Chapter 8

Little Shoppe of ?

“A shop,” Toot said, the disappointment in his voice plain as a knife in your eye, “Why would we open a shop?”

“Not just a shop, but numerous ones. We’ll start with just one, naturally, but we’d expand quickly.” The certainty in Dev’s voice would have told anyone who heard him that he was deadly serious in his intent. “The minute I started absorbing things I realized that I wanted, no, needed more. I think there a void deep inside me that’s never going to be filled no matter how many meshes or skins I intake.” His point was accentuated by the clinking of another gold dropping from the air. Dev could have made it appear right on the rapidly growing pile of coins he was building, but he liked the sound they made when they dropped.

“So we open a shop, say a weapon shop. We sell things for dirt cheap because I just materialize what I want when I want to,” , “And I get a variety of new meshes by either trading quality items for cheap ones that I can improve upon, or buying them directly from customers with the coin we earn. But,” he hastily added, “It’ll have to be from the silver or copper that comes in, all the gold we get is mine.”

“I see where you’re going with this, and I have to say I’m impressed. It is sly and clever in several ways. First, we’d be building up and in plain sight. Hell, we’d be advertising our presence. Dungeons always build down, so we wouldn’t even look like a dungeon. Additionally, dungeons try to keep their entrances guarded and out of the way until they grow in power.” Toot rubbed his hands together in excitement. “We’d just need a few things to get started, a handful of those gold coins and we’ll be set up and operating in no time.”

“No,” Dev said firmly, “The gold is mine.”

“Look,” Toot pleaded, “I know it goes against your nature to give up the gold, but we need to use some to set up the shop. Things like permits, and even a blueprint for a simple shop; unless,” he said with a raised eyebrow, “You know how to create a building from scratch?”

“No,” Dev responded morosely, “You know I don’t. I’ve never seen one.”

“Look, give me twenty gold pieces. I’ll go into the town, get everything we need to get started and bring you back some more items to get patterns from.”

“A rabbit? I really want a rabbit. You said that all dungeons started off with rabbits.” Dev’s greed for patterns wasn’t quite at the level as his hunger for gold, but it was close enough. He’d be damned if another dungeon was going to have something he didn’t.

“I’ll try to get a rabbit, I promise. But right now I need to get things you would use to make a building from. I need to legally purchase the land, get a license to sell, and a variety of low-quality weapons. We’ll need more than swords and daggers. You’ll want armor and such, too.” His brow furrowed deep in thought, “And we’ll get more gold back than I take away.”

Dev sighed. He would rather cut off his right arm than part with a single piece of coin, but he didn’t have a right arm, and the thought of getting back more coin than what he used was enough to appease his ever-growing need for the shiny stuff.

“You know lad, I was thinking. We wouldn’t even need to stop with one type of store. We ought to diversify. Alcohol, exotic pets, books, magic, anything that you’d need to grow in power. The more you learned the less we’d need for people to drop when they are in the confines of your walls. Trust me, you won’t find many spellbooks of worth being carried around, but you could buy one with enough coin. Then the number of spells you’d have at your disposal would be incredible. Most dungeons only get a smattering of real spells. They mostly get enchantments, things used to improve or empower weapons. But you could have access to a mage’s college worth of magic in just a handful of years if we do this right.”

“Oh, I like this. I could buy up the buildings around me and convert them into a part of my dungeon, and no one would ever realize that they were in the middle of a dungeon.” Dev’s head swan with the possibilities.

“A dungeon with multiple entrances and exits. You couldn’t do that if you were a standard dungeon. They are allowed a singular entrance and egress, with the possibility of a hidden passageway in our out later,” Toot verbalized. “I was just thinking, we could even add a mortuary to our little retail scheme.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Think about it. It would give you a steady supply of new body meshes, some of the dead might even be fresh enough for you to get memories and skills from. It would also include a variety of different races for you to learn about. You’d get easy Blood points, too. I’m willing to wager that you would even be able to duplicate the body and add that hardness enchantment you got to perfectly preserve them. People could bring you the most distressed bodies, and you could return them in perfect condition; a condition that would include never decomposing.” He chuckled, “You could be the greatest mortician this world has ever seen.”

“All for the price of twenty gold,” Dev said flatly.

“Precisely.” Toot replied.

“Twenty measly gold pieces,” Dev said.

“Uh-huh,” Toot said hopefully.

“Nope, too steep. I’ll keep the gold.” Dev said in such a way that it heavily implied that the conversation was over.

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Toot deflated. He’d hoped he would be able to make the whole thing sound like an adventure that had great returns for the paltry price of a handful of coins. He knew that Dev’s former people were prone to get attached to magics and shiny coins to such a degree that they would rather die than give up even a sliver of their wealth. It was too much for him to have believed that the process of becoming a dungeon core would have washed that from Dev’s soul.

