Luther returned with the merchant caravan, almost a full two weeks after Roland’s rescue. For the distance he was asked to cover, he made good time. In Hoseki, the kingdom’s capital, information moved quickly. Most messages were returned within days rather than weeks, and having something ordered from the next town over was a simple transaction that ended with the goods on your doorstep.

Gomi’s geography added days and days of delays for anything to reach or leave the mountain town. Though Luther was quick according to the locals who knew the roads, two weeks felt like a lifetime to wait for updates on a psionic monster infestation. All he could do was sit in the guild hall while squonks could be out there feeding and breeding.

The experience was maddening and unavoidable. For as long as he lived in Gomi, he would have to live at Gomi’s pace, the long roads and difficult terrain a fact of life.

Before Luther shared what he learned, the tusk needed to stable his horse on the Tribe farms. The caravan handed him a few silvers for taking watch shifts on their way, and Luther trotted back out of town.

Hans had no problem waiting for Luther. He needed to speak to the merchants anyway.

The caravan was far more prepared for winter than Hans. Knowing that the roads would be blocked soon, the merchants brought several assortments of winter clothing. If they didn’t have the correct size or a specific item, the merchants noted the request, took a few measurements, and promised to have it ready for the next shipment.

He set aside his last bit of guild credit so he could pay for the items when they arrived. Otherwise, he was out of money, and his credit didn’t renew until the fall. He could be thrifty if he needed to be. Finding an odd job around Gomi was unlikely, but he could also feed himself. He could take a few days off of his guild duties and maybe bag a deer. With some salt and smoke, he’d have some of his winter food needs met.

Thinking of going hunting reminded Hans of Roland, Quentin’s father. The hunter was almost back to his old self now. He had recovered enough that he could move back to his own home with his son, and more of the pep and wit that townspeople called “the real Roland” showed itself each day.

Drawing a bow, however, would be beyond him for a while longer. He had a great deal of muscle to rebuild, and the process needed time. Predicting Roland’s greatest concern, nearly the entire town promised to share some of their pantry with the hunter and his son, so they needn’t worry about hunting right now. They would have plenty of food for the winter.

Accepting charity seemed difficult for Roland. Hunters tended to be independent and self-reliant. Being weak and vulnerable–and others knowing it–challenged him to put Quentin before his ego. He knew the right choice. That didn’t make it easy.

Roland insisted on being present for the next squonk meeting. Hans tried to dissuade him, but he didn’t yield.

The blacksmith and his fletcher wife weren’t in attendance, nor was Galinda. Becky hadn’t been back to town yet, so she was absent as well. That left Hans, Charlie, Roland, Uncle Ed, Terry the guard, and Galad–who returned with Luther. As soon as the tusks arrived, Luther handed three envelopes bearing the Adventurers’ Guild crest to Hans.

Luther wasn’t much for public speaking, but he recounted what he learned as best he could.

The three towns the tusk visited were roughly northeast from Gomi, sharing borders with the land where the squonks were found. If Becky’s theory that the squonks migrated into Gomi’s woods was correct, they would have had to come from the areas near those three towns.

No one Luther spoke to in the first town had heard of a squonk or recognized the description. He even deliberately sought out some of the older citizens to see if they recalled any stories or tall-tales that had to do with squonks. They didn’t know anything about the crying monster, but they did know about the orcs.

Apparently, adventurers from the second town pursued an orc raiding party a few days prior, the chase taking them toward Gomi, broadly speaking. The Guild Master of that first town’s chapter confirmed the story in his letter to Hans. That Guild Master suggested that perhaps the few orcs Hans found had evaded the adventurers.

Before he went onto the next town, Luther asked for Hans’ letter to be mailed. When the guild desk saw who it was addressed to, they said that Mazo had passed through as recently as three weeks ago. They didn’t know the specifics of her travel plans, but they had heard where she planned to summer: Natsu.

That’s close, he thought. Wow. I must be adjusting to Gomi when a four-week ride sounds “close” to me.

He might receive a response before winter. The last he had heard, the halfling Blue Mage was on the opposite side of the kingdom, hunting gazers, a Diamond-level monster notorious for its one central eye surrounded by dozens of stalks, each bearing a smaller eye at its end. They shot lasers, and they could cast Petrification.

But Mazo wasn’t interested in adding those abilities to her repertoire. She wanted another of the gazer’s unique gifts: its ability to hover indefinitely.

The problem: Blue Mages learned from enduring an attack. Hovering in place was not an attack, so Mazo began experimenting, looking for a way to adapt her blue magic to absorb different kinds of abilities. The research moved slowly. Gazers were rare monsters, much to everyone’s relief but Mazo’s. She needed test subjects.

Hans wondered if she ever figured it out. Maybe she would mention it in her letter to him.

When Luther moved on to recounting his experience with the next town in line, he hesitated. He pointed to the letter from that chapter’s Guild Master and said, “He said everything you needed was in here.”

