The scene reminded Hans of the party the town threw for Mazo when she visited. The heat of summer hadn’t arrived yet this year, but the spring sun was bright and plenty warm.

The Apprentices–Kane, Quentin, and Honronk among them–had left that morning to relieve the party at the dungeon. The adventurers promised to celebrate when they returned, but they had already delayed their rotation and wanted to give the others time to rest.

For Honronk’s part, his next official rotation was still one cycle away. He insisted he wanted to get back to studying with Bel as soon as possible, which Hans accepted as part of the truth. Though the Apprentice didn’t say so, Hans suspected the rotation was a convenient excuse to skip the party and all of the socializing that came with it.

The Apprentices aside, every person and child in Gomi gathered in the field near the Tribe barns. Four recently slaughtered pigs rotated on spits, baked goods of all varieties covered multiple tables, and the beer flowed freely, pulled from what remained of the Tribe’s winter stash.

Luther, looking more like himself each day, strummed a standing bass. Hans didn’t know the tusk was a musician, and he was a good one at that. Galinda set up not far from Luther’s music, laying out dozens of paint bottles and sanded planks of wood. So many children wanted to paint that they ran out of benches and tables. That didn’t seem to bother the kids who had to sit in the grass, though.

Roland found Hans at the edge of the festivities. Tapping his stein against Hans’, the hunter joined the Guild Master in observing the scene.

“Hard to believe how bleak things felt until a few days ago,” Roland observed, smiling at a child painting her own face blue instead of her board.

Hans sipped his beer and nodded.

“When Quentin’s mom passed, I nearly went with her. If it weren’t for these people…” Roland trailed off as he looked over the crowd. “My parents were born and raised here. They lived great lives, but they had been gone for many years by that point. With everyone in Gomi helping Quentin and I through, it felt like mom and dad were back when I needed them most.”

The Guild Master listened but not knowing what to add, remained quiet.

“It feels like they’re back again today.” The hunter lifted his stein for a drink and frowned. “I need a refill. Can I get you something?”

Thankful for the offer but still having half a stein, Hans said he was fine. As Roland made his way to the beer taps, Hans noticed Tandis joining the hunter. They weren’t overtly affectionate, but he had watched many young students bumble their way through talking to a classmate they had feelings for. The body language and the awkwardness wasn’t much different in adults–lingering eye contact with wide eyes, a few too many excuses to bump or touch one another, a shift in proximity that put their bodies somewhere between friend and lovers–but not yet because neither were sure if they should completely close the distance.

Good for Roland.

A faint sense of saltiness overcame Hans, followed shortly by a wicked smile. What sweet payback it would be to rib Quentin for having a hot mom. And the fact that Tandis was who he made Hans embarrass himself in front of made it that much sweeter.

Maybe making fun of the kid whose mom died with mom jokes is not a great idea.

Damn. Another brilliant opportunity squandered by morals and maturity.

When Galinda began cleaning up the painting activity, Charlie asked if anyone wanted to hear a story. Though the question was aimed at the children, Hans wanted to hear a story too, so he relocated himself to be close enough to listen.

The mayor wove a tale of a hunter from Gomi who broke his ankle when he was deep in the forest, tracking game. With no one around to help, the hunter began crawling back to town, but he was out of water and nearly out of food. The hunter knew his supplies wouldn’t last long enough, but he crawled anyway.

At one point, he stopped to rest, trying to ignore the stinging scrapes on his hands and knees. When he opened his eyes, a face sculpted from leaves looked down upon him, twigs and grass held together by an unseen force comprising its body.

“The forest waits to take you,” the creature said with a soft feminine voice, “but they believe it is not your time.”

The creature explained that monsters from the mountains ravaged the deer population during the winter. They fed like a disease, killing and consuming every creature they could find. No animal was safe, but the way deer bedded down at night made them easy prey for this variety of monster.

If the hunters in Gomi pursued deer the way they did every year, the animals might disappear from the forest for good, so the leaf-covered creature presented a trade. The forest would deliver the hunter safely to town if he promised to deliver a message in return. He was to tell the other hunters that deer were to go untouched that season. The forest asked this of Gomi as a friend and neighbor, a one-year sacrifice to preserve hunting in the centuries to follow.

