The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 10/100

Heart 160000/160000

Experience 24150/90000

Workers 9/67

Monsters 1/69

Traps 62/159

Food 2470

Timber 1780

Iron 124

Steel 420

Charcoal 458

Mana 720

Rock 3450

Gold 255

Leather 377

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 90

Glass 744

Explosive Runes 20

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 0

Quest: Destroy another dungeon.

Quest: Capture an adventurer and put them in your jail.

Quest: Lay siege to the nearby town.

You have reached Tier 2!

New Quest: Capture an adventurer and put them in your jail.

Quest Complete: Reach Tier 2.

New Quest: Lay siege to the nearby town.

Along with the swelling of his consciousness, the flood of messages about quests threatened to give Travis a headache in his first minute of being Tier 2. Opening his awareness first to his heart room, Travis felt Penelope leaning against him, one wing curled halfway around his heart—and she was snoring.

Opening up his "eyes", Travis started looking around the dungeon. Every stretch of tunnel, every corner, and indeed every room had multiple eyes in it—except for Wild and Ludmiller's private room. Not that Travis minded not seeing in there.

The tavern was his best target. Katelyn, Jack, Brayden, and everyone of the other adventurer group were in there talking, only it seemed more like Katelyn was giving a lecture on magic. All the magic users were paying close attention, so Travis figured he'd talk to one of the others present first. "Uh, hey, Stephan. Miss me?"

Jerking his head up, Stephan looked around the barroom. "Trav just woke up."

"Uh, give me a few moments," Travis said to them. "I'm trying to figure everything out. Also, how long was I out?" Travis had tried to keep the last sentence to the two in the bar, but anyone else with their eyes open got the rest.

"Got it, Trav," Ludmiller (who was on watch in the first floor) said.

"Exactly seven days." Katelyn slipped a piece of cloth into her notebook and closed it. "Quick rundown—there have been no undead incursions in that time, we've put down a lot more explosives in the maze and the windy tunnels downstairs, and we've been buttoned up like you asked. Also, we need to start another research."

"Right. I'll do that—Huh, I guess I found out what the reward was for reaching Tier 2. All the research options I had from Tier 1 are now free." Travis looked through his options and spotted Persuasion: Can bind one non-dungeon creature (including adventurers) per tier as a dungeon monster. "I don't know if they're all free. There are some new ones that aren't, and they have hundreds and hundreds of days of research needed."

"Anything that stands out?" Katelyn asked, holding a hand up to placate her students.

"Persuasion. It lets me claim monsters or people as being dungeon monsters. Is that meant to make them into dungeon monsters, or is it like that spell that Felna cast? I do remember it was one of the most expensive of Tier 1, so I'll get it."

Purchasing the option made all the prices come back for the rest. It wasn't completely unexpected, given a similar thing had happened with Penelope's boss upgrade cost. "Okay, got it. The quest reward was only for one upgrade, though."

"That's fine. Now, set another one ready to go please?"

"I'll start out Questing, that gives bonus experience whenever I finish a quest." Travis duly selected that research for training. "I'll leave you to your, err, class?"

"Just helping our allies gain a stronger understanding of their magic and ways to use it." Sitting back down, Katelyn opened her notebook and continued her lesson.

Travis investigated what spells he had to work with. He'd gained a few, several that he couldn't afford to cast, even with over seven hundred mana. Create Mana Shrine and Create Lode's costs had jumped to 500 mana each, which he figured meant that was how much they would cost on the bottom floor.

With a mental sigh, he cast Create Mana Shrine and produced a huge shrine somewhere on the bottom floor—among all the smaller shrines. With his mana sorted, Travis turned back to the research. There were several big ones that led from things in Tier 1, including two that chained off Persuasion.

Helping Hands (requires Persuasion): Friendly, non-dungeon creatures can gain bonuses as if they were dungeon creatures.

That had Travis drooling. Being able to mana boost his adventurers would be amazing, but…

Allies (requires Helping Hands): Friendly, non-dungeon creatures can commune with the dungeon heart.

"Uh, Katelyn? I hate to interrupt you again, but I think I found something very similar to that spell Felna cast." Travis repeated the descriptions for the two upgrades and was surprised to hear her start cursing. The cursing continued, so Travis turned his attention back to new things.

There were piles and piles of research options that required one of four rooms, or required the research from those buildings. Almost all of them seemed to be adding classes to creatures of the dungeon. Priests: Paladins, Clerics, Inquisitors—Mages: Wizards, Sorcerers, Arch-Mages—Soldiers: Barbarians, Tanks, Rangers—the last set of four were slightly different, with the base one being a buff to kobolds, followed by: Trappers, Crafters, Diggers.

It seemed to be an entirely new mechanic that let dungeon creatures get the same archetypes that adventurers had. Travis liked this, particularly if he could get another cleric capable of resurrection. He moved on, though, because he had a pile of menus to explore.

Floor Upgrades were next, and there was only one there so far—he knew more would show up as he got the prerequisites for them.

Floor Boss (2) (requires Floor Boss). Cost: five thousand gold, a thousand steel, five hundred food, and two hundred leather.

