James sat on the wagon next to Steven as they traveled. It had been a few days since they left the camp, the fort they were going to was a few days from his village. When James first realized this, he asked Steven how they'd gotten to his village so fast. Steven had explained that it was a combination of two things. First, they had actually gotten a warning of the monsters' impending attack about a day before the actual attack had happened. And second, they had traveled as fast as they could on the way there, trying to get there in time to save the village. On the way back, while they were still moving fairly quickly, it wasn't as time sensitive.

During the past couple of days James had gotten a lot of chances to see what the adventurers did and see the differences between the groups, which he'd learned were called classes. Steven had helped explain a lot.

The first group, with the heavy armor, Steven had called tanks. There were various classes within that classification, but they primarily focused on standing there and getting hit. James had also learned that most classes had different skills that they were able to use, which was one of the things that set them apart from normal fighters. Tanks generally had skills designed to keep the enemy focused on them or to reduce the impact of enemy attacks. Steven was working on becoming a tank, specifically a subclass of tank called a bulwark. He had explained that it specialized in heavy armour and being immovable. He had shown some of his skills to James. One made stone tendrils come out of the ground and anchor him in place. He explained that that one was for stopping a charging monster or preventing himself from being pushed away by a bigger monster. His other skill was a classic for tanks, called a taunt. He had used it on James once to show him what it did. Suddenly James had felt a powerful impulse to attack Steven, and he'd started smacking him with a rock he picked up. It wore off after just a couple of seconds, but Steven explained that it would last longer on unintelligent monsters. Their practices involved smashing at each other with massive weapons, charging and blocking charges, and just generally practicing brute force fighting. James didn't ever want to get in a wrestling match with a tank.

The second group Steven had called the rogues. He'd explained that they were in charge of moving unseen and hitting the most sensitive locations. Most of their skills involved slipping out of sight or boosting their strength for one, big, devastating attack. One of the rogues had demonstrated a skill for James. They were standing in the middle of the road, but when the rogue used his skill, James suddenly wanted to look anywhere but at the adventurer. He still caught glimpses of the rogue, since he was just standing in the middle of the road, not moving, but James could see how they would become practically invisible if they were actually trying to hide. Their other focus was on finding things that were hard to see. Their training was actually super hard to watch. They trained in the woods along the road, and also acted as the company's scouts. They each had dull blades with paint on them, and tried to get marks on each other throughout the day. Every morning they got a pot of money put together, and each evening it would be split between the one with the least marks and the one who dealt the most marks. James had wanted to join, but without skills he was not even close to the level of the adventurers. James was definitely considering being a rogue, it seemed like one of the most fun classes.

The third group was actually the one he spent the most time with, apart from Steven. Steven called them the rangers, and they trained with bows and arrows. Their skills usually made the arrows do something unusual, or made it possible to make shots that should never have been possible. They were in charge of getting food, and James realized why they often had strange things for food. The rangers were used to killing things attacking them, not tracking down and finding something that didn't want to be found. James spent a good bit of the trip leading the rangers through the woods by the road, looking for game. If he could get them within sight of a large game animal, though, they could almost always get it in a single shot. James had had a bit of practice with the bow while hunting with his father, but this was unbelievable. He saw one ranger stop a charging boar in its tracks with a single arrow to the forehead, snapping its neck and sending it head-over-heels. The rangers had explained that they had a few skills to attack creatures that wouldn't be harmed much by an arrow, like a skeleton or a slime. Ranger wasn't a very popular class, since spells were more versatile than arrows, but there were still a few. James thought about being a ranger, but his compass meant spells would probably be better for him.

Speaking of spells, the group he'd thought was the last group was actually two classes. There were the mages and the support classes. He loved watching the mages practice, it was always something different. He saw plenty of practicing pure power by launching fireballs at rocks. Another one he saw a lot was practicing control, either to make fireballs stay together as far as possible, or a really impressive one he saw was a mage holding complex shaped ribbons of water over his head as he went about doing normal stuff. Steven had told him that most of the adventurers on this trip were actually pretty new to adventuring, but that mage was a good bit more experienced. James had been surprised to learn that Steven had never actually been in a dungeon before. Turns out, most dungeons were far off of the beaten path when they emerged, and they quickly grew beyond new adventurers. Thus, the only dungeons relatively easy to get to have had too much time to grow for newer adventurers to dive in them, and the brand new ones are usually hard to get to, so most adventurers didn't actually get to dive in a dungeon for a while after becoming an adventurer, they just trained the normal way.

