“Guy’s got timing,” Terry said, standing in an empty Forgeborne training room with Hans, Tandis, and one of Tandis’ assistants.

  Honronk had offered her an imp, but she didn’t like the feeling of something following her like that. Hans felt validated by that because he had the same opinion.

  “Showing up in time for the Fall Festival is a good move,” the old guard continued. “I’d love to top a trip off with a feast like that.”

  “Do you trust him?” Tandis asked.

  “He never did anything malicious,” Hans said. “Taking off like that wasn’t acceptable, but for all the shit he talks, nothing went missing when he did. He could have run off with any number of things.”

  “What was the original problem?”

  “The dungeon was still really tight on cullers when he took off. He showed back up out of nowhere, assuming he could dive right back in, but only for the winter, ‘cause he would leave as soon as the melt came.”

  “That’s a dick move,” Tandis agreed. “That makes me hesitant. I feel like most disappointing people find a way to pull it off several times if you let them.”

  Terry shook his head. “He fucked up, but he didn’t create new problems for us. I imagine that would be easy to do, even by accident.”

  “So he did right by Gomi where it counts?” Hans asked.

  “Yeah, I’d be fine putting it that way.”

  “Tandis,” Hans began, “Is your objection to this minor or major? I don’t want to misinterpret.”

  “Appreciate that. Minor. He was perfectly nice to me. Not great pickup lines, but he also didn’t drop any more of them when he found out Roland and I connected. Went back to being perfectly nice is all.”

  Nodding, Hans continued the process, asking, “Do we have a spot for him?”

  Tandis looked down at her notes. “Class or career?”

  “Career.”

  She flipped through several pages and then turned to her assistant. The assistant shook her head. “Nothing open. Not even a wagon escort. What about a guard position?”

  “Full up there as well,” Terry answered glumly.

  “Damn.” Hans rubbed his head, grumbling lightly as he pushed for a deep thought. He had been certain Sven could help with the wagons at the very least, but even those jobs were filled. “I saw a Silver Rogue on the roster for a winter session. Is that true? Or am I making that up?”

  “You remember right, but there’s actually two,” Tandis answered. “Why?”

  “Our Rogue curriculum sucks. It’s been a weakness from the start, and that didn’t help things with Sven way back.”

  “He’s only Iron, right?”

  “I’d pair him up with a Silver for private lessons. Make it Sven’s job to write everything down. I’m not saying the guy writes a book for us. I’d be happy with a topic order and a few observations.”

  Terry frowned. “That seems like a lot to trust him with. I imagine you intend to pay the Silver for their time too.”

  Hans nodded.

  “I don’t see how giving the man a job became paying for education. Pogo has been nothing but loyal.”

  “You’re not out of line there,” Hans said. “Pogo has been super patient. How about this: We ask them both to keep a journal about their lessons. We can take a look at them from time to time to make sure it’s getting done. If Sven washes out, we have a backup. If he doesn’t, then we have two very different student perspectives to work with as we improve our curriculum.”

  “I feel better about that,” Terry said.

  “No issue from me,” Tandis added. “What do we have him do in the meantime?”

  “I’m going to try and cheese him into at least a week of classroom work, two if I can push that far. I don’t think he stopped to eat for the last several days. Just kept moving. He needs a rest before he’s back in the mix, but he would certainly disagree if we presented it that way.”

  ***

  Hans found Sven sitting in the park, or the fairgrounds, depending on who was describing it, with two chocolate chip cookies in his hand and one in his mouth. He sat on a small retaining wall for a flower bed and beneath a bronzewood that made shade of Dunfoo’s sun.

  “Charlie said you had just left,” Hans explained. “May I sit?”

  Sven nodded, chewing. He held a cookie up to offer it to Hans.

  “Oh no, thank you. I just ate a few myself. I like how this part of town turned out,” Hans said, looking around. “I doubt there’s any other place like this, on this plane at least.”

  “A lot has changed.”

  “Yeah. A lot has happened. It’s been busy.”

  “Looks it.”

  Hans imagined how Bel and Lee would have felt about this park covered in bronzewood trees and Druid-planted wildflowers perpetually in bloom. “At any rate, I’ve got work for you. I want you to take private lessons with a Silver Rogue, take a bunch of notes, and then let me copy your notes.”

  “Serious?”

  “Serious.”

  “My new job is… homework?”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Laughing, Hans replied, “Technically, yeah. Our Rogue curriculum needs attention, and this will give us a basic structure to work from. You won’t need to explain or teach what you learn. If we can get the ‘what,’ I’ll be happy. Get the ‘why’ with it, and I’ll be thrilled. You don’t need to worry about the ‘how’ for this.”

  “When do I start?”

  “When a Silver Rogue gets here who agrees to letting us plagiarize them. We’ve got possibles for the winter session.”

  “What about until then?”

  “I’d like you to come to a few classes and then resume combat training. I want to cover a few things before the Rogues arrive to make the notetaking easier. If that doesn’t feel like pitching in, we’ve had a steady trickle of new arrivals all summer, and we might get a burst of folks getting in right before the snows. We can find you someone who needs a hand fixing their place up. Even if you’re just moving shit for them, it’s a big help.”

  “I can do that,” Sven said.

  “Speaking of fixing places up, where are you planning to stay?”

  “The dorms still an option?”

  “If you really miss smelling adventurer farts, go get your fill. We’ve got the space for you to have your own, though. If fixing something up from scratch doesn’t appeal to you, I’ve heard a few conversations in the guild hall about roommates.”

  Sven frowned.

  “Not one-room cabin roommates,” Hans assured the Rogue. “At the least you’d have your own room, but there are spots that are more like apartments with common courtyards.”

