Hans stowed the old guild ledgers in the bottom drawer of the front desk. Age had not been kind to them, and they used outdated recordkeeping procedures. Over time, the Adventurers’ Guild had refined what information they tracked and how they tracked it. The practice was a good one, Hans felt, because it kept the Guild at the forefront of acquiring new knowledge. Administrators hated it, though.

With the old ledgers out of sight, Hans reached for a stack of new ledgers and labeled the first, “Alchemy.” Inside, he used a straightedge to add a series of columns to the first page and then added labels for each.

He input the first entry: Olza’s flower, with a credit to Becky the Druid for discovering it.

Quest Complete: Reestablish alchemical recordkeeping.

He repeated a similar process with a ledger on community outreach. He transferred his loose notes from the few classes he had taught thus far, logging total attendance and the topic for each class.

Quest Complete: Reestablish community education recordkeeping.

Financial records next, recording what he bought with chapter funds. The Inventory and Membership ledgers went quickly as well. The guild had very little in storage, and the only member anyone knew of was Becky.

Quest Complete: Reestablish membership records, financial records, and inventory records.

He suspected Becky hadn’t kept records of the jobs she did for the town or the monsters she encountered, but he would still ask regardless.

Hans leaned back in his desk chair, smiling. Checking off his own personal quests felt damn good.

“Am I interrupting?” Mayor Charlie asked with only his head poked inside.

“Not at all,” Hans said, waving Charlie inside. “Taking a moment to enjoy a simple pleasure is all.”

“Wise beyond your years to think that way,” Charlie replied.

How much older is Charlie?

Hans considered the small, wiry man before him. The man’s hair was thin and wispy, but instead of gray, it was a distinctive chestnut brown. He had pronounced crows feet next to his eyes and the gnarled bony hands of a well-practiced artisan, but he tended to move and speak with a pep that made Hans feel tired. Today, the Mayor seemed to be more serious than usual, a marked difference from his enthusiasm on Hans’ first day in town.

“I’m glad you came by,” Hans said, offering Mayor Charlie a seat.

“Oh? What can I do for you?”

“You came to me. You go first.”

Charlie tipped his head forward in thanks. “Galad mentioned talking to you the other day,” he began.

“No secrets in Gomi.”

“There are plenty, we just don’t keep them from each other.”

“Fair enough.”

“I thought I should check in and…” Charlie seemed to struggle with choosing his next words.

“Check in and see if I’ll keep my promise to Galad?” Hans offered.

“Precisely,” Charlie answered and let the silence hang.

Hans restated the same explanation he had given to Galad when they spoke in the barn, and he added more assurances. “I understand your concerns, but I have to ask: Did something happen before me?”

Charlie again left a long silence before answering. “Are you old enough to remember the discovery of the Lemura Labyrinth?”

“That’s outside of Kirai. I wasn’t born yet, but I know the history. Small town discovers a dungeon, transforms its economy overnight.”

“Kirai isn’t as remote as Gomi, but it was an unremarkable small town off the beaten path, like Gomi. Galad’s parents, gods rest their souls, were part of a tusk collective near Kirai. It started strong, but then the dungeon was found. You can probably fill in the rest.”

“Big influx of adventurers, and enough of them had a problem with tusks to tear down what they built.”

The Mayor nodded. “I mean no offense when I say this: You present two potential risks for Gomi. The first is that you’re new here, and this is a place where new faces are rare. We know now that you’re friendly and trustworthy, but you’re also from the Capital. An innocuous line in a letter home could bring a great deal of suffering to Gomi, whether you meant it to or not.”

Hans nodded. Those were pretty common–and also fair–reasons to be skeptical of outsiders.

“The second risk is harder to articulate,” Charlie continued. “It’s clear to all of us that you are passionate about what you do. You want to build something and have an impact.”

“I’m not following you on that one.”

“How should I say this? Driven people find success, and success attracts attention.”

“Ah.”

