With no company but the sound of his own footsteps and the seeds of brooding thoughts swirling around his head, Vee walked through the doors of Crestheart. The day’s runs were over and all the minions and traps had all been disabled, but the [Dungeon Master] still warily looked from side to side – as well as up and down – as he made his way through the first floor. It never hurt to be careful.

Do and the rest of the [Dungeon Maintainers] had been through already to repair the various damages the rooms had taken that day, but Vee noticed an uncomfortable amount of dirt and stains on the walls and floors. Reaching through his bond to the Light Section of his orchestra, Vee requested a pair of cleaners to come and scrub the dungeon down. For good measure, he used [Would You Kindly] to ensure that it was done daily from then on.

When he reached Mr. Chills’ room, Vee stopped walking. He couldn’t explain why he picked that room specifically to do so – or even why his [Dungeon Master] instincts had nagged him all day about the need to come into the dungeon like this and take a look around in the first place – but he hoped that he’d eventually spot whatever it was that he subconsciously sought.

Through the poor light of the flickering blue torches on the front and back walls, his eyes were ultimately drawn to the center of the room itself, where his ghastly construct normally waited for adventurers. It wasn’t there now, of course, having been taken back into storage by Do and the rest of the [Dungeon Maintainers] earlier, but Vee could still feel something of its presence in the air.

Activating [Third Sight], the [Ghost Maestro] watched the swirling ectoplasm until he sifted through the cacophony. Once he could make out individual shapes, he followed a handful of thready ghosts making their way around the room. When they approached him, the [Ghost Maestro] reached out to them all in turn and invited them to approach. They shimmered in his hands like fireflies as he inquired about their natures.

Hope. Fear. Frustration. Triumph. Anger. Pain. Acceptance. Surprise. Fun.

A fitting assortment of emotions, Vee thought as he watched the spirits vanish one by one back into the ethereal, only to have another variant of the same idea appear a moment later. Fitting indeed. He looked around again. The room seemed like a good approximation of Crestheart itself: filled with possibilities, but in need of clearer vision.

“There’s too much going on and at the same time not enough,” Vee said quietly to the empty room as he pondered the question that was blossoming in his skull. “I’ve got to start making some hard decisions. Crestheart, what exactly do I want you to be?”

The dungeon didn’t answer him, which was to be expected, but Vee felt his dark ponderings growing more insistent as he considered his own curiosity.

It was a simple question on its face, but the more Vee thought about it, the less clear his vision became. He’d been reading about other dungeons during his spare time, and he’d come to realize that he’d been wrong about dungeon sports as a kid. Not all dungeons were the same. It wasn’t even close.

There were dungeons that did their best to stay modern, changing from top to bottom as spectator tastes and preferences made certain traps, minions and stylings obsolete or undesirable. These adherents to the so-called “dungeon meta” were many, and most of them were much bigger than Crestheart. However, they didn’t tend to stay popular for long, swinging between boom and bust each time their [Dungeon Master] had to navigate the ever shifting tide of consumer preferences.

On the other hand, the most famous dungeons on the continent were carefully curated experiences that somehow remained timeless. Built on long-lasting reputations sometimes centuries in the making, their unchanging nature was part of their appeal. Unfortunately, Vee didn’t have that long to build a brand identity, and from what he’d gathered, the [Dungeon Lords] of those hallowed places were rather cliquey.

He'd dealt with enough people like that to last a dozen lifetimes, and had no desire to go and try and ingratiate himself with more now.

A good number of dungeons served as tourist attractions for their home cities, focusing their themes on local industries, or taking inspiration from famous community members. Speculative or “Creative” dungeons offered possible visions of the future or echoes of the past, allowing [Futurists] or [History Buffs] to explore the worlds of their respective imaginations.

Even beyond those variations, though, there were yet other ways dungeons differentiated themselves from the rest of their competitors. Some focused on catering to new, low leveled adventurers, while others dealt only in high stakes celebrity dungeon runs that attracted viewing audiences from around the continent in daring and dangerous bouts where the adventurers genuinely risked life and limb for glory.

So far, Crestheart had been kind of an amalgamation of some of those things. Sort of like a slime, it was currently an amorphous blob loosely defined by its usage of ghosts and – to a lesser, more recent extent – ice traps and minions. But was that all Vee ever wanted it to be?

No, it wasn’t.

He thought about how much he’d enjoyed watching all the low level adventurers get stronger as the result of their efforts in the dungeon. It’d been immensely satisfying to see those grinding in attempt to join the open call – like Alisanne the teenage [Fighter] – make rapid progress, and when the challengers earned new levels, classes or skills as the result of their descents into Crestheart, Vee had basked in their reflected glory.

He'd also enjoyed the thrill and challenge of finding ways to defeat those who plumbed Crestheart’s depths. Testing his wits against the adventurer’s strength provided an endless amount of fascinating puzzles to solve, and Vee wanted to do more of that.

However, as it was, Crestheart didn’t really excel at either of those. Instead, it straddled the middle of both worlds, and as the only dungeon in Oar’s Crest, Vee believed that his creation needed to have a clearer purpose. He needed it to do more, to be more, and his thoughts grew darker still.

As he walked along the narrow hallway where the sliding ghost and some of the skeleton lancers harried runners, Vee let his mind drift over to his quest to help rebuild Oar’s Crest, and the Expectation around his shoulders stirred. For a moment, the [Dungeon Master] was tempted to ask the snake dragon for its opinion regarding what he should do, but it passed quickly. Asking now would defeat the entire purpose of this trip. He was in charge here; he needed to be the one making the decisions.

