Peter had little idea what chain of events he had put into action the day before with the new summons, items, and dungeon upgrades. He only got a quarter of the way toward the dark elf village when he was intercepted by Khan.

  “You upgraded the mine, didn’t you?” Khan asked accusingly.

  “Why did we find something…?” Peter asked tepidly.

  “Find something! The treasure tapirs started going absolutely crazy. They are finding veins of tier 1 metal all over the place as well as better resources. They found a dozen new pockets of dark crystal, several new true silver veins, tier 4 sterling silver, tier 5 ebony… Quite a few others. They are hitting on tunnels they have already covered all over the place. They will not even be able to mine all the locations without some serious considerations on how to keep the mine stable.”

  Peter was happy to see such drastic effects right off the bat. Upgrading the mine twice had seemingly been a good call. That was until he gave Khan the details of the mine as well as highlighting the various shadow pool upgrades.

  “Perhaps you should have talked this out during the post congregation meeting. This makes me realize why we have been limited to tier 1 and 2 herbs. Maybe if we built a big enough plot garden we could upgrade it as well.”

  Peter did not answer. He brought up his interface and expanded one of Khan's various plots of herbs. Nothing happened, but the area soon absorbed several of the other nearby plots that had been arranged in the rows and columns around it, until sure enough. A level 0 ‘dark garden’ popped up right below the shadow pool, also known as his fishing pond. Peter showed it to Khan.

  “It’s almost like we sort these things out before expending limited resources. Then we might be able to create things like that shell strengthening pill,” Khan said, throwing up his hands.

  “You know I believe it was you that insisted on us not combing the various herb plots so that you had walkways and there would be no possible cross contamination, so don’t put this all on me,” Peter said rolling his eyes. ‘Seriously,’ it was not like any of them had known.. They were lucky he had built and expanded his fish pond, and guess who had been against that… Saying it was a waste of space and essence. Who could say when they would have figured the possibility out if it was not for him. Besides, access to higher tier resources in the mine was just as good as better resources that could be grown in the garden. In fact even at level zero the mine had been far more effective with better results.

  Peter breathed deeply trying to calm himself down. It was not this guy's fault. Seemingly it was likely not his fault that his research had been limited with only basic tiers of resources. Unlike metal, it probably took higher tiers to really get the results, Immediate restore potions or the like. Nah, Khan’s only fault was being an asshole. Even now he was prattling on.

  As Peter calmed down he started to realize just how many untold other possibilities there were. Already, all of a sudden the pinnacle upgrade was one of the most desirable cards to get despite the small amount of things he needed to upgrade, but was there really so little that could be upgraded.

  Sure he could see himself running out of things to upgrade as they currently were, but that was only for resources on this one floor. If he made other floors based on other realms, he could have other things he would want to upgrade. If there was a shadow pool and a dark garden, then there could be the opposite or light equivalents. Then there were probably dozens of other realms or aspects. Probably far too many that he could never go after them all. He would either have to spread wide, or concentrate on a fraction of what could possibly out there.

  Peter realized he had been ignoring Khan, having gone into his interface to start making a lava pool bigger. He already had some pools of lava that were near as big as his fishing hole, so it did not take much. But… apparently that was not a thing. However when he transformed a plot of igneous stone on floor 10 of the battle dungeon into fertile solid, a volcanic garden feature appeared on his interface. There really were seemingly limitless possibilities.

  Seeing that Peter was ignoring him, Khan eventually stopped following. He did not care. He moved to the forge. True enough Greg and the hundreds of other gnome and dark elf smiths were going ballistic. Ore was being dropped off all over the place outside. Peter was happy to see a new heap of cobalt. In one day they had mined more than they had previously gathered. That being said it was only a basic tier 2 metal. A small step up from iron. Now that there were higher tier metals than that being pulled out, they were all the rage.

  Peter’s outing turned into an impromptu inspection. The smiths were not the only ones that were going crazy with ideas and uses for the higher tier metals. Gearhead was also trying to requisition the material as was the magic college, but the demand from the magic college was playing second fiddle to the other thing that had them beyond excited.

  “I can’t believe I never thought of this. We should be able to make these scrolls for any spell. It will be so much easier to make them over enchantments,” Glenda said. She was of course talking about the scroll of fey.

  “Wait, are you saying we could make these scrolls for everything?” Peter asked.

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  “Of course not,” Merlin stated. His tone was in a manner of ‘Don’t be stupid’. “As with seemingly all things in how dungeons work, there are limits. In this case, as with enchanted items it is materials. You could not just write on a regular piece of paper with regular ink.”

  “Okay…” Peter said, glaring at the mage. It was just a question. “Could we make paper… parchment out of the dark wood trees? We have a ton of them, as tier 2 material we should be able to make something out of them.”

  “Very likely, We will have to build a little pulp mill first. That being said, my best guess is that a parchment at the tier 2 level would only be able to hold a spell that might threaten a C tier at best. We could not make something even close to the scroll of fey,” Merlin chortled.

