[Milestone Reached, Gold Spent]

  [Dungeon Core Advancement Available]

  Egbert read the words over and over in a mix of excitement and apprehension. Possibly a glorious upgrade, also possibly just some roundabout troll from the gods; there's only one way to find out.

  Egbert opened up his options with no small amount of trepidation. He wished he could roll his eyes as he read the disclaimer at the top.

  [All options are subject to immediate balancing adjustments by the system]

  [All unselected options will be added to the store at an appropriate price point]

  [Choose 1]

  *[Lord Of The Golden Hoard] [Store Price 50 Platinum]

  Your “affinity,” or at least your influence, on the loot bugs and loot bug-adjacent creatures in your dungeon is remarkable and unprecedented (not in a good way). If you really want to lean into the whole "fear my golden warriors" vibe you have unintentionally been cultivating, this will let you...interact with the world more directly… Why not make them everyone’s problem instead of just yours?

  Allows you to direct your loot bugs to accomplish tasks/raids/conquer the world. Outside of the confines of your dungeon. They will become more obedient to your commands (somewhat). And you will be able to view the world through the eyes of all loot bug minions. Yeah, that's right; you can get out of these halls finally.

  Well, that's honestly a freaking awesome option if just for the fact it would make the stubborn little bastards listen to me a bit more. It would be awful nice to get to visit some of the coin collectors' museums again, oh! And the shrine to Abictus, the accounting god—I haven’t said thanks to him in a long time.

  So mostly all upsides, and I have the option to reach out and bitch-slap a lord or mages tower...that's causing me issues via hordes of golden minions. Ha, just imagining dropping Bully into the mages academy and watching the carnage has me practically giddy. Alright, alright, what's my next option? As great as that is, it won't directly make me money.

  *[Shrine to Nomisa][ Store Price 1 Copper]

  The most glorious elucidating sculpture possible upon the mortal plane of existence. If you wanted to say thank you to...well, me...and get a shrine that will pull rich buggers from far and wide that's also perfect as a centerpiecefor whatever kind of rich people rat trap you build. Well then look no farther!

  Raises efficiency of [Gimme The Gold] as well as letting you know the net worth of everyone who has ever so much as mumbled a prayer in my general direction. Helpful to weed out the poor who you shouldn’t waste your time on. If that doesn’t sell it well, I'll give you a kickback from donations and tithes of 1%. Come on, you know you want to...use religion as a way to fleece the faithful.

  Haha! You wish! Wait...seriously, you priced it at one copper in the store...did you subsidize your own shrine? Well, of course I'm not going to pick it, but for a copper...fine, I'll buy your damn shrine after this, but it's going in some out-of-the-way corner. For some reason I don’t feel like the faithful adherents to the literal god of greed will be the most generous of tithers...

  *[Wireless Coin-Operated EVERYTHING] [50 Platinum]

  So you keep buying trap control panels and making me add alternative descriptions for damn near every item in the store so you can jury-rig things that aren't made to make money into making money. This is your solution to all of that: monetize the hell out of anything you want. (will also get rid of the damn toll item section and bastardization of the other categories you have caused). Every object you place in the dungeon can be linked to a coin slot with simple activation conditions. Every monster can be told to chill out a bit for enough coin. Creativity and how mean you want to be is the limit.

  Oh...well hello there, beautiful...I feel like you and I are about to make a vast sum of coins together. I can picture so, so many wonderful possibilities. Master coin slots are strewn throughout rooms with options that range from releasing the golden-shelled hoards for me to hunt. All the way to please gods, give me an overpriced healing potion.

  Bets...so, so many bets... Oh crap, I still need to read the rest, but I don’t see how they could top this.

  [Spatial Fuckery] [50 Platinum]

  Who needs to build outward when you can just keep making rooms impossibly large pocket dimensions that will give any mapmaker a stroke? The perfect choice for the coin-conscious dungeon that is worried about that exponentially scaling dungeon expansion cost. For a very reasonable fee you will be able to define dimensional entrance points that lead to rooms in your dungeon that can be ten times their actual size to start. Maximum spatial warping increases with dungeon fame.

  I mean, for a more traditional hall of horrors dungeon, this would be amazing. Make your deathtrap into a damned nightmare to navigate and throw them off their game. But for me…eventually I could see the merit, especially to stuff gold piles into, but for now I can barely afford to work on the rooms I do have. Oh, we have one more option.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  [Bindings Of The Dark] [70 Platinum]

  Bind your dungeon's essence to another plane of existence. Ever wonder how sometimes people get things far more powerful than they should for their level? Well, this is the dungeon equivalent of that. Bargains with Fae courts that fill your halls with magical fruit. Treaties with the things beyond the veil that make your minions into unled, undying hordes. Both and much more are possibilities with this option. Be aware that your new neighbors may bring some unanticipated changes and guests. Will either keep paladins the hell away from you forever or get a crusade declared on your halls; either way, probably a good thing for you.

