The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 21/100

Heart 1587600/1587600

Experience 194747/396900

Workers 27/133

Monsters 9/135

Traps 71/324

Food 3603

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Mithril 3

Mithril Ore 50

Charcoal 4758

Mana 994

Rock 3263

Gold 1057

Leather 217

Leather Sludge 215

Lava 500

Glass 483

Explosive Runes 5

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 0

Long Guns 5

Bullets 300

Black Powder 300

Poison, Greater 1200

Sulfur 700

Adamantine Scraps 24

Quest: Give classes to 10 of your creatures.

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

Quest: Delve to the bottom of a dungeon with at least 20 floors.

"Giant, armored werewolves?" Travis asked. "Did anyone know they had giant, armored werewolves?"

There were a lot of heads shaking. Even the oldest among them, Tannyr and Kelvin, hadn't a clue.

It had been a huge mess, with Katelyn being killed, but part of the cleanup had been Brayden resurrecting her. Travis asked, "Okay, so, this seems like a good time to build that jail. Blake, can you plan it and tell me where to place it?"

"I'll make a start on that. Any floor in particular you want it on?" Standing up, Blake started to walk from the second floor bar and down the back tunnel.

"I was thinking about the third floor. Maybe beside the lizard village? That way I can keep an eye on anything in there and if they want to get deeper, they have to get past Squishy." Travis was updating the three maps in his heart room himself now, ensuring that anyone with access to him could see everything in the dungeon.

"I'll go too. If we're digging down there, it's best to have me ready to take things on." Standing up to follow, Fife tapped Penelope on the shoulder. "You too, boss."

"Ordered around like a commoner!" Penelope fell off her seat and flopped onto the floor. "How will I cope?" Having gotten a good laugh from everyone, she got back up and followed after Fife.

"What about the rest of us?" Tannyr asked.

Travis looked at his board of things to do (which was separate from the regular work list) and noticed the obvious. "Right, more mithril would be a great start. Can you go and mine some and I'll have someone figure out how to smelt it?"

"Got it. How much do you need?"

"Make it a thousand. We need to figure that out. Brayden, how long can a person be dead before the resurrection won't work anymore?" Travis asked.

Calming down from laughing at Fife and Penelope, Brayden shrugged. "I don't know. From experience talking to others, though, I'd say we have until the body starts to rot. Usually a few days. Why?"

"And if we froze the bodies so they don't rot?"

Brayden looked at Jack. "I see where you're going. They would probably keep a lot longer then."

"Hold on." Jack looked around the table. "Who am I freezing so we can resurrect? Those wolves?"

"Yeah. They're the first of the enemies we've managed to catch and had Brayden around for. I have questions for them and I figure putting them in a prison will also give some good XP." That's when something that had been eating away at Travis, since the attack, made sense. "They didn't have a talisman on them!"

"Only the richer soldiers would be able to afford one, but that wolf-woman we saved was wearing a small fortune in adamantine," Kelvin said.

Brayden nodded. "They all were. It doesn't make sense."

"The empire is fanatically against magic." Felna walked into the tavern, rubbing at the side of her face with a hand. "Also against outsiders. I'd show you how I found that out, but I paid extra to be resurrected without the scars." Slumping into a seat, she tipped her head back and looked up. "They are also way into dying the right way. Bringing them back from a death in battle, I think, would be one of the worst things you could do."

"How do you know so much about them?" Katelyn asked.

"Because they also take slaves." Felna delivered her best and most significant I think that covers everything look. "I hid my talisman and got one so angry they killed me. Free ride out of that nightmare." Shrugging, Felna tilted her head forward when a bowl of porridge was set before her. Sniffing at it, she looked up at Axel and nodded. "Thank you."

"Hey, uh, I saw you got some mithril." Putting a mug of short beer down, Axel shifted his feet and kept looking down.

Felna raised a feline eyebrow and smirked at him. "You want to try your hand at working it? That hammer at your side looks a little big for a carpenter and a little small for combat."

"Y-Yeah. My dad's a smith and he's been teaching me. I'm pretty good, but he said we can't use the dungeon's tools because—" Sighing, Axel shook his head. "And I don't think I want to be a— Not that being a kobold is bad! It's just—"

Focusing on Axel, studying his calloused hands and muscled arms particularly, Felna asked, "What if I told you there might be another way?" His surprise spurred her on. "There's a binding I can do. You won't become a kobold, but you'll be able to hear Travis and, maybe, use the dungeon's tools."

"Felna, we don't know if it will work like that," Travis said. "What if he's stuck or something? Or what if it actually turns him into a kobold?"

"Travis is reminding me that we have only tried this on one person, me. We don't know if it has side effects, though the only one I've noticed is having a dungeon in my head talking at any hour of the day or night." Rolling her eyes skyward, Felna asked, "There, is that enough warning?"

"Dad wouldn't. Mom still wants more kids and they know about—yeah. I'm old enough to make my own choices. Can we go do it now?" The look in Axel's eyes spoke of a need to break out on his own and make his mark, and given the group around him he got a lot of nodding heads. "Please?"