The letter was brief, reading, “Stay out of my territory. Don’t waste my time again.” The letter was signed by the local Guild Master. Reading that outloud to his new hometown made him wish he had opened the letter in private. Guild chapters were competitive, but sharing information about potential threats was part of the Adventurers’ Guild day-to-day responsibility to the citizens of the kingdom. That’s how it was supposed to work, at least.

No one spoke when he finished. The people in the room knew enough about the Guild to know that this refusal was an intentional insult. A Diamond-ranked putting a Gold-ranked in their place.

Luther mercifully continued his story. Though the chapter was a bust, the tavern was not.

“Convenient,” Galad said, suppressing a smirk.

Luther smiled and shrugged.

“I confirmed the orc raid. Same thing the other Guild Master had said. Get this: at least two adventurers were reprimanded for letting a few get away.”

“At least we know the actual raiding party was quite far from here,” Charlie offered. Everyone agreed.

“One more thing: Two people were missing. Blamed the orcs, but then I got to the last town. Three of their people were missing too.”

The tusk leaned back, proud of his investigation. He basked while the others reached the same conclusion he had: Those people weren’t missing because of orcs. They were missing because they stumbled upon a squonk, most likely.

The third Guild Master was more receptive than the second. He copied the notes Hans provided with great interest. So far, no one had unearthed any leads for the missing people. The longer he took to find an answer, the more his people would question their safety, so he was grateful for any kind of lead that might help.

He left Luther in his office while he fetched two more people. When the Guild Master returned, the chapter’s librarian and a Silver-ranked dwarf joined the meeting.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Luther retold the story of how Gomi discovered squonks.

“The librarian recognized the name but not from any bestiary,” Luther explained. “He knew it from a children’s story.”

When Hans opened the letter from this final Guild Master, he found a set of pages transcribed from their archives. Skimming through the children’s story, he grimaced. The story followed three sisters who constantly cried over every inconvenience. They cried so often that the squonks smelled their tears and came to collect them and take them away. One of the sisters stops herself from crying and escapes, but her sisters were never seen again.

Aside from that singular story, they were not aware of any other mentions of squonks, fictional or otherwise. None of the adventurers Luther spoke to recognized it either. They did however see orcs moving through their territory. The band was gone before the Guild could rally a force large enough, but Luther pointed out that the timeline matched their other information.

The three orcs who fell to Hans and Becky were hundreds of miles from home.

Roland spoke for the first time. “They didn’t come that far on purpose. That’s good.”

The room agreed.

“If Becky doesn’t find anything, we can sheath our swords for the time being,” Hans said. “Orcs are far from here, and we have no evidence of a squonk nest. We still saw them though, so a little extra caution wouldn’t hurt.”

That satisfied the townspeople for now and the meeting dispersed.

Quest Complete: Investigate the presence of orcs near Gomi.

Quest Update: Learn the results of Becky’s squonk search.

***

Olza found Hans writing on the blank pages of a thick, leatherbound book. She twisted her neck to read upside down. “What is ‘Versatile Simplicity?’”

“It’s a teaching principle I have.”

The alchemist waited.

“Do you want me to keep going?”

She nodded.

“Promise to stop me if I go on too long?”

“Promise.”

Hans explained that decision-making won fights. In a battle, an adventurer has to calculate hundreds of variables under deadly circumstances. An inch too far, a second too late, and the fight is over, so a battle requires mental speed and extreme precision, both in assessing the problem and in responding to it.

His job, as he saw it, was to train decision-making like any other skill, lots of practice and lots of drills. Early in his meditations on teaching, he sparred and swapped techniques with a visiting adventurer who specialized in the quarterstaff. Any round the adventurer won against Hans–yes, there were several, but Hans won a few as well–ended with the same finish. Even after Hans learned to expect it.

No matter what, the adventurer concluded an attack combination with an upward strike, the quarterstaff equivalent of an uppercut. The blow took Hans off of his feet twice and chipped his tooth.

Why am I spending so much time telling her about how badly I lost?

When Hans remarked on it, the adventurer replied, “Means less I have to remember, and that particular movement has a few dozen different setups. I still come across a new one every once in a while.”

That changed how Hans thought about practice.

“For the sake of simplicity, let’s say you learn 10 techniques to become a complete fighter,” Hans said to Olza.

“Okay…”

“What if then another fighter comes along and finds a way to solve all of the same problems with 7 techniques instead of 10. Is that an improvement?”

Olza nodded.

“Why?”

“It’s easier to decide with fewer options.”

“Exactly, but there’s more to it. Let’s say these fighters get 100 practice repetitions a day. The fighter who needs 10 techniques can practice each one 10 times where the fighter who needs only 7 can practice each of his techniques 14 times.”

“Ohhh, I see. When you say it, it seems obvious.”

“I’m not the first person to have this idea, but I think I’m the first to base a training methodology around it.”

Hans believed that what a student eliminated was just as impactful as what they practiced. The quarterstaff fighter from his story discarded techniques that didn’t lead to his favorite finish. If he had two different blocks that addressed the same attack, he chose the block with the shortest distance to his favorite strike.

