In the beginning, the earth was formless and covered in darkness, then a young man said in a grave and deep voice: “let there be light” and light was.

“You know you could have simply asked me to add a source of light, no? This whole god-like speech you make everytime is becoming repetitive.”

Next to the young man, a woman scoffed at the latter’s immaturity while working, her delicate hands moved in the air and suddenly the whole space got covered in bright light, a giant cavern that could have been mistaken for the center of the earth revealed itself to their eyes.

“You want to keep the sourceless light or you have other ideas?” asked the woman in a bored tone.

“Heh, behold my power, and God said let there be…. Rivers, I guess.” this time the young man directly molded the cavern. A hologram only visible to him appeared around his hands, the light icons gave him the power of a god with a friendly user interface. Deep gashes burrowed themselves in the rocky floor leaving behind kilometer long scars and in the center of all, a giant bowl-shaped depression.

Then with another wave of the young man a heavy rain appeared and soon all the burrows and depressions filled up with water. “Letithia, please turn off the light.”

The woman did as asked and the sourceless light disappeared, however instead of returning the cavern to darkness this action revealed what the young man did, the rivers and lake that seemed filled with water were actually producing an incredibly bright light colouring the cavern in blue.

“Stephen.” calmly asked the woman watching the scene.

“Yes Letithia?” replied the man with a smile.

“How much budget did you throw on using the very expensive liquid mana as light system?” managing to hide her true emotions behind a perfect poker face and monotone voice.

“Around… ten percent?” replied Stephen while scratching his head.

“OK, and for this whole concentric earth styled cavern?” she kept asking not breaking out of character.

“Erm… I saw it discounted on the store for a few million credits… I would say around 8 percent of the budget?” the moment ‘8 percent’ left his mouth a dark aura spread around the cavern with him as the target.

“So, we haven’t even started and YOU ALREADY BLEW EIGHTEEN PERCENT OF THE BUDGET?!” finally her business like facade cracked and unbridled rage came pouring out.

“Well, I actually spent another seven percent for a hidden guardian, but don’t worry, I’m sure the remaining budget will be more than enou- wait! NO, DON’T HIT ME! Kyaaaa.” what came after will be omitted due to this novel being made for all ages in mind.

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True to his word, Stephen, managed to complete the dungeon with the remaining 75 percent, a majestic city made of lustrous black metal grew in reverse out of the ceiling right above the mana lake.

The six-walled floors, each growing out of the previous cleanly separated the city in areas with a giant tower going all the way from the first to the sixth floor. The base, being the biggest, acted as the residential zone, Stephen had created enough houses inside to host a population of ten thousand with hoovering bridges creating a complex multi-leveled floor.

The second floor would host a giant garden that would provide food to the complex, since it was very important to keep the population fed a whopping 10 percent of the budget went into making the garden able to grow plants of different biomes in short time and while only using ambient mana instead of water.

The third floor hosted the forges and workshops, any city would need repairs and any guard would need weapons.

The fourth floor held the barracks for the soldiers and their armories, currently empty due to insufficient budget.

The fifth was a treasure room surrounding the elevator, thankfully unless one was able to take the key situated on the first floor the treasury would remain impossible to open, Stephen placed it there in the hope of firing up the invaders. Unfortunately, the treasury was also empty at the moment.

And finally, the sixth floor was just the tip of the tower that actually acted as elevator, a small platform chained to the tower could either descent until the mana lake or ascend to the first floor.

The last finishing touch was surrounding the city with big platforms where in the future the defendant would place siege machines or just snipe down the invaders with magic or projectiles.

“See what did I tell you, we managed to finish.” gloated Stephen with a proud expression.

“Finish what? There is no dungeon core, no guardians, no weapons for the guardians, no treasures and no traps.” Letithia being the responsible one immediately threw an ice bucket on Stephen's pride.

“Okok, look, we will place a medium core in a hidden room above the first floor, then we will summon a few lizardmen tribes and a dwarf clan, if they don’t kill each other's the lizards will protect the city while the dwarves pop-out weapons and treasures.” And thus the dungeon was actually finished with not even a speck of resources left.

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After finishing the dungeon Stephen and Letithia teleported back to their home, the celestial city of Aincrad, to be specific in the branch office of Dungeon & Miscellaneous, a giant mega-corporation present in billions of worlds.

