The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Level 1

Heart 400/400

Experience 100/100

Workers 4/10

Monsters 0/10-2

Traps 12/10+2

Rooms 11

Food 29

Timber 67

Iron 213

Mana 5

Rock 462

Gold 318

Leather 84

Leather Sludge 29

Lava 7

Explosive Runes 3

Triggered Explosive Runes 2

Quest: Reach Tier 1

"Oh, I figured out what it did now. We just got ten percent onto all our resources. Wish I'd known that was the reward before running us low on wood. And now we have more rock." The state of things wasn't terrible, but Travis wished he'd known the reward before getting Penelope's upgrade.

He couldn't speak to them, but the sight of Penelope pulling an axe that was almost as big as Stephan from behind her back had impressed him. She'd gone to work cutting down trees at a ferocious rate and, so far as Travis could tell, the others seemed to work better around her.

"Huh? Were you talking to me?" Katelyn asked. She was working on the triggered explosive runes in the Library.

"Not really, just talking to myself I guess. I wish these stupid quests would tell me what the rewards are for them." Mentally poking at the interface that was his link to his "body", Travis couldn't figure out how to find some of the things that were normally easy to figure out in games. "This is like a freakin' beta test."

"What's a beta test?"

The question was a good distraction for Travis, and given Katelyn's chuckle she seemed to recognize the humor of it. "It's when something isn't finished yet, but someone decides to let people see and use it. Usually missing important features."

"Oh!" Katelyn leaned back a little from her meditation. "There are spell guides like that. A simple spell for summoning imps, only they have no duration and there is no tuned banishing spell. There was one wizard group that had to literally pay adventurers to clear out their spire."

Travis couldn't keep from laughing at the image. "That sounds horrible!"

"It almost led to the complete destruction of the wizards and the city. Imps are annoying at best—when you summon and have control of them—but they are downright chaotically destructive when let off the chain." Looking up at the ceiling, Katelyn smiled. "Glad I wasn't responsible for that."

The last bit of what she said sounded more like relief than a joke, prompting Travis to ask, "You make any mistakes like that?"

"None that I've told anyone about." Closing her eyes and leaning forward again, Katelyn started work on the next rune. "You might not have noticed but I was—I had to deal with a lot of attention. As a woman, that is. I would always keep my cloak hood up and try to keep from anyone noticing me.

"So, I was in my second year at the wizard's guild in High Hope and I'd taken a shower. Well, I need to say first that the second years' dormitory is a floor above the first years'. Anyway, everyone else in second year seemed intent on showering then, so I slipped downstairs, knowing the first years hadn't moved in yet."

"They had?" Travis asked.

"No. It was deserted when I went down there. I guess, having a whole shower block to myself, I may have spent a little too long enjoying it. Climbed out to find my bathrobe missing. All I had was one undersized—for the job—towel.

"I never found out who swapped my things, but as soon as I stepped out of the shower area I found out that the first years were moving in right then. Eyes, so many eyes." Shuddering, Katelyn let out a bark of laughter. "You have no idea how much of a relief it was when you made me into a kobold."

"What?!"

"I thought about using my magic to disfigure myself. Maybe a nice big scar across my face. To test that, I tried holding an illusion up."

Hearing the pain in Katelyn's voice made Travis recoil a little at how society had treated her. "Did it work?"

"In a way." Katelyn finished the rune and started meditating again. "They just never looked above my neck. Nope, if I was going to do the job, I'd have to mangle all of me up. It would have been horrifically painful and it would have made things ten times worse."

"People can be such assholes sometimes." He wanted to hug her. Travis wished he could offer Katelyn a shoulder to cry on—and he could tell she was crying by how her vision decreased.

"You've done plenty, Trav." Reaching one arm up, Katelyn wiped away the tears while being careful of her claws around her eyes. "There wasn't even much pain, well, except for those damn sludge traps."

"In my defense, it was Pen's idea to use them. She said they were annoying and frequently a problem." Travis was proud of how effective the sludge had been.