That didn’t mean that every technique immediately led to a devastating blow to an opponent’s chin. Instead, he aimed to keep the steps between him and the finish as minimal as possible so he was never far from his favorite attack. He made his style stronger through reduction, not addition.

“That’s the philosophy, and I applied it to my fundamentals curriculum. With beginners, especially, I teach as few techniques as possible. For the advanced students, they have to learn to critique their own style and cut the waste. Fighters do this intuitively to some degree, but we get more out of it if we can do it intentionally and consistently.”

“Geez, Hans. Are you sure Guild Master is the right spot for you? You sound like an academic.”

“Can’t I be both? Anyway, sorry for getting carried away there. What brings you by?”

“An update on our flower mystery.”

Hans sat up to listen more closely.

“I couldn’t find an alchemy ingredient with a similar composition, so I had the idea to expand the search to spell reagents.”

She’s clever.

“Are you familiar with rose silk?”

He shook his head.

“It’s a foundational component in several summoning spells as well as a few mending spells,” Olza said, confirming her knowledge matched Hans’.

“What does that tell us about the flower?”

“Rose silk is used for creating and shaping types of matter, basically. If you need a spell to conclude with something physical, rose silk is usually one of the components. The purple flower has the same kind of fibers, except far far more dense. 10 to 1 or more.”

Discovering a “better” ingredient in alchemy or spellcasting pushed the art further, making potions more effective and spells more powerful. Innovation and invention often followed shortly behind. For an alchemist, making that kind of discovery cemented their legacy.

“Olzas,” Hans said, proposing a name for the flower.

“Becky found it, technically.”

“Well, Becky would probably name it Beckee or something. You discovered its potential, and ‘Olzas’ sounds better.”

“We’re not calling them yet.”

The flower needed further study. Sharing characteristics with rose silk was promising, but swapping the purple flowers in for a spell reagent could be catastrophic. Olza needed to learn about the rest of the petal before graduating to more serious tests. She likened it to picking raspberries. If you know the thorns are there, filling a bucket with the sweet fruits when they’re in season is easy. If you don’t know the thorns are there, you’ll figure that out the hard way.

Hans thought that was a good analogy, but it wasn’t quite right. Pricking your finger on a thorn might draw a drop of blood. Mixing the wrong spell components for a summoning spell might release an infernal champion who transforms your entire town to glass.

Regardless if the purple flower was a world-ending ingredient, Olzas sounded like a good name for flowers to him.

***

Mayor Charlie dropped an envelope to Hans. A letter from the Adventurers’ Guild had been mixed into Gomi’s mail from the caravan by mistake.

Hans broke the wax seal.

Oh, not from the Guild, via the Guild.

Hans,

Congratulations on the new posting. Not how you wanted it to happen, I know, but if anyone can make the most of it, it’s you.

We’re coming up on six months of incorporating your drills into our classes. It was challenging at first, but the results are undeniable. We’re moving through material faster than ever, and we’ve even won a few tournaments.

At the Iron levels. For now. I’m looking forward to seeing where those Irons are in a few years. I think I understand what you meant about students passing you. I can see that they’re already outpacing what I was capable of at that rank. Won’t be long.

Send me more chapters when you finish them, please. I hope you change your mind and get this published.

-Theneesa

Mikata Chapter

Hans reread the letter five times before setting it down. He felt a sense of pride soaked in melancholy. A Diamond-ranked Guild Master was using his methods and getting great results. Those same methods contributed to his exile, and those methods weren’t enough to move himself up one more rank.

Thankfully, Charlie delivered the letter when the kids’ class was long-finished. Had it arrived earlier in the morning, Hans may not have had the will to teach.

Gomi was supposed to be a forgotten town for forgotten people, but a letter could come from anywhere to remind him of everything he left behind. Theneesa used his work as he intended, to give adventurers a greater chance of survival, but the impact he sought could be even larger.

It all came back to teaching. Better-trained adventurers meant fewer casualties and more rank promotions. More skilled adventurers would lead to an improvement in job completion rates. Improved job completion rates meant that problems were solved more quickly and more effectively. The sooner a problem like a monster nest was solved, the less pain innocent people would have to endure.

Teaching. Learning. So much good was possible, especially if that good was applied across the full scope of the Adventurers’ Guild and its many chapters.

You tried that already.

Though the sun was still up, Hans locked the door to the guild hall and went to bed.

***

Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

Mend the rift with Devon.

Complete the manuscript for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."

Pick up the guild provisions from the caravan after next.

Identify the unknown purple flower from Olza.

Keep the guild hall clean.

Prepare a booklist for Mayor Charlie.

Grow the Gomi chapter without attracting outside attention.

Prepare for winter, and don’t forget the beer.

Design drills to practice specific dungeon corridor skills.

Brainstorm ideas for safe approaches to training on uneven terrain.

Learn the results of Becky’s squonk search.

Design a winter curriculum.

Acquire winter adventuring gear.