A batch of visiting adventurers rode in with the merchant caravan, and a few traders were with them as they took a cart down to Leebel’s Rest. Charlie assured the merchants that the dungeon was safe for their wagons and their goods, but they were skeptical. Seeing an armorback sitting casually next to a guard just inside Gomi’s palisade had nearly made the caravan turn back then and there, and that was before they knew riding down to the dungeon was an option.

  Merchants were naturally protective of their wagons and their goods, as they represented their livelihoods, but Hans was happy to hear that a few of them left assistants on the surface to watch their things while they went into the dungeon to enjoy a clean Gomi inn room. Their first stay was on the house, an effort to entice them to return.

  Charlie believed one good rain was all the rest of the caravan would need to get over their fear of the dungeon. Anyone who wasn’t willing to try it before would break when they saw their peers escape the weather.

  Hans’ merchant of choice was one of the people brave enough to visit Leebel’s Rest. Hans was glad, too. He might have missed the merchant caravan completely had he not spotted the rotund man glancing about like a traveler in need of directions.

  “I knew from the day we met that you were one-of-a-kind,” the merchant said as Hans walked him to Galad’s inn. “I’m not surprised you have found this kind of enormous success.”

  Ignoring the flattery, Hans said, “I’m happy I caught you. I want to buy a library.”

  “In what town would you like this library to be?”

  “Not the building. The contents. It doesn’t have to be the largest collection, but I want a library as comprehensive as one of the larger towns.”

  The merchant replied with a scratchy, “Hmm. You’ve placed some big orders before, but this request is much bigger than any of those.”

  Hans nodded. “I know what I’m asking isn’t as easy as exchanging gold for goods. I imagine you’d have to do a bit of travel to find a good collection, then you’d have to pay the library for the privilege of copying their collection, and then you’d need an army of scribes to make the copies and probably a few artists to copy the images. I also know a project like this could take a few years or more.”

  “I would agree with all of that, yes.”

  “I’m good for the gold, and that includes making sure there’s enough profit in all of this to make it worth your time. If you’re willing to coordinate this, I’d give you a down payment before you leave and then make another payment every time you came to Gomi with a wagon full of books. If that payment is an advance for the delivery to follow, that’s fine too.”

  Having access to the wealth of the dungeon gave Hans a sort of high. He could understand why nobles and royalty felt so superior. Nearly any problem could be solved with enough capital, so the families with old money never knew what it was like to scrape coppers together for fresh bread, hoping it would last until the next payday. For everyone but the elite of society, the pursuit of money was a never-ending obligation with life-or-death stakes.

  The rich didn’t know what that was like, and Hans often wondered how a whole class of people could not empathize with the poor. Now he knew why. Having deep pockets made the costs of food and shelter so trivial that they held hardly any value at all.

  A couple years of having a near-endless guild budget showed Hans how quickly access to the magic of money changed someone. He caught himself failing to consider the actual costs of items on occasion, and that realization scared him.

  On the other hand, it felt great to buy a whole library so casually.

  “Estimating the costs for a project like this will take a good bit of research,” the merchant told Hans. “I can aim to have that ready for my next visit.”

  “What if my down payment was big enough that you could get started before the estimate?”

  “I like that option as well.”

  “Great,” Hans said. “Enjoy your stay at the inn.”

  Quest Update: Manage the ongoing establishment of a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

  Then Hans was off to make sure the new adventurers knew where to go and what to do to get situated. From the looks of it, most of them were Bronze with a few Irons in the mix, and their faces reminded him of nervous children. A little direction would go a long way toward easing their minds.

  As soon as he could, Hans extricated himself from playing host. He felt like he hadn’t seen Olza in days. They got to sleep in the same bed sometimes, but neither had the free time to hold a conversation or share a meal. When he didn’t find her at their house, he suspected she was spending time in a certain witch’s hut.

  And that hut got a little more ridiculous each time Hans paid it a visit. As he approached it now, he saw the thatched walls and roof of a round, one-room hut, as he expected. It was deliberately crude, meant to look like something lost children find in the woods in old stories. The last time Hans was here, Mazo had five pairs of fence posts installed to line the stretch of path leading to the hut. They were roughly ten feet apart, and she covered them with meaningless hand-strung bobbles–wooden beads, small animal bones, and feathers.

