> Dungeon Status:

>

> Tier 1

> Level 2/10

>

> Heart 6400/6400

> Experience 100/1600

> Workers 4/15

> Monsters 0/16+1

> Traps 11/25+4

> Rooms 17

> Food 312

> Timber 283

> Iron 481

> Steel 0

> Charcoal 0

> Mana 17

> Rock 638

> Gold 1603

> Leather 248

> Leather Sludge 195

> Lava 28

> Explosive Runes 3

> Triggered Explosive Runes 2

>

> Quest: Have 10 adventurers in the dungeon at once

> Quest: Kill an adventuring party

Travis was still looking through what had changed when Penelope brought back Ludmiller to the dungeon. To him, both looked annoyed at the situation. "What's going on? Did she change her mind?"

"No, Trav, she didn't change her mind. We ran into a priest in town and, as luck would have it, he got right to the crux of the matter for us." Penelope entered the lower dungeon and headed away from the traps. "You have a light?" she asked Ludmiller.

Reaching into her jacket, Ludmiller pulled out an alchemy light. "Yeah. My party used to handle the light for me, but I kept one of these anyway. Girl can't be too careful."

"Yeah, I hear that. This whole thing started for me when my old party made it clear they didn't want me anymore—by shooting me and leaving me for dead in here. The company I keep now is a lot better, trust me."

Watching Penelope lead the adventurer down the hall and through a wall, Travis felt nervous. Another person to convert? Also, that new quest was pretty big, but now he had a definite plan for how he was going to get XP and grow without becoming known as the murder-hole.

"You won't need your light anymore. Look how bright Trav has gotten." Penelope led her charge toward the heart room.

"'Trav'? What do you mean bright?" Ludmiller froze at the tunnel that led out into the heart chamber. Her eyes were locked on Travis and her mouth hung open.

"Hey, Trav. So long story short, spending her life in here is preferable to spending a life of hard labor for the town. I think Robert and Katelyn should watch this. I'd really like it if I didn't have to cut myself for every convert." Walking up to his crystal heart, Penelope pressed her hand flat on it, palm firm against a large facet.

The bond Travis shared with Penelope would have brought a smile to his face—if he had a face. She had always been there and always been strong. "Hey, you know how Katelyn took out those last two?"

"Yeah?" Pulling a knife out, Penelope brought the sharp blade to her palm and struggled to make a cut.

"I got level two from that. Hey, hold up for Robert and Katelyn."

----------------------------------------

Robert, Katelyn, and Stephan all walked into the heart room together, looking at the new recruit. Penelope gave a wave at them. "Hey."

"I need a sample of that, and I want to try something else first. Can I borrow a knife?" Robert pulled out small vials with stoppers and offered one to Penelope. He sliced his own palm with the knife and leaked some of his bluish blood into the second vial, stoppered it, and smeared his palm on Travis' heart. "How is that, Trav?"

"I got nothing. Pen, you want to go now?" Travis asked.

Using the back of her arm to clean the crystal, Penelope opened her hand and pressed her palm to it. "Now?"

Travis's heart seemed to flare a little brighter. "Yeah! Ask her to step closer."

"Step closer, I'll catch you." Penelope kept close and made ready to grab for Ludmiller when she inevitably fell—and she did a moment later. The way she just shrank into her clothing, a glittering wave of scales spreading over her body as she rapidly transformed, was the best tell for Penelope.

"Oh!" Travis' shout caught them all off-guard. "I just figured out what I got for reaching level two—two of the warehouses got upgraded for free. Also, her turning kobold satisfied the quest to kill an adventuring party. All the traps reset for free!"

Shaking her head and looking around, Ludmiller tried to ask who was the new voice and where was it coming from. What came out of her muzzle was an incoherent whine when she bit her own tongue.

"Just relax. Calm down. Try making sounds with your mouth and throat until you can figure out how to make normal word-sounds." Penelope helped Ludmiller to stand, and kept an arm around her just in case the newest kobold in the dungeon fell again. "Hey, Trav, how about we set a special day off for new kobolds to get used to their bodies?"

"Sure," Travis said.

Clearing his throat, Stephan walked past the two siblings. He'd spotted both times that Ludmiller had jumped at Travis' voice. "That's Travis, just call him Trav. He's the dungeon itself. You'll get used to him being able to talk in your head. For now just focus on trying to learn how to speak."

Sighing and giving a nod, Ludmiller looked down at what had become of her hands. Her digits were finer, sharp claws on their tips, and scaled with a mottled light green compared to the darker color of the rest of her scales. Reaching down to her hip, to where her daggers should have been, she remembered that she was technically still a prisoner.

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"Hey, looking for these?" Penelope held out Ludmiller's weapon belt, complete with the daggers, hidden knives, and minor tools of the trade every dungeon-delving rogue (or kobold) would need. "You're in this now, that makes you worth trusting."

Taking her gear and strapping it on—then having to loop it around her waist a second time so it wouldn't fall off—Ludmiller nodded. After a few attempts at thanking Penelope, and only managing barks, she gave up for the moment.

Travis' made a small sound in their heads to get everyone's attention. "Okay, so we need a lot of gold for some upgrades, and that means a lot of storage. If anyone is feeling up to digging, I can mark out a new area for warehouses. Also, Pen, we need traps in the upper floor. I'm thinking some stuff that will seem to be serious, but just waste any resources for anyone trying to make a point of attacking.