Toot hadn’t been sure that was going to be the case. That was why he tested the core by saving the coins for last. There had been a glimmer of hope when Dev had glossed over the copper and silver coins, but the instant he reacted to the gold Toot knew he was in trouble. All dungeons became obsessed with something. They had to; a fire-based dungeon was narrowly focused on things that had to do with flames for a reason. Getting fixated on something as trivial and unimportant as gold was not helpful or healthy in a dungeon’s growth.

There had to be a way for the core to see reason. If there wasn’t then he’d have never survived the process of becoming one in the first place. Toot hadn’t been present during the conversion process, but he knew what all it entailed and he even knew of Dev’s true origins. He’d needed to know that so that he could help guide him in his decision-making process, and now Dev’s old lifestyle threatened to destroy his current way of living. Mostly just the living part.

He needed to make Dev’s greed for a generalized pattern or an enchantment greater than his hunger for gold. That was going to be hard to do. That drive was so deeply ingrained within him the Overseers had utterly failed to wash it from his spirit. That meant that the greed was a part of his ectoplasmic make-up and would never go away. There had to be a way to manipulate that flaw. There had to be something he could exploit but he didn’t have a clue as to how to…Toot’s eye locked onto the gold coin on the pedestal. And just like that, he had his answer.

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“Go ahead,” the elderly man said resignedly, “You stay here in your little pile of fake gold and I’ll see if I can’t earn a few coin from physical labor to get us started. I’m going into town. I should be able to earn a few coppers a day, and who knows, in a month or so I might be able to get us a permit. A few more months after that and I might be able to afford a blueprint. Why within a year we ought to just be starting.”

“That sounds good,” Dev said as another coin clinked onto his pile. He watched Toot turn to go when the meaning of what he’d just said sank in. “Wait, what did you mean by fake gold?”

“I meant nothing by it.”

“Good,” Dev shot back quickly and waited for Toot to go out into town so he could start counting his money.

“I was just referencing the fact that it’s not real.” The old man then stepped out of Dev’s sphere of vision.

“Wait, come back Toot! Why isn’t this gold real? I made it, didn’t I? They’re all an exact replica, aren’t they?” Dev was nearly in a panic at the thought that his fortune was worthless.

“You said it, not me. They’re replicas. As real as real can be to anyone but you. To a non-dungeon’s eyes, one coin is the same as another, but under your gaze, you know where those coins came from. You pulled them from the ether, and each one looks exactly like the next.” Toot pointed to the coin on the column, “You even recognized that fact by saving a real coin. Look at how you’ve separated it from the others. You recognize that it’s different even if you don’t know why. You knew subconsciously knew that it had actual value. At least it has a value that your other coins don’t. It was mined, refined, smelted, minted, and then traded thousands of times before it came here.” When he finished speaking a smile formed on Toot’s face that was covered quite well by his bushy mustache, but Dev caught it and knew that his companion was feeling quite smug.

Suddenly, the glint the coins around him gave off wasn’t as bright or alluring. Their honeyed taste in his imaginary mouth soured and turned to an undercooked manure flavoring. The weight they carried vanished and they might as well have been dust motes.

All except for that glorious gold piece that sat upon his noble column. That was a piece of real gold. Men had sweated for it, hell, the man that had it last had died with it in his pouch. That was an authentic honest to god’s piece of gold. Beautiful, wonderful, spendable gold; and that was what he wanted. That was all he wanted. The imitation stuff left a bad taste in his metaphorical mouth. On reflex, Dev mentally spit.

“Blah! Take whatever you need. You’ve ruined this for me. I have nothing! Nothing!” Dev sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

“Man up!” Toot said. “There’s no crying in dungeoning! You don’t even have eyes, so get back in the game. Give it enough time and we’ll be earning gold. Real, bite it between your teeth, gold that you can bury yourself in for all I care, but you are going to have to act like a dungeon. You can’t just laze about marveling at your riches, you are going to need to do things to bring that wealth in and you are going to need to do it a lot.”

Toot bent over and began stuffing his pockets with coins. He took more than he’d asked for by a good measure, but Dev didn’t care. It was all fake and worthless to him. A minute later and Toot had left their cavern going off to get them started on a life of sales, quarterly earnings, and profit margins. He didn’t know how he knew about those things. Maybe he’d gotten a little something from the dead man after all. Either way, Toot was gone and he was alone.

Alone with his single gold piece. He forced his core to roll up the side of the column until he came to rest atop the very center of the coin itself.

“Hello, beautiful,” he said with contentment.