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 250

Poison, Greater 1000

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.

It was terrifying for Travis, and he suspected Fife too, to stare into the darkness of that cave and have claws lashing out. "That thing must be huge!"

"I've seen them as the bosses in vermin dungeons. This is bigger than any of those, though. Why do you have things hiding in your walls, Trav?" Fife did her best to keep her shield between herself and the giant pincers as they rushed out at her from the darkness. "Hey, Pen, lob some runes in there. I want to see what I'm dealing with a little better."

Pulling out three of the runes, Penelope tossed them one at a time over Fife's head. The first to get close to the huge shape lit the cave up with its flash of explosive power. The second and third drew a screech from the scorpion that had Penelope let out a roar in challenge. "Let me head in, Fife. Keep it from getting out, but don't interfere."

"Where's Katelyn? Jack? Get some mages down here, Trav!" Fife called out, making room for Penelope to get past her and quickly moving back to block the gap again. "And get Brayden."

"They're coming." Travis tracked the approach of his combat-focused inhabitants. "Ogmera, Felna, and Tom are coming too."

Penelope wanted to test herself. The moment she was past Fife, she breathed out a spray of noxious, acidic breath that clung to and started burning the scorpion. What was odd was it allowed her to see it easier. "Hey there, big guy. See, this is my dungeon, not yours."

The first claw to come at her was met with a double slash of her swords, swiping it aside and leaving a pair of burning green scorch marks on it. The problem she noticed, though, was for all the explosives, acid, and swipes with her swords—Penelope couldn't see any damage that wasn't superficial.

"Trav, this might be a tough one." Penelope started to back up to where Fife was, focusing on parrying the attacks. She barely got past her friend when the scorpion's stinger came forward again and, looking fully healed, tried to impale Fife.

"Not on the first date!" Raising her shield to deal with the stinger, Fife knew she left herself a little open. She brought her sword low, and only barely managed to fend off the clacking claw that tried to grab her leg. "Where's our mages?!"

"They're coming," Ogmera said as she walked up behind Fife. "Let me shine some light on that ugly. How can you even see in here?" Pulling out a spare alchemical light, she twisted it on and tossed it into the cave.

Now, with proper illumination, Travis got to appreciate how huge the cave scorpion was. "Pen, didn't you shoot its tail off?"

"That grew back fast. Did you manage to hurt it at all?" Fife asked, her eyes now tracking the thing far easier thanks to the light.

"Regenerating isn't usually their thing. I guess this is the kinda thing we have to deal with on the third floor, huh?" Walking back over to Fife, Penelope looked in at the huge beast. "Ugly as sin, but that venom could be useful."

"Could we tame it, like Squishy?" Travis asked.

"Squishy wasn't angry to start with. He is a nice slime and only wanted to mellow out with a mana shrine. This guy"—Fife used the pommel of her sword to bash away one strike while she used her shield for another—"is doing his best to make me an ex-kobold."

Wrapping her magic into a spell, Ogmera worked it into her fetish and cast the luck charm. Normally she worked the opposite version—one that gave good luck, but with her target being a singular enemy for a change, she instead cursed the luck of the scorpion.

"Whatever you just did, I love it. Luck curse?" Fife asked.

"Hey, we're here. Did we miss anything?" Katelyn stepped into the area with Jack beside her, then stared at the huge form. "Oh shit. Uh— Trav, can you drop a mana field here on me and Jack?"

Felna moved to stand close to the pair, too, and shivered as the blue light suffused her. "Thanks, Trav."

Jack didn't comment on the feline healer gathering with them in the mana field. "Alright. Let's work on that tail first. I'll freeze it, then you flash boil my ice, got it? Third segment up from its butt."

Having an experienced combat mage to guide her was a huge relief to Katelyn. She waited for his ice to form and for him to give her the gesture and then poured heat into the frozen muscle tissue.

The explosion, and the tail breaking off, got a cheer from Fife. "Alright! Nice work. Now, about the claws. I'd like those gone too if— Oh, come on!" She could see the stump where the tail had been removed starting to seethe with flesh and lengthen. "Keep hitting it!"

With the mana of the dungeon itself pouring through them, Jack and Katelyn alternated freezing and boiling the limbs of the scorpion. Even with half of its legs, tail, and one pincer gone, it still kept Fife on her toes. But the problem was it regenerated all its limbs at the same pace. They'd reached a point where they could only take a limb off as fast as it could regrow another.

Clumsy as the scorpion had become with Ogmera's curses, it was still deadly enough that no one but Fife wanted to go near it.

Tom reached the fight next, and seeing that the other two mages were unloading as fast as they could to keep it partially disabled, he worked a different line. "There's going to be some bright light, so don't look at me. Hold onto your pants!"

