Active Quest: Prepare the Association for spring.

  Galad studied the list Hans had written on the chalkboard. As Galad often did, he rested his chin in his hand and absentmindedly tapped one of his tusks.

  “I hope I didn’t leave you waiting too long,” Hans said, emerging from the art half of the gazer research operation.

  “Only a minute,” Galad replied. “What’s all this?”

  “Did you hear about Devon’s tumble the other day?”

  Laughing, Galad said, “Yes. I’m still hearing about it.”

  “We’ve all been so focused on prepping to receive visitors that we forgot how damn weird Gomi is. Yes, people need a place to sleep and food to eat, but there are half a dozen things to freak them out before they get close to renting a room.”

  “Ah.” Galad turned and reread the list. “You speak the truth.”

  The chalkboard was an ongoing log of Gomi oddities that might surprise, confuse, or scare a first-time visitor. So far, that list included:

  -Undead roaming the Gomi forest

  -Griffon riders

  -Armorback guards

  -Titan bones

  -Bronzewood trees

  -Terry

  -The tunnel

  -The minecarts in the tunnel

  -The lake

  -The ferry

  -Sedimanders, camahuetos, and cockatrice chickens

  -Naked Terry

  -The sun

  -Dungeon monsters

  -Mazo’s hut

  -Gomi-grade products (potions, weapons, armor)

  -Tsumi rubble and destruction

  “Can you think of anything we missed?” Hans asked.

  “There are a number of people with imps at this point,” Galad said. “That could raise some concerns, especially with folk who haven’t interacted with wizards much.”

  Hans stood and grabbed a piece of chalk. He added “imp sidekicks” to the list.

  “Communicating what is and isn’t off limits might be wise as well. Curiosity isn’t necessarily nefarious, but it could get some folks into trouble.”

  Hans wrote “dungeon policy” on the chalkboard. “What are your thoughts on warming people up to the idea of living and sleeping in a dungeon? I’ve not thought of a good way to make that seem not scary.”

  “Because it’s dangerous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Charlie and I were talking about this the last time I was up top,” Galad said. “Gomi might be the safest place in the kingdom because of the dungeon.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Monster attacks are a possibility anywhere, but down here, they can come from one of three places: the tunnel, the Tainted Caves, or the New Gomi door. Those are under guard at all times on top of a few other security measures. Monsters could come from any direction at any time on the surface.”

  That was an interesting way to look at it, Hans thought.

  “And if the monsters do come,” Galad continued, “We’ve got armorbacks all over the place, Mazo, Devontes, and a whole contingent of adventurers specially trained to manage the dungeon.”

  “I expected the undead to erode that kind of confidence,” Hans admitted.

  “I think it did the opposite, actually. An undead horde, accompanied by a titan, didn’t get through our walls. As soon as there was trouble, adventurers burst out of the tunnel like hornets. Just a few years ago, the only adventurer here was Becky.”

  “Interesting.”

  “You don’t feel it when you’re around our people? How content they are?”

  Hans thought. “I suppose I do, but my mind really only thinks about the kinds of things that go on that list.”

  “And the disaster they could bring.”

  “Yes.”

  “I respect your craft, Guild Master, but things are going well, better than any of us could have hoped.”

  Active Quest: Enjoy it.

  “You’re right. If you have ideas for how to educate our visitors about this stuff, though, I’d be happy to hear them,” Hans said.

  “We should probably address the undead, the griffons, and the armorbacks right out of the pass. Perhaps at a guard station there.”

  “Agreed. How do we do that? Post a sign that says, ‘Welcome to Gomi! We have a minor undead problem, and we promise the griffons and armorbacks are tame!’”

  Galad chuckled. “That might have to be the way. We should also talk to Terry about who he chooses to post out there. Would be good to have some personable guards who don’t mind answering questions and offering assurances.”

  “I agree on that front as well.”

  After another moment of studying the chalkboard, Galad turned away. “Are you nervous? I wasn’t before when our focus was only on protecting what’s here. Now that we want visitors to like it, well, I’m not enjoying that kind of pressure.”

  “I feel it too, but I’d say it’s more anticipation than fear. All of our visitors so far have done nothing but marvel at what we’ve got here. Maybe not the Prince, but he doesn’t count.”

  “Anticipation, not fear,” Galad said, thinking to himself. “Yes, that’s a better way to put it. Like the hour before a party.”

