The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 9/10

Heart 129600/129600

Experience 14800/32400

Workers 9/43

Monsters 1/45

Traps 59/99

Rooms 66

Food 2401

Timber 804

Iron 1134

Steel 605

Charcoal 0

Mana 41

Rock 2969

Gold 5305

Leather 402

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 90

Glass 800

Explosive Runes 5

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 5

Quest: Reach Tier 2

Quest: Get 10,000 gold

Bonus Quest: Destroy dragon nest on second floor

Watching Fife fight against the predictable dungeon monsters was a sight to behold for Travis. Every movement was perfectly timed to accomplish something whether it was advancing safely down the tunnel or driving one of the dragons back.

He grumbled about one thing, though. "If they weren't so aggressive, I would instead just put up a bunch of auto-reset traps and leave them here as an experience farm."

"How would that work?" Penelope asked, moving up with Fife, holding the other woman's rifle at the ready.

"This dungeon seems so much like a game it makes me wonder if that's what my theme literally is. If that's the case, things like these nests might just last forever." The idea of a fully functioning XP farm that didn't require any observation really appealed to Travis. "Because, at a guess, I'm going to start needing a lot of experience to level up."

"I'm not exactly sure how that will work, Trav, but I gave up doubting your intuition on this stuff over a floor ago." Shielding her eyes from a blinding flare of flame, Penelope let out a laugh at how destructive three wizards could be.

For a brief moment the cave that'd been opened up was a furnace. Even the dragons trying to escape couldn't bear the heat of the spells. When the mana cleared from around the toasty, cherry red location of the dragon nest, Fife let out a whoop of excitement. "Great work! Hey, Trav, that's how we deal with problems like adventurers!"

Your dungeon boss' involvement in scouring the dragon nest from the dungeon has resulted in them being eligible for upgrade!

Travis was so fixated on the message that it took him hearing Katelyn's cheering to actually check Penelope's next upgrade. What he saw made him cackle with excitement. "Okay, so that dragon nest counted as a quest, and the reward just made Pen's next upgrade free."

While Penelope explained what happened to the others, Travis made a commitment. "Tell everyone they've earned a bonus. No one was hurt and no resources used, except a little lava and mana, so I'd like to show my thanks. Do you think a hundred gold would do?"

"I think a hundred gold is overkill, but we have plenty. Okay, listen up everyone. As thanks for the timely and professional work dealing with all this, Trav has told me to release a one hundred gold bonus to you all." Penelope held out her hands in a placating gesture. "This is Travis showing his own appreciation for your work. We might not do this every time, but hey, gold is gold."

"Maybe it could be every time. It would encourage people to come and protect us. Oh, you need to go and get comfortable so we can upgrade you—if you want to, of course."

Trying to shush the cheers of the group around her, Penelope only managed to get through to Fife. "I gotta go, Trav's doing my upgrade now."

"No way? I thought you needed another delivery for that?" Taking her gun back from Penelope, Fife pulled out her own glow stick so she could see.

"That's why we got all the extra gold. Clearing this out did something that makes my upgrade free. He wanted to know if I actually wanted to keep going down this path. How can I not? I know what the end result is, but I also know what I need to protect."

The admission, along with the way Penelope walked along the tunnels scraping her claws against the stonework, made Travis more sure than ever that he had the best kobolds a dungeon could have.

"Robert told me you're getting close to getting another level. That'll be cool, eh?" Fife sat in the heart room, her back pressed against the giant crystal heart. She was a little tanked, sloshed, and otherwise imbibed—and the big mug of ale in her clenched fist was not the first she'd brought down.

Travis couldn't speak back to her, but she knew he could hear her. "Having me as a kobold would be great, but have you thought about making me a—a drake warrior or something?"

She sighed and swished around the ale in her mug. "I'm fine being a kobold, Trav. Just thinking about stuff, ya know?"

Draining the mug down to the last drop, Fife turned it upside down and set it down beside the other two empty ones. "'s not that I don't trust everyone, but I don't want anything bad to happen to Pen. That's why I'm on guard." She picked up another mug, the last of her full ones, and took a long sip. "Best thing about bein' down here is it keeps the ale cold."

Fife was well aware she'd reached the point in her drinking that she would have extreme difficulty getting up again, which only encouraged her to remain in place and drink what ale she had left to her. "Nights like this are going to be so much better when someone else can hold up the other end of the conversation. I hear you have them all doing research, for something or the other. Wait, was that the thing where you get that experience thing from just having adventurers in here?"

Another long sip of her ale later and Fife laughed. "That means I'd still be helping even if I get drunk in here. You're really smart, ya know that?" Another sip of ale and Fife noticed things getting far more sideways than they'd been moments ago. Laying on her back at the base of Travis' heart, she laughed at her own clumsiness, then lowered to a giggle, quieter still to a chuckle, and finally to a snore.

Their conversation, one sided as it was, still posed a few questions for Travis. He wanted to know if he could make people into tougher things than kobolds. Not that kobolds weren't all awesome in their own ways, but seeing Fife as a seven-foot tall wall of muscle would be cool.

