Jeb slotted two coppers into the haste shrine and hooted and hollered in joy as orange sparks danced along his skin. He flashed towards the Loot Bug once again. It was still easily avoiding him, but he was damn near as fast as it now. Egbert watched in interest. I thought it would have run out by now…

  Not even a second later the haste cut out on Jeb mid-lunge; it was glorious. One moment he was pirouetting between the pillars and gracefully dancing around the low arches nearly on top of the Loot Bug. The next he was moving far too fast sideways and caught one of the angled ceiling slopes right upside the head. “Gahh! Curse them wizards giving me a taste oh the real power before yanking it away!” Jeb grumbled while cradling his skull.

  Tammy looked mighty amused and put in a couple coins to give it a shot herself. “ She wasn’t quite as fanatically determined as Jeb, but she was a lot smarter about it, aiming for where she thought the Loot Bug would go instead of madly chasing it in circles. She got damned close on her second try, grabbing empty air in front of an archway a half second before the Loot Bug dashed past her closed fist. “Damn...got close on that un.”

  Jeb and Tammy spent a good while alternating taking turns going for the Loot Bug. Sometimes without the buff for practice. Other times spending their two copper to even the playing field a bit. Jeb had more than one glorious high-speed mishap; Egbert's favorite, although he actually thought he had killed Jeb for a moment, was when Jeb tried to kick off from one of the stone pillars while hasted. Jeb completely missed, instead catching his foot in a little archway and introducing his face to the ground at an impressive speed.

  Egbert watched intently, rooting for the little speedster. The thing never tired and seemed to be just trying to prove its unmatched supremacy over the “adventures” at this point. Best investment ever! Guess what, buddy? You are getting a brother or two the moment they leave!

  As Egbert was thinking that there was a definitive crunching sound, Jeb managed to grab the Loot Bug mid-leap in his fist. Oh well...your replacement will get siblings! “Hot damn, Tammy, I got it! Now what?” They both looked around the room for a few moments.

  Tammy sighed deeply. “Hells, let’s go finish dinner and bandage your head. You might wanna get some ice from the store for your family jewels as well…we can figure out what to do with that thing over some nice fish pie.” She gestured at the golden smear in Jeb's hand. He nodded, and they both shuffled on out of the dungeon.

  Haha! Look at that! Profits!

  [Copper 4][Silver 2]

  Between the two of them, they had spent a fair amount on the Haste shrine. Egbert wasn’t sure how much the Loot Bug was worth, but he really hoped they would come back for more. He quickly bought another Loot Bug so there would be one if they came back tomorrow since the respawn time was two days. Also, Egbert had some eventual plans for this agility room's future, and more bugs were part of it.

  [Copper 8][Silver 1]

  Alrighty, time to look into expansion. The back of my core room is bricked up, but if you look through the seams of the bricks, it leads to something...let's see how expensive expanding from depressingly cramped to just distressingly small is.

  Egbert brought his view right up to the dusty back wall; when he tried to push his viewpoint past his annoyingly arbitrary barrier, he was swept back half a stride. He tried again, this time mentally feeding in some coinage. He could see his horde total tick downward as he passed through the wall and into the bricked-off cavern behind. It was a bizarre experience, like he was beating his head against a wall while throwing coins at it. He kept whooshing forward until he reached the back wall of the cavern.

  [Copper 8]

  Exactly one silver for nearly doubling the room I have to work with, shockingly cheap for now... I bet its cost is going to spiral exponentially or have weirdly arbitrary restrictions. Egbert stopped being pithy for a moment and focused on what exactly he had bought.

  It wasn’t half bad. The first half of the cavern dipped down into a large crevice that ran the length and width of the floor; bits of glowing fungal shelves trailed from the split in the ground all the way up the walls. The glow lit the room a placid light blue, casting deep shadows past a large boulder set almost dead center before the crevasse. Egbert peeked into the crack in the center of the room; it took up more than half the available space, and he wasn’t disappointed.

  The rock descended downward in rough natural steps, narrowing to a bottom wide enough for two men to walk side by side with barely enough room to swing weapons. The bottom of the crack had jagged claw-like stone formations that would be a nightmare to try and find safe footing on and randomly spaced pits from eons of dripping water. Oh ho... I gotta figure out something awful to put down there.