It was an old trick Tom had learned fighting the big bugs in vermin dungeons. Making sure to shield the light ball he was in the process of creating so it acted more like a directional lamp, he shifted the color of light it output from pleasing yellow to green, to blue, and finally further through violet and to a point where he knew it would hurt people to see it. With the color set, he turned up the intensity of the sphere floating above his head.

The body of the scorpion started to glow in sympathy to the high frequency light. First it was a soft shade of green, then it grew brighter and brighter—but what Fife noticed immediately was the huge arachnid became orders of magnitude clumsier. "Whatever you're doing, you crazy wizard, keep it up!"

Tom could keep it up easily enough, but it was draining his reserves. "I can handle this for at most five minutes, then I'm out. Where's Stratus?"

"Coming!" As he walked to the end of the tunnel where everyone was gathered, Stratus could see the glowing, giant cave scorpion being worked on. "That is a superior specimen. Having trouble finishing it off?"

"Can you lend us a hand, Stratus?" Tom nodded to the scorpion. "It's not being courteous at all."

Laughing, Stratus sank into his focus and started working on one of his favorite spells. Normally a single target would be a problem for Stratus. His magic was seemingly stuck on affecting a large area at once—it was why he'd been delighted to get a job adventuring in vermin dungeons. The other time his magic worked a treat was when there was something big.

Centering his flame field spell directly in the scorpion's center of mass, he started pumping his mana into it for all he was worth. Katelyn and Jack's explosive trick did wonders for extremities where there was an exoskeleton to crack, but Stratus' magic acted deep inside the scorpion.

Fife let out a whoop of excitement. "Whatever you're doing, keep it up. It's slow and— Pen! Get in there and finish it!"

Having spent the time reloading her pistol, Penelope slipped past Fife and approached the beleaguered scorpion. It didn't even seem to notice her. "Sorry, big guy. I would have liked to get you outside and let you play with a certain army, but I don't think even Fife would have managed to lead you past all those people without you trying to kill them." She whirled around in a spin, her blades slicing out and severing the weakened armor around its head. When the inner workings of its head were revealed, she aimed the pistol and, at point-blank, fired.

Shivering at the sensation of leveling up again, Fife kept her eye on the downed scorpion, ready to deal with it if it somehow stood back up and kept fighting. "That's it, I think."

"I got experience for it. Wow, a lot of experience." Travis liked how professional everyone had been, but couldn't help being worried that it had taken, effectively, several dungeon bosses and two adventurer groups to beat the thing down. "Do you think it would be worth building one of these a special chamber and making it so it can't get out, but is in the path to my heart?"

"The problem—" Felna cut herself off from immediately replying and explained Travis' idea to the rest of her party. "I was just going to say that with all the trouble trying to kill one, having it with a path to your heart isn't a good idea. We've seen the tight holes scorpions can get into."

Ogmera nodded. "One that big would have to squeeze, but it could probably fit down your tunnels."

"Change of plans. Kill every scorpion we find that doesn't want back-scratches," Travis said. "Wait, Pen, I got a new boss upgrade for you. Boss Upgrade Three. One hundred thousand gold, fifteen thousand food, two thousand mithril, and two thousand adamantine. It's a lot, but I think it'll be worth it. Oh, and Fife, you got level five. New ability: Reinforced Armor."

"Reinforced Armor?" Fife asked, then shivered as she felt her body changing. Around her, the mithril armor seemed to bleed onto her body and became part of her. Large scales on her back, around her arms, and along her cheeks hardened and grew into ridges. She took a slow, deep breath and then looked down at herself. "Far out. This is amazing! I am my own armor!"

Leaving Fife to her self-exploration, Penelope walked around the scorpion's body. "Do any of you know how to butcher one of these? There're three full tails over here you can probably get venom from. It kept growing them back."

Sighing in resignation, Felna nodded. "I'll go get my tools. This will take some time and I might need help. I've taken apart plenty of scorpions, just never one this big before."

Travis was relieved at one immediate problem having been dealt with. The army outside still had a whole city of well-armed guards to fight through to reach him, but monsters in his own dungeon were more imminent and real. "Thank them, please? Your group I mean. I know you're getting paid well for the work, but it's still appreciated that you are willing to do it and not leave me to rot," he said to Felna.

Passing on the message, Felna nodded to everyone. "I'll go get my harvesting tools. Try not to let Fife eat the thing before I get back."

Flashing her teeth, Fife laughed at the joke. "Hey, are my teeth made of metal now?" She tapped one with the tip of her sword and, when she heard a metallic clinking noise, almost cut her gum laughing anew.

When a new tick of mana hit Travis, he realized the little drain on his income was increasing. "Uh, I'm not imagining this. Something is using up a chunk of my mana income—and it's getting worse."

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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.