  Her latest addition was two gazer skulls set to either side of the hut’s entrance. Hans rolled his eyes but also admitted to himself it looked pretty awesome.

  “I told you it would get busy again sooner than you thought,” Olza said when Hans came down the stairs of Mazo’s tower. “You look exhausted.”

  “I’m getting by. Mazo, there are a few new Mages in town. Two Bronze.”

  “Got it,” the halfling replied without bothering to lift her head from her work.

  “How’s it going down here?” Hans asked, taking a seat next to Olza’s workbench. She worked in the tower often enough that she had her own dedicated space that Mazo never bothered.

  “Slowly. Right now we’re trying to record the readings for every spell we can. Becky let us record her Glow Moss spell, so the goal is to find enough data that we can recreate it.”

  “Why that spell?”

  “There’s not a direct analog for the spell in any of the other forms of mana manipulation, so translating it into something Mazo can use would prove our ideas.”

  “Ah. Getting close?”

  A ball of paper hit Hans in the back of the head. “You know better than to ask questions like that,” Mazo scolded. “It takes however long it takes. Science runs on its own time.”

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  “We have a good bit work to do yet,” Olza said. “It’s already led to an interesting observation, though.”

  “Don’t leave me in suspense.”

  Olza grinned. “My study of Tainted Cave reagents still has a long way to go. Gazer eyes for Truesight potions was easy, but tainted treant? Ground iron from the chains that bound a tityos? Gallons of mimic blood? It’s so much. It feels overwhelming sometimes.” The alchemist quieted briefly, as if pulled away by a thought. “But! We did learn that gazer skin retains mana, even in death.”

  “Don’t all things do that?”

  “There is still mana in something after it dies, yes, but that mana immediately begins to decay. Gazer skin doesn’t lose mana, or at least, none of the skin we have collected and observed has shown any signs of mana decay. Weirder yet, that mana still circulates. It’s moving through the skin at all times, even in death. We found that out when our mana recordings got weird. We had gazer skin too close to the device.”

  “That sounds like it would contribute to them being casters.”

  “Yes! That’s our guess too, but we haven’t confirmed anything specific. Sorry. I got carried away.” Olza straightened her hair and then her posture, as if calming herself. “What brings you down?”

  “I swear I was coming to visit because I genuinely miss you.”

  “But?”

  “But… I need your input. What’s the closest library with a respectable collection? Imagine if you could snap your fingers, and it appeared in Gomi.”

  “Hoseki,” Mazo said without hesitation.

  Hans sighed. “That’s not an option.”

  “We need the best!”

  “Too bad. Olza, what do you think?” Hans asked.

  Mazo shouted, “Hey. Don’t you want my opinion on this too?”

  “I tried, so I’m going to an expert who understands the constraints and parameters of a question.”

  The halfling scowled but didn’t speak.

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  “I’m biased because it was my home, but Raven’s Hollow would be my answer. It’s not the biggest, but it’s nice.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Why?” Olza asked.

  “I’ve got a lead on solving our resource problem. That answer is very helpful, thank you.”

  “Of course.”

  After a few seconds, Olza looked at Hans curiously. “This is usually where you rush off to the next appointment.”

  “I’ve got an hour to myself, so I’m going to hide down here and enjoy it.”

  “Sick of the dwarves, I bet,” Mazo mused as she went back to her work.

  “Nah. They’re good people.”

  “For dwarves.”

  “For people.”

  “I suppose they’re not so bad if they liked Boden,” Mazo conceded. “That was a respectable gift.”

  “I’m going to mount it in the guild hall, I think. Shandi says I should ask Thomas to paint a portrait of Boden to go with it. Apparently, he can recreate faces from descriptions, if you can believe that.”

  “If you could stomach it, that would be a sweet way to honor him.”

  Hans didn’t need Mazo to explain her meaning. She knew it would be difficult to see Boden’s face every day. That painting would be a tribute to his life, sure, but it would also be a constant reminder that his story was over. Mazo kept most of her sentimental items in storage for that reason. Despite her usual bluster, she said she wasn’t strong enough to wade through those kinds of memories every day. She needed to not think about them if she could.

  “But you do like the dwarves, right?” Hans asked. “I won’t ask you to admit it twice.”

  “So far. I’m looking forward to our run tomorrow. They seem like legitimate Golds to me, but that will confirm it.”

