Chapter 53: What's an Instance?

The instant Sharlock's voice fell, the room went quiet for a moment.

Professor Bacon sat up straight, hands steepled under his chin — then flopped back against the sofa again. After two full rounds of this, he was producing a nonstop clackety-clack of colliding bone.

Sharlock, in no hurry, crossed his legs and took a sip of the rich bloodfern nectar.

"So you mean to say..."

Professor Bacon simply stood and paced a couple of steps:

"The ones signing up for the graduation research are — goblins? I'm sorry, Lord Sharlock, but you seem to have misread me — and truly, the fault is mine, I wasn't clear. Participants can't be too strong — but they can't be too WEAK either. If it's goblins, I'm very much worried whether they can carry the load, combat-wise. Because, as you know, if goblins serve as opponents for liches about to graduate, the school might as well just stuff a few more scarecrows."

Put that way, Professor Bacon's words were already brutal — and that was WITH restraint. Were the party casually sipping tea across from him not a high-tier demon, the Professor would quite have liked to jab a finger in the man's face and ask, "Do I look like an idiot to you?"

"Don't misunderstand, Professor. My friends and I absolutely do not look down on your school, nor is anyone toying with you. I know you carry a strong bias against goblins — frankly, I'm not fond of them either. But my goblin friends are... different."

Sharlock set down his teacup, folded his hands on his knee, and continued:

"Strictly speaking, those goblins are my dungeon's servants. Servants, yes — but I treat them as friends. Their lives aren't long, they die often in all manner of accidents, and their social standing leaves much to be desired — but they have dreams. They have aspirations. And their strength isn't nothing — they're not quite up to gnomes or beastmen yet, granted, but against a novice lich's freshly summoned undead legion they can absolutely trade blows. They have fighting spirit, too — they'll challenge themselves, do the impossible. And a hundred magic stones is ample for a goblin: an ordinary goblin's accidental-death benefit is a mere fifty stones. They won't have a single complaint. Even if some small mishap truly occurs — the loss of one's life, say — so long as nobody files a report, it won't cause much of a public-opinion stir. The Underworld, after all, boasts no Goblin Rights Association."

When Sharlock finally came up for air, Professor Bacon thought it over and said:

"So what Your Lordship means is: you plan to send your dungeon's goblins to die as cannon fodder, book fifty stones as their death benefits, and pocket the other fifty yourself. Is that the shape of it?"

"How could you say such a thing! I, Sharlock, am not that kind of demon — when would I ever skim a goblin's fifty magic stones!"

Sharlock said this with flawless righteousness.

Though the demon before him spoke with ironclad conviction — absent a contract, not a single punctuation mark of a demon's word may be lightly trusted.

Professor Bacon ran a quick mental ledger: recruiting a goblin via the dungeon core costs one signed contract — not even wages in advance. As Dungeon Lord, simply con them into the graduation research; once they die in action, fifty stones go down as their death benefit, and fifty stones slide straight into Sharlock's own pocket. Wash, rinse, repeat — a perpetual money machine with goblins at its core!

The key question came down to one thing: whether the Undead Academy was willing to accept goblins as sparring partners for its graduating liches.

Quite evidently, it was not.

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"Lord Sharlock, as you know, this is not mine alone to decide. Perhaps return home and wait a while — I'll report your situation up the chain, and if the school agrees, I'll notify you at once."

Professor Bacon rose as he said it.

"Professor, I entirely understand why you'd say that. But to rule out my goblin friends without so much as a trial — isn't that a touch hasty?"

Sharlock rose as well, and said:

"Besides, Professor, you're already here in Frostlake City — heading back empty-handed would be such a waste. Why not give my goblin friends a chance?"

"Lord Sharlock, it's not that I won't give your goblin friends a chance — the school has its regulations, and I can't go breaking them."

Professor Bacon worked his ribs into a sigh.

"Professor Bacon — give my goblin friends a chance, and you'll have that much more time to stay on in Frostlake City conducting your inspection. It would also be a chance for Frostlake City's poor female students. As it happens, I know a place where struggling, pretty female students tend to gather..."

