The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 10/10

Heart 160000/160000

Experience 40000/40000

Workers 9/43

Monsters 1/45

Traps 62/109

Rooms 111

Food 7445

Timber 6780

Iron 124

Steel 420

Charcoal 458

Mana 53

Rock 3450

Gold 15255

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

"So they have more than fifteen thousand in each one," Katelyn said as she stepped back from the gold vein. "Do you have an upper limit for what they hold?"

Travis wished he could record things. He spent a moment lamenting that before he remembered what Penelope had done in the heart room. "Can you write down fifteen thousand here on the wall? Just use a claw on the stone."

"That—Hey, that's actually a great idea. That way we can figure this out and more easily deal with these things." Using her claws, Katelyn drew neatly on a stone by the entrance, adding the date and the amount removed. "So, you're full now?"

"Yup. That little melted blob on the ground? Uh, can you give that to Felna as an apology from me?" He still felt bad about her reaction to the mana boosting effect.

"What'd you do?" Signing her name beside the wall note, Katelyn crouched down to pick up the cooling lump of gold.

"She used her spell on my heart. It's not exactly the same, but it feels similar to the bond I have with Pen. I can see and hear through her, and she can hear me, but I can't give her orders. To test if she was truly considered part of the dungeon, I used Focus Mana on her."

Katelyn opened her mouth to say something, but her laughter beat any words out. "That's why you need to apologize! Remember how it hit me when you did that? She's going to have a headache for a week as her brain deals with the bloat of her mana!"

"I forgot! I figured, since Brayden didn't have a problem with it, that she'd be fine too."

"I'll tell you a secret about Brayden—his god is doing a lot of work to buff and strengthen him. I'm not saying that Felna's isn't, just that Brayden has a lot of Brogdar's attention. Religious casters don't go from being average warrior priests to powerful clerics overnight." Turning the lump of gold over in her hands, Katelyn used a little of her mana to heat her fingers so she could reshape it. "On the plus side, she's going to like having her spells be much more potent."

"Can you ask her how easy it would be for the spell to be shared with others?" Travis asked.

"Why don't you ask her? You said she can hear you."

"When you had a headache, did you want to hear me asking you how bad it was?"

Walking from the tunnel, Katelyn let out a laugh. "Good point. So, you have enough resources to upgrade now, right?"

"Yeah, I just want to make sure everyone is on the same page and I want to make sure you're all going to be prepared for anything. There will be plenty of food and everything, even if I'm out for a long time."

"Trav?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how I've been reading your books, and how I keep everything I read private?" Katelyn rounded the corner leading to the apartments where the adventurers were living.

Travis did know, and he was relieved she kept such things to herself. "Yeah."

"There's a saying I read in one that I like, so I'm going to give it to you right now. No time like the present. Just tell everyone what you're doing—and do it."

"I have the resources. If anyone needs me, I'll be unconscious until the upgrade is complete. If the undead come again—when they come again—wipe them out as quickly and safely as possible. Pen, keep everyone safe for me."

Laying down in the dark room, Felna let out a soft groan at the voice in her head. Her displeasure wasn't so much because of the headache she had, but because now she had to get up and tell her group what was going on.

Swinging her legs off the bed, she groaned as the movement of her head made the world seem a little less stable. "Wait—"

It wasn't in her head, Felna could feel the ground under her feet rumble as if it were shifting. Now moving with haste, she rushed to the door and flung it open to their common room. "The dungeon—"

"Is rearranging." Standing in the doorway, and having seen the panic on Felna's face, Brayden held up one mailed hand to pacify her. "This is normal, don't worry. We have everything under control. There will be a guard posted at the main tunnel, and we are not going to take chances with any attackers."

"Is Felna awake?" Katelyn asked as she approached the apartment. "Trav wanted me to give her a gift as an apology for her headache."

Nodding and making way, Brayden could feel the weird intensity Katelyn gave off as she passed him. She, Ludmiller, and Wild all had it, he'd noticed, but only on the first floor. He pulled himself up short and had to remember it was now the second floor. "Yeah, though she looks a little pale. You okay?"

"I'll be fine when the dungeon stops moving and when my magic is back to normal." Sitting at the table in the common room, Felna felt grateful they'd paid to have furniture hauled out to the dungeon with the latest shipment. She lifted her eyes when she spotted something from her peripheral vision set on the table. "What—?"

It was a cat. A very beautiful cat. Holding up one paw, it was cleaning the pads underneath it while one eye seemed locked on Felna. What was most startling was that it looked like it was made from pure gold.