The injured hunter agreed, and a moose carried him back to town. From the back of the giant animal, he shared the message to everyone in Gomi. The hunters all agreed to do what was asked, but other people in town, those who did not depend on the forest for their livelihoods, argued against it. Venison was a favorite meat in Gomi, so its absence would be felt by everyone.

The hunters still refused to hunt deer that season, and they went as far as to say they would stop anyone who meant to defy the forest. The next year, the deer population rebounded, and hunting was plentiful again.

Charlie explained that the story taught us to respect the land we depend on, and showed that future prosperity is sometimes tied to short-term sacrifice.

Then the Mayor congratulated the children for being like the hunters in the story. They suffered that winter, but they didn’t give up. They hung on despite their fears. Because of their patience, Gomi was better off. The happiness around them now was proof of that.

Quest Update: Ask Charlie about the history and legends of the Dead End Mountains.

Charlie suggested everyone go get a cookie, dispersing the children with contentment in his eyes. Harriot separated from the group to talk to the Guild Master.

“Mr. Hans!” she said. “Do you like your sign?”

“My sign?”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m sorry, Harriot. I don’t know what you mean.”

She grabbed his hand and led him through the crowd. With the idea of a prosperous future still echoing in his mind from Charlie’s story, he thought about what was ahead for Harriot. If she was like most kids in the kingdom, she would learn a trade from her parents–blacksmithing or fletching in her case–and continue their legacy. Most of Gomi’s new arrivals wouldn’t have the same opportunity, however.

Olza did mention taking on an apprentice this year…

New Quest: Talk to Gomi’s tradespeople about apprenticeships for the children.

Harriot’s boisterous pointing, emphasized by jumping up and down, brought Hans back to the present moment. Harriot had brought him to where the children’s art dried in the sun. In the midst of the small boards covered with stick figure scenes and goofy portraits was a batch of sanded lumber nailed together to form a canvas as large as the guild hall’s quest board.

“Hans’ Ultimate Training Dungeon” had been painted on it. Each letter looked like it was done by a different child, representing a wide range of styles as well as every color of paint Galinda owned. The children must have forgotten the word Ultimate, because it was the only word scrolled in perfect cursive, suggesting Galinda added it for them. If he read the sign as it was written, the sign said, “HaNs’ ultimate TraINinG DuNgeoN.”

He thought of the sign he commissioned years ago when he opened his academy in Hoseki. It was an exquisite piece of craftsmanship, each letter cut from wood and expertly painted, not a splinter or a dribble of paint out of place.

Hans liked his new multicolored monstrosity better. And it matched the shield the children painted for him last fall.

“I love it. It’s going to look great hung up outside the guild.”

***

A few days later, Uncle Ed and his companions returned with more good news. Their run had taken a little less than two weeks in total.

Hans found the farmer-now-smuggler standing outside the guild hall, hands on his hips, laughing. He looked up at the new sign hanging outside the training yard. Before the Guild Master finished his greeting, Uncle Ed wrapped him in a hug.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “Galinda caught us up on what we missed.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Uncle Ed’s first question was about Kane and Gunther. Galinda told him they were fine and healthy, but he wanted to hear it from Hans too, especially since Kane was doing dungeon runs now. Hans said they were well and that Kane had taken an interest in being a Spellsword. Seeing Lee on runs showed him the class’s potential, and he liked that he would get to cast spells and use a weapon.

Everyone was healthier and in better spirits with the wards in place.

Satisfied, Uncle Ed offered Hans a summary of his report from beyond Gomi. The entire shipment of beer sold in Osare, and one merchant offered to pay a premium for the barrels left in the wagon. Uncle Ed couldn’t tell him those were actually full of horns and blood from a secret dungeon, so he said they were already claimed by a buyer in Raven’s Hollow.

The real buyer in Raven’s Hollow was recommended to Hans by a visiting merchant, making Uncle Ed the first to meet and bargain with them.

“He calls himself ‘Doorstop,’” Uncle Ed explained. “He got his start working the door at a swanky boutique or something like that. Anyway, he wanted nothing to do with me until I showed him the minotaur horns. By the time he saw the imp’s blood and the camehueto horns, his only questions were how much and how often we could deliver.”

