The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 1/10

Heart 1600/1600

Experience 0/400

Workers 4/12

Monsters 0/12+1

Traps 11/15+4

Rooms 17

Food 29

Timber 233

Iron 481

Steel 0

Charcoal 0

Mana 17

Rock 640

Gold 1603

Leather 152

Leather Sludge 99

Lava 38

Explosive Runes 3

Quest: Reach Level 2

Quest: Kill an adventuring party

It was time, Travis decided, to turn his attention to magic. Katelyn had added a pile of new books to the library, and he could feel them as little wells of information floating in the back of his mind. Reaching for one and focusing on it, he found it to be like opening a Wikipedia page worth of information.

Only, of course, the Wikipedia page was lodged firmly in his memory. The book he'd opened had been Introductory Magic, and now Travis knew how mana flowed and was stored in a human body.

Starting at the beginning of the book, Travis knew all about various ways to meditate and restore mana. He recognized that Katelyn was doing that when she made runes.

So he tried to meditate.

The first instructions were how to sit, how to relax, and how to focus on the energy coming into his body. Well, he couldn't sit, it was hard to relax when he was made entirely from non-organic rock and crystal, but the energy—mana—was another matter. Around his crystal he realized he could see the flows of magic if he focused just a little.

He was in a hurricane. There was a swirling mass of mana around him spinning like fairy floss. Reaching out into it with imagined hands, he scooped a little thread toward him.

The thread was tiny, thin, and took all his focus to keep it from tearing. Travis had no idea how long it took, but when the last little bit of that thread whipped around and poured into him, his Mana ticked up by 1.

Mana Manipulation upgrade unlocked for dungeon heart room.

Excitement boiled through Travis, opening up his menus he found the upgrade in question.

Mana Manipulation (Dungeon Heart Room)

Cost:

4000 Gold

100 Rock

+1 Mana gathered

Can be purchased up to 4 times

"That's a lot of gold. If I get all of that, it's sixteen thousand gold. Okay, so that's cool. What can I spend it on?" He didn't aim the question at any kobold in particular and didn't expect an answer. So, opening up the menu for Dungeon Spells, he took a look within.

Fire Wall

Cost:

5 Mana

or

1 Mana + 10 Lava

Creates a wall of flames that does high damage to anything moving through it.

Collapse Tunnel

Cost:

5 Mana

or

1 Mana + 5 Rock

Collapses a section of tunnel.

Create Trap

Cost:

10 Mana + material cost of trap

or

2 Mana + double material cost of trap

Places a trap of choice with specified upgrades at selected location.

Create Lode

Cost:

50 Mana

Creates a random resource node appropriate to the dungeon floor's level in a random rock square somewhere within 10 units of an already built tunnel or room.

Level 1: Gold or Iron

Level 2: Gold, Iron, Coal, or Sulfur

Level 3: Gold, Iron, Coal, Sulfur, Mithril, or Adamantine

Level 4: Gold, Iron, Coal, Sulfur, Mithril, Adamantine, Platinum, or Divinium

Attract Lizards

Cost:

1 Mana

or

0 Mana + 5 Food

Attracts a group of lizards to the target location.

The last one made him giggle, but the one to create ore was amazing. "I need more mana. I need all the mana." It also let him see the progression of materials for dungeons. Just the name divinium made him shiver in anticipation.

Excited, he almost asked Penelope about it before he realized she was sleeping. Katelyn, however, was meditating. "Hey, uh, Katelyn? Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Meditating to restore her mana, Katelyn cracked one eye open and turned her head slightly toward where she knew Travis' room was. "Yeah, go ahead."

"I was playing around with meditating, and found out how to pull threads of magic into me. It gave me one more mana and unlocked upgrades for my heart to increase my mana regen. Then I looked at my spells and I am a little surprised by one. It lets me make resource nodes that depend on the level of the floor I cast them on. The best, for a 4th dungeon level, has divinium as one of the possible nodes. I take it that's good stuff?"

Travis could see the careful swirls of mana that Katelyn had been funneling into herself evaporated as she fell sideways in laughter. "Did I say something wrong?"

Trying to get up, Katelyn failed and flailed on the floor in laughter for a full minute before managing to recover herself. "Travis! Divinium is not just rare and expensive, it's priceless. Nations would bankrupt themselves for a few bars of the stuff. It only comes from dungeons. If you get to a level where we are mining that, and we trade it, Northridge will be the richest city in the world."

"Oh." Travis tried to recover his wits in light of this. "So how do we get to a point where we can do that?"

"Grow! More kobolds! More floors! More power!" The new round of laughter from Katelyn was far more evil overlord and less excited kobold. "But seriously, we need to get bigger as fast as we can. Keeping ourselves useful to the town means we continue to grow and they grow. Also, it means they'll get more books."

Katelyn froze and turned toward Travis' heart again. "Wait, you can build things to gain more mana regeneration?"

"Yeah, but it's not cheap."

Katelyn got back into a sitting position and looked at the notebook she'd been working on. "How 'not cheap' are we talking?"

"The amount of gold we have now, that's filling up our warehouses… times four."

"Trav, I like the way you say our."

"We are all working together. You mined the gold for me, the others will build enough warehouses to hold four thousand gold, and then we all get cool spells and stuff. Oh, do you like lizards?" Travis couldn't help himself.

