Discovering a dungeon core in the Dead End Mountains was a threat to Gomi on multiple fronts. While a dungeon endlessly spewing monsters into their backyard was not ideal, Gomi’s fear was greater than monsters.

People.

Specifically, those prejudiced against tusks, which, unfortunately, represented a significant cross-section of the kingdom population. The dungeon core was likely to bring all manner of adventurers, speculators, and nobility to the region, all hoping to stake their claim before someone else. To them, the claim of the Tribe–the collective nickname of the tusk-touched commune built outside Gomi–was irrelevant.

Worse yet, orcs invading from the frontier had reportedly inspired dozens of tusks to mutiny, to leave their lives in the kingdom to fight alongside full-blooded orcs. These orcs were not like the small groups of feral orcs the kingdom typically encountered. These orcs were organized, followed a chain of command, and deployed sophisticated battle tactics. That scared everyone, including the tusk-touched, and stoked old hatreds. Being a tusk grew more dangerous by the day.

The Tribe opened its doors to tusks wanting to escape the violence, quietly shuttling tusk families of all ages and sizes to the Tribe farmlands. They would have shelter, food, and community and could stay as long they liked. Come spring, they would have homes of their own and land to work, if they wanted it. Most importantly, they didn’t have to watch for the sideways glances of neighbors looking to run them out of town.

Hans, who recently filled the open position at the local chapter of the Adventurers’ Guild, had resigned just months later. And it was not because his star student lobbied for his removal–because he had. He stayed behind as another citizen of Gomi, willing to do whatever he could to help protect the town. His Guild Master predecessors, on the other hand, saw no future for themselves in Gomi, and they couldn’t leave town quickly enough.

For Hans to do his part, he needed to complete a particular quest as soon as possible:

Active Quest: Train Gomi adventurers to keep the dungeon at bay.

Quests only existed in Hans’ mind, of course, a way for him to organize and reach his goals. No one else could see them, and he didn’t get any rewards or treasure for completing them beyond a hit of glorious dopamine. This quest, though, wasn’t a run-of-the-mill guild job. The quest system was entirely imaginary, but the stakes were not.

To protect Gomi, the town agreed on a plan: Control the dungeon in order to keep it secret, thrusting Hans back into the role of Guild Master to keep up appearances.

Prior to the Gomi dungeon core, the most recent dungeon discovery was the Lemura’s Labyrinth. 73 farmers perished in less than a day when the dungeon opened, spilling monsters onto the surface, but adventurers came by the wagonfull. Ostensibly, they were there to help, but really, most of them came for riches. The damage they wrought on the tusks was worse than the monsters.

Right now, the beasts coming out of the Gomi dungeon were few. The squonks posed a unique challenge because of their hopelessness auras, but the dungeon core seemed to produce only one or two monsters a month. Some of those monsters were twisted chimeras who could hardly function, often dying just hours after their birth.

If that spawn rate held, Hans would have plenty of time to train a crew of Gomi adventurers to monitor and cull the dungeon. He worried, however, that wishful thinking was clouding his judgment. With so little known about dungeon cores, he had no way of knowing how much time they truly had. Hopefully a lot but best to assume the opposite.

Leafing through his partially complete manuscript, titled The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers, Hans sought opportunities to condense and streamline a new curriculum, a new lesson structure with the express purpose of training effective adventurers as swiftly as possible. Gomi needed real adventurers, and Hans wouldn’t accept putting people in the field who weren’t prepared. Everything he cut now he once deemed essential when he previously streamlined his curriculum. Making cuts to an already lean, concise lesson plan felt dangerous.

He was responsible for preparing and protecting this new wave of Gomi adventurers. If anyone died culling the dungeon, it would be his fault for not doing his part as their instructor.

Adventurer education was traditionally quite broad. The world was big, and monsters were plentiful. To survive, adventurers needed to be adaptable to a variety of environments and challenges. One job might have them spelunking for rare mushrooms while the next job could be investigating a werewolf sighting in the countryside. But surprise, it’s not a werewolf, it’s a polymorphing cultist who worships dire wolves, and he’s coming right at you. This exact moment.

So figure it out.

