Four weeks later or six weeks into his first year, Peter unlocked the third floor. His dungeon was now bringing in about 200 essence a day, more than two thirds of which was coming from the ambient essence gathered by the dungeon. Still there had been no deaths and only a few pokes and prods on his second floor. All of which were soon stopped as the D tier porcupine stepped forward to engage.

  He had added two more additional caverns to the first floor to grow enough to support the additional draw of gatherers; he did not however make any more spawners. He would again in the future, but by this point his visitors were pretty comfortable with how things were. The appearance of a new cavern both stirred up some excitement, but also increased the weariness of the people. However after a few days it was all business as normal.

  For his second floor, Peter had moved up to weaker E tier units. It was still a work in progress that would need a few more weeks to get ready. He would have to introduce a completely new dynamic, loot. To draw adventurers into the dungeon he would need to literally throw money at the problem.

  The manual was full of rules and stipulations on loot. He could not just put a pile of gold despite it being fairly easy to do just that. The possible reward had to somewhat relate to the danger the adventure would have to face. Otherwise the dungeons would inflate the outside economy where currency became meaningless. Even his edible plants on the first floor were limited based on the space of the floor.

  On top of coin currency, his loot could include a host of different things including gems, equipment, potions, magical items, and so on, although for now he was limited to lower denominations of coins. He could also make gems and other natural items, but the difficulty level simply was not high enough yet even for the one off loot boxes. As far as potions or equipment, he would either have to pay a premium to have the interface make it, or eventually his forces could build them for free. It would be a deficit to summon items and consumables from the interface so they would have to wait.

  For his second floor, he set the payout to be at the lowest allowable for the challenge level. The people outside were pretty poor, so it might be enough. The more difficult floors later on would offer successively more. However, Emma had warned him about using too much of his floors to attract adventurers. The extra floors in the real world were extremely helpful to house units and to gather resources for his dungeon battles. There were in fact hard limits on floor size in addition to how much ambient essence a floor could collect for you. In contrast every floor of his battle dungeon should be designed to win dungeon battles. Most older dungeons only allowed adventurers up to their tenth to fifteenth floor or so, before they made it so difficult, no adventurers would dare continue on. Peter was far from that point, but it was worth keeping in mind since he would have to decide how much to ramp up the difficulty.

  As far as how to distribute the loot on the floor, there were two main options. It could appear randomly in small chests. Emma had strongly warned against using this as the only method since adventurers would figure it out and just avoid battles. Adventurers gave off more life essence when fighting, so that was definitely a bad thing. Of course Emma had found that out the hard way, since Clockwork even then had failed to warn her of such things.

  Instead, she said they needed to be just a hint of them happening, and when they were found they should be extravagant. Peter understood that. It was like what casinos did to gamblers. Someone wins big so it attracts a bunch of other hopefuls in. The other way was for loot drops after a monster was defeated. They would appear soon after a defender's death. It was almost a payment since the dungeon would reabsorb the unit to form the treasure.

  Peter would have to build tier E spawners for about 500 essence a piece for his second floor units. The costs would only go up from there. Eventually he might have ten or more of the same type of spawner and would be paying triple what these first ones would cost to keep the floor populated with the same units. Not to mention he would have to do this for multiple unit types for the second floor. When he started using stronger E tier or even D tier the cost would further increase.

  They would drop loot and hopefully attract hunters and eventually adventurers. The good thing about adding loot was that he did not need the beasts to be edible to gain more essence. Peter settled on three initial minions for his second floor, the mangy wolf, hard shell cave crab, and a clockwork gnome. He added the last one so that he was not mistaken as a beast dungeon. The gnome’s usually would wield a crappy iron knife or a short sickle. Probably the most dangerous thing by far in his collection dungeon, but still something the nearby hunters should be able to manage if they were careful.

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  It took 5 more weeks to make 3 spawners, one for each of the second floor mobs, before he decided that the second floor was ready for business. The third floor was just a small room under a single ramp, much like the second had been for that first week. The porcupine and other D tiers would once again defend the actual core.

