The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Level 1

Heart 400/400

Experience 15/100

Workers 2/5

Monsters 0/10-2

Traps 5/10+2

Rooms 3

Food 82

Timber 339

Iron 39

Mana 0

Rock 50

Gold 20

Leather 4

Quest: Gather 100 Food

They were arguing. It had been surreal for Travis to hear them at first. Penelope could talk just fine, but the guy had struggled to pronounce words—though anger seemed to be a great motivator. While they were arguing, Travis turned his attention to another problem—if only to distract himself from what they'd done.

By his calculations, his rock resource should be higher. He should have over sixty rock, but only had fifty. There were caps on health, workers, and traps, he reasoned, were there hidden caps on the other values?

Quickly looking through his menus, he found a new item had appeared. Storage Warehouse: 70 timber and 5 iron. Well, he figured, he had that.

"You didn't have to attack me like that! I would have left and not told anyone!"

"Bullshit! You'd have raced back to town for the bounty on dungeon locations. Admit it!"

The worst bit, as far as Travis was concerned, was that he couldn't just walk away. The second worst bit was he couldn't cover his ears—everything his workers heard, he heard. So, deciding on the most practical method possible to solve the problem, he set a new room opposite the timber mill to be dug out and the new tannery to be placed in the existing room.

"Ugh. Really, Trav? Just ordering us around?" Penelope asked.

"You know I can't block out hearing what you hear. You can argue while working, right?" Travis only had about four seconds to wait before Penelope pulled out her pickaxe and attacked the new digging task. "So, uh, what's your name?"

"Stephan." Looking a little twitchy, Stephan glanced down the hallway in the direction Penelope had walked. "Why do I want to—? You're the dungeon, aren't you?"

"Yeah, and before you ask, I have as much idea what's going on around here as you do. Probably less. One day I was living my life—in another country—next thing I know I have a dying woman crawling up to my heart and begging for help." The idea of holding back barely crossed Travis' mind—he felt he owed Stephan as much truth as he could take. "My name's Travis, but just call me Trav."

Walking toward the empty room, Stephan kept glancing back at the pink glow of the heart. "Y-You were a person? Human, I mean."

"Yes. The oddest thing, though, is I used to play games that were like running a dungeon, and for some reason I've become what Pen says is the first game dungeon."

Stephan started pulling bits and pieces out from behind his back as he built tanning racks and some drums. Now that he had two workers, Travis found it a little harder to focus on what they were both doing. "She was really dying?"

"When I saw her first, she was coming into the dungeon with friends. I only had one worker and no idea what to do with anything. Her friend shot my worker and then shot her."

"Sounds like nasty business, but I see why she wants to protect you."

"Us, Stephan. You're part of us now." Travis tried to put the best spin on it he could. "Did you, uh, want to bring anything here? I can make you your own room if you want?"

"You mean I'd make my own room? Appreciated, but this'll be my room anyway. I'm a trapper, Trav, this is my livelihood." Looking at the room, Stephan gave a content nod. "Want me to help—uh, Pen? I could go out and get my stuff. Could check my trap lines too."

Travis answered first, not wanting Penelope to argue more. "Go ahead, and let me know if I can do anything to help. I'm sorry it came to this, and—and I hope you don't think too badly of us for what we did."

Letting out a tired breath, Stephan stood up straight and made his way out of the tannery. "After hearing what she's been through, I can't blame her for wanting to protect you." He entered the room where Travis' heart was and approached it. Reaching out, he pressed his palm against it. "And, for what it's worth, I'll do what I can too. I guess we are all in this together." It still rankled, a bit, but so far his life had been disappointment after disappointment. Looking around the room, he realized this wasn't exactly the worst.

Focusing back on the here and now, Stephan could feel the very heart of Travis under his palm, which seemed weird to him. His whole life, Stephan had sought to deal with living things. Himself, first and foremost, but also his parents, siblings, and finally the animals he dealt with every day. Travis wasn't living like everything else was living—he was a hard lump of crystal that made a dungeon around himself.

