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 12

Food 29

Timber 367

Iron 213

Mana 6

Rock 462

Gold 318

Leather 84

Leather Sludge 29

Lava 7

Explosive Runes 3

Triggered Explosive Runes 7

Quest: Reach Tier 1

Penelope hadn't let anyone go back out until she was sure the adventurers had left, and Travis was perfectly okay with that. Now they had the wood in, however, things were more relaxed. "Well, the town knows we're here now," he said.

"Yeah. It was going to happen eventually. It all seemed a bit bizarre though. They got in a fight with each other after one of them almost caught me and tripped. I couldn't hear what it was about, but I think they were annoyed with him because he screwed up and didn't get me." Penelope walked down the tunnel to the newly dug area and tapped her chin. "Trav, we need to link this section into the main area now and angle a tunnel around for the front traps."

"We still need more timber. Probably as much as you got just now again. Let's dig this out first." Focusing on the plan he'd built, Travis sketched out a new tunnel to lead to their digging area and then connected it up to the tunnel from the front door.

With her speed upgrades and new strength, Penelope ripped through the task quickly. Robert joined in with some minor sections, and by the time Katelyn had gotten them to the eight triggered explosive runes they needed for their traps, a swathe of new tunnelwork had been built.

"I can feel you have more rooms planned. Do you want to link them up for Robert to dig while I move those traps?" she asked.

"Hey, who's the dungeon here? Yeah, give me a sec and I'll get things rolling. We have all the resources we need now for the traps." Linking up the last three planned rooms with temporary tunnels, Travis also requested the dart shooter, two crushers, and the pit trap to be removed.

"Trav, we might want to send Robert and Katelyn to town to buy more stuff soon, but I'm worried about those adventurers. What if they set a trap or see through their brilliant disguise?" With her pickaxe on her shoulder, Penelope came almost three-quarters of the way to the ceiling of the tunnels they were digging.

"Then they use whatever tricks they can to escape and get back here. Katelyn isn't exactly a lightweight when it comes to magic."

"That doesn't help them if they have more than one mage coming for them, or worse, a sorcerer." Shivering, Penelope reached the sludge traps and edged her way around them. "Wizards are clever, and can use their magic in ways you won't see coming. A sorcerer will just throw a hundred times more magic and batter everything down like a ram."

"Right, and that's partly why I need them to go to town. I need knowledge of this world. If Katelyn can get me a book about magic, or even a history book, I can learn everything I need so much faster." Watching as she skipped past all the sludge traps, Travis checked that he had all the remaining traps set for destruction. "It feels weird and kinda disturbing to remove traps."

Starting on the traps, Penelope started disassembling them and removing them from the walls. "Yeah. These ones protected us when we most needed it. Still, can't deny how good those sludge traps are, and they will get better hopefully. I've seen some of those with all kinds of nasty poisons in them."

"The last quest reward increased all my resources by ten percent, but because I'd just spent a lot upgrading you, we didn't get a lot out of it. Should we try to get a stockpile besides the amount needed for tier 1?" Travis asked.

"Could be a waste of time. I'm sure that just powering through and getting more stuff to build would be better. Do you know what happens at tier 1?" The last of the traps to be pulled up, the pit, required filling in with rock.

"You're probably right, and no, I don't know what it gives apart from completing the quest and hopefully unlocking more to do." Travis waited until she'd gotten done building the two sludge traps before setting two pit traps up in the last two sections of the curve. "Hey, you know, if we're not going to use this, we can fill the rest of the tunnel back to my heart with scattered gravel and stones—and mix in more triggered runes."

"Yeah, that's good thinking. I'll add the precise upgrade to these pit traps and set them to drop at the slightest touch." She fit the cover of the first one, then dropped into the second trap and started pulling runes out from behind her back. "Now for the special prize."

Travis would have bit his lip in worry if he had a lip to bite. Instead, he just watched through Penelope's eyes as she set down what amounted to high explosive mines and then covered the pit she put them in. "Those make me nervous."

"They make me nervous, too. Katelyn, though, proved her crafting skill with that fight against the spiders. How's Robert working?"

"He's getting the last three warehouse rooms dug out, then I'll have him hook them to the main area and start building those last five warehouses." Scanning around the dungeon, Travis gave Penelope a rundown. "Katelyn is taking a break from making runes, which I totally understand, and Steph is working on some hides he found."

"Yeah. After all the rushing around of the last few weeks, I think we might need to calm things down so we can have breaks and stuff. All work and no play, right? And I feel—Well, we dealt with those spiders easily enough, and I figure we're as well dug-in as we can be for now that—"

"Relax, Pen. I get you. We have been a little crazy-busy. Time is in our corner now. We won't rest on our laurels, but we don't need to drive ourselves into anxiety overload and depression by working twenty hours a day," Trav said. "Well, maybe you don't, but if I can work out how to sleep one day, it'd be nice."

"You can't sleep?"

"Nope. Just sitting here trying not to go insane. Weird, though, I don't feel tired and I don't get any weirdness from it. I'm just always awake."

Brolly Windchime held the peak of his nose with two fingers while his friend Brayden Smith and Brayden's party members Fife and Jack sat across from him at the table. "So, let me get this straight. The meathead you had with you thought it would be good sport to do the one thing I said not to do and has maybe screwed up any likelihood of us having the dungeon trading with us more?"

Fife felt the worst of the party. She glared down at the table rather than meet Brolly's gaze. "'He was a bloody idiot."

"I'm sorry, Brolly, I thought I had him on a tight leash. Turns out he was playing me as much as the rest of the party. He's out—gone—and when my message gets to my superiors, he'll never get a party with a holy-order member again." Brayden had given up any hope that their quest would get paid out now. "And I know we didn't get the dungeon's theme, but there was one thing I can tell you for sure."