“It’s a strange thing to say we are worried you will do too good of a job, but–”

The front door of the guild hall opened. Quentin was done with his morning chores and arrived for class early, as he had done since Hans arrived in Gomi.

“Good morning, Quentin,” Hans called. “The Mayor and I are wrapping up some business.”

Quentin understood the subtext. The boy grabbed Hans' guild combat manual and stepped out to the training yard to study.

Hans returned his attention to Mayor Charlie. “There’s a lot to take apart here, so I’ll start with this: I have no intention or desire to cause trouble for anyone in Gomi. Anyone. Those are words I need to prove with actions, but right now, my word is what I can offer.”

Charlie stayed stoically quiet.

“As part of keeping that promise, I welcome your help. Truly. I won’t shirk my responsibilities to the chapter. That said, Galad already got me thinking about unintentional consequences and nothing I can think of looks like an immediate problem. To me. If this is how you always approach difficult conversations, I’m betting we could resolve most things together that might come up.”

The slight smile on Charlie’s face said that he took Hans’ words as a compliment.

“Fair to assume you looked into me before I got here?”

Charlie shrugged.

“Doesn’t offend me. What did you learn? And please, continue to be candid.”

The Mayor weighed Hans’ words, trying to gauge how direct he could be without offending the Guild Master. “You were described as a ‘has-been’ adventurer with a respectable but unremarkable career. I know the Hoseki Chapter Guild Master barred you from trying for Diamond ever again. Some folks spoke highly of your teaching methods while others felt the extreme opposite. And your record is spotless.”

That was kinder than Hans expected. “Nobody commented on my future with the Guild?”

“It sounded like most saw the posting in Gomi as a punishment. Somewhere you could be out of the way and forgotten.”

Though Hans knew the truth of those statements, they still stung. Until Mayor Charlie confirmed them, those had been simple suspicions. He was grateful for the clarity, but he was also sad to give up on the hope that, perhaps, he misjudged how leadership felt about him and he was more liked than he believed.

Apparently, he had judged correctly.

Until that point, Hans spoke with the practiced authority of an instructor, a Guild Master. After hearing what Charlie had learned, he felt that strength within him sputter. “Gomi is my last go at it,” Hans said softly. “I always wanted to be a Guild Master someday, and this is my last chance to make something of myself, to do something that matters. If this doesn’t work out… I’m done with all of it. The easiest way for me to ruin this is to betray the people I’m here to serve.”

“I think we understand each other. Thank you for listening to the worries of an old man.”

Quest Complete: Learn more about the citizens of Gomi.

New Quest: Grow the Gomi chapter without attracting outside attention.

A faint screech reached Hans’ ears, like a pig squealing in the distance.

Quentin burst into the guild hall a moment later. “Becky’s back!”

***

Outside the guildhouse, a large crowd, by Gomi standards at least, began to form around Becky and her mount. Hans chuckled to himself about what details the townsfolk had left out in their descriptions of Becky the Druid. Given how big those details were, it had to be an intentional prank.

Becky was half Hans' height but likely near to the same weight given her muscular bulk. Grays and whites streaked her otherwise black hair, pulled back into a braid that matched the braid in her beard.

Becky was a dwarf.

She wore the leathers and furs of someone who lived off the land and relished it, though her accessories were minimal given the heat. Most of her furs were stowed in her saddlebags, leaving her with a sleeveless leather top, perhaps of her own crafting, exposing her tanned arms. Her shoulders, biceps, and forearms were like individual boulders beaded together to form arms.

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

She sat on the back of a warthog the size of a pony. The beast’s flat head was half as long as it was tall, putting its snout a small dip away from touching the ground. Six tusks jutted out the sides of its mouth, the last pair an inch below its eyeline. Its scruffy fur was a mix of tan, mahogany, and oily black. Its hair was longest at the top of its head, as though it was growing the wild boar version of a mullet.

