Chapter 41: Divvying Up the Loot

【Quest Name: Chapter One — The Eternal Kingdom Dungeon, Kobold Chief Kramo --COMPLETE】

【Receiving rewards...】

When Kobold Chief Kramo's towering frame toppled into a pool of blood with a mighty crash, every player who'd joined the battle saw those messages flash before their eyes. Even 【Charlie】, back in the dungeon and decidedly not fighting, got a reward — on the grounds that 【Charlie】 had put in a few shifts of grunt work.

Sharlock was all for life-skills players like 【Charlie】: potter around with the flowers, stare at dirt and zone out, grind coins the rest of the day.

He welcomed the other players too — even when their idea of recreation was chasing thrills and Darwin-awarding themselves.

As Sharlock saw it, their creative suicide runs might be a sorry spectacle, but the sight of them afterward, grinding their hearts out to build the dungeon and generate income on the side — that part was honestly kind of beautiful.

After putting down Kobold Chief Kramo, the players came bouncing home, gleefully dragging their companions' corpses plus Chief Kramo's body behind them.

Sharlock quit peeping on the players, left the core, and headed for the smithy to find Blacksmith Goldmane.

Per dungeon core Bru, slaying a BOSS should be rewarded with gear and a fat stack of money. The main quest Sharlock had set up already paid out plenty of reputation and cash — the missing piece was gear.

For extremely practical reasons, there was no way Sharlock was buying fine weapons and armor for these players over in Frostlake City — and all the Eternal Kingdom had in stock was diamond ore and freshly mined gold-essence ore.

Diamond ore was the lowest grade of ore there was — no stronger weapons or armor coming out of that. Gold-essence ore was decent stuff, but there was no working it until the smithy got upgraded — and besides, using ore with mana conductivity that excellent for weapons and armor felt like a bit of a waste.

Sharlock's plan was to sit on it and make something else down the line — an alchemy table, a portal foundation, that sort of thing. Worst case, it'd fetch a handsome price!

So what about the gear? Sharlock had THAT figured out ages ago.

Kobold Chief Kramo's armor and the iron hammer in his fist were plenty good! And Sharlock hadn't sensed any mana fluctuation off them either — had to be fairly high-grade ore. What ore exactly, Sharlock couldn't tell you, but as gear rewards for the players, they'd do beautifully.

The armor and the hammer were obviously way too big for players to use — but that's what Blacksmith Goldmane was for, refit-wise. Which was exactly why Sharlock had come to see him.

"I follow you, Lord Sharlock. But how many sets of goblin gear I can get out of it — that I can only say once I've laid eyes on the actual weapon and armor and the material."

So said Blacksmith Goldmane, once Sharlock's request was laid out.

With Goldmane briefed, the dungeon core Bru offered up a suggestion of its own:

"Lord Sharlock, a thought on the BOSS rewards. The kobold chief's weapon and armor are clearly far stronger than our current diamond-made gear. I'd suggest, at bare minimum, a dungeon reputation level 2 requirement on them, with quality set to Uncommon — but there remains one very big problem: gear dropping on death."

"Is that a problem? If you want them working hard, you have to bleed their wallets — keep them permanently in a state of 'must work to afford gear' or 'must work to afford anything at all.' Once gear starts dropping on death, they'll have no choice but to grind that much harder. A person who owns everything and wants for nothing — where's the work ethic in that?"

Sharlock paused, glanced over at Goldmane cooking away in the distance, and went on: "What's the engine that drives Goldmane to work like a maniac — cooking, smithing, nothing in his day but work and sleep? Love? Duty? It's being BROKE! Poverty is one of life's great motivators. So if we don't keep the majority of players perpetually poor, why would they ever work hard?"

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So asked Sharlock.

"You're not wrong, Lord Sharlock. Very true, in fact. But there is a point you must weigh as well: while the players work hard, you have to keep it fun — keep spirits high. Those otherworldly players already had it rough and unfair back in their own world. Now they're in this one, and if a hard-won BOSS reward gets lost because they slipped once and died with no teammates around — that is a death penalty far too cruel."

Bru continued:

"Standard-issue diamond gear can be rebought later, and currency can be reground — but one-of-a-kind gear, once lost, is gone forever. Under a death penalty that harsh, you would likely see mass players quitting — that is, the players terminating their master-servant contracts and defecting from the dungeon. And even those who don't defect might well turn on each other, fighting to seize the unique weapons and armor. You wouldn't want to see that either, would you, Lord Sharlock?"

"Yeah, that WOULD get ugly." Sharlock nodded and went on: "So your suggestion is that I make the one-of-a-kind gear harder to lose, correct?"

