The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 2/10

Heart 6400/6400

Experience 100/1600

Workers 7/15

Monsters 0/16+1

Traps 25/25+4

Rooms 43

Food 400

Timber 1403

Iron 1014

Steel 0

Charcoal 0

Mana 6

Rock 1784

Gold 2000

Leather 455

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 51

Glass 800

Explosive Runes 10

Triggered Explosive Runes 8

Quest: Have 10 minions in your dungeon

Quest: Get 10,000 gold

"I'm sorry."

"Trav," Stephan said, swinging his pick again, "don't sweat it. It's just a block here and there. You're still doing a better job of this than anyone else could."

"Yeah, but—"

"No buts. Buts are for dungeons that fail before they get a second floor. We're going to get as many floors as we can and—Oh, left here?"

Focusing on his map and the digging plan, Travis made an affirmative noise. "Yup. It still sucks, and I just know if I hadn't picked up on the gaps being there it would be in one of them. Now it will just be in the last section of the last—" Travis froze as Stephan's digging opened up a 3x3 room with a huge crystal in the middle of it. "That's it!"

Stephan stared at the huge crystal. It wasn't quite as big as Travis' heart, but it was definitely something that looked special. "Where are we?"

"In a perfect spot. Go to the middle here—Oh, I'll just add an order. There." Travis waited for Stephan to dig the block between the mana shrine and the alchemy lab, then put in an order to back-fill a bunch of tunnel. "Just block that back up to the big corner back there. We'll work out something better for connecting this into the dungeon itself." Then he also removed all the rest of the planned "searching" tunnel plans.

"Do you have anything particular for me to do when I'm done with that? I'd like to make more beds for our new friends." Stephan was already in motion, triggering the tunnel squares to collapse one after the other.

"That actually sounds like a nice idea. Thanks, Steph." Travis left him to his work and focused his attention upstairs. There was a LOT going on there, complete with plans being thrown out and redone, doors moved, tunnels dug, and a whole new room made ready for building.

The plans for the "make adventurers run in circles to confuse and annoy them" section was still to be built. "I like the thought of having this be a working tavern. Do you think we could hire some people from Northridge to run it?"

Ludmiller nodded while stalking around the new kitchen-designated area. "That would probably be a good idea. Give any visitors a familiar human face. I think we should narrow down the area around the timber mill on the other side of the entrance. We could make room for more housing there."

"If we do that with the tavern, everyone who works here will need their own homes. I wish doors didn't take up trap slots," Travis said, lamenting the mechanics of the dungeon he was part of.

"Hold up. Doors count as traps?" Blake was shocked. "There's a limit to your traps, Luddy said. Why don't we get a carpenter in to make regular timber doors and install them?"

"They'll probably count as doors too, though I guess I could build up all my traps and then add doors like that. Or even have other kinds of sealing off rooms." Taking a metaphorical deep breath, Travis decided it was time. "Are you ready to build a kitchen?"

Looking confused, Blake asked, "How is this meant to work? Won't we need tools and equipment?"

"Pen showed me this with the doors we put in. Here—" Reaching behind her back, Ludmiller pulled out a hammer and started getting construction materials too. "It's probably a 60/40 split of magic and actual work, but it works so we shouldn't really complain."

Mimicking Ludmiller's motions, Wild crouched down and started building the kitchen. In all, Travis watched them build a bit here and there, while the majority of the room seemed to just build itself. Just before they finished it, a new tick of mana came in and Travis let out a surprised shout of excitement.

"What's wrong?" Ludmiller's hands drifted to her belt, while beside her Wild hefted his two axes.

"Nothing! I mean, I just got the first burst of mana from the new mana shrine. This is great! I'll be able to make so many of them! Then we can make piles of resource nodes to get iron and gold and everything!"

"Wait," Travis' voice echoed to all the kobolds. "There's someone at the front door."

Penelope, who'd been sitting in the bar chatting with Fife, lifted her head and stood up. "Bring your gear and maybe get your friends." Rounding the corner, she looked toward the entrance and saw a young man in the town's guard uniform. "Hey! What's going on?"

"Northridge is under attack! Undead are pressing our defenses and Commander Brolly sent me to—to ask for help!" Timothy Devin felt uncomfortable. He'd never entered a dungeon before in his life, and what scared him the most was how this one didn't seem to intimidate him at all.

Staring at the guard for a moment, Penelope realized that things could go very south if Northridge was overrun by undead. "Luddy, Wild, Katelyn—we need to move right now. Trav, let Katelyn know to get her butt up here. Fife, Jack, Brayden!"

"I'm getting them. Hold on." Fife marched into the common room of their quarters and saw Jack puzzling over something on the table. "Trav has a job for us. The town's under attack."

