The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 9/10

Heart 129600/129600

Experience 28800/32400

Workers 9/43

Monsters 1/45

Traps 59/99

Rooms 68

Food 1985

Timber 751

Iron 1034

Steel 405

Charcoal 0

Mana 58

Rock 2515

Gold 6073

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

Having undead in the dungeon wasn't quite the panic situation it used to be. Travis kept everyone apprised of where they were and how their necromancers were faring against having random boulders slam into them.

For a moment Travis considered one thing that'd started becoming awkward about the dungeon and that was giving people accurate location information by description. What he wanted was to name some parts of the dungeon so they would be easier to reference quickly. Where the undead were marching now was, of course, the Bowling Alley. Boulder traps everywhere and an unhealthy amount of long tunnels made it the obvious name.

"I slowed the zombhounds down with the first two boulders, but you might want to get ready to face them, Wild." Wild and Ludmiller had both been in the library working on research, but they made their way up through the tunnels and met Katelyn at the door to the arena. Travis reconsidered the name and came up with Wild's Arena.

"What have we got coming, Travis?" Wild asked as he stepped into the arena. As he did, his muscles visibly bulged and he became far more solid and stoic.

"There were fifteen zombhounds, ten zombies, and ten necromancers. They also brought their lord, but he looks meaner now. I guess that would be their boss getting an upgrade?" He shuddered to think of that.

"Isn't the only one out of all that—that can survive Squishy—the lord?" Katelyn asked, stepping into the arena and suddenly flaring with pyroclastic energy. "I forgot how it feels to be here. It's like I'm more alive than normal."

"Yeah." Ludmiller faded from view as she stepped into the room before her presence was visible by Wild's blush. "Same plan as last time? I'll wait by the door and let them pass, then take out any remaining necromancers. Wild, what do you want me targeting after that?"

"Zombhounds, zombies, and then the boss. Katelyn, I want you burning the zombies down as fast as you can." Wild judged the heft of his axes. "Travis, how are they liking your boulders?"

"Well, I think I found an interesting thing. There's definitely a limit to how fast necromancers can bring their undead allies back. I killed all but one, and it took nearly a whole minute to get around to bringing back another." Travis then used two boulders, timed just right, to collide with the remaining necromancer and kill it for good. "Right, there are six zombhounds I'm letting through. They're moving fast and I don't want to waste all my boulders on them. Now working on the zombies."

"Spacing them out is good. Gives us time to work our magic." Ludmiller was standing by the door, careful not to get too close to the lava—despite it not actually feeling that uncomfortable to be near. Peeking around the corner, she spotted her targets. "Here they come!"

Watching the undead beasts race into the room, Travis counted them off as they passed Ludmiller and then saw the sixth and final one get opened up completely down one side while a second gouge appeared in its head.

Wild seemed to be everywhere at once. His axes were black blurs in the red light of the room's flames, and behind him was an even bigger fire. Each time Katelyn gestured to a zombhound, it would implode with flames.

With no wounds on them at all, Wild cleaved the second-last undead's head off while Ludmiller ripped open the last with her daggers.

"Set up again, you have two zombies and the lord coming," Travis told them.

Two zombies lurched into the room and Ludmiller let them pass. She waited and saw the undead lord march past her. She took two steps toward him, Katelyn's first blast of magic landing on one of the zombies, and barely saw the huge sword as it swung toward her.

It wasn't at all what she'd expected. She danced back from that swing, only to have the lord slam her with its shield.

Seeing stars and trying to regain her focus, Ludmiller felt the bite of the undead lord's sword strike her neck and cleave through.

There wasn't any light. It was actually rather dark where Ludmiller had ended up. There, in the darkness, she felt something huge and powerful stir.

"Luddy! You're okay. I can see a timer ticking down for you to automatically respawn."

Travis' voice was all around and permeating the darkness. He just seemed so huge and reassuring that Ludmiller found herself relaxing. "How long does that take? A day, right?"

"Yeah. It looks like Katelyn is blowing up the zombies while Wild is cutting down the lord. Hey, you want me to call Brayden to resurrect you?"

"Wait for the fight to be over. I can't believe I didn't wait to see if he could see through my invisibility." Trying to close herself off, though, seemed impossible. Ludmiller watched through two pairs of eyes as Wild stood between Katelyn and the undead lord.

Knowing that they were as safe as if they had talismans took a lot of the worry out of the fight for Ludmiller. She watched Katelyn burn the lord again and again with magic, watched Wild dodge and cut at the monster, with a detached sense of enthusiasm for their skills.

In the end, though, even with the insane damage that the pair could put out, the lord was just too much for them. Wild went down first, his axe biting too hard into the lord's shield and getting stuck—before it brought its sword around in a double slash that stripped away the last of his vitality. Katelyn didn't have long to go after that. She got one more good spell in before the lord took her through the middle in a slice that—like Ludmiller—left her in two pieces.

The door leading out of the arena opened and the lord, with none of his retinue, started heading deeper into the Maze.

Travis felt a little down, given three of his friends had just died, but the respawn counters were reassuring as they ticked down. Explosions sounded in the Maze, one after another, as the undead lord stomped toward the center.

