The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 10/10

Heart 160000/160000

Experience 40000/40000

Workers 9/47

Monsters 1/49

Traps 58/109

Rooms 109

Food 7951

Timber 12600

Iron 634

Steel 605

Charcoal 0

Mana 47

Rock 2447

Gold 3084

Leather 377

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 90

Glass 800

Explosive Runes 20

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 0

Quest: Reach Tier 2

Quest: Destroy another dungeon

On one hand, Travis couldn't exactly complain that they'd sold him too much timber. He looked at the numbers, though, and realized he had to use it up if he had any hope of fitting enough gold to reach Tier 2.

It had cost him another gold vein to get them all loaded back up with gold, but that wasn't a problem. What was a problem was having so much timber. But there was no rush, and it was a weekend, after all. "Pen, can you rebuild the entrance and then we can seal back up and get ready for the next undead raid. I expect that pretty soon."

"Yeah, I got it, Trav. So we have too much timber now?" Penelope was getting to her task, already setting to repairing the wall that hid their warehouse dropoff and timber mill.

"No. It's impossible to have too much of anything. But yeah, we have a lot of timber. Food, too. I have some ideas for using it up but there's no rush." Travis was trying to remember something he'd seen in his menus when it finally came to him. "Wait, let's try something different."

Penelope halted in her tracks and looked at the three sections of wall she'd already restored. "What are you going to do?"

Paying for the Upscale add-on for the first door, Travis was able to stretch it to take up four squares instead of one. "That!"

It didn't take Penelope long to do the work of completing the wall, which now looked like it lifted up into the ceiling somehow. "Can you do that for two more lengths? Then we could have this whole wall open up, right?" She got to work when two more "doors" appeared to line the length of the tunnel, almost to the first bend.

"Exactly! And no more adding and removing rock. Also, I can make the front of each of the rooms their own doors—though with those there's no point hiding them or anything."

Penelope nodded as she finished the next door in the row. "This should help with all future logistics, too."

Wondering if she'd heard the word from him or if it existed already, Travis didn't honestly care since she'd used it well. "The most important thing, now, is getting a new dungeon entrance that's closer to Northridge. Things are about to get way more rapid when it comes to providing supplies and trade."

"You know I'm not going to be all that useful for negotiating and trades, right?" Penelope asked.

"Me either, honestly. I have ideas, but I think it's going to be Steph who at least manages the numbers. Right now I've asked and gotten permission to try opening a closer entrance to Northridge. I've pledged to fund a railway from there to the nearest big city." Travis kept going, despite the wide-eyed stare of Penelope. "And I have asked if they would be okay with us defeating the undead dungeon and destroying its core."

"Who's asking for us? That merchant who wandered in?"

"Yeah. I figured she'd be the best to ask, since an actively threatening dungeon is going to be the biggest disruption to trade possible. She's arranging for the right people to ask on our behalf." Travis was admiring the work Penelope was doing, after she raised the second outer door, when he spotted undead coming in the entrance. "Undead attacking! Everyone get ready."

Snarling in anger, Penelope left the third door and straightened up. She was caught on the wrong side of the tunnels from safety, but then she decided that maybe it was time for a test. "I've got this."

Stepping around the door that she'd just finished, Penelope smiled as a zombie seemed confused for a moment that she was just suddenly there. The monster's confusion didn't last long as her main-hand weapon jumped into her talon and took its head off.

What Travis hated the most about the undead was the quiet, parchment-scraping sound they made as they started rushing forward. It was like nails on a chalkboard to him.

Instinct took over. Penelope felt something grow in her chest and opened her mouth just in time for a mist-like rush of green to pour from her mouth and engulf the undead swarm. The necromancers and skeletons among them were the first to fall. Bones turned a somehow more pale white and then started to run like taffy as their owners just ceased working and died.

Travis was shocked at the devastation caused by her breath attack. Of all the undead, only the zombies and lord seemed to shrug most of the damage off with three wizards and two clerics seemingly ready to fall down. "Can you do that again?"

"Not for a bit!" With the rush of battle boiling in her blood, Penelope fell on the zombies that pushed forward to meet her. Her history of swordcraft as a rogue led to familiarity with her weapons, though she wished she'd had a bit more training with heavier blades.

The first two zombies to reach her fell—one losing its head to her main weapon while the other took her off-hand blade to its head. The first of the wizards' spells hit her. They were pure damage in nature, and ripped at her life force. But it certainly wasn't enough to kill her.

Giving everyone else in the dungeon a blow-by-blow account of the fight, Travis couldn't help but feel pride growing inside himself. Penelope was ripping through the enemy and, even if the lord was about to approach, it looked like that might not even be a problem for her.

When the last zombie was felled, the undead lord could finally step up to face the dragon lord. Sheathed in dark magics, it battered away the dragon's first strike with its shield and brought its sword in from a slash at its unprotected stomach.