Before Sharlock could finish, Professor Bacon's eye sockets lit up:

"WHERE?!"

The words were barely out before he seemed to register the phrasing issue, and he tried again:

"I mean to say — where is your dungeon? I would gladly spend the extra time inspecting it, to see whether those goblin friends of yours are truly the combat virtuosos you describe."

"But of course — everyone in our Eternal Kingdom dungeon will be delighted to receive you, Professor. There's just one small additional request," Sharlock said:

"My goblin friends have certain... special tastes. If you inspect purely as the Undead Academy's deputy dean of academic affairs, you may find it difficult to rouse their fighting spirit. You understand — goblins aren't generally the sharpest forks in the drawer. Without some sense of mission to get their blood up, they may prove reluctant to join the graduation project."

Sharlock watched Professor Bacon tilt his expressionless skull, and leaned in close:

"Here's how we'll do it: I'll head back and work up some proper copywriting. Professor, you stay focused on your charitable work with Frostlake City's poor female students — and I'll write to you."

Portal light flickered at the entrance to the Eternal Kingdom's core hall, and the players grinding coins for dear life all looked up at once.

The moment Sharlock stepped out of the portal, the players came sprinting — some straining their currency aloft with all their might, others hobbling over, or straight-up crawling, covered in wounds.

"Land! LAND! I wanna buy land!"

"Beds! One bed, please!"

"My leg got crushed by ore! Locke, heal me, quick — I can't even mine like this!"

"Damn it! Can't the system post a maintenance notice before it takes the rez function down?! When do we get compensation?!"

The players clamored on and on — a mere hundred people, and already this many demands. Looking at this pack of goblins was like looking at a kennel of squalling, hungry pets lined up for feeding time.

Sharlock worked through their demands one by one, then watched the players scatter back to their own business.

After all this time, the players had long since burned through their curiosity about Sharlock. Sure, the demon-lord model was handsome and flashy — but stare long enough and the novelty's gone.

Why gawk at Locke when there's grinding to be done!

Finished enhancing your gear? Bought your private plot? Bought your bed? It ALL costs money!

As for compensation, that was Bru's department — and for the sake of proper procedure, to make the Eternal Kingdom look like a dev team with genuine professional standards, it would go out server-wide in one unified drop at six the next morning.

Sharlock, easy of mind, repaired to the core hall for some quality forum browsing — and, incidentally, to keep polishing the main storyline for bamboozling the players, plus the background lore and whatnot.

The forum had already gone off like a bomb over Dungeon: The Eternal Kingdom's background lore — the octopus demon's relationship with Locke, the mysterious succubus's relationship with Locke, Frostlake City's Merchant Alliance, Count Jackson's warm treatment of Locke, the assorted other dungeon lords, and on and on.

All of it had whipped the players' curiosity into a frenzy. What lay in front of them was only fragments, true — but you could tell the dev team had mapped out a world of genuinely epic scope. Factions alone already boasted all manner of relatively independent dungeons plus Frostlake City's Merchant Alliance, and what role they'd play in the content to come — the players' enemies, or their allies — was anyone's guess.

The forum's threads were refreshing so fast that a single F5 got you a brand-new front page.

Only xX_ShadowBlade_Xx's detailed quest-recap thread held its place at the top, manually re-pinned over and over.

Sharlock had already read it, though, and had little interest left in that particular thread.

He moved on to the rest of the forum — and before long, one thread caught his eye, kept floating back to the top. The title read

"Bru." Sharlock hailed Bru, who was buried nose-deep in "programming," and asked:

"What's an instance?"

"An instance? You mean instances in the MMO sense? Speaking professionally: an instance is a location that generates rich yields of gear, items, and game resources for players — very different from an ordinary game zone. Let me pull up some video material for you. Below is instance footage and write-ups from the classic MMO World of Monsters — you may find it useful as reference, to aid your understanding."

Bru finished, and Sharlock's screen began popping up instance videos and write-ups, one after another...