"Newbie quests"? It took Sharlock a good moment to process what that meant, but after a detailed back-and-forth with the core "Bru," he finally got it.
Long story short: these otherworld players didn't want a monthly wage from him — but in exchange, they wanted clearly defined quests. Things like "Dig through that wall!" "Build a bunkhouse that sleeps ten!" "Go hunt five subterranean spiders in the wilds!" "Bring back a cartload of timber!" Quests like that.
Honestly, even without Bru bringing it up, Sharlock would've assigned these otherworld players similar tasks anyway. The difference was that upon completing a quest, they'd expect a reward — some money, some weapons and armor, food, that sort of thing.
Sharlock felt a headache coming on. He hadn't expected things to get this complicated.
Weapons and armor he definitely didn't have. Food he also didn't have. As for money... the standard currency of the Underworld was the magic stone, and there was no way on earth he'd hand those out as otherworld-player rewards. But Bru suggested a different kind of money he could hand out instead: gold coins!
Gold coins were the standard currency of the surface world — a thousand coppers to a silver, a thousand silvers to a gold. Sharlock actually had a decent stash of coppers, silvers, and gold on hand, mostly earmarked for later, once the dungeon was up and running, as lure-treasure to draw adventurers down from the surface world.
After all, naturally occurring magic stones were scarce, and making one meant extracting the mana right out of a surface creature — which took special techniques. Meanwhile, the standard way to entice surface creatures into risking the trip underground was, you guessed it, a big pile of shiny gold coins.
To this day Sharlock couldn't figure out why those utterly mana-less metal flakes mesmerized surface creatures so much. Baffling.
Handing out these gold coins as quest rewards for the otherworld players was fine and all. But as far as Sharlock knew, every Underworld creature — demons included — couldn't care less about gold coins. Would goblins from another world really like them?
The core "Bru" was dead certain: "Like them? 'Like' is underselling it — they LOVE them! Hand out gold, silver, and copper as quest rewards and make them the dungeon's official currency, and they'll take that money and run — build a whole bustling economy of their own, I guarantee it. Trust me!"
Sharlock had no idea what all these metal coins were capable of, but as long as he wasn't shelling out magic stones as wages, they could have all the metal coins they wanted. One magic stone bought a whole crate of them at the market!
Sharlock's next job, then, was to sit down with the core "Bru" and put together a detailed price list of rewards for every kind of work — so that when the otherworld players arrived at the dungeon, their enthusiasm stayed high and their moods stayed bright.
Keeping your underlings content — that was the duty of any halfway-decent Dungeon Lord. Most dungeon monsters came to throw in with a Dungeon Lord of their own accord; they weren't magic puppets stamped out by the Lord himself.
By the time all that was wrapped up, Sharlock checked the time — half a day gone, and the moment to summon his chosen otherworld players to their new workplace was fast approaching.
As a brand-new Dungeon Lord about to welcome his very first batch of subordinates, Sharlock was — truth be told — a tiny bit nervous. He gave the food, the metal coin rewards, and the smithy one final once-over... and discovered a critical problem. His blacksmith still hadn't shown up.
Just as he was wondering when the blacksmith would arrive, a flash of mana lit up inside his dungeon, and a portal opened in front of Sharlock. The dungeon belonged to Sharlock — nobody opened a portal inside it without his say-so, and the only person he'd green-lit lately was the blacksmith he'd hired!
Out of the portal walked a dwarf with skin a deep sooty black — a dark iron dwarf, one who lived in the Underworld proper, not in some natural cavern. Like every dwarf, though, he was born with a hammer in his hand and a forge in his heart.
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"Another fresh-start dungeon, huh? You look awfully young for a demon!" The dwarf stepped out, took a look around the not-exactly-sprawling dungeon, then hefted his hammer and boomed at Sharlock at full volume:
"I'm your newly hired blacksmith, Simba. Here's our contract — three-month term, one hundred magic stones a month. Kindly confirm, young Demon Lord."
So saying, the blacksmith produced a contract from inside his coat. Sharlock took it, read it top to bottom — yep, definitely the contract signed yesterday, no issues — and handed it back. Then, in his most official voice: "Welcome aboard. You are this great dungeon's very first subordinate! That's your workshop over there!"
Sharlock pointed at the empty smithy, then remembered something and pointed at the pile of ingredients around the corner: "That's the food storage area. No proper storeroom yet, but once the goblins arrive, my first order of business is having them build one. Oh, and for the time being, please stick to food that's easy to carry — pies and the like will do nicely. These goblins won't exactly get many chances to sit down for a proper meal!"
