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 429

Timber 453

Iron 585

Mana 9

Rock 609

Gold 1003

Leather 114

Leather Sludge 49

Lava 7

Explosive Runes 7

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Quest: Reach Tier 1

Travis had let them build up a little extra gold. With Penelope, Robert, and Stephan working at the vein at the same time (after a little effort to free space around it), they'd built up to a thousand gold. They'd then headed out to get a little more timber, and now it was time.

"Did you do it yet?" Penelope asked.

"Not yet." Travis was more than a little worried. When he'd triggered Penelope's upgrade, she'd been unconscious for hours. What if he did the same? "If I go unconscious while this is upgrading—"

"We'll protect you, Trav," Penelope said, cutting in quickly. She got a round of yeahs from the others that was a relief for Travis to hear. "Even if it's our day off."

"Here goes nothing…" Travis hesitated only a moment before hitting the button.

A deep, rumbling roar echoed through the dungeon. A feeling of vertigo struck every one of the kobolds and their ears were able to pick up the distinct sense of being deeper.

"Trav?" Penelope asked. "Uh, Trav?" When there was no reply for a whole minute, she sighed. "Looks like he's out of it for a while. Okay, the last thing we do before taking our break is to check the dungeon. Robert, check the entrance. Steph, check the warehouses for any signs of damage. Katelyn, you check the processing rooms and your library. I'll head down to the gold mine to make sure it's not messed up."

"How long do you think he'll be out for?" Robert asked.

Thinking, Penelope didn't want to give a false impression of what she thought was happening. "I'd say most likely a few hours. Worst case would be a full day." She dug her way through to the rear of the dungeon and filled in behind her. Robert used her hole to slip out and head down the tunnel toward the front before she closed it up again.

Just as she was done looking at the gold, Penelope heard a shout from the entrance. Leaving the vein be, she ran as fast as she could down the dark tunnels and rounded the corner to see Robert standing, staring at the front entrance. "What's wrong?"

Walking closer, Penelope looked to where the entrance should be. "Wait. Tier 1 is a second level?!" Taking the stairs at a lope—skipping every second or third in her haste—Penelope got to the top and saw an entirely new tunnel that led to the entrance. "And the dungeon shifts down? Huh, wouldn't have guessed that."

"This is going to annoy Trav. We're going to have to move stuff up to this floor so we can process wood and all that without hauling it downstairs." Robert looked around at the dungeon walls. It felt so strange to see a straight line that let sunlight flow in.

"Either way, we don't have to worry about moving all our warehouses down, though." Turning back to the stairs, Penelope was already wondering what Travis would do with a whole new floor of dungeon to work with. "We're going to be doing a lot of digging soon. Mark my words. So, what are your plans for today?"

"Steal some of your blood, start working on better ways to make people into kobolds than you having to cut yourself." Robert caught himself admiring Penelope as they got back down into the developed floor—and not just her cunning. "Uh, Pen?"

"What's up?" Pulling out her oversize pickaxe, Penelope dug a quick shortcut past the traps.

Robert was about to compliment her—about to tell her she looked amazing. He froze up. "Nothing. Nothing I guess. I also want to sample the sticky gunk in those sludge traps and see if I can improve it. Sticky gunk good. Sticky gunk that isn't flammable and doesn't get washed away with common solvents, even better. What about you?"

"I think I'm going to try making some spears. Some good spears. We have some iron and there's an anvil in the smelter, so why not?" Weapons were something that Penelope understood. She liked the runes that Katelyn made too, but now she was bigger and stronger than the others, the boss of the dungeon, she expected that she'd need to be able to fight. "Unless we can get ourselves a weapon smith or something, one of us is going to have to get used to swinging a forge hammer."

Robert filled the hole in behind them almost on reflex. "Better you than me. I'll see you in the smelter, though. I have plenty of glassware, but there are some things I need to make. Namely the glass tubes for the clock I want to make Trav."

In her library, Katelyn sorted through the treasure trove of new books. She put the ones on basic magic theory aside—those would go on the shelves when Travis was awake again—and started sorting the others. One was a yearly roundup of all the latest techniques discovered and perfected over the last twelve months. She leaned herself against a shelf and started flicking through it.

Five new summoning rituals for everything from a multitude of imps to grabbing possessions at a distance. She saw immediate usefulness in the latter one, given she could position it at, say, the bottom of the pit traps they'd set and then trigger it remotely to pull explosive runes in.

There were other, less interesting spells, nothing that she could find useful or fun. Turning her attention to a book she'd specifically ordered, she read the title with glee When A Little Fire Isn't Enough. It was weird for her to go for fire spells. All her life she'd focused on reducing the costs of her magic and overly efficient spellcasting, but here she was with one of the most dirty and wasteful magic foci as her primary deal now.