In addition to Becky’s full saddlebags, the boar also carried two deer, lashed on to the beast so they wouldn’t fall. A bow and quiver hung on one side, and an axe hung on the other. The axe blade was unusual, like it was a compromise between a woodsman’s axe and a battle axe. Its handle looked like it had been grown rather than been carved, a gracefully arching handle of dark gnarled wood.

And the boar kept squealing.

So Becky yelled over it.

“Howdy howdy, friends!” Becky swung her leg over the boar’s back and slid to the ground, falling nearly four feet before her feet hit the ground. “Where’s Charlie? Someone tell him his deer is here.”

Charlie waved. “I hear ya, I hear ya.”

“Hey there, Mayor! You know you got a strange bald man following you?”

Balding, not bald.

The Mayor held up a hand like a presenter introducing a special guest. “This is Hans. He’s the new Guild Master.”

Even the boar stopped squealing. Becky narrowed her eyes and walked purposefully toward Hans. He offered a handshake, but the dwarf simply circled, looking him up and down from every angle, while Hans stood frozen with his hand out.

He spotted Olza leaning against her front door, watching the commotion. He desperately made eye contact, trying to send the message “help me” from his mind to hers. Olza gave him a grin and shrugged.

A hand like a bear’s paw suddenly accepted the handshake.

“If anything happens to my people, you answer to me,” she said, using the handshake to pull Hans down to her eye level.

Charlie set a gentle hand on Becky’s arm. “Galad and I put him through his paces already. He understands.”

Becky held the handshake for a moment longer, her emerald green eyes boring into Hans’ soul. “Welcome to Gomi, boss!” Then she returned to her boar with a playful bounce in her step, starting to unpack her haul. Two saddlebags were stuffed with small burlap bags, which must have been herbs and other wild ingredients because Olza cheerily accepted them.

“Charlie!” Becky yell-talked. “Come get your stinkin’ deer before I take it back.”

Charlie considered the deer. It was as large as he was.

Right before Hans stepped forward to offer his help, Becky shouted, “Mrs. Mayor! Your man needs you!” She was so loud, Hans half-expected to get a complaint from Hoseki about the noise.

The bakery door opened, and a figure ducked to pass through before standing to her full height. The lady tusk made Galad look puny. Though she had some of the softness that comes with being a baker’s wife–and loving it–her bulging muscles still made themselves known. Her arms were larger than Hans’ thighs, and in shockingly few strides she was at the boar.

In the sunlight, she had the distinctive features of a tusk-touched, but she still had a feminine softness to go with her sharp cheekbones, dominant nose, and pointy ears. With one hand, she threw one of the deer over her shoulders.

“Thank you, Becky,” the tusk’s voice reverberated, sounding like the voice they used for giants and cyclops in children’s plays. “If you stay for dinner, come join us.”

“I’ll be along in a minute sweetheart,” Charlie said to his wife. She bent over, kissed Mayor Charlie on the cheek, and headed back to her home in the bakery.

Hans noticed the Mayor’s gaze linger on his wife as she walked away. Lingering for an amount of time that would have been uncomfortable were the two not married. In that moment, Hans wished that he knew enough magic to erase the visual he conjured in his mind.

Becky did another check of her bags. “I think that’s everything. The rest of this is going out to the Tribe.” The dwarf still yelled every word.

“As I was saying, Hans has some guild questions for you,” Charlie attempted.

“Keep your grubby hands off my gold,” she said, putting a hand on her axe, coupling it with a blood-curdling stare at Hans. “I’m just kidding you. Oh, your face. I’ll remember that baby possum face for the rest of my days.”

“It’s nice to meet you. It’s nothing big, I–”

“Becki!” the dwarf yelled at her boar. “What did I tell you about eating dirt? Don’t you even think of lying to me.”

While Becky and her boar stared each other down, Hans asked, “Is your familiar’s name Becky too?”

“Becki with an ‘I.’ We’re sisters. Can’t you see the resemblance?”

And again, Hans simply couldn’t find the words. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. His brain was stuck.

“There you go again. Come on, ask your questions.”

