A small crowd gathered to bid farewell to Mazo, Izz, and Thuz. The lizardmen hitched a clydesdale to a wagon, making the halfling look comically small in comparison to the oversized workhorse. As she exchanged hugs and handshakes with townspeople, Hans crept around the back of the wagon. The lizardmen smiled, knowing what interested him.

“I didn’t show you the new shell!” Mazo said.

The halfling joined Hans at the wagon, using an incantation he didn’t recognize to release the lock on the heavy wooden door. Mazo stepped to the side and watched the door slowly lower until it formed a ramp up into the back of the wagon. There, tied down to the floor with ropes, was a gleaming silver shell large enough for Mazo to stand inside. Several gems encrusted the spiral of the shell with runic script running between them.

Hans wasn’t an expert spellcaster by any stretch, but even he could feel the power radiating off of the strange metal shield.

“You really leaned into the shell nickname, huh?” Hans asked, inspecting the item closely.

“We’ve actually found that shape is more efficient for enchantments, so it works out in two ways,” she replied, grinning.

The shell had to survive the attack of the most difficult monsters to serve Mazo’s purposes, so in addition to the thick metal of the shell, the enchantments added more armor reinforcements and magic resistance. In addition to the defensive capabilities, the shell could also turn invisible on the halfling’s command, solving the problem of her being completely blind in the midst of an encounter.

Thuz and Izz had convinced her to make the investment. Tricking a monster into attacking the shell was increasingly difficult as Mazo pursued higher and higher tiers of abilities. Those monsters were far smarter than an earth elemental and able to identify what was a threat and what was not.

A halfling hiding under the shell, even if it was Mazo, was not much of a threat. If the shell turned invisible, Mazo could present herself as a target and even cast a few spells with her line of sight restored.

Hans estimated the shell was worth more in gold than many noble families had in assets. Enchantments were costly, putting them out of reach of most adventurers unless they were fortunate enough to find an enchanted item while out on a job. As the world’s strongest Blue Mage, Mazo could take the biggest contracts and complete them handily. The Guild Master winced, thinking about his empty bank account compared to the halfling.

She earned every copper. Stop feeling bad for yourself.

“If you think of other upgrades that might be useful, write me right away,” Mazo requested of Hans. “I’m trying to find a mage with enough skill to do a levitation enchantment. Thuz and Izz always complain about how heavy it is.”

Imagining having to lug the shell deep into a dungeon made Hans’ lower back ache. Thuz and Izz were strong–most lizardmen were naturally strong–but that journey would be exhausting.

While the lizardmen closed the wagon back up and did their final check of their horse’s tack and their own equipment, Mazo gave Hans a hug. He bent down so she wasn’t hugging his knees.

“I worry about you,” she said softly so no one else could hear. “I may be far away, but I don’t mind making the trip if you need me.”

“Thank you. Please be safe out there. Well, I take that back. If you get jumped by bandits, try not to destroy the whole forest. People around here kind of like it.”

Mazo laughed and agreed. Minutes later, the wagon rolled down the road with townspeople waving their goodbyes. Hans waited until the halfling and the lizardmen were out of sight before he returned to the guild hall. The surprise visit happening right at the end of a job meant that he had a lot to catch up on. Between the purple flower and hosting Mazo, he hadn’t truly sat down to rest since before the excursion.

Inside the guild hall, Hans found boxes and crates containing what he assumed were his items from the caravan. A trunk wrapped in crisp red leather caught his eye. He was certain he neither ordered nor could afford the container itself, let alone what might be inside of it.

I hope Charlie didn’t spend my credit on something expensive by accident.

The trunk was surprisingly heavy as he wrestled it down from the stack of provisions. He flipped the latch and lifted the lid.

Hans,

I know the face you’re making right now. I also know all of the arguments you would have made if I tried to give this to you in person.

We thought you might like to have more reading material way out here.

The books are a gift. The gold isn’t. You have helped me so much over the years, and did more for me on this brief visit. If you won’t spend it on yourself, do something nice for the kiddos.

Thuz and Izz picked out the books. They miss you. I do too.

Don’t die.

-Mazo

As Hans read, he caught himself making the face Mazo predicted: a mix of guilt and shame. He wasn’t worthy of this degree of kindness and would have fought against accepting the gift for hours. He wiped water from his eyes, grateful that no one else was in the guild hall to witness his emotional moment.

