The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Level 1

Heart 400/400

Experience 100/100

Workers 4/10

Monsters 0/10-2

Traps 11/10+2

Rooms 17

Food 29

Timber 3

Iron 184

Mana 7

Rock 605

Gold 118

Leather 84

Leather Sludge 19

Lava 7

Explosive Runes 3

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Quest: Reach Tier 1

Travis saw through Katelyn and Robert's eyes when they reached the forest again. He also spotted them through Penelope's gaze as she was cutting wood. The wagon the poor donkey was hauling seemed piled high—something that Travis was excited about.

The worst bit for him was waiting for them to get close enough he'd be able to talk to them.

"Travis!" Katelyn started bouncing up and down beside the wagon. "I got you some books on magic. Also, there's a really nice witch in town who is happy to help me teach a new student. She ordered a pile more books."

"She was totally onto us," Robert said.

"If she was, it was because you kept talking! Stomachs are not meant to talk." Katelyn smirked over at her brother. "And Robert got all his glassware and chemicals. It'll be interesting to see if you get anything special for him doing his thing like you did for me."

"You got the iron, right?" Travis asked, not wanting to interrupt but needing to know. So far none of them had looked under the large canvas covering of the wagon.

"Of course we got the iron, Trav. It was like the townsfolk were trying to be extra nice today." Robert led the donkey and cart into the dark tunnel and pulled out a light stick. "Trav, can you mark where I need to dig to get through to the warehouses?"

Watching as Robert continued down the tunnel away from the sludge traps, Travis marked the spot and watched him dig through. "What about the food?"

"Oats. Lots of oats. Just like you said, Trav." Beside Robert, the donkey seemed more than happy to plod along and be led in the dark cave. Stopping the cart at the intersection of the first warehouse and the supplies room, he unhitched it and led the donkey to its room.

Travis turned his attention to the work going on outside. Katelyn had surprised him by helping with the logs. He could see them talking to each other, and wondered what they were talking about. For a brief moment he wondered if they were talking about him.

It was all getting too much. Travis had been keeping his attention on growing while shoving all the harder to think about things down. Survival had been everything, but now they'd reached a point where things were a little more relaxed. He could stop pushing everyone and that started with getting them more comforts and shorter work hours.

First and foremost that he could do was get Robert somewhere to do his work. Even if alchemy wasn't part of his dungeon system, he could still give the guy room to do his thing. While he pondered that, he noticed his iron was going up rapidly. Focusing on Robert's view, Travis saw him unpacking the cart. "You don't have to do that right away. Take a break if you need to."

Robert set another two bars of iron down in the warehouse and shook his head. "I can keep going for two reasons. First, you need someone to do it. Second, this is blocking all the stuff I got."

"I've planned out a room for you. I don't know if whatever the dungeon wants me to make will be that large, but I figured you could do with your own storage area too. I don't know how well I can store chemicals."

"Good to know. I'll try unpacking one of the cheaper and more plentiful ones and see." Walking back to the wagon, Robert fished around in a crate at the front and lifted out a large glass bottle that was wrapped in some kind of wood. He set it down in Travis' warehouse and… nothing happened.

"I got nothing. What is it?" Travis asked.

"Just some purified water. Okay, good to know. I guess I need that storeroom and some shelving in it." Putting the big bottle back, Robert returned to unloading iron ingots.

Travis wished he could sigh. Here he was trying to do what he could, but he didn't know what else to do. He remembered how Stephan had told him that the tannery would be his home, but here he was making the poor guy cut down trees rather than doing his passion. Then there was Penelope that, despite her claim that vengeance was all she wanted, surely had something she wanted to do besides that.

He could only watch the kobolds working and fight the urge to treat them like the games tended to do. "We need to have a meeting. Or, at least, we need to talk about what we're going to do going forward."

"What do you mean?" Robert asked. "Do you want me to go out and get the others?"

"No. We can wait for them to come in, but I'd like—That's too weak. No, you deserve to have your own lives. Yeah, you're happy to do stuff for me, and I get that you can't really not feel that, but I want you to have choices in what you do—both for work and in your free time. Like you and your alchemy or Katelyn and her magic."

Robert laughed and leaned back against the wagon. "You musta been pretty rich. Where'd you came from, Trav?"

It wasn't the reply Travis was expecting and confused him a little. "Not really. Why?"

"Well, you talking about free time as if anyone but a noble or rich merchant has any. Trav, where are you from?"

Travis sighed, at least he would have if he had a body that wasn't mostly rock. "A completely different world to this one. We have—It's hard to explain. There's no magic, alchemy follows rigid rules and we call it chemistry, and you only need to work about eight hours a day to get enough money to live off."

Robert shook his head. "Around here the only people who get that kind of leisure time are the rich and powerful, or successful adventurers. I've talked to Pen, she was good enough that she had a little time to herself, but that comes with risks." He paused a moment, then reached into the cart and rolled off a barrel of oats. "So, eight hour days?"

"Yeah. And you get two days out of seven off."

"Off?"

"You don't have to work at all."

Robert whistled. "And that's really how it is where you're from?"

