Where there used to be natural caverns, the dungeon hallway now ended with stairs and a flat landing, like the dungeon was the basement of the cabin. Opposite the stairs, the dungeon opened into the forest.

Familiar masonry replaced the bottom of the pit, but the trapdoor and ladder were intact. Looking up, Hans could see the ladder punching up through a broken hole in the dungeon ceiling before transitioning to raw pit again, the one he had dug by hand several months ago. He had worried his suggestion would seal it off completely, so seeing those cursed shovel marks was actually a relief.

As the party walked toward the light, Hans said, “I wasn’t sure if this would work or not. This will be our primary entry point from now on. You all gotta be tired of carrying gear and loot up that ladder.”

Every head nodded.

“We’re going to disguise it as a plain old basement cellar. For now, we’ll build a quick gate to cover it.”

“Mr. Hans,” Yotuli asked. “What do I do with this?” The Ranger referred to the zout still wiggling to escape her arms.

“Oh. I totally forgot. Go release it outside.”

“What?”

“Let it loose in the forest.”

Yotuli didn’t move. Where she couldn’t wait to be rid of the zout before, she now seemed unwilling to let it go. “But why? We spent all that time catching it.”

Hans shrugged. “It’s a Becky project, Druid stuff.”

The Apprentice waited, giving Hans time to confirm he was joking. When he did no such thing, Yotuli walked out of the dungeon and set the zout on the ground. The bird sped off into the forest, disappearing into the wilderness almost immediately.

Quest Complete: Grow zouts to complete the deal with the Lady of the Forest.

When Hans followed Yotuli out of the dungeon, he turned to look at the new entrance from the outside. He put his face in his hands and swore.

“What’s wrong?” Kane asked.

The Guild Master pointed to the entrance and its surroundings. In his mind, Hans pictured the cabin with a basement, but he had not accounted for the grade of the mountain side. In order for a door to sit directly below the cabin, a great deal of dirt and stone had to be moved, which also explained the stairs. The pit was deeper than a basement, so the dungeon core aligned its construction with Hans’ request.

Just as the dungeon core seemed to decide on its own that a staircase was necessary, it had decided to carve a wide swath of dirt, extending three cabin-lengths to either side of the original. Looking at it now, Hans saw that doing otherwise would have left him with a tunnel leading to the door of his new basement. If he wanted a door aligned with the walls of the cabin like he asked, this was the only way.

Dungeon wall held the mountain back, descending into a precise right angle of flat terrain. Though the core moved earth to accommodate the suggestion, it didn’t remove any plants. If a tree grew a foot from where there was now a wall, it was lowered, growing uninterrupted on the now flat ground with no apparent side effects.

Nothing about the new scenery looked natural, least of all the two lengths of exposed dungeon wall. His secret passage didn’t look so secret.

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

Quest Update: Find a new design to disguise the dungeon entrance. Bonus Objective: Don’t be an idiot.

“I don’t see why you’re so upset,” Lee said when Hans finished ranting about his mistake.

“We need to undo this. It’s too obvious, but I don’t know if the core will allow that.”

Yotuli stood next to Hans and faced the wall, studying it. “Just cover it up. People build retaining walls all the time. If that wall was Gomi stone it would just look like a lot of work.”

Considering the scene again, Hans admitted Yotuli made a good point.

Quest Complete: Find a new design to disguise the dungeon entrance.

Bonus Objective Failed: Don’t be an idiot.

The more Hans pictured the dungeon wall as a plain stone laid and mortared by hand, the more he agreed that this new entrance could work. No matter what they did with the wall, the entrance needed to be secured for the long-term. He pictured the outside covered with a wooden door, but inside, they would do something more akin to a jail cell or a bank vault.

New Quest: Talk to the blacksmith about metal doors for the dungeon.

Ultimately, Hans decided Yotuli was right about the exterior wall. “That’s a lot of stone to move.”

“Half a mountain of it, for sure,” Yotuli said.

“Good thing we have Apprentices,” Hans said, patting her back with a smile before walking up and around the wall to enter the cabin.

Yotuli called. “I was wrong! We should ask the core to undo this!”