As its feet reached the bottom of the stairs, something else got Travis' attention—Penelope woke up. She didn't exactly fit on her cot anymore, for one thing her legs hung off the end and her wings had torn up some of the furs.

Rolling to her feet, she stood up and up and up—almost brushing her head on the ceiling. "Mmm. Trav? How big am I?"

"Come out into my heart room and I'll tell you." He didn't really need her to do so to know she had grown significantly. The way her head was almost at the same height as the ceiling was a good give-away. When she stepped into the light of his heart, Travis gasped.

"That big, huh? Wow, I can reach out to the top of you now." Stepping up to Travis' heart, she did just that and pressed a claw gently on the top of it. "Anything fun happen while I was asleep?"

"Wild, Luddy, and Katelyn are all respawning. Big wave of undead came in and it looks like their lord got an upgrade. He's working his way through the Twists now." Travis noticed that Penelope's weapons had become larger too. One was the size of a short sword and the other was a huge blade—as big as the lord's. "Do you want to tackle him?"

Drawing her weapons, Penelope looked them over. The short sword was the right size for her to use as a dagger, but the great sword was far closer to being a short sword to her. "Yeah. Let me give this a shot. And send someone to fetch Fife and the others. Probably Brayden."

"Brayden's already up there. I sent him up when the lord saw through Luddy's stealth and beat her down. He's trying to bring them back, but he—Oh, he got Katelyn up. Brayden, can you let Fife and the others know we might have a situation downstairs?" After hearing an affirmative, Travis passed it on to Penelope. "Oh, and all of you, you shouldn't have to dig through walls anymore. I got an upgrade that says you can just pass through one block worth of wall."

"If I can figure out how that works, I'll let you know." Walking toward the wall that would let her bypass the Twists and shortcut into Squishy's shrine, Penelope faced the first wall she needed to pass. "Alright, wall, I need to be on the other side."

She walked at the wall and it was definitely still a wall.

"Okay, let me try again." Pushing forward with just her hand, Penelope tried to focus on the feeling of reaching through mud. That worked. She followed her arm and, with a silent rush of pressure, was spat out the other side of the wall. "That's neat. Okay, time to help Squishy take out that big bastard."

When she slipped through the rock a second time to get into the tunnel from Squishy's shrine to the final traps, Penelope could hear a dull explosion in the distance. "How many is that, Trav?"

"Three. One more and it will be in the final run to get down here. How are you going to tackle it?" Travis shoved back the nerves he felt at knowing the undead dungeon's boss had crushed all his defenses so far.

Smiling and reaching her claws out, Penelope ran the back of her hand down Squishy's side. "Now, Squishy, you wait back here and sit on your shrine. When the bad guy comes and attacks you, I'll step through the wall and get him to turn around—then you pull him in. Got it?"

Travis was a little dumbstruck as to how the slime might understand her, but it seemed to be.

The fourth and final blast of the Twists went off and the wait was on. A few lizards were making the tunnel where Trav had his last boulder trap as their home, so he spotted when the undead lord entered that tunnel. "I'm going to throw a boulder at him, then he'll be in here. Ready?"

Just giving a nod, and expecting Travis to see her vision bob, Penelope waited. She heard the click and rumble of a boulder—heard too the sound of it crashing into a shield—and further bone dry steps as it entered Squishy's area.

It took Travis a moment to figure out what was going on. The lord hadn't charged at Squishy, but when he felt an intense pain from the slime, he remembered seeing what Jack had used on them before. "Pen! The lord is freezing Squishy!"

Pushing her fist through the wall, Penelope followed it and came out just behind the lord. She didn't wait long to draw her off-hand sword while bringing her claws down the undead's back—raking away armor and the remains of whatever tattered flesh it had there.

The arm the undead lord had been pointing at Squishy with reached to its hip to draw its weapon as it turned.

"Leave my friend alone!" Penelope drew her sword at the same time as the lord and, when he swung at her, she caught its heavy blade with her short sword and knocked it aside while bringing her own weapon down on its shield.

She didn't have to beat the lord, but Penelope was finding that fighting it was easier than she'd thought. Its blows, that should have knocked her weapons from her grip, were caught solidly and divested of their power. Cracks and breaks were appearing on the lord's shield where her own great sword had collided with it several times.

Not that her main weapon felt like a great sword. It was light and responsive in her grip. She was enjoying the fight in that it was against an opponent that wasn't quite good enough to get by her defenses.

After some back and forth, with no wounds scored for either combatant, Penelope finally had things set up just right. Screaming her rage at the acts the undead had perpetrated before reaching her, she tossed her swords aside and started clawing at the lord. Grabbing its sword with one hand and its shield with the other, she raised one leg and braced against its pelvis. "Sorry, but you're nothing but food," she said, kicking it with such force that it lost its grip on weapon and shield and, flying backward, stopped moving several feet into Squishy's body.

Watching the disarmed skeleton trying to claw its way through the slime—with no evidence of success—Penelope collected her own weapons and walked over to Squishy. "He was getting you pretty good, wasn't he?" Leaning forward, she pressed her head against the surface of the slime. "Don't worry, big guy, I've got your back."

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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.