""MASTER!!!"" Yuna, Khuno and even Findley all yelled, their lips twitching and brains spinning as they processed Frost’s words. How could such a thing ever be considered a small problem.

"Geez, burst my eardrums why don’t you." Frost somewhat expecting them to react this way shielded his ears with his hands, but the aggregate volume was just too much, the vibrations wormed their way through his defences making him feel a sharp pain.

"This isn’t a joke Master! How could you be so careless with your plans?" Yuna was in complete shock, a brothel centred around employees that would adamantly refuse to do the very job they had been hired to do, what’s next putting frost goblins in charge of teaching common tongue to the city’s children.

"Ok I can see that this ’little issue’ has gotten all of you up in arms Yuna in particular but that makes sense given the seat you filled during my absence but trust me it really isn’t all that much of problem."

"And how in Nova is that Master?" Yuna really needed a proper answer, something more substantial that trusting Frost’s judgement. Emotional and instinctual decisions may have worked in the early stages when the Dungeon and Niflheim were still relatively small but at their current scale such recklessness would nine times out of ten come back to bite them in the ass.

"Because they don’t actually have a choice Yuna, what I’m offering is merely an illusion, a kindness if you will to help alleviate or give reason to condemn and deny how they’ve lived their lives until now. Their harmful traditions are the very reason these once proud, skilled and powerful women have been reduced to their current miserable state. Less than 30 remain and their strongest individual can barely be considered at the peak of C-rank, hardly worthy of their ancestral fame." Every time his mind pondered over their illustrious history Frost couldn’t help but let out a sigh and express feelings of pity and disappointment.

"I have planted seeds in their hearts, seeds that have already shown signs of growth and even blooming so when I say this is nothing but a minor issue that’s exactly what it is Yuna." He looked at the young ice maiden, his gaze and body language exuding extreme levels of authority.

Yuna felt a cold shiver run down her spine as she endured that look of his. She had overstepped, being confused and expressing disagreement with a decision was fine but to demand further explanation and even mock his ability to plan ahead well that was outright insubordination.

"Apologies Master I don’t know what came over me." Yuna quickly bowed her head and asked for forgiveness.

"Your actions were a reflection of your concern for the Dungeon and myself so I will forgive you, just be more mindful in the future." Frost wasn’t adverse to a having a close relationship with his subordinates but there had to be a line in the sand especially during formal settings like their current one.

"Yes master."

"The Lunar maidens will come around in due time, what I need from you three is a plan outlining the establishment of the brothel and how we should go about running it."

"Can we discuss it out with the Dungeon i.e. with merchants and or the guilds?" Asked Findley, painfully aware that the amount of expertise he could lend to this endeavour would be minute at best.

"Yes, feel free to bring it up with those you can trust but don’t mention anything about the Lunar maidens as I plan to reveal their involvement further down the line." If they wanted to create a high end establishment it’d do them well to seek knowledge from those who had experienced such services first hand.

"What about involvement? Will the Dungeon be in full control or can we outsource investments and in regards to running the place itself are you willing to hire those from Niflheim’s populace?" This time the question came from Khuno, someone who like Frost understood the enticement of such services.

"I’d like for the Dungeon to foot the entire costs, others can build their own brothels in the future, but this one will be completely under our authority." He didn’t want those not affiliated with the Dungeon managing his Lunar maidens.

"As for hiring Niflheim’s populace I don’t mind the use of labourers for construction nor am I against jobs involving cleaning of the establishment but for the actual intended services no, I don’t want to hire any of the public, at least not right now." While he may only have access to a limited number of Lunar maidens once they unearthed their true potential he didn’t foresee them having difficulty with the number of prospective customers but even if that was the case he had other monsters who could lighten the load. His yuki-onnas were rather beautiful while his ronsos proved to quite attractive to many of the female adventurers, the amazonian beauties in particular.

"What about furnishings, food, alcohol?" Keen to wash away her disgrace Yuna offered her input.

"That will require some outside aid." The Dungeon had limited capabilities when it came to processing their raw materials. "Vet several merchants and go with the ones that provide the best quality for the best price and with the most assurances, I don’t want our supply to run dry because of an issue in their home country." The Northrend empire being a perfect example of this, their civil war had created numerous embargoes and inflated price gouges.

"I’ll give you a week, after that I want to have a detailed plan on my desk." The actual construction and establishment of the brothel could be put off for several weeks depending on the war situation, but he wanted the plan finalised so he could better prepare for the Dungeon’s and Niflheim’s future.

"By your will" The three B-rank monster officers accepted Frost’s order with military like salutes before moving onto the next topic.

"To sustain the rapid improvements in our defences and to keep up with the construction of our outer wall as well as the brothel we just discussed we’ll need more materials so our first injection of DP should be focused on either increasing the yield output of our existing mines or purchasing new ones." To get the outer wall to its current height the amount of gold coins the city and Frost personally had to cough up was staggering. The Dungeon simply couldn’t keep up with its own growing demand.

"Agreed, more than half the stone used in residential construction is outsourced, we’re bleeding money for something we’re fully capable of handling ourselves." Findley being the one in the charge of the Dungeon’s military might and its assets knew full well of its current output, an output that was like a drop in a bucket compared to the demand. During Yuna’s tenure as Interim Lord she often discussed the material situation with him thus giving him a much more in depth opinion on the subject.

"We have no need for more high quality mines; 1 star should be more than sufficient for our current demands." I.e. regular iron, pykrete, stone etc... materials that were incredibly common throughout Nova.

"How much were you thinking?" Frost queried not realising the true depth of the city’s current demand for base materials.

"At least half of the budget Master." Findley answered after sharing a look with Yuna.

"Half? You want me to spend 160,000DP on 1 star mines."

"Yes but even more would be better in the long run." The sooner a mine was purchased the sooner it would pay off its initial costs.

"What about monsters? Traps? Treasure chests?"

"Beyond the addition of the spiders, the B-ranks and a few others I believe we can cover the difference at least in the short-term with our current level of income. We’ll have to forgo or at least reduce the amount of new spawners, but a necessary sacrifice given how much of our materials are currently outsourced from nations like the Northrend Empire, an Empire that could very well one day march an army up to our front door." Findley usually opposed ideas that reduced military spending, but this case was different, to grow and develop the outside city which funnelled high levels of DP into the Dungeon everyday they needed to become more self-reliant otherwise opposing nations could easily take advantage of such weakness.

"....Alright I’ll assign 200,000 to 1 star mines, 25,000 to the efficient spiders, another 33,000 to purchase 3 B-rank monsters leaving a little over 90,000 for regular monsters, traps, treasure chests as well as my other focus." Since both Yuna and Findley were in complete agreement about the material situation he decided to go all in and trust their judgement.

"Other focus?"

"Dungeon expansion Khuno."

"But Master we’ve still got 5 good floors between the adventurers and the Dungeon’s core." Findley reported this fact himself, so he struggled to understand the need for expansion when even their current lowest floors had nary a single visitor.

"I’m aware Findley but when I say Dungeon expansion I don’t mean down."

"....Up?" Khuno answered innocently.

"Idiot how’s that any different from going down." Yuna as if taking an opportunity to get revenge on Khuno for earlier whacked him across the back of the head.

"Ow! Did you just hit me?" Once again the squabbles between siblings seemed inevitable but Frost quickly nipped it in the bud. "Stop it." Two words but they were more than enough to bring both Yuna and Khuno to a sudden halt.

"What I meant was to enlarge the floors we currently have, ideally the top five that see the most activity."