Evocation was fierce for its mana costs, but reducing spells and making them more mana efficient was her jam. First, though, she needed somewhere to practice. The library was not an option, nor was a random hallway someone might be walking down.

Making her way to Travis' heart room, she melted the wall in the corner that opened to the back tunnels, stepped through, then prodded the ceiling with her magic to cause it to tumble down and seal back up. "I could get used to this. It's a little like geomancery but with far more style."

Trying to judge where she wanted to work, she made a short bit of tunnel and then a long thin room, then joined it back to the library before pinching it off from the back tunnels. Humming away happily, she held up one scaled hand, drew her mana into it—her staff flaring bright with embers—and released the fireball to hurtle down the hallway and impact the far wall with a thud and a wash of flames.

"Okay, that used a lot of mana. Let's see what I can do about putting more load onto my focus staff." It was a low-risk-high-reward trick used by wizards since the first magic user carved a pretty piece of wood. This time, when she cast her spell, the staff flared into actual fire in her hand and the resultant fireball used around a third of the mana as previously. "Nice, but I want to be able to fling these all day, so I'm going to need to modify the spell itself."

She was about to retreat back to her library when she thought of something nice she could do for Travis. "I'm going to see if my magic works on the gold."

The buildings had all been fine. Stephan had even checked on the donkey and found them upset, but quickly calmed with a quick petting and a handful of oat mash. Each time they went out to cut wood, he'd check his traps and bring any extra game inside and skin them, but now the tannery was full of hides and he had plans.

Timber was easily acquired, he only needed to think about the dimensions of the wood and he could pull it out from behind his back. The first frame he made was big. Big enough to hold not just a normal sized kobold, but Penelope.

He knew there were clever ways carpenters could join wood together without bindings, but he wasn't skilled enough with joinery to manage those. Instead, he made notches in each length near the ends and used leather twine to bind the timbers into a box shape. Next he stitched several hides together and stretched the leather out over the frame, securing it with more stitching.

The result, when he was done, was a soft suspension bed that would be perfectly sized for Penelope. Fetching more timber—shorter this time—he repeated the process three more times with smaller frames and less hides.

Strutting a little as he carried the beds into Travis' heart room, Stephan stacked them against the wall with a sense of accomplishment—just in time to hear swearing coming from the smelter. Scratching his head, he decided to ignore it and go back to working with the leather in the tannery. He wanted to make more rope.

"That should have hurt." Robert looked at the glass on his hand with curiosity. It was hot—he'd heated it in the flames himself—and now it was a ball of still-glowing-red putty in his hand. "I guess there are some advantages to being a kobold. Oh well, I'll just toss it in again."

He was trying to make a thin tube of glass with a tiny hole in the middle to use to meter the water flow in the clock he planned. The problem was that while he needed a hot fire, Penelope was using the same fire to heat iron. "You got it too hot."

"No, I got the fire just right—for working iron. We need another smelter, clearly." Penelope gestured at the spear-tip she was working on.

Smooshing the glass into a ball in his hands, Robert shrugged. "Well, we have another whole day. I call next on the smelter. Who knows, maybe Trav will get a proper glass blowing room or even an alchemy room?"

"There's a good chance of it, though you'll probably have to do some alchemy before that might pop up. I wonder how he's dealing with this?"

"He's probably relaxed and analytical or screaming in panic. Maybe both at the same time." Smoothing out the surface of the glass with his hands, Robert realized his scales were actually polishing it. Tilting his head to the side a little, he kept at it.

"Yeah. More of the later lately. He seems intent on making life in here pretty good—for kobolds." Satisfied with her first effort, Penelope set it aside and grabbed another piece of iron. "What are your thoughts for spears?"

"To avoid using them at all opportunity. If I still have an explosive flask left, I'd rather drink it than use a spear." Robert kept working on the sphere, curious as to what it would end up like when he was done.

"It's weird to have nothing to do. I mean, as an adventurer and dungeon delver I had a lot of downtime, but I—" Freezing, her hammer held high as she was about to start working on the next spearhead, Penelope started grinning like a fool. "We need to make a still."

"We'd have to go into town and get some copper or, preferably, copper piping." Though his hands still worked on the glass, Robert's mind was now rushing around to come up with all the objects he'd need. "I have the temperature gauges, and I can make the rest with enough copper and time, but we need that copper."

"You and your sister could go back—"

Robert jerked as if hit. "Not Katelyn. If she gets in on this, we'll never hear the end of it. If we just hand her a drink, she's fine, but don't ever let my sister help you refine any process. Ever."

Waiting a while to let her mind digest that, Penelope hammered the next spearhead into shape. "I could go in alone, I guess. Hey, could you make me up a hundred gold for the copper—Oh, and I'll need a grindstone for this too, so make it one-fifty."

Setting the glass sphere down in the crate with the rest of his glass-blowing supplies, Robert stood up. "I got it. I'll just go next door and grab the gold."