street. “Haven’t been able to get much else though, so it’s all wood figurines until this bandit nonsense gets cleared up. Thien’s had a much worse time than I have. Getting any gold is darn near impossible. I take it things haven’t been great for you, either?”

Vee shook his head and explained his minion troubles.

The [Toy Maker] nodded and rubbed his chin. “Yeah, that’s rough. It’s weird though, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The way nobody can catch this guy. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been around long enough to have seen a good number of bandits in my time, and none of them were like this. Usually they don’t bother people too much, and are just kind of a small annoyance. Every once in a while, one will get delusions of grandeur and stir up some trouble like what we’ve been dealing with for a few days until some mid-level adventurers go kick their teeth in. Not this guy, though. Now, if you ask me, I think there’s something else afoot. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. Anyways, enough of that. My wife is always telling me I’m conspiratorially minded.”

“I…see?” Vee said, unsure of how to respond.

Brice didn’t seem to notice.

“Since you’re already here, how about a spot of shop talk?”

“Shop talk? What’s on your mind?”

Brice gestured at the figures on the table. “You reckon you could have your [Dungeon Champion] swing by sometime? His figure was right popular during the street fair and I’d love to make some more that show off his new armor.”

Vee thought it over for a moment. What was the harm in that? It wasn’t like there’d be any adventurers for Alforde to fight for the next few days, and posing for a model might actually lift the armorsoul’s spirits.

“I don’t see why not,” he said slowly, “but what’s in it for us?”

The man’s eyes narrowed and gleamed. “Straight to bartering, huh? How about five percent of sales?”

Reginald tightened his brim around Vee’s head and hissed before the [Dungeon Master] could respond. “Five percent?! That’s not nearly enough!”

Brice looked up at Reginald and shrugged. “Oh yeah? How much is fair, then?”

“Twenty five percent.”

The [Toy Maker] smiled and put down his knife to hold out his hand.

“Sounds like there’s a deal to be had at fifteen, huh?”

“We have final say on the design and pose of the figure before you start selling them?”

“Of course, of course,” Brice said. “I wouldn’t dream of it being any other way.”

Vee shook the man’s hand to seal the deal. A tingling sensation filled his skull, though he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. He returned the man’s smile.

“We’ll be by tomorrow,” he said, waving goodbye to Brice.

“Be seeing you,” the [Toy Maker] replied.

Making his way to Thien’s shop, Vee was disappointed to see that the lights were all off and there was a sign hanging from the door. In big, bold letters, it said, CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO MATERIAL SHORTAGE.

Well, that wasn’t good. Scowling, Vee tucked his hands in his pockets and headed back toward Crestheart. He’d have to ask around and find out where Thien stayed when she wasn’t at the shop.

At least the trip hadn’t been a total bust. Maybe there was some truth to that old saying about a door and a window after all.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 28

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 17

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 11

Wit: 31

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 13

Plotting: 15

Charisma: 12

Devious Mind: 20

Leadership: 16 (+1)

Guts: 11

Intimidating Presence: 9

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 4

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 12

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 14

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 3

Might: 37

Wit: 12 (+1)

Faith: 25

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 17

Intimidating Presence: 13

Heart of a Champion: 7

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 5

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

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Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 40

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 14 (+1)

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 6

Might: 1

Wit: 32

Faith: 10

Ambition: 26

Greed: 22

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 35

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Loyalty: 45

Patience: 10

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Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7