Bel and Lee looked at one another when Hans finished explaining the history of the Gomi dungeon thus far, minus the fact that cores could be influenced. He didn’t intend to hide it. He just didn’t know how to explain it with any amount of brevity. Though the tusks didn’t speak, they seemed to be deciding if the conversation was real or if the last seventy-two hours were one long hypothermic hallucination.
Hans had hiked out to the Tribe farmlands to talk to the newly arrived tusk adventurers. The dorms were packed, and a cold rain coated the world in ice. To talk privately, they had gone to the storage barn. Bel and Lee sat on kegs to listen to Hans’ spiel.
“We have two Apprentice Mages and no one to teach them,” Hans continued. “If you’d be up for it, Bel, a few lessons could do them a lot of good. I know I’m asking a lot of you when you’ve only just arrived, on top of how weird everything else sounds. I’m sorry to dump all of this in your laps.”
“Before anything else,” Bel began, her voice far deeper than Lee’s, “We’re grateful for the welcome we’ve received, and we will happily earn our keep while we’re here. When the world gets back to normal, we’ll be moving on, though.”
“No one here will have a problem with that.”
“Good. I’m happy to teach what I can, but what’s this dungeon routine look like for us?”
“It’s like being an adventure but with less pay and longer hours,” Hans said with a smile.
“Master Theneesa said you were quite the salesman.” Bel and Lee both chuckled.
“I wish we had more to offer you, but I’d be happy to give you training if you’d like while you’re here.”
Lee shared that Theneesa encouraged them to study as much as they could with Hans while they were in Gomi. If he was good as she said, running a dungeon with low-level monsters and teaching tusks how to use magic was a fair trade for Hans’ coaching.
Quest Complete: Talk to Bel about the deficiency of magery education in the Gomi chapter.
Going into more detail, Hans told the Silvers about Chisel, Honronk, and Kane. All three were aspiring magic users but with different focuses and backgrounds. He explained he intended to order more study material when he could, but anything she could show the Apprentices would mean a dramatic improvement for all of them. He trusted Bel to do her best choosing what she taught and when, but if she wanted a second opinion, he would be happy to talk it through.
As for Lee, she could give all of the adventurers a different perspective on combat. Sparring with the Apprentices would be educational for them, and if she was up to it, Kane might be a good candidate for Spellsword. The Guild Master wouldn’t mind sitting in on those lessons either. If Theneesa was requiring weapon-in-hand casting of her Apprentices, she had likely refined her method significantly in the years since she trained under Hans. He hoped he could learn some of it.
“Anything I know, you can have,” the Guild Master said. “Do you have a subject in mind?”
“Master Theneesa said to take every class and lesson we could with you, regardless of topic or skill level,” Bel answered. “I think we’re particularly interested in critiques and feedback if you don’t mind that.”
He didn’t mind at all. In fact, he often structured lessons that way when adventurers visited the Hoseki chapter for training. He would either spar with the student or observe them sparring to make a recommendation of what they should learn. Teaching a student from Apprentice onward was drastically different from teaching a student who already had several years of training in their quiver.
In the former scenario, Hans could handpick every aspect of the student’s training, moving them through his carefully designed curriculum one lesson at a time. Visiting students, however, had different foundations and progressions, building them up to their rank in a way that was nothing like what Hans would have done. He didn’t think that he was right and that other instructors were wrong, necessarily–though they were, sometimes. Fighters had varying styles, and so did teachers.
To help experienced students, he had the most impact tweaking techniques they already used, which usually entailed an adjustment to footwork and positioning, and selectively adding new knowledge in just the right place to jump their progress forward.
For example, he often found that adventurers struggled when an opponent got inside of their guard. Close quarters fighting with a sword, a weapon that couldn’t be used because of the proximity, was a common gap in training. If Hans spent a week with an adventurer working on grappling and clinching skills, the student could leave Hoseki with a whole new set of trips, throws, disarms, and strikes–knees and elbows, mostly. More importantly, they would have a system, a decision tree of sorts, to help them choose the appropriate technique for the situation.
“Mr. Hans?” Lee asked.
His mind must have wandered. “Yes, sorry. We can do as much of that training as you want. While you’re here, think about what monsters you’d want to learn too. I can’t explain it very well, but we have a way to help with that.”
***
Five minutes into her first lesson with Honronk, Bel climbed the guild hall stairs to talk to Hans in his apartment.
“Mr. Hans,” she began. “He said he would study Repel Possession. He refuses to learn anything else.”
The Guild Master had not considered Honronk’s project when he set up the lesson. The Apprentice Black Mage had less than a week before his party rotated up to the cabin, so Hans rushed to schedule their first session. Bel was a blessing, and he didn’t want to waste a single day of that good fortune.
