The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 10/10

Heart 160000/160000

Experience 40000/40000

Workers 9/47

Monsters 1/49

Traps 62/109

Rooms 109

Food 7945

Timber 10480

Iron 589

Steel 605

Charcoal 0

Mana 88

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

"More space! Mwahahaha!"

"Alright, mister, we're going to have words about your addiction to warehouse upgrades." Penelope couldn't stop laughing after her gag, looking at the last of the ten warehouses she'd upgraded. "At least tell me that's enough."

"Nope! We still have way more timber than we need for the tier-up. Food too, and rock is taking up a ton of space. It's fine, though. If we can get more steel, there's almost fifty more of these things we could upgrade."

"Ugh! Okay, what else? I'm warehoused out."

"Tannyr got super bored and demanded I give her something to dig, then Luddy found out my plan was to build a lizard village, and now they're both trying to figure out how to best get it right beside Wild's boss room." Travis was watching the pair as they pored over a map of the first floor. "It'll be a big one, too. Twenty-five by twenty-five."

"Well, they sound like they have that sorted. Was there anything else you wanted to build?" She started walking back through the tunnels to his heart room.

"I wanted to try building a mushroom farm. It seems weird, since it says the size is variable in five by five squares. So I figure we can use it to fill gaps that things have left." Already looking for a good spot to put such a building, Travis realized he had a good candidate in the rings looping around his lower floor. "And I have just the pla—"

Trembling mentally as Penelope walked a circle around his heart, her palm stroking it, Travis felt a giddy-happy feeling fill him. "That's really distracting."

"Tell me if you want me to stop it."

"I didn't say that. Anyway, I'll mark out a huge area. Once Tannyr is done upstairs, I'll get her to come down and help with it."

Watching Penelope get to work, Travis turned his attention to where Tannyr and Ludmiller were poking at the map. "Figure out a spot for it?"

"No," Tannyr said.

"Yes," Ludmiller said.

The pair looked at each other, sighed, and reversed their answers.

"I want to have it back onto the arena so we can have lizard armies fight with us." Ludmiller gestured to her plan to have the lizard village connected to the arena with the bypass tunnel circling around it. "This lets us do that."

"It's also awkward. What I propose is we put it over here, behind the drop off warehouse and timber mill. That will mean the lizards can slip out into the tunnels and cause havoc with attackers." Tannyr tapped a claw at her preferred location.

Looking over both choices, Travis decided to make the best decision. "Both. Definitely both. We'll have one village over here, supporting the arena, and another over here, to harry attackers."

Both gasped in surprise, and Travis figured he had things sorted. "But let's build the arena village first. Okay, I like this spot, but I have a question for Tannyr—do you want your area connecting before the loop or after it?"

"Huh? Oh. Before. That way I can make a storefront down here and use it to show off things the townsfolk might want to buy." Tapping a point just between her stoneworks and adventurer rooms, Tannyr hefted her pickaxe. "So, how about we get started?"

Tannyr and Ludmiller worked together, digging for all they were worth to clear the huge room out behind the gunsmith and stoneworks. They spent hours digging until Tannyr suddenly let out a string of curses. "Trav!"

Penelope had been digging along well, opening up the huge long section of room Travis had wanted dug out. Robert had wandered in and started helping when Tannyr's cry got Travis' attention.

The moment Travis spotted what she was looking at, he cursed. "This is my fault. Stupid gold mine!"

"We've got another five units to dig to finish off this huge room?" Tannyr asked. When Travis made an affirmative grunt, she sighed. "Well, finish off this row and then we'll expand the other side five. You'll need to change the routing of the bypass tunnel."

"Yeah, I can work on that tomorrow. Damn, I wanted to get this finished so we could have a pile of cute lizards." Travis looked at the huge room and had to just give up on each project for the day. "Was working on a mushroom farm downstairs with Pen and Robert."

"Free food?" Tannyr asked.

"I hope so. I don't mind at all, particularly since we have a lot extra right now, but did you know that everything that comes out of the kitchen and bar literally just uses 'food' as fuel? If we could get those mushrooms producing that same food, we could even open our own tavern in Northridge."

Timesink research completed!

"Wait, who was doing research?" Travis asked, directing his voice toward everyone.

"Uh, me, Steph, and Blake," Katelyn said. "What happened?"

"We just unlocked Timesink—but as we are now we don't need any XP. Do you want me to assign another research target?" It occurred to Travis that he had needed to specifically assign people to research topics, but somehow Katelyn had managed to trigger it herself. "Well, I guess the best one for us is Flush. That makes it so when there are multiple costs for things, gold price goes up but other costs go down."

Penelope was the first to respond. "I won't lie, Trav, that sounds perfect for our situation. Start us off on that."