Leaving the adventurers to get ready, Penelope checked her knives, grabbed two explosive runes, and looked the guardsman up and down. "You'll need to lead us back the way you came. How many of them are there?"

"The whole town took up arms. We've been fighting for four hours."

"Necromancer, then. Change of plans, we'll be moving up behind their ranks. You know how to tie your armor to be quiet?" When Timothy shook his head, Penelope started attacking his armor. Unbuckling some of the more useless straps, she used them to pad between the larger plates at his thighs and shoulders. "This quietens your armor down. It might come off sooner rather than later, but where we're going it won't matter. Trav!"

"Yeah?" Travis asked her.

"Tell Stephan to make a door up here to hide everything. Right at the entrance here." Penelope gestured at the entrance of the tunnel that led to the tavern. "If we don't come back, you need to button this place up tight and make more traps than you know what to do with."

"Please come back, Pen," Travis said.

"I plan to. Where are—" Penelope cut off as Fife and Jack stepped out of the hall, followed by Brayden. From the new hidden entrance to the lower floors, Katelyn stepped out, her staff glowing red with cinders flaking off it. "Okay, let's go. The town's been fighting undead for hours without end, which means they have a necromancer putting them back together in the field. We need to find it and kill it."

Stepping to the edge of the dungeon's exit, Fife looked back and smiled. "Trav, you're gonna give me enough gold that I can plate my armor in it, right?"

"He says yes, come on, Fife!" Penelope couldn't help but grin, though. She followed their guard to what she judged was east of Travis' dungeon. Then they turned north-east for a bit and all of them froze at the sound of clanking bones and armor.

Certain gestures were not just common, they could be universally understood. When Penelope held up her fist, closed, everyone stopped and waited. Not a minute later a flare of sickly green light illuminated the forest ahead of them and chilled them to their bones.

Penelope looked at Ludmiller and Wild, then nodded forward. Together they crept slowly through the undergrowth, stopping when they got within sight of the staging area. There was a skeleton sheathed in dull green light in the middle, while a dozen other skeletons with various weapons and armor roamed about.

"Doable. We'll want to pull them into an ambush. Hit them hard and fast, then rush the camp before the necromancer can raise them again. We—" Ludmiller stopped when the necromancer lit up the forest again with his necromancy, raising a dozen piles of bones from the ground. "We do it after this. You go back and tell the others and—and we'll bait them."

"No. You both go back. Leave this to me." It was more words than Wild had said during one moment for most of his life. He reached out and patted Ludmiller on the shoulder and stepped toward the camp. "Go."

"Wait"—Ludmiller stepped forward and grabbed Wild from behind—"I love you." She pressed her lips to his cheek, nuzzling and then kissing him before letting him go again. "Don't die."

Grabbing Ludmiller by the wrist, Penelope started back to the group. "We, uh, don't have—"

Blushing, Ludmiller shrugged. "Love is more than just where bits go, Pen."

"I guess. Okay, we can't trap anything, because Wild won't know about the traps in advance, but I have two explosive runes, and we have two magic users." Rejoining the group, the pair quickly explained the plan.

Reaching down, Fife started grabbing up handfuls of mulch from the ground and smearing it over her armor. "Gold plated? I think we're going to need something better than that. I will say one thing for him, Trav sure knows how to treat a girl." Drawing her sword, Fife rolled her shoulders in anticipation.

Everyone else had their own little rituals, but they'd all seen fighting before and knew what they'd be doing—except Katelyn. "I just burn them, right? Anything special I need to worry about?"

"Don't cross your magic with mine," Jack said. "And don't burn up everything you have right away. Our job is to pick off ranged attackers and knock down things that are already badly hurt."

Brayden Smith lowered himself to one knee and looked around the motley group gathered. "Brogdar, we both know what's coming isn't anything but the blackest evil. They kill to exist and have no morals about it. Strengthen us, your right fists, so that we might crush the darkness and lead a path to the dawn." His prayer was not a normal one, and Brayden knew it didn't have to be. His god listened, though, to such prayers because they often led to the greatest victories.

The weapons in everyone's hands began to softly glow—not even the kobolds present were immune from the blessing.

"Here they come," Fife said, just as Wild ran past her like his tail was on fire.

The first of the skeletons, moving remarkably fast for an undead, crested the slight rise and got a pace over it when Fife's shield came up to slam it sideways. Rusty sword flying from its grip, the skeleton started to right itself when a glowing black axe came for its neck.

"There are more coming." Wild's previous party hadn't had a good defensive fighter, and seeing how easily Fife was knocking the skeletons down—setting them up for easy kills—made his blood rush in excitement.