  Peter gulped. Yup, he needed more pinnacle upgrades. He also felt a bit more regret of having used his two other pinnacle upgrades to increase the mine to level 3. If he had tier 3 and 4 wood resources he could literally mass produce scrolls like this. He supposed he could upgrade some trees tree by tree. No, that would only make each individual tree capable of producing higher tier materials. It would still take time for any to develop. Then he remembered. He checked his interface.

  Eureka!!! He had 60 common dungeon upgrade cards. Then he realized he could only upgrade 4 trees with the 60 upgrades which were equivalent to about 150,000 essences. Peter sighed, giving up the idea. If he did get anything it would likely not be in a quantity that would make that much of a difference. Plus it was possible the trees would be killed to harvest said resources. His 60 upgrades represented 15 possible B tiers. It could wait.

  Eventually, Peter felt like a damper on the exciting fervor left. He would give them space to allow things to fall back into a rhythm. As fun as the whole play by play was, he could wait for Borris end of day report to find out what new metals had been discovered. However he was intercepted before he made it very far.

  “You really threw this place into an uproar,” Delilah said, sauntering over.

  “Yup, perhaps I should have said something to someone yesterday when I upgraded the mine twice over…My bad.”

  “Also saw that Krista got a new ‘Masterwork’ celestial sword. She waved it in my face this morning. She has only been here a day and already getting presents. I believe it took you a year and a half to give me something.” Delilah flicked his shoulder.

  “Then it died at the next battle. Several years after that you gave me another tiger, a ‘celestial’ one. Which… died in less than a year as well. Even Glenda got something more long lasting. Seems you only give gifts that will last to the other girls.”

  Peter looked away, swallowing. He was an idiot. He doubted saying that he had left the sword with the artificers with direction to give it to wherever its use would be best served would fly. “I did not forget. I’m going to get you something good… Oooo, actually I found a way to potentially raise you to higher tiers.”

  Peter shared the interface with the development pool. He could no longer open the option since he could not purchase it, but he remembered it well enough. “Hmmmm…” Delilah practically purred. “Well when you get it to the point where I can become A tier we can go together… Ooo and I would not want clothes to get in the way of the absorption process.”

  She smiled wickedly when Peter gulped. His flushed face clearly brought a lot of amusement to her. She broke eye contact. “Well I guess that will be at least another year or two. I guess I should really enjoy going outside the dungeon while I still can. If it can make me A tier, we can make special B tier agents from my D tiers that could take my place. I would not want to be one of those…’High maintenance girls’ you’ve mentioned.”

  “Ooooo, when you are thinking about leaving on your next expedition,” Peter asked. The heat had begun to subside. He actually dreaded the response. He had more than one reason to want to update the shadow pool. If she was A tier, it would cost too much to keep her outside, alternate realm or not. It was too ‘high maintenance.’

  Delilah had conducted 3 expeditions last year. The first she had been gone nearly 2 months. The second and third had been shorter, but both had still been over a month. It was not that she was just his love interest. As the master, dungeon dictator, he did not have too many people that were comfortable enough to really approach him.

  Well, that was not quite true, but Delilah was the only one that was actually enjoyable to be around. It was all business with most. People like Glenda, Greg, or Merlin only brought up things they would like or needed, or to quickly show him something. They were all far to work engrossed and would rather not waste time talking to him otherwise. N’terrin was alright, but the guy was more reserved. Besides he was busy managing the ever increasing amount of dragons, beasts, and his own projects like breeding. Still Peter had visited the guy almost daily when Delilah had been gone, because he was the best of what was left over.

  Of the ones that did approach him. Boris, Gearhead, and the other lower tier clock works had no issue approaching him, but they were hardly fun to be around. Khan would spend most of the day with Peter if he would allow it, but it was like hanging around some old person caught up in some ideal past. He would complain and speak at length about things that could never be changed. On top of his general passive aggressive stance toward Peter’s decision processes or management style, Peter would rather be alone.

  “If you’re good with it, my team will be ready to head out tomorrow.”

  “Not trying to scout out close to one of the other dungeons or something,” Peter asked. His heart was already sinking.

  “Of course not, there are a hundred things we need to check out and discover in Dawn. For one, I will have to check in with our capital team. Perhaps they will have found out a little more. Near the end of my last expedition, I heard there was a growing insurrectionist group. Potentially, they are backed by some Warsaw insurgents,” Delilah said, with a wicked grin.

  It was clear what she had in mind, if she could locate them. Peter sighed. He felt like a military wife sending her spouse out to war. “Well then perhaps we could do lunch and dinner then today.”

  “Of course, then perhaps some dessert afterwards,” She walked her fingers up his chest. The flush and heat returned. “Got to make sure you are not steered away by some other dungeon minx while I’m away.” She turned headed back toward the core. “Oooo, and you still better give me that higher level pool… and some other presents,” she tacked on.