The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 2/10

Heart 6400/6400

Experience 100/1600

Workers 5/15

Monsters 0/16+1

Traps 13/25+4

Rooms 19

Food 312

Timber 583

Iron 351

Steel 0

Charcoal 0

Mana 18

Rock 843

Gold 1203

Leather 248

Leather Sludge 195

Lava 28

Explosive Runes 4

Triggered Explosive Runes 7

Quest: Have 10 adventurers in the dungeon at once

Quest: Get 10,000 gold

Even badgering Katelyn to get her to work on her own stuff hadn't worked. Travis grumped silently as she ate. He grumped as she yawned. He even grumped as she walked off to her sleeping quarters.

"Why doesn't everyone do more stuff for themselves?" Travis asked Penelope while she was hauling logs into the dungeon. "I tried to tell her to take some time to do something she enjoys, and she laughed at me."

Penelope laughed at Travis, only making his grump a little stronger. "I know you don't like giving orders, Trav, but that one was perfect. She's obviously enjoying her work."

It was obvious once she'd pointed it out to him. He was all set to figure out a better way to order Katelyn to have fun when Stephan and an adventurer stepped into his dungeon. It would have been panic-inducing, especially when two more adventurers stepped in, but he recognized her. "Fife and her group just came in."

"Do they look ready to fight?" Penelope dropped the tree she'd been hauling in, turned, and started marching to the entrance.

"They have their gear on, but I don't think they're here to fight. Fife isn't smiling, though." That last bit worried Travis. Every time she'd visited, she'd been excited and smiling like a little kid. "She looks dead serious about something."

"Here she comes." Stephan looked more comfortable now he was in the dungeon. Travis could hear him but, thanks to the lack of lizards near the entrance, he could only see Stephan from Penelope's eyes.

"Yo! Pen!" Fife didn't look like she was ready to go for a weapon, which made Travis far more relieved. "Heard you had some assholes come in?"

"They heard about the adventurers?" Travis asked Penelope and Stephan.

"Not all of them were assholes. At least one is working out pretty well." Striding up, Penelope gestured to a side tunnel. "Pretty sure I owe you an explanation and the first drink of our new tavern."

Travis felt he could relax. Robert and Ludmiller had both taken breaks, and all he got from Katelyn was long, vaguely growling snores. He turned his attention to the research he'd need to make this place really hum with experience.

First was fifteen days worth of research on Reaper. It doubled the XP he'd get from kills. Given how things had gone with Ludmiller's friends, Travis liked this idea. Even if they never had another group stumble in, that was a requirement for Timesink. Timesink was simple: Gain XP over time for having adventurers in the dungeon.

55 days in total to research them. He just wished he could tell everyone to research and get it done in 11 days.

Then he had a thought: if Penelope did everything faster and better than the others, would having her work on these reduce that time?

He also wanted to add sleeping quarters and picketing for animals. The latter, he expected, would be best as a big open area with wooden fittings. Then it hit him—how much of a town would fit in a dungeon? Travis had plans!

Walking behind the bar, Penelope was surprised to find there was a cask of beer already there and ready to go, as well as glasses and—strangest of all—little bowls of nuts. She poured four beers and kept one for herself. "So, what was up with them?"

"Huh?" Fife asked, pulling back from the excellent beer she'd already started on. "Oh! The idiots who didn't contact the town for info on your place and just came straight here—with that idiot Porter? Not a lot. Brolly asked us to come out and see if you had any extra complaints. They found Porter in town after the priest there revived him."

"Wait, what?" Penelope shook her head. "I mean, yeah, they came here. I didn't realize Porter was with them. Their rogue led them down the sludge traps, neutralizing each one, but they missed the—" It was too late now. The layout of that room was known. "There is a double-pit trap at the end. Not normally a problem for a group, but Ludmiller missed it and led the whole lot of them over that."

Curiosity was eating at Jack. "A pit trap killed them? What did you have at the bottom?"

"Well, Katelyn, she's a wizard, makes us explosive runes. She had some in the bottom that only go off when a non dungeon-creature goes near them." Penelope liked the stunned expressions she saw. "There were eight of them."

Brayden whistled at that. "No wonder they didn't make it through. The priest said you claimed the one survivor on account of her not being able to pay for the damage. That's this Ludmiller?"

Nodding, Penelope took another swig of beer. "Gave her the choice. She could either work it off for the town or with us. She chose us, knowing what that would mean. Maybe she should come pay a visit to let you know how her first day of work's gone?"

Picking up on the vibe and not wanting to give his presence away, Travis spoke to Ludmiller. "There're some adventurers at the door—not from your party. Pen thinks it would be a good idea if you went up and showed them you're okay. Also, there's beer there for you."

"Bee—?" Ludmiller perked up at that. She still hadn't mastered speaking with a mouth full of sharp teeth and a tongue that was long enough to cause trouble, but she could get basic ideas expressed. "I comi—"

"She's on her way up. I'll direct her to use the main tunnel entrance. We don't want to let everyone know there are hidden doors in here right away." Travis hadn't spent more than a few moments on the conversation with Ludmiller, though it did mean he lost track of what was going on in the tavern.

"That brings us to the other important thing. By a unanimous vote of the three leaders of the town, you are a dungeon under protection. Like with that other one they got, a verdant and animals one." Jack sipped the beer, content to witness a surprised kobold trying to absorb the full impact of what he'd said.

"So that's why Porter got arrested?" Penelope hid her smile—or tried to—behind the beer as she took another drink.

