Someone knocked on the cabin door.

“Olza? You’re early.”

“No… I’m on time.”

“I thought you’d be here tomorrow,” Hans said. “I’ve been mixing up days more often lately. Training has been busy.”

Olza wrinkled her nose when she stepped inside. “I thought maybe I’d bully you out of this cabin too, but you can keep it.”

“What? You don’t like the smell of hard-earned experience?” Hans grinned.

“Nope.”

“Want the campus tour? A lot has changed.”

She said that she did. Hans showed her the new dorms as well as the in-progress stable. The build team was still preparing the site but had staked out dimensions and location. Next, Hans and Olza walked up the hill to say hello to Luther. The tusk helped the husband and wife harvesters build their cabin. He had planned to be working on his own cabin, but with his mind set on living in the dungeon, he didn’t need to. Once this cabin was far enough long, he would devote the rest of his free time to the father and son harvesters. They needed a home as well.

“Olza! What a surprise!” Luther set down his hammer and gave her a hug. “What brings you up the mountain?”

“I’m due for another core assessment. I’ve been tracking how it grows when the dungeon grows.”

“Interesting. What have you learned?”

Olza laughed. “Not much. We’re still just observing its behavior and how it changes for now. Your cabin is coming along nicely.”

“Oh, this isn’t mine.” Luther pointed to the couple working at the other end. “It’s theirs.”

“Typical Luther,” Olza said. “Will yours be in this area too?”

Luther looked at Hans. “You didn’t tell her?”

“I’m not a washing well lady,” Hans said. “It’s not my place to share that.”

“I also just got here,” Olza said.

“She also just got here,” Hans agreed.

The tusk struggled to find the words but eventually said, “I’m moving into the dungeon. We’re not sure when, but I’ll be fairly deep.”

Olza glanced between both of the men, a round of laughter waiting to leave her lips, but she saw they were serious. “That’s pretty weird, Luther, but I get it.”

“You do?”

“I moved to Gomi because it was the most remote town in the kingdom. I wanted that space between me and everyone else. The more the better. If you’re doing that too, I understand.”

Hans raised his arms, insisting he hadn’t told her.

Luther smiled. “Thank you. If your work with the core continues, I imagine we’ll see each other regularly.”

“That’s very true,” Olza said. “A friendly face down there doesn’t sound bad. Are you worried you’ll get bored?”

“Perhaps somewhat,” Luther admitted, “but not very. I’m looking forward to reading and playing music. Might try some farming too.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Hans said.

“The idea is a new one. I like being a farmer. When I started thinking about missing it, figured I could have a few pots going to scratch the itch. Might have to be mushrooms or something like that, but that’s okay.”

Luther said he needed to get back to work but suggested they talk that night if they found themselves bored or lonely.

Hans took Olza by the A-frame shelters the carpenters and laborers had used for most of the spring. She saw several of the workers on the road on her way in, but she wanted to say hi to the ones she hadn’t. When they arrived, they found Gomi’s blacksmith–Harry and Harriot’s father–talking to some of the men who had the day off.

“Guild Master!” the blacksmith said. “It’s nice to finally lay eyes on the Gomi dungeon. It’s more quaint than I’d expect a dungeon to be.”

Hans chuckled. “If there is a ‘normal’ for dungeons, ours isn’t it. No rush, but come find me when you’re done here and I’ll show you where I think the smelter could fit.”

“No need. Tandis already showed me. She got me an apprentice too.”

“Really? Who?”

“Boy’s name is Eduardo,” the blacksmith answered. When he saw that Hans didn’t recognize the name, he added, “his father is one of the harvesters.”

Ah! The father and son Luther just mentioned helping.

“Yes, of course,” Hans said, a touch embarrassed. “That’s great news for both of you. What do you need next?”

“Just gotta build the bloom furnace. He’s a ways from working a furnace on his own, though. Once we get the road open, I’d suggest carting the iron to town, so I can teach him properly. Getting your materials right is everything for a smith, you know?”

Hans didn’t, actually, but he trusted the blacksmith’s judgment. “If you say that’s best, we’ll figure it out.”

“Until then, I’ll spend a few days with him up here. Show him how to build and stoke a furnace. Get him crushing the iron. Once the road is open and we can bring the haul to town, Eddy will live with us for his apprenticeship.”

“Really? You’d do that?”

“Certainly. That’s how I learned. I think it’ll be good for Harry and Harriot to see an older kid learning a trade too.”

“You’re a good man. Thank you,” Hans said.

The blacksmith smiled. “Still plan to get me some of that celestial steel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just holding it in my hands would be the experience of a lifetime,” the blacksmith said. “I’d never have thought I’d get the chance to work with it.”

Hans said it would still be some time before the dungeon could produce it, but the blacksmith was fine with that. He’d teach a hundred apprentices if he got to make one sword out of celestial steel. After a bit more chit chat with the blacksmith and other workers, Hans and Olza departed.

They sat on the steps of the dungeon cabin, drinking tea.

