The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 1/10

Heart 1600/1600

Experience 0/400

Workers 4/12

Monsters 0/12+1

Traps 11/15+4

Rooms 17

Food 29

Timber 33

Iron 481

Steel 0

Charcoal 0

Mana 14

Rock 640

Gold 103

Leather 102

Leather Sludge 49

Lava 38

Explosive Runes 3

Quest: Reach Level 2

Quest: Kill an adventuring party

"Wait, my trap and monster limit went up. I mean, the base amounts of both AND the bonuses. We can have eight more traps now." It was a revelation, but implied there were two sources of the increase. "Okay, so if the base amount is calculated by my tier and level, why'd I get more bonus?"

"You had a quest for getting to tier 1, right?" Robert asked. He was in the process of testing the sludge from the sludge traps, though Travis was still a bit annoyed that he was working on the second of their days off.

Travis examined his stats a bit more. "Oh, of course, the quest! Now I have one to reach level 2. There's no upgrade for that. Does it just need experience? Hrmm. There's only one way to figure that out."

Robert was adding a series of chemicals to various samples of sludge. He looked up from it for a moment. "Does everyone from your land think like this?"

"You mean poking at things to find out how they work?"

"Yeah."

The question was good enough to warrant Travis spending some time thinking about it. "Not in exactly this way or to this extent, but we have scientists who do this constantly and for most of their lives. We kinda got a lot of the big questions answered that way, though some still took an idiot taking the wrong path to discover."

"I think around ten percent of alchemists and even less than that of mages even try to improve things in this way. Most will just buy a book of spells or recipes and just improve based off other people's work. That's why Katelyn and me came out here. We figured if there was one place new magic and alchemistry could be researched and discovered, it's a dungeon." Robert added small amounts of different substances to each sample. "I know that's true for me, and given how Katelyn's been muttering about kobold magic, I'd say she's found her new home to be just as she imagined it too."

Travis was a little in awe of Robert's words. He'd felt terrible about their conversion, but here Robert was telling him that this was his ideal life. "Make sure to tell me if there's something else I can do for you. It actually makes me happy to know you're enjoying yourselves."

"Perfect. We can all help each other, then."

Penelope now felt a little more self-conscious walking into town leading the donkey and cart. She'd made a shopping list, and had brought a huge bag of gold with her to spend. It should have been terrifying, but she had an ally walking beside her.

"What do you guys eat?" Fife asked. "You've got the teeth for meat."

Despite everything that'd happened with Porter, Penelope found herself more comfortable with the adventurers than with the other folks around town. For one, she could feel a tenseness around the merchants that—now that she knew they knew—was obviously because she was a wild dungeon monster. "Yeah, we mostly eat meat. There's been some oats on the menu lately, but we normally toss some meat in there too to flavor them."

"Ha! That's good adventuring food that—" Stopping mid-boast, Fife realized where her words were going and why Penelope knew about such things. "Right. Yeah. So why all the grain then? How many mouths do you have down there?"

"More than the faces you've seen, Fife. The grain is mostly to keep this guy fed and pay for upgrades. You wouldn't believe what happens behind the scenes in a—In one of our villages."

Fife saw the word as a good substitute for dungeon. "Right. Village. Got it. So your village got bigger. Any new traps? I still have nightmares about that sludge setup you got."

"You want to know the best bit about sludge traps?" When Fife nodded, Penelope wiggled her tail a little more than was strictly needed to walk as a kobold. "We have a k—lizardkin—working on making them better."

"Ha! I wanna see some poor sap caught in that stuff. So, when's the tavern going up?"

"Just as soon as we get enough stuff to build it. Oh, right, need more iron. Come on." Leading the way, Penelope realized she felt like an adventurer again. Fife was her kind of people, when she'd been human, and the comradery and language suited her just fine. "Hey, Fife, you ever thought of settling down?"

The question caught Fife off-guard. "Huh? Give away the adventuring? Nah. I figure I keep going until I get unlucky enough to die. Why?"

"The village is looking for new members."

Fife stopped in her tracks. The comment confirmed everything she'd suspected. "Huh, I was right."

"What?" Penelope asked.

"I'm not normally right about these things. It's a new experience. So, how would it work? I come to the d—village—and settle down? No more fighting?"

Laughing, Penelope couldn't stop barking as well as the idea caught her by surprise. "No fighting? A dung—village?"

Fife paused a moment to process the words, then nodded. "Okay, that was stupid to ask. But I'd stay a—I don't know how to say it and not give the game away."

"It's stupid to have to keep it going, but I did notice you aren't the only adventurer group in town. Yeah, you'd be like the others. I dunno, maybe you could become a floor boss or something and get some more stats or something." Penelope shrugged.

"Right, and how would you get the village to make me the floor boss and not one of the other—uh—villagers?" Fife paused when she spotted a stall selling a stick decorated with various meats. "Hey, how much?"

