52

  Egbert—Dungeon of Greed.

  There were bad days characterized by moderate inconveniences. Or a seemingly endless string of tiny but annoying ones. Like when you tear your coat on the way out the door to your carriage. Then when you finally get to the business meeting, you realize in your haste you forgot the tax ledger that you very much needed to make your presentation.

  So everyone at the tax office has to wait on your torn-jacket-wearing ass while you shamefully take a carriage back home to retrieve the ledger. That’s just a bad day, slightly memorable but not the kind of day that wakes you up with night terrors.

  Then there were really bad days, the kind of day you keep replaying in your mind with a ‘never again’ mantra attached and the unspoken promise to never talk about it. Egbert had had a few of those in his life. The one that came to mind was the dreaded Knell Ranch audit.

  He had imbibed a probably irresponsible amount of a very delicious yet very spicy chicken chili and predictably found himself trapped within the outhouse in a near blizzard. Worse yet, no one had restocked the lavatory with corn cobs. So after his business, he had shamefully eyed his socks, knowing what needed to be done. Two lost socks later, he had trudged back towards the farmhouse in a blizzard with some very cold toes.

  He never made it back; the call of nature spurred him to rush back into the frigid privy. He had repeated the scene, this time sacrificing a beloved scarf for the sake of sanitization. By the time his guts had finally calmed, he had scurried back to his room half-dressed, freezing, and completely devoid of any vestiges of pride.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, he had later found out the ranch in fact had an indoor privy that was well stocked, and the talk of the ranch for the entire span of his stay was who had soiled the old, decommissioned privy?

  That was a really bad day. Today was so far beyond that measure of problematic it had zoomed past at least kind of funny and straight into existential panic. Egbert, of course, was a dungeon now, his soul stuffed into a damned golden marble and his life boiled down to making coins and growing the dungeon. Rinse and repeat; try not to go mad.

  And today the angry, stuck-up neighbors had come calling. There was a band of cutthroats currently kicking down his front door, accompanied by a group of pricks who wanted nothing less than to fondle his core!

  These bastards have severely underestimated me! Not only am I going to send them packing back to their pithy academy, but I'm also going to take them for every damned coin they are worth!

  Egbert immediately flew all the way through his dungeon to the bottom floor into Max’s Tavern. It was relatively packed today. People were still excited to try their luck at the relatively novel quest board he had installed. Especially since yesterday some lucky bastard had won a literal gold bar from the random loot boxes.

  Egbert rushed over to the quest board and delisted every single quest he had available for adventurers. One of the gnomish artificers who was browsing it sputtered indignantly as his browsing was violently interrupted. “What is this nonsense! I was going to go and conquer the loot pit! Don’t stymie me!”

  His twin sister, sitting at a nearby table, violently rolled her eyes. “Maybe he’s just trying to save your life after you nearly blew us up last time.”

  Egbert ignored them and got to work changing the entire quest list into a special event.

  I don’t need to count on the benevolence of my delvers if I make it worth their time to help defend the dungeon. I know the one way to truly appeal to my beloved customers, and that is greed. Let's see how long the invaders last if every one of their damned scalps is worth a few greed points!

  "Stab a brigand, get a lootbox" has a nice ring to it as well, but I feel like I might actually lose money on that one, and as admittedly critical as this situation is, I'll be damned if I go broke fending off these pretentious problems. So let's make it a bit more balanced.

  The quest board started flashing in bright strobing patterns as the text across its surface changed. Egbert made as big of a spectacle of it as he could. By the time he was done, every single eye in the tavern or the nearby battlefield was at least glancing towards the quest board in concern, wondering if it was about to explode. or if Egbert had finally lost it and was just turning random things into mimics now.

  Max wobbled from behind his bar on his prosthetic leg with a deep sigh. “Greed, what the hell are you doing now? I didn’t think we were doing another loot bug war until someone triggered it? And there's no damn way any of these idiots have gotten that many greed points yet.” He stopped at the entrance to the balcony, squinting at the shimmering rainbow-colored letters slowly rotating above the quest board: “SPECIAL EVENT LIMITED TIME REWARDS, DISCOUNTS.”

  Max’s face took on a grave look. “Oh shit, something’s wrong. I didn’t think you even knew what the word ‘discount’ meant, much less how to use them.” Max hobbled back behind the bar and started putting his always nearby leather armor on over his casual clothes. Complete with a small bandolier of potions under one arm and a well-worn sword on the opposite hip. He paused for just a moment and took a good pull off a whiskey bottle just for luck before he stuck it back onto the shelf.

  At this point everyone was clamoring from the surrounding areas towards the tavern, trying to see what all the hubbub was about. All the patrons already in the bar were piling onto the vastly overcrowded porch. There was a short shriek and a splash as someone who had a few too many drinks was hip-checked off the railing-less deck into the neighboring whirlpool.