The price seemed fair for a wholesale purchase done in secret, and Uncle Ed used a significant portion of the profits to hire a team of builders from Osare to build the palisade. He hadn’t wanted to do that after what happened to Luther, but hiring from any town farther away than Osare was too expensive. Charlie already assured him he had made the right choice, and Hans echoed the sentiment.

“Still don’t like it,” Uncle Ed said. “They’re coming in with the next caravan. Hopefully they’re gone before the one after that.”

“We’ll keep an eye on them. I promise.”

Quest Complete: Earn enough gold to free enough workers to build the new campus.

While happy to complete the quest, he had not completed the bonus objective: selecting a secret passage.

With the Gomi dungeon plan running at full speed now, Hans admitted to himself that a secret passage was no longer a fun side project. The more their activity grew, the more careful they should be. If anyone from outside Gomi visited the cabin, runs couldn’t stop, and they couldn’t reveal the dungeon to the interlopers.

At times, he felt he was being unreasonably paranoid, but part of his mind always dwelled on the worst-case scenario. He only felt relief when he had a plan for dealing with it.

New Quest: Pick a practical secret passage design to disguise the dungeon entrance.

“I mentioned this to Charlie too, but I think we should run three wagons next time,” Uncle Ed continued. “He says we won’t have enough beer for that, but I still say we’ll figure that out.”

Yeah, I can’t put off the secret passage much longer.

Hans promised to think on potential solutions. He agreed that larger deliveries were preferable to more frequent deliveries, and the dungeon was still expanding. Their present volume was challenging to move. When the dungeon grew, that challenge would only get worse.

New Quest: Find new ways to safely sell a larger volume of reagents.

Uncle Ed suddenly looked uncomfortable, his head down and shoulders slumped, his eyes looking everywhere but at Hans. “There’s one more thing. I thought you should know folks are saying Master Devontes is on the front lines now. They say he’s winning the war for the kingdom by himself, but that’s just what I heard. I know you don’t like talking about him much, but I thought…”

Hans told Uncle Ed not to feel badly. He thanked him for everything he shared and for taking on shipping responsibilities to help Gomi.

Later that night, Hans relayed Ed’s report to Olza. They sat in two rickety wooden chairs with their backs to the guild hall, the forest across the field before them and the stars twinkling overhead. Night still clung to the chill of winter, but with a thick sweater and cup of hot tea, Hans was perfectly comfortable.

“We’ll get close to crashing the market for camahueto horns if we aren’t there already,” Olza said, processing all she had just heard. “The demand for imp blood is much higher, but our supply will drop the value, at a minimum. That will happen to anything we grow in the dungeon, really.”

“With the wards, we won’t need the sacs from the geode geckos anymore, so that’s another thing we’ll flood the market with. I can’t figure a way around it. The dungeon will keep growing the stuff even if we don’t need it.”

Both of her hands around her mug, Olza took a slow drink of her tea. “Smaller reagents would be easier to ship. Doesn’t fix the economics, but it would make Ed’s life easier.”

“That’s something.”

Olza agreed.

“How about uses? Could we use the supply to make something? If what we make can’t be sold, being useful cuts down on what we waste.”

“All the recipes I know for our horns, minotaur and camaheuto, are known for having those as ingredients. It would be the same supply issue with more work.”

“So get new recipes.”

“Yeah, sure, Hans,” Olza said sarcastically, “I’ll just invent half a dozen recipes that no other alchemists thought of.”

“I’m not entirely joking,” Hans said, unable to hide the beginnings of a self-satisfied grin. “You won’t run out of material to test with. That’s for certain.”

“That’s the hard part. We’d still have–” the alchemist stopped speaking when Hans’ hand reached for her wrist. His other hand reached for his sword.

“Something big in the tree line,” he whispered.

Though Olza tensed from the news, she didn’t move. Hans stared into the darkness, trying to catch another ripple of shadow. He scanned back and forth, listening for movement but heard none. He felt Olza point and looked in the direction she indicated. The hulking creature approached, slowly crossing the clearing between Gomi and the forest, as if it were stalking the two humans. Calm. Focused. Deadly.