A plan finally formed in Hans’ mind. “Stop by the guild hall before you leave? Looks like you have other stops, and I have a kids’ class to teach soon.”

“Oh nonsense. I’ll come by and see the kids.”

That wasn’t the plan, but now it was.

Quest Complete: Meet Becky the druid, Gomi’s only active adventurer.

***

As it often did, word spread quickly through Gomi that Becky and Becki were in town. The same seven kids from the day before returned for class, and they each bubbled at the sight of the dwarf Druid. Even Kane giggled at Becky’s antics. Soon, there was a small crowd sitting against the training yard fence, watching the kids’ class and Becky taking the kids’ class.

Meanwhile, Becki meandered through town, munching on weeds.

To Becky’s credit, she offered to be Quentin’s training partner for drills since the class was an odd number, and she seemed to genuinely follow Hans’ instruction. She was quiet when Hans spoke, but otherwise she talked through most of the class. Sometimes she complimented Quentin. Sometimes she hurled insults at the boy while giving him advice at the same time.

“You’re stepping too wide. You’re moving like a pregnant cow. Are you a pregnant cow, or are you an adventurer?”

No matter how absurd the commentary, Quentin laughed with every exchange. Becky’s personality may have been unorthodox, but the town’s love for her–as well as her love for the town–was clear. The loud dwarf was oddly charming.

Sometime during the class, the prickly town guard had joined the crowd. Hans ignored his presence and began to wrap up for the day.

“Mind if I say something, boss?”

Hans stepped back and gave Becky the floor.

She addressed the students as well as the adults gathered to watch. “I just met the Guild Master, so I can’t tell you a lick about his character, but this man knows his swordplay. I’ve been stabbing stuff for a while, and I learned like five new tips today. Kids, keep training with Hans and you’ll be tougher than me or Becki.”

Stepping back to join the students, Becky let Hans continue. “Wow. Thank you for that, Becky. Those were very kind words.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Hans noticed Gunther whispering in Becky’s ear. Her face went dark. “I’m sorry, Boss. I need to say one more thing.”

Hans stepped back, accepting that he had lost control of the class at this point, but the kids had never laughed so much when they trained. That was just as good for them as learning to fight, Hans thought.

“Terry! Is your dill pickle face here?”

Hans didn’t know what it meant to have a “dill pickle” face, but based on the context, it was an insult.

“Terry! Where are you?” Becky stood on her tiptoes to see around the faces in the crowd.

Terry raised his hand and stepped forward, sheepishly. “I’m here.”

“Hey, boss,” Becky said to Hans, motioning for him to come close so she could whisper. “How about you and I spar? I’ll give you hell but I know you’ll win. I promise you, no one will question your ability again.”

“Sparring, not a duel.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

Accepting the offer had its risks. His refusal to duel was a deliberate one, his attempt to instill in his students that they did not need to draw their swords every time a stranger hassled them. If Becky was sincere, sparring with her in front of the kids and the townspeople would be educational. He could talk about sparring etiquette and how to make sparring about training rather than fighting.

If she had a temper, though… Let’s just say that more than a few duels began as friendly sparring matches, spinning out of control when an ego was damaged.

“Okay. I’m game. We only have training swords, though. I take it you prefer your axe.”

“We can spar with more civilized weapons next time. Swords are good with me.”

Hans opened his mouth to explain what was about to happen to the class.

Becky beat him to it. “Me and the Guild Master are going to fight! Just fooling. We’re going to have a friendly match. I want you all to listen–especially you, Terry–I’m going to give Hans my best. If he wins, it’s because he’s better. Got it?”

Her eyes scanned the crowd, daring someone to question her honor. No one spoke.

“Thank you, Becky,” Hans said, before speaking to the students. “Before we start, we need to talk about why we spar. Who wants to guess why we spar?”

“To win!” Gunther exclaimed with a little too much bloodlust in his voice.

“Kind of, and we’ll talk about that in a second.”

“Practice!” Loddie answered.

