Tammy- Underneath Dungeon Of Greed

  Tammy stuffed her robust frame through another winding corkscrew of a turn in the damnable tunnel she was crawling through. Her familiars were clutched to her side, casting a low purple light so at least she could see where she was going, but she was starting to get worried about if she was going to fit or not.

  Normally she would have told people to utterly sod off if they asked her to go climb down a slimy, narrow tunnel in a dungeon into gods knows what. But—and this was a big but. Their patron had given them a task; he had spoken to them all on the eve of the contest.

  The unknown was what it called itself, and the unknown had a goal that was best carried out while Greed was too busy trying to corral his insane monsters into a semblance of order and obsessively counting the coins he collected from greedy townsfolk and a few out-of-towners who had come for the opening of the dungeon.

  Tammy roughly stuffed herself through a probably too small hole and kept shimmying into the darkness while she mused about the dungeon that had changed the town of Tine forever. Edens Vale was, quite frankly, a tiny country, and towns like Tine were simple places that rarely changed. In the last month she had watched a frankly absurd shift in the entire atmosphere of the town.

  The shopkeepers went from dubious about some supposed new dungeon to utterly enthralled, stocking wares adventurers might want and building up dragon’s hoards of backstock.

  The local mayor's office had circled the wagons, so to speak, refusing to send missives out and let the town get inundated before everyone was prepared. Hells, there were currently two new inns being built in the field that led from Greed to Tine.

  Everyone in town had accepted that yes, this is real; we got a dungeon. Yes, it’s a weird fucking dungeon but not a murderous one. They all knew a gold rush was coming; the town would be inundated soon, and they were doing their damndest to be ready.

  Tammy’s thoughts on the dungeon were a bit of a mixed bag. She couldn’t decide if he was a prankster with a bit of a dark sense of humor, utterly unhinged, or just kind of a greedy dickhead.

  None of that really mattered though; he had brought them to her family’s future, to their new patron. Her eldritch starfish began pulsing with a dangerous light, and she stopped suddenly, looking around cautiously.

  Ahead, the tunnel opened up to a darkened cavern; she could hear the faint crashing of water and something else almost like wind easing through rocks. Tammy gulped and summoned a dripping tentacle to wrap around her arm for comfort before she crept forward.

  She waved a hand with a dark flash of mana, and the starfish lit up far brighter than before, illuminating the chamber. Because it wasn’t just a cave; it was a grand chamber. A ziggurat rose straight ahead of her, worn down by time and the water trickling down its steps. Its dark stone edges still flickered with blood-red runes holding a dark purpose.

  The ground to the right and left of the Ziggurat was a faintly glowing tangle of thorns and trees almost jumbled together with far too tall mushrooms the color of blood. This tangled forest circled the ziggurat all the way to the chamber walls except for right in front of her.

  In front of her an unadorned road of black brick led straight to the massive structure; as she squinted at it in the gloom trying to make out more details, something shifted. Something unfathomable and massive slid from the ceiling and landed atop the ziggurat. All Tammy saw before she turned tail to run were eyes, hundreds and thousands of eyes.

  Dead cold pits that held nothing but hunger and yearning, things that had been sealed down in the dark for a millennia for a reason.

  Egbert- Well, you know where Egbert is.

  Egbert was enjoying a few moments of relative peace after the utter insanity of the last day. Most of the adventurers had finally left or at least retired to the tavern in order to exit this plane of consciousness with Max’s aid. Thrognar was still wandering around for some damn reason.

  The Orphans were gathering all the fallen weapons of the banner bugs from the battlefield. Which, while a bit concerning, was so far down on Egbert's list of problems it was hardly even worth him noticing.

  This had gotten… A bit too chaotic even for his tastes while it was a very profitable success. He really needed to rein things in before he actually got supplanted by one of his damned creations. Egbert was planning to work on a more ‘normal’ section of this floor that adventurers could just explore in and pay out the nose for keys or monster spawns. Well, and a lot of other things, but one step at a time.

  Then Egbert needed to start another floor; he had the normal lootbugs up top with their playground and the loot pit. The mimics were pretty happy in their little village of horrors and far too many keys.

  The banner bugs had their own damn realm now to fight over on the tavern floor. He was about to make a house for contempt to hopefully stay in most of the time.

  But, the fucking “Puppy” Egbert couldn’t kill the little shit, and honestly, at this point, since Contempt probably just started a blood feud with an entire mages academy. Egbert should probably hold onto all the strong monsters he could…and their allies. Egbert sighed and side-eyed the yokels still fishing at the whirlpool.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  So since apparently, he was staying, Egbert thought it was wise to give the “puppy” a floor separate from Contempt, or else things were almost certainly going to devolve into another inane bloodbath.

  Egbert rushed up to the artificial stone wall he had used to divide off the tavern and battlefield from the rest of the frankly insanely large cavern. It was set about a hundred strides from the battlefield. Egbert looked at it thoughtfully and then nodded.

  Yeah, that will work. Just strengthen that part a little bit and put a glorious creepy chapel halfway up the wall. That ought to make the murder-obsessed wannabe god happy. He can be very dramatic on his own private balcony with gothic spires all around him. Oh, and candles—probably need a lot of candles too.