  Olza looked up, curious. “Which part of the dungeon did they choose?”

  “Centaurs,” Hans answered.

  “That scored a lot of points with me,” Mazo added. “Anyone who wants to put a few centaurs down has my respect, even more so if they run to that adversity. I figured they’d go for ogres or armorbacks.”

  “I did as well.”

  “How do you think they’ll do?” Olza asked.

  Hans thought for a moment. “Decent, I imagine, but I don’t see it being easy. Their party is a little frontline heavy for fighting centaurs, and they spend most of their runs underground, so the open field is a disadvantage for them too. That’s probably why they picked that battle, actually. A clean sweep would make a statement about their skill, that’s for sure.”

  Ewan’s party marched confidently down the spiral stairs from the Shit Shroom Inn to the thinly forested area where the infernal centaurs grew. As had become common practice, the observers–Hans, Devon, Mazo, and Terry–took advantage of the unique structure of the room.

  With the stairs coming straight down into the middle of the chamber from the ceiling, anyone not in the battle could sit safely near the top and observe the battle playing out beneath them. The stairs themselves emptied into a recreation of a campsite Hans and Mazo made years ago in the frontier. That’s where the battle began, so that’s where the dungeon started the adventurers.

  Six infernal centaurs would charge in as if launching a raid as soon as one of the dwarves stepped beyond the immediate camp.

  The dwarves weren’t running the section completely blind. Hans gave them the same prep explanations that all of the other adventurers got. They knew how many enemies they would fight, what they were, and what the battlefield environment was like. Anything beyond that was up to the dwarves.

  At the base of the stairs, the dwarves grouped up. Hans could hear Ewan speaking, but it was too soft to make out the words.

  He watched as Ewan went to each member of this party, grabbed both of their shoulders, and put his forehead against theirs. He told them something, they both nodded, and then he moved onto the next party member and repeated the ritual. When he had spoken to all five of his party members, he paused to look over them one more time.

  Ewan drew his shortsword, leaving his battleaxe strapped to his back. The other two Fighters did the same while the Rogue readied their bow. The Cleric held a staff, and the Black Mage reached into a reagent pouch.

  They all gave their leader an affirming nod.

  Starting with a slow, heavy beat, Ewan pounded his sword hand against his chest. Each party member mimicked the movement and the pace. After a few moments of thumping their chests in perfect sync, they split.

  Ewan walked to face the first charge while the rest of his party scattered. One Fighter ventured beyond the camp in the same direction as Ewan while the other stayed near the Cleric and the Black Mage.

  “Where’d the Rogue go?” Terry asked.

  Mazo pointed in the opposite direction of Ewan. The Rogue had run a few dozen yards from the party in the other direction and bedded down behind one of the wider trees in the area.

  “Interesting.”

  The audience startled when Ewan roared a long warcry, the stomping of hoofbeats seeming to rise up out of his bellow as they neared the battlefield. The second Fighter mimicked Ewan’s yell while the remaining Fighter, Cleric, and Black Mage were already eyeing the paths the centaurs were likely to take. They shifted constantly, correcting their ideal defense position as the enemy neared to put as much of the terrain to use as possible.

  The Rogue stayed still and didn’t so much as peek out from their hiding place.

  Two of the centaurs set their sights on Ewan, charging side by side with a gap in between. Centaurs knew that their speed was strongest in a straight line and weakest during sharp turns and pivots. They used the dual charge to account for an agile, dangerous target. If Ewan held his ground, dodging to the left or right would not easily put him out of range of either centaur.

  If he sought cover too soon, the centaurs would have room to adjust and target the dwarf anyway. If he turned to run, they would chase him down and put a spear between his shoulder blades.

  Ewan didn’t move from his position. He crouched, his sword hand bouncing in nervous anticipation. The dwarf clearly had a plan, but Hans couldn’t guess what it was.

  The lead two centaurs reached a point where they were four horse-strides, at most, from the dwarf.

  A dirt wall the height of Ewan’s chin burst from the ground directly in front of the dwarf and was wide enough that both centaurs had no choice but to jump it, which they did easily enough. At the same time, Ewan crouched beneath the wall.

  The sudden change in terrain disrupted the centaurs’ timing and targeting. The wall sent them up while the dwarf lowered himself to the ground, adding two to three feet to how far a spearhead needed to travel to find its mark. The centaurs didn’t have enough time to correct their positioning, so their spears touched nothing but air as they soared over Ewan’s head.