When a few lizards gathered around Fife, soaking up her warmth and getting cozy, Travis turned his attention elsewhere.

Tannyr was cleaning up the mess in the tunnels she'd been working on. She had some help from Stephan, who was mostly focused on butchering the dragons, but otherwise she was trying to work out how to correct the mess the cave had made of their plans.

Clearing away the already-planned rock was a start. She then began filling in the sections that would reform the rooms of the dungeon that had been the original plan. Her last step was to link it up to the inner dungeon and then, giving a wave to Stephan as she walked past him, sealing the tunnel behind her so she was once more in the outer loop.

Moving down the loop, she dug out the next section of four rooms and linked those into the center, but when it came time to do the one after, she found another surprise. "Trav, another mana shrine."

"Oh! Thanks, Tannyr. Hrmm, what to do with the extra room? I think some mana storage would work nicely there. We'll need more gold to get those up." Travis watched her work while he chatted. "Are you sure you're—?"

"Going to cut you off right there. I like this. I've spent a few years already underground, working stone, and you can rest assured I enjoy the cool quiet of these tunnels far more than the tavern up by the entrance." Tannyr made her way to the next area to dig out. "Not that I don't like you talking with me, but this is something I could do all day and not get bored of it."

"There's not much else I can do but trust you. That said, you still get two days off from doing what I want you to do each seven." Travis tried to ignore her laughter at the last bit. With Penelope undergoing her upgrade and everyone else researching in the library, he was bereft of any conversation partners.

As hard as Travis had tried, Squishy just couldn't hold up his end of the conversations they had. What he could do, he realized, was get a little work done cleaning up plans here and there. He also paid the thousand rock needed to upgrade the walls and floors on the second floor.

Upgrades, he realized, were something he'd been a little behind on. Thankfully, with the Tier 0 upgrades being so cheap, he could grab a few of them right away. Draconic Constitution (gives all his creatures regeneration 1, or so it said), Workers 2 and Workers 3 (which increased his worker limit, led to…), and Sneaky Workers were all purchased—the final one of which said it allowed workers to slip through walls.

There was one upgrade he was avoiding—Lizard Swarming. It would make lizards try to steal any non-dungeon creatures' items. He would have loved to have it work on enemy attackers only, but there were too many people living in the dungeon to be able to keep the lizards under control.

When yet another mana tick occurred and he had a healthy surplus, Travis cast the spell to create another mana shrine.

The next day was a busy one. Beside Tannyr's suite, they built the gunsmith and started planning out more traps to thin the numbers of enemies that would reach Wild's room.

Tannyr was carving out the second floor again just as Travis spotted a human enter the dungeon. Of all the kobolds, only Katelyn was on the first floor. "Katelyn? We have a new visitor. Could you go and see what they're up to?"

In the process of melting a stack of gold off one of the veins, Katelyn nodded. "Sure. How is your gold looking?"

"Just passed six thousand. That should do me for a few hours." Travis watched through lizard eyes as the human (wearing a guard uniform) knocked on the door that led to the bar.

Just as someone in the tavern opened the hidden door, Katelyn reached the door opposite and opened that. "You have a horse with you? You can lead it in there too," she said aloud. "Trav, we need somewhere for people to put their horses. Maybe we could convert the storage drop off there since we have the other one now?"

"Good thinking," Travis said. "Could you go and find out from them what they need?"

"Mmhmm." Waiting for the guard to get his horse inside too, Katelyn closed the outer door behind them and ushered him into the tavern area. "You're ready to get the other share of the resources for us?"

"Yeah, though Captain Brolly has other things worrying him. The goblin dungeon to the north of Northridge is getting more and more active. They have patrols out and we're expecting their first expedition any day now." Timothy Devin had found himself volunteered as dungeon liaison after his earlier meeting here, not that he minded too much. "The captain has secured an order for ten guns and needs the gold promised to pay for them."

"We can bring that tomorrow. How much?" Katelyn settled down at the table Timothy was closest to and gestured for him to sit too. Since her change to being a kobold, she felt far more relaxed in the presence of men—because she was sure they weren't trying to work out how to get her to lift her robes. "Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'm Katelyn."

"Tim," Timothy said. "Ten thousand gold will cover them. He said he got a good deal."

Katelyn laughed and nodded. "You're speaking to the right kobold, then. I've just dug out five thousand or so, I guess I know what I'll be doing later today. Will you be going back to town with our group, then?"

Looking around the taproom, Timothy saw a group of four humans to one side playing some kind of card game while another sat apart from them, writing notes on a tablet while he flicked through a book. "That was the plan. Expecting more undead?"

"Yeah. Probably some time today. You're welcome to watch the fun if they arrive." Standing up, Katelyn gestured to the kitchen. "Are you hungry? We always have a pot of stew on."

Perking up at the mention of food, Timothy nodded. "A bowl of stew would be good, thanks."

"Katelyn, hate to ruin your date, but I just watched some zombhounds run in the front." Travis adjusted his voice mid sentence, ensuring all the kobolds heard the second half.

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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.