Penelope rolled her eyes and pulled out a gold coin. "Two, please." She passed the coin to the guy and he gave them both two. "We have a lot of clout with the village."

Fife got plenty of time to mull that over as they walked across the square to where the ironmonger was set up. The meat had a spicy and hot sauce on it that made eating it difficult without a drink.

"Hey! Do you have any iron or steel?" Penelope hadn't had a single problem with the hot sauce, the stuff tasting just like a sweet tang to her, but now she was at the ironmonger she realized Fife was struggling to eat her second stick.

"Waiting on fresh shipments. Should be another two days, but I have a few bars of each I can spare for the right price."

Penelope knew she was going to get ripped off, but the speed that Katelyn could melt gold off that vein made for a severe lack of caring about getting the absolute best price. She needed the goods, they were selling. "How much?"

Ignoring the bartering, Fife walked away a little to investigate the town weaponsmith's latest work. "Mind if I hold them?" she asked the young man who had arms thicker than her legs.

"Yeah, yeah. But no ideas or I'll call the Guard," the weaponsmith replied with a bored tone. Then he spotted the sword at her side. "That's quite a piece of work there."

Seeing the nod toward her hip, Fife perked right up. "You better believe it. Enchanted and everything. Stays sharp and self-repairs nicks." Drawing her blade, she held it out hilt-first to the man. "When it's your ass on the line, you make sure you have a good, reliable weapon."

Examining the sword, the weaponsmith whistled and nodded. "It's one nice piece of steel. You don't have any elemental effects on it?"

"Nah, we have a great sorcerer in our party. Guy is a wonder to watch him work—don't tell him I said that. If I can't hurt something with cold steel, I let him have his big rescue moment." Taking her sword back, Fife checked it like she always did, then slid it back in its sheath. "One thing I've been looking for, though. Do you sell pistols?"

Penelope's head turned at the mention of guns. She'd already dealt with the price and was just trying to argue the ironmonger out of more metal.

"Nah, no pistols. I knew a guy down south that worked that stuff. Was there something in particular you wanted, or just wanted to browse?" Guns were a spectacular way to deal with things, but they attracted a similarly spectacular price. Knowing the deal on marking up prices for the kobolds, and seeing that Fife was a friend of theirs, the young man saw a lot of gold in his future. "I could always get one or two sent up here?"

Fife sighed. She really wanted a pistol as a last resort weapon, but the cost was prohibitive. "I don't really have the—"

"Send them up. If they're good, we'll take them," Penelope said, giving a wink to the ironmonger. "Some powder and bullets too. All the stuff needed for, for a hundred shots from each."

It was a dream come true. The weaponsmith pulled out his tablet and started scrawling on the wax with his stylus. "I don't know exactly how much they'll cost, but it will be consistent with the going price down there, plus the usual overhead."

Penelope knew all too well about that overhead. "If they shoot straight and have all the kit, I'm sure we can work out a price we're both happy with."

When they'd loaded the iron and steel, and rolled the wagon out of earshot of the weaponsmith, Fife turned and stood in front of Penelope. "You can't buy me a gun. That's a crazy debt I can't—"

"You saved my life and you weren't even in my party. Everyone in the—village—would consider that a debt we owed you." Penelope gave Fife the hardest look she could until the other woman sighed and let out a grunt. "Yeah, you did one little good deed, but it was important to me. So, thanks. If the guns aren't good enough, we'll talk to someone who can get us good stuff."

"All this time I've been kicking the ass of villagers and I should have been saving them." Fife shook her head and let out a whoop of excitement. "Have you thought of going back to your old life?"

They'd been dancing around her history so much that Penelope was surprised when Fife just outright asked it. "Yeah and no. I was in a party with two assholes I'd rather see fed to a dungeon than walking around. They stabbed me in the back and that was the reason I joined the village. Kinda the start of all of it. If I left now, what would the others do without me?"

"Tell me about it! Jack and Brayden would be like two lost lambs if I wasn't there to beat them over the head when they're about to do something stupid." Fife left it completely unsaid that in the majority of times it was her doing something stupid and usually Brayden who shouted her back into line.

"Those two who were coming in? One of them is working to make my brewing kit right now, the other is trying to figure out new and inventive ways to blow stuff up with magic. And you know what surprises me?" Penelope waited until Fife asked what. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Yeah. Wish Porter had kept his head about him. It was nice to have a big guy I could rely on, but then that was the problem in the end." Sighing and moving to walk beside Penelope again, Fife contemplated better days.

Out of sight of the pair, Porter said, "See? That's a lizardman from the dungeon. They're trading with it and everything."

One of the five people with him laughed. "No sweat. Just show us where this dungeon is and we'll clear out all the damn lizards. Then we can all get a piece of that pie."

"You really want me to come in too?" It was a dream come true. Bigger parties meant safer fights against more powerful dungeons.

"Sword and board, right? Always a spot for that—more meat for the grinder, as they say."