Turning again, putting the pink glow of the crystal heart behind him, Stephan started down the hallway. Marveling at the difference that kobold eyes made in a pitch-black dungeon, he spotted the triggers for the traps as easily as if they glowed. "Why aren't there spikes in the bottom of the pit?"

"That was our first pit trap. Pen was going to upgrade it once she was done with the tannery. I guess you got lucky in that respect."

The voice simply being in his head was starting to almost seem natural to Stephan. He jumped past the pit trap and kept going down the hall, through the zig-zag, and out through the fake deadfall. The forest seemed more alive than ever before. New smells and sights met his senses, but he could feel an almost palpable sense of exposure.

"Feels weird out here. Everything seems too big and the sky"—Stephan looked up to the flickering sunlight coming through the canopy—"is too big and too close. I guess I have to put on my big boy pants."

"What am I building in here?" Penelope was still in a bit of a huff about Stephan. She could sort of see where he was coming from, but this was too important and Travis was too vulnerable right now. She looked around the empty room with curiosity, waiting for the work order to come.

"Warehouse. When you were digging the tannery, I noticed my rock stores weren't going up. A new building appeared in my menu that allows more storage."

The sound of his voice in her head reassured Penelope. She'd gotten used to him so quickly that it felt normal. She wasn't sure how she knew what she needed, but when she approached the building and reached out for tools and resources, they were just there. Shelving, huge buckets, as well as a sign at the front. "Eighty-two food? Two hundred and nineteen timber? What's all this?"

"That's my resource count. I guess this lets you know what I have. The room says it has room for two-hundred more resources. I am not sure specifically which one, or if it just gives two hundred more to all of them, or even just two hundred extra in any combination. I guess this is testing it out."

Penelope laughed. "So, to test it, want me to dig?"

"How much would you—Oh, right. If I'm at the limit now, I just need one more stone to test this. Then you could go get some wood and test the timber mill."

With a nod, Penelope collected her pickaxe and headed to the end of the hallway to dig out two new bits. "How was that?"

"I got fifty-two rock now! It worked!"

"Right, but now we need to test if it is stuck holding rock or if it can hold other stuff. I just need to get some timber, right?" Now having gotten used to the game-like world the dungeon was, Penelope twirled the pickaxe on her shoulder and it turned into a wood-cutting axe.

"Wait, that won't work. I've already had way more than the amount of timber I have now. You'd need… You'd need around two hundred more before you would have a chance of seeing any in the warehouse."

"Well, that sucks. So, what else do you want me to do?" Walking down the hallway, Penelope was aware how much her tail had changed how she moved. Each step rolled her hips, but the extra motion not only felt natural, but seemed completely stable.

"If this is anything like the games I played, and so far it has, there should be some ore veins around. I want you to do some digging to hunt for them. This might feel like make-work, but if it pays off and we get iron or gold, that means we can get some great upgrades."

Travis' voice held some trepidation that Penelope interpreted as worry that he was putting her through a bunch of hard work for nothing. She wanted to reassure him. "Well, if nothing else, it will save us some digging later when we expand a lot more." No sooner said than she found a bunch of digging orders. Swapping back to her pickaxe, she set off to start looking for shiny things.

Brolly Windchime watched, covertly, as the group of four perused the noticeboard. They were the first of the new breed of Northridge tourist—dungeon-delvers. When they reached out and pulled down the notice that showed the location of the first dungeon that'd appeared, he all-but jumped for joy.

"Yer lookin' mighty happy there. I didn't see you at sermon last noonday, Brolly." Rupert, his features set in a perpetual scowl, had followed the captain of the guard of Northridge to see what he was up to. What he'd found was someone experiencing excitement and joy. He would have none of that. "Those types will ruin this town. Mark my words."

