Kane and Quentin stepped carefully around the Polza patch, giving the pit itself a wide berth. Their obvious curiosity for the dungeon was tempered by respect for the high potential of danger. Hans had expected the boys to be mature about the project from the beginning, but seeing it for himself was still a comfort.

Becky hadn’t arrived, so Olza got to work setting up basecamp instead of prepping for a crawl. Though they had a defense for the hopelessness aura to test, they wanted Becky’s immunity nearby if it failed. Roland seemed to be immune as well, but exploring the dungeon further was not of interest to him. Besides, if Roland went down with them, the boys would be alone on the surface.

Hans helped Roland measure out the space around the cabin. While the Guild Master stood awkwardly in one place holding the end of a string, the hunter scribbled in a notebook. At times, Roland seemed to argue with himself before recording the final decision.

“Dad,” Quentin said, looking around the rocky Polza patch. “Where are the boards?”

As if expecting that question, a grinning Roland pulled two axes out of his rucksack. “Right here.”

Kane understood the meaning before Quentin. The tusk teen moaned like he was in deep pain.

“We’re chopping all the wood for the cabin?” Quentin asked.

Roland nodded. “Eventually. First we’re building a shelter for us to camp in while we work on the cabin. We’ll need 30 trees cut to twelve foot lengths. Look for ones about this size.” The hunter connected his hands like he choked an imaginary neck, fingertips to fingertips, thumb tip to thumb tip.

To Kane and Quentin’s credit, their complaints were short-lived. They set to work chopping down trees that met Roland’s specifications.

After the temporary shelter was complete, an A-frame design large enough for the three but small enough that heating it would be practical, they would begin on the cabin foundation. Roland planned to set posts to account for the slope, a tiring dig process but better than moving enough mountain dirt to make a flat piece of land. Luckily, the warmth from the dungeon core had kept the soil from freezing. Digging of any kind would have been impossible otherwise.

The cabin blueprint was the simple one-room design Roland suggested to Hans. They could sleep four comfortably and up to eight if they didn’t mind the close company. One room was easy to heat, and the structure was simple yet strong enough to endure wind and snow. Come spring, they could reevaluate and consider expanding the cabin into a larger building.

This design would suffice for now. Secret passage planning could wait.

Quest Update: Help Roland complete the cabin build.

Hans helped Roland prepare the build site for the temporary shelter, clearing away brush and pruning lower branches that might get in their way. In a short time, the teens deposited four logs, thick enough to be sturdy but still narrow enough that one person could maneuver the weight. The Guild Master held each log in place while the hunter tied each end to a tree, eventually forming a rough square. From there, they could lay down the floor, and then every other log could function as both a wall and roof.

Despite four sets of hands working on the shelter, they hadn’t finished by sundown. One night in a tent wasn’t so bad if it meant having a reliable shelter the next, provided a heavy snow didn’t surprise them.

Exhausted from the day’s work, Kane and Quentin went to sleep as soon as their tents were up. Roland sat at the campfire with Hans and Olza, sipping at a cup of tea to wash down a gamey dinner, speaking softly as to not wake the boys.

“Hard to believe you’re going to test an idea from my son,” Roland said. “He’s sharp, but most people wouldn’t take advice from a kid, not at your rank.”

“Good ideas can come from anywhere,” Hans replied. “I knew Quentin had been thinking about the squonks since you came home and figured he wouldn’t stop. Thought maybe making it constructive would help him a little.”

Roland approved. “I appreciate you letting him come along. I have some time to catch up on, I’d say.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Olza said. “You’re a good dad, and he loves you.”

“Thanks for saying that.”

“It’s true.”

Active Quest: Research the history and legends of the Dead End Mountains.

When the conversation lagged, Hans remembered one of his quests. Hunters were great sources of local lore and legends, in part because they often embraced superstitions to some degree, seeing patterns in nature after hours and hours in the trees. Like Roland, most hunters were born and raised in the woods their profession relied on, making them even better sources of information that might not make it into a textbook.

“Do either of you know any stories about the Dead End Mountains? Unsolved mysteries. Old wives tales. Those kinds of things.”

“Oh there’s some good ones,” Roland said, poking at the fire.

Olza perked up. “Really? I haven’t heard any.”

“Becky mentioned the mountains being titan bones,” Hans said.

