The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 10/100

Heart 160000/160000

Experience 32800/90000

Workers 11/67

Monsters 1/69

Traps 63/159

Food 2463

Timber 385

Iron 5292

Steel 1320

Charcoal 358

Mana 279

Rock 4134

Gold 4028

Leather 377

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 300

Glass 635

Explosive Runes 20

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 9

Long Guns 9

Bullets 500

Black Powder 500

Quest: Destroy another dungeon.

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

Quest: Have your full contingent of bosses.

With Fife asleep and unable to be roused, Travis decided digging anything on the bottom floor would be a very bad idea—what with the chance of digging out tougher monsters than even the cave dragons. With that in mind, he asked Tannyr to take a break from digging and work on making some guns.

Katelyn was working on something new that involved a lot of gold and wouldn't tell him what it was, not that he minded. The patterns she was working the gold into, though, looked similar to the mana manipulators that sat around his heart, which gave him an idea what it might be.

And, in looking at them, he noticed they had an upgrade.

Advanced Mana Manipulation:

+9 Mana gathered

15000 Gold

500 Rock

50 Steel

Each one had that. It wasn't a hard decision, though he'd need yet more gold. The rock he already had plenty of, the steel too, plus he could swing the cost his way even better by just spending more gold.

"Kate, I know you're working on—"

"Hold on, Trav, I'm focusing here." Katelyn's voice was a little strained. Travis waited, and waited, and when she finally finished some intense magic design with the gold, she said, "Okay, what's up?"

"Kate, I know you're working on some kind of mana manipulation thing, but I have an upgrade for the ones in my heart room that give me nine more mana regeneration per each one. It uses gold, rock, and a little steel."

"So you need me to get more gold?" Already standing, Katelyn ran her claw tips over the work she'd just completed. "This is almost done, mind if I complete it first?"

"Go ahead. I'm curious what you're spending your day off doing, actually."

"This is a mana foci—Well, it will be a mana foci when I'm done with it. See, they let you refine your mana at the cost of, well, the foci." Her claws, nimble and far more capable of being used for delicate work than the heated irons wizards normally used, pinched sections together as she assembled the device. "You see, I was hoping that it might trigger—"

Something in Travis' system seemed to click and he got a message.

New building unlocked due to mana foci-equipped minion.

"Kate, I got something unlocked. Gimme a second." Travis went looking through his list of buildings and found it. "Magitech Workshop. Says it allows for the simple manufacture of magitech." At her confused look he clarified. "Magitech is a term from my world. It usually means something like a mix of magic and technology, or at least equipment for automating magic."

Tapping a claw on the foci she'd made, Katelyn looked thoughtful. "Yes, but why is it the word used in the dungeon?"

"I—" Travis stopped. "It used the word tank too. Hold on, am I even speaking English right now, or is it something else? What language am I speaking right now?"

"Trade-common. It's a mish-mash of languages. It's used in the kingdom because everyone is taught it." Katelyn rolled her eyes. "But the odds of it being the same as a language from another world are so minuscule as to be non-existent. So, something weird is going on and when you talk, we hear trade-common. When we talk, you hear—did you call it English?"

"Now you see the kind of weirdness this is for me?" Travis asked.

Katelyn laughed and rolled her shoulders. "Trav, I'm a kobold. You think this wasn't weird for me either? Anyway, what do you need—gold, right?"

"Right. If you keep melting it down, I can spend it to increase the manipulators." Travis considered his options. "It will be eighteen thousand gold per, but that will mean there's a ten percent discount on the rock and steel."

"You like having stores of rock now?" Katelyn asked, grasping her staff and leaving the library.

"Rock is a reminder that I am growing. Rock is—Well, long-term it's needed for the boulder traps, but for now it's nice to have a few thousand of it just in case I need it for something big." Watching along as Katelyn navigated her way to the second floor, he remembered something he'd wanted to bring up. "I think it's time I experimented with some monsters. Squishy has been so awesome and I think I was being silly—somewhat. I still don't want to create sentient monsters."

"So…?"

"So wyverns and burrowing wyrms are creatures in Tier 1 that we could get. I don't know what comes in Tier 2, since those are probably hidden behind metal requirements or something. Or maybe even require the Tier 1 buildings or upgrades." Catching glimpses of Katelyn by wandering lizards, Travis was aware of how much more aggressive she looked on the second floor.

Katelyn barked a laugh. "You know, Trav, if you get wyverns, the odds of Fife being the first to ride one is practically one hundred percent."

"She's tough enough now that she'd survive falling off, so I don't care."

Laughing more, Katelyn made her way to the same gold vein she'd been working on previously. "Even if she died from it, she'll be back in a day anyway."

"Yeah. I like that about this place. It's more dangerous than back where I'm from, but at the same time I can make sure no one dies." Even to Travis that sounded a little weird, but he didn't overly care about it. Protecting his friends was important to him. "Okay, I'll tell you when, but you'll probably run out of vein before we're done."