  If you crossed over the pit, it led off to an obviously man-made stone wall with a dramatically carved metal door that was the end of where Egbert could see, but based on the shape of the cave, it almost certainly continued past the wall.

  But first up here…Egbert looked at the uneven stone walls scattered with scraggly cave plants and a mostly smooth cavern floor. To him it looked like a blank slate perfect to build on. What if I sealed off the top of the crevasse and made it so you needed a key to get down there…or just made some kind of a challenge to crossing it, made easier, of course, if you are willing to shed a few coins. No, the first adventurer who can fly will laugh at me….

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Egbert spent a solid day brainstorming on what to do with his new room while browsing the store. Thankfully Jeb and Tammy came back the next morning for round two of catch the speedster. It actually took them longer this time than the first to catch the new Loot Bug. Considering how Jeb was more bruise than man at this point, Egbert shouldn’t have been surprised.

  He started in on the new room. He went with a bit of a different approach this time mostly because he had found a new category in the shop that he wanted to try.

  [Removable Hazards]

  [Grease dispenser] (5 Copper)

  Glug glug, it sprays a generous layer of magic grease over a good-sized area. Feed coins into it to make it not do that for a few minutes. Hilarious when added to slopes and spike pits.

  [Man Grabber] (5 Copper)

  Run, run, as fast as you can! No, really, this thing's aim is terrible, but if it grabs you, you are getting yeeted back to it; it accepts bribes to chill out for a few minutes.

  [Flame Lobber] (1 Silver)

  Lazily just kind of tosses about fireballs about as dangerous as a first-year magic academy student who just told his classmates, "Hold my ale and watch this."

  Egbert checked his horde. I guess fishing pays pretty darn well. Thank you, yokels!

  [4 silver]

  He bought two grease dispensers and one man grabber. He placed one dispenser on either side of what he was now going to call the Loot Pit. So they had good, even dripping coverage that ran down the uneven stone steps and pooled a tiny bit at the bottom. The dispensers were hideous things that looked like a drunk goblin had made them; a slightly steaming cask with a wide funnel jammed into the side randomly spurted out gouts of brackish “oil.” There was a little box jutting from the top that had a coin slot and the word “off” scrawled above it crudely.

  [5 Copper] [2 Silver]

  The man Grabber got placed dead center in the bottom of the Loot Pit. It looked like a madman’s version of a ballista with a claw on the end of the bolt instead of an arrowhead. It slowly spun in circles, sparking just a little bit with each rotation, ready to yank some poor bastard back down into the pit.

  Egbert Went ahead and opened up what he was almost certain was going to become his favorite maguffin category in the store.

  [Unusual Containers]

  [Blink Chest] (2 Silver)

  This has a few things going for it. Firstly, it's on a teleport anchor; you have one minute after you move this heavy bastard before it blips back to its home. Secondly, you need a runic key; the purchase includes the key.

  [Madman's Key Chest] (2 Silver)

  This chest requires three keys to open it and also comes with one hundred keys; yeah, only three of them are the right keys. It's a bit mean.

  [Oh So Close Chest] (1 Gold)

  This thing is gnarly; if you get too close to it for more than a few seconds, it teleports. The key also teleports randomly; seriously, good luck getting your hands on both of them at the same time.

  Man Wouldn’t it just be a nightmare if you had to climb down into a grease-covered pit and haul out an uncooperative treasure chest with time constraints…? Egbert bought the Blink Chest, carefully nestling it down beside the Man Catcher at the bottom of the loot pit. It did look heavy as shit; the whole thing was metal and sat on a circle that glowed a faint red. He made sure that it was getting a nice healthy coating of grease on it before he moved on to the key.

  [5 Copper]

  The key was an odd square runic box the size of an apple with a small handle on the top of it. Egbert shuffled it over to the boulder at the top of the loot pit edge and promptly fused it with the stone, burying it more than three-quarters of the way inside. Oh no! It looks like the key isn’t collectible anymore...guess you will have to just carry the chest… Uphill…and dodge Mr. Grabby there.Unless, of course, you don’t mind parting with a few coins... Egbert chuckled unkindly to himself.

  With the last of his copper, Egbert took mercy on the adventurers and bought a single [Coin Pile] to put into the blink chest; he did want them to come back after all. And if they managed to get the chest out and the damn thing was just empty... Egbert shuddered; that would make HIM livid. He didn’t even want to imagine what the wrathful fish people would do.