***

After letting Becky know that the zout request had been fulfilled, Hans, Kane, and Quentin began the journey back to Gomi. The boys had been at the cabin long enough for their skill level, and with Tandis rotating in, the cabin would be cramped anyway. They were likely to pass her and the Apprentices on their way home.

“Why are we walking so fast?” Quentin asked.

“Builders from Osare are coming in with the merchants to build our wall. I want to be there before they are.”

Other than the one question, neither Kane nor Quentin complained about the pace. Hans did but only in his mind. In Hoseki, if a restaurant was more than six blocks from his home, he would pick somewhere else to eat instead. In Gomi, walking for a day between destinations was normal, and he had been walking a lot these days.

Fortunately, they made good time. A well-worn trail unobstructed by snow was far easier to traverse. They might be able to make it back to town without having to camp for the night.

Hans used the time to talk to the boys about their training and experience in the dungeon.

“Lee is teaching me to be a Spellsword,” Kane said. “I can’t cast anything yet, but she’s incredible to train with. And on runs? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Ask him about the spells,” Quentin said to his friend.

“Lee said I should only learn spells with no visual elements, like Force-based magic, so I can keep my class a secret if I wanted. Do you agree with that?”

“Those kinds of questions are tough to answer. Adventurers have strong opinions about everything. When you get to Lee’s level, what’s right or wrong isn’t as clear as it is at Apprentice or Iron.”

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“I don’t get it,” Kane said. “The technique works well, or it doesn’t. Right?”

The Guild Master shook his head. “It depends. It depends on a lot of things, actually. Bel and Lee have trained enough that their style is as much about what they don’t do as what they choose to do. They’ve learned so much that they can’t possibly use it all. For an adventurer like Lee, whether she realizes it or not, the advice she gives sometimes assumes that the rest of your build is the same as hers, or will be.

“If Lee specializes in Force magic and wants to keep that hidden, I’d bet her swordplay is built around that idea. If you want to hide your casting… Push, for instance. If she uses that spell from a distance, it’s obvious she cast it because if a spell wasn’t what knocked the guy across the yard, what else could it have been?”

“So she needs to make contact to hide it.”

“Yes, but more than that. If she blocks an attack and then uses Push, well, that doesn’t make sense either, right? If she wants to hide the spell, she can only cast it with strikes that would reasonably match the trajectory of the spell. That’s a complicated thing to do if you want to use your spells regularly in a battle.”

“So it’s better not to try and hide that I’m a Spellsword?” Kane asked.

Hans put his palm on his face. “What I’m saying is that sometimes what’s right or wrong is up to your tastes.”

“Really?”

Hans nodded.

“I’d rather my sword be coated in green fire.”

Yeah, whether he knows it or not, Kane’s made his choice.

Quentin spoke up. “Can I re-ask a question?”

That got Hans’ attention. He couldn’t recall a student ever making that particular request before. He said for Quentin to go ahead.

“Why aren’t you Diamond?” While Hans was temporarily in shock, Quentin hurried through a justification. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but Bel said if you want to be Diamond you should think about it when you’re an Apprentice. But I don’t know if I want to be a Diamond if that’s not what you did.”

The Guild Master walked in silence for a long while. He enjoyed the sound of the leaves crunching beneath him and the spring air moving through his lungs.

Didn’t you say your job as a teacher was to keep students from making the same mistakes you did?

“The Adventurers’ Guild makes you swear an oath that you will never speak of the Diamond test to anyone who isn’t Diamond-ranked themselves.”

“Oh, you don’t–”

“It’s fine.You both deserve to know. When you test for Diamond, the guild assigns you the quest, supposedly based on your specific strengths so that someone like a Healer wouldn’t end up on a job that a world-class warrior would find challenging. That kind of matchup is over before it begins, so the quests are meant to be a fair test.

“All of that’s supposed to be a secret too, but too many Gold-rankers have failed and blabbed I guess. What’s not well known is that they are all solo quests, and all of them are in the frontier. They all end with a magic item that the guild keeps. Somewhere in there, in the natural completion of the quest, you’ll find or acquire the ability that takes you to Diamond.

“Devontes met a deity that offered him Paladin abilities, but that’s an outlier. Mazo’s quest had her fight a young dragon who had abilities like a Blue Mage. When the dragon died, her mana pool quadrupled, and it was already unnaturally large. Don’t ask me how because I don’t know, but that’s given her a huge advantage over other mages. That little show she put on you for you? Most mages would be lucky to cast a spell that powerful twice a day, but between her pool and regeneration, she can move a ton of mana and keep moving it.

