The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 11/100

Heart 435600/435600

Experience 71925/108900

Workers 11/73

Monsters 1/75

Traps 63/174

Food 2463

Timber 8123

Iron 2292

Steel 910

Charcoal 5058

Mana 350

Rock 2850

Gold 1057

Leather 197

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 0

Glass 635

Explosive Runes 5

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 15

Long Guns 16

Bullets 400

Black Powder 400

Quest: Destroy another dungeon.

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

Quest: Mine some mithril.

Trickles of experience came in, which Travis definitely approved of, and then one of his quests completed for no apparent reason. But, seeing as it was the Defeat another dungeon's boss one, he wasn't surprised.

When a new resource was revealed—some kind of blackish rock that wasn't coal—he was.

He'd gotten one tick of mana with the two new shrines before another in his dungeon despawned. Robert had slipped out to dig a little more (cleaning up the edge of the proposed lizard village where it butted the new mana shrine), and then had gone to sleep.

From there his mana was almost full again, so he waited until the last few minutes before his next tick to buy another mana shrine on the third floor.

Now, two whole days since Penelope and co had set out to besiege the undead dungeon, he was starting to get a little more antsy. "I'm worried. There hasn't been any XP for over eight hours."

Lifting her head from the bowl of stew she was devouring, Tannyr sighed. "Have any counters appeared?" The silence that was her only answer gave her time to attack her food again.

Travis felt a little stupid for not realizing that. If they'd died, Penelope, Katelyn, Wild, Ludmiller, and Fife would all appear with timers. He waited for Tannyr to finish before apologizing. "Sorry, and thanks."

"It's natural to worry. Reassuring for me, too. When you need almost a quarter of a day of arguing to let me do something slightly dangerous, that's how I know out of all the dungeons I could have landed in, this is a good one. So! Do you have the last bit of that room marked out?" Busing her bowl to the kitchen, Tannyr took the time to wash up as she spoke.

"Yup. There are nine squares of depth lost to that mana shrine." Travis had to figuratively bite his non-existent lip against warning her again. "I think Robert is working on a new liquid for a trap today, but I don't think we'll need his help upstairs."

"Getting more confident, are we?" Tannyr rinsed her hands off and walked out of the kitchen.

"If you mean, am I confident that monsters will come after me instead of going to the surface? Yeah. Also, if they do try to run the tunnels to the town, I have plenty of chances to make them regret their life choices." Travis talked while Tannyr took the stairs up to the first floor and then the quick one down to the third. He was about to reply when he saw her start stepping through the walls, taking a shortcut to the new area without having to go through the arena or the delaying tunnels.

"Ah, there it is. I can feel the pull of the marked places. Thank you, Travis." Walking across the room that was lit only by the soft blue glow of the mana shrine, Tannyr drew her tools out from behind her back and got to work.

Bigger rooms, or so Travis had noticed, tend to be dug out faster than long tunnels. Tunnels needed repeated shoring up but open areas needed far less work—and even less still with Tannyr.

"Trav?" Blake had been looking over the new area and planning out the area for the garrison some more when he'd heard voices. Finding the source to be a group of people milling around at the bottom of the stairs with an escort from the town. "A little help?"

For Travis, having a blind spot was odd, but when there weren't a lot of lizards on the first floor already, and they all spent their time hanging around the other entrance, he was kinda stuck with one kobold's eyes. "Okay, so you have Brolly Windchime there, he's the guardsman, ask him what's up and we can sort things out."

Blake, on the whole, was happy drawing maps of dungeons. He loved doing it so much that when a dungeon had directly offered him a job designing a dungeon, he'd jumped at it and even given up his humanity for the chance. He was a map person. A dungeon person. He was not a people person. "Uh, excuse me? Brolly?"

Hearing his name, Brolly turned and looked down at the kobold. "Ah! You're—" He stopped himself from taking a likely bad guess at the name of the kobold.

"Blake, sir. What's going on?"

"Blake!" Brolly couldn't remember who Blake was, but that didn't stop him from pushing on. "More new residents, or potential residents. I don't think I asked how many workers you can support, but at some point food would become a problem, right?"

"The problem is, Blake," Travis said, "without Pen, we can't make anyone into a kobold."

"We actually have food under control. We could even expand further, from what I understand. Now, about more applicants—there's a problem. You know that Penelope and the others are out right now?" Looking around, Blake was surprised to see—among the mostly elderly and obviously infirm—a family. "Are there any emergency cases? You'd have to pull Penelope back from the other dungeon…"

"No, no emergencies, but a few of these older folk aren't in the best shape. So Penelope is the only one that can do the, uh, thing?" Groping for a term to describe turning people into kobolds, Brolly just didn't bother trying in the end. "That will be inconvenient. We're still waiting for word about destroying that damn undead monstrosity."

Travis groaned and wished he could throw his head back in annoyance. He also wished he had a head. "Damn, I'd hoped that would have been done by now. Tell him we are going to need to have them put up in to—"

"Most of them are fine with places in the city, but the family over there won't be. It's complicated, but their little one—they look a bit like a goblin. It's uncanny." It still seemed weird for Brolly, but weird was sending out two squads of riflemen to back up a dungeon as it rips apart another dungeon, and he'd only given that order two days ago. "They need somewhere that isn't a town that gets regularly raided by goblins."