A dirty arrow flew past Fife's head when she stepped over the ridge. Then another thudded into her shield. Keeping the attention of the two bow-using skeletons, she was happy to see one burst into fire and the other freeze solid before she even got two steps closer to them. "Come on, our turn to attack a meat-grinder." Keeping her shield up, Fife marched past the smoldering skeleton—leaving the frozen one for Wild to shatter—and made her way to the necromancer's guards.

Penelope led Ludmiller off to the side a little from their main group. Circling around the skeletons marching up to meet Fife, they got a lot closer to the necromancer than they would have otherwise been able to.

Taking one of the stones Penelope passed her, Ludmiller tapped Penelope on the shoulder three times, then made a questioning gesture. When she got an affirmative, she limbered up her arm. Green light flared from the necromancer, and things got a little crazy.

"Throw!" Penelope drew her arm back and tossed her stone at the necromancer, glad to see Ludmiller doing the same.

The ground around the bony skeleton mage started to shift with dark magic, but the first of the runestones hit its head and crumbled. The blast, followed a moment later by a second concussive thud, sent the necromancer flying away as its latest batch of minions started clawing their way from the ground.

Rushing along the edge of the camp, Penelope and Ludmiller spotted where the necromancer was—and it was getting up. "I hope this works…"

Ludmiller hadn't seen a lot of firearms. The things were expensive, unreliable, or both. Just as Penelope's hand raised the pistol to shoulder height, though, the gun started to softly glow with silver-white light.

The crack of the pistol was loud, louder than anything else in the forest—including the explosive runes. The blessed weapon sped its bullet forward, the ball of lead flying straight and true.

Watching as the necromancer's skull exploded as the ball discharged its energy into one side, flew through it, and hit again on the following wall, Ludmiller and Penelope started turning to run. Crumpling to the ground, the light left the undead abomination as its final summoning brought a group of skeletons back to undeath.

Brayden had almost forgotten how good it was to fight evil. His arms sang with the purity of his work. Beside him, Fife covered his weak side and helped form the pair of them up into a better shield for those behind.

Fire lashed out to crackle and burn bones to brittle sticks while, on others, ice caked up joints and limited mobility. Wild darted around, seemingly always there a moment after a skeleton was unbalanced by one of the magic users—his axes hungry to deliver devastating blows.

The strikes, though, weren't as effective as Wild was used to. Before he'd become a kobold, he would have been walking through these paltry undead and killing them with ease. The reminder of his sacrifice, though, made him remember why he'd made it.

Fife finally cleared a bit of breathing space by stomping a frozen skeleton's skull with her boot, and looked up to see Penelope and Ludmiller running at them with another group of skeletons chasing—as well as some kind of abomination.

The thing stood ten feet tall, was a mismatch of fleshy limbs, and its eyes glowed green with the hunger of death. Loping after the two rogues, it stomped on one of the skeletons and ignored the flailing undead as it stomped it to its final rest.

Spotting the behemoth of a zombie coming their way, and the skeletons, Jack sighed. "Hey, Katelyn, do what you can to the zombie, I'm going to deal with the skeletons. Fife can't take both." Preparing his ice-shard spell, he aimed the initial target at one of the skeletons right in front of the zombie.

Sure enough, the zombie crushed the bespelled skeleton, which promptly exploded into shards of ice that swirled around—drawing on Jack's mana as one after another the skeletons froze and exploded too. The final rush of shards dug into the zombie but couldn't kill it.

Recognizing magical exhaustion, and liking his style, Katelyn crouched over Jack to protect him while raising her staff. "This is probably just as bad an idea, but what the hell." Motes of light flared in her staff, growing brighter until the whole length of wood glowed red. "Next time, I'm bringing a bucket of lava."

Fighting a huge foe—and controlling its movement—was an entirely different kind of fight. Fife led with her shield, shoving her whole weight against it as she collided with the zombie. Only the quick work of her sword kept its arms back. It tried, of course, but reaching at her with clawed limbs vs her cold steel only resulted in the zombie losing fingers, a hand, and in one case a whole arm below the elbow.

A rush of flame over Fife's head made her grin savagely. "I would have normally said to burn the skeletons and freeze the zombies. These things stink when they burn." She braced against her shield and heaved it back a few more paces, opening up breathing room for the rest of their group.

Ludmiller and Penelope drew their daggers and came in behind the zombie. With its attention on Fife, they sliced at its legs—severing its hamstrings before dancing away from the falling titan.

Working with Wild to hack off the zombie's limbs as close to the torso as possible, Fife felt a bit like a butcher at work. It was a grisly task, but she eventually had it on the ground with only its head still attached to its body. "You know what, big guy, I have a great new toy for dealing with this situation." She stuck her sword into the ground and drew her pistol. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to have one of these to do this." She leveled the barrel at the zombie's head, smiled down at the snapping jaws and the pure fury in its eyes—and pulled the trigger.

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.