Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 22/100

Heart 1587600/1587600

Experience 366807/435600

Workers 27/139

Monsters 9/141

Traps 114/339

Food 5665

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Mithril 922

Mithril Ore 0

Adamantine 917

Adamantine Ore 0

Charcoal 4008

Mana 33

Rock 1243

Gold 1057

Leather 216

Leather Sludge 215

Lava 501

Glass 483

Explosive Runes 30

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 0

Long Guns 30

Bullets 200

Black Powder 1500

Poison, Greater 500

Deadly Scorpion Venom 76

Sulfur 1058

Quest: Give classes to 10 of your creatures.

Quest: Half populate your dungeon: Workers 27/66 | Monsters 9/67 | Traps 114/162

Quest: Delve to the bottom of a dungeon with at least 20 floors.

Your raiding party reached the bottom floor of an enemy dungeon!

You gain:

20,000 Food

10,000 Timber

10,000 Leather

10,000 Gold

50,000 Experience

With everything that had happened, twelve days had never seemed like such a long time. His reward for Ludmiller's "delving" to the bottom floor (now the ninth) of Breath of Spring's home was welcome. Combined with a flood of experience from having thousands of people spend half a day inside him had pushed his level up and gave him enough gold to make some significant purchases.

He couldn't see the buffer, but he had started to keep a rough tally of what it should be.

A little over a hundred thousand gold, about twice that in timber and food, about the same amount of leather, and he knew he had some iron and steel, but not how much. "Okay. I think I have this figured out. So, there's about a thousand ore in each of the third floor mithril and adamantine lodes. We have used up about a hundred of each on various things—Fife, I'm looking at you."

Weighing about as much as a car, Fife shrugged her shoulders. "I am what I am; and what I am is a freakin' tank!" She was seated in the tavern on her new stool—one made of mithril. "You should have seen it, Trav. That crazy bitch kept hitting me over and over, and even what I didn't parry or block barely left a mark!" She looked around at her companions. "All I'm saying is, when I was still just an adventurer, if I'd run into a kobold decked out like I am now, I'd have been riding my talisman back before the fight even got started!"

"I'll take your word for it, Fife, and thanks." Travis wasn't sure if he could have stopped the woman from reaching his heart—not in the state Fife had described her in. "Right, so. We have three classes unlocked now. Priests, Mages, and… kobolds. Apparently the last one is a big boost to 'kobold performance'. Anyone want one of those?"

Brayden raised his hand. "I'll take Priest if I can change it later. How much is it?"

"A thousand gold. Let me check something with Fife." Focusing, Travis examined Fife's class and saw that he could pay to change it to either Priest or Mage. "Okay, that seems to be possible. Ready?" When Brayden nodded, Travis paid the cost. "There you go. And you have an ability called Focused Heal."

Concentrating on his own self, Brayden felt only marginally different. "Focused heal?" Saying the words resulted in a torrent of power funneling through him—and needing a target he chose Fife.

"Oooh! Tingly! Hey, did you know Breath can do some really hardcore healing? I mean, that crazy Northerner kinda was beating on me hard enough to outpace my regeneration, but wow that gal just kept pouring out the healing."

"If I can change it later," Tannyr said, "I'll take that kobold one."

"There. That one has a first level ability called Expanded Slip." It seemed far less obvious than the other names so far, to Travis, but he was sure it would be useful.

"Expanded Slip? Oh, hey, that's weird. You know how we can push through walls? I can feel in each direction that I could—just keep going." She walked to the southern wall, pushed through into the kitchen, then walked further to the wall there and pushed through five layers of rock into the tunnel before Wild's arena. "That's different. Trav, how far—?"

"Five blocks there. You have another two before you're into the maze."

Tannyr laughed. "Now this is useful. Tunnels? Who needs tunnels?!" She set about making her way back to the tavern.

"Right. So I need seven more. Pen, do you want to ask around and figure out who wants what. Also, what you want," Travis said.