"Tell them we have room for the family. I'll figure something out and we can build them a room on the second floor where it's safer." In a way Travis could understand the sentiment, but he also hated the idea of that kind of racial blame being leveled at a child.

Travis turned his attention to Robert and where he was working on some alchemy. "Robert, can you come up here? I need some help digging a new kind of room."

"Yeah, Trav. Mark it out and I'll get on it. This can wait a bit." Even if it couldn't, Robert was happy to put something aside to turn into tar rather than let Travis down.

Dragging his focus back to Blake, Travis said, "I have Robert coming up to help dig a residence on the second floor. Being near adventurers and, particularly, having the tavern there means they can get food easily enough until I can work out what to do with them."

"I know dungeon delving is ninety percent planning, but I think we are going too far. Come on, we can roll this place!" Penelope felt cooped up and she hated it. But at the same time she respected what Kelvin and Ogmera were saying. "I just want to make this damn dungeon realize it can't go out and—and… Ugh."

"Something wrong, boss?" Fife asked.

Penelope glared at Fife for the new moniker, mostly because it fit. "I'm feeling too much like a dungeon boss and not enough like an adventurer. Sorry, everyone, I'll try to keep this urge under control."

"Big, nasty, dragon wants to kick some ass. I totally get that, though. I want to go in there and beat down every door looking for the bony bastard too." Fife crossed her arms, but the grin that settled on her face probably spoke volumes for it not being simply all bluster.

"We have our talismans, most of you have your ability to resurrect back at your dungeon, but Brayden and Kelvin don't. We need to work out a way to know when we're in over our heads and need to pull out—and how to do that sanely without risking their lives beyond what they already are." Ogmera nodded toward the two kobolds in question. "This is compounded by one of those being your primary healing."

Looking at Brayden, Fife shrugged her shoulders. "It's simple, really. We go in with Felna and Nathaniel to cover healing. Brayden and Kelvin stay out here." When everyone looked at her like she was crazy, Fife asked, "What?!"

"That's actually a good idea. They can remain out here and help take down anything that slips past us." Jack looked from Fife to Brayden. "Sorry, but it is the sensible path."

Sighing, Brayden nodded. "I get it. I do. Pen, when we get back, we'll get your arena done if I have to dig it myself—with a spoon. Take care in there."

"I'll help, don't worry." Penelope shot Kelvin a look too. "Both of you'll be in my cohort."

"So we're good?" Standing up from her crouch, Fife reached to her back and grabbed her shield. When there was nothing but grunts of assent, she drew her sword and was first over the palisade. "Come on! I want to go and chew on their heart!"

Her blood pumping, Penelope was set to jump over the wall too when Brayden grabbed her by the arm. "Huh?"

"Don't let hunger guide you. Listen to Ogmera and the others," Brayden said, looking up into Penelope's eyes.

Nodding, Penelope continued her intent and jumped over the wall. By the time the rest of the kobolds and the humans formed up before the dungeon, Fife was already peeking inside. "Okay, order of march. Fife is up front, no question about it. I'll take second, then Ogmera's group, with Katelyn, Wild, and Ludmiller bringing up the rear. They may have loops and blind tunnels where we can't easily rearrange our order."

Wild grumbled a little, but saw the sanity of the plan. That it meant he got to work with his cohort specifically did please him, though. "With us three, I'll try to parry anything that comes at us from behind. Luddy, Kate, please kill anything fast."

This was new to Katelyn. She nodded to Wild and bumped her shoulder against Ludmiller's, but she still felt a thrill of excitement when they all stepped into a hostile dungeon. Travis, when she'd first tried her ill-fated attempt at taking control of him, had seemed almost inoffensive. The undead dungeon had a weight to it. The air itself felt intimidating and unfriendly. "No complaints from me. If I see something that isn't this group—it's cooked."

"She sounds worse than you two," Ogmera said, glaring at Stratus and Tom. When she noticed their attempts at innocent expressions, she groaned. "Just make sure you don't burn any kobolds."

"I have it on good authority," Tom said, "that Miss Kate likes being set on fire."

At the front of the party, Fife was excited to find her first encounter. She wanted to do her thing and be the big bad shield at the front. She was surprised when Penelope's big hand grabbed her shoulder and held her still. "What?"

"Trap ahead. I'll tell you when to stop." Even in the dark Penelope could sense the difference in air of a trap, and when Fife was about five steps from it, she spotted the pressure plate. "Okay, stop here."

"What kind of trap is it?" Fife asked.

"Spikes. There's a steel arm camouflaged on the wall there. It will swing out and impale you."

When she followed Penelope's gesture, Fife saw the outlines of the bar and judged her height. "Got it. Here goes."

Penelope froze in shock as Fife walked forward and triggered the trap. The big arm swung off the wall with incredible speed and hit a raised shield.

"Our group never had a rogue, Pen. It's nice knowing when the traps are about to spring, though, but it does take some of the excitement out of dungeon-delving." Using her sword, Fife smashed all the spikes off the arm and then used her shield to bash the whole thing down. Broken, she ignored whatever Penelope might want to do with it.

At the back of the party, Katelyn was feeling more and more oppressed by the dungeon. The weight of it around her and the difference from Travis' dungeon made it all feel so wrong. "I hate this place," she muttered.

"Right there with you," Ludmiller said.

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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.