“This is vile! Disgusting! Repulsive! Revolting, even! I like it!”
“Thank you, sir. We plan to hide valuable merchandise under all this detritus, so the customers will have to seize the installed base completely."
“Digging through all this shit – oh, add shit to the pile – would presume the adventurers know, there is indeed valuable stuff here. Not just those wooden lockets. Hide some more valuable stuff here! Maybe make the first adventurers stumble on them easily, so they could tell their friends, who then need to dig."
“A fantastic idea, sir!”
Finished with the cave, the procession made it to the summit of the lower hill.
“Quite a nice view!” the stockholder congratulated them for the previous CEO’s work “How fine would it be to put a fortified village or a fort here!”
“I will direct…”
“No, that wasn’t a suggestion, only a comment. Leave it as it is.”
“Yes, sir. As you can see, the place currently has only a few trees, some of them fruit trees. The main imperative to scale the hill are the little birdies here, providing colorful feathers as merchandise. We conceptualized the Peacock appearing on this hill with a higher chance, while it could be deployed elsewhere too."
“A limited offer spawn? Nice idea. What is the frequency?”
“Once per day, sir.”
“Good. Maybe make a once-a-week special offer, with an even rarer peacock."
“Yes, sir! Dana, look for an even rarer and more colorful version immediately!”
“Yes, honored CEO, sir.”
“Otherwise, the danger rating of this hill is quite low. At least let a few snakes or venomous bugs spawn here. Or, what you did with Floor 1, a few normal Lynxes. You are currently giving away free loot.”
“Sir, we fabricated interdependent testing procedures to professionally expedite distributed expertizes in acquiring the fowl.”
“What?!?!”
“The birdies are extremely hard to catch, and if not caught cautiously, the feathers are ruined, Esteemed Stockholder, sir.”
“Finally someone, who can talk normally. Who are you exactly?”
“Winston, sir. Engineering.”
“Figures…”
“Also, the Zone Leader is roaming through the whole Zone, making it imperative to explore everything. Besides, the view is nice.”
Going down the saddle and up to the higher hill with the lookout tower, Zoli showed the stockholder the setup.
“According to O&A and Quality Management, we have set up a proximity alert. As soon as customers pass the checkpoint, the Deputy Zone Leader will credibly deploy compelling leadership skill to…"
“You, there, engineer Goblin, translate!”
“As soon as there is a valid target, the Fire Salamander will set fire to the whole hill. Sir.”
“Distance?”
“Ten meters and five centimeters from the center of gravity of the Salamander, sir.”
“Why add those five centimeters, though?”
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“The Salamander has a weighted length of ten centimeters, so the center of gravity will be five centimeters from the extremities. If we set the distance as a round ten meters from the front of the unit, and it would face the wrong way, the net distance could be less, than the intended distance of a round ten meters. While assuming…”
“All right, I understand. You are all morons. Setting the hill on fire is a nice touch though. More experienced adventurers wouldn’t be endangered by the fire, though. I think, after a few tries, the adventurers will figure out, they needed to snipe the Salamander from afar. Still a good training.”
“Thank you, sir. I think.”
“What kind of loot are you providing here?”
“The view. Customers can survey about a quarter of the Forest Biome from here and almost all of the Lake Biome. We have discussed adding patches of shifting fog over the lake, so the view would change from time to time, and we could hide a few important points more convincingly. Providing a free view from an otherwise accessible point just feels so strange."
“You are building a dungeon, giving away free stuff should feel strange!”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, let’s see, what you have planned for the other floors!”
“Yes, sir. We still feel, that appointing airborne employees as Zone Leaders so early would send a wrong message in the content's covalent benchmark, and some of the previous Zone Leader allocations, for example, the Bears, Tigers, or packs of predators would also be overpowered in the early Zones. To provide competently delivered, diverse, and competitive customer service, other Foxes and Lynxes have to wait for another utilization. Zones 3 through 5 are all heavily wooded hills, and our current provisional Org Chart envisions implementing the Dread Wild Cat, one of the Boars, and the Wild Dogs in these Zones. HR also found these interesting Web Spiders in the application lists, and we plan to hire a clutch of them for one of the special places."
“Oh, Spiders are a classic! What about that nice cave system in Floor 5?”
“While the provisional Org Chart, Process Map, and Business Plan all call for an above-ground Zone Leader, we are formulating a scheme, where all the Deputy Zone Leaders and Senior Agents are in the Cave System, providing the best merchandise in the Zone."
“What kind of monsters do you plan on having? How would you direct adventurers to a murder hole anyway? Sure, some will explore every hole, they come across…”
“Either different bugs, HR leans towards some kind of Ant, or a clutch of Hole Borers, that were brought up for Zone 2. Maybe that blob… What was it called?”
“A Slime, honored CEO, sir.”
“NO! I forbid you to use Slimes in any form! I regret ever importing them, they are a menace! Something went wrong there… I blame some lazy moron.”
“Understood, sir, no Slimes whatsoever. Should I direct HR to terminate a random lazy moron in one of the teams?”
“No, this was not your fault. Back to the cave. Stick with a different array of bugs. You could maybe make the cave a separate Floor, too…”
“A fantastic idea, sir! Team, prepare a Process Map, Org Chart, and Roadmap, amend the Business Plan, and schedule meetings!"
“Yes, honored CEO, sir!”
“All right. While your progress in making this mess work isn't stellar, I deem you barely sufficient for the task. I trust you will speed up the renovation! You still have almost one century, but time flies, if you take it easy. I expect you to open at least this 'Forest Biome' of yours in a few decades! You know the consequences, if you don't make the dungeon viable and the grandest dungeon of all the Multiverses!"
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
“For some reason, I’ve got a headache… Which shouldn’t be possible… I will visit regularly, so hop-hop, zack-zack, prove, you aren’t a failure!”
“Yes, sir! You can count on me and my team!”
“Just don’t make a greater mess, than the previous dungeon master did…”
With the stockholder gone in an instant, Zoli turned to the Executive Team.
“You all heard the Stockholder. Your work was deemed barely sufficient, so globally maximizing extensive resources, you have to step up revolutionized goal-oriented total linkage! Schedule a meeting for tomorrow, so we can discuss how to scale frictionless schemas!”
“Yes, honored CEO, sir! We will inform the Team Leaders to step on the employees to work harder! The amended Process Maps, Org Charts, Roadmaps, and Business Plan will be ready by tomorrow! By then, we will also have an outline, of how to implement the Stockholder's input."
“Yes, do that. We need to make this company future-proof and it is mission-critical to do it in an expedited way."
Despite his stellar leadership, his subordinates made him look stupid and lazy in front of the most important person, his company reported to. Thankfully, no employee decided, it was a good idea to show up still drunk, or in office-inappropriate clothing. Or did anything similar – Zoli had quite an experience with idiotic wage slaves ignoring e-mails, detailing what to do and not to do, while important people did floorwalks.
Even after terminating the worst offenders, the next time someone still did something unprofessional.
To settle his mind, Zoli retreated to his beach house, lamenting, how incompetent and lazy his underlings were.
