Peter relegated the next four weeks to beefing up the upper levels. He first met and then surpassed his goal of each floor pulling in 200 essence naturally, but the 800 plus naturally gathered essence was now only a large minority of what his dungeon was bringing in. Just 6 weeks ago he had been hovering around 1,000 essence a day, now he was drawing in 3 times that, and that was not even accounting for the deaths. The deaths were not frequent but he still had several a week, which garnered him on average another 1,000 essence every day.

  Over the four weeks, he had expanded, added new unit types and spawners for them. He maintained the floors at various tier levels making them all quite predictable. Still with all that effort his upper levels were only a bit under what he would consider at capacity, and more people were arriving every day.

  The area surrounding his dungeon was a full on boom town. Merchants were already setting up shops as were other businesses. They were still all operating out of tents, but buildings were under construction. He was sad to see that most of the regions original residents were starting to get pushed out. After all, they had no power or influence. They currently still made up about half of the population outside or inside the dungeon, but that would soon change.

  After what he called his site visit by the elite adventuring team, there had been no word or sign of order being brought to the area. More murders and incidents had occurred and more convicted people had been executed in his dungeon. However that was all likely about to change. Already things had calmed down significantly after the most recent arrivals.

  Nearly two hundred people had arrived yesterday along with mounts, wagons, and as much supplies as they could carry. They would perhaps have been an attractive target for the unruly population, but no one would act against them since a good 50 of the newcomers were knights with full plate and top notch weapons. Standards bore the red insignia of a sun against a yellow backdrop, delineating this group as an official government sponsored entity, if their gear did not already do so.

  Accompanying the humans was a group of 11 elves bearing their own green standards with a white wave insignia. These were the west sea elves, which from the talks was a scattered populace that were technically also a part of Dawn but not completely. Peter guessed they were a vassal state or something along the lines.

  None of it really mattered to him. Right now his dungeon would still be vulnerable to attacks in the real world if someone decided to destroy his core, but as his current progress they would not be able to threaten him much longer. The only thing Peter would have to worry about in another year or so, would be if the powers that be above his dungeon elected to restrict access to his dungeon.

  Fellette had mentioned that it happens. Either only certain people would be allowed in, taxes instituted that decreased adventuring numbers, or for whatever reason they would prevent access entirely. At least for now that did not seem to be something he needed to worry about, unless the people currently in control got conquered or something.

  It was crazy to him that his new existence could spark a war, but that was the reality of it. The world outside was a big place, and there were clearly less than 1,000 dungeons in existence at any one time. Only 30 to 40% of the new dungeons from each decadal group survived past 10 years, spare cores or not. Then at that point even more were immediately culled by the intermediates dungeons with a good decade or two on them.

  That was what Peter really needed to focus on. His collection dungeon was progressing just fine. He would need to start looking where he was going. He had every intention of battling in the next congregation. That being said he would continue to expand and develop his dungeon for now. Doing so would mean more daily essence, giving him more for when he elected to start preparing for battle. He would continue expanding keeping his dungeon just above the point where he would consider it at capacity.

  Still since he had met his goals, it was time to make a few things he had put off. He pulled the C tier clockwork card out along with 2 C tier design cards. It was time to make an administrator that could start handling the minute details with loot and other matters. Plus he could use the company. He was starting to feel a bit batty. Even someone like Clockwork in small doses would do it, until he got some humanoid cards for some better company.

  Peter elected to get the choice for both design cards so he was given 6 options. He would then use his increases to adjust computing capability or intelligence. Since his last time using triplification, he had read through the section on the increase support ‘card’ more thoroughly. Yes, he could increase the stats for attack, defense, or special directly, but he could also choose a specific feature. He could increase a units speed which may increase the attack or defense attribute by a rank or not He could increase things like intelligence which might never affect their rank or could affect them quite quickly. Increasing a dumb golems intelligence might make its fighting capabilities sky rocket…. Well that was Peter’s theory.

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  However, now he was less concerned with his administrators stats, but its capability. It would just be the first unit to join his staff, that might someday number in the hundreds. He could only direct units on the same floor as him during battles. Since he could only be in one location, and was in fact very easy to kill he would need messengers and staff making decisions.

