"Hey there! Huh? This game doesn't support emoticons?"
So said one goblin — big eyes, proud high nose bridge, and still irredeemably ugly — in a raspy female voice. A lady goblin, clearly.
"Of course not. This game is full VR — runs on some kind of neural-capture system, totally ditched mouse and keyboard. Check out my tongue — blthththth — see how nimble that is? You think any other game can do that?" Next to the lady goblin, a male goblin was wagging his tongue around as he spoke.
"So what do we do now? This game doesn't even have a tutorial?"
Another goblin chimed in with a question.
"Yeah, like, no quests? Free-roam from the start?"
"That's the Dungeon Lord over there, right? Demon Lord Sharlock? Dude, this NPC's model is way too handsome!"
"Real question: can players pick Demon Lord as a class?"
"It's just CBT1, man — goblin's the only class. Forums said they'll open more once the game's further along!"
"Think there'll be an opening cinematic?"
...
The dungeon core hall had, effectively, become a chat lobby for the hundred players from the other world. As they gabbed, they assigned themselves all kinds of names — some bizarre, some borderline normal — and flashy green names started popping up over their foreheads one after another. Some made small talk; most just drifted off to wander the dungeon, touching this and poking that. The dungeon exits were sealed by Sharlock, though, so they were all concentrated in the core hall — which wasn't big to begin with. Wander all they liked, there was nowhere to go.
"SILENCE! You servants from the other world! I am your noble Demon Lord, Sharlock! From this day forward, you are subjects of the Eternal Kingdom Dungeon, and your mission is to build the Eternal Kingdom into the greatest dungeon in history! Now — go claim your quests, and start building!"
With that, Sharlock had the core "Bru" issue the quests they'd drawn up in advance.
All contact between a Dungeon Lord and the dungeon's servants ran through the dungeon core — Sharlock could assign tasks remotely through it. But per "Bru," direct orders wouldn't land all that well with these goblins. Steering them with paid quests was the way to go — and the pay would mostly be metal currency: copper, silver, and gold.
Once Sharlock gave the order, quest-log-style windows appeared before the players' eyes, followed by prompts to accept their quests.
"Mine a hundred diamonds? My tutorial quest is MINING?"
"I got that one too! Pays ten coppers!"
"Where are the diamonds?"
"Mine's hauling a hundred diamonds to the smithy. How come the only one doing grunt labor is ME? I wanna mine too!"
...
The goblins who'd taken mining quests naturally got their hands on the dungeon's only twenty pickaxes, while most of the rest took ore-hauling quests. That ore would be smelted into usable metal and forged into new pickaxes and other iron tools — but more importantly, shields, armor, and weapons!
What kind of dungeon doesn't have an armed force, right?
The Eternal Kingdom had sat abandoned for years, never once developed, so the territory around it was riddled with dangerous uncharted regions — Underworld creatures of every sort prowling the surroundings, some troublesome even by Sharlock's standards. The magic beasts especially.
Magic beasts were vanishingly rare, and far, far stronger than your average wild beast — subterranean spiders, killer vines, dire wolves, that sort of thing. If those kept creeping into the dungeon through freshly dug tunnels or the open entrances during expansion, it'd be a genuine headache — which made arming your servants and giving the dungeon a fighting chance of self-defense absolutely necessary.
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Besides, those monsters made perfectly good goblin food. Sharlock couldn't be running to the market for groceries every other day — one market trip burned a teleport scroll, and teleport scrolls did not come cheap.
These otherworld goblins were bizarre in word and deed. They named themselves. They kept stopping to inspect their own ugly bodies and faces. Their curiosity was bottomless, their sociability off the charts for goblins, and their nerve enormous — Sharlock had already watched a whole bunch of them march right up to say hi, kneel in salute, even tell him jokes!
Your standard goblin — a low creature — was born knowing fear at the sight of a ranked demon like Sharlock. Not these otherworld goblins. They weren't just unafraid of Sharlock. They seemed, if anything, unafraid of DEATH.
Sharlock's certainty on that point only hardened after he watched one goblin try to stick his hand into the furnace blacksmith Simba had lit, and get punted clean out of the smithy for his trouble.
Sharlock gave zero response to any of the goblins' oddball behavior. Weird as they were, they worked fast, and they worked HARD.
No month's wages, no food provided — and still, the second they grabbed their quests they threw themselves into the digging and hauling at a rolling boil, with no sign of enthusiasm fading or anybody angling to slack off.
And when they finished a quest, they'd beeline to Sharlock for their reward — copper coins — counting them out one by one and tucking them carefully away in their pockets, like they were handling national treasures.
The goblins who finished their mining runs would even return their pickaxes to Sharlock of their own accord, right on cue for the next goblin to pick up a mining quest, come collect a pickaxe, and sprint off to the dig site.