“Oh!” Hans said, spilling half his cup when he lurched to life. “I’ll be right back.”

The Guild Master endured the awkward trot of a downhill jog to expedite his journey to the dorms and back. Until the armory was complete, the dorm building doubled as a storage space. He returned to Olza with a bundle of thick, dark roots in his hand. He presented them proudly.

“How much have you harvested?” Olza asked.

“Half a barrel or so.”

Olza accepted the roots and said, “That’s a lot of mandrake.” As she inspected the root, she frowned. She looked more closely at the plant. She sniffed it. She touched the root to her tongue.

“Are you okay?” Hans asked.

“Where did you find this?”

“The mandrake elemental.”

“Har har,” Olza said. “Good joke. Where did you find this? There might be seedlings nearby that will fully grow over the next few weeks.”

“I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She held up the root. “You gave me fool’s root, trying to trick the alchemist. That’s a good one.”

“That was on an elemental a day ago.”

“Show me the rest.”

***

“This is all fool’s root, Hans,” Olza said, hints of her exasperation leaking through. “All of it.”

Hans stroked his beard. “I genuinely believed the Lady meant mandrake.”

“What exactly did she say? You know better than most that the words a spirit chooses matter.”

“She said she saw something I desired, so she gave it to me. I thought she meant our talks about an alchemist apprentice, but yeah, I may have wanted fool’s root vodka more. Okay, I definitely still do.”

Olza half collapsed against the barrel, dropping her head on her arms. “Gods, Hans.”

“This isn’t my fault.”

“You just said it was,” she replied without lifting her head.

“Well, yes, but it wasn’t intentional. I know this messes up your apprentice plans. On the other hand…”

Olza sighed. “I know. On the other hand, we get vodka.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Tandis said, poking her head into the dormitory. “Are you busy, Miss Olza? I can come back later.”

“It wouldn’t be possible for you to waste my time more than Hans,” Olza answered.

Tandis laughed. She turned to the side and addressed someone Hans couldn’t see. “Go on in. Ask Miss Olza,” he thought he heard her say.

Tandis’ daughter entered the room, timidly stepping forward with Tandis following shortly behind.

“Oh, hi there, Willow,” Olza said, bending over. “What’s on your mind?”

Willow looked back at her mother for a moment and returned her attention to Olza. “Miss Olza,” the girl began, “if you are still looking for an apprentice, I want to apply.”

“How old are you now?”

“Six.”

Olza nodded, thinking. “Why do you want to become an alchemist?”

“I like baking cookies,” Willow answered.

Doing her best to hide her confusion, Olza looked up at Tandis who smiled and shook her head.

“Tell her the rest,” Tandis encouraged.

Willow took a deep breath. “I like baking cookies and trying my own recipes. My mom says alchemy is kind of like that, except what you make helps people.”

“Cookies taste much better though.”

“That’s okay!”

Tandis put both hands on Willow’s shoulders and said, “She barely eats the cookies, to be honest. She’ll taste them, but she doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

“Alchemy apprenticeships usually start at sixteen,” Olza said to Tandis. “I know other trades start earlier, but small mistakes in alchemy are pretty dangerous.”

“That’s okay!” Willow said, jumping to insert herself into the adult conversation. “I’ll wash bottles or sweep the floor until I’m old enough.”

Olza crouched to put her eyes level with Willow’s. “Alchemists need to be able to read, write, and do math. Complicated math. So how about this: You can help me in the shop once a week if you study on the other days.”

Willow looked up at her mother.

“Don’t look at me! Miss Olza is talking to you, not me.”

Willow straightened her back and said, “I promise to study, Miss Olza.”

Olza smiled. “I’ll hold you to that. I’ll talk to your mom about getting your lessons started.”

“Okay!” Willow said, bouncing. “Thank you, Miss Olza.”

Tandis mouthed “thank you” to the alchemist as well. “Hey. How about you go see if Uncle Luther needs help? Stand back from the work when you ask so we don’t mess it up by mistake.”

Willow zipped out of the dorms, leaving Tandis, Hans, and Olza.

“Thank you for hearing her out,” Tandis said. “She adores you.”

“Really?”

“She does. She’s pretty shy, though. You might not remember, but you made her and the other kids some kind of candy over the winter to go with the Sleep potions. She’s been fascinated ever since. Talks about you all the time.”

“That’s very sweet.”

“I’ll do my best to teach her right,” Tandis said. “I wouldn’t mind your guidance. If I’m honest, I can read and write, and Willow’s already been practicing, but we’re mostly just reading books together when I’m not at the dungeon.”

Olza said she would put a plan together that Tandis and Willow could follow. Hans mentioned their talk about Eduardo to Tandis, joking that she was unofficially running the Gomi apprentice program.

“They’re all good kids,” Tandis said. “I think they’ve spent too much time trying to be invisible. Asking about being an apprentice doesn’t occur to them, even if they know they want to do it.”

Tandis thanked Olza again for talking with Willow and excused herself.

“So…” Hans started. “How long until all that root is vodka?”

