It's been a few months since the light-fingered old lady Marie was caught lifting items from not only my city, but from my dungeon too. Since then a lot has happened in my dungeon city.

After managing to establish trade routes with almost all the major cities in Ishda, the people of Varona have never been happier. Not that they weren't happy in the first place, but through Soul Guide's eyes the majority of my human population have a very-healthy green glow. There are even two blue souls kicking around loving life.

Obtaining a green soul is the first step towards the question marks of tomorrow. Not that we know what they are yet, or what they mean. Even Me has no information relating to them, or the strangely-titled next level. At the minute, the whole notion has been shelved until I'm ready to harvest a soul. I'm not even sure how I'll go about that, but it's a problem for future Abi. I'm sure she'll be able to work it out.

Over the last few months, Varona's residential district has more than doubled in size and numbers. After merchants had made their first visit to us, they returned with people as well as more goods on their second. Even now, the numbers keep increasing as people arrive at our mountain city on a daily basis adding to the population and most importantly my DP.

They're all looking to make a home for themselves in the city I've created here. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the excessively good-looking current residents. The overall beauty of the ex-residents of Gorn, the ones that arrived here a few months ago, has risen dramatically too, leading me to believe that making beautiful people really is my superpower. Me still vehemently disagrees with my idea, however, claiming I have no such power. Although, with how good my personal assistant looks himself, he's not really one to talk.

Anyway, more people means more problems, but that's nothing more Assassins and Mages can't fix. And as soon as you've weeded out the rotten batches, the rest manage to fit in quite well.

Deputy Mayor Sacha and the city Council have also been hard at work setting up our economy. Somehow, they managed to succeed and currency now flows through my city as though it was there all along. It still baffles me that she knew what she was doing. I mean, I created her and have no idea how she managed to pull it off. I've never been the best person to hold the money as Anya would say.

I'd be lost without my family, that's for sure. Not only Sacha, but every single one of them play an important role in keeping Varona going. From the Cultivators to the Guard Captains, the Task Master to the Potion Master and the Gourmet to the Council. Everyone plays their part, supporting the others around them without even realising. Even if they did, I'm sure they'd still help regardless because that's the type of place we're trying to build here.

Other than the constant expansion to cater for the growing population that keeps on accumulating, only a few choice buildings have undergone upgrades since then. Ali's restaurant, The Crescent Cafe, which everyone had taken to calling Ali's, has even been renamed that way since its upgrade.

The restaurant itself is now more of a chain business. With each building looking homely and welcoming when you walk through the doors, the Gourmet employs more than a hundred staff members and owns ten establishments all over town.

I also had to upgrade Lucinda's place too. It thrives with activity everyday and is one of the most popular buildings in town. Unsurprisingly, the oddly-shaped building looks even stranger than it did before.

Now more factory than building, the strange feature still manages to fit into the street where it was previously. It has an extremely-large furnace inside and four chimneys are attached to the outside of the property. None of them look like they are connected to the one inside, but they all pump out multicoloured smoke nonetheless. This doesn't dissuade customers however, and the sight of rainbow coloured smoke lets them know that she's open. Lucinda also has a small staff of her own now too and they cater for more customers on a daily basis than she did prior to the feature's upgrade.

Tilly's Clinic, The Surgery of Soothing, was the last building to see an upgrade. Unfortunately, it didn't keep in line with the other features and the Cleric's name isn't mentioned in its title. Maybe it's because she's contracted and I didn't create her, but who knows?

What instantly became the most grandiose named building I have ever heard of, The Royal Halls of Regeneration, is now one of the largest buildings in my city. It has four floors and over two hundred rooms. Other than the ever growing list of guards, what started out as the Hut of Healing now boasts the second-largest number of employees working at a single establishment.

Hana and Mira are in charge of the majority of my family. They're also in command of the few thousand Tironians who decided to join the guard too. It's a good job that my guys coordinate together so well as all that's left for the ladies to do is train the humans.

My dungeon is a well-oiled machine after all.

Other than the upgrades and the growing population, the mountain-city of Varona is not the only part of me that has evolved during this time. The home I share with my family has undergone some major interior and exterior changes.

Below the seventh floor, Barry had hand carved an entire maze all by his lonesome. Not wanting to let his magnificent work of art and effort go to waste, I bought the entire area with my points. Now that I'm a higher level and boast a stronger foundation, I'm able to acquire areas that the hard-working Mythril Golem has cleared out free from backlash.

The maze itself is almost the same size as the forest floor that Trixie and her pack reside on. Barry even added a stairwell that is identical to the ones on the floors above. Damn that Golem is amazing. If it wasn't for those Gachas I would never have gotten the deep-diving DP machine so easily and my growth as a dungeon would be miniscule at best. Even though I rake in an absurd amount of points every night, it wouldn't have been possible without the efforts of Barry.

After the maze had become part of my dungeon, I swapped the entire eighth floor with the first and once again placed my Core in a room behind Veris. My first Boss. The Dodgy Dominatrix. After those adjustments were made, I then began smashing out new dungeons floors as though there was no tomorrow.