"This is the second-last gold one on this floor, I think. I don't begrudge Fife wanting one to herself, but we might want to create a few more on this floor, now it's the second, and exploit them." That said, Katelyn started unloading her fire onto the pillar of gold and rock.

His gold count jumped quickly, reaching eighteen thousand after a little time. The vein was much reduced, but not gone as he paid for the first upgrade. In his heart room, a big pile of twisted gold patterns appeared in stacks on the floor around one of the manipulators.

Katelyn kept going, not noticing any overflow at all. When the vein disappeared, she finally stopped her spell. "Well, that's it for this floor. I'll head down and use that bigger vein up in among the storage warehouses."

"That paid for one of the upgrades, and I have a little over five thousand again."

The second gold vein took a little longer to use up, and so Katelyn moved to the third floor. The gold vein there, she had to admit, was reassuringly bigger and thicker. She burned away at it until Travis told her to stop, at which point she stepped back from it and asked, "How much was that?"

"I got the other three paid for, so that's fifty-four thousand, and we're back to five thousand again. That means you just got thirty thousand directly out of that one." Travis was impressed with the haul. The gold node had been created when the floor was still the second, so he figured it was still a second-level gold mine. "I wonder if they go up by the same factor of ten?"

"That would mean this one's a bit over one tenth done. Wait, almost a fifth?" Katelyn was feeling a little drained as she scratched the gold count into the wall. Not being on the second floor left her weaker, and she'd been so intent on her new focused heat melting method that she hadn't realized what it was taking out of her. "Guess I come up and build your new manipulators?"

"Stephan already started on one, but I think there's another room you're more curious about." Travis didn't have to take a huge mental leap to know Katelyn would want to get a Magitech Workshop up and working as quickly as they could. "First thing's first, cost. It's a higher cost than we have room for gold, and that's not even trying to use Flush to make everything else cheaper."

"Ugh. Don't tell me that. How many more warehouses do I need to convince Pen to build for you?" It was a classic joke around the dungeon now that Penelope would be forced to spend the remainder of her life building warehouses.

"I have Storage Management, which boosts each warehouse two and a half times. We just need to get mithril for it. The reason I can see it, I think, is because I got the upgrade for free with a quest. Not that I can upgrade more until we can mine mithril."

"Okay, but automated magic stuff, Trav! What does it say about the building?" Katelyn was practically dancing along as she giddily imagined what she would be able to do.

"Starts off, minus ten mana regen. Well, that just means these new manipulators will be put to work. It allows us to make mana foci, wands, and staves, and it says it unlocks an upgrade for mana shrines." The idea of losing ten mana regen stung, but it was only a minor cost when compared to what he would be getting soon enough. In the world of dungeons, mana and gold were the two most valuable things. "It requires thirty thousand gold, five hundred glass, five hundred mana, and two hundred rock to build."

"Those extra resources aren't surprising. Glass is a good magical insulator, it's why alchemists prefer the purest glass for their work. The gold is likely to build contraptions to work with all that mana you'll be constantly pouring into it. And mana, well, that's unsurprising. I expect a lot more things are going to need that." Reaching the heart room, Katelyn saw Stephan assembling one of the manipulators quite competently. "Hello, Steph." She walked over to him, and before he could do more than stand up and look at her, kissed him on the cheek.

Even Travis had to admit that it was good to see Stephan smile so much. He'd always been a bit of a loner in the dungeon, something Travis could relate to from his time before coming here, and it was nice to see the pair doing so well.

"Hello, Ms. Arskith. Any new magical breakthroughs today?" Stephan asked. The kiss had surprised him, but not in a bad way. They'd been keeping mostly to themselves of late, but now that there were some other couples in the dungeon pairing off, he felt more reassured about their relationship being more public.

"Mmm, yes. A new building I get to play with, when we have enough storage. Also, these wonderful things. More mana regeneration for Trav means I get to work with more things too." Hugging Stephan tight, Katelyn kissed his cheek again. "And we also need to look at building some rooms for us."

"I'll be putting more resource nodes on the second floor," Travis said, trying not to interrupt their moment. "So if you're okay with making a suite there, it would be easier since we'll be digging a lot there anyway."

"That floor is fine by me." Any floor, really, agreed with Stephan. Though, with how hard some of the monsters were to deal with on a second floor, he didn't like the idea of digging an extensive new area on the third. "Didn't you say there was an upgrade for the lizards that lets them find resources for you?"

It clicked. Travis realized what he'd been missing and why the second floor was his first key to streamlining resource farming—there was already a lizard village there. "Steph, you're the best. Thanks for reminding me of that. I'll be upgrading those lizards as soon as we get that timber delivery from Northridge."

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.