Another week passed with Tom and others continuing to train every day. The fires of the war had simmered to embers for the time being as the attacks had ceased on the Vanguard guild with the success of Plan Mexican Standoff. Several skirmishes had popped up between The Master and Stormcrusher, as well as between Stormcrusher and Vanguard, and even once between The Master and Vanguard. Without a way to safely remove the collars quickly from the slaves, Tom had been forced to bide his time.

Having given Herbert the last several weeks to work on something for the collars, he decided to check in with him. On his way to the engineering lab, Tom ran into Bobby. The big man had been looking for Tom and wanted to check in with him.

"Hey, Tom. Listen, we gotta talk about something. I think we need to take another approach to the training." Bobby said, stopping Tom before he could continue.

"What do you have in mind?" Tom asked, curious about what type of training Bobby could not be getting from Bron.

"Well, Bron has been great, and he has given us a lot of training techniques to use, but I just don't think that we are including enough people. There are a lot who are just going about the normal workouts or grinding on monsters. Do you have a problem if I start a routine that will rotate through everyone in the guild to teach them some of the new training techniques?" Bobby asked, seeming seriously concerned about the others.

"I think that is a great idea. Do you think you can handle that many people? That might become a full-time job." Tom explained his concerns.

"I should only have to do it for the first while. Then we train others to do the classes that have a better aptitude for it. I'll work on that part with Chris. Soon we can have daily classes at different times to allow people to get their work done and still train." Bobby continued.

"I think that sounds great. Make it so number one!" Tom said, smiling at his old Star Trek Reference.

"At least I'm not number two. Thanks, Tom, I'll get right on it." Bobby said, looking at Tom strangely, obviously missing the reference.

He turned and left Tom to continue about his business, heading toward the cafeteria knowing that would be where he would find a large group of people to buy into his new training idea. Tom continued on alone until he reached the basement. He waved to Roland, who greeted him when he came down the stairs. Tom moved over to see what the smith was working on.

"Got anything new to show off, Roland?" Tom asked the large, sweaty, soot-covered smith.

"I do actually. I have been vorking on a new armor prototype vis one of ze enchanters from ze guild." Roland explained. "Here, take a look."

Roland held up what looked like a blackened piece of half-plate metal half-leather armor. He tossed it to Tom with ease and Tom deftly caught it out of the air.

"Holy shit! It's so light!" Tom exclaimed, expecting the metal to make it much heavier than it felt.

"Ja! It has ze lightening properties imbued into ze runes along with ze strength properties to make it far stronger zan it should be at its size. But it should be as tough as ze dragon scales." Roland boasted proudly.

"This is amazing work, Roland!" Tom praised the smith as he continued to look over the armor piece.

"Danke schoen! It has been a lot of issues, and I am still not fully happy vis it, but it has come a long way since I committed verschlimmbesserung vis the first sets." Roland explained.

"Since you committed what again?" Tom asked, unable to understand what the smith meant.

"Verschlimmbesserung. It means, how you say, tried to make better, but made worse." Roland told Tom, trying to find the English words to explain the German term.

"I'm not sure I understand," Tom admitted as he stared at the big man.

"Zink of a painting. When someone vants to restore it to its former glory, zey usually have to clean off ze years of grime. And sometimes zey commit verschlimmbesserung by destroying some of the work in ze process." Roland continued explaining.

"Germans have a word for everything don't they?" Tom asked smiling.

"It is a very efficient language," Roland beamed.

"Well, definitely do not give up! This is great!" Tom poured more praise on him.

"Den Teufel nicht andie Wand malen," Roland quoted.

Tom stared blankly at Roland after he said this, not able to speak German. Roland laughed a big hearty belly laugh at Tom's face.

"Literally translated it means 'Do not paint ze devil on the wall'. It is a German proverb. It means do not assume zat somesing will go wrong before you know ze outcome." Roland explained. "You cannot just say zat somesing vill be bad. I vill never give up in zis endeavor." Roland gave Tom a big thumbs up at this sentiment.

Tom moved to hand the armor back to Roland, but the man held a hand up to him.

"Zat is for you. I saw your armor last time and decided to get you somesing you could use right avay." Roland explained. "Keep it. I hope it protects you in your battles."

Tom stared down at the armor and Inspected it.

Item: Half Plate of Protection - Light

Item Type

Armor - Light

Durability

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1500/1500

Defense

+300

Item Quality

Excellent

Item Rarity

Rare

This armor, created by the Vanguard smith Roland, was created and enchanted with weight-reducing runes as well as strengthening runes to make this armor as durable as plate armor, but as light as leather armor.

"I...I don't know what to say, Roland. This armor is amazing!" Tom gushed over the armor.

"Danke mein Freund. You honor me vis your verds." Roland said, bowing his head as he placed his hand over his heart. "Come back to see me and I vill see if I can be having you some more sings to help you."

With that, Roland went back to pounding on a piece of glowing red metal. Tom took this as his cue to leave and equipped the new armor piece. He immediately felt lighter than he had wearing the medium armor and flexed around to get a feel for the mobility of the piece. Because of the automagic resizing properties of armor, it fit perfectly with no pinching when he moved.

Reaching the Engineering lab on the other side of the basement, Tom waved to Herbert who also had Bohdan with him.