Initially, Hans could cut anything not immediately relevant to Gomi. If a reagent or a creature was not native to the area, it went into the “later” pile. Desert survival? Jungle survival? No point. Gomi didn’t have those. An encyclopedic knowledge of known monster species and variants? Probably the coolest part of his job but largely irrelevant right now.

Gnolls were the most common monster threat in the Gomi forest. Orcs, goblins, and trolls were always good to study as those species often roamed far from their original homes. Wolves and dire wolves would be similar to fighting gnolls, and they were the most likely wild animals to pose a threat to locals.

And finally, Gomi had squonks. He saved that one for last because he had no idea what to teach for a squonk lesson. His best strategy for resisting the hopelessness aura was pouring water down the front of his pants, and that hadn’t worked all that well. Were it not for Becky and Roland, he would still be wandering the dungeon, out of his mind with sadness. He hoped he’d come up with something by the time the first class of Apprentices was in the rotation. If they didn’t have a plan for squonks, culling the dungeon would be much more dangerous, if not impossible.

New Quest: Design the ultimate strategy for hunting squonks.

Gods, this is going to be hard.

The more Hans worked on a plan for how to keep the Gomi dungeon a secret, the more impossible it seemed. The scope of the challenge was so much bigger than training adventurers, and the scope seemed to grow the more deeply he thought about the problem and uncovered wrinkles and rough edges.

If the Gomi dungeon core was like the others, the deeper levels could produce treasure. If that was the case for Gomi, the town would have another secret to keep. Otherwise, a nowhere town suddenly selling rare items by the wheelbarrow would surely raise suspicions. The flipside of that problem was that without a source of loot, explaining why several adventurers lived in Gomi permanently would be equally difficult.

Supposing all of those problems were solved–which was quite the supposition, even for Hans–an entire town had to keep a singular secret. One disgruntled citizen running their mouths, or even a child gushing to a merchant as children are wont to do, and the entire operation would collapse. No amount of optimism could make that seem feasible. Bad actors were inevitable, and well-intentioned people made mistakes.

In theory, the dungeon could be a secret kept from Gomi as well as the world. Every offshoot of that line of thinking bothered him, though, deeply.

If he couldn’t be honest with every citizen, his remaining options felt more like bad conspiracies. A shadowy web of deception that kept all but the select few in blissful ignorance, believing outlandish lies that conveniently explained the adventurers, the monsters, and the loot. Having to keep that facade going at all times sounded soul-suckingly exhausting.

I couldn’t live the rest of my life lying to everyone every day.

But that was it. He couldn’t think of any other solutions.

New Quest: Solve the town secret problem without being a conspiracy weirdo.

He had a little less than three months to develop the complete solution and to learn as much about the dungeon core as he could. When the pass opened again, the problems from the outside world would compound the ones Gomi already had. In his mind, compromising on training adventurers and understanding the dungeon core was out of the question, yet how could he train adventurers in Gomi while also exploring the dungeon?

Why do they have to be separate?

If his training methods were efficient enough, he could take groups to the dungeon and train them there. While the trainees rested between classes, he could research the dungeon and the dungeon core. Assuming they devised a way to safely fight the squonks, that is. That plan still put Apprentices at risk, however. He couldn’t say for certain that they could handle a dungeon monster so early in their training, not when they knew so little about what the dungeon core could do.

Flipping back through his notes, Hans frowned. His thoughts went circles, and he had come no closer to addressing the biggest problems. The more he spiraled, the more he seemed to move away instead of toward a solution.

“Are you okay, Mr. Hans?” Quentin asked, sitting at one of the tables in the guild hall.

Hans leaned back, shutting his journal and rubbing his eyes. “We have so much to get done,” he said, “and too many questions left to answer.”

They avoided addressing the topic directly, lest someone overhear before a plan was decided. Despite his young age, Quentin knew about the dungeon. His father, Roland the hunter, had been the first squonk victim and was one of the original party members who discovered the dungeon core. Quentin had lived through the worst of the ordeal already. He stayed at his father’s side while he recovered from days in the hopelessness aura, so the seriousness of the monsters was not lost on him.

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

Roland wouldn’t allow his son to go about life in ignorance when he could face the same monster and suffer the same fate. Were Quentin any other kid, Hans might worry, but Quentin was more mature than most adults.