The support classes were actually part of the mage class, due to them being focused on casting spells, but the roles varied enough that people tended to differentiate. The main role of a support adventurer was as the party's healer. They were also in charge of giving boosts to the adventurers in their party, so they usually had a good variety of helpful spells. He saw one support class adventurer cast a spell on a horse when it was struggling to pull a heavy load through a patch of mud. Suddenly the horse was moving like there was nothing attached at all, and the problem that would've been a few hours of work on James’s farm was solved in minutes. Their other job was having random spells to hinder the attacking monsters. He saw one support adventurer summon a bunch of grasping vines to slow down some rogues chasing him when he snagged a whole leg of roasted jackalope.

By far the most practice for the support classes, however, came from them watching the tanks practice. Injuries weren't uncommon during their practices, and James saw a number of bad wounds healed in moments. Given his recent experience with natural healing, even with the assistance of his compass, he could see exactly how beneficial the healing capabilities were.

Today, however, James was just riding with Steven on the wagon. James had quickly discovered that even with his increased constitution and unusually high dexterity he still could barely keep up with everyone. He'd heard that adventurers were the best of the best, and this group confirmed that. The only ones who weren't at least James’s equal in terms of travel speed were the tanks, so they took turns riding on wagons. To be fair, the tanks seemed like they never got tired, which made sense. A high constitution would let you travel for longer, where a high dexterity would let you move faster. That's why the rogues and rangers could range through the forest and still keep up, but were exhausted at the end of the day, but the tanks had a hard time keeping up but weren't even tired by the end.

As they rode along, James and Steven had quickly become friends. They had talked about a lot of things, and James had asked Steven all of the questions he could think of about adventurers. Steven was extremely knowledgeable about all things adventuring and dungeons, his father had been an adventurer until he died 5 years before while fighting a group of dungeon monsters outside of their dungeon and attacking the dungeon responsible.

Suddenly Marcus ran up beside their wagon. James wasn't sure how strong Marcus was, but he was definitely the fastest one in the group. "Get ready, Steven. We're almost to the fort." Then he was gone to the next wagon.

Steven sat up where he'd been relaxing on the seat and started getting himself ready for a fight. Steven usually wore most of his armor, but some things like his helm and his shield he left in his bag of holding for convenience. Now, however, he pulled out everything and got ready.

James, however, was confused. "Steven, wouldn't it be safer now that we're almost to the fort? Why are you getting ready for a fight now?"

Steven shook his head, although it may have just been him making sure his helm was on right. "Not quite. You know that there are dungeons that send their monsters out of the dungeon? Well, the reasoning behind it, as far as the adventurers' guild can tell, is they want to wipe out the adventurers so no one can threaten them. In response to this, and to prevent them from attacking villages like yours, the guild created 3 forts and moved all training for new adventurers to those forts. Basically, they put all of their eggs in one basket and painted a big red bullseye on it for the rogue dungeons. So far it has seemed to work, the dungeons have been focusing their attacks on the forts, knowing that losing even one fort would have a bigger impact than taking out dozens of villages."

James thought about it. Made sense, by making such an important target they had effectively made villages like his unimportant to the dungeons. "So why are you getting ready to fight?"

"Well, because it is such a big target, the rogue dungeons, or the dungeons that are attacking outside of themselves, attack the fort on a fairly regular basis. Marcus is worried that the dungeons may have been using the attack on your village to split our forces so they could attack the fort while we were gone."

James nodded, then sat back in his seat. He hoped there weren't any monsters attacking the fort, he wanted to train a bit before he faced his next dungeon monster. Even with the possibility of monsters to fight, though, James was still excited to make it to the fort. Steven had told him a bunch about it, and he was excited to see it with his own two eyes.

