Egbert still had a lot of work to do on just the loot bug's new home. He had been sticking to cheap materials and simple layouts to save on gold, but just Bubba's castle had cost him a pretty penny.
[Copper 2] [Silver 3] [Gold 10]
Ehh, if I'm really conservative on Twitch's castle and clever about the battlefield, that miiiight… be enough, but worst case, I just wait a bit. I think the loot pit and mimic village will be raking in the gold now that I have better ways to collect shineys and a much better “totally not a drug” to keep them coming back.
Egbert eyed the twisting cavern floor; he left a good amount of space between his first modification and Bobba’s castle. Egbert made a simple tower about as tall as two men with loot bug-sized tunnels running through it and a small balcony. He added a slatted cone roof in a deep purple just for the flair. Loot bugs would easily be able to trundle up the twisting tunnels and to the balcony as well as the few random exits on its sides. A person...could maybe do it if they had balls of steel, a slight frame, and didn’t even know what the word “claustrophobia” meant.
Egbert went full defensive fortifications in front of the tower, adding small waist-high walls that adventurers could duck behind and dotting them out from the tower in three rows, giving cover for both defenders and attackers who managed to get close. He left the tangled slippery floor alone; if someone wasn’t paying attention, they had pretty fair odds of twisting an ankle...or slipping ten strides down into any number of waterlogged caves. Huh...I feel like more people might drown here than I was anticipating…have to add water-breathing potion dispensers down in the most “visited” caves.
Another five towers were added to this side of the battlefield; they were simple enough and moderately sized, so it only cost him a couple gold. He skipped the currently barren middle of the battlefield and put six more towers on Twitch’s side. These, though, he placed in a tighter cluster with higher and more frequent defensive walls. He arranged them like diagonal slashes that intersected randomly to be purposefully confusing. And add a bit of a maze-like aspect once you got near the bases of the towers. It only seemed fair; the ground on this stretch of the cavern wasn’t nearly as bad as Bobba’s half.
Egbert looked at his gold and grumbled; at this rate he wouldn’t be able to build Twitch’s castle and have enough to buy some problems to add.
[Copper 0] [Silver 1] [Gold 5]
I mean...unless I cheaped out on Twitch's castle...he and his cohort are probably too...medicated...to really care, right? Yeah, it's fine. I bet I could even get some Zip Dust-themed dispensers in there… Just a taste for a sliver...wow...what kind of person have I become? Would I really add dispensers for an addictive substance in a ratty lair filled with addicts, just to make the maximum profit possible?
Egbert paused for a solid two seconds before starting to make the shantytown “equivalent” of a castle. He skipped any real defensive wall and went straight to copying one of the new high-density housing things that the cities were doing. He made a nearly windowless square edifice to efficiency that reached four stories high with the thinnest walls and floors he could use while keeping structural integrity.
It had nearly twenty identical sparse rooms, each with no furniture and barely enough space for a man to stretch his arms. The hallways weren’t much better, barely tall enough to avoid stooping as you walked through them and only wide enough for one man at a time. It would be great for the bugs, for invading humans…not so much. The stairs were narrow, spiraling affairs that led from floor to floor and finally to an open-plan room on the roof that only had three walls and cheap wooden planks for a ceiling, all ingloriously overlooking Twitch’s new domain from the roof.
Eggghh, I mean, it was way cheaper that way, but man, that thing is going to fall over. If anyone too high-level attacks it...alright, the easiest fun one I KNOW people would pay to use... Siege weapons, coin-operated siege weapons. Egbert felt rather pleased with his ingenuity as he started browsing the store; the trap section would certainly have what he needed.
A few delvers entered his halls while he was crafting away downstairs. And Max finally started building his damned tavern. Egbert ignored them all as he rifled through his options, sorting out the best choices he had available for the moment that would work as “siege weapons” when he made them coin-activated and let adventurers point them. Hoo boy, someone is going to accidentally obliterate their own party with one of these.
[Knockoff Dragon's Breath Trap] [1 Gold]
True dragon's breath will melt nearly any metal in existence below the third tier. It's required for many of the highest forms of forging; it can even burn away the very soul or essence of normally near-immortal creatures. This is just a really cool flamethrower with a banging dragon head around the nozzle. Sputters a bit and is very hard to put out once lit. Normally there would be a list of ways it can target adventurers, but since that's reallllyyy not exactly what you're planning to do with this thing, I'll leave those out.
[Barrel OH Fun] [5 Silver Per Use]
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It’s really not any fun for anyone involved, but if you place these strategically and let people activate them from a distance or catapult them—hell, anything that doesn’t involve it activating near the user—they will be popular. It...”borrows” a monster or ten from the store for a brief period. This can have catastrophic and hopefully brief results.
That…sounds like it could be the most fun I have all month or lay waste to one of my floors...Do I really want to have those this close to the tavern and the orphanage? The inspector was explicit that I would lose my exemption if the problematic little shits get eaten. Oh, I could just install some magic barriers or something around the tavern area and charge for it!