"Yeah, but most dungeons will have like one trap. They won't fill a whole damn hallway with them. There are ways around them, too, but we can work on that. Ask Robert about improving the sticky gunk in them so the next alchemist along doesn't just dilute them out or something."

"I wonder if I'll get an unlock when he makes something? Maybe an alchemy lab?" More than anything, Travis wanted to make the siblings comfortable and able to do the work they'd been planning to. Minus the whole controlling the dungeon thing, of course. That was all the more incentive to let them spend their gold in the town.

"Hopefully, though Robert can build his own easily enough. We should probably go back to town and buy more stuff. We need food, right?" Katelyn asked.

"Yeah, we need food. We also need a lot of gold. Oh, and we need to protect ourselves. If we can't keep people from taking all our stuff, we can't exactly keep growing. Oh, and we need a bolt-hole. I only wish I could move my heart to the far end of it." Travis had never seen hearts be mobile in any games he'd played, but he held out a little hope he might be able to move some day.

Work wasn't any easier being bigger, but Penelope sure felt better about being outside. Behind her was a string of stumps she'd made of trees, and crawling on them was Stephan and Robert, each with their own axes stripping off branches and hauling them back toward the dungeon entrance.

The sunlight was still annoyingly bright, but Penelope had started to pick up what was a kobold thing and what was being a dungeon minion thing. The latter, now, she completely lacked. "Hey, Steph, Rob," Penelope said, "is it just me or does the forest not feel as exposed anymore?"

"Definitely," Robert said. "Though, it seems to have more to do with being near you. When we haul the trees back to the dungeon, I start to feel a little worried again just before reaching the entrance."

"Huh. Well, I guess I should try to cut the trees a bit closer to the dungeon, then. Don't want to make it a straight line leading to the entrance, anyway." Hefting the oversize axe on her shoulder, Penelope walked back about halfway to the dungeon and started thinning more trees.

When Stephan walked up to her and stopped after dragging the furthest tree down the line she'd cut, Penelope looked at him oddly. "What's up?"

"Someone's watching us. There's movement in the grass just beyond the treeline. At least two heavy armor users. Should we retreat?"

His voice was a little shaky as he explained it and Penelope knew why—he wasn't an adventurer. "Not yet. If they're just watching us, they will know we've seen them if we retreat with all this timber on the ground. Let's not cut down more trees and just clean up what we have here." She spat on her hands and got another swing on the tree she was working on. "And next time you drag anything back to the entrance, duck inside and let Trav know what's going on."

"I'm not sure if that's the biggest kobold I've ever seen or a lizardman, but that axe is not what I'd call standard equipment for cutting down trees." Jack was crouched down behind the ridge and watching the work party with a critical eye. "What do you make of them, Brayden?"

"Unless the stupid dungeon made a kobold a boss, that has to be a lizardman. My eyes can't see as well as yours, Jack. Can you see a dungeon?" The assignment had come with several bonuses, for which Brayden Smith was quite happy. The biggest payday would be identifying the dungeon theme, location, and get out without any casualties.

Jack shook his head. "We've been in this part of the forest. If I could have seen the dungeon then, I would have."

"Could have been that awesome spell you used." Fife admired almost anything that could kill half a pack of direwolves in seconds. "Next time, instead of shards, can you make the ice into fists?"

"Ha! Yeah! Punch the wolves to death. That'd be so much cooler." Raising his mailed fist and holding it out to Fife, Porter got a firm bump from her.

"Will you two keep it down? We don't want these kobolds running away." Groaning, Brayden glared at the two fighters in his party.

"Yeah we do," Fife said. "We want them to run so we can chase them and find out where their dungeon is, then we'll peek inside and figure out what theme it's running, and get back to town by evening."

"You saw that barmaid?" Porter nudged Fife's elbow. "She had to have some elf in her somewhere."

