The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 21/100

Heart 1587600/1587600

Experience 316683/396900

Workers 27/133

Monsters 9/135

Traps 101/324

Food 4297

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Mithril 500

Mithril Ore 260

Adamantine 15

Adamantine Ore 500

Charcoal 4408

Mana 1039

Rock 1013

Gold 1057

Leather 216

Leather Sludge 215

Lava 501

Glass 483

Explosive Runes 25

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 0

Long Guns 10

Bullets 800

Black Powder 550

Poison, Greater 1000

Deadly Scorpion Venom 120

Sulfur 450

Quest: Give classes to 10 of your creatures.

Quest: Half populate your dungeon: Workers 27/66 | Monsters 9/67 | Traps 101/162

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

Three days had passed slowly, the siege settling back down to a protracted affair once more. Travis had been careful in expanding his floors, increasing the size of the bottom floor mushroom farm and hooking up a string of resource nodes his lizards had found to the dungeon proper.

Astrid was still a problem. She was in his prison for now, and that meant she was getting time to think about what she wanted to do.

Research had finished on Dungeon Order, which allowed him to make Priests. The reward for jailing Astrid had been one free research—he'd snapped up Dungeon Mages, which unlocked the Mage class.

Building wise, they'd built a Martial Hall and a Crafting Hall, and started research on Dungeon Kobolds. All this had been accomplished by asking his new workers to spend as much time as they could in the Library.

"Most people don't want to live in a dungeon, Trav." Fife was leaning back on a specially made steel chair in the tavern, her feet on the table and a mug of ale in her hand. "Beats me why; it's lovely down here!"

"Is it really that bad for normal people?" Travis asked. He felt like fidgeting now. He had a lot of workers that were sitting in his library and simply talking, relaxing—making numbers go up.

"Trav, if they're sensitive to the feeling of dungeons, and a lot of people are, and they haven't gotten used to it, like adventurers have, then it will grate on their feelings constantly. You can't sleep like that." Fife had made the executive decision to never take the bulk of her armor off, but made an exception for the helmet, because it made drinking hard. "So we'll keep a few rooms spare. If people want to try it, we let them. We can offer free accommodation to any adventurers, too."

"That will work, yeah. Honestly, normal people don't give much experience, so unless most of the town were in here, I wouldn't be getting—" Travis froze as he saw their prisoner standing up and at the bars. She seemed to be saying something he couldn't hear. "Felna," he asked, directing his question to the cleric, "our prisoner wants to talk. Could you come down and work your magic on her again, please?"

Snapping her eyes open, Felna yawned and stretched on her bed. Sitting up with the fluid motion of a feline, she arched her back but kept her eyes closed. "I need to start charging overtime rates when I'm sleeping. What was that again?"

"Astrid wants to talk. Where'd you learn about overtime?" Travis asked.

"Since everyone else was in the library yesterday, I figured I'd tag along. You lived a fascinating life." Pulling on underthings, arming clothes, and her armor, Felna opened her eyes and looked around her bedroom. "Let's go see what the big kitten wants."

Reaching the bottom of the dungeon, Felna found Fife waiting for her. "Giving me a shortcut? I can reach her just fine now we have that jail."

"More like I'm being ready in case she tries something stupid. Besides, to reach the jail easily, you'd need to take the stairs down to here from the top floor. Oh, we got that priest unlock thing. Did you want to bug Trav about seeing if you can get that on top of your adventurer stuff?" Fife twirled the pickaxe in her hand and brought it against the wall with a crash that broke away a hole into the tunnel between her and Penelope's boss room.

Following along, her glowing light illuminating Fife's armor from behind, Felna said, "I am not ready to make that pounce yet. Try asking that young smith."

"That's a good idea. Thanks, Felna," Travis said.

"Hey, Squishy! Hope you haven't been getting bored down here? Pen keeps killing stuff before it can come play." Fife walked over to the huge slime and reached out to hug it as best she could. "Hey, did I ever tell you how one of the other slimes you were with killed Brayden and would have gotten me, too?"

"Are you talking to me or the slime?" Felna asked, doing quite well at hiding her laughter.

Turning and looking back at Felna, Fife smirked and said, "Squishy is the best listener."

Felna groaned and walked down the tunnel toward the corner and stopped. "Isn't the prison meant to be here?"

"Sorry, Squishy, I gotta go show the newbie around the dungeon." Giving the affectionate slime a pat, Fife walked down the tunnel to where Felna was. "See, if you were a kobold, you could do this."

"Oh, sure, just walk through the wall." Felna stood and waited for Fife to break down the rock from the other side. "Show off."