Sharlock's tone was pure evil slavemaster. Blacksmith Simba seemed entirely used to it, though — clearly this wasn't his first Dungeon Lord gig. He walked into the smithy, fired up the forge with practiced ease, and then... set out an iron pot and went to grab ingredients to start cooking!
No ore, no forging — what's he supposed to hammer, thin air?! The ore was still waiting on goblins to dig it up!
With even the blacksmith squared away, Sharlock straightened his clothes, unfurled his huge demon wings behind him, checked himself in a mirror to confirm his image of dignified Demon Lord-ness was absolutely beyond reproach, and strode up to the dungeon core.
Next up: summoning the chosen hundred goblins from the other world — the players!
The summoning ritual itself was simple. Beyond feeding in mana, it was just signing a stack of otherworld contracts — the likes of the Dungeon: The Eternal Kingdom Virtual Network Agency Agreement, the Season 1 MMO Approval Confirmation, the Waiver of Liability, and so on, a whole pile of them. Sharlock signed every last one through the dungeon core without a second's hesitation, not even skimming the fine print — otherworld contracts held basically zero binding power over a demon like him.
With all of that done, Sharlock at last began the summoning.
As he poured in the last of the required mana, a full hundred half-man-height portals unfolded before his eyes. Hands clasped behind his back, chest out, chin up, Sharlock waited for the otherworld players to come forth and swear their fealty. Several minutes crawled by without a single goblin emerging, and Sharlock started getting antsy:
"Where are my subordinates? Those players from the other world — what's taking them so long?"
"They're doing character creation. They get VERY particular about the parts that don't matter at all — faces, outfits, even accessories and trinkets. That's just how the other world is." So answered the core, "Bru."
Hearing that, Sharlock settled in to wait. Every so often you'd run into some bored demon using mana to restyle his face — who knew otherworld goblins shared the hobby, and at this scale? As for where the mana came from — his, obviously. Every goblin working in his dungeon needed his mana to maintain their link to this world. For a mana-rich demon, though, that was hardly a strain.
Thankfully, the wait wasn't long. At last, the very first goblin stepped out of a portal.
And what a goblin — absurdly tall for the species, right at the ceiling of normal goblin height. He came all the way up to Sharlock's knee.
Shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, the goblin stepped out of the portal, laid eyes on Sharlock, and went completely blank. Then a look of naked wonder spread across his face as he gazed all around. After a full circuit of gawking, the goblin muttered: "Has tech really gotten THIS good? I thought VR MMOs were fake till now. It's actually real. My God — the character models, the textures, the way the skin feels to the touch... there's even pain feedback? Can I adjust that..."
As far as Sharlock could tell, this goblin had slipped into some kind of frenzy — deeply abnormal behavior. Every dark creature arriving in a dungeon was supposed to swear fealty to the Dungeon Lord, first thing, before anything else.
"My humble servant! Come down at once and swear your loyalty to the great Demon Lord Sharlock, and you shall earn my mercy and rich rewards!"
Sharlock stood ramrod straight, masking the joy and excitement bubbling up inside him as best he could, and delivered the line with icy menace.
The goblin heard Sharlock's voice, turned back around, craned his head up — way, way up — at Sharlock, and squeaked in flustered panic: "【xX_ShadowBlade_Xx】swears allegiance to the great Demon Lord Sharlock, my lord!"
The moment he finished, the guy went right back to wandering and gawking, muttering to himself: "They made the Dungeon Lord NPC THIS realistic? The presence on this dude is insane — I nearly dropped to my knees for real. Unbelievable. I've GOT to go hype this up on the forums later."
Sharlock found the goblin's behavior bizarre, to put it mildly — but even more bizarre was this: the instant the goblin announced his name was 【xX_ShadowBlade_Xx】, that exact name materialized in giant letters above the goblin's forehead — 【xX_ShadowBlade_Xx】.
That's right — the very name the goblin had picked for himself! And it moved right along with him, fused to him like a part of his own body.
While Sharlock was still puzzling over why this goblin was burning mana to wear a weird name on his forehead, more and more goblins of every description came pouring out of the portals — some in skimpy three-point-style tops and shorts, some in plain shorts just like 【xX_ShadowBlade_Xx】. All sorts of faces among them. One thing in common, though: ugly!
What, you were expecting goblins to be hot?
And then, right there in front of Sharlock, the goblins struck up a conversation!
══════════════════════ DUNGEON LORD'S NOTE ═══════════════════════
The first beta tester strolls out, comes up to Sharlock's knee, squeaks his oath of fealty, then gushes about character models — green name floating overhead.
Is xX_ShadowBlade_Xx a top-tier goblin name or what?
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