Meanwhile, Gill was still planning his future endeavours in the core room. After spending a few gold for a simple couch he flipped one of his newly minted coins in his hand while looking through all the options available to him. He found one of the traits he simply couldn't neglect.
Multiple Dimensional Layering. It basically doubles the dungeons size by adding another floor that mirrors the first one. If you add one trait point, the dungeon gets one extra floor. Another level and it doubles the total to four. And it continues like that endlessly, double upon double of floor space. The only issue is that after he added one point into it, the second level requires two points to upgrade. All Gill had was a total of two points, with one already spent into the first new layer, leaving him short of his endless expansion.
'Well, that just goes to show how there are some breaks on the exponential growth. If there wasn't, I could've just made the dungeon into a long treck to the center of this world, added some food and water spoiling traits and that would have made the whole place impervious.' Gill thought to himself. Looking over the dungeon menu for his current gold and doing some quick calculations, he noticed that his earnings were truly pitifully small.
'The five undead bring in just about five converted gold coins an hour each. So, in total my passive gold generation lands at about 25 gold per hour. Even though their levels differ, they're equally mindless without any real drive to perform. I guess that's the issue with low level items, even though it cost a full thousand gold..', Gill glared at the apprentice necromancer wand.
Looking over his total inventory of items to sell to speed things up a bit, in total it came out to a beggars allowance. All he has left is a single copper sword, a pair of copper daggers and that dungeon scanner. Both the sword and dagger set would sell for 250 gold each, but the dungeon scanner didn't have a price and sold for zero gold. All he could really do for now was wait for a couple of hours to generate enough gold for that mana array.
With nothing better to do in the meantime, Gill headed down into the mine to do some mining himself. Might aswell take the chance to earn gold while figuring out how strong he actually is. Taking the lift back down into the mine and grabbing a pickaxe from the floor, Gill started swinging like a madman. The walls of the mine behaved like tofu as he sliced them open like cutting vegetables.
'This is much easier than expected. It seems my level 10 strength is truly superhuman.', Gill smiled to himself as he worked up a sweat doing the mining work. He himself mined at a terrifying rate that added up to almost 100 gold coins per hour. After spending twelve hours sweating down there, his surplus of gold landed at 1600 coins after adding the undeads share in total! Taking a break from his mining spree, Gill headed back to the couch in the core room to take an earned rest and look over his gains.
Opening up the dungeon menu and looking at his stash, he noticed a difference between his own minted gold coins and the ones he got from missions and selling equipment. Looking closely, 1555 of his gold was termed 'Demon Gold', while it could still be used as traditional gold it also had some special properties.
[ Demon Gold ]
[ Cursed currency that spreads misfortune to all non-demons in its possession ]
With a glint in his eyes, he immedietly realized what was going on. This was something Gill didn't expect. Probably, most things he dabbled with would receive some sort of curse, just because he was a demon. If he could spread out Demon Gold as 'rewards' to the adventurers that braved his dungeon without killing them, wouldn't it be possible to earn experience and levels from afar?
Imagine, a party of five were to come and brave his dungeon. They fight his minions and descipher his traps, believing that they reached his 'Demon Treasury' after a long and arduous adventure. Spotting chests filled to the brim with gold, they'll be beyond themselves with joy and immedietly try to bring it out of the dungeon. Depending on the amount of gold they manage to leave with, they'll catch more and more misfortune.
A trap they already deciphered suddenly sprung back to life on their way out and hurt one of the companions? Bad luck. Another party of adventurers spot them and notice that they've managed to find treasure in the dungeon? A fight will most likely break out, what horrendous luck! They somehow make it back to the entrance, and a team of knights from the kingdom is outside, preparing to take down the dungeon? They better pay the 'protection fee' or lose everything on the spot!
Slowly but surely, the gold will spread throughout the entire kingdom and perhaps even beyond. More and more people will have Gill's Demon Gold in their possession, getting more and more unfortunate. Fell down a flight of stairs, broke your legs? Simply bad luck. Took a bite from an apple and found only half of an extremely poisonous insect inside? What great misfortune! As the bad luck keeps on adding up, sooner or later they'll die from all the misfortune - and Gill will receive tons of experience from afar!
Thinking about ways to spread his cursed gold out into the world, Gill remembered the camping equipment and the poisoned food he left outside the dungeon entrance. Perhaps, hiding a few purses filled with coins inside the backpacks would make the whole thing seem even more authentic. Imagine, due to the misfortune laced gold in conjunction with the poisoned foodstuffs, the adventurers going through the equipment might not even check for poison at all. Any would-be visitors could go 'oh, why didn't we check it out' and 'what rotten luck, how did this happen'.
Standing up from the couch, Gill snickered to himself as he opened the door to the core room and walked out. Noticing how the portculis next to the exit was gone and replaced with a staircase, he realized the trait point he spent on layering was already in effect. Most likely, the top floor should still be prepared with the traps and chest he placed earlier.
'I should leave the traps as they are up there and prepare a new setup down here. I can even leave the fake chest there and stack a few purses filled with cursed gold ontop, if anyone every survives the first trap.' Gill thought to himself as he walked down the corridor. Jumping up the stairs, the first thing he saw outside the gate was a small rodent of some kind. It didn't eat the poisoned food on the ground and just stood next to the entrance while looking inside the dungeon anxiously.
[ Ding! Spiritual beast detected near the dungeon. ]