“I’m sorry, Bel. That’s my fault for not thinking to tell you. He’s learning Repel Possession to help Gomi, and he’s very… focused. Would you mind starting your lessons there?”
“I don’t know it, but I’ll take a look and see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” Hans said sincerely.
By the time Honronk’s party left for the cabin, Bel was confident he would be able to cast Repel Possession by the time he rotated out again. She hadn’t yet mastered the spell herself, but Honronk was close enough that a few adjustments to his gestures and his incantation pronunciation jumped his proficiency forward. With a bit more practice, they could finally test the spell on the tusk children to confirm if the Blood magic hypothesis was correct.
When Chisel returned to Gomi, she danced in place like a teen girl fawning over Master Devontes on the streets of Hoseki. Though Bel wasn’t a White Mage, Chisel had never had an actual magery instructor. The Silver tusk represented a turning point in her training, and she couldn’t wait to take her first lesson.
From upstairs, Hans could hear the two laughing and talking excitedly to one another. In addition to gaining an instructor, Chisel gained a friend. Like Bel did with Honronk, the majority of her early lessons with the White Mage were filled with improvements to the words and movements that powered spells she knew or was working on.
Having skipped traditional introductory lessons, neither Chisel nor Honronk had learned the earliest magery material. Bel compared it to repeating the same letter over and over as a kid to learn handwriting. Real communication didn’t happen until those letters were joined together to form words and sentences, but that was difficult to do without knowing the mechanics of perfectly reproducing individual characters.
From the bits and pieces Hans heard of the lesson, Bel chose to teach Chisel Turn Undead. While that spell was one of the classic advantages of having a White Mage in the party, Turn Undead was a complicated spell, making it exceptionally difficult to learn independent of an instructor. If that was the only spell Bel helped Chisel learn in her time in Gomi, the knowledge exchange would have been an incredible success.
Bel’s lessons with Kane were much more in line with a typical magery curriculum, but when Hans heard her talk about how movements with a weapon could be used in place of spell gestures, the Guild Master went downstairs and asked if he could sit in on the lesson, purely as an observer.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Soon, he furiously scribbled notes to record as much of Bel’s instruction as possible.
“When Master Theneesa teaches a spell, she approaches it differently than any other mage I’ve met,” Bel said. “Once we can cast a spell without reagents, we practice casting the spell while walking slowly. Eventually, she works us up to casting while we’re running, and casting with a weapon comes after.”
Kane looked at the incantations and gestures detailed in the entry for Repel. He frowned. “I have to do all that while running?”
“Eventually. I won’t lie to you and say it’s easy, but if I could learn to do it, you can too. Master Theneesa’s methods are effective if you do the work.”
“Okay, so I learn to cast and move, but how do I do a spell gesture with something in my hand? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Bel began her explanation with a comparison to swordplay. In combat, well-trained, experienced warriors often found themselves in what some called “a flow state.” Their hours and hours of practice ingrained technique and awareness into their unconscious minds. In the way a person doesn’t think about walking–they just do it–warriors in flow felt their bodies automatically and seamlessly pick the right technique for every moment, stringing them together to the point that they felt effortless. For anyone watching, the warrior could seem supernatural, somehow finding the right place at the right time with such precision and elegance that the fight looked choreographed.
Theneesa’s method aimed to unlock a flow state for mages. Then, she combined the flow state of a caster with the flow state of a warrior to create a Spellsword.
Hans had heard the idea of flow for fighters from his early days as a Junior in the Guild, and he experienced it himself on several occasions, primarily when his personal training was at its most focused and most intense. He couldn’t trigger the flow state on command, but when he found it, he imagined that's what a Diamond or a Platinum must feel like all the time. Flow made him feel more than human, like he had somehow tapped into a unique kind of magic.
Despite his personal experiences and his immersion in adventurer training, he couldn’t recall the concept ever being applied to magery.
“Between us as brother and sister,” Bel said to Kane, “Master Theneesa is still evolving this method, but she has reached the point where she can cast two spells at the same time.”
The Guild Master choked on his tea, the series of hacks that followed forcing him to leave the room. With tears in his eyes from coughing so hard, he returned to his seat and apologized to Bel and Kane for the interruption.
“Did I hear you right?” Hans asked Bel.
She nodded. “It’s not something she advertises,” Bel said. “She says her research is too new to share, but part of that research is experimenting with teaching students like me and Lee. How dual casting works is well beyond me at this point, so I can’t explain the mechanics or theory behind it.”
When Hans asked Bel for examples, she shared that Theneesa could cast two buffing spells at once with the same proficiency of an experienced mage casting one such spell. The Mikata Guild Master had made progress on several combinations, but currently, she could cast Repel and Angel Shield at once.