They went around a corner in the trees, and there it was. No monsters, but … what a fort! James wasn't sure fort was even the right word! Could a fort really be that … that … enormous? The fort was built in a massive cleared area, and the trees were cleared for at least a mile around the walls. The ground for the last fifteen hundred feet or so was flat ground, providing nowhere to hide. Then the wall! At first James had assumed it was a cliff! It had to be 300 feet tall! And it stretched as far as he could see, making a nearly flat line, meaning the circle made must be massive!

Directly in front of them, James could see what appeared to be a tiny door at the bottom, but as he strained to see, he could actually see a few guards and realized that the "tiny" door was actually over 20 feet tall, but was just dwarfed by the size of the walls themselves. Then he noticed a second door, this one even larger. It was cut directly into the stone of the wall, and had to be 50 feet tall, maybe more! "What … how … but …"

Steven laughed. "That's almost exactly what my reaction was the first time I saw the fort! You just have to let it sink in for a second."

James stared at the fort as they kept bouncing along. "Why do they need such a massive door?" He understood the use of an insanely large wall, but a door to match didn't seem very useful.

Steven pulled off his helm and scratched his chin. "You know, I've never actually seen the big doors opened. I honestly kind of forget they're there. The reason I was given when I first came is that some nobles have unusual pets, and some of them are quite large. Still, I don't think those doors are opened very often, it takes a long time to close them so it's a pretty big security problem."

Made sense. With a hole that big the wall wouldn't even really matter anymore. "But … how did they even make a wall that big?"

Steven laughed. "I had the same question. From what I understand, it's made from some super strong rock found in dungeons, and is nearly indestructible. The wall is also thick, nearly 40 feet thick. The top of the wall is like a giant highway."

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James' mind was having a hard time grasping the sheer magnitude of this wall. 40 feet thick? That was insane!

"As for how they made it, it's actually all one solid piece to make it stronger. Apparently that kind of stone is incredibly slow and difficult to work with magic, but some of the strongest Earth mages in the guild worked for weeks sealing the stones together. The wall is nearly 350 feet tall, and goes over 50 feet into the ground. To get past it is incredibly difficult, and that's ignoring the adventurers on top actively causing you problems. Finally, there is an enchantment over the entire fort. If anyone burrows up within the fort, the people in charge will know it."

They sat in silence for the last mile, both of them just looking at the massive wall that dominated the valley. As they got close to the wall, James could see tiny people on the top, watching them approach. Really, he knew they were normal people, but they looked pretty small at that height. As they went through the gates, there were no problems, apparently Marcus was important enough that the guards knew him.

As they passed through the long tunnel that was the gate, James waited for his first view of the inside of the fort. It didn't disappoint. As he looked, he realized the fort was actually an oval, not circular, making it even bigger than he'd assumed. It had to be ten miles across in the middle, and at least as long! Really, he was mostly guessing on the distances, they were just too big for him to really comprehend. As they were traveling towards the middle, he discovered one reason it was so big. All of the fields were inside the wall. As he looked, Steven started talking again. "Even if the fort were completely cut off from the outside world, we're pretty much completely independent. Crops are grown within for most of the food eaten, and there are many wells, springs, and rain catchers for water. Additionally, because everything near the wall is just fields, if someone wanted to throw something over the wall to cause damage to the fort, like with a trebuchet or a ballista, would not only have to clear the wall, but clear it and keep going for a long ways to hit anything important. Realistically, probably not going to happen. This place was designed to be impenetrable."

James agreed. He couldn't imagine anyone actually making it into this place, but then he had a thought. "What about flying monsters?"

Steven smiled. "They thought of that too. In the town are several massive mana cannons aimed upwards. If something flies in too high over the walls, it will expose itself to the cannons. The cannons are designed to do maximum damage to something flying high over the fort. From what I understand about enchanting, if you add detrimental things to an item you can get more powerful effects. The cannons only have a very narrow angle they can hit, and they have to have a clear line of sight on the target for at least a few seconds to fire. This is probably only going to happen for things extremely far away … like something flying too high to be hit by the weapons on the walls. Finally, it takes a lot of power to fire them, but there are plenty of mages in the fort to help. The benefits counteracting those big weaknesses is that once they have successfully fired at a target, the projectile itself will actually track down the target, no matter what maneuvers it tries to escape. And when it hits, it hits hard. Almost nothing would survive a single hit from those cannons."