It wasn't that Sharlock had never visited other dungeons. But the goblins in those dungeons could NEVER work with this kind of efficiency and fire — wages on time, food plentiful, and they'd STILL slack and dawdle on the job. Usually it took an orc with a whip riding herd on them.
Skip the wages and the food, and the goblins would just run off entirely.
Sure, these otherworld goblins were weird, and obsessed with a metal currency nobody had any use for — but having seen their work rate and their energy, Sharlock had no complaints left. Goblins who saved him magic stones, worked like machines, and even bought their own food? A few quirks were well within the acceptable range.
"My esteemed Lord Sharlock, now that our beta has successfully kicked off, I believe it is time to flesh out our game content and forum information! You know — the game map, the bestiary, newly opened zones, that sort of thing."
So said the core "Bru" while Sharlock stood there playing overseer, eyes glued to the swarming otherworld goblins.
Honestly, Sharlock didn't quite follow. Game map, bestiary, new zones — each one made sense on its own. All together? What did any of that MEAN?
Bru clearly knew exactly what was confusing him and launched into an explanation: "As you have seen, these otherworld goblins are... different. Think of it this way: they treat this world as their playground. Mining and hauling are grunt work to this world's goblins — but to the otherworld goblins, the players, mining and hauling are a form of play. In this world they've begun a whole new life, a new journey. That's why they keep up this level of enthusiasm and efficiency, and why they'll KEEP it up. What they want isn't wages or food. It's more ways to play!"
"So... I need to carve out more venues for the goblins to use as playgrounds? Like other dungeons do — build entertainment facilities, let them play in the mud, wrestle, watch shows?"
Sharlock thought it over. Fair enough — other Dungeon Lords did exactly that to keep their underlings' spirits up. His only hang-up was that he was strapped for magic stones. No budget for performance troupes or professional wrestlers. Mud, they could have for free.
"That's roughly the idea. Except these players, compared to mud, wrestling, and shows, prefer a somewhat more... spirited form of entertainment: adventure!"
The core "Bru" promptly explained what that kind of entertainment actually meant.
In short: these players did NOT enjoy sitting around in the dungeon. What they loved was striking out into the unknown and brawling with brutal beasts — the bloodier and more savage the fight, the happier they got. Even death couldn't slow their pursuit of that thrill. They especially loved pushing hard content: run into a genuinely strong enemy, and they'd zerg it with dozens or even a hundred bodies, any sacrifice acceptable, so long as the big bad went DOWN. Oh — and after downing a tough enemy, they'd generally expect a fat reward. Gold coins work. Gear is better.
That part was easy enough to arrange. The bones and pelts of Underworld beasts could be crafted into equipment — the stronger the beast, the better the gear. Magic-beast materials could even produce gear with innate mana, which sold at a serious premium in the markets.
Of course, in Sharlock's eyes, all of that gear was garbage. A ranked demon relies on his own power; magic items are for support, and armor and weapons are, for a demon like Sharlock, pure dead weight.
With "Bru's" explanation on board, Sharlock understood: he was to carve out a new zone, ideally stocked with a steady monster supply, loot, and treasure — a labyrinth or a nasty beast serving as the BOSS would be a nice bonus — and let the otherworld players treat it as their adventure playground.
Which meant drawing up a map, building the matching bestiary, stocking enough loot, and so on. A hassle, sure, but nothing Sharlock couldn't handle — he'd been meaning to scout the surroundings anyway. Besides, the Underworld's monsters were a development resource as far as he was concerned: sooner or later his servants would be killing them off and hauling back the corpses either way. Seen that way, he'd be providing the goblins an entertainment venue AND saving a fat stack of magic stones.
Any deal that saved magic stones was a good deal!
Sharlock took "Bru's" advice, delegated quest-reward distribution to "Bru," and headed out for a lap around the dungeon's grounds. He quickly settled on a suitable playground — the Spider Nest!
If any Underworld monster qualified as a "steady monster supply," it was the subterranean spider. They bred fast, they were thick on the ground — packed practically wall-to-wall across the whole Underworld. Give them one egg-laying Spider Queen and BOOM: fifty, a hundred hatchlings in the blink of an eye. On top of that, they loved to dig, so the whole nest was a labyrinth in its own right. Even Sharlock had zero desire to take a stroll through a spider nest.
The nests also housed plenty of other Underworld creatures — killer vines, subterranean worms, the deeply dim kobolds, and so on.
None of these were particularly strong, but as a challenge for the otherworld players? More than enough.
Having picked the next zone to open up to the otherworld players, Sharlock turned to head back to the dungeon. He'd barely moved when the dungeon core "Bru" spoke to him:
"Lord Sharlock. A player has died."
══════════════════════ DUNGEON LORD'S NOTE ═══════════════════════
One hundred goblins grinding mining quests for ten coppers each, tucking coins away like national treasures — then Bru drops the cliffhanger: 'A player has died.'
Got theories on how the respawn system actually works?
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