  There had only been a couple hundred in his tutorial battle, but his future battles would likely have thousands and eventually even millions. He would need people collecting data, determining enemy numbers, and analyzing the enemies' elites. When Emma and Felllete had talked about it, it had sounded like a full control center. Where hundreds of staff and messengers contributed.

  This first guy however would be in charge of managing his collection dungeon, more specifically gathering essence from the hunters and adventuring. Later on he would have resources wholly devoted to upkeep armies of units, making weapons, and so on. He would have plenty of others, working various aspects and administration for him. Then he would have staff dedicated for the battle dungeon and so on. That was far off. This guy would be his aide for everything for now.

  Peter looked through the choices. All were clockwork beings, but only two were humanoids with sentient like intelligence. Of the two it was relatively easy to decide which one to pick, from the clockwork spearman (C) or the clockwork engineer (C-). Peter used his two increases to boost intelligence and computation, its rank did not change. Once again he got a reroll and then a 3, for 8 stock cards total keeping his good roll streak alive.

  The unit that looked uncomfortably like clockwork appeared in front of him. Peter looked at the unit. “I think I will go with Boris.” Peter said, determining the unit's name. He had thought of using some naming convention, like designating the first at alpha and so on. Then again, he did not really know very many more of the Greek letter names, so he decided to go with the first thing that came to mind. Names did not change or really mean anything function wise, but he would need names for his staff.

  “Boris, clockwork engineer, ready for tasking.” the robot said, standing rigid. He had the same voice synthesizer, staticky radio-like voice. Peter wondered whether he should have tried to increase his personality or something. Would that even work? He shuddered, was he really about to put such a cold, “Logical”, entity in charge of his dungeon? He could only imagine how clockwork ran his own dungeon. He shook any misgivings off.

  “Boris, you will forever be in charge of essence collection, loot allocation, and modification of all associated dungeon levels. Each day you will give me a brief about where we stand, and then propose changes you would like to implement. For now you will not be allowed to actually use essence and will get confirmation on all decisions.”

  Peter added that last part. He needed to size up this guy, before he handed the proverbial reigns over. For all he knew his new staff member might decide to adjust things to the extreme, resulting in more deaths just to garner him more daily life essence. Peter could live with how the dungeon stood right now. His first four floors had no traps and got sequentially more difficult making it easy for the humans to decide whether they were able or ready to go down another floor. If they grossly overestimated their capabilities and got themselves killed, then that was their fault.

  “Also you will aid me in any other matters, until I summon more appropriate staff to take over,” Peter stated.

  “Affirmative,” Boris stated. Then Peter spent several hours doing his best to communicatie his intentions.

  Regardless of his worries Boris managed things according to his expectations, or at least to how he had understood them. After a few clarifications, he had no problems with the clockwork unit. He even handed over all loot allocation or upkeep decisions. Peter decided to keep final approval for expansions or dungeon modifications in his hands, but Borris would plan and make recommendations.

  Upkeep had never been much of a concern for him since he had only ever allotted the minimum 1%. Which had already brought people in swarms, however soon what the beginning floors gave out would not be enough, and he would have to offer far more for the intermediate adventuring parties. A few parties had shown up and had been underwhelmed by what they got for defeating the fourth floor boss despite Peter having initially put it at 10 times what a normal mob on floor 4 would give out. It was now at 50 times, and yet intermediate and advanced adventurers still found it paltry.

  Starting the intermediate floors with the fifth floor was Borris’ first task. The fifth floor would have mid D tier units as the top of the food chain, but would still have mainly low D tiers and even E tier swarms to change things up. There were adjustments he could make with spawners including linking them to summon a group all at once. The group would then stick together and roam the floor. Even with the increased costs it only took two weeks to make the fifth floor viable enough to open.

  Two weeks later, Peter unlocked the sixth floor for 25,000 essence. By week 30 he had opened floor six, and even unlocked the seventh floor for 35,000. For the sixth level they would make high D tiers the top of the food chain with various units from the lower ranks and tiers. There they would stop for now and expand. Peter used both the doublificstions he had gotten out of the card packs to make two mid C tiers using an original C tier card from lightning and the dragon fly. A lightning warrior and six winged dive bomber were created. They would stand guard on the seventh along with a host of D tiers that had not met the criteria to be added on the floor.

  For the second half of the year, he would focus on expanding the floors that they had and getting ready for congregation.