Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 31/100

Heart 3,686,400/3,686,400

Experience 62,463/921,600

Mithril 5,733

Adamantine 3,364

Mana 6,420

Poison, Greater 500

Deadly Scorpion Venom 51

Quest: Kill 19 city dwellers.

Quest: Half populate your dungeon: Workers 46/66 | Monsters 35/67 | Traps 80/162

Quest: Reach level 50.

Travis was annoyed. Everyone else was getting work done while he had to manage babysitting. If it had been Mixie, he'd have been perfectly happy with that. The girl's endless joy, curiosity, and energy was contagious. He'd only ever freaked out once; when she was jumping up and down on Squishy while the slime was giggling (he'd never imagined a slime could giggle).

But, despite all the enjoyment to be had watching a little girl in literal goblin mode tear around the dungeon—he was stuck keeping Liz from attending the big meeting in the town hall. At least he had support. "Give her the next stack of forms. I don't care if she starts to get annoyed at us, I want her annoyed at us."

Blake passed over another stack of papers, each one needing to be read and signed. "I swear, Travis must have been a dungeon full of accountants in a past life. How he makes all this, and keeps track of it, I'll never know."

Travis wasn't upset with being made the villain. Dungeons were meant to be evil and bad, after all. Also, the opinion of one woman who wasn't an ally didn't have any impact on him. He was focusing on her complaint about the paperwork, mentally smirking that she was getting a little bit of what she'd inflicted on Christine, when he heard Fife shout.

"Trav!" Fife had backed up from the cave she'd just cracked open on the second floor. "I don't know what's in here, but it'll make a great boss room!"

"Sorry, Blake, Fife found something to fight and I need to focus on her. Do you think you can drive Liz into a mental breakdown by the time we're done?" Travis could see the strain lines on Blake's scaled face as he nodded very slightly. "Thanks."

Fife had dropped her pickaxe and grabbed her shield from her back and drawn her sword. Peering into actual darkness was annoying, given that her vision let her see perfectly in complete darkness within Travis normally. But, with her recent time spent in the goblin dungeon, she still had plenty of light sticks. Twisting one, she tossed it into the cave and laughed. "Cave Dragons!"

"I just got a quest for them. It wants me to tame one. That's not how it worked last time. Is this something weird changing?" Travis asked.

"Tame one? Okay, that sounds like the best option. I want pet dragons!" Advancing to the doorway, Fife braced her shield before her as several of the beasts within unleashed their fire breath at the same time.

"Pet dragons are pretty awesome. Ask Pen," Travis said.

Fife nearly choked on her own laughter before getting it under control and asking, "Hey, is there anyone else that could help? Maybe Huntress or even Breathy?"

"'Breathy'?"

"Shut up. It's a cute name for a cute girl. Uh, Katelyn would be helpful too. Anyone?" By now the dragons were forming up at the exit of the tunnel, taking it in turns to breathe over Fife. "Bah, I'll do it myself!"

Travis didn't leave her to do it alone. Reaching out his mental touch to as many of his new monsters as he could, he asked if they would help Fife fight some things. The resulting stampede, he decided, was totally not his fault. "I have some, uh, cavalry coming."

"Whoever it is, thank them for me!" Fife advanced into the cave and started by slamming her shield into the first dragon's head, knocking it silly, and then bringing her blade down on its neck. "I love this sword! Tell Axel I love him!"

Ignoring Travis' groan, she tried to push forward to dispatch the next dragon but came under assault by three at once, leaving her pinned down behind her shield and unable to make inroads on them. "Dammit. Where's that—" A roar behind Fife cut off her thought and, though she couldn't turn to see what had made the noise, the sound of her friends advancing to her flanks made her laugh in pure joy. "Bitey! Bitey Too! Come on, let's get 'em!"

Driving forward, using the wyverns' attacks to distract while she pushed in and dealt mortal wounds, Fife started making inroads. The dragons pushed back as hard as they could with fire breath and their stunning attacks—the latter were ignored by Fife, though she made sure to protect her friends whenever they were targeted with one. The breath attacks were tougher to deal with, and she shouted at Bitey Too when she could see him getting scorched by one. "Get back, guys. Let me hold the line here. Trav, you got more friends on the way?"

"A few. One of the wolves is almost there, some scorpions. Squishy is annoyed they can't make it there in time. He's a good slime, though, and is keeping the path to me locked down."

"He's the best slime!" Fife, her spirits raised by the imminent arrival of support, snarled at the dragons and pounced at one—removing its head in the process and then having more to deal with behind it.

She was alone again for a while, making no inroads but not letting the dragons out, when a howl behind her made her blood pump. She expected one of the big quadrupeds to rush to her side, but instead a much larger form holding a pair of adamantine axes and encased in as much adamantine as Fife was herself. "Wha—?"

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Slamming his shoulder into one of the dragons, Hreti let his bloodlust sing through him. His axes swung in gleeful arcs, butchering the dragon before him as he removed wings, legs, and finally its head. "Travis said you needed aid."

"Yeah! Damn wingless dragons keep surrounding me. You seem to have a cure for that." Fife was able to push deeper into the dragons now, getting all their attention on her while Hreti used the distraction to end the beasts. When there was only one of the dragons left, though, she stepped between him and it. "Wait!"

