Procrastinating, Like a BOSS

Chapter 6

With my mind finally free I was floating in the lava pool next to Stalin while I rearranged the tilemap. I could do it from anywhere and found the heat pleasant, like a soothing bath. Being my own boss, no one was going to tell me no. Anyone who did could take it up with the elemental hounds. Scratching Stalin’s head I worked in blissful comfort.

I spent fifty mana buying enough tunnel sections to form six very boring layers of dungeon. They were all uniform pieces I was using to map the labyrinthine on each layer with. My intended aesthetic for the final design was undecided. Using a makeshift one during layout would be a waste. I needed a solid plan in place before I could start playing with the visuals if I wanted a coherent design. One did not buy furniture before you knew what kind of house you were decorating.

Making a simple design didn’t take long but I was being fussy, trying to use everything I’d learned. In the tutorial, the heroes had navigated using special tools, maps, skills, and luck. I found that undesirable in the extreme. It required a long time to get everything necessary and train. Luck was also unacceptable since it wasn’t an indicator of anything meaningful.

Perhaps it was leftover game knowledge from my old life that nagged at me. Either way, I had strong feelings about player friendliness. I felt like a dungeon needed to be visually pleasing and relatively easy to navigate. Those two things were the key to a prosperous future. Grinding monotonous miles of grey wouldn’t encourage someone to visit a second time.

If they didn't enjoy the experience, they wouldn't invite friends. More to the point, it would discourage non-heroes and those with low levels which I needed to avoid. There was no guarantee that there were enough high leveled heroes nearby to meet my tithe. I wasn't even sure if level mattered or not, the system still confused to me.

Balance would be my friend and I set my first layers up with that in mind. The entry-level was a designated safe zone. It had no monsters or traps and I didn’t consider it part of the dungeon proper. My intent with it was to provide a place to do some minor materials gathering and get ready to begin a descent. From it, players would enter the first stack. The collection of layers marking the official dungeon.

Each stack would follow a formula and feature standard grind layers, a boss room, and a safe zone. The number of layers, theme’s and difficulty would vary to keep things fresh. The key features would be dependable fixtures of the design.

An adventurer who played fair would be able to challenge the boss. I'd need to work out exp payouts, but the grind layers would add up to enough. Throwing them at something that was too much for them to defeat wouldn't benefit me.

The boss would be themed, and challenging, but not too tough. I was aiming for a difficulty that wouldn't force adventures to use more than 30% of their resources. If things went to plan, they'd get through cheaply. If it didn’t, they'd still have plenty of spells and items to compensate for some bad luck.

Afterward, the safe zone would provide them a place to rest and prepare for the next stack. Or return by teleport to the entrance. Forcing them to spend more than a week or two in the dungeon would be taxing. That would wait for deeper stacks and higher levels.

The math was going to be messy to work out. I didn't have exact exp payouts, level requirements, and average equipment statistics. Even so, I felt confident that I had a good formula to work with once I got the facts and figures straight. Expansions would also be easy to manage with a solid framework behind them.

I wanted the dungeon to feel somewhat welcoming, but not spoil the adventurers. I aimed to cultivate heroes, providing the middling and above ones a chance to grow. The weak and less intelligent would die, but not at random. Deaths would happen at a point where the ratio of risk and reward would make it palatable to others.

That was going to be the real challenge. Making sure those who came in felt they stood to gain enough to justify the risk. That was part of the reason I was obsessing about ruling out luck as much as possible. I needed to present myself as a symbiotic existence, not a parasite. A daunting task, all things considered.

Realizing I was spacing out I got back to work. The first floor, following the entry-level, was reached by a natural basalt stone stairway. It was irritating to look at since it didn’t mesh with the marble and other more colorful metamorphic rocks. It was still better than a simple slope though, so I put up with it.

It didn’t have a maze of any kind, all the paths lead to the entrance to the second floor. Finding the shortest path was the trick. They had to realize there was a correlation to the diameter of a tunnel and its length. Large ones were longer, smaller, shorter. A simple but important lesson in looking for rules to exploit.

The second floor had three separate paths that were simple traditional mazes. The middle maze led to the fourth-floor staircase. The other two dead-ended but none of them had enough twists to leave anyone dangerously lost. I needed to mark the correct maze somehow but put that on the to-do list for when I got around to aesthetics.

The third-floor layout was a series of circles pierced at random intervals by tunnels. Each tunnel either formed little spurs or connected to the next circle. The spurs lead nowhere and would result in backtracking.

