“Good afternoon, Mr. Hans,” Bel said, stepping into the guild hall. She found the Guild Master at his desk, reading one of the guild’s spell tomes.

“Welcome back.”

She inclined her head slightly, smiling. “Adventurers are healthy. The dorm is usable. Construction is mostly complete, but the master carpenter told me to let you know that they still need to winterize the structure. The road will be a month or two yet, but they’re using the trees they clear to start on a stable.”

“Thank you for the report,” Hans said. “Do you have a minute? It’s not an emergency, and I understand if you’d rather talk tomorrow.”

Bel sat on one of the hall benches. “I have time.”

“What’s your experience with large humanoids? Ogres, ettins, cyclops–those sort of monsters.”

“We’ve hunted a few trolls about the size of the earth elementals in the dungeon, but that’s it. Mikata is far enough from the frontier that we don’t really see monsters like that. Most of the jobs are for hunting beasts or search and rescues.”

“Any qualms about training for large humanoids for the next few months?”

“Not at all!” Bel said. “We’d love that.”

New Quest: Expand the dungeon using the ogre valley job as a blueprint.

“I hoped so.” Hans scribbled a note in his journal. “Last question: What do you know about the Magic Lock spell?”

Bel frowned. “A little bit. I’m not an expert though.”

Hans flipped the tome around so Bel could read where he pointed. “I’m curious about the sigil-locked variation. I’d like to add more security to the dungeon, but any idea I’ve had that keeps monsters in also makes it harder for adventurers to leave. This reads like a sigil lock is the magic equivalent of a guard checking for identification.”

Bel read the entry on Magic Lock and its variants. “Your read looks correct,” she said after a time. “I’m guessing you read the warning about how easy Magic Lock is to dispel?”

Hans nodded.

“I assumed as much. I’m also assuming you’ll ask Honronk to install the enchantments that can prevent that?” she asked.

Shaking his head, Hans answered, “I don’t want to take more training time away from him. Right now, the only casters in the dungeon are imps. I’ve never heard of one knowing Dispel, and they’re pretty deep in the dungeon. Long-term, yes, we get the enchantments done. I think for now, Magic Lock by itself is fine.”

The Silver-ranked Black Mage reread the entry of Magic Lock. “Doesn’t look too complicated. I’d probably only need a week or two. At worst, a month.”

“Look. I appreciate that more than you know. You and Lee have done a lot for Gomi, though, and I don’t want to abuse your kindness. This project can wait if it needs to.”

“Ogre training is a fair trade,” Bel replied. “Besides, this is for the good of the Tribe. We don’t plan to live in Gomi forever, but we want places like this to exist whether we benefit or not.”

“I’m grateful. I’m also serious, though. Promise to let me know when we are coming close to asking too much of you two?”

“Promise. What do you plan to use for the sigil? You have time to decide if you’re not sure yet.”

Hans pointed to the Repel Possession tattoo on the back of Bel’s left hand.

“Ah. I should have been able to guess that. That’s a good idea.”

“Thank you,” Hans said. “Terry is going to hate it, though.”

“Why?”

“When Honronk did the first round of enchanted tattoos, all he could talk about was how much he hated needles.”

Quest Update: Apply a sigil-lock Magic Lock to dungeon doors.

***

Hans stood in the training yard, addressing that day’s kids’ class. “Gomi’s adventurers are going to be training to fight large humanoids. Humanoids are monsters that are built like a human, two arms, two legs, head on a set of shoulders. Ogres, orcs, cyclops–Those are all humanoid.”

He scanned his students for early signs of confusion. Seeing none, he continued.

“For the next few weeks, we are going to focus on grappling. That means we’ll be on the ground a lot. …And I see the adults already looking nervous.”

A few, but not many, of the guardians who came to watch their children train chuckled.

“Today is going to be a small introduction, but to spare your clothes we will spend most of the class doing our normal drills. From now on, though, wear work clothes or something you don’t mind getting ruined. If you don’t have clothes like that, no worries. When I took this class at your age, I trained in loaner clothes from the guild, so if you need those too, tell me. This is no different than borrowing one of my swords or shields, okay?”

With the preamble out of the way, he launched into his curriculum.

“Eventually, we’ll talk about offense, but we’re starting with defense because large humanoids have a tendency to grab their prey. Getting squished is still a real danger, but a monster like an ogre would rather eat what it kills. They can’t do that if they ruin the meat.

“We will never be stronger than an ogre, so grappling one isn’t like wrestling with your brother or sister, but everything you learn today will be good for that too.” Hans smiled, and the children giggled.

To begin the unit, Hans taught the children about a position he called “side control,” which looked like a classic wrestling pin. One child was flat on their back. The child on top was chest to chest with their partner. From above, the bottom student was at six o’clock and the top student was at nine o’clock. When everyone understood what the position was, Hans had the children do a version of sparring–no strikes, only grappling–where the match reset when the person on the bottom wiggled free.

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After a few minutes, he taught the children how to use their bodyweight and positioning to make their pins harder to escape. He showed how to hook the far arm to create an attachment and how to hold their partner’s head at the same time, using a shoulder to control where the head could turn. Lastly, he had the children extend their legs so the majority of their weight was on their partner rather than their own knees, hands, and feet.

Far fewer children were able to escape during the next round.

“Getting pinned is frustrating right? For me, it’s also a little scary, so if you were afraid during the drill that’s okay. It’s normal. An ogre or a cyclops won’t use side control like a person does, but the techniques we’re about to learn will still be useful. You just might be escaping from beneath a foot instead.”

