Egbert looked down his nose sourly at the crying child. It wasn’t his fault the child owed him two copper, lemonade stands were taxable income after all. The child was an orphan, yes, but the orphanage was in a different tax bracket; the snotty problem in front of him was not.
“Now, now, consider this a learning experience!” he said placatingly
The little boy scrunched up his face even further. “But I needed all ten of my copper to buy new shoes!”
Egbert smiled; this was the perfect chance to help the youngster understand how the world worked. “Okay, young man, let me give you an example! Here you need two more copper!” He opened a small coin purse at his side and drew two of his own copper out. It was always critical to keep the crowns and his own gold separate after all. He magnanimously handed them to the child.
The child’s tears mercifully stilled for a moment. “Really, you are giving this to me!? That’s enough for my shoes!” The kid's face brightened, his fist tight around the coins.
“Yes, it’s a gift, from me to you of two coppers!” Egbert smiled, his crow's feet highlighted by the expression.
The boy excitedly turned to head to the shabby cobbler down the street. Egbert tapped him on the shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. “Sir?” the boy asked, a confused look on his face. “I thought it was a present?”
Egbert smiled kindly again. “It is, young man, but remember gifts are taxed at nearly fifty percent to avoid fraud!” He reached out and gently plucked one of the coins from the boy, adding it to the lockbox that held the crown's taxes. “It’s important to always factor in taxes when you save up for things!” he finished sagely, tousling the boy’s hair.
The orphan began sobbing again. "Oh damn...I don’t think he understood." Egbert mumbled to himself.
The last thing he saw as he turned was his bodyguard down on the ground, a dagger stabbed into his side, and the steely flash of an arrowhead inches from his face. The world went black for an uncomfortably long time. Oh damn...I should have asked the king for extra security after all.
[System Intervention In Death]
[God Of Greed Nomisa Has Spent Essence To Intervene]
Egbert's eyes snapped open in a panicked flash. “AAAGGHHH ROOBBERY!” He screamed, or well, tried to. All that happened was his viewpoint jiggled a little bit, and no sounds came out. Oh bother...what afterlife have I earned myself? I never stole, and I stuck by the letter of the law! All he could see around himself concerningly in a full three hundred sixty degrees was grey stone worn down by time to the point that the seams in the brickwork had nearly disappeared under dust.
[Class assigned]
Wait, what? No! I have a class. I am a second-tier [Pennypinching Savant] I worked hard at that. I was the crown jewel of the kingdom's income, with nearly a ninety-nine percent collection rate! The other one percent were dead; they don’t have to pay taxes...their descendants do..
The system mercilessly kept filling his view with very upsetting notifications.
[Assigned Class Rarity (Unique)]
Oh well, maybe I did speak too soon…
[Wealth-Powered Dungeon](Unique)
Umm, I'm sorry, can we please go back a step? Dungeons are wonderful things that might as well print money for the surrounding towns hells, some do.
There was an uncomfortable pause as nothing new popped into his vision. “Haha...very funny, Conrad...great jest. Now seriously…” he tried to say. Instead of any sound, the system sprang into his vision once again.
Dagnabbit! I was praying this was all a grand, convoluted joke...
[Wealth-Powered Dungeon](Unique)
A custom class added by the God of Greed for his centennial celestial selection. Essence gains from kills or any other sources do not apply to this class. Mundane Currency may be spent directly for improvements to the dungeon. Any currency obtained through means that go against the spirit of adversity a dungeon should foster will be removed.
Wait, what in all the seven hells does that mean? Can I not just grow some magical healing plants and sell them? Why not! I would be disgustingly rich in a week! Well, maybe that's why not…
[Talent Granted]
[Unbound Store]
Monsters, traps, and more are available for purchase.
[Skills Granted]
[Craft Domain]
Coins may be spent to shape and expand your dungeon and improve entities within; price increases with the size of the dungeon and complexity of changes.
[Gimme The Gold!]
Any precious metals in your domain may be slowly broken down into a fraction of their value in coins.
Oh hells...Egbert started trying to swivel his view and move around the dusty room he found himself in. Thankfully it was instinctively easy; he hovered up and looked down at his “body,” a small coin-shaped golden gem sitting haphazardly on an ancient square stone altar that blended in with the rest of the damnably drab room. Well, assuming I'm not actually in hell and I have in fact been denied the bliss of a pleasant afterlife to play dungeon for a while, that must be my core; if that breaks, I'm a goner. Or if a strong enough mage shows up and binds me…
The thought of being bound scared the hell out of Egbert. He could deal with needing to creatively monetize a murderous maze, he could not imagine an existence without end bound to some bureaucracy’s idea of proper dungeon management. Every single dungeon he had collected taxes from that was managed was...distressingly underperforming compared to the wild ones.
