“The Back Forty Acres – Part 1 Quest Complete!”

  The treasure chest materialized in the middle of a dungeon dive, giving Lacey and Colt a break from the monotony of the work week. Opening up all those new levels had sped it up so much that they’d beaten the clock by days. It was hard to believe that they’d once thought it an impossible task.

  They got pizza, and a hot dog and marshmallow roasting kit. It came with a smokeless firepit like you’d find in posh magazines, a pouch that ejected a fresh hot dog or marshmallow randomly, and a bunch of smooth wooden dowels. The stash of buns and condiments had to be reordered manually, but they became unlocked in the pedestal along with chocolate bars and graham crackers for s’mores.

  As they’d promised themselves, they closed the dungeon and went on a break for Sunday dinner at Colt’s parent’s place, not that they were nearly as hungry as they used to be. Colt talked about Kat a lot, and they fussed at him to bring her to dinner soon. Lacey wasn’t sure how they were supposed to pull that off, but when Colt told Kat, she just gave a wink and said she’d take care of it.

  Lacey stood looking over the valley behind the dungeon. They’d moved the control room to sit at the edge of the back entrance. The view was literally through their back wall, which Lacey had made of the thick clear glass they used for the magnet puzzles. At first, they’d had the opening actually in their control room, but the traffic was distracting. The sheer number of Goblins, Spunks, and Rejects coming in and out of the opening was a little much. They moved the residential areas closer to the back entrance, but they couldn’t move anything outside like they did inside the dungeon. The denizens of the dungeon had to do all the building outside, at least for now.

  “If you could get the pedestal out here, we’d be all set,” Colt came up behind her. “I’m surprised you haven’t moved your desk out here.” Four Trugs were hefting a series of walls they’d dismantled from one of the stables. They should have been in the dungeon, but Lacey and Colt had decided to close the dungeon for a few days to make the move happen. Bernard had said that they could all use a break anyway while they waited for the reinforcements to arrive.

  “The ground is too uneven, but Ginger promised to lay a deck out here as soon as the main move is done,” Lacey tapped her booted foot on the ground. The moon overhead spread more than enough light for the dungeon denizens to work.

  “You could have prioritized it,” Colt bent down to pluck a browned branch of pine needles up off the ground. A troop of Goblins gave the Trugs a wide berth as they headed back into the dungeon for another load.

  “I’m not that desperate,” Lacey said, closing her eyes to enjoy the slight breeze. “I could just take a pad of paper out here and sit on a log for a while.”

  “I have an idea,” Colt held up a finger and ducked back into the dungeon. She could see him at the pedestal as he waved a few of the returning Goblins over. The clear wall allowed her to watch with a smile as Colt ordered them to carry the firepit outside. The Goblins didn’t complain at all. They just lifted it with Colt and carried it outside next to where she stood.

  “I told you it could wait,” Lacey complained, waving at the slope she stood on. “The ground is too uneven.”

  “It is now, but if you don’t want to slow down the Goblins’ work, you can’t be upset if I do it,” Colt pointed the Goblins off the path that was being beaten down by the moving traffic of more Goblins toting packs of tools and rocks.

  “Don’t you have a date with Kat tonight?” Lacey called out to Colt as he raced back into the control room to pick up what he’d ordered off the pedestal.

  “I’ve got a little time for my bestie,” Colt shrugged, a shovel in one hand and a rake in the other. “If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty helping me out, we could get it done in no time.”

  “Then you’ll be all sweaty before your date,” Lacey protested, but she took the rake he handed to her.

  “We have showers,” he answered, chucking a shovelful of dirt from the high end of the slop to the low end. “Are you going to pitch in?”

  “I’m in, but don’t blame me if Kat is annoyed with you,” Lacey shook a finger at him, but then they went to work.

  They didn’t get to finish the patio themselves. Returning Goblins, incensed at the idea of their dungeon masters doing manual labor, took their tools and finished it for them. An hour later, it wasn’t a full deck, but it was a level enough clearing to fit their fire pit. Lacey was glad of it a few hours later when the night turned nippy. Colt hadn’t even needed a shower before he’d waved goodbye for the night.

  The industrious dungeon denizens, having long ago learned how to work in shifts throughout the day and night, were almost as quick as Bernard’s crew in putting the little town together. It only took a week for the Spunks to implement Lacey’s design for the waterwheel-driven mill. The dungeon worked easily on half the normal Spunks in the trap corridors, especially with new levels being summoned including the denizens required to run the level. They weren’t running all the new levels yet since there really weren’t enough adventurers to populate them all. Twenty levels were more than enough for the current adventurer population.

  Crops were planted with all the seeds they’d gotten from the adventurers. The Rejects were as well designed for that as the Spunks were for building. They had circular fields, turning the valley landscape into one that almost looked like flowers drawn by a kindergartener. Rejects could pull their own plows, their horse bodies strong for all their smaller pony size.

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  Lacey worked on the little deck of split logs, with its firepit cut into a hole in the center and her desk off to one side. She could still keep an eye on the pedestal room, but no longer did the oppression of the mountain over her head create a tension in her shoulders. For the first time since they’d entered the dungeon, Lacey felt that blanket of pressure lift on the mountain breeze.

  Lacey drew every normal animal she could think of including crows, robins, sheep, horses, cattle, and hogs. For the dungeon, she made Blobs of destruction, Gelatinous cubes, Man-eating moles, Magic mouths, Cave crawlers, Cave bears, Carrion crawlers, and a dozen things from cellular biology that translated well into knee-high creatures out of a person’s worst nightmares. And at night, she and Colt would roast some dinner over the fire just before he headed out to be with Kat and Lacey would kick back with that book that Colt had replaced.