"You're sixteen?" Looking at her meaty porridge, Felna started shoveling it into her mouth and gulped it down as fast as she could.

"Sixteen makes him an adult?" Travis asked.

Felna nodded, still eating.

Nodding, Axel said, "Yeah."

Not stopping her frantic pace, Felna grabbed up the adulterated mug and stood when she'd had her fill. "Come on, then, before any of us think clearer. I'm pretty sure this needs to be done in his heart room."

"And that's it?" Fife asked. She looked over the thin room that ran beside the tunnel that led to the lizard village on the third floor. "What if you went the other way?"

"So it was up against the village? We could do that. Hey, and that fits better too. Good eyes, Fife." Blake adjusted the design to be the place Fife had suggested. "Trav said the prison has a cost per two-by-one section, so I think that will be each cell size. That means we will hopefully get thirty-two cells."

"With a hall down the middle. Okay," Penelope said, rolling her shoulders, "let's go do this." With the other two following her, she led the way as they slipped through stone and tunnels, first passing through her own boss room and then reaching Fife's. The figure of a woman, arms and legs corded with muscle, glared at her when she entered the room. "Hey, I know you can't understand us, but we're going to make your bedroom for a bit. I hope Squishy isn't—"

Fife had ignored Astrid and ran straight to Squishy. Giving the slime her best headbutt (which bounced off harmlessly), she asked Squishy, "Not giving you any trouble, is she?"

Fairly advanced for a slime, Squishy was nonetheless not all that smart. It felt a lot of affection for the other denizens of the dungeon, but the woman in the room was not a friend but also not to be food. Squishy's dungeon had made that clear.

Dungeon monsters rated low on Astrid's scale of things to treat with respect—except as opponents. She snarled at their strange language and tried to call on her berserker side, but weakened as she was she couldn't manage it.

Worse, though, than the dragons was the slime. The thing had not moved since she'd woken, but she had tried to leave the room and the thing had moved to block her. With only a thin wrap of fabric to protect herself, Astrid didn't plan to fight a slime bigger than any she'd seen before.

One of the three got Astrid's focus because, unlike the bigger two, Blake wasn't a fighter. He didn't wear armor, carry a weapon, or even move like he was used to dealing with an enemy trying to kill him.

She'd died, Astrid was certain of it. She'd panicked and screamed as she'd gone down, tried to lash out and take one with her—or so she liked to think. The truth was she'd been terrified. All knew that the foul magic of the southerners could even violate the bond of a good northerner and their afterlife. She hated to think about it, but she had to wonder if she would have begged to be saved by them.

"Is it just me," Blake said, "or does it look like she's really pissed off about something?"

Fife snorted. "Yeah. Remember what Trav told us Felna said? They love going down fighting. I gotta respect them for that—but the better thing is to go down fighting and live to come back and do it again."

"That's the truth." Penelope pushed through the last bit of wall and emerged into a tunnel with lizards everywhere. When Blake came through behind her, she'd already picked one up and had it on her shoulder. "I adore their little hats."

By the time Fife reached the tunnel the other two were in, each of them had a lizard on their shoulders and were talking to them. She didn't need to be asked to follow suit, though she picked up one lizard for each shoulder. "Okay, Trav, can you mark the area for digging?"

Penelope was sure that with anyone else, Fife wouldn't have pitched in. She mused on it being another part of the weird thinking that kobolds had. None of them would bow down to her, but in ones and twos, they all deferred to her. "Nice pace. Keep it u—"

As the square Penelope had been mining away collapsed to reveal a huge cave beyond it, Fife dropped her pickaxe and drew the tools of her trade. Not asking permission, she shoved Penelope aside and put herself firmly into the gap. "Trav, tell the rest we have a situation."

"Got it! Your cohorts are coming. Blake, head back to the village and then skip through the residences. I'll guide you." Travis was so focused on getting Blake moving that he forgot to phrase his words as a request. "Sorry, Blake," he said, "I didn't mean to order you."

"Able to focus better away from the danger," Blake said. "It's fine, Trav. I would have been slow to move, anyway. Where am I headed?"

Leaving Travis to handle the logistics of getting help and ensuring Blake was safe, Penelope drew her rifle and aimed it over Fife's head. "Watch your ears. I'll shoot when I see something."

Shield forward and down slightly, Fife tried to hear or see what was inside the cave. When a huge claw swung her way out of the blackness, itself a pasty white, she was quick to get her shield between it and herself.

"Holding!" Penelope had to fight not to aim and pull the trigger. The claw was massive—as big as Fife was—and opened as it reached for them. To the left of the huge claw, she saw something else approach and turned her gun to it and fired.

The loud echo of the gunshot was like its own weapon in the confined area. The huge stinger that'd been plunging toward them jerked back after the ball from Penelope's rifle almost ripped the end of it clear off.

"Cave scorpion!" Fife shouted.

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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.