Checking one of his axes mid-swing, Hreti couldn't stop the other before it clanged hard against Fife's shield. "Sorry."

"Ha! It's fine! Let me see if this guy is up for being friends." Fife tried to hide the way she shook her shield arm after the impact. As big as Hreti was, his swings had a horrendous amount of energy behind them. "Okay, buddy, what's your issue? You want to—"

When the dragon snapped at her, clamped down on her arm, and tried to bite it off, Fife laughed. "Aww, just like Bitey. Are you hungry? Is that it? Trav, do you have some dragon-type food?"

"Of course I do. You all eat it, remember? I am a dragon dungeon. Just think food and pull something out. I'm sure they'd rather eat it than your arm." Fife, her body covered in a layer of adamantine, was the most wonderfully stable thing in Travis' life. The only times he'd seen her die were when she was good and ready to—and he'd keep doing everything in his power to ensure it stayed that way. "Though, maybe I could have Grace come and season your arm. A little gravy, salt, and pepper ought to help."

"Ugh. You're the worst, Trav." Ignoring the chewing, which might be starting to find the joints in her armor but didn't get past her hide, Fife reached behind her back with her shield arm and grabbed at something and thought, big meaty bone.

What appeared in her hand was the better part of half a sheep's back end—raw and dripping blood. The bone was hacked off at about the hock, but there was a lot of meat on the thigh. "Huh, I didn't know we got sheep. Well, would you rather chew on this than my arm?"

Confronted with something that was chipping its teeth or a huge leg of lamb, the dragon eyed Fife for a good minute and, when she bopped it on the nose with the joint and it got a good smell of the blood, it spat out her arm and grabbed the offered meat.

"There you go. Better than eating me, huh?" Fife kept hold of the bone while the wingless dragon ripped more and more meat off it, growling all the while but showing every sign of enjoying itself. When she reached her chewed arm out to pet its nose, however, the dragon paused and snarled at her. "Not ready for that yet, huh?"

A crunching sound heralded the dragon being done with the lamb and wanting more—something Fife was prepared to do. This time she lifted out a larger joint of meat and held it out. Once the dragon was grinding its teeth into that one, it didn't care if she put her hand on its muzzle.

"I'll admit, there are more than a few wolves in the north that would become your best friend if you treat them like that." Hreti checked the edges on each of his axes before sliding them back into the holsters on his armor.

"You speak— Wait, you're speaking dungeon talk, right?" Fife asked, looking back at Hreti. "When'd you join?"

"Three days ago. I'm still trying to get used to this. Astrid said I didn't have to, even Travis said I didn't have to, but my honor said I had to." Hreti leaned against the rough rock wall of the cave. "I've been avoiding you."

Fife raised an eyebrow and produced more meat for the dragon.

"You killed me." The words came out in a rush. "You stopped us from getting that gate open, you held your ground against our whole pack and we couldn't best you."

Feeling her constant life regeneration closing what wounds she'd taken and restoring her hide to pristine condition, Fife laughed, startling the dragon for a moment until it realized she had another leg of meat for it. "You'd have kicked my ass if my friends hadn't helped when they did. There's only so much one defensive tank can do against you guys. I take it that's your normal method? Overwhelm with numbers and violence?"

"It works a lot more times than it fails. When it fails, though…" At a loss for how to finish the statement, Hreti let out a long sigh. "When I woke up, it was with a great deal of shame. I had failed Astrid. If I'd just managed to knock you aside long enough to work the gate, we'd have fulfilled our mission. To die completing a mission is the greatest reward any soldier could hope for—to fail is the worst possible outcome. Astrid didn't look angry, though."

"She was pretty down when we first revived her. She didn't know I was listening, but we didn't have a jail at the time, so she was chilling in my boss room. I couldn't understand a word she said, but she sounded upset with herself." Fife ignored what Travis was trying to tell her as she produced another hunk of meat for the dragon as it let loose a belch of sulfurous gas. Travis didn't sound particularly urgent or worried. "Squishy is the best to talk to, you know? He listens, never cuts you off, and doesn't judge."

"Squishy is the slime?" At Fife's nod, he said, "I had never thought of it that way. When I need to talk and get something out, I will usually find something dangerous to hunt. The goblins of the rot dungeon are good for that. They listen real good when you're cutting them up."

"You want to come on our next run down there? I want to bring Brayden this time. Between him and Felna, we'll have enough healing to push all the way to the bottom!"

"Fife!" Travis had to yell to get through to her. "You can stop giving him meat. He's tamed and we got a new room to build."

Glancing at the dragon, Fife tilted her head to the side as she looked up at the huge head. "Aww, don't worry, little guy, I wouldn't let you go hungry. Here." She pulled out an entire pig this time, complete with an apple stuck in its mouth, and held it up to the dragon. "Don't listen to the mean ol' dungeon. You can eat whatever you want whenever you want."

"What now?" Hreti asked.

"Now? I get my butt back to work and finish digging this new training dungeon, then get Trav to help me fill it with traps!"

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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.