  Alright, everything is repaired, traps reset. Let’s see where that clusterfuck of a day got us to in the most important of terms.

  [Copper 2] [Silver5] [Gold 55] [Platinum 1]

  Well, that’s nothing to shake a stick at!

  Egbert got right to working on his largest-scale expansion ever, starting with the first new attraction of the dungeon, The Cathedral Of Contempt.

  He started by knocking down almost all of the temporary wall he had put up to divide the cavern; he left one large slab that ran from the floor to the ceiling and even reinforced it a bit. Drawing the bottoms out so it was more like a sharply rising hill than a sheer wall. Then he started on the cathedral itself; he went up the wall about halfway and started with a massive circular room that was moored into the air by the rising slab of stone.

  Then because he knew Contempt would want it, he added an angular balcony that jutted out strides into the air with a set of very dramatic and purposeless archways that ran along it. Then he went back to the plain circular room and looked around; it needed…well, a lot. It was bare stone right now.

  You know…this might not be a bad place to plop that shrine to Nomisu…

  Egbert spent the single copper coin it cost and dropped the shrine straight in the center of the cathedral. It was about what he was expecting: a statue of a very jovial-looking man, coins raining down around him, and a monocle over one eye inspecting a massive gem in his hands.

  Of course the whole thing was gilded gold as well, although Egbert's practiced eyes could tell it was just golden paint. Even the god of greed understood the appeal of NOT spending your fortunes to plate everything in gold, no matter how tempting it was.

  Now I just really hope contempt is like, “Oh, wonderful, some decorations for my new abode,” instead of “Die, vile interloper, there can only be one,” and then vague hissing noises followed by chants and stabbing.

  Egbert added columns that rose from ceiling to floor in spiraling rows around the room to add some pizazz. He even carved little screaming loot bug faces into the obsidian-like stone he went with. Then a few rows of simple pews. A frankly unsettling number of candles dotted around the room In creepy clusters and some dark-colored tapestries to finish it off. He figured this room was good enough for now.

  You know, maybe I should really lean into this a bit more than just as Contempt’s house; there’s no reason this couldn’t also be a challenge for people to trek through. How much did that all cost me anyway? Meh, less than ten gold. Let's keep going!

  Egbert crafted glorious wide staircases that led from the edges of the room and wound up to a second floor. This floor he laid out more like one would expect a normal manor to have. Branching hallways with red tile floors contrasted against the black stone walls. Each hallway had a single door that led to one of four rooms.

  The first was a wide-open banquet hall with a hearth at one end and a massive stone table running down the center. It was still cheaper for Egbert to just use stone than to actually buy a table, so he went with that for most of the furniture in the room. Chairs were carved from the floor, immobile but regal. And he dotted a half dozen pillars along the length of the room that matched the ones from downstairs.

  The next room was a library divided into three tight floors. A staircase circled the room, leading from one floor to the next, and from anywhere in the room you could gaze back down to the reading area. Egbert sprung for a cheap but dense yellow-gold carpet in here. After all, if he ever actually added any books, he did want to have some noise absorption for readers.

  Square book-sized shelves were carved into the stone all along the walls in lieu of real bookshelves, and a smattering of the cheapest wooden furniture he could find was added to the reading area in the center of it all.

  Hmmm…

  [Copper 1] [Silver5] [Gold 43] [Platinum 1]

  Egbert was spending more than he meant to here, but if he was being honest with himself, he was having fun. He was getting to design a bizarre cathedral in the center of his dungeon, and if he was lucky, maybe someday he could even fill it with some books so he had something to do on his off time other than plot and be far too invested in the loot bug succession wars.

  He moved on to the second to last room of his bastardized version of a cathedral. He wanted a simple chamber for…worshipers…to rest in. He kept it stark, with rows of beds and a small area for blades to be sharpened. Washbasins with drains near the bottom to scrub the blood of your enemies off with. He even sprung for a couple small mirrors in case people needed to paint skulls on themselves for some reason.

  He finished that room off with a small placard on the door. A metal backing held golden bold letters written in an almost eerie cursive. ‘Cultist’s Room.’

  Ha! Ohh, I don’t even care if I’m probably going to regret that I can monetize the blade sharpener or something later.

  The final room was, of course, a throne room for Contempt. But Egbert had no intention of making it anything suitable for a normal king, no...it was going to fit Contempt’s special brand of creepy.

  The square room was forged with swirling flecks of gold throughout the stone, making it almost dizzying to try and focus on. Four pillars of nearly transparent quartz rose from floor to ceiling, offset from the walls of the room. In the dead center of the room, Egbert began crafting Contempt's awful throne.

  It was shaped like a dark dripping honeycomb of obsidian dripping from the roof and settling unevenly across the floor. It's thousands of interconnecting tunnels where just big enough for a banner bug to crawl through or for Contempt to burst forth from. Every one of the individual honeycombing openings was rimmed with the smallest of subtle etchings suggesting screaming faces or the cries of the damned.

  Egbert stood back and looked around at the honestly fucking terrifying room he had made.

  Now THIS is what a boss room should look like!