"If you'd like, I could melt it down to coins, but Trav sounded really sorry for what he did to you, and I thought you'd like something special." Shrugging her shoulders, Katelyn had estimated it was probably around thirty coins worth of gold, but it wasn't like she hadn't just stuffed the storage of the dungeon literally to overflowing with the stuff. "As for what he did, I don't think your magic will go back to how it was. Once I was affected by it, I had the same problem. It's not a quantity issue, just density. Every time you use some of your magic, you will get about six times more.

"The good news is, it won't change how you work your magic or how fast you regenerate—you will just have far denser magic and hence more potent spells. If you'd like a full explanation, I'm working on a book about magic."

"A book?" It took all of Felna's effort to pull her eyes away from the gold statue and look at Katelyn. "You're the wizard that Stratus and Tom are always talking to?" Being wizards too, it seemed sometimes like they wouldn't shut up about the 'brilliant kobold fire mage'.

Being unremarkable was new to Katelyn, but being admired purely for her theories and hypotheses was now right up there with the best things Travis had done for her. "Yes. I've been helping both of them refine their mana usage to make better use of their energy. Now, one thing Trav asked was if you could teach that spell you used to others?"

What surprised Felna, when she touched the statue, was that it was still warm. Not just held in a hand warm, but there was a persistent heat inside it. "I wish I could, but it's a secret of my order." She looked from the golden statue in her hand to Katelyn, expecting to see her at least somewhat upset. The kobold was smiling, though.

"Well, that's all he asked me before he hit the switch to upgrade. He's in torpor or something now. What I'd like to know, though, is if you can cast the spell with a different person as the target?" Katelyn sat down at the table, turning the chair sideways so her tail didn't get kinked awkwardly against the chair's back. "I know at least three magic users who would like to have that mana spell used on themselves."

"Let me guess, Stratus, Tom, and that sorcerer from the other group?" Felna asked.

"More than that. I bet both Ogmera and Nathaniel would both jump at the chance of having their spells made more potent."

"We're a party of magic casters built around exacting calculations for mana use and regeneration—of course they'd want it. How long does the headache last, though?"

"A few days at least. Try casting simple spells to reduce your mana; that seemed to help with me." Katelyn looked at the statue that Felna hadn't put down yet. "Do you want a matching one that looks the other way?"

Closing her eyes and putting the statue down, Felna glared at Katelyn. "What? But this is already too—It's hard to accept your value on gold, you know. I guess it's your lack of avarice. What's your story? How did the dungeon get its hooks into a wizard prodigy?"

"That's not a long story, so sure. Robert, my brother, had come up with a potion he swore would let us drug a dungeon heart and make it addicted to it. We had it all figured out. We'd slip into a new dungeon, I'd keep everything back with my magic, and he'd drug the heart. We'd have ourselves the best source of resources and—It didn't go like that. Pen was smart. She waited until we were working through the sludge traps and then it all went south. They offered us our lives if we stayed in here."

"You aren't angry about that?" It appeared a little too convenient that everyone was so easily okay with becoming kobolds. "Seems like a bad deal for your freedom."

"He built me my own library. He gave me a budget for books that just has yes written on it. But you know what he gave me that makes everything worthwhile? He gave me something new to research. The magics of dungeons and monsters are rarely explored. The overlap between it and what regular magic users have is startlingly wide sometimes.

"Take for example that spell you used on Trav. He thinks, and I'm inclined to believe him, that it's actually a very similar bond to that of a dungeon boss. If that's the case, it implies that one of your holy order, at some point, managed to examine a dungeon boss in detail within its dungeon." Katelyn noticed Brayden had left, though she couldn't really figure out when he'd slipped away.

"Interesting. If that is its source, I'd be curious to find out how it came about too." That's when it finally clicked for Felna. She reached one paw up and pressed her forehead to it. "You wanted to know more about the spell so you could duplicate other dungeon effects."

"That was an additional goal. I have managed to adapt at least one spell for Trav to use, so civilized magic can become dungeon magic. There hasn't been as much luck with adapting civilized magic to kobold magic, however. Everything I try to cast now just turns into an appropriately powered fire spell. But, I understand that you don't want to share it. At the very least it proves my theory correct."

Felna still didn't trust that Katelyn wouldn't try to wring the spell out of her. Every clerical order had its secrets. Some held knowledge of machines or medicine, but hers held their magic close. "So what do you plan to do with that now?"

"Now? Now I will try to examine more effects around the dungeon and see if I can emulate them." Katelyn stood up with the help of her staff, turned, and walked to the door. "How's your head?" she asked before making it through the doorway.

"It's feeling better, but I think I'll go back to bed."

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.