His job as a [Dungeon Master] was to have a vision, and work to make it a reality. It was just hard to do properly, as there were a million different ideas and half-baked thoughts swirling around the young man’s skull. How was he supposed to sort through them? How was he supposed to pick what to focus on? What criteria did he use? How did he measure success?

It started feeling like too much, and Vee sucked in a sharp breath. During times like these, Vee’s father had often told him that it was important to keep from letting himself get overwhelmed by possibilities. Focus on the non-negotiables first, Tyrion Vales had oft-repeated. Everything else can wait until those are handled.

Like the disappointment he’d always been, Vee had a hard time following the advice, but he tried yet again.

His non-negotiable was simple: he had to pay Sacre back. Tomorrow was collection day, and though he didn’t feel like summoning Cecil to check the exact figures, Vee instinctively knew that the gap between how much the dungeon made and how much he needed to pay was nearly gone. Unless he found another source of revenue soon, he’d be eating into his reserves in another week or two and out of money in a few more months.

That wasn’t where he wanted to be, so that was priority number one. No doubts there.

After the loan was paid back though? Much harder to say. He wanted Crestheart to be great, but couldn’t decide what that meant in his heart. How about building Crestheart into something that could serve as an economic catalyst for the rest of Oar’s Crest? The Expectation liked that, but Vee pushed that goal aside too. It was too nebulous, too rife with ambiguity. So much so that it was nearly meaningless to say.

Tapping his boot against the nearest wall – how he wished he had a desk to drum his fingers against! – Vee mulled things over a little more and settled on “Improving Crestheart”.

Still a bit too platitude-y, but more concrete and surprisingly actionable.

While Vee believed that he needed to improve the dungeon’s minion diversity by expanding the menagerie and ordering new minions from the union, both of which he’d do as soon as he could, he figured the easiest thing to work on first would actually be to tighten Crestheart’s thematic cohesion so that each run of the dungeon told a “story”.

That story was a simple one. He had three exploratory levels to work with, so he’d split his minions and traps into three different themes. Ghosts and slimes on the first floor, skeletons and elementals on the second, and then ice traps and new minions on the third? Where did Mr. Chills fit into that? Vee frowned. Not a bad start, but more thought was needed.

Once he’d settled on a course to improvement, whatever that ended up being, Vee needed to find ways to attract as many people around the continent as possible. Building a long term enterprise that could serve as the basis for other economic developments wouldn’t work if his market was just the people in and around Oar’s Crest.

Hopefully Zeiken was making progress in that regard.

There were still far too many ideas for Vee to wade through in detail, but his spirit felt lighter. Or maybe that was just indigestion. He’d had some beans with his lunch.

Just one step at a time, Vee thought as he trudged deeper into the dungeon. Forward progress is all that matters.

It didn’t take much effort to find things that could be improved as he made his way to third floor. There were rooms that could have their layouts optimized, hallways that went on just a hair too long, and repetitive challenges that should be combined into more extreme versions of themselves. Like reading written words aloud as opposed to staring at them silently, Vee found that dungeon planning was an entirely different beast while walking through it instead of simply looking down at a sheet of paper or through his viewing crystal. Rooms flowed differently than he’d imagined, and sometimes he found that layouts he’d believed to be rather interesting were actually clunky in practice.

Taking out his tiny notebook and one of his favorite pens, Vee took note of all the things he wanted to change. By the time Vee walked into Alforde’s arena, it was a pretty long list. Here too, there were things that had outlived their purpose, but Vee needed to talk to Alforde first before making changes. This was his friend’s space, and the armorsoul should have some say in what happened to it. However, that didn’t stop Vee from brainstorming about what he might suggest. Like for example, the simple ring was effective, but Vee couldn’t help but imagine it’d be cooler if there were a few other supplementary platforms or hazards as well. Giving each battle a story of its own that wasn’t pre-determined sounded like a good thing to do. Didn’t it?

Floating platforms, minion hazards, using the teleporters to allow for more interesting movement options? A giant ectoplasm construct – tree shaped, maybe? – filled with the strongest wind skill crystals Hanako could make? The arena was a canvas, and Vee imagined himself a [Painter].

Well, maybe Future Vee would be, actually. He was kind of out ideas after that.

The last thing he checked was the treasure chest, and to his chagrin he saw that there was only a single reward pendant left.

Crap. He’d let himself get distracted by other things, as he had all too often before, and forgotten to seek out additional rewards for the dungeon.

Alright. New first priority for improving Crestheart: Find Thien. Barring that, acquire some other equivalent rewards to offer those who defeated the dungeon.

Tucking his hands into his pockets, Vee headed back up to the office. As he made his way back up the stairs, a notification appeared before his eyes and brought a smile to his face.

[Congratulations, you are now a Dungeon Master Level 20!]

[Wit +1]

[You can now use the Dungeon Loadouts Skill!]

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 29

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 20 (+1)

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 13

Wit: 32 (+1)

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 14

Plotting: 19

Charisma: 13

Devious Mind: 22

Leadership: 17

Guts: 13

Intimidating Presence: 10

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 5

Determination: 1

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 13

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 14

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 5

Might: 39

Wit: 12

Faith: 26

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 20

Intimidating Presence: 12

Heart of a Champion: 8

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 6

Vanity: 2

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

--~%@(%[email protected] &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#[email protected]!)~--, #[email protected]& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 38

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 15

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 8

Might: 1

Wit: 33

Faith: 13

Ambition: 27

Greed: 22

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 37

$#&*[email protected]!!

Loyalty: 46

Patience: 8

[#&%%%@%!#@__--#%]

[email protected]#!! @#[email protected][email protected]#

@#[email protected]%%^

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7