“Winter may be behind us in four weeks or so,” Roland estimated. He sat in the guild hall with Hans, Kane, and Quentin. “If the melt keeps going how it’s been, I mean.” The hunter added that snow would still arrive from time to time before spring took hold, but the pass might be usable by then.

The hunter couldn’t say when the land around the dungeon entrance would be thawed enough for new construction. The cabin was farther up the mountain than Gomi, so winter was likely to still have a grip even when Gomi headed into spring.

Beyond the weather, Roland wasn’t sure when Gomi would have the hands to build the campus Hans envisioned. Charlie already recruited volunteers within Gomi itself to work on surrounding the town with a palisade when weather permitted, and Galad had done the same for the palisade they intended to build on the Tribe farmlands. Both were sizable projects that might not be complete in time for the following winter with their current workforce.

Adding a campus to that workload, nearly two days away from town and partway up a mountain, was a big ask.

“Hypothetically,” Hans began, “if all of the folks working on the Gomi palisades worked on the campus, how much could we get done before next winter?”

“Hypothetically?”

“Yes, I agree a town wall is more important than a dungeon campus. I don’t want that to change. I’m just trying to better understand projects like these.”

Roland looked at the list again. “Is the hidden tunnel one of your jokes?”

“It’s serious, but we can ignore it for now.”

“A dormitory and a pantry are possible with that many workers. I’ve never built anything larger than a cabin, though, and I don’t know how to account for building that far up the mountain. Might be that only the dormitory can get done in time.”

Hans felt that was a fair estimate. When Roland pressed him on what he was considering, the Guild Master shared that Gomi would likely have the funds to hire workers from another town, which would allow them to use the Gomi volunteers for the dungeon project. That approach would bring a bunch of strangers to their doorsteps, but they could afford the manpower to have the Gomi palisade done in weeks rather than months.

All of that assumed they could sell their growing stock of camahueto horns and vials of imp blood quickly and without raising suspicions.

“I also wanted to talk to you about Quentin,” Hans said, changing the subject. Kane and Quentin went rigid at the mention of one of their names.

Roland chuckled. “Nothing to talk about. He’s sixteen next month and decided a long while back that he wanted to apprentice.” Hans stole a look at Quentin and saw the boy listening, wide-eyed.

“Kane, when’s your birthday?”

He said he didn’t know.

“A lot of tusks never really know,” Roland said on behalf of the young tusk. “I was planning to celebrate his birthday when we celebrated Quentin’s, the correct date be damned.” Over Roland’s shoulder, Kane smiled so hard he looked like he could poke himself in the eyes with his own tusks.

Hans was satisfied. They were young, but two more Apprentices would be a big help. “Uncle Ed already gave his blessing as well. Do you have any questions for me about any of that process?”

“Not any that you aren’t already trying to answer. For their sake, it would be great if they were officially ranked. Would give them a trade they can live off of outside of Gomi.”

“All of the adventurers want that, and I get it. Trying to figure it out.”

“We know, and we trust you. Otherwise, I know nothing is risk free in that profession, but I’m glad they’ll have you looking out for them. Any other Guild Master and I think I’d feel differently.”

Kane and Quentin slapped hands and hugged when both Hans and Roland finally confirmed they could apprentice. The Guild Master was known to be cautious, so hearing that they could officially train in a month’s time was the best news Kane and Quentin had all winter.

Quest Update: Solve the campus construction logistics problem or devise an alternative plan. Bonus Objective: Pick a secret passage cooler than a bookshelf door.

Quest Update: Finalize spring preparations for launching the dungeon plan by talking to Charlie, Galad, and Galinda.

***

Charlie and Galinda sat by the fire, reading, when Hans knocked. When he mentioned why he was visiting, Galinda half jumped from her seat. She retrieved a piece of paper with two colors of ink, black and green. Handing it to Hans, she sat back and awaited his reaction.

The flier had a braided pattern around its border, mostly black but with a single green thread lacing through the middle. Big blocky text filled the top third of the paper with green lettering that said, “Hans’ Ultimate Training Dungeon for Ultimate Adventurers.” Below that was the Gomi crest, a fairly banal circular design with a bear head in the middle. Galinda used it as the flier’s primary visual element, like other businesses might do with a symbol representing the business or an illustration of the product.

Below the crest, the following was printed in black: “Learn from the kingdom’s only Gold-ranked Guild Master, learn to fight and survive, five gold per week, lodging and food not included, no refunds for any reason, including weather or instructor availability.”