He got right to it, floating from the first room he was in towards the half-collapsed hallway ahead. It was a two-stride tangle of rotted beams and fallen hunks of stone that led out to the blessed golden light of a sunrise. Egbert metaphorically widened his eyes at the sight before him; he was on a thick stone platform with the memory of a stone staircase winding down a nearly sheer cliff face.
Directly below him a waterfall crashed down into an utterly crystal-clear pond teeming with birds and plants. A crane swooped by past him, trailing off into the distance. To his right idyllic fields rolled into almost too-green pine trees that ran all the way up to the base of a mountain. In fact, every direction he looked led up to a mountain in the distance, protectively ringing this pristine landscape.
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Across the lake, near enough that he could see trails of smoke rising happily into the blue sky, was a cozy town. Deep red and brown wooden buildings were built around three streets that were arranged together like the tines of a pitchfork. Even from here he could see people milling about in generous yards and gardens, carts lazily trailing up and down the roads.
Realization hit Egbert like a lightning bolt. Ha HA! Well played, money god, Edens Vale. One of the most pristine, idyllic places in the world and handily located between four kingdoms. If I were looking to start a new gold rush and give a concerning number of people access to it, I can’t think of a much better place. It’s an awfully nice view as well. Egbert stayed where he was while the sun slowly climbed, enjoying the way the shadows trailed away.
He shook himself from his revelry and darted back into his lair; he needed to get started. Goodness knows how much time he had before someone wandered in here. It wasn’t like his location was remote; there was already someone fishing at the lake below his new front porch.
First thing first, Egbert started scouring the hell out of his limited space. He couldn’t go past the front porch, so that left him the collapsed hallway and his core room. It wasn't much... He was starting to get more and more concerned as he examined every single inch of the stone floors. There wasn’t a single copper coin in sight, much less a silver or gold. Hmmm, well, how much do things in the store cost?
With a thought, a new window opened up, sorting the store into almost too many categories to count. Oh, oh my, this...has promise…. He opened up a category labeled [Toll Doors]. Most everything was currently greyed out just enough that he couldn’t read the options; there were three, however, that were fully visible to him.
[Dungeon Entrance] (1 Silver)
A locked door of minimal strength that has no lock, simply a slot for coins.
[Eye-catching Archway] (1 Gold)
A gratuitously flashy archway entrance of low strength that has no lock, simply a slot for coins.
[Blood Or Coin Door] (5 copper)
A foreboding doorway with a spike on one side and a coin slot on the other that lets adventurers pay for entrance in either blood or coinage.
Well, I mean, Of course I want the eye-catching archway, but if I put that up now without anything else dungeon-y, I'd be dead or enslaved within a day; the next sunrise would see me as a shimmering beacon above the waterfall. Wait, do I even have any damn coins? Egbert had a moment of sheer panic as he realized no body meant no, he in fact wasn’t carrying his coin purse on him, but to his pleasant shock there was a small coin bag symbol at the top of the shop screen that held the exact quantity of gold he had in his personal coin purse at his time of death.
[Dungeon Hoard]
[Copper 9] [Silver 2] [Gold 0] [Platinum 0]
Okay system, please go ahead and hide the denominations I don’t have, no need to be unkind about my current financial state. The gold and platinum indications winked off of the screen. An idea began forming in his mind for a simple but rather meanspirited way to earn some coins with just a handful of purchases.
He opened up the monster tab and filtered through until he got to one of the most famous monsters in the realm, Mimics. No one would expect that in literally the first room of a dungeon, right? Like what bastard would do that... A poor one, that's who. There were two options available above a massive list of greyed-out ones.
[Door Mimic Tier-1](lvl6) [4 Copper]
It's a mimic shaped like a door. I don’t know what else you were expecting. It's not very strong, but it is cheap.
[Treasure Chest Mimic Tier-1](lvl10) [1 Silver]
Is it cliché, and is it likely to get stabbed by every adventurer with half a brain? Yes, but it's also pretty mean and will do a number on the really stupid or greedy adventurers.
Egbert reread the descriptions a few times. They were weirdly...snarky compared to the first ones he had read. Huh…. I have no clue what's up with the store's attitude, but I think I can work with this combo.
Egbert went ahead and bought two Of the Blood Or Coin Doors and a single Door mimic. He winced at his dwindling account as three doors unceremoniously plopped into existence next to his core, falling to the ground with a clatter. He left them in an awkward pile for now; one of the doors had a single angry eye looking around in confusion. Sorry, little money-making nightmare, gotta clear the hall first!