“That’s correct. This is practice to prepare us to fight. Becky and I are friends, so we are going to spar, not fight. That means neither of us gets mad if we lose, and it also means we look out for each other. We can’t train or adventure if we’re injured, so we need to spar with enough control that we keep each other healthy. We’ll talk more about learning from sparring when we get that far in the curriculum.”

Becky stood in her starting place, waiting for Hans to finish. As Hans took his place across from her, he noticed the dwarf adopt a loose fencer’s stance. She bent her knees and held her sword out, pointing the tip at Hans. With her sword arm extended like it was, she wouldn’t generate much power, which was what Hans expected from a dwarf, initially. Instead, she created more distance, sacrificing power for mobility.

With her chosen stance, she could intercept attacks more quickly. Her attacks would likely be short and tight with an emphasis on thrusting attacks, he predicted.

They began, and Hans saw immediately that his assessment was correct. Unfortunately, he underestimated her speed.

The dwarf Druid was inside Hans’ guard in a flash. Lacking the space and the time to parry or block, Hans avoided the initial flurry of thrusts with a series of dodges quick enough and small enough to match the rhythm of her attack. Becky advanced with every step, forcing Hans to give ground.

Despite her swift strikes, her sword hit only air, her attacks always a fraction of a second too late, as if Hans could predict where her next strike would go. She never missed by much, but she still missed.

In the midst of her flurry, Hans noticed the dwarf’s weight sink, like springs starting to compress. The movement was subtle, but the shift in positioning was enough of a tell for Hans to set a trap.

When Becky hurled herself forward with a powerful thrust, Hans slipped to the side and stepped toward Becky in one motion. He turned and watched the tip of the blade go by, as casually as he might step aside in a hallway to let someone pass. With Becky’s arm extended, fully committed to her thrust, Hans wrapped his free arm around the dwarf’s sword arm, turning to face the same direction as the dwarf, pinching her limb against his ribs.

The technique locked her arm in place, the blade of her sword pointing at nothing as if Hans was standing behind her teaching her to attack, like a pool player teaching proper cue stick form by holding the players hands and doing the shot with them.

With the butt of his sword, Hans gave a quick hammer strike to Becky’s wrist, forcing the weapon from her hand.

The fight was over in seconds.

Hans let go of Becky’s arm and picked up her sword, holding it by the wooden blade to give her the hilt. Becky accepted it with a smile and returned to her starting position.

When Hans did the same, they restarted a moment later. Becky slid forward to thrust as she had in the first round, but as soon as Hans dodged she slid back. Instead of the loose fencer’s stance, she assumed a more traditional soldier’s guard, her sword angled upward, her every limb tight to her body.

Hans taught the same stance because of its efficiency. The sword was in position for defense and offense, her body ready to respond without having to wind up.

It was bait. She wanted him to chase her.

He played along and pursued as if he hadn’t noticed her leave her fencer’s stance. Becky couldn’t hide her grin as she attacked with a tight fronthand slash, bringing her sword across horizontally where the belly dancing Hans had used previously to dodge her thrusts would be useless.

But Hans was ready. He slid backward, Becky’s slash missing completely. As the strike traveled across his center line, he followed it with a parry, putting more energy into the failed strike and closing the distance behind it. When Becky stepped to recover her balance, Hans was there. He wrapped her arm again and knocked her sword to the ground.

Becky stared at the wooden sword in the dirt and broke into a belly laugh. “Terry!” she yelled. “Probably best not pick a fight with the new Guild Master.”

***

Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

Mend the rift between Hans and Devon.

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

Replenish basic adventuring provisions.

Pick up training equipment from the smith when it is completed.

Wait for Olza to deliver the rest of the potion order.

Reestablish job-completion and monster-hunting recordkeeping.

Identify the unknown purple flower from Olza.

Keep the guild hall clean.

Assemble a chapter library.

Write a letter to Mazo for help with Olza’s flower, after asking Olza’s permission.

Grow the Gomi chapter without attracting outside attention.