  The crowd briefly glanced at the figure as she waved her arms in a slight panic. Beehived hair sticking out dramatically from the frothy waters. She was doing rapid laps around the rim of the whirlpool. A bulky figure threw a rope in her general direction and then turned back to the quest board. A special event was too important to miss after all, and based on how this dungeon worked, there was almost certainly a water-breathing potion for sale down there if she couldn’t manage the rope.

  Ha, dammit! I've been waiting for someone to fall into that thing for a month! Why did it have to happen now? I'm busy! Bah, let me finish the new quests, then I'll go see who the railing-less atrocity of a porch fed to the whirlpool finally.

  Egbert worked feverishly trying to come up on the fly with quests that people couldn’t resist that would invest the adventurers in the defense of his core. He was being a lot more generous than he would have liked, but desperate times and all that.

  Before he unveiled the list to the crowd, he wanted to hype them up a bit, so he zoomed into the evil pet rock he used to talk through. It was sitting in its customary place near the end of the bar, where he normally used it to talk to Max or occasionally the orphans, although those little bastards seemed to have joined the other team.

  Egbert hoped that was all some grand master plan and secretly they would still backstab the invaders, but hell if he knew. They were an evil, self-serving bunch after his own heart, so he was still pretty fifty-fifty on that. And Thrognar…well, that goofy behemoth would probably at least jump to his team the first time someone tried to stab Remorse, his beloved mimic.

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  Egbert dramatically cleared his throat through the rock, sending an evil hiss across the tavern. “Max, my valued partner, if you wouldn’t mind bringing me out to the quest board for an important announcement!”

  Max ambled over and picked up the rock. “Okay, now I know something’s wrong; you just called me your valued partner. Are you dying?” He sounded genuinely concerned. Egbert hoped it was because they were friends and not just because his tavern's profits would drop like a rock if the surrounding dungeon croaked.

  “Not if I can help it, to the porch max!”

  Max pushed his way through the crowd and hauled himself up on the table nearest the quest board. He held the rock out dramatically. “Alright, you heathens, Greed has an announcement!”

  “Alright! Who here has been having fun in the dungeon!” There was a smattering of confused responses, and maybe two out of the dozens of people present tentatively raised a hand.

  Hmm, okay, that was a bad question.

  “Let’s try that again! Who here has been making money since they started enjoying the wonderful challenges I supply you all with?” This time about a quarter of the present adventurers raised their hands.

  One guy off to the side shouted, “I spent everything I earned just fecking surviving the first time I fell into the loot pit!”

  A few murmured agreement, and another adventurer spoke up, “I would have! If I hadn’t had to spend ten damn gold to get the key in the mimic village! The chest only had 9 gold! What the hell is up with that?

  Dammit, Egbert, do better; you are losing the crowd!

  “Alright, moving on! Who here wants to make a shit ton of greed points they can spend in the wonderful reward station right next to us?” The crowd thankfully mostly murmured assents at that, and people dotted throughout the crowd raised hands ignorantly, hoping greed was finally about to give a handout.

  “Great, wonderful! Today we have a special event called Dungeon Invasion!” The quest board letters changed to a glowing rotating “Dungeon Invasion” that strobed through all the colors of the rainbow. Nearby people winced and averted their gaze from the violent advertising. Others murmured excitedly, even with the seizure-inducing light show doing its best to blind everyone.

  Let's dial the brightness back on that a tiny bit, good gods…

  “Well, you are all in luck; some uninvited idiots are breaking in, trying to steal your treasure! And well, kill me! So all the quests are going to be themed around that!” Then in a much more serious tone, “But really, help please. Also, this will be the easiest greed points I will ever give out, so...chop chop…” The crowd went wild, shouting over each other; some people straight up drew weapons, while others just finished their drinks and beelined for the exit, absolutely not getting involved in whatever the hell was going on.

  The quest board dramatically scrolled down with new available quests, and greed wasn’t lying; by his standards, they were dirt cheap.

  [Grab the creepy fuckers book and burn it.] Cost: 1 gold. Reward: 100 Greed points.

  There's a mage that looks like the awful lovechild of a ghoul and an albino diddler. He’s walking around making grabby hand gestures and threatening to fondle my core. If you take his weird flesh-bound book and destroy it, you get the reward! I suggest burning it, but honestly, however you can get it done is good with me.

  [Deliver Cromwell to Contempt] cost 1 copper, reward 100 Greed points.

  Yeah…I don’t want to hear any moral complaints about this one. I have no idea if my high and mighty murder-happy bug with delusions of godhood is actually going to come down from his perch and help, so this is my solution. The job is simple: grab the obnoxious, pretentious prick in the distractingly colorful robes and dump his ass into the boss room in the cathedral. See, it isn’t murder; it’s barely even kidnapping.