Staring as his old friend pulled out his holy symbol, Brolly raised an eyebrow.

"By the word of my patron god, Brogdar Evil Slayer, they're not evil. I checked them before the last scampered into the dungeon. That's not much, but it—"

Taking a slow breath, Brolly smiled. It was good news and some he had scarcely hoped for. "You put that in writing and you can have full pay for the quest—including all bonuses."

Jerking her head up, Fife looked at Brolly. Squinting, she pondered her chances. "That important, eh?"

"Yeah. Brother Rupert—the old hellfire and brimstone priest in the south quarter—was so against trading with these kobolds that he threatened to start a riot. Poor old bastard doesn't have that many followers anymore, but he was part of the town since we started, and it'd be wrong to turn him out because he's not precisely what we need anymore." Slumping to his elbows, Brolly poked the table with a finger. "But a declaration by Bray'd be something he couldn't argue against. I don't care if they're good, just that they're not evil. You heard that group came back from the rot dungeon up north? Scored big on some new toxins. We're going to need to take care of that dungeon, too."

"You're like a mother hen, Brolly. All these eggs to take care of." Brayden, relaxed now his party was going to get paid, leaned back in his chair. "A kobold dungeon that wants to trade, a verdant animal dungeon that any city would covet, and you turn out to have some weirdly nasty rot dungeon that is farmable. What—?"

"Sir!" Running into the tavern, Timothy Devin saluted his commander.

"Spit out your report, Tim," Brolly said.

"Sir, the lizardkin trader is back. You said to—" Timothy was surprised as not just his commander, but all three of the adventurers were on their feet and running past him. "They're in the trading square. Buying iron and…" He and the bartender were the only ones still in the room.

"Stop jiggling around, Robert." Sitting on her brother's shoulders, Katelyn Arskith reached up to pull the leather hood just a bit further forward. "They're coming back, act natural." When the merchant returned, Katelyn smiled at them. "You can load the grain on?"

Holly Miller, the only grain merchant in Northridge, smiled at the strangest intelligent creature she'd ever seen. They wobbled around, muttered to themselves, and if she didn't know better she'd have sworn their face looked a little like a kobold's—but she'd talked with the merchant guildmaster in the city and had been given advice to trade with them however she saw fit. "Of course. It will be by the barrel, if that's fine? Those hemp bags from last time are just too troublesome to handle."

"Perfectly fine!" Watching as the merchant's assistants rushed over and started loading the barrels on the cart. "Please mind that first barrel. It's full of glassware."

Small talk was ever the tool of merchants when it came to getting useful information, and Holly smelled the potential for more gold. "Glassware? Are you opening a tavern in town?"

"Tavern? Oh! No, nothing like that. My br—friend is an alchemist. I'm just picking up some things for him that he ordered." Aware of her almost slip, Katelyn didn't want to give the game away when she and Robert had gone missing from the town recently. "Put it on top of that iron if you need to."

Their next stop was the book merchant, where about a third of the books she'd ordered had arrived. Katelyn was excited to talk shop with the merchant, given they were a hedge witch and knew the fundamentals of what she was researching. "I don't suppose you're looking for somewhere to move to where you could build the biggest library ever?"

Robert Arskith, who had been doing all the walking so far, reached a hand up to poke his sister in the side.

"Sorry!" Katelyn had to excuse herself before the woman even replied. "Ugh. Had something annoying for dinner and now—Well, you don't want to hear about that, but my patron is interested in expanding his knowledge, and another magic user to instruct him would be greatly appreciated—and rewarded." She ignored further poking and clamped the claws of one of her feet on Robert's upper arm.

Llewellyn, the merchant in question, reached up and removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "If my cut wasn't so good…" She cleared her throat. "I'm contracted to work here for five years. In that time they're going to build me a library, a house, and a moderate garden." That she didn't want to live in a dingy, dark, dangerous—she fished for more D words—dilapidated, and dank dungeon was an understatement. Alliteration, even in the depths of her mind, never ceased to gratify her.

"Oh." The news that there were contracts involved annoyed Katelyn. Despite the fact that the dungeon effectively broke all ties, she didn't want to literally kidnap people and drag them to it. "Well, keep it in mind. We're always hiring. Anyway, I'm after some teaching books on magic. Basic stuff."

"Teaching young ones or adults?" Pulling out a slate and stylus, Llewellyn was poised to take notes.

Lying about her motives, however, was something Katelyn was perfectly fine with. "Adults, but it needs to be basic. I've recently found a student with a lot of potential that is from a deplorably backwards village."

"I don't have anything catering specifically to that, but if your student doesn't mind children-oriented material, I have several copies of Introductory Magic, Elemental Affinities, and Spirits And Bargains." On her slate, Llewellyn started to note how much she would normally sell them for, given the transport cost, and how much markup for the odd coin.

"Those are perfect," Robert said in a whisper.

"Shush or she'll hear you," Katelyn said in an equally discrete whisper.

Llewellyn wanted to shout that she could hear them whispering to each other, but she actually kinda liked talking to Katelyn. The money was good, too. "So…?"

"We—I'll—take all three." From the corner of her eye Katelyn spotted a book she recognized that wasn't part of a first-year student's back-destroying load. "Is that Arskith's Arcane Abatement?" She pointed to the open book.

Looking at what she'd been reading, Llewellyn raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. I'm trying to refine my ritual magic to be more efficient. So far it's hard going—Arskith's theories should work for witchcraft, but all her focus was on wizardry."

It was a completely new idea to use her own work on a completely different field of magic. "What isn't making sense?"