"Lizards? That's a little—" When the spell went off, a small stampede of tiny feet rushed into the library and, in particular, where Katelyn had been sitting. "TRAV!"

The sun had only been in the sky for two hours. Sojourn looked at the dungeon entrance and whistled. "Nothing fancy so far. What do you feel, Harry?"

Extending his magic senses, his particular bent focused on empathic magic, Harry took in everything the dungeon was telling him. "It just got its second floor. If it's done anything with it yet, I'll dance a jig."

"That new? Well, we can hardly disappoint our newest party member by stomping all over this ugly pit. Come on, let's start. Just like I told you, we do this by the numbers and kill everything. If it moves in there, kill it."

"What about the core?" Porter asked.

"We don't touch cores. Killing a dungeon draws the worst kind of attention." Unsaid by Sojourn was you should know that.

Ludmiller advanced and stretched her senses to their limit as she stepped foot in the dungeon. It would know they were here now, but that couldn't be helped. "Wild?"

Purring, Wild hefted the two dark metal axes that were his preferred weapons and nodded to the rogue. "Got your back." It was a common phrase from him, mostly because it was one of the few he knew. He believed strongly that actions spoke louder than words.

A long and straight hallway beckoned, and Ludmiller knew she would be first in and last out. She didn't skip joyously down the hallway, no matter how clear it looked. Every step was spent in slow advance, listening to her senses like a spider waiting for a vibration in its web.

Dungeons, she knew, were tricky. They could use magic to place traps. They could cut you off from your friends with infernos or rock-slides. Despite what she'd told Sojourn, a straight and trapless floor was a worry that she couldn't overlook.

"Why are we going so slowly? It's clear to the stairs ahead, see?" Porter asked.

Harry strummed a gentle chord that hushed the rustle of clothing and the lilt of his voice. "Hear that, Luddy? Our newest party member just volunteered to take point."

"Sure. I love watching new meat get impaled by spikes." Ludmiller didn't turn back to look at Harry, instead taking another careful step. "Brace, what was it you said, it's easier to just let the newbie ride their talisman than heal them up from traps?"

Glaring out from the gaps of her helmet, Brace couldn't stop a grunt from breaking free—her version of laughter. "Yeah. Pull your weight or you're dead meat."

"I'd suggest not pissing off either of the lovely ladies of our party, Porter," Sojourn said. "Between them they keep us safe from death."

Always moving, Ludmiller followed the tunnel to the stairs without further criticism. When she reached them, she nodded to Wild. "You have point to the bottom of the stairs, got it?"

Wild just nodded and stepped past Ludmiller, the grip on his axes tightening as his own sharp senses told him that things would be getting exciting shortly. He liked exciting.

"Soj, give me some light." Waiting for the little hooded lantern to flicker to life, Ludmiller moved around Wild again, her hip brushing his lower thigh. One day, she thought.

The view to her left was a dead straight tunnel that led to darkness that even her own sharp eyes—backed by the faint illumination of the lantern behind her—didn't fully penetrate. "Left wall or right wall?"

"Follow nose," Wild said, gesturing with one axe forward and to a right tunnel.

Closing her eyes, standing dead still, Ludmiller did just that. Inhaling slowly, picking out the scents of her party members one by one and discarding them. She smelled kobolds everywhere, but down the tunnel to her right she could smell fire. "You are smart and strong."

Ludmiller liked the way Wild purred as she delivered the compliment. She'd given it truthfully, too. There were street smarts, there was magic smarts, there was even pure book smarts, but Wild had an uncanny sense of truly natural places—and dungeons were some of the most natural of them.

Advancing, now picking up more scents she'd missed under the smoke-smell, Ludmiller reached the next intersection and took the left branch. She froze, however, one step into it. "Sludge trap ahead. Strong or many." As she spoke, she pulled out two vials of general sludge nullifier.

Rounding the corner, however, Ludmiller was greeted with a horror of a sight. "You said these kobolds were smart? No, they're fucking terrifying. This whole length of tunnel is sludge traps."

Unscrewing the top cap of the first vial, Ludmiller aimed the pressurized nozzle ahead of her. "I only have enough if we stick to one side."

Taking the right wall, she advanced. The first two traps were dealt with by one vial, then the next two by another. In all she used all five of her sludge nullifier and still hurt her feet from stepping on caltrops hidden in the weak slime that was left.

The smell of the reaction was destroying her olfactory sense—Ludmiller was nose-deaf by the time she reached the last of the slime traps, and the thought of using up all five expensive alchemical potions was starting to eat into her thoughts. Stepping forward, she led the party around the corner and, just as Wild stepped up behind her, she heard a retaining pin slip.

There was an instant moment of horror as she realized she'd missed a trap. It was the sound that no rogue worth her salt wanted to hear, and it was right under her feet. She jumped—jumped for her life.

While Wild's reflexes were just as sharp as Ludmiller's, he didn't hear the warning she did and was too slow getting any push-off from the platform. As he fell, he tried to lash out with his axes and get a grip on the stonework, but the rock just crumbled as he continued his fall.

Landing in a roll, Ludmiller looked back to see Wild, Porter, and Brace tumble into the hole. Her heart didn't even manage to beat again before an explosion rocked her, deafened her, and erased her party members from the dungeon's presence.