  [Steal a mage staff] Costs 1 gold, rewards 25 Greed points

  There are mages coming in that were very much so not invited. I don’t know if they technically need the staffs, but they wouldn’t have brought the damn things if they were useless. This reward is earnable multiple times; points are awarded for every staff thrown either into Twitch’s shanty town or the whirlpool.

  [Bandit, Begone] costs 1 silver and rewards 10 Greed points.

  Alright, this one is almost free greed points; all you have to do is either “help a bandit off the premises” and keep him off for 24 hours or deliver them into Twitch’s shantytown, Bubba’s castle grounds, or Bully’s pit. Personally I suggest the pit; it's not that hard to push someone off a ledge.

  [More quests may be posted as the situation develops.]

  Egbert's gold total started spiraling upward from the few remaining adventurers who were sticking around for the invasion. They were diving into the comparatively cheap quests and fat rewards like hogs in a trough full of the best slop.

  Max shuffled out of the crowd with the rock clutched against his chest. His face looked like he had been stabbed; it was so severe. He made it back behind his bar and shuffled to the far end before whispering in towards the pet rock. “Greed—how fucked are we? Ulfrick’s academy has finally come knocking; that’s bad, that’s real bad.” He unlocked a door behind the bar and went into his own personal room while greed answered.

  “I mean, I won’t lie, Max, it isn’t great. That prick Cromwell, you remember him, right? You brought him here on a sightseeing tour! He's back.” Max flinched guiltily; he hadn’t forgotten how pissed Greed was about that mess-up. Mostly because greed would never stop guilt-tripping him over it.

  Egbert let out a rattling sigh. “Honestly, it could be worse; the mages are the real threat, and they have a whole lot of meat shields between them and the few defenses I can unleash on them. Few being Boo; that horrific, horrible, skin-crawling abomination is the only damn monster I have that actually listens to me.”

  “The mimic?” Max asked while shuffling through a chest he had just dug out of a dusty corner in the room.

  “Remorse? Ehh, I can kind of point him at stuff and hope he eats it, but his track record isn’t exactly impressive. I see him more as a likely speed bump in their invasion than a real solution.”

  “Fair enough, and where the hell is your core? I know you shuffled it around a couple times lately.” Max asked while digging through yet another chest and pulling out small bundles he laid down onto his bed.

  “I’m not going to tell you that, Max, and what on the gods’ great plane of existence are you doing? We are under attack, and you are sorting through your damned laundry?”

  Max let out a dark chuckle and slowly opened a few of the wrapped bundles on the bed. The first held a pristine, well-oiled shortsword with a red edge that glowed faintly in the dim room. The next package held a set of slick leather armor forged from green and black leather that was hard to look straight at. “Well, greed, if I’m going to be fighting for my damned livelihood since it is very much so connected to your continued existence at this point. I figured I might as well put on my actual adventuring gear instead of the stuff I wear around town.”

  “Huh, you know, I honestly keep forgetting you actually are higher-leveled than most of our normal delvers. I think it’s the peg leg; the peg leg just screams infirmity.”

  “Oh, fuck off, greed.”

  The Knights—Cathedral Of Contempt

  Joe and Carter finally managed to haul Randy's hefty armored frame over the edge of the balcony. The whole time he was wailing at them, “Don’t drop me! Don’t you fucking drop me!”

  Ben, who was watching the drama play out, rolled his eyes. “Oh, shush, oh great leader, you are fine.”

  Randy stood up in a clatter, nearly knocking Carter over. “Fine? Fine!? I've been dangling on the side of that wall for nearly an hour! You idiots took forever to get the damned pulley set up!”

  Joe peered over Randy’s shoulder while he was ranting, “Hey, shut up!”

  Randy turned on Joe. “Don’t you tell me to shut up! I’m only speaking the truth; we were both dangling there for far too long!”

  “Because you’re fast bastards…” Carter whispered.

  “No seriously, Randy, shut up and look what the hell is happening at the tavern? Hey Carter, you have a sight talent. What on earth?”

  Carter peeked over towards the gathering crowd and a blinding light show. “Oh shit, guys, limited-time event! We have to get back over there!”

  Randy looked over the edge of the balcony at the nearly thirty-stride drop. “If you think after all that time, effort, and fucking stress to get up here I’m just going to climb back down again!” He started working himself up into a full rant to justify his fear of heights.

  Joe made eye contact with Ben and mouthed the words “clip him back up” to him. Ben nodded with a smile and subtly grabbed the rope attached to the pulley. He silently looped it into the climbing harness; Randy hadn’t taken off his armor yet.

  Randy finished passionately, “…and that’s why I’ll be damned if I go back down after all that!”

  Joe stepped close and put a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. “Those are all really good reasons…but limited time event sooo…” Randy's eyes got wide in realization about half a second before Joe just pushed his ass back off the edge. Carter and Ben were already lowering him back down to the bottom, poignantly ignoring the foul, shrill cursing coming from their fearless leader.