The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 11/100

Heart 435600/435600

Experience 71925/108900

Workers 11/73

Monsters 1/75

Traps 64/174

Food 2459

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Charcoal 5058

Mana 476

Rock 2875

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 17

Bullets 400

Black Powder 400

Quest: Destroy another dungeon.

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

Quest: Mine some mithril.

There were enough lizards around on the second floor that Travis could watch the family as they ate a meal in the tavern. Two parents, two children—one of the children had green skin, fangs, and a pair of long ears that stuck out to the side and hung down a little.

"How often does this happen?" Travis asked Robert.

"Going to have to be more specific, Trav." Back in his lab, Robert was working on a new flammable agent for traps.

"The family."

"Oh, the curse thing? Uh, I don't know. People don't usually talk about it much."

After hearing Penelope's story of an ancestor that was a dragon, it wasn't a big leap to make for Travis. "I don't think it's a curse. Pen said her ancestor was a dragon. I assume any dungeon monster could—uh—get free?"

Stopping his work for a moment, Robert leaned back and looked vaguely in Travis' heart's direction. "Even if they could, they still couldn't—Uh, what I mean is, even Pen doesn't have—"

"Someone did. Maybe it's only a thing for fully upgraded bosses?" Travis asked.

"Goblins are only the lowest level, though." Turning his attention back to his work, Robert started writing notes on his tablet.

A thought came to Travis that he liked. He liked it enough that he wanted to voice it. "It doesn't matter, though. I don't care if they're a goblin, kobold, or—or any other race. If the world doesn't want them, they're welcome here."

Robert, who paused writing, said, "That's a big commitment, Trav. Do we have room for all those kobolds?"

"No, probably not, but I don't want to make that a requirement. Look, they have a home. They can go into town if they need to. They're safe. I don't need them to work, not if I expand the mushroom farm. It's probably time we tested out the full extent of the floors, but I think they might not have a limit. That means I can have as many people living comfortably in here as I want."

"You keep doing this." Laughing, Robert leaned back and stretched his back. "Dungeons aren't meant to be altruistic, Trav. You're meant to be greedy and mean and want to destroy everything."

"I want to destroy the undead dungeon."

"Only because it's gotten really annoying and picked a fight with you."

"But it's the—"

Your raiding party reached the second floor of an enemy dungeon!

You gain:

10,000 Food

10,000 Timber

10,000 Iron

10,000 Steel

10,000 Gold

50,000 Experience

You have reached level 12!

"…" Travis stared at the message, even as it faded. Wheels clicked and revelations came. "That's why the damn undead dungeon kept attacking me! Robert! Dungeons get experience and resources when their minions attack another dungeon for each floor they reach!

"They were farming me because I kept letting their groups reach the second floor. Ugh, I hate not knowing the mechanics of this damn thing! I need"—Travis took a slow, deep (and very much entirely mental) breath—"a tutorial."

Robert was quiet for a bit. He made a few more notes on his tablet before saying, "So Pen and the others got to the second floor of the undead dungeon?"

"Yeah. I got a pile of experience and a huge amount of resources. They don't seem to be using any space, though. Let me try to buy something that costs more gold than I have in storage." Even with so many resources in a big bonus like that, instinct made Travis pick the cost that made it use more gold and less of other resources.

With his attention spread out over all his warehouses that he could see, he paid the price to get a lizard village built in the newly cleared out room Tannyr had dug. Sure enough, not a single bit of gold disappeared from his rooms.

"It seems like it's some kind of buffer," Travis said.

"Buffer? Like a neutral chemical?"

Stumped at Robert's question, Travis realized he'd have to explain. "It's more like a storage beyond the normal storage. In this case all the payment appears to come out of it first, so it's not using our actual gold, timber, or food."

Shaking his head, Robert shrugged and got back to his work. "I have never heard it used like that, but I'll take your word for it. So, attacking the other dungeon is good. Maybe we shouldn't kill the undead dungeon but just have it for farming like this?"

"It's tempting, but I still like the idea of doing things without making my friends go and fight."

"Fife, I'll point out, likes to fight. She'll probably get bored if we don't have undead coming in regularly or if she can't go out and beat them up."

"Yeah, but we can deal with that when we get it. If Fife getting bored is the worst thing we have to deal with, I'll count us as being lucky. I'll get someone to bring that family down to my heart so we can have a conversati—"

"I'll get them. Blake's a great guy and all, but he really loves his maps and plans." Turning a little stopcock off on his glassware, Robert stood up and headed for the door.

It wasn't easy. Life had been going well for Jacob and his family until four years ago—though even he had to admit the problem really started in the last season. His wife, Grace, had been swelling with their second child. He'd worked hard to pay for some healing potions in case the birthing went bad, but she'd delivered their little Mixie without any of the trial their son, Axel, had been.