It really did seem like they'd planned for everything. As they traveled past field after field, James was in awe at the pure size of this undertaking. And Steven had mentioned that the adventurers' guild had built three of these forts? James had known the adventurers' guild had a lot of power, but this was insane. "This has to be the most strongly defended location in the world."

Steven laughed. "Nope! Not even close! That award goes to the dwarves in their mountain strongholds. There are even some cities, like the capital, that are better defended. The reason these are so important, though, is because this is where the training of new adventurers happens. Without the steady flow of new adventurers, there would be no one to keep the rogue dungeons in check."

James thought for a moment. "What about the king's army? Surely if the dungeons were going to overrun the kingdom they'd step in and help."

Steven shook his head. "They'd probably try, but it wouldn't help. It isn't super well known, but a strong dungeon crew could probably take on the king's army by themselves and come out on top. The kingdom hasn't been to war in ages, so anyone who actually wanted to fight worked towards being an adventurer. The king's army is composed of those who couldn't manage to become an adventurer or who just want to pretend to be a warrior. Many nobles actually enlist in the king's army just to get a title they can use at social events."

They sat again in companionable silence as they moved slowly closer to the town in the middle of the fort.

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When they made it to the town, James was in awe again. He had known that his village was small, but this was insane! His home was one of the larger houses in the village, with two stories. Some of the buildings he saw here looked like they had at least 3 or 4! And the number of people! The roads were wider than most of the roads in his village, but there were still people filling them! People made space for the wagons pretty well, so they didn't go too much slower, but it was still crazy! Eventually the wagons stopped in front of the biggest building James had seen yet! Marcus stood in front of the group of wagons. "Thank you, everyone, for your good work over the last few days. Go to one of the guild lodges to get your pay for the trip, and have a good night's rest tonight."

James glanced at Steven. Steven chuckled. "What, you thought we all came for free?" He sobered up a bit. "Realistically, for this one I think many of us would have, but any guild sponsored thing like this you get paid to be a part of. The guild pays in two ways. The first is in coin, just like normal. The second is in guild credit. This can only be earned by helping the guild, and is quite useful. Most new adventurers actually spend most of their time either training or trying to earn guild credit, because you can spend guild credit to be taken into a relatively easy dungeon with a higher-tier adventurer. That's one of the ways they earn credit. Like I told you earlier, it's really hard for a new adventurer to get into a dungeon, so earning credits is really important."

That made sense to James. And he didn't have any problem with the adventurers being paid to come help his village, they had to eat somehow!

Before James could ask Steven what he was going to do now, Marcus ran up by the side of the wagon they were still sitting on. James wasn't sure why Marcus always seemed to be in such a hurry, but he was always running everywhere. "James, I have some stuff to deal with that's come up since we left, but then I can talk to you about your life here. Do you think you can meet me here in five hours?"

James nodded. He'd forgotten about the fact that he needed to get settled here, and was glad Marcus was planning on helping him. He didn't even know if he could find somewhere to sleep in this big town. "Sure. I can do that."

Marcus nodded, then was gone. "Not one to waste time, is he?" James asked Steven jokingly.

Steven chuckled. "Well, he is pretty busy. And I'm sure he's way backlogged after leaving the fort for a few days."

James nodded. Then he remembered what he was going to ask Steven before Marcus had shown up. "So now what are you going to do?"

Steven shrugged. "Really, I kind of just train, help out where I can to earn credit, and work towards getting into a dungeon. An adventurer's strength only really starts to increase after they start diving through dungeons and can increase their tier, until then it's mostly just practicing so you're ready."

James nodded. Steven had explained a bit about tiers as they were traveling. Tiers were sort of common knowledge, but there were a lot of misconceptions about them too. Now James had a pretty solid basic understanding of how tiers worked and the benefits to increasing your tier.

Steven glanced at James. "Well, since you've got a while before you need to be back, and the guild halls are going to be swamped with everyone trying to get their pay, what'd you say I give you a bit of a tour of the town?"

