The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 39/100

Heart 5,475,600/5,475,600

Experience 970,615/1,368,900

Mithril 200

Adamantine 200

Mana 310

Poison, Greater 500

Deadly Scorpion Venom 51

Quest: Destroy another dungeon.

Quest: Half populate your dungeon: Workers 65/66 | Monsters 89/67 | Traps 151/162

Quest: Reach level 50.

Travis had begun to learn that having nobles and other high-ranked folks enter once a day was a big deal. Barons, earls, and high priests were all good—but two times now Stewart had been within his dungeon as King, and each day had resulted in over a million experience gained.

The first task Travis had given himself, after Stewart had given them a place to emerge into the city, had been to widen that entrance to something a cart could move through and, further, expand the tunnel that led down to the resources on his bottom floor. It gained him a lot more rock, but now opened the way for the city's miners to get to work.

Fife had taken to digging a mini dungeon while preparing for the last delve on the goblin dungeon, as well as being on hand for a new project. Travis had to face facts—he needed to provide access for the humans to mine. So, they'd decoupled the various mazes and boss rooms to allow for a direct path from the first floor to the bottom. It was extra wide to allow the miners of the capital to "delve" without any risk of being harmed. Topped off with a new teleport "trap" near the mining area, and Travis was content to let them mine all they wanted. He had negotiated a deal for them to tithe a percentage to himself in either the metal mined or gold.

Right now, though, Travis was letting everyone do the work he'd posted while he looked through Penelope's eyes and listened through her ears as Stewart conducted a special court.

Stewart liked to think that the courtiers that normally clustered around for any of his father's ceremonies were reticent to approach because they were trying to calculate how to handle a new king whose policies could be vastly different from his predecessor. But, more realistically, he could accept that they were huddling because there was a dragon lying beside his throne with the end of her tail making a symbolic arc before Stewart. "We are here to establish the laws regarding a new dungeon in the region."

The words, and the reminder that a lot of money was on the line, created a little courage in those assembled. Penelope watched one young man stride forward. He wasn't dressed to quite the ostentatious degree as the others, but he'd clearly made a point of trying to fit in. She could see calluses on his hands and some muscles bulging under his fine clothing.

"Your Majesty," the courtier began, bowing his head the appropriate amount before he continued, "would not the existing tariffs and laws regarding harvesting resources from the city's Verdant dungeon apply?"

Keeping his tone level, Stewart said, "No. They don't apply. Those tariffs were calculated to subsidize the city. The new dungeon is not here to subsidize the city." Looking aside to where Penelope was pretending to be asleep, Stewart cleared his throat. "Lady Penelope, is your lord able to speak with us?"

Lifting her head and looking around the room, Penelope couldn't stop the draconic side of her mind from calculating if she could get all the courtiers with one breath attack, or if it would take two. "Lord Travis is always ready, Sir."

"Excellent. Lord Travis, you have already negotiated with a trading consortium, am I correct?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Travis said, ensuring his voice went to Stewart, Penelope, and all the courtiers and guards present in the room. Stewart and the guards had, of course, had some time to get used to hearing him. The nobles present hadn't, and were looking around in panic for the source of the voice. "I hope it wasn't presumptuous of me but I have had good business dealings with the Sellswell merchant guild in the past, and already saw to negotiating a percentage tariff with them."

Stewart had to stop himself from saying "excellent" again. "I won't delve into how much your arrangement is, so long as you set a public price." This was the highlight of his day. Once they were done, he'd be back to the meetings to reassure every craft and commerce guild, as well as every noble, that he wouldn't make any changes from his father's decrees.

"Please, Sir, what is the nature of this voice? Is it your dragon?" another courtier asked.

The question was always going to come, but it was something Stewart had planned for. "The voice you hear is the dungeon himself. Lord Travis. I believe this will suffice to explain why this matter is unlike the Verdant dungeon?" He caught several nods, and took mental note to arrange for them to have an extra meeting. Some of them, though, looked as if they'd been served food with mold growing on it.

"The standard fee for anything mined of gold, iron, mithril, or adamantine, will be thirty-five percent of either the quantity mined, or its equivalent price in gold. Miners will have a lit, twenty-foot-wide path from my entrance to the resources, and there is a teleporter trap that can carry anyone back to that entrance. Your people will follow directions and not mine where they are not told to do so. There will be additional resources that will be free to mine. These are coal and sulfur." Travis was reading what Stephan had written down. "If anyone wishes to negotiate a better contract, you are welcome to."

"So that's it? We can pay thirty-five percent of the market price in gold for mithril and adamantine ore? What's the catch?"

"You can make use of my smelters too, though we'll have to build some you can have access to. They will increase the yield of your ore." Travis liked how quickly they figured that out. "Nothing. No catch. You can even have them for free if you give me that percentage when you're leaving."

Stewart shouldn't have been surprised at how money-hungry his courtiers became when they realized how rich they would get. "I will reiterate that no harm to dungeon creatures will be tolerated. They have the protection of the kingdom, myself, and the guards that I will have placed within. I will have a proclamation regarding this once the details of this deal are finalized."

"There shouldn't be a problem with resource generation—I can create many of these nodes a day. But I would like to review the process in a year's time and adjust the costs then." The shift Travis saw through Penelope's eyes—from calculating to an almost need-to-use-the-bathroom desire to exit the room made Travis laugh into the void of his mindscape. They were so prepared to ignore their earlier objections and worries in pursuit of profit.

"There are the matters of safety," Penelope said, drawing everyone's attention to herself. "You will not bring your own guards into the dungeon. If we see anyone attempting to bypass the tariff or steal goods from others, their sponsor will be held accountable for their actions. Affiliation will be established for everyone upon entry."