The stairway to the boss room bellow was at the center. The trick to getting it was realizing that the floor was sloped. You had to find the cross tunnel at the lowest point in the circle or try every single one. Losing time would be annoying, but not dangerous. None of it was impossible to navigate without figuring out the trick. It would encourage people to pay attention to their surroundings.

Beneath those layers, in the boss room, I was lounging in lava. The floor had a doom metal aesthetic but was an employee break room. I didn't have a specific plan for it, but I felt like it was a good idea in and of itself. Not all the monsters I used would be intelligent, but I wanted official rest areas for them. Places adventurers wouldn't be able to access. A tricky thing to manage when I had to keep everything connected.

Only half done the boss room had two doors. The first lead to the old tunnel system. The second lead to the staircase for the lowest level where the safe zone was. That room was a sad little affair for the moment. Half the size of the boss room and empty it had a neglected atmosphere.

It didn’t bother me though. I would have to add some amenities for those delving deeper when I had some business. A time that was too far off to worry about for the moment. I didn’t plan to take on more victims for the rest of the year.

I was going to focus on building things up rather. Not sweating losing all my points on an ill-advised kill. A decision I was calling the “No Tip” strategy after the fucker who’d cost me two entire points. It was all I could do since I didn't have an option to filter who entered my dungeon.

Looking at my layout as I procrastinated adding to it, I was struck by an idea. Taking some of the layout sketching tiles I created a tunnel. It ran from my side of the mountain to the other side. Only a single tile was between it and being completely open. I felt confident about which side I’d chosen to open shop on, but that might change.

The connection alarm appeared in a corner, so I used a few mana to experiment and bought exterior plots. They ran from the mouth of the dungeon to the entrance of the tunnel. As soon as they connected, the alarm disappeared. The discovery left me giggling as it provided a new opportunity for building.

Behind the exterior plots, I created cave-like rooms in the stone. For the moment that was enough. I'd need to invest a great deal of mana to make anything interest. Even so, I felt happy. I'd be able to model the exterior to do something eye-catching.

It also gave me a fast getaway option if things got too intense on one side. A couple of tiles of stone moved around, and I'd be able to change which side was open in an instant. A handy feature in itself and the tunnel could be used as a through fair for travelers.

Mountains were hard to cross so I could even get away with a modest toll. I didn't need money since I could make it but that wasn't a good practice. I needed real coins rather than counterfeit. The coins I could make were undisguisable from real as far as I knew. The problem was that they were created outside of the local economy.

Possibly outside of resource scarcity even. That meant I had an infinite amount of them and that was never good. It would be easy to do something stupid and cause a collapse. It had happened a couple of times in the history of my world.

One rich man on his pilgrimage to mecca had been so giving with gold that he'd devalued it. He'd spent years after repairing the market by buying it back. That was a level of involvement with the locals that didn't appeal to me.

“Ugh…” I groaned to myself, my brain maxing out as I tried to think about potential local impact. It was important but also not, at least for the moment.

“Something wrong?” Stalin asked, sounding lazy rather than concerned.

“Death from above!” The lady hound called from the diving spot before leaping in with vigor enough to send lava flinging at me. I laughed as the sizzling feeling of it contacting with my flesh tickled a bit. Insulted enough to lose his composure Staling burst from my side to jump in and start flinging lava back at her. Watching them play was relaxing enough that I unclenched and forgot my economic woes.

Settling in a little deeper into the lava I checked on the deconstruction tab. I still had a while before the sword was reduced to its constituent parts. Thinking about what to do I looked at my design options. I didn’t feel enthusiastic about them or enlarging my current floorplans. I did take a moment to increase the distance between them to about ten feet. It would allow space for most traps and make it difficult for someone to blast through the floor to a lower level.

I looked through my available puzzle’s and traps but didn’t feel any inspiration. They needed to fit the theme I’d yet to develop. Trying to motivate myself I looked through options for décor in the shop and was disappointed again. They were bland cave features based on my current location and the tiles I’d converted. Things like stalactites and some junk in the mine from its period of human occupation.

Wanting a change of pace, I decided that it was a good moment to get caught up on my correspondences. I wrote to Agony first since I had something to share finally.

Hey!

That guy sounds like a douche. Hope he's not being rude to you.

I've had a crazy couple days, sending you the logs so you can see.

If you want to come hangout, feel free. I installed a pool!

The message was brief, but I added screenshots of the build log and notices. Combined with footage of the events, I thought it painted a telling portrait of that madness. My aim wasn't to compare miseries though. I hoped it would cheer him up after having to deal with the dumb dick from the tutorial who’d yelled at him. Customer service jobs were always shit.