Hans drew his sword and stood in front of Olza. He began to shout and yell, waving his arms to make himself appear larger and more threatening. If he was facing a bear or a wolf, that might be all he needed to scare the animal back into the forest.

The creature was not a bear or a wolf.

“Why are you hollerin’ at this hour?”

“Becky?” Hans asked the darkness.

“What? You never seen a dwarf before?”

Hans lowered his sword. The Becks were close enough now that the faint glow from his apartment window upstairs outlined the boar and its dwarven rider. “You can’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Sneak? I wasn’t sneakin’. I waved hello and everything.”

“When?”

“As soon as I came out of the tree line.”

The Guild Master sighed. “Becky. We don’t have low light vision.”

“That’s not my fault. I ain't your mom.”

While Hans fetched tea and beer–the Druid specifically requested both–Olza caught Becky up on the several weeks of developments she had missed. When Hans rejoined them outside, Becky took both beverages, drank the beer like a pelican swallowing a fish, and passed the empty cup back to Hans.

“I’m sorry you missed the party,” he said to Becky.

“Naw. One time, I heard Charlie say something like, ‘True friends don’t get sad when their friends experience happiness.’”

Olza and Hans agreed that was a good sentiment.

“You’re up to date now,” Hans said. “Where have you been?”

“Workin’, and that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Becky launched into a vague explanation about running errands for “the forest” that took her to every edge of the Gomi forest, which meant quite a bit of travel. The only context Hans had for the distance was the time they tracked squonks to rescue Roland. As far from town as they were, they were still two days away from the forest’s edge. These errands were important, she explained, so she had to prioritize them over everything else.

She had kept up with Buru’s lesson with sparrows, which was news to Hans. Buru had never told him, nor did Hans see a small flock of tiny birds singing to the enormous Druid. With how few words the birds could carry, he estimated that any one of his lessons would require a hundred or more sparrows.

Though she put great detail into how far she traveled, Hans heard few specifics.

“Becky,” Hans interrupted, “Why won’t you tell us what you were doing?”

For what may have been the first time, Hans saw the Druid look uncomfortable. She slumped and shifted, as if every time she breathed, another part of her clothing itched or poked, forcing her to move endlessly while her feet were rooted to the ground.

“I have permission to break an oath, but I’ve held it so long that it still feels wrong. Even if it isn’t.” Hans and Olza waited. Whatever she was struggling to say, it seemed serious. “The Lady of the Forest talks to us Druids. Most of our spells and abilities come from her.”

“Like a god?” Hans asked.

Becky scoffed. “Nothing like that. She ain’t a god, and we aren’t worshippers. It’s more like a partnership. We need each other.”

While Becky spoke, Hans searched his memories for anything he had read or heard about supernatural beings working with people. Fishermen often talked about lakes and oceans as being a “she,” entities that could be angered or placated based on how they behaved in “her” waters. Was this something similar? If Becky’s allusions to serving the “forest” meant this being, could there be similar beings in the water, or anywhere in nature for that matter?

That was too much of his own conjecture to be useful. The only concrete stories he could recall that matched Becky’s description were deals with the fae. The fae weren’t mortals, but they weren’t gods either, and some scholars would disagree with saying that fae were somewhere between mortals and gods. Interplanar politics and power struggles couldn’t be so easily forced into a linear hierarchy, apparently.

“The Lady of the Forest…” the Druid began after a long pause. “She needs Gomi’s help, and she is willing to trade. She knows what we’ve been workin’ on, and she’s offerin’ to watch the borders for us. Any outsider enters the Gomi forest, anywhere at all, she’d tell us.”

“In return?”

“She wants us to use the dungeon core to bring a bird back from extinction.”

Hans' slack-jawed reaction was so pronounced that he spilled some of his tea.

New Quest: Consider a deal with the Lady of the Forest.

***

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."

Ask Charlie about the history and legends of the Dead End Mountains

Protect Gomi.

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

Talk to Gomi’s tradespeople about apprenticeships for the children.

Find new ways to safely sell a larger volume of reagents.

Pick a practical secret passage design to disguise the dungeon entrance.

Consider a deal with the Lady of the Forest.