Careful, Hans, doesn’t mean he’s not still a kid. Let him be a kid.

“Can I help?” Quentin asked.

Hans tapped his chin. “Yes, actually. If something in there reminds you of squonks, tell me.”

Quentin stared back.

“This isn’t me trying to fool you with busy work. You have fresh eyes. Maybe an entry or note will stick out to you that didn’t for me.”

The boy’s face scrunched up in thought.

“I’m serious,” Hans insisted, and he was. “When you get stuck in your research, try a new perspective. If you can’t do that on your own, borrow someone else’s. I’m borrowing yours.”

Nodding, Quentin agreed to help.

The Guild Master–well, kind of not really the Guild Master, but nevermind that right now–needed to return to the dungeon, and he was certain it was for pragmatic purposes and not his inner child feeling gleeful about an adventure. The entire plan hinged upon controlling the growth of monsters, making exploration a priority. The more they understood, the better they could prepare.

Very reasonable.

***

“Olza? What brings you out here?” Hans was surprised to see the alchemist in the Tribe’s brewing barn, talking to Galad. The trek through the snow hadn’t been easy for the Guild Master. Snow clumped around the edges of his pant legs and shirtsleeves, which began to melt as soon as he stepped inside. The warmth he built up beneath his jacket on the way over felt oppressive now that he was indoors.

Meanwhile, Olza looked as though she hadn’t been outside at all. Her navy blue overcoat didn’t have a spec of snow, and her dark braid was perfectly bound, not a hair out of place. She was dry and cleanly put together, unlike the sweaty Hans. Most residents of Gomi appeared to Hans that way, as if they somehow glided along with the season, working with winter instead of against it.

If there is a potion for snow walking that they’re not telling me about, I swear…

“I wanted to talk to Galad before we left.”

“Left? Where are you two going?”

“No, ‘we’ as in you and me. We’re heading back to the mountains, right?” Olza had just then decided what the cover name for the dungeon would be, as talking about it openly could spark a fire before they were ready to tend it.

Hans disliked that he hadn’t been the one to give the dungeon a codename. He was more upset he hadn’t thought to, though. Stealing a glance to Galad, the large tusk smirked and shrugged. He knew better than to get involved.

“There’s only one bed in the cabin,” Hans said. “I hope you like sleeping outside.”

“Leave in the morning?”

With a sigh, he replied, “Yeah. Sure.”

Bowing her head slightly to Galad, Olza said she was heading home to pack. Hans watched her feet for signs of snowwalking. Suspiciously, she shut the door behind her when she left, blocking his view.

“Olza’s looking into a sleep medicine for the children. Nightmares have gotten bad enough that we have someone watch the doors all night so no one runs. Anyway, what can I do for you, Guild Master?” Galad asked.

“Well, as you’ve heard,” Hans coughed, “I’m heading back to the mountains for a few days. I wanted to check in with you before I did.”

“Haven’t given me much time.”

“Really? I’d assume you already had the expansion planned down to the board.”

The tusk chuckled. “Don’t forget the posts we need for the walls.”

Hans laughed too. He had guessed correctly that the tusk would over prepare. They both knew they were kindred spirits in that respect.

“Construction is easy if you’re willing to do the math,” Galad continued. “The work is hard, but the planning is straightforward. I don’t know how to tell the Tribe about all of this, though. I’m stuck there.” Galad scratched one of his tusks.

“Yeah, me too.”

“They don’t have a chapter on that in the guild manual?”

“Right. Would be nice if this was in the textbooks.”

They agreed to let one another know if they had new ideas and to update each other on the progress made on other fronts. With only a few days having passed since Hans’ party returned with news of the dungeon, Galad seemed to be as consumed with the problem as the Guild Master. Hans hoped the tusk had slept but wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t.

Rearranging furniture for winter training was simple enough, Galad said. Making good on the Tribe’s promise to build new homes for their new neighbors while also making the necessary expansions for defending their way of life–all of that came next. The Tribe couldn’t surround all of the Tribe farms with a wall, however. In a world where they had the manpower to watch them–which they didn’t–building them by hand with their numbers could still take years.