M&D mainly busied themselves in designing and building dungeons for all kind of clients. A god wanted a dungeon to prepare a hero? No problem! An old dragon wanted to create a fortress to protect its treasure trove? As long as it could pay for the service why not? A pervert wanted a dungeon full of obeying monster-girls? No desire was too weird or big as long as you could pay.

Suddenly inside a 4X4 room, two people appeared, one of them sporting black hair and a robe deemed by everyone but him to be ridiculous, and a girl with luscious blonde hair and fashionable t-shirt and pants. The two were Stephen, a novice dungeon designer and his intern, Letithia.

“Good job today as well Letithia, thank god I had your help in tweaking the laws of physics or I think the whole castle would have fallen straight into the mana lake,” said Stephen while trying to pat Letithia’s shoulder, an action which was dodged by her without even watching.

“K, thanks.” she left the room in big strides with Stephen following after.

“So, what are you doing after? Up for a beer?” Stephen asked with a courteous smile.

“No sorry, unfortunately, I already promised my cat I would spend the night with her.” without actually sounding sorry she said the first thing that popped inside her head and left Stephen behind.

“Again? That’s like the… 98th time in a row that you spend the night with your cat.” said Stephen.

She just shrugged her shoulders and with a natural tone replied “she is a very possessive cat, what can I say.” and then quickened her steps, leaving Stephen behind.

“Guess I’ll just spend another night with the best person on this world, myself,” he said, his tone low and lackadaisy. As he reached the entrance of the building, his ear suddenly buzzed. He touched it and connected the call, “yes? Oh, okay, I’m coming.” his face paled, for some reason his boss wanted to see him immediately.

He walked to the office while wondering if he had done something, was asking Letithia out every single night sexual harassment? Had he finally decided that an old robe was in violation of grooming guidelines? Had another client called in and lamented about the sloppiness of his work?

Whatever it was he was gonna find out in a few minutes. With a knock he entered Bossman’s office, yeah, his boss name was Bossman, came to think of the irony if their roles had been reversed.

“Mr. Bossman, you wanted to see me?” he asked with a trembling voice.

“No I didn’t, but unfortunately I have to, sit down.” replied the midget from his comfortable armchair, Stephen had always wondered how practical was a heavy armchair in conjunction with a desk. Nevertheless, he sat down in the small plastic chair in front of Bossman.

“Stephen, you know I’ve always considered you as a son, especially since you act like a child half of the time and fuck up the other half,” Bossman started with some sweet words trying to lower Stephen’s guard. “But now I gotta ask you, have you been stealing company property?” he asked with a serious tone.

‘So that’s why I was called!’ thought Stephen before replying, “Well Mr. Bossman, maybe I did take a few paperclips, some pens, Randy’s lunch twice a week and possibly a desk. However, I swear I was gonna give them back!” tried to plead Stephen.

“What? That’s not what I was ask- wait a desk? How did you… Nevermind, I don’t care about a few paperclips, I wanna know if you stole any of the followings:” he then took out a sheet of paper and started reading “High powered terrain manipulator, supreme level dungeon core, a complete high leveled dungeon creation kit, and then I have a big list of other materials that you apparently bought using the allocated budget for other works but never actually used in any work.”

“What can I say, you busted me, sir.” He didn’t even try to defend himself. It all started 3 months ago when he saw Letithia use a dungeon’s budget to buy a coffee for herself, if she could buy a coffee with company’s money why couldn’t he buy himself a dragon? Well maybe a dragon would be too obvious, so he bought himself a rabbit, xiao bai (little white) whom he loved immensely.

From there on he kept stealing a few materials every now and then and hatching a master plan, too bad he had been discovered so fast, he had so many more items he wanted to embezzle.

“Thanks for your honesty.” said Bossman while pressing a button on his desk. Suddenly security officers busted through the door pointing their weapon modules towards Stephen. A weapon module consisted of a gauntlet with preregistered spells in it, all the security officer had to do was focus on a spell and blast him to the otherworld.

“Wow, that was fast!” said Stephen in admiration. “Bossman, can I say one last thing before I get taken away?”

“Sure thing kid,” replied Bossman sporting a big grin on his face.

“Would you mind checking the 97th item I bought today?” asked Stephen with a grin bigger than Bossman’s.

Seeing that grin Bossman felt there was something wrong, he immediately checked the item, [hand-held teleport module 100% charged]. “Oh shi-”

“You were one day too late.” suddenly Stephen pressed the button on the device in his pants and with a flash disappeared.