"Hey guys! I wanted to check on the progress of the collar removal problem. Have we made much progress?" Tom asked as he approached one of the tables they were working at.

"We don't have a good solution yet. But we are working on it. We have some ideas to build prototypes for. But we really can't be sure until we get to test it out on something." Herbert explained.

"We know it will do what we set it to do, but that is as far as it will being going without another collar to test on," Bohdan added in his Ukrainian accent.

"That's a bummer. Do we have a collar we can test on? The last one we cut up." Tom asked, remembering having to use bolt cutters to remove it.

"We can get some, but the damn things require a special skill to use," Herbert said holding up an intact version of the collar he had apparently bought from the vending machine. "So we are still attempting to find a way to activate the collar to test it."

"So what are you going with for the first idea?" Tom asked, hoping to pressure them to reveal the first thing they were trying.

"We decided to try to build something that could be thrown at someone with the collar on. It should cast a version of the anti-magic zone spell that Bohdan used last time in a limited range. It will work in the same way a spell scroll does with a single cast option when activated." Herbert explained holding up a metallic cube with a button on it. "This is just a basic model and has no functionality, but it's basically like a grenade. Press the button, throw the cube, and three seconds later the spell fires off. We can make it do multiple things when the button is pressed, so the end goal is to fire off the anti-magic field at three seconds, then whatever will unlock the collar at either four or five seconds."

"But we have no idea what that will be still," Tom said flatly, staring at the cube with a hand under his chin in thought.

"Correct. But will figure it out. It's only a matter of time. Give us another couple of weeks and we should have a working prototype." Herbert explained to Tom, setting the cube down on the table.

"Okay, but this is absolutely priority number one," Tom replied.

"We know. Everything else is on hold until this is figured out right now." Herbert stated.

"Perfect. Thanks for working on this for us. Let me know as soon as you have something." Tom bid them farewell after this and went back upstairs.

Reaching the main lobby with nothing to move forward with, Tom decided he needed to reassemble his team and take them to get a different type of training. He had been holding off on this with the war efforts, but now there was time.

Walking to the security center, Tom opened the steel door and found TJ inside watching the monitors.

"You take shifts here now?" Tom asked as he walked up behind him.

"Can't lead from the back all the time. Gotta get in the trenches with the men. Especially in war." TJ replied looking up at Tom.

"Can you call Brian, Derek, James, Kiera, Jay, and Kevin in here for me?" Tom asked with a smile.

"Sure. Give me just a minute." TJ replied, making some notes on a pad before using the announcement system to call for the others.

Once they had all arrived about twenty minutes later Tom addressed them all.

"Brian, you mentioned that some dungeons had been found while we were gone. Have they been explored yet?" Tom asked.

"No, we kept them off limits until your team could take a stab at them first. I know you have that deal with your patron about dedicating dungeons and wanted to be sure we had the best team go in first." Brian explained.

"Perfect. Because you are going with us." Tom said grinning evilly at him.

"The fuck I am!" Brian protested.

"Everyone has to train. You have to get stronger too. We are going to powerlevel you." Tom said.

"Do you think that's a good idea, Tom?" Derek asked.

"It's the fastest way to get him leveled up. He won't have to do much. Just deal a little damage here and there and he'll get the same XP as us." Tom countered.

"This seems very dangerous, and I'm not okay with it," Brian protested as his eyes flicked back and forth between Derek and Tom.

"Oh, it's happening, don't you try to wriggle out of this," Tom said still looking at Derek. "He needs this. And it'll toughen him up a bit. You have all your gear right?"

"Umm, yes?" Brian said in more of a question than a statement.

"Good. You will join us in the first dungeon. I won't make you do both, but you might change your mind while you're in there." Tom said finally looking back at Brian.

"I don't fucking like this. Why can't we just go kill some damn goblins instead for leveling?" Brian tried to get Tom to change his mind.

"Because this is way more XP for the same amount of time and we get prizes at the end," Tom explained, loving watching Brian squirm.

"I'm gonna enjoy watching you die slowly maggot!" James jumped in on the teasing.

"For fucks sake, James. The goal is to keep him alive." Tom turned on James and scolded him.

"Sure, sure. That's the goal. But the goal and what actually happens are two very different things." James was rubbing his hands together in glee at this point.

Seeing the discomfort Brian was in, Kiera couldn't help but poke the bear.

"We can't watch his back all the time. Monsters come from all over. Could just sneak right up behind him." Kiera added, causing Brian to turn a couple of shades paler.

"That's true. I guess Kiera and James will just have to be your personal bodyguards in the dungeon then." Tom said staring straight at Brian.

"Yeah...wait we what?!" Kiera stated, too into the moment to realize what Tom had said at first. "I'm not a fucking babysitter. Let Kevin do it."

"Kevin will just rush into the battle with his Rage ability activated. Can't count on him to defend Brian. But two fighters who normally are behind the front lines would be perfect." Tom was now the one rubbing his hands together evilly.

"We walked right into that one," James sulked as his shoulders slumped.

"Dammit!" Kiera facepalmed as she exclaimed the word. "Why did I have to go and stick my nose in it!"

"Because you like causing others discomfort," James replied.

"Damn my need to watch others in pain!" Kiera cursed.

Looking down at Brian who had shrunk into a chair and was looking quite pale, he said, "Now where is that first dungeon you were telling us about?"