Travis laughed at that. "No, but it's how it is meant to be. The reality is people finding loopholes in laws and employing people for less than a living wage."

"Ah. Not quite perfect, then. But you want to make your dungeon perfect?"

"I like to think I wouldn't work my friends like a horrible bastard." Pausing as Robert dumped the barrel grain in the warehouse, Travis was shocked. "That's two-hundred food per bag!"

"There's another two in here. We didn't know how effective they'd be." Robert walked back to the wagon and double checked. "Yeah, there's a ton of this stuff in here."

"Alright, so one more of them in, then I want to do an experiment. Did you get the pot?" Travis was excited now. He had plans to test mechanics and would need someone's help with that. Robert, being an alchemist, fit the bill.

"Yeah, but what do you mean by experiment?"

"Will cooking the grain give more, less, or the same amount of food as raw grain?" Travis asked.

Robert tilted his head to the side and grabbed out the camp pot his sister had purchased in town. "That's an interesting way to look at it. Is there a reason to suspect this?"

"Yeah. The timber mill, the tannery, and the smelter all give bonuses for processing things before adding them to my storage. I thought we could see if doing that without a special room would work too."

"Right, so we cook a small quantity—like a handful of oats. Then we add each to your storage and see if the values are different." Robert lifted the pot out and located his equipment he'd purchased in the cart. "I can get onto that right now."

Wincing at how eager Robert sounded, Travis realized that getting kobolds to chill and ditch work a bit might be harder than he'd thought.

When the two kobolds were out of town and out of earshot, Fife let out a bark of laughter. "Gotta admire the guts of 'em. We chased them into their dungeon and they're right back out, pretending they're a lizardkin. I like these guys. Hey, Brayden, do you think that big one would take Porter's spot in the party?"

Jack elbowed Fife. "You want a kobold to warm your bed?" He got a punch back. "Worth it," he managed to say through gritted teeth.

"Okay, so the meathead didn't ruin your thing here." Brayden Smith gestured in the direction the kobolds had left. "So what now?"

"Now is the boring part." Pointing back at the merchant district, Brolly Windchime rolled his shoulders. "Now we have to go to all the merchants and get the details of their encounters. Find out what the kobolds are buying, how much our merchants are gouging them, arrange to have the gold restruck with our own coin molds, and encourage the good merchants to continue to do business. Everyone gets a cut."

"How much are you making on this?" Brayden asked.

"The town is making a good amount. We can afford to offer more incentives to people to move here—particularly guards and skilled workers. If I can, I'd like to get an earth wizard to perform a survey here." Pipe dreams though they had been before this new revenue stream, Brolly was excited to boost the growth of Northridge into a full city.

Jack whistled. "Sounds like a good growth opportunity. I can see why Porter's stupidity worried you. Why, though, don't you formalize trade? Build an outpost near the dungeon, offer the kobolds protection, offer to build them a door."

"That's a lot to offer a dungeon, a door might be going too far, but an outpost and preventing adventurers from getting in would be a good idea." Walking toward the market square, Brolly thought about it. "There's no reason we can't build the defenses and let them man them. Or even have them hire guards from us."

Penelope shrugged her shoulders. "No reason we can't pull that much timber in again tomorrow. Then you can get your upgrade, right?" She'd started to feel a new connection to the others, the bond that fortitude she'd given them outside now pinging in her head to tell her where all the kobolds were and insight into their moods.

"We still need a pile of gold as well. Maybe have Robert mine while the rest of you haul trees in?" Travis asked. "And, when I get that, you're all having a day off of celebration, followed by another day off. That can be your first weekend."

"Our first what?" Confusion poured in to blend with Penelope's own, though she realized Robert wasn't feeling it.

"Trav wants us to have spare time. Where he's from, they only work eight hour days and they have two days of doing nothing out of every seven." Robert acted casual with his description, trying to back Travis up with his words.

Penelope had never heard of such a thing. "Trav, what's all this?"

"Well, I figured we are safe enough now. So, I want to give all y'all a bit more freedom. After tomorrow, I'll hit the upgrade button and you can have two days without having to work." Travis sounded firm and set in his conviction.

Raising one eyeridge and looking at Travis' heart, Penelope waited a moment for him to explain further—but he didn't. "Why? I mean, what if there's a pile of new stuff that needs doing when you get Tier 1? What if someone comes?"

"Then we'll deal with it," Robert said. "Emergencies are still emergencies."

Travis wished they could see him nodding his head. He didn't want to be that boss who asked his workers to repeatedly work on their days off, but for one-offs they could make things work out. "There will always be something to work on. I don't think a dungeon can ever be without work for its inhabitants, but it's important to me that even if you are bound here, you can have lives spent doing things you want to, not just because I told you to."

"We'll just wind up doing work stuff anyway, because the way you treat us already means we get to do stuff we enjoy." Her arms full of books, Katelyn had been on her way to the library with her new hoard.

"Trav, I guess you're the boss. If you want to give four kobolds the day off to do whatever they want, we get the day off," Penelope said, shrugging.

"Two days, Pen. Two days," Travis replied.