  But Ewan was not hiding. When he ducked, he shifted himself to one side of the wall to put himself directly underneath one of the two warriors. The tip of his shortsword sliced the horse stomach of one centaur. The wound wasn’t an immediate deathblow, but the centaur roared and stumbled through the next steps of its charge. From what Hans could see of the wound, he expected the centaur to bleed out within the next thirty seconds.

  Before the injured centaur landed from their jump, Ewan’s focus was already shifting. He set his eyes on the healthy centaur. The moment the dwarf’s sword was clear of its first strike, he threw it into the man-back of the second centaur. With a blade in its spine, the centaur fell, rolling forward headfirst in a spray of dirt, hooves, and blood.

  “Nice,” Devon commented approvingly.

  While Ewan was setting his trap, the other fighter zigged side to side to give the two centaurs charging him a moving target. The Black Mage raised several walls of earth well ahead of that dwarf while creating similar barriers closer to themselves, the Cleric, and their Fighter guardian.

  Despite the new obstacles, the backline trio still came perilously close to centaur speartips. Every one of them had to actively avoid an attack and did so by inches. The lone forward Fighter, however, was more fortunate. His unusual movements combined with the appearance of dirt walls sent his two centaurs wide.

  Ewan ran down the bleeding centaur. The moment the Black Mage was out of danger, they attacked the same monster with Force Bolts. One struck its shoulder, and then Ewan’s ax came down on its hindquarters. Another chop later and its head rolled across the ground.

  Down two comrades, the infernal centaurs regrouped for a return charge. They failed to notice the Rogue hiding in the far section of the battlefield.

  As soon as they turned their attention to their next charge, the Rogue emerged and put an arrow into the human backs of two centaurs. They weren’t kill shots, but the surprise threw the centaurs into disarray as they spun to locate the source of the arrows. That hesitation gave the Rogue a window of opportunity, and they took it. A second arrow buried itself in a creature’s skull.

  Three centaurs remained.

  The Rogue ducked back into hiding, and the Cleric buffed the rest of the party with a prayer.

  Ewan and one of the Fighters trapped one centaur between them. It flailed its spear and kicked forward and backward with its hooves while the dwarfs danced just out of range. A Force Bolt struck its hindquarters. The fleeting moment the centaur used to look over its shoulder at the wound was all the dwarves needed to finish the job with their axes.

  One centaur’s attempt to avoid facing the same fate drove it toward the other Fighter, the Cleric, and the Black Mage. Its charge long disrupted, the centaur pranced like a nervous horse in a paddock. Without its speed, the balls of flame from a Fire spell easily found their mark. The Fighter used that cover to step away from guarding the backline and hack a leg with his axe.

  The last centaur attempted to run, but the Rogue put it down with arrows.

  Quest Update: Make a final decision about giving Ewan’s party Diamond quests.

  “I think that makes it definitive,” Devon said. “Our new friends are skilled.”

  Hans, Mazo, and Terry agreed.

  “Did no one else notice the eyes?” Mazo asked.

  The others looked at her, confused.

  “There used to be two infernals with purple eyes. There was only one just now.”

  Hans looked at the centaur corpses below. “You’re sure? So it died for real recently?”

  The working theory was that if the dungeon grew a creature that was still alive out in the world, it appeared in the dungeon with burning purple eyes. Two infernal centaurs from this encounter escaped before Hans’ party could slay them, so their eyes were purple. The far-dorocha, the evil fae whose blood they used for growing bronzewoods, had purple eyes. Every version of the orc Wargod that grew in the dungeon had purple eyes, and the three not-Devons that appeared when Tsumi was first added to the dungeon also had purple eyes.

  Mazo nodded that she agreed with Hans’ conclusion.

  “Pardon me saying so,” Terry said, gently, addressing Mazo, “but I’m not sure I remember seeing concern on your face before. I’m not liking it.”

  “What’s wrong?” Hans asked Mazo.

  “If that’s how it works, how would the dungeon core know what happened to a centaur on the other side of the frontier?”

  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.”

  Manage the ongoing establishment of a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

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

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

  Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Make a final decision about giving Ewan’s party Diamond quests.

  Finalize a process for distributing Diamond quests.