1 A Loser's life and A Winner's exit

In the beginning, the earth was formless and covered in darkness, and then a young man said in a grave and deep voice: "let there be light", and light was.

"You know you could have just asked me to add a source of light, no? This whole god-like speech you make was already cringy the first time."

Next to the young man, a woman scoffed at the latter's immaturity while working, her delicate hands moved in the air, and suddenly the whole space got covered in bright light, a giant cavern that could have been mistaken for the centre of the earth revealed itself to their eyes.

"You want to keep the sourceless light, or you have other ideas?" asked the woman in a bored tone.

"Heh, behold my power, and God said, let there be…. Rivers, I guess." this time, the young man directly moulded the cavern. A hologram only visible to him appeared around his hands, the light icons gave him the power of a god with a friendly user interface. Deep gashes burrowed themselves in the rocky floor leaving behind kilometre long scars, all leading to a large bowl-shaped depression.

Then with another wave of the young man, a heavy rain appeared, and soon all the burrows and depressions filled up with water. "Letithia, please turn off the light."

The woman did as asked, as she waved her hands, the formless light disappeared replaced by a soft hue emanated by the water-like liquid slowly sloshing against the river banks and painting the whole space blue, like an upside-down water kingdom.

"Stephen." calmly asked the woman watching the scene.

"Yes, Letithia?" replied the man with a smile.

"How much budget did you throw on using the very expensive liquid-mana as a light system?" she professionally asked without showing any emotions.

"Around… ten percent?" replied Stephen while scratching his head, slightly embarrassed.

"OK, and for this whole concentric earth styled cavern?" she kept asking not breaking out of character.

"Erm… I saw it discounted on the store for a few million credits…" he calculated in his mind for a moment before continuing, "I would say around 8 percent of the budget?" the moment '8 percent' left his mouth a dark aura spread around the cavern with him as the target.

"So, we haven't even started, and you already blew one-fifth of the total budget?" then, she casually added, "I see." and plucked an oval-shaped gadget out of thin air.

"W-where are you going?" concerningly asked Stephen with a little stammer.

"back to base, I'm done receiving bad assessments because of your bs. Not sure if I can get you fired, but for sure I'm not gonna work with you ever again." this said she disappeared, leaving a dumbfounded Stephen staring at the space she occupied mere moments ago.

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By focusing a lot and cutting a few corners, Stephen managed to complete the dungeon with the remaining budget. A majestic city made of lustrous black metal grew in reverse out of the ceiling right above the mana lake.

The six-walled floors, each growing out of the previous one, cleanly separated the city in areas with a giant tower going all the way from the first to the sixth floor. The base, being the biggest, acted as the residential zone, Stephen had created enough houses inside to host a population of ten thousand with hoovering bridges creating a complex multi-levelled floor.

The second floor would host a giant garden that would provide food to the complex. Since it was vital to keep the population fed a whopping 10 percent of the budget went into making the garden able to grow plants of different biomes in short time and while only using ambient mana instead of water.

The third floor hosted the forges and workshops, any city would need repairs, and any guard would need weapons.

The fourth floor held the barracks for the soldiers and their armouries, currently empty due to insufficient budget.

The fifth was a treasure room surrounding the elevator, thankfully unless one were able to take the key situated on the first floor the treasury would remain impossible to open, Stephen placed it there in the hope of firing up the invaders. Unfortunately, the treasury was also empty at the moment.

And finally, the sixth floor was just the tip of the tower that actually acted as elevator, a small platform chained to the tower could either descent down to the mana lake.

The last finishing touch was surrounding the city with big platforms where in the future, the defendant would place siege machines or snipe down the invaders with magic or projectiles.

"See what did I tell you, we managed to finish." gloated Stephen with a proud expression before remembering that there was no one next to him anymore.

--------------"Finish what? There is no dungeon core, no guardians, no weapons for the guardians, no treasures and no traps." Letithia being the responsible one immediately threw an ice bucket on Stephen's pride.------------------------------

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After finishing the dungeon Stephen teleported back to his home, the celestial city of Aincrad, to be specific in the branch office of Dungeon & Miscellaneous, a giant mega-corporation present in billions of worlds.