  “Fancy.”

  “I only saw Tsumi briefly, but yeah, the people with money in this town had pretty good taste.”

  Sven chuckled. “I’ll think about it. Can I ask if the crew is still doing runs?”

  “Not in the way we used to. Terry took a pretty bad hit and is focused on teaching and managing the guard. The others still do runs from time to time, but they’ve all got their own projects.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be,” Hans said. “You kids did great as a party, so don’t get the wrong idea. For a typical party, there’s usually a venn diagram of sorts where everyone overlaps, and that’s because they choose who to run with. None of you moved to Gomi wanting to be adventurers, and no one had a choice about jobs or party members. Now that the pressure is off, I think it’s good for everyone–you included–to figure out what they really want for themselves.”

  Brushing crumbs off his lap, Sven said, “I like that. And I promise not to let you down.”

  “Do you know what happened the last time I made sure a specific adventurer had a good experience down here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He fucking killed me, Sven,” Hans said. Smiling, the Guild Master stood and slapped the tusk on the back. “Success here is anything above feeding me to armorbacks. Do your thing, and we’ll be fine.”

  “This drill is based on a real job,” Hans explained, standing outside of an uninhabited home in Leebel’s Rest. It was a manor-esque structure at the outskirts of town, overlooking the lake. “The job didn’t have this exact house, and there isn’t a thunderstorm raging, but the premise is going to be the same. We knew orcs were squatting in the house, but we didn’t know if there were survivors from a farm they raided.

  “So the job is to clear the house of orcs and rescue anyone alive. A Spearman I ran with was with me for this, and we were on our way to meet the rest of the party for a job. This popped up, and Boden… Well, Boden never passed up an orc job. We did this as a duo, and that’s how you will do it too. Some of you might not have a class built for this kind of sweep, and that’s part of the point.

  “Before I take questions, some ground rules: No destroying my house. Incidental damage is fine, but if someone blows out a wall, we have to stop for the day. There’s not a way to observe this course, so instead of changing the encounter each time, you’re all going to promise to not tell the others what you saw inside. No hints, no warnings. Got it?”

  The class nodded back at Hans.

  “Questions?”

  “What rank were you for this job?” one adventurer asked.

  “I got Silver a month later. There wasn’t any intel on this job, though. We knew there were orcs and nothing else, so it didn’t have an official encounter rating.”

  “What recon and prep are we working from?”

  Hans shook his head. “None. We didn’t have time to linger, and Boden never liked delaying an orc job. We were reckless and went right in.”

  “Where can we enter?”

  “In the real thing, this house was on stilts on a beach,” Hans explained. “We could only go in through the first floor. Anything you see on the front of the house is fair game. Something inside might kill you if you’re bad at sneaking around, though. Remember: Don’t give the others any hints when you finish your run.”

  While the rest of the class went a little ways down the street to put the house out of direct view, a Bronze Fighter and a Bronze Ranger approached the front door.

  Hans leaned his hand against the nub of an exposed dungeon root to watch the run. Initially, seeing the dungeon from more than one perspective gave him terrible headaches, but with practice he could now manage multiple viewpoints. The result felt a bit like Buru’s Herd Instinct ability, where part of his knowledge was visual and part of it was instinctual.

  In the real job, the one orc on watch outside went inside when the rain picked up, so Hans and Boden approached the house without resistance.

  Boden kicked down the door, and Hans followed him inside. To their shock, every orc in the house was on the first floor. Three were well-armed warriors, and two were mojokas.

  One warrior fell to an axe in the skull as soon as Boden burst into the room. The remaining four orcs fought like hells. A barrage of Force Bolts forced Hans and Boden to fall back into a side parlor. Hans got the door shut before the nearest warrior could stop him. Boden dropped a bookshelf in front of it. They left the room through a door on the opposite side, putting them in a short hallway leading to a posh common area of couches and cushions.

  From there, the fight was a slugfest. The mojokas continued to hurl spells at the adventurers and were surprisingly skilled at targeting the humans without injuring any of their allies. The outcome looked grim until Boden threw his axe to kill a mojoka. He finished the fight with an orcish piece of shit sword, but that risk with the axe took off just enough pressure that the pair could survive a hard fight.

  Hans picked this encounter to recreate because the strength and number of enemies immediately within was a surprise, putting Hans and Boden off balance right from the start. They expected a fight, but the instant ferocity wasn’t something they had dealt with before.

  They survived the battle. The people captured by the orcs had not. Pieces of them were all over the house.

  The scheduled job Hans and Boden were rushing to ended up falling apart. They were too injured, and Gret and Mazo couldn’t do it with just the two of them.

  Via the dungeon roots, Hans watched as the Fighter and Ranger met three wooden soldiers as soon as they entered. To their credit, they defended the immediate barrage of attacks. The chaos, however, clouded their vision. Neither of them saw the two lesser water elementals standing in for mojokas. They blasted both adventurers with jets of water.

  The force of that water would bruise a little, but there was no significant risk. In fleeing the water jet, the Ranger walked into the fist of a wooden soldier, breaking his nose.

  When they came around the corner to rejoin the class, both drenched to the bone and one with blood flowing down his face, the looks of confusion on everyone who had yet to go made Hans smile. No one could imagine what scenario would cause that outcome.

  Good.

  “Next pair!” Hans said.

  Quest Complete: Brainstorm more competitive dungeon games.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

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

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

  Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Master your Diamond boon.

  Get Dunfoo the materials he needs for a Holy enchantment.

  Run future tests in a secure part of the dungeon.

  Reclaim your ability to focus.