"Listen to them, Boss!" Drazek hissed, pressing his green, oversized ear hard against the cold stone of the corridor wall as a massive, teeth-rattling BOOM reverberated through the very foundation of the dungeon, showering both of them in a fine, choking grey dust. "That wasn't a standard pickaxe strike or a polite exploratory tap! That was a full-scale black-powder breaching charge! They are literally blowing a hole straight through our western perimeter right into our primary drainage artery!""I am well aware of what a commercial mining charge sounds like, Drazek, considering my core is currently vibrating at a frequency that is threatening to shatter every single glass vial in the inventory," Qevran snapped, his golden orb flaring with a sharp, warning crimson as he drifted two inches closer to the ceiling to avoid a cascade of falling mortar. "And they aren't just blowing up the western perimeter—they are violating Section Nine of our temporary commercial lease agreement, which e

 "I don't care about your precious Section Nine lease restrictions, ye shimmering golden lantern!" a booming, gravel-coated voice roared from the pitch-black mouth of the newly blasted extraction tunnel, cutting through the damp, dust-choked air like a heavy pickaxe hitting granite. "We're minin' through the iron seam, and if a few o' yer fancy little floor tiles get smashed to smithereens in the process, that's just the cost o' doing business in the deep earth!" A heavy, iron-shod boot slammed onto the damp stone flooring, followed immediately by the terrifyingly loud clank of plate armor and the overwhelming, sulfuric stench of cheap dwarven pipeweed. Qevran’s golden core flared an incandescent, furious violet-red, casting long, writhing shadows across the low-ceilinged corridor as he drifted forward until he was hovering mere inches from the intruder’s broad, iron-plated nose. "This is not a public mountain ridge,

 "I'm just sayin', Qevran, the damp in the lower service conduits smells different today," Drazek muttered, his small, webbed goblin fingers flying across a grease-stained brass terminal as he yanked a tangled bundle of insulated wiring. "It smells less like stagnant algae and more like someone's been down there roasting cheap sausage over a stolen mana torch. And you know as well as I do that none of our boys are allowed open flames after the great grease fire of '84." Qevran’s core pulsed a sharp, warning shade of crimson as he glided smoothly out of the low-ceilinged archives, casting a long, jittery shadow against the rough-hewn stone walls. "Open flames in the service conduits? Drazek, we barely have enough thermal output to keep the primary mana manifold from icing over, let alone fuel for illicit sausage roasts. Are you picking up actual thermal signatures, or are your goblin instincts just acting up because the barometer is dropping?"<

 "Or worse," Drazek muttered, pulling a rusted, heavy-duty monkey wrench from his utility belt and hefting it with a grimace, "they could pump a few barrels of explosive grease down the intake and blow our entire administrative wing into the stratosphere while we're trying to balance the quarterly ledger." Qevran’s golden core strobed a blinding, furious white. "Not on my payroll, they won't. Drazek, mobilize the alpha-tier acid slimes immediately. Send them up through the sub-level utility access and flush out every last one of those unpermitted squatters with high-viscosity chemical persuasion." "You want to use the high-viscosity batch?" Drazek blinked, his yellow eyes widening in sudden, manic delight. "The stuff we scraped off the bottom of the knight-barracks floor after the siege? Boss, that's practically concentrated industrial sludge. It'll eat right through their boots." "I want those saboteu