I added a picture of my layout and one of myself and the hounds lounging in the lava for kicks. I was serious about the invitation. I hoped I'd get a couple of days to spruce things up before he accepted. The break room was okay, but it lacked a real sense of style in my eyes.

With the reply I was looking forward out of the way that left the one I wasn't stoked about. I almost deleted the message from Mephisto as I felt shy a second time. Agony was an adorable elemental spirit who I knew in person. This guy was someone I knew nothing about. So, for no reason at all, my brain started assuming he’d be judging for how I responded.

It was a thought that annoyed me as soon as it formed. Fuck him if that was how he was and fuck me for assuming that based on nothing. I was going to write him back if only to spite the little self-hate voice in my head.

Hi Mephisto,

It’s nice to hear from a neighbor. Things have been hectic, but I feel like I'm getting the hang of things. Maybe we can chat and share building tips later.

All the best to you.

There should have been a comma instead of a period and my name but that was a to-do that was still far down on the list. Having burned about ten minutes I looked at my contacts, wondering if I should drop a note to Steve. He’d said I should contact him if I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.

My interface had included a slave contract by default. I had no idea what sort of trouble stir up if I got too involved with management, even on a friendly basis. It was still, probably, a good idea to try and be professionally communicative.

He'd seemed like he wanted to be helpful before. Freezing him out without any cause might end with me losing out on valuable resource. I decided to go the professional route and typed a very brief message.

Hello Steve,

Just wanted to let you know I'm getting settling in fine. Thank you for the opportunity!

With that done I decided enough was enough. Sitting around enjoying the pool wasn’t doing anything for my creativity so I floated out. The lava sheeted off my form like water, not sticking at all unlike with the dogs. I needed to get off my ass and start examining the mine in more depth.

“I’m going to explore. Call me if anything comes up.” I called to the hounds. Stalin turned to answer but the lady hound jumped on him to dunk him in the lava. He came up sputtering and splashing at her in revenge and I left laughing.

I’d done a cursory exploration before activating my core but hadn’t had time to map it out fully. Instead, when I created my floor plan, I’d rerouted connection points between it and the old system. They became accessible only by a chokepoint I’d created in the boss room.

I could have cut them off but without knowing anything about local ecology I’d felt bad. Caves could have some cool ecosystems. Denying them surface contact might destroy them.

Unlike a normal explorer, my map kept me from getting lost. Unfortunately, unlike in the dungeon, it didn’t alert me to interesting things. I had an advantage but was hunting for treasure the old-fashioned way.

Not knowing much about the mine, I threw random bits of rock into my inventory. Whenever I spotted a different looking one in it went. Once they were in my inventory, I could examine the info on it with ease. I wasn’t that interested in the general composition but wanted to figure out what the mine had been for.

Marble was common but I doubted that it had been the sought-after element. First, because tunnels weren’t squared off for slab excavations. Second, because the deposits were still common enough to warrant the mine being open. I also failed to find any indication of a catastrophe that might have led to its closure even if that had been the case. There were no signs of cave-ins or gas leaks that I could find.

It increased my sense of certainty that humans and dwarves had been after something else. They'd only left when they couldn’t find it anymore, in an orderly fashion. A certainty that didn't make my search any more interesting. Even with my unnaturally perfect dark vision, floating around collecting rocks and human junk was boring.

I didn’t get excited until I found a rusted mine cart and a bit of track that I threw in my inventory. I found it suspicious that the track didn’t connect to anything at first. After a brief inspection, I noticed that the cart was too damaged to move. Full of marble chips it had likely been too heavy to bother with when the tunnel was abandoned. That also explained the single piece of track. Everything leading up to it had been salvaged but that piece had been trapped.

Waste not, want not. I upgraded it to new condition which removed the damage. The piece of track came next and was soon glitteringly new. The marble chips it contained separated into piles in my inventory. They were based on what trace elements they contained.

A few even had gemstones in them which I planned to refine. My enthusiasm restored I looked at my map to plan my next move. I was at the end of the tunnel and it didn’t connect to anything at that point. Working backward I started exploring its side branches.

They yield dead ends, broken pickaxe handles, and the occasional smashed lamp. Like the mine cart, I started upgrading them to new condition. Even if they weren’t doing anything for me now, they might be all I had to decorate within the end.

