When they stepped outside the cave, a crimson sky welcomed them, illuminating jagged surfaces of red rock. From their high position, they could overlook vast distance of bare rock with no vegetation to speak of. Occasionally, they could see some movement, as creatures fought for their lives in this harsh environment, but there appeared to be numerous caves, gorges, crevices and natural stone spires to provide shelter from preying eyes.

"A shithole." Toby said dryly. "That is good, there is a lot of unclaimed space."

"I should feed my subordinate first using the fifth doggy we left behind. This area will take a lot of time to scout." Irwen pondered while looking around the rocky hill they had emerged from.

"Not necessarily, let's head back. It is time to put my skills to use." Toby said with excitement. At last, he would be able to take roots somewhere and behave like a proper dungeon, not being carried around like a piece of jewelry.

They walked back to the bathouse, picking up the only corpse that was not charred along the way. It took Irwen a while to manage to roast it with her spells without burning it black. They presented the food to starving Sivian and built an access tunnel into the midst of the pyramid, where Toby decided to stay for a time, putting his plan into motion, when he remembered something terrible.

"Right, I can lose experience points through my minions, but I can gain none by having them kill the low level creatures outside the cave that means . . . I am fucked!" No matter how he thought, if he decided to behave like a normal expansionist dungeon, he would slowly level down, it was impossible to have zero loses in battles.

"I do not see where is the problem, why would anyone kill your acolytes?" Irwen happened to be not far away and heard his desperate ramblings.

"Where is the problem?! The problem is that I will become as strong as a slug if I keep losing troops when conquering . .. "

"Conquering?" Irwen looked at him, while tilting her head.

"Yes, people do that if they want a piece of land of their own." Toby explained slowly.

"Why would you need that?" She tilted her head even more. Oh boy, she could really tilt her head so much! It was probably because she was a lich.

"Why? Because if I want to keep building spectacular creative things, I need to build them somewhere, preferably not in the air! That is why I need my own land! " Toby exclaimed impatiently.

"You don't." She said flatly.

"What do you mean I don't? When I am about to build my creations somewhere.. ."

"Why yours? Most builders do not own what they create." Toby felt like he had been hit by a hammer.

"You mean. . you mean . ." Toby finally saw the point Irwen was trying to make.." . . I can act as an architect constructing buildings for sale?!"

"Right! When conquering is too difficult, just build it for someone else and let them do the conquering instead." Honestly, it was logical, but the possessive dungeon nature of Toby would have never come up with it.

"But then what I create will not be .. mine." Irwen thought she saw tears on the surface of the crystal.

"Why does it matter? You said that you wanted to create right? Not possess." Irwen's eyes looked at him and he was unable to dodge her burning gaze.

His nefarious white-haired companion had maneuvered him into a position where he would have contradicted himself, if he opposed her.

"R-Right!" Toby stuttered, undead were really evil beings.

How he had ended up as a construction worker, he should have been an emperor!

* * * *

Randolf stood in front of a huge portal, watching first squads of soldiers pouring in. All of them were highly trained scouts and other reconnaissance specialists. It was expensive to open an interplanar portal like this, the army had to quickly secure a foothold on the other side of the portal and build facilities there to help reduce the expenditure of resources.

"The assholes did it again." Randolf sighed, walking towards the portal, joining one of the marching scout teams. Sometimes, he felt like a lapdog of a drug cartel, receiving only missions with little rewards and high risks. He could not believe the ten had decided to wage a war against the demon world.

Worst of all, it seemed to be an extermination war based on his observation of the prepared resources.

An extermination war! What a madness he had gotten himself into!

Most of the wars he had participated in had been classic resource wars with a singular clear objective, to seize resources of a specific region, which was equivalent with gaining control over the population of the region. In wars like that, no one really wanted to kill the ordinary people who harvested the resources, but to disable the information network of the enemy and replace the manipulative scheme that was being used to control population. The execution needed a lot of information and numerous quick, powerful strikes of small teams. It had to do a lot with how information circulated in society and minimalistic approaches were often useful considering the only thing that changed for an ordinary miner or farmer was that the sign would say "A Mine of His Majesty Bobo The Smallass" instead of "A Mine of Chief Bebe The Bigfoot", people did not give a shit where the resources went, it was not into their pockets anyway. Their living conditions might change a bit, but it was not something to die for.

An extermination war was something different. It happened when the invader decided to not extract the resources using native population for some reason, leading to a long, dragged out war where large scale armies were used. However, this was the only kind of warfare applicable in the demon world, as there was no manipulative scheme that would allow to persuade demons to feed resources to humans with a smile. Slavery was an option, but it had been tried and had not been successful. Demons were too stubborn to yield without scheming revenge behind their masters' back.

Randolf thought that the decision like this had been approved, because the leaders of The Guild had become too disconnected with reality. Shut in their high luxurious towers, they no longer saw or care about the destruction their decision would bring. Another factor was that there were no longer many people who remembered the last Crusade, their vivid memories no longer present in the society to discourage others to follow warmongers.

Still, gnashing his teeth Randolf had no option but to lead one of the squands through the gate, doubting The Guild leaders' competence more than ever.

* * * *

"That's it?" A huge powerful figure of a demon stared at Toby, who trembled in fear.

"That is as high as you can build? Pathetic!" The demon growled, his muscles tensing under his red skin.