Planning where the wall should go meant deciding what to protect and what could be left behind. If they faced an attack, anything outside of the walls would likely be lost. Homes, sheds, crops–best to accept they wouldn’t survive. The average townsperson knew that’s how it worked during a war. Living to rebuild was more important, as painful as it might be.

But Galad wasn’t a general. He intended to surround the barns with walls. No personal homes would be inside. He reasoned that division bred contempt, and contempt poisoned communities. If Galad put his own home inside the walls, he would signal that everyone else was lesser than him in some way. His belongings were important enough to protect but not theirs.

To survive together, Galad felt the challenge should be shared equally. Every building inside the walls would be owned by the Tribe, from the brewing barns to the dormitories. If they couldn’t save every home, their priority would be how best to survive together, during and after an attack. That meant they needed cohesion and trust most of all.

Somehow, Galad’s moral justification for his defense strategy was also the most tactically sound to Hans. The tusk again impressed. Not a soldier or general himself, Hans too had worried about “haves” and “have nots.” That’s how it happened when walls couldn’t protect everyone equally. They never could, really, but Galad’s solution put every person in the same kind of bed, under the same kind of roof, and with the same food to eat.

“Does your plan include a blacksmith?” Hans asked. “And how about a hospital?”

“Explain.”

“The sieges I’ve read about have lasted months or longer. We’ll want the essentials inside the wall if we want to hold out.”

Galad nodded. “I hadn’t considered that. I’ve been thinking about food, weapons, and shelter.”

“And beer.”

“What?”

“Think I didn’t notice we’d be protecting the beer with this plan?”

The tusk laughed. “It’s good for morale.”

Hans agreed, wholeheartedly.

***

Becky still refused to pass through the fissure and enter the room with the dungeon core. She stood in the crack, six feet higher than the floor, watching Hans and Olza inspect the room again. Presently, they measured the octagonal walls. Next they logged the lengths of the eight roots, one for each wall. Those roots followed a straight and smooth obsidian line to a cube of the same material in the middle of the room, which they also measured.

The cube was fractured, violently. At its center, the fragment of a sphere glowed a soft purple. Most of the core was missing, but the glassy curve of the lone shard was enough to hint at how the whole might look were it not damaged.

“We should collect root samples,” Olza said, squatting next to the only living root system. The other seven had died so long ago they had nearly turned to dust.

“Too risky,” Hans said.

“No, I’ve been thinking about this. We had to walk on the roots to get here, so we know they aren’t that fragile. Becky’s picked a few dozen of the flowers, which is also breaking the roots, right?”

Hans agreed those observations were correct.

“The adventurer paranoia is noble, but I know my craft. Let me work.”

Finally agreeing, he couldn’t help but wince when Olza used a knife to scrape the bark of a dead root into a vial, repeating the process with the living roots. She tried to do the same with the wall, but nothing came loose. She was bold, but she wasn’t bold enough to take a chisel to the strange surface. Not yet.

While Hans went brick by brick–literally–searching for switches or buttons or compartments, Olza approached the core, leaning close but not touching it or the cube.

“I think the sphere changed,” she said.

“I already checked. No change.”

“You’re wrong.”

Hans spun around. “I swear I checked.”

Olza pointed at the sphere. “There was a small crack here last time.”

Narrowing his eyes, Hans trudged to look at the core with Olza. “I don’t remember a crack,” he said, bending over.

“It was barely the size of a pinhead, but I remember it. Two roots to the right of the living, standing right here, looking at it just like this. It was there.”

“You’re joking. Smaller than a pinhead?” The unpolished center of the core was like the surface of a sandcastle, the smallest grains catching light and shadow to make the surface sparkle. Remembering a detail that small would be like tracking a grain of sand on the beach.

“It was there.”

Looking up to Becky in her perch, the dwarf declined to get involved.

Thinking on it, alchemists worked with precision to execute demandingly exact recipes. Olza was nothing if not professional. As the obsidian explosion showed him, when they dropped quartz on the purple flower to test its connection to the spell Create Earth, single grains mattered. If anyone would notice a single grain, or something nearly as small, it would be the alchemist instead of the retired adventurer.

“If you’re right,” Hans began, “what does that tell us?”

“It’s repairing itself.”

***

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.

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.