"That should conclude the matters of mining rights in the new dungeon. The only remaining thing is a few little decrees. Lord Travis is hereby a citizen of the kingdom and is conferred a life-peerage. He will hold the rank of knight of the realm. Lady Penelope will, likewise, be a knight of the realm, a citizen, and carry an additional honor for service already rendered to the crown. The dungeon Breeze, in Northridge, will be granted citizenship, and each creature in both dungeons will also be made citizens of the Greater Trade Kingdom—except lizards." Stewart looked to where the court records keeper sat and gave the woman an encouraging nod. "That should cover everything."

Travis thought there would have been pushback from the group against such a thing, but he could practically see the dollar symbols in their eyes now.

"You are all free to go." As soon as the words were out, the courtiers were bowing and rushing to take their leave. That he'd soon be speaking to money, and power, hungry idiots that he couldn't dangle a carrot before dampened Stewart's mood a little.

Stewart was relieved and pleased to see that two of the assembled group remained. "Lord Hubert, Guildmaster Drover. I am glad you aren't as ready to cast caution to the wind as the others." The former was a tall human man and the latter was a dwarven woman.

"I don't think either of us are as ready to be swayed by—admittedly—very enticing, shiny baubles." Sparing a moment for the levity of his words to fade, Hubert pushed on. "Sir, the former king was a great man. He will not soon be forgotten. But, we know he spent a lot of his time teaching you, Your Majesty, and we both know that it is vital to listen to the quiet words as well as the loud ones." Bowing as deeply as he could without compromising his balance completely, Hubert felt like a giddy schoolboy on the inside. He dearly wanted to put his family's concerns into the latest venture of deriving riches from a dungeon willing to bargain directly—but he could always smell a better deal coming, even before it had arrived. "And for you, Lady Penelope, as you have already shown willingness to make private deals, I believe I would like to avail myself of that rather than bully my way past… the impatient."

"I'll arrange an appointment with Travis' senior negotiator," Penelope said.

"I expect Guildmaster Drover will want to discuss her plans as well?" Stewart asked.

Dipping her head an appropriate amount, Drover replied, "Of course, Your Majesty. As the kingdom's metal-smiths, you'll—"

Clearing her throat, Penelope looked at Stewart. "They will be making weapons for the war?" At Stewart's nod, she looked back at Drover. "You will keep every bit of metal you mine, and Trav—Lord Travis—has an open offer to your smiths. It will lead to much more efficient use of materials."

Any annoyance at being interrupted was washed away with smug satisfaction and a little curiosity. "At your earliest convenience, Lady Penelope."

"If you both wait outside, I'll escort you to meetings once we're done," Penelope said. "Unless you want to take care of it yourself, Trav?"

"No!" Travis sent to Penelope. "Okay, the last one will probably be fine, but it is probably best if Stephan handles any actual negotiations." He widened his voice to Stewart. "Just nod if you want me to give Lord Hubert a better deal than all the others."

Dipping his head slightly, Stewart thought back to how Hubert had spoken—acknowledging Stewart's father, but not making any demands of Stewart. "Hubert, you and your father were both trusted advisors to my father, and I'd like to continue that relationship. Until further notice, you can contact me as you wish, though I might not always be free immediately. I think we have everything in order here?"

Drover, Guildmaster of the metal-workers of the capital city, worked her way through the offer given to her by a smith and a kobold. She looked at Axel. The young man had definitely been smithing for some time, as evidenced by the corded muscles in his arms and his wide, strong shoulders. The kobold beside him was not a smith at all, but a woman beyond seventy years old, if she was to be believed.

Choosing her words carefully, Drover worked through the offer again, out loud. "You're offering any smiths who will be working on the army's weapons, armor, or siege machines a class that normally only applies to dungeon monsters, but you can bestow on people—that will let them make more items with the same materials?"

"Well," Axel said, unsure exactly how to address a guildmaster, but figuring he'd speak as he would to another smith, "eventually. You have to take the basic Kobold class first. You gain experience for doing anything related to work a kobold would. From that you will get stronger and heal quicker, but it's a requirement for Kobold Crafter. That's where you start getting unlocks specifically for reducing materials, making better quality items, and if your smiths would be willing to work in the dungeon, they could produce items faster."

"You have to understand, Guildmaster, Axel is currently the highest level in this, and he is less than a third of the way through the class." Millie gestured to Axel at the appropriate moment. "This would normally cost five thousand gold, four thousand adamantine, and four thousand mithril per person, you understand, but we have recently come into a method to mine vast quantities of those without any work at all."

The amount of resources it would cost to make each of her smiths have this dungeon class was horrendously wasteful in Drover's mind, or it would be if she were paying the price. "How fast are those greedy sno—those nobles' workers—removing resources?"

Shrugging her shoulders, Millie smiled with a full set of sharp teeth. "It was deemed a good deal. They appear to be mining almost as fast as Trav can place new nodes, and they get upset whenever we get a run-on of sulfur and coal. We have begun paying a small premium for removing entire nodes of those."

"The other offer." That was the odder one, somehow. "Becoming kobolds… I will mention it to our retired master crafters. The choice will be theirs."

"It might seem strange, but Travis won't enforce his will on anyone, and they are welcome to live their lives outside the dungeon." Millie didn't want to lie by omission, so added, "Though being underground feels more comfortable now, and I won't deny that if he were to give me an order, I would have no option but to follow it."

"I appreciate the honesty. As I said, I will pass that on." Standing up, Drover thrust out her hand first to Millie, and after shaking she offered it to Axel. "Lad, would you mind showing me these swords you mentioned?"

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.