The Heart Grows

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Dungeon games? Yeah, they're a good way to waste a few hours. The trick is to know the map and plan appropriately. Of course, it doesn't matter if you get beaten. You revise your plan for that map and do a bit better next time. Man, it'd really suck to wake up as a dungeon heart in a fantasy world you know nothing about, barely able to even work out how to control your dungeon. Lucky that wouldn't happen to anybody, huh? What with only havingone chanceat getting things right, you'd have to plan extra-defensive A small warning here. This story deals with a dungeon that acquires its minions by turning various sapients into them. Once minions of the dungeon, they are mentally at the beck and call of the dungeon. This means that the story does explore that power dynamic from the PoV of someone trying their best not to abuse his power and people who find themselves being affected by their new position in both mental and physical ways. This story should be getting chapters published weekly. I have a comfortable buffer set up and on top of the weekly writing I am committing, a commissioner has donated two monthly writing slots to ensure this remains on a weekly schedule. There will be a stat block at the beginning of every chapter bar the first, and a handy map at the end. All my works come with aCC BY-NC-SA 4.0license. This means you are free to download, publish, and even make derivative works of my writing so long as you include this license, attribution, and don't sell the works. Keep it free!

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2022
Author: Damaged

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 3,032
Views: 3,185,917

What readers say about The Heart Grows

“The Heart Grows is a story about people making the best of their new lives as dungeon monsters. While the basic premise is that of a dungeon story it is not written entirely from the POW of the dungeon core. Focus of the story is on the lives of people inha…”
SmaugTheDragonRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“I'm going to go lowest score to highest. Keep in mind I'm reviewing at chapter 165, and have only reread the early 100 once, and like with a lot of stories here, the early chapters can be rough around the edges. Grammar: I am a pedant who only doesn't have…”
TheBaronFDRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

SmaugTheDragonRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The Heart Grows is a story about people making the best of their new lives as dungeon monsters.
While the basic premise is that of a dungeon story it is not written entirely from the POW of the dungeon core. Focus of the story is on the lives of people inhabiting it and coming to grips with their new existence. Do not expect a very number heavy, system or combat focused story.
What this story shines with are the existencial questions raised by the instincts of being a dungeon minion/boss/core changing the perspectives of the former humans (and other races!) and coming to term with the physical and psychological changes.
In the world of the story interestingly, dungeons are not some abberations, but all settlements work under the light compulsion of spontaneously forming alien intelligences. I do appreciate that the author has grounded the world in the realities of pre-industrial societies of cheap labor/life and constant scarcity of food and other recources for the poorer man.
Story wise, the events at times are a little too convenient for the dungeon to the point of shaking the suspension of belief. The power progression does not have to be an exponential upwards trend, but that is just my preference. The scene so far is set for a lot of conflict and interesting local geography, something that dungeon stories often struggle with.
On grammar, I would appreciate if there were more obvious transitions between pow shifts as fast pow jumps without setting the scene can be jarring. Though overall the style is clean.
Some character introductions, especially at the start felt a little rushed, I would not mind a chapter or two focused on the new adventurers or townspeople as they are introduced or just some slower paced chapters between new developments. I do worry how the story will deal with an expanding character roster going forward?
Overall, one of the best dungeon stories on RR at least in my book, especially if you like kobolds and believe in the supremacy of the dra
TheBaronFDRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm going to go lowest score to highest. Keep in mind I'm reviewing at chapter 165, and have only reread the early 100 once, and like with a lot of stories here, the early chapters can be rough around the edges.
Grammar: I am a pedant who only doesn't have OCD because a different diagnosis fit better. Damaged sets off the need to review syntax and word order only rarely, and the frequency has grown less and less over time.
Style: I love the perspective jumps. A problem I have with a lot of stories here is that I get lost in the main character's perspective and story beats that should be incredible become blasé. I do not have that problem here, and even the MC perspective is grounded. It feels like the MC exists in the world instead of the world existing in relation to the MC.
Story and Characters: I'm lumping them not just because of the score, but also because they ended up almost identical. Almost every story beat is compelling, the characters are always interesting if not always complex (in a story with so many, some get left behind). 160+ chapters in and the number that felt like filler can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.
The highest compliment I can pay is this: I carved out part of my day to read the new chapter when it drops every week. I have a dozen stories I loosely follow, but only this and one other get read on release instead of getting a backlog to binge.
NoissarRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I can almost say I love this story. I love my family like anyone one whom does not have a garbage family should. I can really enjoy food and snacks and nice weather all the same, but I will not claim to love them.
This story has me torn. It has a tiny bit of the Dark stuff that give real meaning to the things that make everything else great.
The first dozen chapters or so can feel a bit shakey and then at somepoint the baseline is set and the story at just over 80 chapters is still one I do not have to wonder if I feel like reading if a new one is up. It is a goto for sure.
PenguinsAreScaryRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
... because it kept me off task consistently. Yeah, I admit it.
I enjoy the story and I enjoy all the non-story effort that the author puts around it: The maps, the ask a characters, the comments. It's a very pleasant read. The characters are all very charming. I would love to see more.
Eris Dis HarmoniaRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Well thought out world building, believable and lovable characters, and action that has held me to my seat. I can't say I'm an expert in high fantasy, but the Author has made me feel that I could step out my door and into another world.
I can't wait to see where this adventure goes, but I'm loving every moment.
HyruneRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A wonderful read - binged the whole thing over the last couple of days until I sadly couldn't click Next anymore. The author's engagement with their readers and their commitment to answering questions genuinely pleased me, but it was the characters and the the worldbuilding that really impressed me. I cannot wait to see how Travis develops further.
InusanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The concept of "Reincarnated as X" is very tropish of late, but for this story it works well. Playing off of the Reincarnation tropes, this story uses resource management game structure knowledge, but handles it well enough to bring alone readers that aren't fully familier with it.
I found that I would keep reading chapter after chapter only begrudgingly willing to stop to do things like sleep or fix food. Characters are reasonably well thought out, and there is a good progression of story as it goes along.
If you are looking for a light read, that may take a while (89 current short chapters) to work though, this is a good one to pick.
LuesatoraRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
When I first started reading, I thought it was just going to be another cliche litrpg dungeon story. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but they have become so common that I find them a little tedious, so that have to work harder to impress me.
But this is not one of those. It does fall back on some of the common dungeon litrpg tropes, but it also incorporates some other ideas and concepts that are interesting enough to really make it stand out as something special.
I have re-read the story over from the beginning twice now and have still enjoyed it just as much each time.
So if you are contemplating whether or not to read this story, just think about that. I have read this story THREE times. So surely it must be worth taking a look at at least once, right?
NeoblackheartRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Normally I don't review the good stories. You only get a positive review when the story is just a step above everything else. This is one of those stories
Style: I love the style of writing that is used with this story. Every single chapter has a very detailed map of the dungeon and it's super fun going through the story watching as all the little rooms gets added. I can't point at the exact chapter but at around I would say chapter 80 to 90 the map gets a big overhaul that makes it look even better.
Story: I have read plenty of stories and this is one of the better ones. It kept me engrossed the whole time which is one of the hardest parts of writing a story. Many stories started good and then bogged down in boredom. They begin trying to slow down the mc to keep them from getting to strong and turn the story from a quick exciting story to something just slow. This story keeps you on your toes the entire time.
Grammar: Grammar was never a big deal for me. As long as I could read it and didn't trigger the image of Godzilla having a stroke trying to read it I was happy. This one though really doesn't mess up at all on the grammar that I could see.
Characters: At first there wasn't many of them but that soon grew. The thing was every character had it's own feel to it and that's a truly difficult thing to pull off but they all feel really nice.
VerdantOzarkRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
As Dungeon core stories go, this is a very interesting one.
The setting is a "genius loci" setting, where important places of power like cities (and dungeons) have wills and can affect things inside them.
The last 2 or 3 arcs have included a deep exploration into how that makes the world different.
The first arcs is where the dungeon gets built and is pretty good at being that.