The timer on the sword’s deconstruction went off when I was halfway done with a branching side spur. I paused to look at what I’d received. I checked the description of the flask of basilisk venom and then moved on. The corroded Gilnamar interested me more. I could use it where I had no idea what to do with the venom.

“Research Gilnamar.” I thought and was rewarded with a pop-up.

Gilnamar (Legendary)

A metal that develops from iron exposed to high concentrations of earth mana. Rarely naturally occurring it was once a major export of the mage king’s empire. Several colleges were devoted expressly to its creation. The method was lost after the death of the fifth mage king and the empire's collapse. The mythology that developed around it led to the near-extinction of silver giants.

A metal culled from the blood of silver giants it grants strange powers to a blade but curses its bearer. Those who wield blades made of it will be unstoppable in combat. In all other things, they find misfortunate.

I put the bar of metal in the refinement window. Immediately I received a notice that I’d need to add twenty more units to upgrade it. Annoying but not insurmountable. I paid and soon had a grade E Glinamar bar without the corrosion damage.

Going to the crafting interface my displeasure doubled. I needed ten bars to recreate the sword. A development which made me question if that sword had been useable. I could all but hear it shattering as it collided with another blade.

Ignoring the inconvenience, I bought the needed bars. I didn't go to craft the sword afterward this time. Instead, I refined the enamel and leather. I already had D grade leather, but I wanted to match it to the blade. Refinement brought it up to S grade. It still rated as common, but I wasn’t sure how to increase that value and left it for the moment.

I did the same with the enamel and received three colors. Red, yellow, and green which gave me an idea. Putting green into the deconstruct tab I was pleased to see it would be rendered into blue and yellow. I didn't hesitate to start the process.

With primary colors at my disposal, I could have some real fun on later projects. Looking at my other supplies I found the cloth dye's I'd obtained from the Savex uniforms. They included black, yellow, and red. It was disappointing not to have blue, but I refined them as well.

I started crafting the sword and the timer informed me it would take half a day. That was a pretty large amount of time to kill. Getting all the materials for the sword and future projects sorted out cost me thirty mana. It left me with twenty mana for the rest of the day. A fact I didn't mind since I was about to be one legendary sword richer.

I took my time finishing the exploration of the tunnel I’d been working on. An hour process that once I finished, I couldn’t summon enough interest to do again. Instead, I headed back to the boss room where I found the hounds napping snuggled with each other. They woke when I got near, tails wagging. I took a couple of minutes to pet them, enjoying the company after spending hours alone.

Going back to my layout I added some of the items I’d found to test the theme for the entry-level. In the end, I had a reasonably polished first draft with a basic human mine theme. If I’d just wanted to get things done, I might even have left them as was. Instead, I was already making a list of changes to implement once the days reset occurred.

A list that didn’t interest me as much as it should have. Beyond not being inspired by the decor I had at my disposal my mind kept drifting back to the sword and its owner. Going by the amount of metal I’d received from deconstruction and the amount needed to refine it, the sword had been in a hopeless state. That the boy would have carried it around even so, even used it, nagged at me.

“So, good news, bad news.” I said, realizing halfway through that I wasn’t sure what was what. It might all have been bad news from a certain perspective.

“I’ve decided not to kill the boy, but I’m going to send him on his way in the morning.” I said and the female hound tilted her head while Stalin harrumphed.

“I have to give him a potion. You can come to watch if you like, but I want you to stay back far enough that you don’t hurt him if you do.” I added and Stalin whined at that request.

Even so, they both came and did as I asked. Stopping far enough back in the tunnel to only make it a bit warm near the room where the boy was, they waited. Two potions remained in my inventory. The second hydration potion and a better grade healing potion.

I put the second hydration potion in the backpack I’d left in the corner of the room. The sword was rested against the wall next to the bag. Feeling prepared I started to uncork the healing potion. That when I noticed a bit of bare shoulder peeking out of the blanket he was under. I’d forgotten that I’d taken all his stuff, leaving him naked.

Sighing at my idiocy I took a set of clothes from my inventory and set them next to him. As I did an idea occurred to me. I’d put the locket in his bag directly by selecting it as the destination. Trying the same with him I was relieved to find that the clothes went on him without a hitch. With that established, I moved the locket back to his pocket where I’d stolen it from.

Feeling like we’d be able to have at least a semi-productive conversation now I gave him the healing potion. Unlike the first one, it didn’t restore his hit points right away. Instead, it took away the negative status and doubled his healing rate. It would allow him to wake up naturally once he was recovered.

He slept peacefully until morning, and I kept working while he did. Love or hate the aesthetic, once my mana regenerated, I refined the appearance of the entry-level. I hoped to find a satisfactory combination, despite not seeing much potential.