"Keep them near the stairs, but I want to have a loop around to bypass them. There's some research we can do that I think will be the best way to get lots of experience, and since that's all it takes to gain levels, I want to reach the next tier-up point as soon as possible.

"There is a spell I can cast that will create new resource nodes, and the deeper the layer I cast it on, the better the chance of getting stuff that is worth a lot to the town. I don't care if we don't make full value for it, I want that town growing rich."

"Yeah, I'm up for digging. Anyone else?" looking around the assembled kobolds, Penelope nodded to Robert when he pulled a pickaxe out. "What about you, Ludmiller? You can practice talking while you dig."

It was the moment when she realized that while she had her things again, and there were no chains on her, she would be expected to do hard labor. Nodding, she looked around for a pickaxe.

"She needs to learn how to get her pickaxe and tools. Robert, can you show her?" Travis asked.

"Right. I was thinking of the best way to do this, actually." Walking up behind Ludmiller, Robert pressed his pickaxe to her back so the handle rested there. "Okay, reach back and grab the pickaxe."

"This is stupid," is what Ludmiller wanted to say, though in trying she managed to not bite her tongue at least. Wrapping her hand around the handle of the pickaxe, she pulled it out and before her. Turning, she saw that Robert was still holding his pickaxe. "Wha?"

"You just have to think about the tool and imagine it there. It's some kind of dungeon magic—and now it's magic you can do." Robert reached his pick up to his shoulder. "I can feel a pulling to the east tunnels. Are we expanding storage there, Trav?"

"Yup. Storage will be down here. I'd prefer it if Pen did the upstairs digging, at least until I can get more lizards around here," Travis said.

"Lizards?" Katelyn asked, her curiosity rising.

"Lizards! The way I see seems to be complicated. I can see and hear through all of you, I can see the tunnel layout of the dungeon, and I can see through the lizards that live down here."

"So we get more lizards? How do we do that?" Penelope asked. "Wait, explain it as we work. No point wasting time standing around."

"I'll go back to making those proximity runes. They worked well, I feel." The delight Katelyn felt for how well the special trap had worked was evident in the way her staff flared and shed cinders onto the surrounding floor. Turning, she started to saunter off, already reaching behind her to pull out a stone to start work on.

Following Robert, Ludmiller had way too many questions to not be able to speak. As they approached a T intersection in the tunnels, Robert walked up to it and dug quickly, ripping into the stone there and creating a hole.

"This is how we get around the traps. There's no point in making the most amazing trap hall in the dungeon if we can't get past it ourselves. Just make sure to seal it up behind you when you're done." Robert turned right and felt the pull of a lot of digging work waiting to be done. "Can you feel that? That's Trav setting build orders."

It was like an itch in her fingers Ludmiller couldn't ignore. "Dig?" The word surprised her with its clarity. She was proud of getting at least one word out cleanly.

Sealing up the hole behind her, Penelope left Robert and Ludmiller to the right path as she took the left. Up the stairs and into the first floor, she felt a touch more vulnerable up here, though that was probably the light of the entrance. "Okay, so right here. This will be the back tunnel around the traps?"

Travis caught the words from Penelope. "Yeah. The reason we're doing this up here is there is a research project that gives experience to me for having outsiders in the dungeon."

Working her shoulders at the improved pace Travis had paid for as an upgrade—stacked with her boss status and huge pickaxe—Penelope started ripping through the rock with her own thoughts racing. When she reached a corner, she said, "We need a dungeon or something, too. A holding cell. It'd probably be best on this floor. Much as I'd like it defended better, it's harder for anyone to accuse us of being up to no good if we can give the guards from town a tour."

"That's a good point. There's no room called prison or dungeon or anything yet, so I guess we just keep unlocking stuff. It was hearing Fife going on and on about wanting to drink out here that gave me the idea for all this. I wonder if that's how things are meant to work? In one of the games I played, there was brewing, but it was used to make your dungeon creatures happy. I guess we're supposed to use a prison to keep them locked up and get experience from keeping them like that?"

"Yeah, I'd say that's probably the intent. No reason we can't do it differently. We still need to make sure no one can raid us, and I like the plans so far for that. We could even make an actual maze in here, though a wizard could navigate it easily enough. Talk to Katelyn about that." Throwing herself at her work, Penelope could sense that Travis' attention had shifted elsewhere. She was fine with that.

Turning his attention back to the other diggers, Travis watched as each swung their picks with the same speed as Penelope, but lacked the power she used to break it up twice as fast. "You're both doing great. I think I might upgrade a few more warehouses, but I'll ask Steph to help with that."

As Ludmiller found, digging was oddly therapeutic. The act of putting pickaxe to rock was ridiculously easy for kobold bodies, and she was ripping apart stone with a pace and strength she wished she'd had as a human. The places to dig were marked, somehow, and she didn't have to think about the work at all—so she focused instead on everything that'd been happening while also talking to herself about the events.

Travis was the biggest revelation. The dungeon wasn't just populated with intelligent beings—it was an intelligent being itself. He sounded male, and she could remember the way Penelope had stroked the heart with her hand. She wondered if they'd been a couple before this? People could be turned into kobolds, so why not turn people into dungeons?

That was intriguing and terrifying to her. She worried at the thread of existential horror but it didn't go anywhere else. Travis had clearly wanted another worker, she was stupid enough to work for a party that took her to the nightmare of all traps. Now she was going to pay for that.

[https://excessive.space/images/dungeon/Chapter%200028-floor1.jpg]

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