***

Olza scribbled furiously in her notes.

“The core is smaller than I expected,” she said, looking at the partial crystal sphere. “We’ve added a lot, and this is a fourth, or maybe less, of its full size. Assuming the core’s dimensions will be consistent with what we’ve observed already.”

She asked Hans to hold the torch at a better angle for her to write. When he didn’t get it right, she grabbed his arm with both hands and put it in the position she wanted.

“Have you noticed there are fewer roots in the hallways now?”

Hans nodded. “It’s been a slow shift, but yeah. Making a suggestion to the core seems to reduce the roots.”

“Interesting. That lends more weight to our hypothesis that dungeon cores are more like plants than beasts.”

“Why do you say that?”

“This is all still conjecture, but think about tree roots. You can see some of them from the surface, but there is a huge network of those roots underground. The older a tree gets, the deeper its roots. There are all sorts of reasons why that’s good for a tree: keeps it from falling, collects water and nutrients, but it’s also a kind of self-defense. Any organism that relies on being underground, even partially, uses that as a shield. It’s hard for something to damage your roots if a thousand pounds of dirt are on top of them.”

“Ah, so the more mature the core gets, the less we’ll see the roots because they do more to hide themselves?” Hans asked.

“Maybe. We know very little, though, like why are only one of the root systems in this room alive? Why did the core look ‘broken’ when we found it? Will that fissure close at some point? And then there’s the way the dungeon grows, which is a whole other mystery. How does it replicate one of your memories? How does it happen so quickly? The real Regenerating Castle was built over centuries, and the core recreated it in seconds.”

Olza had ranted about those kinds of questions before, so she already knew Hans didn’t have answers. The Guild Master listened so Olza’s thoughts could continue unimpeded.

“The Reavers’ Rest explosion was apocalyptic. If a blast like that happened in the middle of Gomi, the entire town would be gone. Not a trace. That’s an incredible amount of energy, and if I’m honest, I doubted that hypothesis before we found this.”

“Why did you doubt it?”

“Think about Mazo’s spells. The bigger the outcome, the more mana the spell needs. You know her abilities better than me, so how many Mazo’s would it take to replicate the Reavers’ Rest event?”

Hans scratched his beard. “Geez, I don’t know… Ten? Maybe more?”

“And you’ve never met another mage who was anywhere close to Mazo’s level, right? If dungeon cores follow the same kinds of rules, that’s an unimaginable amount of energy. God levels of energy.”

Olza sighed deeply, a hint of frustration growling beneath it. Hans asked her what was wrong.

“I’m impatient,” Olza admitted. “A scientist shouldn’t be impatient, but I’m starting to worry that we won’t find answers to these questions in my lifetime.”

Patting her on the shoulder, Hans said Olza was underestimating herself.

For the next twenty minutes, Hans followed Olza around the dungeon core room while she logged dozens of details. Nothing else in the room had changed, but she insisted that was useful data as well. When she finished, she told Hans she was ready for the next experiment.

Hans called up to the fissure. Terry poked his head through.

“Ready for a dungeon reset?” Hans asked.

“Yes, sir. Couldn’t come at a better time. Kane is farting up a storm up here.”

Kane yelled from somewhere behind Terry about that not being fair.

Terry looked at Olza, and his face dropped when he remembered she was there. “Sorry. Adventurer humor, I guess.”

“Sounds more like little boy humor to me.”

“That may be true,” Terry replied. “At any rate, we’re ready when you are.”

Stepping up to the core, Hans thought deeply about a mountain retreat he visited once, a small collection of structures built from stone. A noble owned the retreat, and it wasn’t used during winter. The scenery reminded Hans of Gomi in the spring, and his party was the first to arrive, so he got to explore the grounds while they were empty.

If Luther was going to live in the dungeon, Hans wanted it to be as nice as he could make it. However, this would be the first dungeon suggestion that didn’t include monsters of some kind. Hans insisted that difference didn’t matter. To him, a suggestion was a suggestion. Olza disagreed, saying any deviation in method could be meaningful as far as science was concerned.

The Guild Master ran a knife across his upper forearm, near his Gomi tattoo. As the suggestions got larger and more complex, the core needed more blood before it flickered purple. They believed that flicker meant that the suggestion was “finished” and the core accepted it. Where early suggestions needed only a few drops from a finger prick, he now needed close to half an ounce, or roughly a third of a shot glass according to Olza.

The blood dripped on the core. And dripped and dripped and dripped.

Hans’ world went black.

***

Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

Mend the rift with Devon.

Using a pen name, complete the manuscript for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."

Expand the dungeon with resource-specific monsters for each of Gomi’s major trades.

Decide whether or not to pursue silent walking and snow walking.

Find a way for Gomi adventurers to benefit from their rightful ranks in the Adventurers’ Guild.

Build a rest area in the dungeon with space for Luther to live there full-time.

Secure a way to use surplus dungeon inventory for good.

Expand the dungeon using the ogre valley job as a blueprint.