[Big Ass Wand] [4 Gold]
The size of a tree and twice as mean. Trees aren’t mean? Obviously you haven’t seen the bullshit going on north of you. Tree-related casualties have beaten out bandit-related deaths. On a side note, most of the bandits are now inside the trees…ANYWAY…
There was a long pause, like the god was busy typing the rest of the description. What the hell is wrong with this guy? What does he mean the trees are eating people? Is this pertinent information, or is he just being pithy!?
A massive wand meant to be attached to a ballista mounted on castle walls; more advanced versions come with more advanced spells. This one comes with magic missiles, given all the oomph imaginable. Want to get back at Ben for blowing up your Man Grabbers with his wand? Point this in his general direction and watch the fallout, or just let the rich bugger explode a few loot bugs with it—your call.
Okay, that was a bit funny, but that description should have just been “BIG ASS MAGIC MISSILES.”
Egbert sighed and moved on to the last one he was considering that was at least in the realm of immediately affordable. Someone upstairs was causing a bit of a ruckus, and he needed to hurry up and go see what fresh hell today had brought him.
[Homing Boulder] [2 Gold]
Big ole tower with a giant boulder on top, easy to see and avoid, right? Well, it would be if the boulder wasn’t actually just a very bitter elemental. Will home in on and attempt to squoosh, squash, and/or paste intruders. Might have some fun synergy with the rather awful topography of the cavern floor you have decided to leave in place out of sheer pettiness and desire to be as cheap as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I respect your coin purse-clutching ways, but even by my standard there are going to be an awful lot of broken ankles.
Meh, yeah, that boulder sounds like it would sow some not necessarily lethal chaos. Egbert just went ahead and bought one homing boulder for now, saving the rest of his coins in case of emergencies, like needing some popcorn to stave off his not-so-gradual descent into boredom-fueled insanity.
[Copper 0] [Silver 9] [Gold 0]
He put down the rather imposing tower in the dead center of the battlefield. It stood on the twisted ground, a strangely aggressive edifice of roiling stone and magma. Uhhhhh, that's...how does that count as a boulder?
The tower itself was four blackened pillars with a platform on top. The entire thing was made of a gleaming obsidian that wept molten stone from small pore-like divots across its surface. The Boulder itself was a rounded creature of dark brown, endlessly shifting plates of stone. Its very skin ground against itself as its stubby, neckless head looked down over its new home. Two deep eyeless pits burned the color of blood within its featureless face.
The elemental shifted around on its platform a few times with a deep, unhappy-sounding, grating grumble. Tiny legs unfolded from the bottom of it along with segmented hunks of uneven rock in the rough shape of arms. It more or less threw itself off the tower and onto the twisted landscape, happily pressing its face against the cavern floor before waddling to a shallow cave a few feet away and nestling in like a bear for winter.
Alright...can’t anything I get match the damn description? My boulder trap just put itself UNDERGROUND…. Sigh...whatever, it’s fine. I’m sure he will pop out to harass people or something, at least adjacent to being a trap when people pay his cost.
Egbert zoomed back towards his top floor to see what the hell the disturbance was. He would really wish he hadn’t if he had known the future horrors, what absolute inane pain-in-the-ass bullshittery that this fateful meeting would bring. He would have stuffed himself into a cave with the “Puppy” and just called it good for the next fifty to one hundred years and let the problematic fucks die of old age.
Egbert curiously passed through the village over the loot pit and into the loot bug room. The second he walked in, there was a brilliant explosion as someone threw one of the very valuable mana crystals straight at a hanging treasure chest, and it exploded in a shower of mimic giblets. Holy shit! New adventurers? Also, RIP nameless mimic; that was a rough way to go.
Egbert excitedly zoomed over to his unstable mana crystal dispenser, eager to see what kind of new contestants could afford to use rocks that cost a couple gold each like a grenade. He froze in abject horror at what he saw; he was being robbed. What? NO! I'm the one who fleeces people. Get your grubby mitts out of my vending machine!
A figure that might as well have been the most generic scoundrel or cutthroat imaginable was pressed against the machine. They had a ratty red bandanna across their face and a grey and black cloak that looked a few sizes too small wrapped around them; greasy jet-black curls peeked out of the cloak’s hood. The burglar had one arm stuffed up the chute of the machine. The other hand had a dagger stabbed into the coinslot of all places, turned at an unhealthy angle, and mana pouring freely in. Whatever they were doing was making the machine drop stone after stone into the waiting hand. Expertly they pulled stone after stone free, setting them down into an awaiting shabby box.
A figure darted into the front of the room from the hallway, also wrapped in obscuring clothes, this time many sizes too big. “Resh! Hurry up, someone is coming this way! You know we are supposed to stay at the minimum security joke of an orphanage they have in town!” a light, somewhat sinisterly smooth voice called out.
Resh let out a cackle, an actual cackle, before shouting back. “Fuck ‘em, they don’t know we’re wayward fucking orphans. I'm just an adventurer doing adventurous things. When else are we going to get the chance to raid an actual dungeon? That fuck is trying to pawn us off on another do-gooder, and who knows where we will end up.”
Oh? Wait, who are these...? Oh gods...these are some of MY orphans?
