‘Now Cargo, As i understand it you are claiming the recently discovered metaregion as “your territory”. Could you explain what you mean by that and how you are justifying it?’

Mickey made sure to keep his eyes on the mayor's little tophat and not on their twitching pedipalps.

‘Well as a dimensional I can influence some metaregions, especially newer ones like this one, making them a bit more friendly and useful. Though it’s more forestry than farming. Since I got to this one first and have shown interest in guiding its development, other dimensional meta’s will leave it alone so they don’t step on my toes. If i’m not actively involved in its use for military, economic or research reasons eventually you’ll be knocking on my door asking me to fix something you broke. By being in charge of the region from the get go I can maximise its usefulness and prevent problems from ever happening in the first place.’

Lachesis tapped out a reply before the artificial voice came from the speakers.

‘And you’ll do this by founding, and I quote here. “A video game adventurers guild.”.’

Mickey rubbed the back of his head self-consciously.

‘Yeah. It sounds a little silly but metaregions respond better when you work with them, and this one’s running a videogame or roleplaying game theme, so it'll be more effective this way, trust me.’

‘ “Sigh” So how exactly is this “guild” going to be organised?’

‘Ahh, Let’s see four divisions, General, where most of the delvers or adventurers will go, Operations which will handle the actual doing such as training, scouting and the like, logistics which will handle logistic, basic equipment, and buying and selling the stuff we pullout of the region as well as keeping track of the number, and finally there’s administration which will handle requests, certification, payroll and the like. Oh and there’ll be me as guildmaster but I’ll be honest, my plan is to push all of those things onto other people and to only get involved when shit hits the fan. Which it will.’

The dog sized spider paused before typing out a response.

‘Very well. I’ll leave the management of the metaregion in your hands. At least until the first major scandal, where we will reassess the situation. I’ll have someone email you the paperwork.’

‘Cool.’

With that done mickey left the office and headed home.

On the way there he paused briefly at one of his remote access nodes to deal with the influx of psionic energy he had garnered from the recent investigation. While the expanded capacity meant he wasn’t overburdened he still wanted to expand since he felt unsatisfied with how small the early levels were. to this end he was going to make a single large level which he would hopefully fill with a forest. This would fulfil a few objectives of his. The first was storage. Mickey hypothesised that since psi energy was produced by living things, that if he dumped it into a living plant by killing the plant he could recoup his investment.

The second was resources. While his dungeon would give skills and such there was no natural loot. He couldn’t add ore deposits to the cave levels since he couldn’t create it from nothing and would have to take the ore from somewhere else, defeating the point. However with minimal effort he could create a gas exchange with the outside world. This would allow him to harvest carbon dioxide which would be used by plants to grow into loot. Metawood and possibly even alchemical ingredients. true functional alchemy wasn’t a thing yet, but with the right skills and recipes Mickey could fix that.

The third was self-gratification. Frankly Mickey wanted something impressive. Something that would make people step back and go ‘Wow.’

Mickey wasn’t prideful by nature, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t with ego. And he liked forests. Having a private one appealed to him.

As for the layout he settled on a grid of hexagons that could be rotated or swapped around ensuring that the forest couldn’t be mapped and that it would be easy to add or remove features. Originally Mickey wanted to use octagons, since he prefered the number but unfortunately he found that you can't make a grid of octagons without getting complicated or adding in other shapes.

He separated the bare stone hexs with a rim of stalagmites so he wouldn’t lose track. Before he could even start growing plants though he needed a large amount of soil and extra stone. He could cheat on how much stone was needed by stretching the stone into a thin film on top of warped space.

To Mickey's mind the dungeon resembled a hose or tube wrapped into a very complicated knot. This meant that if you dug through a wall in one room you would break through into another room on that level, but not necessarily in a logical way. Exiting one side of the tube would always result in you entering another part of the tube. There was for practical purposes no exterior to the dimensional space, rather it looped in on itself in a way that made Mickey's head hurt if he thought about it too hard.

However since the plants need their roots to run through the soil Mickey couldn't cheat by folding space.

As he pulled into the driveway to the house he shared with Eleanor he considered a couple of problems their relationship was likely to face. First she was going to get curious about Mickeys ‘Mysterious Past’. When they first started dating Mickey made it clear that yes he had a past, and no he wasn’t going to share unless it became necessary. The past was in the past. Let it stay there.

Secondly Elanore was also Laminae. And Laminae was a good doing do-gooder with a strong sense of justice. And Mickey was a little bit on the dark side. Not evil but rather his unspoken past had enough evidence of his pragmatic choices and mercenary decisions to raise eyebrows. And while Mikey was (mostly) retired this venture was on the shady side and would inevitably pull him back in. Especially since he fully intended to tap some old friends for manpower. Lamine wouldn't like that but Eleanor would understand… He hoped.

She did not.

The trip through the dungeon inflamed Eleanor's questions in idle curiosity into full blown prying. Naturally Mickey had gotten stubborn and even more secretive and the whole thing exploded into a messy argument about trust.

(‘You don’t trust me with your past, I can keep secrets, What secrets are you HIDING!?’

‘You don’t trust me with my past, my secrets are unimportant, you don’t need to know all my secrets!’)

As a result their house was filled with angry silence and Mickey was banished to the couch, which he promptly replaced with an actual bed.

The upside of this is in order to hide from the troubles at home he buried himself in his new job of dungeon management. Things thus proceeded at a rapid pace and before long he found himself inspecting the new guildhall located near the portal while waiting for his old friends (and new hires) to arrive.