The first step was framing, positioning their bodies in such a way to maximize the force they could exert while also preserving any space the monster might have left open. For this scenario, he taught them to keep their arms bent and their elbows close to their ribs. To help them remember the position, he imitated a frumpy old woman acting shocked, her mouth open, her palms on her cheeks.

“In sword training, you’ve heard me say things like ‘be a spring’ or ‘no windups.’ Who remembers why I say that?”

Hands shot up. One of the newer students answered, “Our attacks are stronger that way.”

“How so?”

“Our stance should be like a drawn bow, so when we attack we can just attack. We don’t have to draw back first.”

Hans nodded proudly. That was his original explanation, almost word for word. “Very good,” he said. “The idea is the same in grappling. Starting as close to the right position as you can will make your escape easier. So, as your partner comes down into side control, bring your elbows close, and use your forearms to build a frame. Gunther, can I borrow you?”

The Guild Master instructed Gunther to lie on his back without his elbows in. Hans settled in on top and pointed out that he wasn’t following any of his tips for pressure right then. He asked Gunther to count to ten, loudly.

“ONE, TWO, THREE–” Hans lowered his weight, enough to squish the tusk slightly but nowhere near his full pressure. The motion forced the air out of Gunther’s lungs, and he gasped, struggling to keep counting. “–four, five, six.”

The children laughed.

“Don’t laugh too much. I’ll squish you next,” Hans threatened, jokingly.

Next, he instructed Gunther to bring his elbows in, wedging his bent arms between his chest and Hans’, propping up the weight like each of his arms were a sawhorse.

“When we grapple,” Hans said, “it’s best to grapple with our bones and not our muscles, so when I try to pin Gunther again, he isn’t going to try to press me off of him. I’m too big and fat–” the children laughed. “–so instead of pressing he is going to be rigid, just holding his position.”

He checked to make sure Gunther understood. He had Gunther repeat the counting exercise. The boy’s voice shifted slightly when the Guild Master lowered his weight, but not nearly as much as it did the first time. Hans then made a show of demonstrating all the ways he could put more of his weight on the young tusk, but Gunther just kept counting.

Once the children practiced framing with their partners and understood what he was asking of them, he taught a basic escape. To execute the movement, the student on the bottom brought their feet close to their butt, then they elevated their hips, like their bodies were shaped like a bridge. From there, they pushed their butts away from their opponents without moving their shoulders or feet. The motion was akin to reaching for your toes when you stretched, and the important part was that the student’s hips got farther away from their partner.

Hans compared the motion to how cooked shrimp looked. He switched to the toe touch comparison when he learned that most of the children didn’t know what a shrimp was let alone what a cooked one looked like.

“The important idea here,” Hans said, “is that we move ourselves, not our opponent. Gunther is pretty strong, but I’m so much bigger that it doesn’t matter. If he tries to move me off of him, he’s going to get tired really fast, so we use this technique to move ourselves instead. If a boulder is in your way, go around it. It’s a waste of effort to try moving it.”

The children practiced the escape for a few repetitions. Hans saw that their focus and interest waned, so they switched back to sword drills for the remainder of the class. When class ended, they lined up and shook each other’s hands, like always.

As Hans went down the line thanking the children for training and telling them they did well today, he saw Bel standing with the other adults against the fence. He hadn’t noticed her slip in.

“I’ve seen all of those movements taught in combat classes,” Bel said, “but I’ve not heard anyone talk about using them against ogres.”

“‘Against’ isn’t the exact word I would use. All of this is last ditch survival stuff. If a monster that big grabs you… It’s going to be ugly.”

“Have you had to use any of this?”

“Me? No,” Hans answered. “I did have a student use that escape to get out from under an ettin foot. The monster was holding him down, probably to eat later, and he got out with that exact movement.”

“Aren’t most grappling techniques designed to be used against other humans, though?”

“Definitely. The principles of grappling still apply, to a degree. If a monster is large enough to wrap a hand around me and squeeze, knowing to frame could buy me an extra second or two of air, and I don’t need to tell you how valuable a second can be.”

Bel nodded, knowingly.

“The biggest thing is drilling into adventurers that they can’t muscle a monster like that.”

“Move yourself, not your opponent,” Bel said, repeating Hans’ line from the class.

“Yes, exactly. When you and I talk about it like this, that seems obvious, but a person’s first instinct is the opposite. Held down? They try to press the problem off of them. Stuck in a grab? They try to pry it open. The monster has clamped down on your weapon? They death-grip it and get flung all over when they should have just let go.”

“Interesting.”

“All of this ‘philosophy,’ I guess you could call it, is woven through large monster battle tactics, humanoid or otherwise. It’s as important for offense as it is for defense. I’ll say the same things again and again until you’re sick of hearing them, but that’s what we have to do when your natural instincts can get you killed. We have to rip them out and grow new ones in their place.”

Bel paused to process the Guild Master’s mini lecture. She grunted a brief laugh and said, “And everything you taught us about fighting earth elementals matches this philosophy too, I take it?”

“Yep.”

“So we’ve already started your curriculum?”

Hans smiled. “Some concepts are easiest to teach when the student isn’t aware they’re learning them.”

***

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.

Suggest growing mandrake elementals to the dungeon core.

Apply a sigil-lock Magic Lock to dungeon doors.

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

Build a rest area in the dungeon to improve adventurer recovery.

Secure a way to use surplus dungeon inventory for good.

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