"Yes and no. They'd like to make an example of him for going behind the town's back, but the law wasn't in effect until after they'd delved this place. He'll get off, but it will be a good warning for anyone else stupid enough to try it." Delivering news meant Brayden didn't need to betray either of his clients' personal information. Plus, getting paid for a job and getting free beer was a no-brainer for him so far as work went.

"Yeah, but I know what that means. You need to map our dungeon." It was distasteful to Penelope. "That's a hard no. Even if it would get us protection."

Clearing his throat, Brayden nodded. "We have delivered the information as we were contracted by Brolly Windchime to do. Now, as nothing more than friends sharing a drink in a tavern, let me give you some advice. Insist it be someone other than us. Modify your dungeon for spirals and loops, make people go back and around in circles. They will need to see your dungeon's heart, but you could have some friends there willing to deal with anyone who gets the wrong idea."

Travis perked up at that. "I like that idea. We can pay them gold or whatever. Hell, we can give them lodgings here for life."

"Lodgings?!" Penelope had been so shocked to hear of Travis' plans that she'd blurted it out. "I—" Now she faced the curiosity of three adventurers.

Leaning back, a smile spreading over his face, Jack asked, "Who've you been talking to? You seem a little zoned out every now and again, and now it's obvious you have someone talking to you."

"Might as well tell them if they're going to become our hired guards," Travis told Penelope.

"I suck at this stealthy crap. I was a good rogue—never got caught out by a trap. You might as well say hi to Travis. Fife has met him once before, though she probably doesn't realize who he was." Penelope shrugged her shoulders.

"Where is he?" Fife asked.

"You're sitting in him. Trav is the dungeon. You saw his heart. The weirdest thing about this whole situation is he wasn't always a dungeon."

Walking into the tavern, Ludmiller looked around and spotted the group sitting at the bar. She walked over to them and had to jump a little to get onto one of the stools. "Hey."

"Wait, one thing at a time." Fife was trying to get her head around the Travis situation. "So you're saying that the dungeon was a person too? This is nuts. Were they an adventurer too? What were they? Where are they from?"

Pouring Ludmiller a drink, Penelope shrugged. "To figure all that out, you'd have to ask him and listen to his answers. As for what I think, he's a genuine and nice guy. He doesn't want to hurt anyone, but he has made it clear he won't allow others to harm him or us in any way."

"He nice." Ludmiller didn't want to stretch her new ability to talk too much, so she stuck to simple. Lifting the beer up carefully, she took a few goes to be able to drink from it—and wound up just shoving her snout into the glass mug.

"Yup, he is. Now"—Penelope filled Fife's mug back up, because of course it was empty—"he wants to hire you for the task you were just talking about. What do you want?" She gave her best smile, which she knew probably had a lot of sharp fangs. That's fine, in her book, these adventurers were used to dealing with creatures with more teeth than them.

"Gold's always nice," Fife said, smirking. "And I hear you have plenty of that."

"Gold is—" Travis was cut-off, though.

"Please, we could pay anyone a big pile of gold to do a thing and they'd do it. What do you want that a dungeon could provide?" Penelope nodded toward the mug in Fife's hand. "Free beer in here for life? What about new equipment? We're not going to be limited to iron and wood forever. Trav is already exploring the possibility of metals that would make you wet your pants, Fife."

Turning to Jack, Penelope tapped a claw on the bartop. "And you—"

"Jack," Jack said, when Penelope seemed to be fishing for his name.

"Jack. You're not a wizard, because you don't want to talk my ears off—figuratively these days—about how magic works. Sorcerer, right?" Penelope waited for a nod. "Okay, reagents. You want a gallon of lava that somehow doesn't seem to go cold?"

"The opposite would be better."

"Well, what about access to one of the best wizards I've ever had the displeasure to be stuck in a dungeon with—who has invented a new line of magic in the last few days? She's written books and is writing more."

Jack tapped his chin and let a little power draw a snowflake in the air. "New magic?"

"I'm sure she said something about that. Whenever that girl gets the chance, she talks and talks. Hey, want some explosive runes? They're great for dealing with anything you don't like. She makes them—I think I mentioned that already?" Penelope pulled three explosive runes out that she'd been keeping on her person. "Had some spiders recently. We don't have spiders anymore."

Travis could appreciate the angle. "What about Brayden?"

"Brayden. A warrior priest has little he requires apart from his equipment. Like Fife, I know you can practically smell the mithril, adamantine, platinum, and divinium that a big dungeon can produce. We're working on getting to those. What we also need is people. If we bring in more people wanting to spend time here, they'll need spiritual leadership." Penelope could see her spiel wasn't biting for Brayden as well as it had for Fife and Jack.

Brayden hadn't become a settle-down-and-preach priest. He was a warrior priest, he stood as a bulwark between people of all sorts and evil. "There are plenty of gods. That priest in town you took Ludmiller to—"

"Yeah, I don't have much for you but a place you could call home, other dungeons nearby you could test yourself on, and a growing city. We plan to get bigger. We want to get more people to willingly become kobolds in here. What do you want us to do to secure your services?"

It was a lot of little things. Brayden could see what Travis had planned—a dungeon that was as much a city as Northridge—but even the deal of being the sole priest for such an enclave didn't fit in with his vision of his future. "Let's go with what you're offering Fife for now, with negotiations as we go."

"I can live with that," Travis told Penelope and Ludmiller.