Elise lay on a pile of grass staring up at the sky with the slime beneath her head, completing its duty of being a pillow faithfully. After two days the goblins managed to clear out plenty of the grass, forming a sizable dirt clearing and path into the forest.
Currently, they are tasked to use an axe to cut down trees to expand the path into the woods as well as bring back any grass or animals they can find to add DP to the dungeon. Although miscellaneous junk they brought back isn't worth much, they added up to around 20DP, currently the dungeon's main source of income.
Elise had saved a portion of the grass for her own use, her bed where she lay cloud gazing. There wasn't much for her to do as most of the work was manual labour taken care of by the goblins and skeletons. On a separate note, the gobs had been told to do whatever they pleased in terms of breeding and were encouraged. Amazingly, Clel and Crel were already pregnant and due in 27 days.. They really are uhh.. strong.
The skeletons, on the other hand, have been busy hacking and digging. After entering the dungeon there would be a path as wide as two carriages, around 5 metres, stretching only 20 or so metres into the mountain. At the end of the road was a medium sized clearing.
Currently, the skeleton army had grown to 80 or so, their expansion was mostly funded by the dirt they dug up. They didn't want to buy anymore tools with DP anyhow. She instructed 20 of the Skeletons to use the rocks they dug up and break them to make primitive tools, she left that taskforce to Zwei who kept establishing herself to a secretary entitled to a desk job. There weren't any desks to work at though. Although clumsy, the skeletons were doing well mass-producing primitive tools, AKA rocks on sticks.
While there were 20 picks circulating the golem expansion crew, the rest used primitive tools to hack away at the dirt and transported them with a two boarded-up shopping carts. Amazingly, shopping carts cost around half the price of wheelbarrows, therefore Elise had bought two and boarded it up and reinforced it with the wood brought back by the goblin lumberjacks and their one skeleton helper.
It could be said their low budget dungeon expansion was going well. They had collected quite a lot of lumber for future construction and whatnot which was piled in the clearing within the dungeon. Elise made a mental note to build a storage area as soon as possible. Currently, their DP was currently balanced at around 700.
That said, Elise hadn't been laying on the hay bed doing nothing most of the time. She had been directing the operation and receiving reports the whole time. On the other hand, she had also been browsing the shops and marking down a few important items she was aiming for.
Having reflected on their failed operation (small outing) on the first day, she was honestly ashamed at her stupidity. They really just went out with nothing, no information nor strength, not even some money.
Firstly, they are dungeon creatures and creatures of another world, going out without some sort of disguise or shield was like going out naked. They were bound to stand out especially with their appearances, black hair and purple eyes were not common around the republic, nor were beastmen. In fact, this world doesn't have any beastmen so it would have been quite an incident should they had found a town or village.
She really didn't know whether they were lucky or not to cool their heads running around the forest without direction. Elise decided to obtain two transformation masks before they would go to the towns, the items cost 60DP each and changed one's appearance. It boasted fooling anyone under 3500PL which seemed plenty decent for this world.
Some other items she found in the system shop seriously left her speechless.
[Solar Panel 500DP]
[Gas Generator 20000DP]
[Wind Turbine 800DP]
[Battery 10Kw/h 1000DP]
Although these seemed like an amazing future path, is it probable? Would the people used to a world of magic really utilise electricity? That said, these require too much capital so the idea was shelved.
Another important task Elise worked on was her information gathering. Two days ago, she had sent out an Eagle to scout the area and produce a map. They were on the bottom of the north-eastern side of Rocky Mountain, a mountain that stood alone in the middle of nowhere. It was huge and rocky with no vegetation growing upon it, therefore, the residents of this area had dubbed it Rocky Mountain.
The dungeon is around 6Km to the nearest town, Emerald Grove, and 27 to the next, Dusk Meadow. To their crazed joy, they were 16Km to the Western Silver Trade Route which lead to Silver City, one of this world's best trade cities. This meant they were on the edge of the People's Freedom Republic, a free trade country, which was greatly beneficial to them. They were near both Vesrye Empire and Holy Light Kingdom meaning they had a great geological advantage.
The trade route signified an almost endless supply of customers, of which were almost guaranteed to be merchants. If she could establish herself as a trade city/dungeon, she could potentially steal Silver City's worth and grow rapidly off this.
Although Elise had obtained a portion of this information via the eagle she sent out, the more important part had come from the lesser ghosts she had finally put into use. After confirming Sam, the first ghost, had the ability to practically disappear when it tried to hide, Elise had purchased another one and sent one to each village to scout and gather information.
She really had to thank the dungeon for its auto-translation functions for speech as she almost cried when she saw the squiggly letters through the ghost's eyes.
To her surprise, although these were countryside towns, they were quite developed due to the trade route. They were both 1-2 Km in diameter and had sturdy walls surrounding them. Elise estimated them to have 500 or so permanent residents each with a rough estimate of other 500 or so floaters.
The ghosts were doing a fine job of wandering around and listening in to people's conversations, although not much was gathered yet. Most people's conversations are really just useless topics such as: A-how's the weather today, B-it sure is fine. It was really difficult to gather information. Watching the mundane lives of all these people, Elise had been bored to death, food was her only comfort.
Although she really wanted to splurge endlessly on food, she understood how important every DP is for a dungeon just beginning. When starting a business, one must be prepared to invest everything they've got, no matter money or energy. One of the biggest mistakes people make when starting a company is taking all the profits and using them. When one first makes money out of a company, invest it back into the company and let it grow.
Profit is not the only value a company has, only when there is a steady income could one take out a small portion of money for what they want, not need. Elise understood this, it was engraved in her brain. She knew how important cash flow, or DP flow in this case is and limited herself to 10DP food money per day. With only a few popcorn packets and a pizza, she continued to watch the boring lives of towns people on her open air hay bed.