The pouch Mazo mentioned sat on top of the books. A quick visual estimate had him choking on his own breath. If he was right, he held around 100 gold coins, an incredible amount of wealth for him. Since he was a Gold and not a Diamond, he was paid 1 gold per month for managing the Gomi chapter–a rule they invented for him since he was the only Gold guild master in all of the Adventurers’ Guild. The Diamonds running other chapters got 20.

He set the gold aside and scanned the spines of the books. Each tome was bound with leather etched with gold and silver inlays. They even smelled new, like one of the high end bookstores in Hoseki.

The trunk contained the following books:

-Another book on magery for beginners, written by a different author with a different method from the book Hans already had.

-A tome covering the main Lesser and Mid-tier spells.

-An alchemy book containing only the recipes developed in the last five years.

-An expanded bestiary with color images of each creature.

-A guide to bushcraft for the northwest region of the kingdom (where Gomi was located).

-Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K.J. Parker.

-Three Years Underground, the account of an expedition gone wrong, written by the lone survivor.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

-From the Field, a collection of essays written by various adventurers, recounting unusual jobs with the kind of detail only another adventurer would appreciate.

The last book in the row had his name on the spine. He raised an eyebrow and looked more closely to confirm he wasn’t misreading or hallucinating. The spine read: The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers. His manuscript title.

He pulled the book from the trunk and flipped open the cover. Inside, Mazo had left another message: “Finish this someday.”

As he turned the pages, he found that Mazo took her copies of the manuscript draft and had them transcribed in beautiful cursive and formatted like a proper book.

He felt the water in his eyes again.

He looked through the book more closely and confirmed that these pages were from early drafts, easily picking out where had made significant changes in later versions. Still, the book had the mesmerizing presence of the adventurer books he grew up reading. And the words inside were his.

The empty space was also his. The back of half of the book was nothing but blank pages, the parts of the book he had yet to write.

Resting on one of the hall benches, he sat with the book, his book, feeling the fine leather with his fingertips as thoughts about Mazo and the Adventurers’ Guild and Devontes and his mountain of shortcomings raced through his mind. His motivation to finish the manuscript disappeared when his dreams of reaching Diamond died–a fact he rarely admitted to himself let alone anyone else.

Quest Abandoned: Prepare a booklist for Mayor Charlie.

Quentin is going to love these books, he thought to himself as he set the trunk full of books aside–full except for his book. That he stashed in a desk drawer where others wouldn’t stumble across it.

Back in the storage room, he sifted through the remaining unopened boxes and crates. He found his winter gear as well as smoked, dried, and canned foods for him to enjoy when the Gomi snows cut him off from the rest of the world. He felt the material of his cloak and the lining of his boots. If these didn’t get him through the winter, he wasn’t sure what else would.

Quest Complete: Pick up the guild provisions from the caravan after next.

Quest Complete: Acquire winter adventuring gear.

Quest Updated: Don’t forget the beer!

Speaking of beer, he needed to talk with the Tribe about Mazo’s warning. The orc attacks and rebelling tusks happened far from Gomi, three months by wagon, at least. The distance was a comfort for now, but Hans knew that war had a way of rippling across the kingdom. For the average townsperson, that might mean a shortage of certain items or a disruption in their travel and trading routes, but tusks joining orcs was a new kind of wrinkle.

Part of him rationalized that the tusks who switched sides were outliers, a few people with warped ideas of right and wrong, perhaps spurned by the way the kingdom treated their kind. The rest of him knew that the average civilian wasn’t interested in nuance. Even if they were outliers and not part of a new trend, the truth might not matter. Fear was easier.

Fear was always easier.

***

Hans stood in front of his largest kids’ class yet. His usual seven were in attendance, joined by four new children. One was Terry’s daughter, a shy twelve year old girl with red hair and freckled skin. The most he heard of her voice were timid “mmhmms” when she answered a question, which was fine. She paid attention in class and did her best to follow directions.

How did Terry end up with a daughter this nice? To Terry’s credit, the guard was friendlier to Hans now, but he was still ornery.

The class had started to use the exterior of the faux dungeon corridor as well as the interior, making the most of every side of every wall as the class grew. Pausing their warm up drills, Hans called all of the children into a circle.

“Before we start something new, let’s review the rules we’ve learned so far. Who remembers our rules?” The children all raised their hands. “Oh good, let’s test you. What rules have we learned?”