  “You’re a great host,” Hans assured the tusk. “I’m grateful to be growing old here instead of somewhere else.”

  “Me too, my friend. Me too.”

  The Forgeborne training room had become an obstacle course of crates and barrels.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Combat casting requires more than accuracy,” Mazo explained to her students. “It requires timing, and timing hinges upon your ability to anticipate and predict. A Force Bolt moves quickly, but you still need to aim where your target will be instead of where they are to account for the distance it has to travel. You have to make the calculation while also not getting brained yourself.”

  The halfling directed her class’s attention to the cluttered training floor.

  “I’ve set up the sparring runes, but stick to Mana Arrow only, and please don’t aim for the head. Teams of two will start on either end. If you get tagged, you’re out. The team with Mages still standing wins.”

  A lady Black Mage raised her hand. “Can we use spells like Force Wall?”

  “Only Mana Arrow,” Mazo repeated. “We’ll make it more complicated later. Now, remember all of the lessons we’ve done on using cover as you cast, and mind your angles.”

  The Mages turned to one another and began to pair off.

  “Nope!” Mazo said with her voice raised. “I’m assigning the partners. It’s for your own good.”

  After the teams were set and the first match began, Mazo found Hans watching from the back wall.

  “You’ve got some promising students,” Hans observed.

  “Yeah, a few of them don’t suck. We’ll see how many stick around when I turn off the runes in a few days.”

  “I still don’t agree with that method.”

  When Mazo talked about turning off the sparring runes, she meant doing so without alerting the students first. They wouldn’t know the safety measures were disabled until they got hit.

  “Too bad,” Mazo replied. “It’s my class, and they’ll be protected by Stoneskin. Nobody will die, but they’ll respect their own mortality a lot more when they feel that sting.”

  Hans didn’t respond. This argument had played out between them several times before, and neither had shifted their positions in the slightest.

  “You hanging out for a minute?” the halfling asked.

  “Something on your mind?”

  “Mimics.”

  Active Quest: Decide how to manage breeding requests for monsters like mimics and shadow scorpions.

  The Guild Master groaned. Stopping in to observe this class was a mistake.

  Mazo ignored his grumbles. “I haven’t talked to Honk yet, so give me a little credit.”

  “Alright, go on.”

  “Has Olza ever talked to you about clean rooms?”

  “Cleaning rooms?”

  “No,” Mazo rolled her eyes. “‘Clean rooms’ for alchemy.”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “The idea is pretty simple. For volatile or sensitive ingredients, alchemists will use a sterilized room for their work to lower the risks of something else influencing a reaction. It’s a big production, but the effort is worth it for the right project.”

  “I can see the value,” Hans replied.

  “You might not believe me, but I believe just as strongly as you that a loose mimic is a dangerous proposition. So, I got to thinking about building a clean room for the mimics. The sterilization isn’t really the point, but we can isolate them and put however many sally ports you want between them and the door.”

  “Making a sally” was a military term for a type of troop movement. A sally port was an entrance with at least two doors, and only one could be opened at a time. When a person went through the front door, it closed behind them before the next door opened. If something or someone attempted to follow that person in, the sally port offered the opportunity to expel them before they had any real access to the interior. Or vice versa.

  Gomi used two sally ports for the cockatrice chicken enclosure. In that case, the intent was to keep them from escaping, which would also be the intention for the mimic clean room.

  “Dunfoo quoted me for some Truesight enchantments. He’s ripping me off, but I’d pay for them out of my pocket and personally recharge their mana stores. We can use potions in the meantime since there’s quite a waitlist for Dunfoo’s attention. As for the room, I propose we ask the tunnelers to dig one fresh. That way there’s only one way in, and it’s got solid mountain for walls.”

  Hans knew what was happening, and he was prone to doing it when people he liked really wanted to do something he disagreed with. What was once an absolute in his mind–no mimic breeding, ever–began to shift under the weight of steadily applied earnest logic.

  Mazo’s plan addressed his major concerns, and he hated admitting that to himself.

  Well, not all of his concerns.

  “What about the part where it’s a crime?”

  Mazo waved the thought aside. “Nothing’s illegal unless you get caught.” She saw Hans’ disappointed glare and immediately corrected course. “I’m only joking. We’d keep it a secret, of course.”

  “If it’s a secret, how will you use what comes out of the research?”

  The halfling huffed. Hans grinned. He got her with that one.