Then the bottom listed Gomi as the location.

When Hans asked about making multiple copies, Galinda handed him two woodblocks, one for the elements in black ink and the other for elements in green ink. She had already planned for printing. When the first caravan arrived, they could arrange for the blocks to be taken to Osare–or any other nearby town with a printer–where they would print dozens of copies to be mailed to every guild chapter in the kingdom.

To Hans, that felt like a lot to ask of a merchant, but Charlie and Galinda assured him more elaborate requests were normal and expected. If someone from a place like Gomi needed a representative for business in another town, merchants were happy to charge a fee for the service. Choosing the right person to trust in that arrangement still mattered, but the practice was common enough that neither Charlie nor Galinda had any concerns of it going wrong.

With the flier approved, they set aside several gold to account for the merchant, the printing, and the mailing. Seeing Mazo’s generous gift depleted even more made Hans a little sad. Somehow, having that much money on him–even if he always fully intended to invest it in helping Gomi–brought a sense of security. A sword on his hip guarded from monsters, and a heavy pouch of gold could guard him from pretty much everything else.

Charlie admitted he hadn’t started on the letter yet, but Hans assured him that was a good thing. He had new ideas, and he wanted to incorporate them into the letter. After a fair amount of discussion and a few pencil drafts in Hans’ notebook, Charlie penned the following letter on official Gomi letterhead:

Our friends at the Guild,

It has come to our attention that the Gomi chapter Guild Master, Hans the Gold-ranked, is under review, the results of which could mean his removal. We are troubled by what this change might mean for our town and so would like to propose an alternate solution, all of which has already been approved by the citizens of Gomi.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

If Hans can keep his current posting, Gomi is willing to take responsibility for his monthly salary as well as costs for supplies and equipment the chapter might need in the future.

While he’s no Diamond, we know that a replacement Guild Master is unlikely to be available to Gomi for some time, if ever, based on our previous challenges of keeping the post filled. Hans has provided useful services to our town, and his presence was a comfort this winter when gnoll activity was high. We are well aware of his reputation in the Guild but have found him to be tolerable, especially in light of his non-guild spending with locals.

Having a wealthy retired adventurer in our town has been a boon to our economy, if we can be candid. He has hired every carpenter and nearly all of our laborers to build himself a sizable home when weather permits. If his pockets are as deep as he suggests, we could need the next five years to finish all of the projects he has planned.

If you haven’t heard, he is opening a training facility this spring. To continue my candor, we don’t expect the facility to be a draw for tourists, but we do know he has signed several local employment contracts as well as a long-term lease agreement. I’m sure you can understand why we’d want these sorts of investments to continue flowing.

The Gomi chapter annual report is enclosed with this letter. My understanding is that numbers around program participation and total monsters slain are important to our King. As you can see, Gomi’s numbers are on the rise. If you accept our proposal, we expect these reports to continue improving, year over year.

Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Charlie

Mayor of Gomi

“I’m quite pleased with this,” Charlie said, blowing softly on the two new pages of handwritten ink. “Seeing this on paper gives me more confidence. I have to admit the plan sounded too fanciful at times, but this letter makes it all seem plain.”

Hans shared his idea of hiring outside workers for the Gomi palisade, funding the effort with dungeon loot so their local builders could expand the dungeon campus. The story of Hans building a cabin could be used for cover, and the reference to higher gnoll activity would explain why a small town was building a wall. The rich, dumb adventurer living in town explained where Gomi got the coin to hire outside workers.

Charlie saw the value in having more builders in town, even if temporarily. The town needed a wall if violence found its way to Gomi, and the town also needed their adventurers to cull the dungeon. The current cabin operation wouldn’t get them through their next winter.

If they could get the funds from selling dungeon reagents, Charlie was open to hiring outside builders.

Quest Update: Finalize spring preparations for launching the dungeon plan by talking to Galad.

***

“You’re sure about this math?” Galad sat at his kitchen table, reading the calculations for how much the dungeon might generate if they could choose which monsters to grow.

“Olza did the math.”

“Then it’s definitely right. This… This is a lot of gold. Your concern makes more sense now.”

Galad explained that his mom and dad used to talk about supporting more places like the Tribe. They knew a lot of tusks would never be able to make the journey, but they wanted the people on the far side of the kingdom to have what they had in Gomi. The topic filled many late nights of dinner table musings but never coalesced into a viable plan.