  The coin pile wasn’t a lot, and it was worthless to him since it was all dungeon-born coin, but it was a good fistful of coppers and a couple of silvers, certainly worth a few broken limbs on the world’s meanest slip-and-slide stairs.

  Egbert checked on his progress.

  [Unnamed Dungeon]

  [Threat: Laughable]

  [Wealth: Tax-exempt poverty level]

  [Influence: Local curiosity]

  [Store Progress]

  [Toll Items 2 Silver / 1 Gold] (lvl1)

  [Mimics 4 Copper / 1 Gold] (lvl 1)

  [Dungeon Loot 1.7 Silver / 1Gold] (lvl1)

  [Hazards 1.5 Silver / 1 Gold] (lvl1)

  [Containers 2 Silver / 1 Gold] (lvl1 )

  [Notable Features]

  [None]

  Horde 0

  Bah, still counting me at the poverty level. I'll have you know I am now the proud owner of two rooms and a hallway! It's a bit of a fixer-upper, but just you wait! Egbert settled back into his musings, trying to figure out the best ways to cheaply make the loot pit both more appealing and profitable.

  Maximillian Roth – Edens Vale

  Max looked out from behind his bar at his normal tavern clientele; he was struggling to keep the sheer mind-destroying boredom he was feeling from showing too obviously on his face. He shined the same fucking glass for the eighth time that night.

  Jeb was nearly blackout drunk again at the end of the bar; he looked like absolute hell. Two fat black eyes, scrapes all over him, and a goose egg on his forehead that made him look like he was halfway to becoming a unicorn. Max didn’t know who had beat the shit out of Jeb, but it was pretty even odds it was one of his siblings, or he just fought gravity and lost repeatedly.

  Max sighed, rubbing the stump of his leg tenderly right above his prosthetic; lately it was hurting like hell when he stood around for too long. He had been an adventurer, not a great one but decent; he made it to his second advancement trial and barely survived it. He left the adventurers guild five toes and a shin poorer, but with a decent chunk of coins.

  Sure, he could have paid for someone to regrow the leg, but that was expensive…almost the same as just buying a tavern and calling it good before you got eaten. So he went that route, and by the gods, he was regretting it more and more every day.

  Jeb stumbled down the bar towards him, waving an empty wooden stein like the chalice of eternal youth. Max grimaced at the stumbling fisherman. “Alright Jeb, your tabs are capped out, and fuck no, I do not want any pickled fish instead of coin. I’m still trying to sell the last ones I took.”

  Jeb caught himself on the bar, clutching onto it with his free hand as he swayed like a ship in choppy waters. “Oh, don’t be like that, Max. A man needs his libations after a hard day of work.” Jeb slurred out; frankly, Max was amazed he was still standing right now.

  “Firstly, where did you even learn the word ‘libations’? Is your sister reading to you again? Secondly, this man needs fucking coins to buy more ale for you heathens.” Max raised his voice a bit, casting it across the room to his drunken patrons, eliciting scattered chuckles, one that was immediately followed by an “oh no” and a skinny fellow rushing outside to empty his guts.

  Jeb wasn’t the least bit dissuaded, reaching into the ratty wizard’s robe he had been in for the last few days and pulling out a smushed little golden something. He set it on the bar in front of Max proudly. “How much oh my tab does this cover!” Jeb swayed precipitously for a moment while waiting for Max’s answer.

  Max creased his brow and picked up the golden carcass, examining it for a moment dubiously before his eyes widened in surprise. “Uhh, Jeb, where did you get this?”

  Jeb leaned all the way over the bar to whisper conspiratorially, “I’m going to be a real wizard now, Max!”

  Max looked back at the Loot Bug carcass, and a curious smile creased his face. Maybe he wouldn’t be terminally bored for the rest of his “retirement.”

  “Tell you what, Jeb, help me become a real wizard too, and I’ll clear your tab, all of it!” Max smiled predatorially at the drunken man. “Where did you find this exactly?”

  Jeb paused for a moment, blinking hard like his mind was trying to cut through the drunken haze and scream at him to shut up. The liquor won, and he leaned in even farther over the bar top; Max had to retreat back a bit as Jeb’s fragrant maw came right up next to his ear. Jeb whispered excitedly, “The old shrine above da lake.” Max patted him on the shoulder and began filling Jeb’s cup with ale again.