That was a hefty amount of steel, but Travis could see getting that for Wild shortly. Fife too, when she was brought in. The odd thing was there was a second set of costs for it: six thousand gold, nine hundred steel, four hundred and fifty food, and one hundred and eighty leather.

It took him a moment to rack his brain and remember the odd pricing research he'd done. More gold, less of everything else.

He liked this a lot.

Dungeon Upgrades had nothing new. Not a single thing he could get beyond Tier 1. That meant everything there had prerequisites he didn't have.

Room Upgrades had a lot of exciting stuff. An upgrade for a Smelter to let it work with mithril and adamantine. He recognized that meant he needed to start harvesting those. Also, like with Floor Upgrades, there were alternate costs on everything.

Even better timber processing, a boost to researching speed, and a weird boost to the mushroom farm called Necromantic Fertilizer that needed XP gained from undead kills to purchase rounded out the other mundane things for Tier 2 Room Upgrades that he could see. The last was even more weird—three upgrades for the Lizard Village.

Exploration Focus: Lizards focus on exploration outside the dungeon area. Will venture outside and provide dungeon with sight beyond its borders.

Combat Focus: Lizards take up arms (and armor) to defend the dungeon against invaders. Using ambush tactics, they will slowly eat away at invader health and resources.

Resource Focus: Lizards will locate resource nodes and harvest from them. They will also locate undiscovered nodes and burrow through rock to show them to the dungeon.

Travis liked all of those a lot. He liked them so much that he wanted to build a dozen lizard villages. A hundred! He imagined putting four big villages by the entrance and giving them all Exploration Focus—sending hundreds of lizards out to explore the world.

And also finding all those resource nodes on the bottom floor.

"Trav?"

Penelope's voice, from right beside his heart, called all of Travis' focus away from his menus. "Good morning, Pen. Sleep well?" he asked.

As she ran her claws lightly over him, she yawned. "I feel like I should be asking you that too. I did sleep well, but waking up was so much better. You were down for a week this time."

"Kate told me. A whole week without any attacks from the undead? That's really weird. Unless it was upgrading things too. I can't really blame it given the way you ripped apart its boss last time. Hey, I was going through new things. There's some amazing stuff here."

"Slow down, Trav. There's something important I need to tell you." Standing up as tall as she could, and now once again dwarfed by Travis' heart, Penelope kissed the stone. "I love you."

It was three words that could drag him back to reality so fast it made his non-existent head spin. "Thanks for keeping everyone safe and for being—for being amazing, Pen. I love you too." The tightness of her reply—an enormous hug—was almost overwhelming. Travis had a momentary flashback to his dream, then threw the nightmare away—this was the real world and not being able to hug back was his curse. He didn't need to hear Penelope's cries when she lived through the same horror.

The dungeon heart is under attack!

"What's going on?"

"We're under attack?"

"Trav?!"

The shouts, the panic, and the rush of everyone trying desperately to reach the bottom floor and Travis' heart was touching, but Travis realized what'd happened and needed to put a stop to it. "I'm okay! I'm not hurt!"

And then Travis looked at his stats and, sure enough, he'd lost 4 points of health—to a hug.

"I was getting Pen to test something. This was my fault, sorry!" Travis wished Penelope didn't look so shocked and embarrassed. "Really. Please. Just go back to what you were doing. I am at one hundred and fifty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six still. Pen's right here beside me. I'm safe!"

Everyone slowed down and even Squishy stopped trying to squeeze into smaller tunnels to reach him. "I wanted to see if my hunch was correct."

Opening the hidden door and approaching his heart, Katelyn narrowed her eyes at Travis. "What exactly was your hunch?"

Travis didn't want to lie, but he also wanted to spare Penelope the embarrassment that was evident on her face. "That I—uh—"

"It was my fault." Penelope said. "I woke up and found him awake too, and then—and then I got overwhelmed and hugged him."

Ludmiller, arriving with her hands on her daggers, heard the last bit as she walked in. "You hugged him hard enough to damage his heart?"

"I didn't mean to! I was—"

"Hey, everyone, can we calm down and go back to dungeon stuff?" Travis asked, though neither Katelyn nor Ludmiller seemed inclined to listen to him. "It was an innocent mistake."

Walking over, Katelyn elbowed Penelope. "It's the most adorably terrifying thing I've ever heard. And it's also amazing."

"Just about the most romantic thing I've seen all day." Ludmiller turned and smirked as Wild walked in. Walking over to him, she put her arms around him and hugged him tight against her. "It was Pen. She hugged Travis' heart so hard it did damage."

Looking a little alarmed, Wild hugged Ludmiller in return. "Travis is watching the entrance now? No more watches?"

Thankful to find a topic to change to, Travis said, "Yes. I've got lizards up on the first floor looking around now. They'll let me keep watch. We have a whole new floor to build, and I've got plans for it!"

"So, what cool new stuff do you have?" Penelope was all for distractions.

"Well, so far I've gotten—" Travis started explaining the research, the floor upgrades, the room upgrades, and his favorite, the lizard upgrades.

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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.