I bought natural-looking tiles to replace the smooth ones I'd used to sketch the layout. It helped a little but it was a process that required tinkering and extra purchases. Fortunately, the sketching tiles were easy to reuse. I placed them lower down where the next stack would go.

I looked at the design and thought it was fine for the entrance but didn’t feel satisfied. Unable to do anything about that I moved the employee lounge to the boss room in the lower stack. I warned the hounds of the move. I felt like it would be, at best, rude to treat them like furniture. They opted to walk down, curious about the new layout.

That was where my enthusiasm ran out. Needing another change of pace, I decided to play with the enamel colors. When I thought about mixing them a color interface appeared. It was simple and gave me a break down of all the available hues that could be mixed. When I selected one, a bottle of enamel of the same color was produced. A simple but satisfying process.

With an array of colors at my disposal, I decided to try decorating a lantern as a practice piece. Obligingly, a window opened that resembled the old school image editors. It had a few tool options and all of my enamel mixtures at my disposal. That alone was nice, but it also had an undo feature and layers as well.

Feeling gleeful I selected a fine-tipped brush. To my surprise a solid black one appeared in the air, a bit of paint on the end of it matching the color I’d chosen. It was the grassy green I'd chosen to test out on the lantern.

Curious about the system I reached out to touch the image of the lantern and found it wasn't photo-real. It was the physical lantern itself suspended in space. For a moment I felt a sense of something almost divine as I played with the interface’s capabilities.

My elation only grew as worked through every brush tool before moving on. There were four tips in total at my disposal with adjustable size and a flood fill. A limited but highly versatile selection.

I found carving tools and a stamp function by clicking on icons. I could sculpt and cut metal and stone alike with the carving tools. The stamp, when set to erase, would etch and when set to add would emboss. The last tool worked like a physical one but could erase any media.

I went through many layers of junk art before I calmed down. Next, I had to focus and gain mastery of the toolsets. A process would take time but which I understood the basics of after a short while. I could have spent days doodling with a carving tool in stone and never got bored but forced myself to focus.

I returned to my original goal and deleted all the practice layers on the lantern. Overcorrecting I made the lantern’s design a little boring. On top of the grass green, I added a yellow scrollwork embellishment. Feeling that wasn't enough I added a little min-max indicator next to the oil control nob in red. A nice but utilitarian design in my opinion. Feeling pleased with myself I put it back in my inventory and decided to check on the boy.

Floating down the hallway and checking my map I could see his status. He was fully recovered along with his hit points. A good sign even though he was still sleeping. At an earlier point in the day, I'd felt like I should talk to him, offer him the kind of deal I'd given the others.

Now I wasn't so sure. He hadn't seen anything damaging to me. It would be fine to let him leave in ignorance. Possibly better for him even. the guards had complied but that didn't mean they had been happy to have dealings with me.

I felt conflicted as I approached the room where I'd stashed him. My melancholic mood a lifesaver as I floated over the remains of the bandits and paused. Laying dismembered and burned in the tunnel they were a gruesome sight. Time and the fact the hounds had been feeding on them hadn’t added anything pleasant to the scene.

I chucked the bodies into the tunnel in front of the employee lounge. A shiver that reminded me of a cold sweat running down my spine as I did. Yep, just have a nice chat with the boy about how I wasn’t going to kill him then have him walk out to that scene. That wouldn’t have been trauma-inducing at all.

“Mary mother of fuck!” I swore violently. I hastily checked to see if I’d left anything else horrific out. There wasn’t anything that leaped out at me and I cleaned up the blood using my inventory function. That caused some gruesome thing to be populated to my store in response. A fact I didn’t bother worrying about since no one could see but me. Instead, I was racking my brain for any other potential fuck-ups.

The other members of the Savex soldier’s group. I’d raided their bodies but left them outside, for roughly two days. I owned the tile they were on and shoved them down into the ground. What I did was too violent and inconsiderate to be called a burial, but it happened. The last thing I wanted to be known for was being the naked death dungeon.

“Beware ye, o’ adventures! This one doesn’t just kill ye, it takes yer dignity!” I could picture the rough sound of a one-eyed crazy man spreading the tale from bar to bar. It would be the literal death of me if adventurers were too weirded out to approach my dungeon and I failed to make my tithe.

“Ow! Shit!” A voice that didn’t belong to me or the hound said followed by a clattering of metal. It seemed the boy was awake, and not a moment too soon.