Penelope used her off-hand to deflect the blow so it missed her. She backed off a step and used the positioning to bring her main-hand in for a stab with the huge weapon. The sword seemed to burn with its own sickly green energy as it pieced the undead lord, and Penelope could detect a chemical-burning smell as acid began to devour the undead flesh.

The undead lord jumped back, removing the blade from its body by dint of getting out of the dragon's range. With its mages behind it, the abomination knew it just needed to delay the fight for them to eventually win. It braced its shield and prepared to parry as it marched back toward the imposing draconic dervish that stood before it.

But, despite the undead lord's confidence in its wizards and clerics to take care of the defending boss, their casting seemed to have ceased. Turning, it stared as an inferno raged where the remainder of its forces once stood. More, though, the flames were rolling down the tunnel slowly toward it.

Katelyn, being on the floor she was assigned as a cohort, had a significant boost to her magic power. Her mana output wasn't just from the floor bonus, though—she had blue motes of light bubbling around her, making her mana extra dense and regenerating her at a furious pace. With her arms sheathed in fire that didn't burn her, she pointed her staff at the undead lord and screamed, "Burn!"

Penelope didn't give the undead lord time to turn around and chase down Katelyn. She sheathed her off-hand blade and sank her talons onto the undead's back, pulled it toward her, and sank her sword into its neck in a smooth action. She just wished it actually stopped moving.

Thrown down the tunnel—deeper into the hated dungeon—the undead lord was slowly regenerating. It started toward the entrance, its hatred for the dragon boss burning with ice inside it. Discarding its shield, it took hold of its sword in both hands and charged.

"Huh, it's back." Aiming herself at the charging undead lord, Penelope opened her mouth and exhaled again. The green mist clung to the blade first, the weapon becoming pitted and corroded at an astounding rate. The rest of the undead didn't fare much better, and by the time she had to deflect the weapon it shattered on her own.

Twisting to the side, deflecting the undead lord with her primary weapon, Penelope brought her short sword around and used the monster's own momentum to bring the blade completely through its neck.

When its head hit the floor of the dungeon, Penelope was panting with the rush of combat. Turning, she spotted Katelyn stepping out of the inferno with not a single burn on her. "Thanks for the help."

"You didn't look like you needed it, but this is my floor. I'm not letting you have all the fun." The fire licking around her felt more like a pet than dangerous, though Katelyn snuffed it out when Penelope approached. "What were you doing up here?"

"Fixing up the walls so we don't need to dig them out anymore. Check this out." Activating the hidden mechanism made one of the quad-doors fold up and slide into the ceiling. Penelope looked pleased as punch.

"On our day off?" Walking through the open door, Katelyn settled beside one of the inner doors; the one for the warehouse there. "Still, I guess the holes needed filling in."

"For a few days, at least. We're going to need to move this stuff up to the new floor when Trav gets his next one." Finishing the door that sealed off the area, Penelope moved over to the final door. "As for days off, every day feels like a day off here. Not sure if you've noticed, but Trav doesn't do orders, and I sure won't. If you want to do some work on a day off, go for it. All you have to worry about is Trav whining about it."

Laughing, Katelyn finished her door quickly, thanks to it only having the one upgrade that made it cover more area. "So, we're doing the big tier upgrade tomorrow?"

"Probably not. We have—We have more timber than current projects require." The wording amused Penelope. She looked at Katelyn and saw a raised eye ridge. "It's true."

"You can just say we have too much."

"Nope. Trav was adamant that you can never have too much of anything. Besides, we can just upgrade some warehouses to clear some space—and make space at the same time." Finishing off her own door, Penelope rolled her shoulders a few times and winced. "Though I might see if I can find Brayden and get some heals. That was pretty intense."

"Sure. Now you start thinking of the damage you took. They were raining a lot of death magic on you." Katelyn stepped closer, examining her friend. "But you seem to have resisted a lot of it."

"They threw a basic boss and a bunch of old bones at a dragon—of course I wasn't going to let them live. Well, survive. Hey, did you see my breath attack? Acid!" Feeling accomplished for that, and having used it twice to good effect, she straightened up. "Hey, Trav, how about we use up some timber on upgrading warehouses?"

"That sounds like a good idea, actually. All the warehouses at least have the level one upgrade, that means it will cost steel as well, but I think we can drop that surplus down a bit. There are some other things that need testing, too. I wanted to build a mushroom farm so we can get a constant food income. We're going to need that if we start recruiting more." Travis turned his attention to ten warehouses and purchased upgrades for each of them. "Okay, rooms are ready for work."

"Right. We'll do the warehouses first, then we can look at the new stuff." Penelope opened one of the doors and stepped out of the hidden area. "Hey, did we get much experience for that stuff?"

"None at all, sorry. We're at max. Only getting the tier upgrade will unlock more."

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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.