"Y-Your majesty, I can build it bigger, higher, just give me a little more time!" Toby pleaded desperately, looking at the statue of Aisus he had constructed. It was three meters tall, the same height as the demon, but his trademark manly feature was over thirty meters high.

"No more time slave and no more excuses. For your incompetence, I am sentencing you to become a part of my smallest palace statue, you will become its eyeball." The demon laughed madly.

"NOOOO!" Toby shouted and looked at the thirty meters high Aisus' penis in front of him that spoke to him from above.

"Are my breasts too soft?" It said with a smile.

"Eh? N-No! Just please grow a bit!" Toby shouted desperately.

"I won't, stop daydreaming and wake up stupid stone!" The same voice said and Toby matched it with the right person, then he finally woke up from his nightmare.

"Irwen, I have a bad premonition about this. What if I displease the contractor?! He can . . .make me into his eyeball!" Toby continued to despair.

"Into what?!" Irwen looked down at him, as calm as ever.

They were walking on the surface, Toby hanging around Irwen's neck and Sivian reverently following her. At this point Toby was worried about Sivian's mental health, as she took the supposed Irwen's status too seriously.

"Don't be a coward, if you build a huge beautiful statue at some high place, powerful people should notice shortly and contact us requesting your services." Irwen repeated what she had already proposed to him in the cave.

"I do not know if a statue is the right choice." Toby said defensively.

"Why? If you make it at least thirty meters, everyone. . ."

"No, a statue is definitely a bad choice!" Toby firmly stated and continued before Irwen could bombard him with questions.

"It is because, because demons are certainly more interested in warfare than art. I will construct a castle, no, a huge fortress!" Toby presented his plan with passion.

"That might be true, I see that you have been thinking about it for some time. I will take the role of a spectator then, o great builder." Irwen smirked at the polished stone on her chest.

"Right, leave it to me!" Toby said resolutely and chose the place where the project would start to take shape. It was the easiest spot, the hill on the side of which was the entrance to their underground tunnel.

He began the work with a simple wall that isolated all random creatures that might wander to the construction site. He continued with a big underground cellar that would temporarily house all the Tombs to create his army of acolytes. At the point when he had hundreds of acolytes, the work progressed with lightning speed, a huge Fortress made completely of stone slowly standing up like a giant after a long nap.

Toby wanted to display an extravagant fotress that would be not only original, but practical as well. He decided to center his construction around a triangle of three towers that were connected with bridges high above the ground. Each tower was eighty meters high and had a circular base of fourty meters in diameter. The towers were one hundred meters apart and had only small windows that were typical for castle keeps dedicated to war. The towers were walled off from the outer courtyard with a thick thirty meters tall wall, the outer part finally having outer wall that was even ten meters higher. Toby decided to add more radial walls to the outer part of the castle between the outer and inner walls, using six walls to divide the outer courtyard into six sections. Toby was truly happy he had the new [ Advanced Dungeon Sense::Unlimited Scauting Radius], enabling him to not move his Tombs at all, improving the speed of the construction.

"Mmmm, that is shaping up nicely, but I can do so much more!" Toby could not hold back when he imagined all what he could create with his acolytes. At first he had thought that the huge armies of a dungeon had to be overpowered, but thanks to the leveling mechanics, what ended up being truly overpowered was the potential of acolytes to build. He could support so many and every one of them was able to use earth magic to a fairly satisfying degree.

"The warm up ends here, let's improve it a little now." Toby giggled like a little girl, Irwen having the decency of ignoring him.

* * * *

"Great master Kruxiblotax!"A squeaky voice kept calling repeatedly.

Some of his more daring subordinates claimed his name should signify excruciatingly bloated taxes, others thought that it was his cross-shaped axe that was always blocked that bears the fault for his name, but there were none that belonged to either of the groups present right now. Therefore, Great Master Kruxiblotax could afford to wait for some time until the two words resonated enough in his ears, without any disrupting whispers of some of his subjects that were too smart for their own good.

"Yeees." He said slowly, turning his head down to see the imp that was jumping on his spot unceasingly. Great Master Kruxiblotax was a genuine Inferno Minotaurus, despite the nasty rumours of him being just an overgrown, fat imp.

"Our elite scouts spotted a new fort in our territory that does not pay tribute, Great Master."

"How dare they not to pay tribute to me! How large is the fortified house?" Kruxiblotax stood up and slammed the shaft of his axe against the stone floor.

"Our scouts claim it is bigger than twenty Bombastic Eternal Citadels. " The small figure of an imp chirped, evoking an immediate action of his master.

Kruxiblotax sat back down, knowing twenty was usually the highest number most imps knew.

"Too trivial, how can I, Kruxiblotax concert myself with such a tiny matter!" Kruxiblotax thundered, snorting loudly.

"Great Master, have you perhaps intended to say concern . .. "

"Of course you are not able to understand what I have said, you are just a simple imp!" Kruxiblotax lashed out with his axe angrily, but missed the lively imp with his blow.

"That was a warning for your insolence! The next blow will decapitate your little head, tiny maggot!"

"Please spare this unworthy one, Great Master Kruxiblotax! Great Master, what can this humble one can do for the Greatest Master Kruxiblotax to calm his wrath? " The imp appeared to be skilled in talking to his master and managed to calm him down with ease.

"Report it to him." Kruxiblotax gazed at the imp and the imp knew that under no circumstances he should say that "him" meant the true owner of the land and Kruxiblotax's superior.

"It will be done, Great Master." The imp bowed and left the throne room of Bombastic Eternal Citadel.