  No one had challenged the second floor ramp for quite a while, fearful of the far more dangerous porcupine monster. Word had gotten around that it was not something to be messed with, but Fellette had mastered the art of introducing a new floor. Peter copied one idea directly.The last thing he did was to create several new ramps down to the second floor. A howling wolf caught someone's attention, and soon a party of village men decided to investigate the new exit. They were overly cautious, but since the porcupine failed to appear they timidly proceeded on. All it took was one kill on that initial visit. A hunter curiously picked up the dropped pouch and examined its contents. Just a few coppers, but that was apparently more than enough.

  By the next day several hunter parties were trying their hand at the second floor. The first floor was taking care of most of their basic needs, so they had all that time they had used to spend hunting or trapping. That was the hope at least. The day after there were even more parties. The day after that even more.

  It was at this point that Peter realized he either had a good thing going or he was no longer in control of the situation. His daily essence was rocketing up. By the first day of hunters it was already eclipsing what his dungeon naturally brought it. Two days later it was double that, but it was not like Peter was watching his essence tick up. No, he was frantically using it to expand the second floor and occasionally the first floor. More rooms, corridors, and more spawners. He did not even need to bother with loot chests, the unit drops were plenty.

  By the end of the first full week of the second floor being officially open he was making 161 essence naturally, but bringing in five times what he had been prior from just the villagers at about 400. There was not a sign that the number of hunting parties would not continue to increase, already hunters were coming in from further out villages. Word surely had reached the town. How long till it made it to an even more populous area out of the region?

  Peter wondered if the other rookie dungeons were experiencing the exact same thing or if it was only due to the situation he had created for himself. Regardless, he could not ease up. More rooms for the first floor to provide for the increasing population becoming dependent on harvesting. More rooms and spawners for the second floor to cater to the ever increasing hunter presence. Reality was he was not building them fast enough to keep up with demand.

  By the end of the second week he was forced to add two more unit types to the second floor, both E tier. One a spined badger, the second a clockwork hammer gnome. The second became the most deadly unit, and the first to seriously wound a hunter. Just a broken leg, but a second had his arm broken only a day later. No one had died, but it only took one careless moment for that to change.

  After that Peter slowed down the expansion of the top two floors significantly as he started developing the third. The hunters clearly started to get disgruntled. The new wealth opportunities were being over hunted with the spawner units being hunted within hours of spawning. Hunters were even camping inside the dungeon to ensure they were there and had the chance to hunt them first.

  Peter had probably underestimated just how poor these people were. Still it was bringing him in more essence, and he needed to push forward. It was only a matter of time before heavy hitters, actual adventurers started to arrive. Would the porcupine unit be able to ward them off? Probably not, since even C tiers would not be enough to ward off true elite adventuring parties.

  Still Peter wanted another floor that the weaker hunters and adventurers could challenge. That meant another floor with E tiers. With his daily essence only continuing to increase, Peter had the third floor ready for a soft opening and had unlocked the fourth floor for 5,000 essence in only two weeks.

  Once again he introduced new down ramps, within an hour he had several parties down on the third floor. The mobs now were as strong as Peter could manage while still being E tier. Most of their stats were either E or E (+). Right now there were only three types, Ravenous wolf (E+), clockwork fire spider (E), and Proto golem (E+). The last was a result of him having finally used up his glass original card and resulted in some see through shard unit that walked or rolled around endangering hunters with its jagged edges.. These three units were definitely a step up and a hunter was wounded pretty seriously almost immediately. Still the fervor continued since the loot was a touch better.

  Peter knew he was about to have another week of rapid floor expansion. A week where he would likely incur his first kill. He still felt a bit uneasy about the idea, but what could he do. He was not yet 12 weeks into his first year. Peter was unsure of how they tracked time here, but he knew there were 420 of these 26 hour days. He was already 20% of the way through his first year, and had not even begun to prepare for the next congregation.

  Progress was going smoothly right now, but surely this gold rush fever could not keep up, or maybe it could…