  “Okay, fine,” Mazo said after a pause. “You’re right that we can’t publish, but that doesn’t mean the knowledge won’t be useful. Besides, your concern was safety and safety only. Making it worth the effort is my responsibility.”

  “Let me talk to Dunfoo about the enchantments so I understand everything I’m agreeing to. If we do this, and that’s still very much if, we would build the room in the Tainted Caves. You’d have to be okay with that.”

  “I am, but why in that section, specifically?”

  “Mimics are already in that stretch of dungeon,” Hans replied, “and screening for them is already a part of going in or out. No mimics, even tamed ones, will ever pass through that last door to Leebel’s Rest. Everything stays contained, and no new areas get exposed to mimics.”

  “I can accept those terms,” Mazo said.

  “Alright. I’ll let you know how it goes with Dunfoo.”

  Quest Complete: Adapt.

  “I can’t bloody touch you,” Smasher of the Whiters party said, huffing for air at the end of a round.

  “You did well,” Hans said. “I had to dig pretty deep in the bag of tricks to stay in it.”

  Which wasn’t the entire truth.

  Smasher was a competent fighter, but his usual quarry–large groups of goblins or kobolds–rewarded bad habits and made him more of a brawler than a tactician. In those fights, wild powerful swings helped to keep space between him and the monsters that outnumbered him, and blocking one of those swings didn’t do much to help the goblin. If the blow itself didn’t kill it, the force sent it tumbling into a friend or two.

  Those habits were invisible to Smasher prior to his training with Hans, so none of this analysis was kept from the Silver. Much of his work over the winter had centered around tightening up his technique so a skilled opponent wouldn’t be his undoing.

  Hans was too skilled, however. Staying focused still mattered in a match against Smasher, but as long as Hans was paying attention, navigating the battle was barely enough for him to break a sweat. Swordsmen at Smasher’s level were predictable to the point that Hans’ impenetrable defense made the match look choreographed, like Hans knew the exact sequence of attacks he would see before the fight even started.

  The assessment that Smasher “did well” was genuine. He followed Hans’ instruction and made good decisions appropriate for his skill level, but Hans didn’t need to touch his bag of tricks whatsoever. Smasher was mature enough to recognize that he lost due to a skill difference. Hans saw no point in undermining his confidence further by emphasizing how badly he lost.

  Kane rotated in for Smasher. “You look more like your old self,” Kane said.

  “Not quite, but I’m getting there,” Hans replied. “I appreciate the compliment, though. You’re still welcome to exploit that weakness. I’d prefer if you did.”

  The tusk nodded. Hans had never told him so, but Kane’s skills surpassed Smasher’s in several places. Not by much, and the tusk still had a lot to learn, but sparring with Kane was a different proposition.

  His athleticism made him fast and powerful. While Hans was rarely tricked or caught off guard by an attack or counter, he had to work for every inch of progress with Kane.

  Each session was closer to feeling like sparring with Devon in the Hoseki training room, the match where Hans had his leg broken. When Hans had that realization, he noticed a dull ache in his femur before and after sparring with Kane. Whatever part of his brain was responsible for survival did not want these matches to continue.

  But Kane was right. Hans was feeling more like himself. The weeks it took him to adjust to his change in vision weren’t pleasant, but he no longer felt his missing eye was a glaring disadvantage. Now that he understood the timing of his technique adjustments, he could properly spar.

  And he hadn’t noticed how much fun he was having recently until Kane pointed it out just now.

  “Let’s get started,” Hans said. “We don’t have many of these sessions left before you’re off to Kohei to beat on somebody else.”

  The tusk was on Hans in a blink. The Guild Master used an outward parry to direct Kane’s sword to the ground. Hans stomped on the blade as he shoved Kane back. The weaponless tusk brushed off his butt from where he landed.

  “You’re supposed to keep this in your hand,” Hans said, pointing at the sword under his foot.

  Kane returned Hans’ smile with a grin of his own. If the Guild Master wanted a challenge, he would get one.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Monitor for independently grown sections of dungeon.

  Complete the next volume (Bronze to Silver) for “The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers.”

  Establish a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

  Prepare the first collection of job debriefs for publication.

  Learn to help your advanced students as much as you help beginners.

  Enjoy it.

  Prepare the Association for spring.

  Decide how to manage breeding requests for monsters like mimics and shadow scorpions.