Seeing Kane’s quizzical look, she explained that Angel Shield was a protective spell that conjured a shield made of mana. That shield orbited its target, intercepting any object within a set radius. Arrow, spear, fireball–If the object crossed that invisible threshold, the shield spun into position to block. She emphasized that Kane should think of the mana shield as having the same limitations of a physical shield. Angel Shield couldn’t block two attacks from different directions, it could be broken with force, and if what it blocked was capable of going around it–such as a large fireball–then anything it couldn’t block continued onward toward the adventurer.
Usually, a person wielding a spear would have to compromise their technique to wield a shield at the same time–which is why many adventurers preferred to use the spear by itself to maximize its potential. Angel Shield on a spear user was a huge advantage.
I am so damn proud of Theneesa.
Theneesa’s accomplishments were her own. She did the work. She had the ideas. She put in the time. Hans had gotten to play a role in that, though, so while he didn’t believe that any portion of her success belonged to him, he celebrated it nonetheless. Like a fan cheering for an athlete, the fan isn’t a direct contributor to a victory, but they were welcome to share in the joy that followed.
“Apologies for disrupting the lesson,” Hans said to both the student and the teacher, “but thank you for trusting me enough to explain that.”
“Master Theneesa said to trust you as much as I trust her. She speaks highly of you.”
The new round of tears pooling in his eyes weren’t from coughing.
***
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Hans asked Gunther. “You don’t have to do this, and there’s no shame in saying no.”
“He means it,” Kane said to his little brother.
“It will help the Tribe, right?”
Hans and Kane said that it would.
“I want to help my brothers and sisters,” Gunther said resolutely.
The Guild Master offered Gunther his hand. The young tusk shook it. Leaving Kane and Gunther in their room, Hans shut the door behind him and joined Galinda, Olza, Bel, and Uncle Ed in the farmer’s modest dining room. Honronk, meanwhile, sat cross legged in front of the boys’ bedroom door, eyes closed, meditating. Uncle Ed’s home had never hosted so many people, but every person present was there to support Gunther.
That night, they would test Repel Possession against the nightmares.
Gunther skipped his most recent dose of modified Sleep potion to allow the dreams back in. When the night terrors forced Gunther to run, Honronk would cast Repel Possession. If the spell could defend against the magic affecting the children, the nightmare would end immediately.
Unfortunately, the spell’s effect was unlikely to be permanent. Bel compared it to dumping water out of a leaky boat. Pouring a bucket over the edge helped, but it didn’t stop more from flooding in. If the test was successful though, they would be far closer to a solution than they ever were before. Their next step would be to hire an enchanter to build a permanent ward for Repel Possession. Such a commission would be exorbitantly expensive, but Gomi would have plenty of capital as soon as they sold the dungeon reagents.
The adults in the dining room waited quietly, not wanting to disturb Gunther’s sleep or Honronk’s spellcraft. Olza, Bel, and Uncle Ed sat at the table. Galinda leaned against the doorway, and Hans paced the short distance between the front door and the home’s primary fireplace in the common area.
Other than rain pattering on the roof, the house was still and silent.
When Hans heard a doorknob turn, he stopped pacing, listening for what came next.
The door creaked open, and Honronk began an incantation. Wool socks on tiny feet brushed across the floor in the rhythm of steps. Hans assumed that was Gunther trying to leave while Kane held him in place.
The incantation stopped at the same time as any sound of movement from the other side of the house.
“Did it work?” Gunther asked.
The house shook from the shouting that followed. Olza and Galinda held each other's hands and bounced in a circle. Uncle Ed’s chair slammed into the wall when he launched to his feet to hug Honronk. Bel stood on the outside smiling, using her finger tips to catch the tears wanting to race down her cheeks. Hans sat on the floor, experiencing the elation of breaking the surface of a lake just before his air ran out.
A solution. We finally found a solution.
“Guys?” Gunther asked again.
“Yeah, Gunny,” Kane said. “You did good.”
Quest Update: Implement a Repel Possession ward to stop the nightmares, permanently.
When the jubilation settled, Uncle Ed fished a bottle of whiskey from a kitchen cabinet and began to pour. Kane and Gunther both asked for a glass, but he told them no. They grumbled a bit, but the importance of the moment was not lost on them.
“How soon can we get that ward up?” Uncle Ed asked to anyone in the room who cared to answer.
“Not soon,” Galinda said, her smile fading.
Olza added, “We’ll find an enchanter, but it will take time.”
Though that wasn’t what anyone wanted, they were grateful that they now had a clear direction to pursue. The light might be far off, but they could see it where the horizon was nothing but darkness before.
Honronk plunged the house back into tense silence when he said, “I have an idea.”
***
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.
Earn enough gold to free enough workers to build the new campus. 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.
Implement a Repel Possession ward to stop the nightmares, permanently.
Design a training dungeon concept to test on the dungeon core.