“Everyone knows the mountains are titan bones,” Roland scoffed. “How about what lies beyond the mountains?”

Neither Hans nor Olza had heard such stories, not more than what the Guild recorded in their histories.

“The mountain merchant is a good one,” the hunter began. “According to my dad and my pap, the mountain merchant visits the Dead End Mountains every one hundred years, and has done so from the rising of the mountains at the beginning of time.

“Coming from beyond the mountains, the merchant waits at a summit meeting spot for one day. If no one traded with him, he would leave and return after another hundred years.

“If you met the merchant, you would be given the opportunity to trade for a key. What you traded was up to you, and he would reject or deny the offer. The only hint the merchant has ever shared about what to offer is that it should be ‘something his customers beyond the mountains would see as having unique value.’ Were you successful, he would give you the key to a lost city hidden in the Dead End Mountains, full of treasure.

“Somewhere along the way, the location of the summit was lost, as was the day he was expected to arrive. Some folks believe the trade is already complete and a race of mountain people have lived hidden in the Dead End Mountains for centuries. Others say there’s a clue in the forest to help you find the merchant, but you can only find it if you’re lost.

“Regardless of what you believe, you should look at the mountain tops every day. If you don’t, you might miss your chance to spot the merchant.”

When Roland finished his story, he grinned.

Olza asked, “Who does the merchant trade with on the other side of the mountains?”

The hunter shrugged.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Are there stories about what’s on the other side?” Hans asked.

The stories didn’t agree with each other, Roland shared. The adventurers who claimed to see it described it as a wasteland, a desert where dust storms never stopped. The guild supported that report as official fact, but Roland had heard stories of it being a paradise or a frozen ocean, a sea of stars at the edge of the earth or an entirely different world, a place nothing like the kingdom.

Talk died out after that. The three at the campfire let their minds quietly accept that sleep was near. Hans smiled through the entirety of Roland’s story and continued even now. He loved this part of adventuring, getting to hear stories that had never left one small place in the world. He had become something of a collector in that respect.

Quest Update: Research the history and legends of the Dead End Mountains, more.

Gomi had to be a treasure trove of wonderfully weird stories, and with a dungeon pit a few feet away, he suspected he might become a character in one of those stories someday.

What an honor that would be.

***

Hans was the first to wake, so he started on the fire. He was slightly concerned that Becky hadn’t arrived yet, but Druids had their own perception of time. He pushed it from his mind and hung the kettle over the flames. Waiting for the water to boil, he surveyed the site.

The temporary shelter would need another hour or two at the most. Having Kane and Quentin to fell trees was a big help, but if they were wielding axes, Hans was stuck with the shovel. Digging the pit had given him his fill of shoveling for a long while, but the cabin needed a foundation. Having an actual bed to sleep in would be quite the reward.

But what next?

Not sure where to start, he began drafting a wish list–a more serious one this time–of what functions a dungeon outpost should serve.

Shelter and warmth were the foundation, but more shelter meant more mouths to feed, so they’d need a cellar for food, maybe even a smokehouse so they could process and preserve game on site instead of having to drag it back to town. Sharing a single room with three other adventurers would eventually lead to friction. A little bit of leisure space would help that.

An armory with some basic maintenance equipment would be a necessity. The less they had to hump weapons and armor back and forth from town, the better. An on-site blacksmith was a fantasy, but they could have enough on hand to make basic repairs. The same should probably be said of an infirmary. A serious wound wouldn’t survive the hike to town, so they’d need to stock an inventory of medical supplies and teach someone to use them.

With so much time to pass, a space to train and a place to read would be nice as well. They sounded like luxuries, but sometimes luxuries were necessities when everything else was hard.

For the cabin to be an effective cover, none of those things could be visible. How could they hide half a town of resources? No secret bookcase would be good enough to pull that off. The longer he stared at the pit, the more he realized that underground may be the most effective option.

“Why do you look so sad?” Olza asked, reaching for the kettle.

“I don’t want to dig anymore.”

***

Asking for Roland’s help was a dumb idea. The hunter’s standards were too high.

“Sorry, needs another foot and a half at least,” Roland said, looking down at what digging Hans had accomplished.

Glumly, Hans returned to his work. In the background, he could hear Kane and Quentin holding a steady rhythm of chops. Roland had them looking for larger trees for the cabin build, and the boys decided working on the same tree was easier. From time to time, Roland would walk to where they were working to assess their technique. After a short evaluation, he’d point out what they should do differently to drop the tree in a safe direction before returning to digging holes with Hans.