His parents often dreamed that way, wishing for all manner of extra resources to make helping more people possible. The brewery never made enough for them to entertain funding the land for another Tribe, even in their best years. Funding comparable to that of a small kingdom would change that.

“I wish I could ask their advice right now,” Galad said.

Hans wasn’t sure he could add much to that, so he let the silence hang while Galad collected his thoughts.

“One year, there were more deer than we could shoot. We ran out of arrows. Seriously. Broke every single one. We kept seeing all these deer, and it made me so angry. My mom said, ‘Never complain about a blessing.’ She said that all the time, and that was shorthand for ‘Save your sadness for the bad days instead of letting it take your good days too.’”

“Wise woman.” And strong. Hans had not forgotten the story he heard about Galad’s mom juicing a town guard on a jailroom door.

Galad agreed. “Do you think that applies here?”

“I don’t think I can speak for your mother.”

“Let’s say for yourself then.”

The Guild Master thought. “It sounds like it applies.”

“I think it does as well.”

The tusk stood from the table and returned a moment later with a notebook and pencil. He suggested they consider additional layers to their loot laundering plan. If their to-be-determined partner wasn’t right for moving all of the loot, they could run wagons to multiple partners. The Tribe brewery might need to invent a second line of products or a really good story for how they expanded the operation so quickly. That last part felt manageable, at least.

According to Galad, one of the newly arrived tusks told him a story about their family’s peach farm. Every year, their family had larger and larger harvests, but enough people didn’t want food grown and handled by tusks that harvests started to rot. Fruit they couldn’t sell didn’t need to be picked, so every summer the sickly sweet smell of rotting fruit grew stronger and stronger.

Then someone knocked on his family’s door. A halfling greeted them and offered to buy their entire harvest the following year and made a small down payment as a show of good faith. When harvest came, so did the halfling, with a small fleet of covered wagons. They rode in after sunset and left before sunrise.

The next day, the tusk’s father went to the market, and he saw the halfling selling a wagon full of peaches to one of the canneries that had turned the tusk family away initially. The halfling advertised the peaches as coming from the next town over, talked about the wonderfully ripe harvest he had brought to sell, and collected a hefty bag of coin, leaving with an empty wagon before noon. From what this tusk’s dad could see, the halfling likely doubled his money, if not better.

“So this halfling flips the family’s peaches for a big profit,” Galad continued. “But his family was thrilled about the arrangement. They sold their entire harvest to the halfling for years after. He gave a better price than anyone in the town ever had, and his folks got a kick out of seeing the jerks overpay for the same fruit.”

When conversations around dungeon loot first sparked, the same tusk suggested to Galad that the Tribe sell to a large-scale distributor, someone that would normally sell a large volume of product anyway–an idea they already entertained but were unsure of how to execute. If they couldn’t find a partner, they could invent one, which meant establishing and staffing their own distribution point outside of Gomi. That suggestion seemed like overkill under their first estimates for dungeon loot. Now, it seemed wise.

In his mind, Hans marveled at how much his neighbors learned out of desperate necessity, and they had to use that knowledge more than once. Making a living as a tusk always had an extra layer, a workaround or a fix for an obstacle that existed solely to spite them. They had already gone through what Gomi was facing with the dungeon at smaller scales, and they had done it dozens of times. In that way, the dungeon plan was more of the same.

That realization was an odd comfort.

I’m the only one who hasn't done something like this before.

“Do you need any help ahead of spring?”

Galad shook his head. “Wagons will be ready, barrels and all. We’re on schedule.”

Quest Complete: Finalize spring preparations for launching the dungeon plan by talking to Galad.

Before Hans opened the door to venture back into the snow, he asked Galad, “What would you do with the money?”

“See if anyone here wants to build another Tribe. Send them off with seed funds, build a sister city so to speak. And after that? If we could buy the safety of Gomi, I’d spend any amount of gold in the world.”

***

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.

Refine 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.

Solve the campus construction logistics problem or devise an alternative plan. Bonus Objective: Pick a secret passage cooler than a bookshelf door.

Find a partner to move dungeon loot efficiently.

Find a way to share new knowledge without putting Gomi at risk.

Address the deficiency of magery education in the Gomi chapter.

Continue researching non-localized spells capable of causing nightmares in tusk children.

Test structural suggestions for the next dungeon core experiment.

Harvest oil sacs from geode geckos.