Fife rolled her eyes. "Yes, Porter, we'll get back to the pretty barmaids once this job is done. What you think, Brayden?" Despite her assessment, Fife knew well that Brayden was the most tactically minded of the party. She also knew that not following his advice was a good way to wind up hurt or dead.

Rubbing his chin, Brayden nodded. It wasn't part of their contract to leave the dungeon critters alone, just not to kill them. "I like it. Okay, Jack, can you get us some haste?"

"Alright." Porter started to stand only for Brayden to grab his arm. "What?"

"Don't kill them. If you get close to them, feign a trip and let one of us help you up." Brayden glared at Porter. "These kobolds are smart enough to barter and mint their own coin. If they ever wind up making peace with the town, they could tell them we defaulted on a quest and lied."

"Ugh. Alright. I won't kick the kobolds all the way back to their dungeon. Come on, let's get them moving." Jerking his arm from Brayden's grip, Porter looked to Jack. "When you're ready."

It wasn't a fight and it certainly wasn't an engagement. The moment the four of them broke cover (with Jack's spell enhancing their movement for all of a minute) the kobolds turned tail and ran. Brayden watched as the bigger one met their gaze for a moment with its big axe on its shoulder before it turned almost casually and started to run.

"You said we can't kill the kobolds. What about that lizardman?!" Porter asked.

Elbowing her partner in the ribs, not that his armor would have let him feel even a hard blow there, Fife glared at Porter. "Don't ruin this gig. Brayden's word is law out here. You fuck this up, you fuck us up."

"Come on! Don't be such a goody-two-shoes! They're dungeon monsters. We're adventurers. We kill dungeon monsters!" Pounding his legs, Porter was gaining on the lizardman he saw, and he was just about within range of a good shield slap, when something tangled up his legs and he went down.

Brayden stopped while Fife kept running. He'd seen the woman trip Porter over. "You damn idiot. What did I tell you last time?"

"You only said we couldn't kill the kobolds! Even the quest says that. I only signed up for this shit-show to bash heads." Porter glared up at Brayden and started to get his feet under him. "You need me for—"

Even Brayden didn't see Fife's fist coming for Porter's cheek. "Fife!"

"Only joined the group to 'bash heads'?" Fife's anger came in a kick that took Porter's legs out from under him. "You wouldn't have gotten in this group if you weren't fun to hang with, and now you tell me you're only here to bash heads?"

Porter was seeing stars from the second punch. Fife's fist might have connected with his chainmail, but she was wearing steel gauntlets. "You—"

"Brayden, I can see in your eyes. Give him his marching orders. He's done." Fife glared at Brayden, daring him to say anything other than what she wanted.

It wasn't much of a choice for Brayden. On one hand he had a solid fighter in Fife and on the other he had an annoyance who seemed to think the party was some kind of democracy. "We're going back to town after we find out what this dungeon's theme is. When we get back, you're through, Porter."

"Over a bunch of kobolds?!"

"Over putting yourself before the job at hand." Turning his attention from Porter, Brayden called out to Jack. "Figure it out?"

"No clue!" Jack was standing at the entrance of the dungeon, a flickering ball of ghostly fire above his head and a dozen ice spells balanced on the tip of his tongue in case something happened. "It has a theme, but it's like nothing I've seen before. Look down this tunnel and tell me what you notice?" The last he asked when Brayden and Fife reached his side.

"Looks like a dungeon, Jack. Mind clarifying?" Brayden asked.

Fife cut in before the sorcerer could. "It's straight."

"Yeah," Jack said, "it's like someone built this thing using a straight-ruler and a blueprint. These kobolds are a little freaky. I'm going to put this down as unknown theme."

Brayden shrugged. He would have liked to have the full quest payout, but if Jack couldn't figure the dungeon's theme out, they were out of luck there. "You okay, Fife?" He turned to the woman.

"Yeah. No. I don't know. Ugh, you were right, Bray. I shouldn't have gotten with another adventurer." She looked at Jack and pondered some things, then let out another sigh. "Come on. I want to beat that bastard to the barmaid."