[Copper 4] [Silver 1]
It was a simple process to clear the ancient hallway out; he simply willed the stones and rubble back into their original places, turning the tangled mess into an out-of-place, new-looking stretch of hallway that practically glimmered compared to the surrounding stonework.
[Copper 9]
Oh yikes, okay, five copper just to clean up the hallway, got it. Now...how do I actually move the doors...? It took some trial and error, but thankfully if he just went over and pretended he still had hands, he could magically float them around to the places he wanted them at. Unfortunately that didn’t include magically making them fit perfectly, so Egbert begrudgingly spent another copper shaping a series of doorframes around the doors as he placed them.
[Copper 8]
He went with a simple, if a bit dickish, arrangement: the porch had a Blood or Coin Door; there was another placed half a stride into the hallway; and then finally, before the small room he currently resided in, he placed the door mimic.
Alright, that should do it. Lull them into a false sense of security, and then get them to either fight or pay the mimic. No one is going to choose to stab themselves over just a copper or two, surely. But I need to have some kind of treasure here so I get repeat customers. And…I need to hide myself somewhere…
For now, Egbert simply hollowed out a little slit into the altar and let his core fall in like a coin in a piggy bank slot. He lurked in his new home, browsing the treasures tab. Like everything else, it was unfortunately mostly grayed out, offering him three choices only for now.
[Coin Pile] (5 Copper)
It's literally a small unimpressive pile of coins. What did you expect? No, you can't spend them. They do respawn for whatever schmucks you con through your doors, though.
[Respawn Time 1 Day]
[Coin Spider] (9 Copper)
Same deal as the coin pile, except it's stuck to the abdomen of a very large, very hissy spider. Why choose this over just a pile of coins? Mostly because it's more amusing and potentially a good distraction.
[Loot Bug] (6 copper)
Small Fast runs like hell and has a tiny bit of gold in the shell. No, you can’t melt your own Loot Bug for money.
[Respawn Time 2 Days]
Hmmmm... Egbert bought the lootbug and went back to the start of his dungeon, adding a tiny finger-sized channel under the doors that was just big enough for the lootbug to squeeze through. There we go, a motivating factor. Nothing keeps a man going like the lure of gold.
[Copper 1]
Alright, I have the lure. I have the adversity, and I have functioning toll gates! Now all I need is a reason for all of this to be here that isn’t “Hello, townsfolk, I’m a dungeon. Who wants to murder me after you get past my one defender? Egbert thought about it for a while. Eden's Vale had one magical academy in the area, if he remembered correctly. It wasn’t a great reason for any of the nonsense he had here, and he doubted it would hold up to literally any scrutiny, but it was the best idea he had for now.
Egbert added a small scrawled message above the first doorway into his dungeon by carving thick bold letters into the stonework holding the door in place. “Magic Academy Trial Of Resolve, Prove Your Worth!”
He stepped back to look at it all. It was...well, honestly, kind of lame…two doors and then another door trying and sort of succeeding to mimic the others. The Mimic had all the same features as the Blood Or Coin ones. A dagger-sized spike on the left with a channel for blood under it. Black and red faded wood and a bronzy coin slot on the right. Except everything about it looked slightly...off, like a little bit of a melted wax version of the originals.
Egbert lost track of time inspecting the Loot Bug; it was a strange little beetle the size of a man's thumb that was covered in a glimmering golden shell and for some reason hummed rather aggressively at all times. It also moved so damn fast around the place it was more of a noisy golden streak than any kind of real insect.
He was pulled from his revelry by a deep chill as a man stepped onto his porch. Egbert immediately flew over to see his first visitor. It was the fisherman from the previous day, a wrinkled, straw-haired man with leather for skin and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. He was carrying a wooden fishing pole in one hand and a wicker basket with a few still flopping fish in the other. He squinted at the words carved above the door, slowly sounding them out to himself.
[Jeb Smitty Tier-1](lvl33) [Old-Magic Fisherman]
Jeb nodded approvingly to himself, a wide smile unveiling his missing front teeth. “By all the Gods above, this be it. This is my chance to be a real wizard!” He set his fish basket down and squinted at the coin slot and then looked back to the slightly rusty spike.
“Pappy didn’t raise no pussy! Mages Tower Im A Coming!” He dramatically slapped his hand down onto the spike with a holler.
No, goddammit! Just pay the coin; it's ONE, ONE BLASTED COPPER TO GET THROUGH. YOU INBRED HILLBILLY! Egbert raged internally as Jeb proudly watched the first door swing open.