“Blocking is bad!” half the children yelled in near-unison.

“That was an easy one. We’ve talked about that a lot.”

“Never reach!”

“That’s a good one. We never want to overextend when we attack. If you’re leaning forward, your balance is bad and your power is bad. What else?”

“Don’t pick your nose!”

Hans laughed. “That’s a class rule, yes, but let’s stick to combat rules.”

“Simple, not fancy!”

“Well done. Well done. Every move we make should be the simplest solution available. Who wants to tell me why?”

Kane raised his hand. “Simple attacks are more direct, and they’re more efficient.”

“Excellent, Kane. Everyone, Kane is exactly correct. Wasted movement can expose you to more attacks. That doesn’t mean a ‘simple’ attack is always the best answer. We want to take the simplest option available for the problem, but the fundamentals are often the best choice. Okay, one more. I’ll give you a hint: It’s the newest one.”

The class murmured to each other, every child thinking hard.

“Mobility is good,” Gunther guessed.

Hans wobbled his head side to side. “That’s close enough. The rule is ‘mobility over everything.’ Who can remind us what that means?”

Quentin answered this time. “Unless our lives are in danger, we shouldn’t go for an attack if it puts us in a bad position. Staying mobile is safer, and if you’re mobile, you probably have more options.”

The boy’s answer was almost word for word what Hans had said when he first introduced the rule. “That’s correct!” Hans praised. “We’re going to do something you’ve all been asking for. Can anyone guess what that is?”

Almost the whole class answered, “Spar!”

Children are always so bloodthirsty.

“Before I explain how we’re going to do this, I’m going to add another rule: ‘Always protect your training partner.’ If someone gets hurt, they might have to miss a lot of class. That’s not good for them, and it’s bad for you because now you have fewer people to practice with. Also, you probably don’t want to get hurt either. If you are good to your training partners, they will be good to you. Everyone understand?”

Heads nodded enthusiastically.

“I’m proud of everyone for working so hard to learn. Here’s how we’re going to do sparring.”

Since many of the children had never sparred before, Hans matched two students together, instructing them to start at half speed, so no one should be swinging their hardest. While two students sparred, the rest of the class would watch, and if they did as they were instructed, try to learn from their classmates. During the short sparring session, Hans provided commentary to the watching students, pointing out things they should notice, and he gave both of the sparring students coaching as well.

With limited protective equipment, the students were instructed to only aim below the shoulder. In Hans’ experience, that didn’t prevent every injury. After all, children are uncoordinated and still developing. With the wooden swords and the slower speed, which Hans strictly enforced, the worst any child should get is a bloody nose or a black eye.

Hopefully.

Gunther had been the most aggressive, charging at Harry as soon as Hans started the match. Hans rushed forward yelling, “No no no no! Gunther, slow down. Harry isn’t a basilisk. Well, he might look like one, but he isn’t.”

The children all giggled–including Harry–and Gunther corrected himself. He needed reminding on a few occasions, but that was normal.

As he expected, many of the children moved in stutters, hesitant and lacking confidence or shirking and recoiling at the prospect of getting hit with a sword. Sparring was different from their drills, but those drills prepared them for this step. They had spent many classes practicing how to choose what techniques to use and responding to the techniques of their opponents. The kids didn’t know that, of course, but their brains and bodies would take over with some practice.

Harriot took a wooden sword to the point of her elbow and cried for a few minutes, but she was otherwise uninjured and nodded as Hans talked to her. Hans knew that pain was only part of the reaction. Getting hit was scary, and he made sure to explain to the class that being afraid is normal. He also shared that he had cried during sparring, telling the children that the last time he and Mazo sparred he bawled like a newborn baby.

That was a slight exaggeration, but the story worked as intended. Harriot was less embarrassed, and her classmates didn’t judge her for crying.

To reward the children for a great class, they spent the last 10 minutes playing dodgeball. Hans couldn’t prove it, but he was certain there was collusion among the children to target him.

As the kids made their ways home, he asked Kane and Quentin if they had another 30 minutes to train. Not knowing why the Guild Master asked them to stay didn’t matter. Excitement gleaned in their eyes.

***

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."

Identify the unknown purple flower from Olza.

Don’t forget the beer.

Brainstorm ideas for safe approaches to training on uneven terrain.

Design a winter curriculum.

Talk to the Tribe about the potential threat and contingency plans.