“Gret, the Rogue I’ve talked about before, his quest was in this kind of ancient prison. It was a maze, and monsters stalked him the entire time, trying to drive him into traps or corners. He read a scroll that gave him a Stealth ability when he cracked the vault at the bottom.”

“Will Gret visit like Mazo?” Kane asked.

“No. He’s dead.”

“Oh.”

“Disintegration trap.” After a few minutes of crinkling leaves breaking the silence, Hans continued his answer to Quentin’s original question.

Hans’ Diamond quest sent him into a terathan hive, a species of monster that combined the body of a giant spider with the torso of a humanoid. Like other monsters with humanoid characteristics, terathans came in a variety of classes, from warriors to casters, and were highly intelligent. Their spider qualities covered their bodies in a hard chitin, and even the drones–the weakest terathan variety–had forearms shaped into crude but sharp, serrated machetes, making them quite dangerous despite their low place in the terathan hierarchy.

The females could spin webs, and their bites were venomous. The more mature females could spit that venom as far as an archer could fire an arrow. They also tended to be larger and more aggressive than males.

On top of all of that, there were a lot of terathans, up to 200 in an established hive.

“I tried three times,” Hans said. “On the first two attempts, I retreated from poison. Once I got to the spitters, I couldn’t drink potions fast enough. Every drop felt like getting bit by a rattlesnake. On the third attempt, Mazo came after me, cut me out of a web. If she hadn’t, I would have been dinner.

“After that, the guild barred me from trying again, not that I could if I wanted to. I’ve never really felt like myself since then. Not as fast. Not as strong. Less resilient. If the best version of me didn’t succeed, this version definitely wouldn’t.”

“Mr. Hans,” Kane cautiously began, “What happens to a Diamond quest if it’s not completed?”

Hans swallowed. “It gets passed on. Devon drew the same quest. He cleared it.”

“So… The deity could have offered you the Paladin deal instead?”

“Maybe, but hard to say for sure.”

Quentin spoke. “Did you know he got the same quest before or after?”

“Before. I helped him prep, and he got to the queen in a day. He burned the hive down on his way out.”

“Sounds like I don’t want to be Diamond,” Quentin said.

“No, don’t say that,” Hans replied earnestly. “Make that decision for yourself. If you want to go for Diamond, you have my full support.”

“We could do that in Gomi?”

“Well, no,” Hans had to admit.

He didn’t know how the guild sourced the Diamond quests. If Quentin wanted to reach Diamond, he would need to go through the Hoseki chapter to do so, but how could he do that if he never ranked under the guild officially? In Gomi, they had decided to not add new registrations to the guild roster to avoid attracting attention, which meant their adventurers would gain none of the benefits of being an official adventurer.

Part of him believed the roster wouldn’t matter anyway. Any recommendations from Hans for potential Diamonds were not welcome. The Adventurers’ Guild told him that specifically.

That reminded Hans of a quest he had been putting off.

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

Footsteps in the distance got everyone’s attention. Sven, Terry, and Tandis approached from the opposite direction. Sven waved a wiry arm when he spotted Hans and the boys. The Guild Master found the next few minutes excruciatingly awkward. He always felt that way walking toward someone he needed to talk to when they were far off yet making eye contact.

Hans was still in a rush, so they didn’t do much more than exchange pleasantries. He did ask if the caravan had arrived yet, though, and they said it hadn’t. Before the parties went their separate ways, Tandis made sure to tell Quentin, “Say hi to your dad for me!”

Even before she was out of sight, Kane poked Quentin. “Say hi to your dad for me.”

“Shut up,” Quentin said.

“If she’s into your dad…”

“Shut up.”

“Quentin, hey,” Kane said, waiting for Quentin to look him in the face. “Your mom is hot.”

“Shut up!” Quentin punched Kane’s body as the young tusk wheezed from laughing so hard.

Hans was grateful he was in the lead. He could hide his own laughter better that way.

***

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.

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

Research the root-covered earth elemental.

Talk to the blacksmith about metal doors for the dungeon.

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