As he walked through the dark tunnels, guided by a kobold that had given them each their own alchemical light, Jacob reflected on how they'd managed to keep Mixie a secret for a little over three years.

"How deep are we?" Axel asked.

"It's impossible to tell." Robert didn't need the light he held to see, but the others would feel more comfortable with more light around. "We're still trying to work out if the floors are unlimited in size. We do know they're in some kind of stable pocket reality."

For a moment Axel had pondered another question, but quickly snapped his mouth closed when the answer he'd gotten had been completely useless. Holding his hand, walking beside him as easily as someone three times her age, his little sister was looking around at everything. His hand drifted to his belt where he had a light forge hammer on a loop. It might not be as good a weapon as swords and axes, but the arm strength he'd built apprenticed to his father made it more than effective.

The guard captain that had promised to take them to the dungeon had told Grace that it would be safe—that this dungeon was fiercely protective of anyone living inside it. She only had to glance at her children to reignite the fear that he'd lied. When the small kobold led them into a pink-lit room, though, her fear dissolved into wonder.

An immense crystal dominated the room. Glowing with pink light, the massive thing could be nothing else but a dungeon heart. Grace stared at it, never having seen one before in her life—but somehow feeling a slight pull from it. "H-Hello?"

"That's Trav, or Travis. This is his dungeon—He's telling me it's our dungeon, but I think you get the idea. He said he wanted to talk to you here so you'd understand that he is being honest. Something about making himself vulnerable." Robert gestured to what even he felt was at least somewhat awe inspiring still—the heart. "So, first, we don't know if you've heard any rumors or stuff about us, but all of us living in here, except for Squishy, weren't dungeon monsters. I came here with my sister, wanting to take control of the dungeon and use it for experiments."

Of the four newcomers, Mixie was the most taken by the heart. She walked over to it and poked it with one clawed finger. "Big!"

"Her claws are sharp they'll—" Grace cut off at the raised palm Robert offered her.

"Travis has a lot of health. He said it's okay." Robert crouched down and ran a claw lazily over the floor. "You want to know what the deal is, right?"

It was exactly what Jacob wanted to know. Nothing in the world was free, and after speaking to some of the others that'd come out to the dungeon, he knew what the price would be. The dungeon wanted workers and had a way to turn people into kobolds. "Yeah, but I bet I can guess."

"Nope, there is no deal." Robert shrugged. "You're allowed to stay here as long as you want, without any requirement that you become kobolds—though it would be helpful if you did. If you want to work, Trav will give you room to work. If you want to have a bigger family, he'll add another sleeping area for you." Robert had to admit, it felt good to be altruistic. "Food, drink, a home, safety, and you're free to leave whenever you want. No strings attached. Huh, what do strings have to—Oh. Another saying I don't get."

"Why?" Grace asked. "Is it because of Mixie?"

Robert had expected that. He listened to what Travis said and nodded. "Yes. This is exactly because of—"

"She isn't cursed," Jacob said. "She never saw a single being outside the three of us until she was almost four."

"Trav says he knows what likely happened. Something about—Huh, that does make sense. So there are patterns in us that our bodies use to make up plans for how we look. Some of the pattern is used, some is ignored, and some goes from used to ignored or the other way around over our life. Sometimes a pattern will even skip a generation." As he spoke, Robert tried to make a mental note to get Travis to explain this to him later. "You both have bits of goblin pattern in you, but your bodies never used it. When you had your son—He probably has it too. Mixie, though, the patterns lined up just right and her body saw that perfect pattern and used it."

"So it really wasn't a curse? How do you know all this?" Jacob asked.

"I don't know all this, Trav does. If you're going to trust anyone to know about curses and how people are put together, I think you'd probably want to trust someone who has put people together already." Robert shrugged at that, ignoring the slight lie in it.

Walking closer to the heart, Grace held out her hand toward it and took a slow breath. "You mentioned work? I've never really—I have worked in a tavern before. I was a cook."

"Was?" Robert asked.

"They told us that we were idiots. That we had to take Mixie and—and leave her in the forest. They said—"

"They said," Jacob continued for his wife, "that a goblin had swapped her. Our daughter would be dead, but—"

Robert nodded. "But Trav knows that is a load of piss. She's your daughter and you can raise her here."

It didn't make the decision hard for Jacob. Ever since people had learned of his daughter, he'd found out he wasn't welcome anywhere. Now he had somewhere. "I'm not the greatest blacksmith you'll find, but I'm good enough with a hammer and furnace that my old master called me his equal. If you want something made or repaired, I'll do my best to get it done."

"I noticed you have a kitchen." Grace sounded hopeful and, at the same time, a little excited. She enjoyed cooking, but months on the road without anywhere to cook more advanced than a pot over a campfire had left her a little dejected.

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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.