"Mage," Penelope said, grinning without any reservations over how many fangs she was showing off. "I'm going to be too big for swords and stuff soon. Besides, what city in the kingdom has its own freakin' dragon mage protecting it?"

No sooner did Travis pay the cost than Katelyn banged the heel of her staff on the floor. "I'll take that too," she said.

Travis paid for a second Mage class. "Okay, you both got Magic Dart. Please don't shoot up my bar."

"Pfft! Use it on me if you want to test it," Fife said. At which point two magic spells slammed into her. "That barely hurt!"

"But it did hurt?" Penelope asked.

"I mean, a bit. Kinda hard to tell with Regeneration and Healthy. Pain is transitory." When everyone stared at her, Fife asked, "What? I've been reading more of Trav's books. They're interesting. Did you know tanks in his world are huge machines that can kill people from miles and miles away?"

"Okay. So, I'll ask Wild and Luddy when they get back from next door, but does anyone else want something to carry them over for the meantime?" Travis asked.

"What happens if I swap classes right now?" Tapping her claws on the table, Katelyn looked at Tannyr as she entered the tavern again. "Would I get to keep everything my Mage class does?"

"That's a good question. Okay, here, have the Kobold class." Travis paid the thousand gold again and gave Katelyn the Kobold class. "Well, you now have Expanded Slip and Magic Dart. So it isn't so much a restriction as something you can all work at maxing out."

Everyone at the table was silent. Travis wondered if he should break the silence, but it was Fife who got her head around it first. "I could be a wizard, tank, healer!"

Travis snorted back a laugh. "Calm down, Fife. You've been spending every day grinding XP out there on the wall. What makes you think any of us will get that kind of time?"

"I've been thinking about that, you know. Once all this is over, we're going to be mostly making profit from trade, right?" Penelope looked around, getting nods. "Which means we have traps and bosses and all sorts of fun things''—she waggled her eye ridges at Fife, and got a laugh—"doing nothing, right?"

A chorus of "yeah"s prompted Penelope to continue. "So we pay adventurers to delve. Give them a bonus per floor. Let them set a difficulty and arrange different paths. We could even cover their talisman costs."

"So," Jack said as he swirled his drink in his cup, "giving adventurers a direct payment for fighting, not having them risk their lives, and we get experience and rewards? Wish that had existed before I became a kobold. Oh, can you give me Mage, too?"

"Can you give me the Priest class?" Felna asked. She'd been sitting at the next table and listening to the business being conducted at the impromptu meeting. "I figure I'll start with that, if you are okay paying for—"

"Felna, of course I'll pay for it. Here," Travis said, paying another thousand gold. "It worked. You have Focused Heal too. You're helping in ways that don't require you to have scales or swing a pickaxe, Felna, but don't think for a moment that I don't value your help."

"I'm worried the others will want to move on soon. When the siege is over, that is. I've been meditating as often as I can, and I think Sandwalker wants me here." Reaching one hand up, Felna rubbed at her ear with obvious irritation.

Travis would have sucked in a slow breath, if he could still breathe. "Talk to them. Stratus and Tom seemed to enjoy their time here. There's also that goblin dungeon nearby, too."

"We'd need a tank for that, and unless you're going to lend us Fife, we'd need to track down one we can trust." Felna tilted her head as the ear seemed to need a lot more rubbing.

"Why not?" Fife asked. "When this is all over, it's going to get pretty boring. Smashing some goblins, orcs, and trolls seems like a great way to pass the time. Plus I'd be getting Trav credit for delving into the dungeon."

Drinking the last of her ale, Penelope said, "Felna would probably give us credit already, but there's no reason you can't ask any of us to come on a delve."

"We're probably going to attack it soon enough ourselves, right?" Katelyn asked, and got a series of nods. "So if you want to come with us on that, and get some experience for your Priest class, that should be fine too."

"If anyone else has a preference for classes, let me know. Otherwise, you can all have the Kobold class by default." Travis waited for the rest to speak, then said the same to every other kobold in the dungeon. The cost was mildly exorbitant, but well worth it from his point of view.

