The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 9/10

Heart 129600/129600

Experience 6800/32400

Workers 9/35

Monsters 1/37

Traps 59/79

Rooms 64

Food 2443

Timber 804

Iron 1134

Steel 605

Charcoal 0

Mana 78

Rock 2157

Gold 305

Leather 402

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 100

Glass 800

Explosive Runes 5

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 5

Quest: Reach Tier 2

Quest: Get 10,000 gold

"This is going to be my room?" Penelope walked around the huge space. It was as big as Wild's arena. "I like the idea of having some room to stretch out. You know I'm probably going to end up as an actual dragon, right?"

"We don't have to upgrade you all the way. If you said this was as far as you wanted to go, this is it." Travis was indeed perfectly happy to let Penelope live how she wanted. "So don't feel pressured."

"I do feel pressured, but not by you. It's everyone in here—no, they're not pressuring me either. I see them all working so hard to protect all of us, to build and grow and—It would be wrong if I don't put my all into it too." Walking to the entrance, she let out a sigh. "How much is it going to cost for my next upgrade?"

"Five thousand gold, a thousand steel, five hundred food, and two hundred leather. That is my next target for a major upgrade. The next goods delivery, and a little time processing gold, will get us there." The cost of the upgrades were becoming staggering the higher level Travis got, but they were at least one-off upgrades. Though, he admitted that this was going to be an upgrade several of his floor bosses would need too. "I expect Wild will want an upgrade soon enough, too."

"This work-around for steel production will only last so long. We need to start smelting our own. Also, didn't you say we could get farms now? Why don't we have a few of those to at least offset the food we're eating?"

"They use a lot of timber."

Standing up from her crouch and stretching, Penelope made her way to the tunnels again. "Yeah, it seems like a lot of things need lots of timber. That's something we should prioritize from Northridge."

"Shame there's no way to grow trees underground." Penelope walked back down the tunnel and through to the heart room. "Wait, are there any above-ground buildings yet? Maybe you can build a lumber yard or something outside?"

"That might be something I get to do next tier. One more level and we get to start collecting resources for that."

"How much is it?"

"I don't know. Some of these upgrades don't show up until their prerequisites are met. Since my level reads as nine out of ten, I figure next level it ticks over and needs a tier to unlock more." Looking around, Travis tried to figure out how long he'd need to work to get some of the research unlocks too. "Do you think there will be more research after the tier-up?"

Penelope walked around his heart, examining how it was growing, running her claws over the surface, and feeling the wisps of the three mana manipulators doing their work. "How many workers could you have by now, Travis?"

"Thirty-five."

"And your longest research is?"

"A hundred and fifty days. Oh, I get what you mean. If I had all the workers I possibly could, that research would be done in just five days." It was, Travis realized, very useful to have an outside perspective on this. "Okay, so we need more kobolds in this dungeon, don't we?"

Penelope laughed and leaned her cheek against Travis' heart. "How do we get them?"

"Advertising?"

Penelope struck a dramatic pose. "Embrace a lifetime of servitude!"

"Ha ha." Travis threw as much sarcasm into his laugh as he could. "But, seriously, most people move to a town like Northridge and don't ever move away again, do they?"

"Yeah. Something like that. You get some, usually researchers and long-lived races who will probably move on after some time, but mostly, people just settle down and work their whole lives somewhere." Penelope froze and groaned. "You walked me right into that. Well done. So, you put out word that our dungeon is just another great place to come and raise a family. Oh, and make sure you bring your family first, because once you're a kobold…"

"Yeah, but it's not like we have to make their kids into kobolds. Let them live here rent free until they're old enough to make the decision for themselves." It felt like the right way to do things. "And, if we set up the living quarters on the second floor, have that only accessible from stairs to the surface or via Wild's arena to the back way down—it'd make it super safe."

"You're already planning for another floor?!"

"I'm planning for two more. Unless the spells just don't show info about stuff more than two floors away, four is the limit. That means I have to be ready to have the first floor, now, sunk two more down. I figure when I get the next one, that whole floor will just be a twisting, huge maze and time-waster that people can get lost in forever. When the last one is added, I'll then have stairs going to the tavern from there, but just have the entrance lead straight to the second floor—then we build out the first floor into a huge residence."

Penelope started to laugh. Barking and hissing too, she almost doubled over and finally sat down and put her back to Travis' huge heart. "Trav! You are amazing. Half of this is just—This is why I trust you. Why I'll give up every shred of myself to keep you safe. I'll protect you"—she turned her head and pressed her cheek against him—"just so I can see what you'll build next."

"Travis' dungeon has drawn the entirety of the undead dungeon's focus. The way they're handling it, I don't think they mind. I got the impression that the dungeon gains something from defeating them." Brolly Windchime read through the notes he'd written up of the little visit to the dungeon. "They have repelled—completely destroyed, that is—several raids and are getting one every two to three days."

It was with a choke of panic that Christine Sellswell listened to the report. "They have two to three of these attacks a week?! And they just deal with that?"