  Colt managed the dungeon by day, using every moment in between to sketch out dungeon mazes that Lacey then littered with mobs and traps. By night he was off with Kat, and while he came back tired, he was happy. That was enough for Lacey, not that she didn’t let him off without some teasing when he came in at midnight with a goofy grin on his face. He put in just as much work as Lacey did on the dungeon, but he sneaked in some time to search out flowers from the back 40 once in a while.

  Lacey shook her head as she peeked out over her book to watch Colt arrange a bunch of wildflowers into a clay vase he’d bought from a crafting Goblin. If only Colt’s charm had been enough to get her libido pumping, they’d be a happy old married couple by now. She was glad he was happy with Kat. Now that she was out from under the mountain most of her days, Lacey was content to watch the budding romance with bemusement. It was weird how much of her bitterness had been in the oppression of the underground fear that she couldn’t even control. She felt more like herself than she had since they’d gotten here.

  Colt had managed to get some Goblins to drag out a bunk bed, but without a roof to keep the rain off, he’d had to drag it back inside. Lacey still slept in her underground bed, but it was so close to the open wall that it didn’t seem as debilitating as it had been. She just kept her bedroom door open. Spark liked to chase birds early in the morning. Lacey was lucky so far in that Spark was totally terrible at it.

  Lacey watched Colt slip out with a wave and gave it a few moments before picking up her pad of paper. He’d been such a good sport with her bad moods over the past weeks that Lacey wanted to do something for him. For the past week, they’d fallen into a routine. She’d be in bed by the time he returned, mostly because he hated her waiting up for him. She was up before him the next morning.

  “Morning, partner,” she started, handing him a cup of coffee.

  “Morning,” he answered, rubbing a hand over his face as he took it.

  “Burrito?” she handed him the breakfast, and he squinted at it in puzzlement. The glare from the dawn spread up over the mountain of their valley causing him to have to blink the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Thanks,” he took it, and she sat back down at the table, next to a chest. He wasn’t so sleepy that he missed her innocent yet smug look. “What are you up to?”

  “Can’t a partner order up breakfast without –,” she was interrupted as the chest bounced.

  “Uh, huh,” he raised an eyebrow at her, but his hands were full of burrito and coffee. “What’s in the box? Revenge for my Crocorat?”

  “Maybe,” her mouth twitched, as the chest scooted an inch toward the edge of the table.

  She watched the dozen conspiracy theories that crossed his face. Had she summoned a feisty mimic chest? Was there a wild beast in the chest? She couldn’t blame him. She’d been in such a bad mood for so long. He couldn’t see the holes in the chest, made by a Thief trying to bypass the traps. She’d scavenged the chest afterward. There weren’t any traps on their treasure chests, but that adventuring Thief hadn’t known that and had drilled a bunch of holes around the lock. There was a snuffling at the largest hole.

  Colt took a too-large gulp of his coffee and two large bites of his burrito before setting both down at the end of the table. He drew a dagger from one of the sheaths across his chest, a set he’d gotten from Kat.

  “So suspicious,” Lacey shook her head slowly at him over her coffee cup. “Maybe it’s a nice surprise.”

  “Uh, huh,” he didn’t look convinced, but he flipped open the chest.

  Lacey had to duck to avoid the chest’s lid, but it also allowed her to get outside the range of the creature’s tail as it whipped out over the falling lid. The dagger hit the floor and Colt’s eyes went so wide, Lacey had to laugh, not that she could be heard over the puppy’s commotion. It lunged for the burrito, knocking over the coffee. Lacey had to back away from the table, laughing at the mess the dog was making.

  “It’s a dog?” Colt sputtered out. “Just a dog? Not a hellhound or something?”

  “I made some hellhounds but I didn’t want them to eat Spark, so I settled for just a simple dog,” Lacey explained. “You said you wanted a pet.”

  “Wait, it’s a pet?” Colt gaped at her.

  “Yes, silly,” Lacey edged back behind his desk. The puppy had finished the burrito and was looking around for more, having given up on the bitter coffee after a single lap and snort. “You gave me Spark, so it was past time for you to have one too.”

  “My pet?” Colt leaned down to pick up his dagger before the puppy considered it more possible food or a plaything.

  “Now that we have a back yard,” Lacey waved to the outdoors, not needing to finish her statement. “There’s a leash in the chest for her. Who needs a treadmill when you can go for a walk out there?”

  The puppy was the image of a tan and white pit bull that Colt had wanted from a pet store when they were living in the apartment. Colt plopped down on the floor and gathered the wiggling form into his arms, wet eyes meeting Lacey’s over her head. A wet slurp landed on his laughing chin as he pet it vigorously, starting a whole wrestling match on the floor.

  “Who’s a good girl?” he cooed at the puppy, who happily pounced on Colt’s head.

  “What are you going to name her?” Lacey asked, heading to the door to the outside.

  “I think, Beka!” he answered, scooping Beka up into his arms to follow Lacey outside.

  “Wasn’t that your first girlfriend?” Lacey challenged his name.

  “I don’t remember,” he avoided the subject, stopping at the chest to fetch out the very long leash. “You think she’ll be safe out there?”

  “Spark is,” Lacey shrugged. “The denizens won’t attack her and they’re the worst that reside out there.”

  “Uh, oh,” Colt hugged the puppy to his chest defensively. “Spark.”

  “They’ve already been introduced,” Lacey assured him, sitting at her desk on the patio. “Spark’s not thrilled, but so far, Beka is being respectful.”