"Exactly! In fact, Lord Sharlock, you can simply use me to soul-bind that equipment to the players who own it. No one else would be able to use the gear — which settles the constant, large-scale infighting over equipment. A high-tier demon versed in magic contracts can manage that with ease. All that remains is making sure the gear cannot be lost. Trust me, Lord Sharlock: do this, and the players' sense of belonging to your Eternal Kingdom dungeon will soar, their moods will lift with it, and they will stay right here grinding away, too busy to eat or sleep."

"Solid points, all around. Soul-binding the gear to the players will eat a little of my mana, but if it gets them wage-slaving and grinding that hard, it's a trade worth making." Sharlock nodded and continued:

"As for making the gear unloseable — spend a little money on a simple two-way item-teleportation magic circle, anchor one end in the dungeon and engrave the other onto the weapon or armor, spell out the terms in the contract during the soul-binding, and there you have it: gear guaranteed not to vanish when a player dies."

"That would be wonderful, Lord Sharlock! If we can truly pull that off, all we need to do is publish a game patch on the official site announcing the new equipment feature, and the otherworldly players will absolutely be cheering and jumping for joy over your magnificent design."

Bru said all this with unshakable conviction. Sharlock, for his part, couldn't care less about cheering and jumping — what he cared about was whether the players could keep this up indefinitely: no wages, no supervision, maximum output.

To lock that in, the players had to stay permanently starved for metal currency and reputation — metal currency above all. In short: keep them hovering between broke and subsistence at all times, so that making money means working themselves to the bone, working themselves to the bone — and loving every minute of it.

And Sharlock? Sharlock got to sit back and live comfortable.

To keep the players locked in that state — in service of his goal of building the greatest dungeon and becoming the greatest Demon Lord — Sharlock cooked up yet another brilliant idea:

"Bru — this is one-of-a-kind gear, I went to all the trouble of soul-binding it, AND I'm spending magic stones on two-way teleport circles for it. I am definitely recouping some costs here. And riding on this patch announcement, I've just thought up a beautiful new way to vacuum the currency right back out of their pockets — at SCALE!"

"And Lord Sharlock means...?"

"An official whole-server gear auction. I levy a twenty percent tax — no, thirty — and the leftover copper gets split among everyone who fought."

Bru went silent a moment. He had clearly grasped Sharlock's intent:

"Lord Sharlock... are you a demon?"

"Yes. A high-tier demon."

The players came bouncing back with Kobold Chief Kramo's corpse, and inside the dungeon they stripped him of everything that could be removed or found: a few un-eaten meat cutlets, raggedy underpants, a nail file, a mystery object suspected of being lipstick, a copy of the story collection "Kobold MILFs", and assorted other garbage.

Why call it garbage? Because His Lordship the Demon Lord Sharlock said so. The real valuables were the armor on Kobold Chief Kramo's body and that giant iron hammer — and even without knowing what the hell they were, the players knew this had to be some seriously badass gear!

After all, their attacks couldn't even dent that armor's defense, and that hammer could smash their diamond armor to scrap without breaking a sweat!

The players laid the weapon and armor before Sharlock, every last one of them gazing up at the great Demon Lord with big pleading puppy-dog eyes, hoping Sharlock would appraise the gear — and itching to receive the BOSS-fight rewards they were owed.

Crowded around by the adoring mob, Sharlock delivered the armor and hammer over to Goldmane. Goldmane gave them a once-over, flashed an "OK" hand sign, and said:

"This here's mithril workmanship. From a set this size, if I'm making gear and weapons to fit goblins, I'd get maybe three suits of armor and three weapons — but I'll need a full day. What weapons do you want made? Shall I start right now, Lord Sharlock?"

The moment the players heard that, the chat detonated:

"Damn! The BOSS rewards are made TO ORDER?"

"So realistic. I figured we'd just pop a treasure chest and be done with it."

"Can I pick my own weapon? I want a two-handed greatsword!"

"Dream on. Gear like that is not landing in your lap — the whales called dibs ages ago."

"But with gear that good in hand, even the whales won't dare leave the dungeon, hahaha. One death outside and it's all gone."

"Huh. Now that you mention it, yeah."

The players chattered over each other six ways to Sunday, until Sharlock leaked a sliver of dominating aura and shut them all up. He gave Goldmane a one-moment gesture, then — under Goldmane's bugging eyes — swept his cloak aside with a flourish and proclaimed at full volume:

"My loyal subjects of the Eternal Kingdom! Your valor in battle has shaken the entire Underworld. Kobold Chief Kramo, once the terror of Underworld folk, threatens us no more! To honor your deeds, I, Sharlock, Demon Lord of the Eternal Kingdom, do hereby bestow upon you magnificent spoils of war!"

When Sharlock finished his rousing speech, Bru fired off a whole-server announcement to tack on one more line:

The players heard Sharlock's words — and before they could even start celebrating, they watched Blacksmith Goldmane, standing off to the side, smack the already-dead kobold chief's head into pixelated mush with one hammer blow, beard bristling as he roared: