“No, I won’t give you Higher Passive Absorption just yet!” The Administrator’s voice rang in his head. “I don’t see any progression so far, you just built a house for yourself! Ask again, when I see some effort done! I don’t give out free stuff! Until then, don’t call me!”

That was unfair. How could he build an awesome dungeon and run a company with the revenue of a small start-up working out of a basement?!? His total daily income was around 1.400 Mana, give or take a few, and four Hundred of that was tied up for upkeep. Since he needed his MOB, he could not shave off costs there – he probably even needed to expand the MOB, the grasslands on the other side of the mountains looked a bit unfinished and with almost no critters.

He had, however, three rules that looked like the issues the Administrator told him about: Unkillable, Unlootable, a Dungeon Rampage. The last one was the trigger for when guests tried to pick pretty flowers and ent every last entry in the MOB against them. The daily cost for those three rules was a staggering 100 Mana per day. They needed to go immediately!

Zoli laid back in his chair. Doing things in his mind was counter-intuitive for him. Working at a computer for more than a decade, looking at spreadsheets and flowcharts and presentations, he was not prepared to be creative. He missed his computer screens and charts. Having Mana again, he created two large desk displays and an even larger for the wall. And a keyboard. He immediately felt better, almost like back in the office! Only if he could project the charts and stuff on them!

Actually, he could. He was the dungeon, and the displays were part of the dungeon, so part of himself. He could do everything with them, he didn’t even needed them, he could have projected the data on everything. He just needed to want it and figure out how to do it. In barely six hours he figured out a way – no, not the easiest way of willing it done in realtime, but some roundabout way of “implementing IT-solutions”, “running macros”, “collating data” and “making reports”.

Actually, his solution wasn’t realtime anymore, but had a lag of a few minutes and cost him a Mana per day…

The first thing he did after implementing the new process was to find out, where his Mana was coming from and where it went. The first one was relatively easy: he got a base of 100 Mana, and one for every square kilometer of finished dungeon terrain. Yes, he had almost 1.300 square kilometers! Plus a bit over 500 of unfinished grasslands!

The expenditure was a bit trickier to collate. His territory was divided into 131 “Zones” (whatever those were), numbered continuously, and he had to pay a daily salary to the MOB residing in said zone. As for his MOB… He got a looong list. There were different classifications for them: Monster, Animal, Critter, but in another column every last one had the designation “Normal” with the annotation “Level 1”.

He didn’t understand the classification first, but after observing different ones (i.e. projecting them on his display like National Geographic), he started to get a feeling. “Animals” were, well, animals he would be able to see on Earth. At least at one time or another, he got the distinct feeling, he saw a few extinct ones, and a few he could not place, and had a clear alien origin. Not that he was that good in paleozoology…

“Monster” in contrast were animals with some extra abilities, like able to shoot strong water jets, having uncanny camouflage skills or to change shapes. Since he had only those three (an ugly fish, a lynx-like cat and a walking chest), his sample-size was limited.

“Critters” on the other hand, were small animals – cats, rats, wasps, snakes, frogs, bugs and such. Interestingly, some cats and snakes and stuff were classified as “Animals” not as “Critters”, Zoli had to dig a bit to realise the difference: “Critters” were bought in bulk and the individual threat wasn’t high, but he had to buy “Animals” who were of individual threat. Like the difference between interns and real employees.

Each one entry in his MOB had an upkeep cost – miniscule on the individual scale, but it still added up to almost 300 mpd (Zoli decided to shorten Mana per Day to that. Efficiency was key to business success, after all!). However, he did not realize the point yet that every last one of his dungeon monsters being just normal Level 1s.

Every entry on the MOB was assigned to a specific Zone for statistical purposes (Zoli assumed) but were able to wander as like liked. Zoli accidently found a Rule with which he could limit the monsters wandering or bind them to a specific Zone, but left that alone for now. It made no difference at the present, and he knew that much of animals that the liked to wander. Maybe later he would play with it.

The most interesting thing he found was a band of high-cost entries in Zone 1: little green bipedal fellows with large ears, eyes and noses residing in something he would have dubbed the “Visitor Center” the Administrator was talking about. They looked marginally intelligent, wearing uniform shorts and shirts, and just milling around at the present.

“Hehehe! Real employees!” Zoli giggled “They don’t look highly intelligent but probably are not dumber then all those drones I had to work with previously! Let’s pay them a visit! My new managers are waiting to be promoted! HAHAHA!”

He left his office to arrive at the Visitor Center, in a room that looked like a conference hall. The walls were decorated with posters of a few of the animals, with slogans printed across them. Save the planet, trees have rights, be nice to animals and such. Zoli surveyed the room, and just knew, there were some Rules still running: Unlootable and Indestructible being such.

Obviously he just removed those rules from the MOB, not from buildings. He removed those rules (about a dozen free mrp gained!) and made a note to check his displays again in case there were other unnecessary Rules floating around. He decided to get rid of the Visitor Center as soon as he knew what to do with the little green fellows.

While he was messing around with the Rules, the door to the hall opened, and his new possible employees and managers filed inside.

“Yo, Man! You the new Bossman?” one of them asked, when they were inside.

“Yes, yes, I’m the new CEO of this amazing company. Nice to meet all of you dedicated employees! You can call me Honored CEO. I have been appointed to this position because the stockholders felt the company was facing challenges in the portfolio and had to enhance client-focused initatives in delivering alternative and competitive core competencies. We now have to proactively actualize cross-functional leadership skills to streamline compelling content.”

Zoli was proud of his presentational skills, he had attended a few workshops for manager positions. It was essential to communicate the accurate information to the wage-slaves in a time-proven and business-like way. Unfortunately, the little green fellows stared at him exactly like those underlings on Earth.

Why couldn’t they understand? He spoke with other managers for hours in this way, and everyone nodded with understanding, all just made sense! Oh, wait! That was why every company had Team Leaders and such, so they, as future manager-candidates could tell the slackers what to do with the information they were given by the managers! He had two choices now: train some low-level managers to tell the others what to do, or demean himself to their level and speak Pedestrian.

It was obvious, what he would chose: train up the low-level slave drivers!

That he didn’t even need managers and team leaders and his whole intelligent workforce consisted of only those twelve before him, haven’t even crossed his mind.

“All right, I will promote some of you, so you can lead your teams and deliver the expertise to your co-workers. Let’s see… You there! “Zoli pointed to the lest-ugly looking probably female “I promote you to my secretary. What’s your name?”

His secretary just shook her head.

“All right, I will call you Janine.”

“You there, Peter, will be the head of Production and Manufacturing.”

“Egon, you will be Research and Development.”

“Raymond, yes, you there, Finances.”

“Winston, Engineering.”

“Harold, IT”

“And Dana, you will be HR!”

He still needed someone for Marketing, Customer Service, Supply, Procurement, Quality Management, Operations and Administration. And a few others. However, he had only five of the little green fellows remaining – but saying little green fellow was probably insensitive, so he thought about what to call them instead. Then he knew: Goblins!

“Jenette, Marketing and Customer Service.”

“Cynthia, Supply and Procurement.”

“Colette, Operations and Administration.”

“Ellen, Quality Management”

“That leaves us with James, you will be Corporate Security. For the other departments, I don’t think I need them at the moment. Probably I will assign other departments to you all as it is needed.”

What Zoli did not understand was that he promoted his employees to be heads of departments, or as the System translated his words and intentions: he evolved a dozen monsters to Bosses and raised their Levels. What previously were dumb Goblins of the “normal” designation and Level 1, became Level 30 Bosses. And every last one could now speak and understand Corporate fluently.

They gained Skills and Perks befitting of their departments, at a level, that would be around 400% out in the world – a level very few people reached because of the cost and time invested.

The mpd-cost for them also multiplied, from a miniscule size (even together, they only cost 2 mpd previously) to 20 each. Zoli was in for a big surprise.

He only needed a Corporate Headquarters now!