Each floor has a different layout, but all the monsters I chose were the same. Notice how I use the term monsters as every floor has been filled with Goblins. That's right. Horrible fucking Goblins.

Disgusting Goblins. Normal Goblins. Smelly Goblins. HobGoblins. Ugly Goblins. Dirty Goblins. Reluctantly, I even chucked an extremely dirty, smelly and profusely-ugly Goblin Mage in there for good measure as their leader and the final boss on floor twenty one. I couldn't care less about the little green bastards and wholeheartedly encourage adventurers to kill them mercilessly. Hence the term monsters.

What were once floors one to eight, from Barry's maze all the way down to the Sanctuary and my Core, are now floors twenty two to twenty nine. They were moved down out of harm's way as I had finally opened my dungeon. A dungeon not owned by a Lord, or a money-making government. A dungeon dedicated to helping Tironians evolve, grow and potentially advance to the question marks of what comes next.

Normally, twenty-one floors of Goblins wouldn't be too difficult for a well seasoned party. Especially not one whose members level in the twenties and who are passed the first class advancement. My Goblins however, as with everything else, are on a whole other level. After deliberately adding more DP to the ones below floor ten, the adventures aiming to train themselves inside me haven't been able to progress any further than them.

Also, after creating a total of 1000 Goblins, I unlocked the strangest feature yet. Even stranger than the Hay Bale. The Goblinator. That's not its real name, but I thought it sounded better and named it myself. It's a special feature that spits out a low-ranked Goblin every few seconds until the capacity for that floor has been reached.

How does it know when it has reached capacity? I have no idea. I didn't even know my floors had a capacity limit, but apparently they do. Me explained how it works to me, as he does, but as usual it went in one ear and out the other as he was throwing some very technical words around that were above my comprehension limit.

Sacha would have probably understood it though.

At 1000DP each, I placed a Goblinator on each one of the first ten floors. Would you believe it then unlocked the Hobgoblinator? Of course you would. I'm grateful that the rule of ten worked on the monster creating feature because I wasn't sure that it was going too. It's almost cheating in a sense as the Goblinator took 1000 Goblins to unlock. I would have expected that I had to create the same amount of Hobgoblins to unlock their self-creating feature, but I won't complain.

I put Hobgoblinators on floors eleven-to-twenty with the DP-enhanced Goblins and unlocked the ElderGoblinator. I don't even have Elder Goblins unlocked on my list of monsters yet, but I went ahead and placed an ElderGoblinator on the twenty-first floor anyway. The fake dungeon boss, Obling the Goblin Mage, needed some minions after all.

He's the only named Goblin out of the thousands that roam my floors and if I'm being honest, I didn't even want to give him a moniker. Bosses and Minibosses contribute to the appearance of my mountain and the last thing I want is to be known as is Goblin Mountain.

Fuck that!

That's why there's only one named gob on all twenty-one floors. Each individual had to have a single Boss as well, but they all answer to Obling for some reason. Maybe because he's the highest-costing monster in their evolution.

Anyway, even with the anxiety-inducing little bastards roaming around inside me, they're proving to be very useful. Simon, Katrina and Anon have been placed in charge of Dungeon admittance and Sophie helps out in that department too. There's no entrance fee, but we keep a record of everyone going in and out of me just to keep track of them. Just in case the Goblins do manage to kill someone.

Even though my aim is to help the people of Varona grow, I can't expect that to happen without a few casualties. That's why we keep a register of sorts. If someone doesn't make it out of the dungeon and I can't find them inside it either, then it means they're no longer with us.

As sad as it is, death is the actual price for entry and you might not leave my grounds alive. That said, it's not like we force people to enter the dungeon. The only people that have entered so far are the ones that work in the Barracks as guards to train.

Them and a handful of adventurers that turned up a while ago. They've been living here for a little while now and frequently visit my dungeon. They haven't made it past the large groups of Hobgoblins yet, but they are ok for low-leveled humans. Not that it matters, I plan to add even more floors now that the dungeon is open to make sure my Core stays safe.

It damn well needs to be safe. With the single Goblin Mage chosen as the fake Main Boss and the twenty-one floors that I've added to my dungeon, the size of the mountain that Varona sits at the foot of has risen exponentially. This led to a few awkward questions being raised, but members of the City Council handled it like pros in true Abi fashion.

They kept passing if off until the questions stopped coming.

Legends!

In all fairness, the growing mountain holds no impact on the quality of life my citizens receive and if anything its size now acts as the perfect landmark for our city. You couldn't miss the bizarre-coloured sight if you tried.

Anyway, it's not just the dungeon divers of my city that put their lives on the line by venturing inside me. I too put my own life at risk now that I'm inviting them in. If someone stronger than Light happened to turn up out of nowhere, ignored the Categorisers and my rules, managed to reach the Sanctuary and slaughter everyone inside, then I'd be absolutely screwed. Up until Marie the Kleptomaniac Space Mage arrived, I was under the impression that there weren't any Tironians that had made it past level 40.

It's a good job that I fully trust in my family's strength and abilities.