Spinning around, Brolly beamed at Rupert. "Good brother! It's such a lovely day, and has been all week—so much so I had my hands full with the new guards and their boundless energy." He didn't say that with the completion of temple to the Sisters of Grace, he had no need for hellfire and brimstone lecturing that was the brother's preferred topic.

The coffers tray had been hard to pass around when there were so few people in his temple. Rupert shook his head. "I heard about where you were. That bloody harlot of a priestess. Mark my words, Brolly Windchime, following the teachings of that sort will bring you nothing but trouble!"

Piss off you old windbag was what Brolly wanted to tell Rupert. What came out instead was, "The town needs to grow, Brother Rupert, and the teachings of the Sisters of Grace have been known to encourage more than just the sowing of oats."

Rupert spat on the ground and mumbled a dire curse under his breath, not that he put any of his willpower behind it—he might dislike how things were going, but that didn't mean he'd do such dark things.

Dismissing Rupert's mumbling, Brolly walked over to the barracks that had only just been completed. One of the four dungeon-delvers turned and looked at him, and as if she were some kind of human meerkat, the three others turned too. Brolly got a chance to size them up.

The woman had some light chain armor on and wore a shield and two-handed sword on her back, while a shorter longsword decorated her hip. Her expression looked ever-wary, her eyes flicking around even while her head was turned toward Brolly.

The first of the men wore equipment similar to the woman, though instead of a two-handed sword on his back he had an axe. This man, with lighter features than any but the half-elf in town, had a warm and welcoming smile.

The third party member was short, stout, and carried a small steel shield buckled to his left arm. He carried the usual assortment of knives for an adventurer, but whatever primary weapon he preferred seemed missing. His expression was that of surprise when he saw Brolly, raising one side of his fuzzy unibrow.

Finally, was a young man with fuzzy red hair holding a thin stick made of willow. He didn't have the robes of a mage, but there were a lot of tells that physical combat wasn't his specialty—not the least of which being the fact the gem on the end of his staff was glowing slightly.

It was that third man who stepped forward and thrust a hand out toward Brolly. "Brolly Windchime?" When Brolly didn't reply, he went on. "Brayden, Brayden Smith! Come on, you have to recognize me!"

It took Brolly far too long to remember. "Bray-the-Ass?" Skipping the handshake, Brolly grabbed his friend around the shoulder. "It's been too long! Are you raiding dungeons now?"

"Only with the meanest bunch of dungeoneers you're ever gonna meet. This is Jack"—Brayden pointed at the mage—"and the other two are Porter and Fife. Here, we saw a dungeon on our way into town, but it wasn't the one you have on the map here."

"Now you done it, Brayden. I don't think I've ever seen a guardsman look so happy." Leaning forward, Fife waved her hand before Brolly's face and laughed. "You do have a bounty on dungeon information, right?"

Shaking off his shock, Brolly gestured to the barracks. "We have a bar in here. Let me get us all a drink and talk about it. Rates are standard for dungeon-delving—you have my word on it. What type of dungeon is it, to start with?"

Staring, Brolly shook his head. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it."

"We poked our heads in, it's got rabbits for workers, digging out the whole interior as a huge open field. The theme seems to be Verdant, there're trees, grasslands, and not a single predator." Brayden could still feel the weight of coins in his belt pouch. "You'll want to fence this off, build a tower nearby, and get farmers down here. Also, find something to feed this that isn't its own animals."

"Yeah. I must admit I didn't expect there to be something like this as one of our dungeons. Less adventurers will come for this, but the gains to the town will be immense." Pulling out a sheaf of paper, Brolly started taking notes of the ground around the dungeon entrance. "Are you heading to the one up north?"

"Yeah. With Jack's magic and a solid shield-wall, we should be able to deal with swarms and the bigger vermin that tend to fill such places. Rot will still be a problem but with Brayden along we will be able to at least poke our heads in the door without dying," Porter, the man with the axe and shield, said.