Hearing talking, Astrid waited for the kobold and the catkin to approach. The cat-kin knew a smattering of her language, but the lowest form of it—leading Astrid to the easy assumption that she'd been a slave at some point. The kobold was taller than most, but still far shorter than she herself—but the look of the creature terrified her. Not only were they wearing a fearsome suit of armor, but Astrid could see more of the metal had replaced large patches of scales on the kobold's head. "I want to talk."

Waiting for Felna to cast her spell, Astrid kept looking over Fife. It wasn't hard to tell what the metal was—it was the same kind that she'd worn as a wolf. The magic sank into her and she heard that voice in her head again as if it were clear as day. "Yeah, I wanted to talk. I'm useless down here. Give me something to do."

"How can I trust you?"

Astrid slumped as best she was able which, given her muscle mass, wasn't a lot. "Because I can never go back to my troops. Because I would rather rot in a hole than go back and die."

"Wait. They'd kill you if I let you go?"

"Of course. I should be dead— I was dead. I am tainted now." Looking down at her hands, Astrid snarled. "They will think I am dead already."

Travis had to fight from snorting at the sincere story. "I know that feeling."

Jerking her head up and snapping away from the self-pity, Astrid snarled, "What would you know of this?"

"I used to be human, from a different world." Travis figured he could always deny it all if she told anyone, not that she could, given no one spoke her language except Felna, and she'd been reading his memories anyway. "I don't even know what I did to get stuck like this. But you know the worst part? I finally found someone I love—and I can't touch her."

"Oh." The information was a lot for Astrid to take in. "You were human?"

"Yeah," Travis said. "Not from here, though. A different world where there was no magic."

"Such a place would be a haven to my people. Magic is abhorrent to us. It—" Fumbling for a word, all Astrid could do was repeat the religious views of her people. "It is forbidden and evil."

"Magic is magic. What you do with it is what matters. It's like a sword or an axe." Lacking a better way to describe it, that's all Travis had. "Except for when gods use their own magic, I guess. Brayden, the cleric who brought you back to life, worships Brogdar. He's a god that hunts down evil."

"False gods—" was the first thing Astrid said, but she regretted it immediately.

"False gods," Travis said, "or gods that don't exist, would mean Brayden brought you back from the dead with his own magic. Brayden's amazing, but I don't think he can do that." As soon as he'd said it, Travis realized something else that meant: he brought kobolds back from the dead. Did that make him a god, or was he using another god's power?

"If he is fighting against evil, why would he bring me back?"

The answer wasn't exactly a hard one for Travis to deliver. "You're not evil, I guess."

"But I killed his people. I killed guards on the wall. I killed the mage." Astrid wanted to snarl the words, and did. "To you, I'm evil."

"No." When Astrid tilted her head to the side, Travis elaborated. "You're no more evil than I am. I have killed people, maybe not as many as you, but I have definitely killed adventurers and some of your soldiers who came in here to attack me."

"They had no other option but to come in here. Donna is a harsh commander and wouldn't take insubordination. She was the one who was in charge of taking control of a dungeon to use as shock troops." It wasn't intelligence on her people, it was just a chain of command. There were no tactics that weren't already visible. "Ten days ago, I would have used the argument that all holes are evil, but I didn't know about you, the human you, then."

"So, what do you want to do now? You said you wanted to talk, and we've talked."

That was it. Astrid was left without a moral foot to stand on. All she could figure out was that neither the dungeon nor she was evil and, in a way, were even kindred spirits of a sort. "Do you hire mercenaries?"

It wasn't a hard choice to make. Travis could accept her, let her work, and have her adjust to a different way of life at her own pace. "You will be paid half as much as the others for a year, to cover your acts against myself and the city. You will live in an area built specifically for you, and each day you will return to the dungeon and sleep there. If you leave without a good reason, that will be breaking your contract."

"It is a better deal than I would get locked in here or at the hands of my people. I accept on the condition that after a year, the last clause will be removed." Astrid wasn't sure exactly how she could clasp arms with a dungeon, but at that point the walking pile of armor stepped in and unlocked her cage. Holding out her hand, the kobold took her forearm in a mailed fist and shook it.

"Trav, I hope you're not screwing things up here. She's going to need armor and weapons, because I'll be damned if she's going to be on the payroll and not get our gold's worth out of her. Also, I want to see her do that big wolf thing again. That was so cool!" Fife pointed to the exit of the dungeon. "Come on, the first thing I want to do is see if I can outdrink you!"

"She killed a few on the wall," Hilda said. "As did your siege weapons."

Nodding at that, Donna watched as the sun rose over the horizon and sent its golden rays into the sky. "I'm having thirty fake trebuchets built now. None of them will be any good, but they will keep their blasted Ghost busy while we sap the wall."

"Astrid loved her siege weapons too much. We don't need to blast the wall down from afar if we can collapse it. You have a week, then I expect you to open the gates one way or another—just like Astrid." Hilda used a dagger to clean her nails. "I'd rather not lose a sister."

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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.