"From what Brayden—that is, Brayden Smith, the priest of Brogdar that has joined the dungeon— says, they are holding the undead back and expanding their own defenses further. I presume the undead dungeon will be ramping up its attacks both in quantity and quality of attackers, so we probably want to deliver all the resources Travis has ordered." Giving Christine a raised eyebrow, Brolly gestured to her.

"Right. We're loading up to deliver the second half of their order. I've already arranged for more steel to be delivered, and the work crews who finished off the stone wall have been put to work harvesting and planting trees. From what our negotiations seemed to uncover, wood and food are their main requirements, with steel as a stop-gap until they can produce their own at quantity.

"At some point things are going to swing the other way. We'll be buying or trading, at less-than-favorable positions, high quality materials from them. That's when we have to dig our heels in and start selling to the kingdom at large for a large profit margin.

"I would suggest, at our first opportunity, building a road and series of forts leading to the dungeon. We must protect our investment here—and I think even the dungeon would agree on that." Done with her particular notes, Christine looked between Brolly, Howard, and the two priests in the room. "Any objections?"

"It won't be cheap," Howard Tailor said. "Those forts won't build themselves. We'll need more stonemasons, more workers, and more soldiers."

Smirking, Christine lifted out two sacks of gold. They were hefty sacks, with two thousand gold in them collectively. "I have talked to my merchants. We are willing to invest in this—heavily."

"Your workers and guards will all receive full protection against death." Brother Rupert wasn't prepared to give up gold to this plan, not unless pushed. "There are no better conditions anywhere in the kingdom for such workers."

"That's appreciated, I'm sure, by the workers and our guards." Looking at Brolly, Christine got a nod from him. "And will make hiring workers far easier. I'll start the process. Howard, anything to add?"

Looking over the notes he'd been scribbling onto his tablet, Howard nodded. "Since this would be a project to directly assist the dungeon, we may be able to ask for Tannyr's assistance in designing the forts. We will still need talented masons to do the cutting and preparing of the rock. I'll arrange for the first such fort to be built around our quarry."

"Regarding hiring guards—"

"How many do you want? I'll add that to my agents' list."

Chuckling, Brolly said, "Appreciated, and if you could make a note that experience with long guns would be a bonus. I talked to the dungeon when I was over there, through an interpreter, and they seem to think that with a little lead time they could be making firearms for us. Now, I know you were excited to see raw resources sold through Northridge, but we could have some of the finest weapons in the kingdom in our possession soon."

"And for sale?" Christine and Howard both asked at the same time. They each looked at the other and laughed.

Tannyr Stoneshave looked at the design and nodded her head. "This will work. I can have this done quickly and then work on the second floor." Pulling out her own tablet, she began copying down the information that Blake had passed her. "Trav, Pen said you wanted to reach a research target?"

"Oh! Yes! We have so much to dig th—"

"I'll do the digging. It's a waste of others' time—unless they want to. Ask them to research instead and leave the rest to me." Tannyr slipped the tablet into her shoulder bag and stood up from her planning table. "I wonder if being a floor boss would give me any bonuses to digging?"

The question sent Travis' thoughts spinning. Increasing Tannyr's digging speed, by even a small percentage, would be huge. "If it comes to that, you'll probably be the boss for the first floor—when we get the fourth floor."

"Isn't that Wild's job?" Walking down the tunnel from her home, Tannyr squared up against the corner where the tunnel turned inward on the maze.

"When I get a new floor, it appears at the top and becomes the first floor."

Reaching behind her back and pulling out a dungeon pickaxe, Tannyr shrugged her shoulders. "As long as you have it planned out. Dedicating a floor to just digging would be a good idea, I think."

His talk with Penelope had prepared Travis for the conversation well. "Oh, I'm going to go one better. I'll have that floor dedicated entirely to being residences and support for them. We'll use custom stairs to link that to the bottom floor, so all that will be considered a safe area behind the traps and defenses."

Pausing after digging through two chunks of rock, Tannyr smirked. "Glad you have the macro-level plans sorted. Guess I'll be designing things on a smaller scale than that." And, with that, she started eating through the rock at a furious pace, carving out the new tunnel to secure the gold mines.

Turning his attention to the rest of the kobolds, at least the ones awake, Travis told them, "I'd like to spend a few days focused on research. With eight of you doing that, it would only take four and a bit days to get Timesink researched, which would give me xp for just having Fife sitting on her butt in the tavern."

"Got it, Trav," Katelyn said, "but did you still need some gold mined?"

"Yes, thanks."

After repeating the request so Fife could hear it, Brayden passed back her reply. "Hey, Trav, Fife says she'll sit on her ass all year if it will help."

"Thank you, everyone." It was going to be a quiet few days. Travis wondered how long the town was going to take for the next delivery.

"Hey, uh, Trav? I think there's something down this way into the rock." Without asking, Tannyr diverted herself from the straight path and dug just three squares over. "Ah, more gold." The following two days of digging held more such surprises, with an extra mana shrine discovered on the second floor.

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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.