Setting that as the target, Travis settled in as the night approached and the dungeon became quieter. He kept a vigil, of course, in case they had any unexpected visitors. Though, with all his traps armed and the various explosives primed and ready, he didn't worry too much.

The morning after almost single handedly defeating the undead dungeon's latest attack, Penelope made her way up to the tavern area and started on some breakfast while waiting for more kobolds to wake.

Being the only one awake meant she got to contemplate some things with a clear head that she'd missed at the end of the previous day. She felt strong, and her one woman stand against the undead lord had proved that. Having melted away most of his support just with her breath, she had genuinely been quite fine just beating him and his cohort up.

"Do you want to finish the farm today?" Travis asked.

"Yeah. We're probably going to need some more help. Robert and I barely managed not even half of your plan yesterday." Picking up her bowl, Penelope slurped down the stew with abandon.

"I'll ask Robert and Blake to help. They should be plenty. Tannyr and Luddy ran into a problem with the lizard village. There was another gold mine in the way. Speaking of, I might create a few more down here. I need to use up mana again."

"Gold mines, after what just happened?" Penelope couldn't help herself, she laughed at the image of them trying to build some more significant rooms but only finding gold mines.

Tannyr stepped into the tavern and looked around. Spotting Penelope, she relaxed a little and went to get her own meal. "You want another bowl?"

"Mmm? Yeah, thanks. Don't let Trav's gold mines get you down. We'll burn through gold soon enough when we start spending more of it and less of the other stuff." Penelope made sure Tannyr wasn't watching and picked up her bowl to lick it clean.

Bringing out two fresh bowls, Tannyr noticed Penelope putting her bowl down. "Just a bit more digging and then we can see what these lizard villages can do. It's weird, but I'm finding more and more to enjoy down here."

Robert and Blake arrived, sought out the kitchen and started on their own stew. The room was silent as everyone ate. Penelope seemed to be trying her best not to just pick up her second bowl and gulp it down, but she had to admit she was exceptionally hungry. The second bowl defeated, she walked to the kitchen to find her third.

Over the course of the day, Travis watched them digging away. When his mana reached a suitable number, he decided more mana shrines would be a good idea.

It was late afternoon by the time the two projects were completed. The mushroom farm, technically eighteen mushroom farm plots, was done first, and all eighteen plots were built for the same overall cost. "Thanks, you guys, this should mean we never have to worry about buying food ever again, though if we want to start getting a positive rate going, we'll probably want more."

"Not a problem, Trav. You know how it goes, we're all working together down here. Free food is always going to be the best course of action." The dark structures stretched on for quite a distance in either direction, and on each of the little stone beds was a tray of mycelia. "Do we have to harvest this ourselves?"

"We'll find out to—" Travis halted mid sentence as he felt a new notification hit him. "They finished the lizard village! Also, I think Tannyr found another iron vein."

Everyone heard his excitement and headed for the first floor to see what had happened.

Christine Sellswell smacked the piece of paper. "You don't get to make that call, Brolly." She glared at the Guard captain. "Technically, the dungeon can just march into that undead hole whenever he wants and just stomp them and break the heart. It's not like there are laws against dungeons attacking each other."

"There are when they have been made a citizen of the kingdom. Travis must not break that heart." Folding his arms over his chest, Brolly Windchime shook his head. "You know these laws. We can't—"

"I've already sent word and gold ahead. My family's law firm in the capital will be petitioning on Travis' behalf. That was something he asked me to do." Letting her predatory expression play over her face, Christine dusted her hands for effect. "The other matters are arranging for a railway to Northridge. That will be hideously expensive, but that shouldn't be a headache for long. Travis has decided he wants a more firm presence in Northridge apart from just a few allies—he is going to lease the old Brown estate."

"That hardly seems fair to him," Howard Tailor said. "You're at least going to clean it up for him, I hope?"

"Of course. I'm going to be hiring staff to keep the building neat and tidy. This leads us to the last big thing. When he has his next floor, he's going to try to open a new entrance close to the city. I don't pretend to know how any of this works, but he thinks he can do it." Christine had notes to pass out, showing her tallying of events so far and their costs. "Your rifles are paid for, Brolly. Stephan, the kobold who traveled here last, also asked that we try to recruit potential new kobolds for the dungeon. Families would be preferable, though he said their offspring need not convert until they can make the decision for themselves."

Staring a little incredulously now, Howard tapped the sheet of paper where that last bit should have been. "Just like that?" At Christine's nod, he scoffed. "There is certainly no harm in trying. I admit I am curious to see what items the dungeon will be willing to make and what it will leave to us. Did you get any information on that?"

"I was merely ensuring the interests of my own guild be met. I would suggest, Howard, that if the crafters of Northridge wish to be represented, you may wish to send someone of your own out to the dungeon." Christine was glad to see her opposite number smiling and giving her a small nod.

Available at: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/220350/fictions

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.