M&D mainly busied themselves in designing and building dungeons for all kind of clients. A god wanted a dungeon to prepare a hero? No problem! An old dragon wanted to create a fortress to protect its treasure trove? As long as it could pay for the service, why not? A pervert wished for a dungeon full of obeying monster-girls? No desire was too weird or large as long as you could pay.

Suddenly inside a 4X4 room, one person appeared, one of them sporting black hair and a robe deemed by everyone but him to be ridiculous, Stephen. Never caring much about other people opinions had been one of the reasons behind his "voluntary" isolation.

He read a story about a wizard from the lower worlds doing some legendary quest? Then you could bet your life he would dress like him for as long as he could remember or something cooler happened.

Walking from the warp portal to the cubicle he shared with Letithia; he prepared a little apology to win back her unwilling assistant. However, he was stopped on the way by a notification on his field of view. "Bossman wants to see you, NOW."

He walked to the office while wondering if he had done something, was asking Letithia out every single night sexual harassment? Had HR finally decided that an old robe was in violation of grooming guidelines? Had another client called in and lamented about the sloppiness of his work?

Whatever it was, he was going to find out in a few minutes. With a knock he entered Bossman's office, yeah, his boss name was Bossman, came to think of the irony if their roles had been reversed.

"Mr Bossman, you wanted to see me?" he asked with a hesitant voice, hoping it was all a big mistake and he could go home to watch on some Vetflix.

"No, I didn't, but unfortunately, I have to, sit down." replied the midget from his comfortable black leather armchair. Stephen had always wondered how practical was a massive armchair in conjunction with a desk. Nevertheless, he sat down in the small plastic chair in front of Bossman's desk.

"Stephen, you know I've always considered you as a son, especially since you act like a child half of the time and fuck up the other half," Bossman started with some "sweet" words trying to lower Stephen's guard. "But now I gotta ask you, have you been stealing company property?" he asked with a serious tone.

'So that's why I was called!' thought Stephen before replying, "Well Mr Bossman, maybe I did take a few paperclips, some pens, Randy's lunch twice a week and possibly a desk. However, I swear I was gonna give them back!" tried to plead Stephen.

"What? That's not what I was ask- wait, a desk? How did you… Nevermind, we can talk about that in a moment, I wanna know if you know about any of the followings:" he then took out a sheet of paper and started reading "High powered terrain manipulator, experimental supreme level dungeon core, a complete high levelled dungeon creation kit, and then I have a big list of other materials that you apparently bought using the allocated budget for other works but never actually used in any work."

"What can I say, you busted me, sir, hahaha." Weakly laughing he didn't even try to defend himself. It all started three months ago when he saw Letithia use a dungeon's budget to buy a coffee for herself. If she could buy a coffee with the company's money, why couldn't he buy himself a dragon? Well maybe a dragon would be too obvious, so he bought himself a rabbit, xiao bai (little white) whom he had since loved immensely.

From there on he kept stealing a few materials every now and then and hatching a master plan, too bad he had been discovered so fast, he had so many more items he wanted to embezzle.

"Thanks for your honesty," said Bossman while pressing a button on his desk. Suddenly security officers busted through the door pointing their weapon modules towards Stephen. A weapon module consisted of a gauntlet with preregistered spells in it. All the security officer had to do was focus on a spell and blast him to the otherworld.

"Wow, that was fast!" said Stephen in admiration. "Bossman, can I say one last thing before I get taken away?"

"Sure thing kid," replied Bossman sporting a big grin on his face.

"Would you mind checking the 97th item I bought today?" asked Stephen with a grin bigger than Bossman's.

Seeing that grin, Bossman felt there was something wrong. He immediately checked the item, [hand-held teleport module 100% charged]. "Oh shi-"

"You were one day too late." suddenly Stephen pressed the button on the device in his pocket and with a flash disappeared.