  Moving along…. This is already happening without even having any portals or whatever. If I ever got this, I bet the “puppy” would move its family in.

  It wasn’t a terribly hard decision for Egbert. Several of them had promise, but Wireless coin-operated Everything was literally custom-made for him by the god of greed, and he had to agree that it would streamline his well...everything. Egbert selected it, and a deep tinkling chime echoed throughout the dungeon. Like tens of thousands of golden coins being poured into a stone bathtub just for him.

  Egbert could feel the slightest change across his entire dungeon, like invisible little coin shoots had interconnected him with every part of his domain. He could practically hear doors begging to be price-locked. The distant mewl of a shrine that was slightly too cheap. And the veritable roar of the fact he could now gate his monster spawns behind coinage.

  Oh ho! This is absolutely marvelous; now we can really get this all started! Max, hurry the hell up and build your tavern before I do it for you and charge you with interest! Okay...okay...first things first, finish up the munchkins' shacks, and then it's time to make the centerpiece of this floor.

  Egbert cast his gaze to the walls next to the waterfall. The tavern and urchin housing would be right next to it, specifically with the tavern wrapping around the fuck-you whirlpool. He would leave a good amount of room, maybe fifty strides, so he could build more structures on the edge of this floor as needed. Having a hub for commerce was needed after all.

  He turned from the wall to the vast expanse of twisting cavern floor riddled with pits and natural valleys, miniature caves as common as solid ground was. It ran all the way to the edges of the crystalline forest. Alright, it's time to build these bigger, better bugs a real home, a never-ending battlefield in which they can prove themselves...and where adventures can pick a side to try and raid the oodles of goodies I'm going to stash around here.

  Egbert decided to make the battlefield so you were facing it side-on from the tavern's direction; that would make it easier for people to watch and, more importantly, bet. Maybe even throw a coin or ten into swinging the battle one direction or another.

  Egbert was just about to start smoothing out a two-hundred-stride rectangle of the treacherous ground to build on top of when he stopped himself. Wait, why would I do that? The loot bugs don’t need steady footing to fight on; that’s a people problem, and they would love the little nooks and crannies all over the place with their current size. So instead, Egbert started crafting at the leftmost edge of the soon-to-be battlefield. He had a big chunk of coins to spend, and by the gods, he was going to make something that would take people's breath away.

  It'll probably also make them ask, "Why would you do that?" in hushed awe, but that's a them problem. If they were stuck in a cave all day with their main source of entertainment being mildly homicidal bugs and the worst games of hide-and-seek imaginable all day, they would get it.

  Let’s start with Bubba’s new castle...well, assuming he ever comes back? If not Bubba’s yet unnamed successor! Mystery fat bastard castle! Egbert started in on the fat bastard castle with a sweep of his intent, raising high stout walls that curved out slightly on the edges to make for difficult climbing surfaces and a wide footing to fight on top of. He dotted square guard points along the wall and moved to the front. In the front center he created a stout wooden gate with the emblem of a purple boar rendered in incredible detail.

  I mean, for walls that works...what am I missing? Oh...duh, a freaking moat! Egbert practically danced around the castle excavating chunks of stone until he had a five-stride-wide and ten-foot-deep moat with a single narrow bridge crossing over it to the gate. That might have been overkill, but I am going to laugh very unkindly the first time an adventurer falls in there and I get to charge them to escape.

  Egbert moved in past the rough defense to the large empty space within the walls; he left the treacherous ground untouched and just started building on top of it, sculpting the stone of the castle walls into nooks and crannies to make sure it was stable. The result was a bit of melted-looking wax but stout and oval, with door openings on each end. Well, that's...boring as all hell. Hmm...

  Egbert practically cackled to himself as he went to the castle and ran bridges from it straight to the walls. Bruisers love shoving people off of falling hazards. If I fill this castle with a few bully bugs, I can turn this place into the colosseum of nope. The next thing he did was build up the castle like an open-plan oval tower. Ladders led from one floor to the other, and each of the first three floors was just a circular platform suspended from the walls on heavy chains.

  That will give them a nice wobble using the chains instead of real supports and make sure there are no safety rails. Yea, there we go. Oh, why not add a hole in the center of the platform as well? By the time he was done, the tower had three doughnut-shaped platforms suspended upon chains with the world's sketchiest ladder trailing from each donut hole to the floor below.

  On the final floor, he put an actual floor on and a large, comically oval throne that a big-ish loot bug could fit in comfortably. He stepped back and looked at the rough state of the “castle.” High flanged walls, a fuck-off moat, and falling hazard bridges leading to the castle. And inside are three tiers of “why would you make this” falling hazards attached to chains.

  Ha, oh, I still need to add quite a few bits and bobs, but anyone who focuses on ranged combat is going to have a really, really bad time in there, for example, a mage, or five that need to be thrown down the donut hole of doom to their death! Gods I miss donuts. Anyway…this is good enough for now. Let's go get started on the actual battlefield, then on to that drug-addled little nightmare Twitch's castle.