To disrupt the monotony, Hans shared his cabin thoughts with Roland, from what he thought it needed to what concerned him.

The hunter laughed.

“What?”

“No one is coming up here just to have a look. Build whatever you want.”

And he was serious. If someone took the effort to find their way to this exact spot in the Dead End Mountains, the problem was likely bigger than a believable cabin could solve.

“I see your point,” Hans said with only a little huffing, “You’d really put it out in the open?”

“I’m just a backwoods guy. Who am I to say what’s right for a big time adventurer retiring to the mountains?”

“Very funny.”

Roland smiled. Hans thought the hunter was doing that more often, smiling. The weight he hadn’t been able to shake since the hopelessness aura was lightening. It wasn’t completely gone, but it seemed easier for him to carry in recent days. That was good news for Roland’s son as well. Hans suspected that Quentin had played the largest part in that recovery, and the boy deserved for things to work out.

“What happens when Quentin becomes an Apprentice? How does that work?” Roland asked.

“When and not if?”

“We both know why I say that.”

Hans laughed. Quentin’s interest in adventuring was far stronger than mild curiosity. Anyone could see that. “Apprentice is a more formal version of what he’s doing now. Good bit of bookwork, a few written tests. There’s a combat competency assessment as well. When the tests are done, he’ll shadow Bronze-ranked and Silver-ranked adventurers on low rank jobs.”

“What’s that look like in Gomi?”

“...That’s a good question. The practical experience will be tough to get because there just aren’t a lot of jobs here. It’s pretty important adventurers experience a variety of jobs at the low ranks when mistakes are less deadly.”

The hunter sighed. “I assumed that was the case, as much as I don’t want it to be.”

“He’s got some time to decide what he wants to do. If he does travel, I can make sure he’s with a good chapter, the kind of people you’d want him to be around.”

“I appreciate that.”

***

Sliding the last post into place was not as triumphant as Hans had hoped. They shouldn’t need to use shovels for any other part of the job, but he wasn’t looking forward to hefting the logs Kane and Quentin had gathered. Dragging the logs out of the woods looked far worse than digging post holes, so Hans was grateful he had avoided lumberjack duties at least.

Roland explained that they would do very little processing of the logs because they didn’t have the tools or time, but he promised it would be airtight. The hunter was as good with a woodsman’s axe as Hans was with a sword. Watching him build the temporary shelter was as entertaining as it was educational. Hans suspected the cabin total build would be more impressive than the precise modifications Roland made to any individual log.

After trying and failing to argue that they should get a glass of fool’s root, Kane and Quentin went to their bedrolls while Hans, Olza, and Roland spent another night around the fire.

A tortured howl echoed up from the pit. Everyone tensed, each of them instinctively reaching for a weapon. A few breaths later, it came again.

Becky had yet to arrive. The conundrum that had them waiting for Becky in the first place–a shortage of squonk-resistant adventurers–now put them at risk. Going after the howl wasn’t an option. Not only could a squonk claim one of them, the halls were trapped by the Druid for just this reason, to keep monsters from escaping the dungeon.

Hans grabbed a few pieces of the chopped firewood and tossed them into the pit. He stepped into the darkness and emerged with a blanket from his tent, wrapping it around his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Olza asked.

“Taking watch in the pit. I’m not going in the dungeon. Just watching the door.”

Once he reached the bottom, Hans gathered the firewood he dropped and built a fire, the opening of the pit overhead acting as a chimney. Putting his back to the fire and facing down the cavern that eventually became a dungeon, he crossed his legs and put his sword across his lap. With light behind him, his eyes had an easier time adjusting to the darkness.

Three minutes passed.

My damn knees. Oh gods.

***

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."

Expand the Gomi training area to include ramps for footwork drills.

Design a system for training dungeon awareness.

Research the history and legends of the Dead End Mountains, more.

Protect Gomi.

Train Gomi adventurers to keep the dungeon at bay.

Design the ultimate strategy for hunting squonks.

Solve the town secret problem without being a conspiracy weirdo.

Help Roland complete the cabin build.

Test Quentin’s siren-squonk theory.

Pick a secret passage design for the cabin. Bonus Objective: Make it cooler than a bookshelf door.