Quest Complete: Give classes to 10 of your creatures.

New Quest: Kill the boss of another dungeon.

Travis had a sinking feeling as he read the notice. The obvious choice was to persuade Breath of Spring to allow herself to be killed, but he didn't want to inflict that on her dungeon. He wondered if she'd do it for pay. "I hate this quest system sometimes," he said to no one but himself, and moved on with paying for all the extra people he'd acquired as kobolds to have a class.

After the meeting, Penelope was deep in thought about what she wanted. She had her pickaxe out and was making her way to the north-west tunnels where two adamantine and one mithril lode awaited her. Given she was the one to benefit most from it, she figured it was up to her to harvest the needed metals.

"Trav, tell me you have another mithril lode for me?" she asked, when she reached the first of the spots. The silvery metal ore was easy to break but way too light for her liking.

"Yeah. The lizards uncovered one to the south earlier today. If you get these, and mine that, you can start toward Boss Upgrade 3. Do you want to talk about that?" Travis also spoke to Stephan. "Steph, can you take these to Brolly? Uh, they're in the gunsmithy, sorry. I heard that he'd given his own gun to that sniper who took out one of the officers. I want to match it with a pair of pistols for them and a replacement mithril rifle for him."

"Sensible. It pays to encourage excellence. I'd suggest some monetary compensation too. Mithril guns aren't exactly something they can use to buy food." Having been reading in the library, Stephan gave Katelyn a little kiss on the cheek, stood up, and headed out with a bounce to his step.

"Good idea. Grab, uh…" Travis tried to think. It was hard to remember monetary value when he had an almost uncountable pile of gold. "Just pay them how much you think is good."

"Trav," Penelope said, "I think I've accepted it. You know what did it? I was facing off against those soldiers yesterday, and one had a particularly buffed-up breastplate. I saw myself in it, and it didn't bother me. I feel like myself, even now, and I know I'll still be myself even when I have more claws than I know what to do with."

She kept up her work, ripping the mithril node apart with her pickaxe. It was so peaceful to swing the pickaxe and mine. In no time, or so it felt, the node was gone.

"What I look forward to the most is flying. Fife and Jack both seem to have favorite wyverns now, even if I have no idea how one can carry Fife. The smiles on their faces after flying make me want this more than I ever feared it."

She moved to the next node, emptied it of its adamantine, and shifted to the third in that cluster. Tannyr was already there, finishing off the last of it while she watched. "Thanks."

"No need for thanks. This adamantine is going to be making more armor and weapons, as well as what we need for you. I talked to Axel—he's excited to make armor for a dragon." Tannyr's arms moved with speed and precision unmatched even by Penelope. "Where's the last lode?"

"Follow my directions," Travis said, and led them there. He watched through their eyes as the seam of mithril they dug to was whittled away. It was cathartic to see the numbers go up in his inventory, too. "Axel has been smelting it for you. The interesting thing is that he's getting XP by doing it. So are you, Tannyr."

"That makes sense," Tannyr said. "It would be hard for kobolds in normal dungeons to get fighting experience."

"Are you saying I'm not a normal dungeon?" Travis asked, trying his best not to laugh and say the line straight.

"You're both terrible." Penelope walked through the dungeon to her boss room, then walked through to her sleeping quarters. "Trav, if you get the resources you need before I wake, trigger the upgrade. Oh, and before I forget, you get experience for having had someone enter your dungeon, even if they leave again a minute later?"

Talking to Penelope in her bedroom always felt more intimate, somehow, than when she was in his heart room. "Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing. Put up a sign at the entrance. Have it say 'come inside, get a bowl of food, and we'll pay you one gold.' I'm sure that will go over well." Yawning, Penelope stretched out on the huge bed Stephan had made for her, getting comfortable in the stunned silence Travis gifted her with. "I love you."

"You're amazing and I love you too." The words were so easy for Travis to say now because, without a single reservation, he meant them.

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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.