James smiled. "That'd be great! I have a feeling that if I tried to explore on my own I'd just get lost."

Steven laughed. "Perhaps. Although once you know how, navigating in the city is simple. All streets are either North-South or East-West. The North-South streets are numbered, 1st on the far East, increasing as you go West. The East-West streets are also numbered, 1st on the far North. When someone gives directions, they will always give the North-South street first. So, for example, this big building here is on 20th and 32nd. That means we're 20 roads in from the East, and 32 roads in from the North."

It didn't sound quite as simple to James as Steven had made it sound, but he figured it would become easier with practice. He also made sure to remember the location of the big building, in case he needed to ask for directions later. Steven hopped off the wagon, and James jumped down and followed him into the city.

Everywhere James looked he saw something different that just begged for him to come look closer. While there were definitely a lot of residences, the shops were far more interesting to James. The town had the normal shops for food or clothing, but it was obviously aimed towards adventurers. He saw stores with weapons, armor, and other things he associated with adventurers. He saw a few stores that had books, and he saw one mage shuffling through a stack of books.

As they traveled, James was actually surprised by how few stores there actually were! By far the majority of the houses were residences. He also saw a good number of places for entertainment. There were a few inns, a couple of bars, and a few places that he wasn't quite sure what they were, but had far too many people streaming in and out to be a house. He also saw one of the guild lodges that Marcus had mentioned, and as Steven had predicted, James saw a number of people he recognized from their travels waiting by a counter.

Then they went around a corner, and James gasped as Steven spoke. "Welcome to … market lane!"

James stared. This street was far busier than the others they'd been walking on, with people absolutely everywhere! And all of the buildings were shops. Just with a first glance James saw at least 3 places selling weapons, a couple selling armor, a half dozen fletchers selling arrows, a couple of bookstores, and a couple of places selling more mundane items. There were also a few restaurants releasing aromas that made James salivate. Many of the shops had displays out front or behind front windows, but James could also see that most of the shops went back a ways.

Steven swept his hand out, gesturing to the chaos. "This is road 35 from the North. Most people just call it market lane. It's where most of the shops and places like that are situated. All the way from the East to the West, shops are the primary establishment on this street. Most of the shops are relatively small, just a front room with the family that runs the shop living in the back. Still, a few of these are fancier places where there are display rooms and waiting areas for the important guests to be pampered. Most of those are around street 15 from the East, but you can still find a couple over here."

They started down the road, and James was surprised at how easily everyone got around. Steven, despite being far bigger and stronger than most people, didn't push his way through the crowd, but the crowd all just kind of worked in sync to get everybody where they needed to go. It reminded James of a school of fish. There never seems to be any room, but all of the fish are still moving freely. He even saw one person riding a horse down the street. It wasn't moving quickly, but the crowd split around the horse and they managed a decent speed. It reminded James of a river breaking on a rock or a boat moving through a lake.

As he walked, James noticed something was missing from his village market back home. "Steven, where are the blacksmiths? I see lots of blacksmith shops but I don't hear any working."

Steven smiled. "The blacksmiths are usually behind their stores, and you can't hear anything because most of them have an enchantment to prevent sounds from leaving the areas where they work. There are also enchantments on the whole street that lessen sound once it's traveled a certain distance. This means I can talk with you just fine but the general noise level of the street is lessened significantly."

James had noticed that the road was oddly quiet for the number of people, but he hadn't known why. James found it crazy that they would use an enchantment for something as simple as keeping noise down, but he supposed that's what you get when you put a bunch of powerful adventurers together to design a town! They walked in silence for a while, James just staring at all of the different things available for purchase. Steven asked about the prices on a couple of things, but didn't end up buying anything.

After they had walked on the market street for a little while, Steven tapped James on the shoulder and motioned down a cross street. "You've still got a while before you need to go meet Marcus. Follow me, I'll show you one of the most popular places to go for a good time around here."

Steven hadn't led James wrong yet, so he followed him down this new road. So far the town had been like nothing he'd ever imagined, and he couldn't wait to see what incredible thing Steven would show him next.