“Hans. Hans. Wake up.”

  Hans opened an eye. The blackout curtains in his bedroom were drawn shut and tight to keep out Gomi’s permanent sun. Olza was so close that her nose was almost touching his.

  “Did I dream?”

  “No, but I need to show you something.”

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing is wrong. Put on some pants and meet me in the lab. Or don’t bother with the pants. I don’t care. Just get downstairs.”

  Hans nodded, rubbing his face as he sat up.

  Olza paused at the top of the staircase. “Don’t fall back asleep!”

  “I won’t.”

  Ultimately opting to wear pants into a lab filled with dangerous chemicals, some of which could do great harm to exposed flesh, Hans found Olza bouncing in place in front of a workbench, grinning wildly.

  “Do you remember when we talked about Buru and how plants circulated water?” she asked, still bouncing.

  “Yeah.”

  “And we talked about how animals need flowing blood to live.”

  Hans nodded.

  “Watch this.” Olza turned her back to Hans. When she turned back around, she had leather and chainmail wrapped around her wrist. She had a bracer of shadow scorpion chitin on top of those, and she cinched it tighter with a free hand.

  For the sake of the demonstration, she attempted to stop bouncing. She mostly succeeded, but Hans still saw her vaguely vibrating as she held out her arm.

  The bracer blurred to almost nothing, obscured by the natural Camouflage ability of the shadow scorpion. And it stayed blurred. Hans hadn’t timed how long Dunfoo’s enchanted chitin lasted before burning out, but Olza was so far beyond that it didn’t matter. And the Camouflage stayed active.

  Eventually, it started to smoke. Olza cut the straps and let the bracer fall into a nearby sink. A foul smell wafted up, like spoiled meat cooking over a campfire.

  “What’d you change?” Hans asked. “That was impressive.”

  “When the shadow scorpion dies, its mana stops flowing. Dunfoo’s enchantment injects mana back into the material, so it goes from inert to fully active in an instant. That’s like water boiling immediately instead of over time. That much change that quickly is fairly violent, even if it’s too small to see. So, I decided to see if I could make that process smoother by cycling mana through the chitin before the enchantment.”

  Olza handed Hans another bracer. This one had not been tested yet, so its condition was original.

  “I lined the inside with gazer skin,” Olza explained.

  Hans grimaced.

  “I know, but you just saw the results. The mana movement of the skin reduces the stress on the chitin, so the enchantment activation is less abrupt. I think the glue I’m using is why it eventually fails. I’d expect Dunfoo to have a solution for something like that.”

  “Wow,” Hans said, reinspecting the bracer. “You’re amazing. This feels like a big step.”

  Olza nodded rapidly. “Uh huh. It’s taking everything in me to not run down to Dunfoo’s right this minute.”

  Hans laughed. “I have a feeling he would not be happy about that.”

  “He certainly would not. That’s why I woke you up.”

  “And I’m glad you did. Congratulations on this. I know you worked hard on it.”

  Leaping to wrap her arms around Hans, Olza bounced up and down. He had to brace himself to keep from falling over. He hugged her back and enjoyed the moment with her.

  “I thought you were joking when you said there’d be another expansion,” Terry said.

  Tandis bumped Terry. “He just said not to attract attention.”

  “It’s fine,” Hans said. A few doors down from the guild classroom and the gazer research rooms, Hans twisted a knob and disappeared down a set of stairs.

  The descent wasn’t as long as the stairs in the Lich Crypt, but it was close. Terry and Tandis followed Hans down and into a long tunnel.

  “I don’t remember a door being there before,” Terry mumbled to himself.

  “It will make sense,” Hans assured him. “I promise.”

  “Is this something you recognize?”

  Hans looked back over his shoulder only briefly. “This is from the Hoseki sewers.”

  “So this is supposed to be filled with shit?”

  “Yep.”

  Terry looked down at the empty channel next to the walkway. “Small blessings, I guess. Wait. It’s not going to fill up with shit later, is it?”

  Hans laughed. “Depends how much you talk.”

  “Some things are serious, Hans. Not everything is a joke.”

  That made the Guild Master laugh harder. “I promise. It is not going to fill up with shit.”

  “Hoseki is pretty fancy to put this many enchantments in their sewers.”

  “The torches?” Hans asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Those aren’t in the original. I borrowed them from the Mines.”

  “You said this was new.”

  “Correct.”

  “But you’ve already been through to decorate?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Terry,” Tandis said. “You’re really bad at surprises.”

  “This is what happens when I’m encouraged to be curious and to ask questions,” Terry retorted. “I’m being a good adventurer.”

  “We’re here.” The party stopped in front of a bronzewood door. The glimmering woodgrain looked wholly out of place attached to a Hoseki sewer tunnel. “You’ll need to use it when adventurers are out of earshot, but if we need to change the password, we can. For now, it’s ‘B Dumas, Haynu.’”

  “How the-” Terry’s question cut off with a grunt when Tandis elbowed him in the ribs.

  Hans opened the door the rest of the way and led his two guests inside.

  The sewer tunnel opened into a vast but nondescript square chamber. The overall footprint was akin to the training room in the Forgeborne Mines, but here the ceilings were higher and the center of the room featured a fighting pit surrounded by a parapet. The floor of the pit was roughly three stories below and was ringed by iron gates, so many that the walls of the pit were more iron than stone.

  “Welcome to our newest training tool,” Hans said. “Terry had this idea a while back, and it was a good one. The idea is that adventurers can encounter a monster in a controlled environment with instructors present to help and to coach. Instead of running into an ogre camp, for example, a party can fight a single ogre in the pits. Beneath our feet are several cages that presently contain goblins, kobolds, two trolls, and a single ogre.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Each of their cages is connected to an armarillia enclosure. That scratching you here is the shrooms. Everything else is asleep.”

  Hans paused fifteen yards or so back from the pit’s edge and pointed down at a block of stone partially sunk into the floor with an exposed iron ring on the top.

  “Grab a spear, please,” Hans said, directing Terry toward a weapon rack on the wall.

  The guard returned with a simple wooden spear, its tip nothing more than a sharpened point.

  “You probably shouldn’t inhale when you lift the lid, but otherwise, you’re mostly out of range. Grab the ring, move the lid, and drop the spear into the murder hole.”

  “Right now?”

  Hans nodded.

  Terry did as he was instructed. Beneath their feet, the spear pierced something soft. That something thrashed for a brief second and stilled.

  “Good. Now take this.” Hans offered the old guard a small glass vial and then pointed closer to the pit. “Uncork it, keep it lip up, and drop that down the murder hole right there.”

  The old guard followed instructions. Something stirred beneath their feet. It groaned and shifted, its body rubbing against the walls as it came to life.

  “The last step is to pull this pin,” Hans said, pointing to a horizontal iron cylinder the size of a sword hilt at the very edge of the pit. It threaded through several thick iron rings sticking up from the floor. “Terry, do the honors.”

  The Guild Master vaulted the parapet and landed on the cobblestone floor of the pit. The creature’s stir shifted to anger. Something smashed against iron, growled, and yelled.

  “Just pull it?”

  “Yep.”

  Hesitantly, Terry hooked the pin with his finger and yanked.

  Below, the iron gate separating the enclosure from the pit fell, sinking straight down into the floor with a stingingly loud crash. A moment later, an ogre charged out from beneath Terry and Tandis, its eyes locked on Hans. The Guild Master didn’t draw his sword as the monster stomped toward him, spit flinging from its mouth as it raged.

  A Force Bolt went through the ogre’s face, and it unceremoniously flopped forward, dead.

  “We don’t have to use every monster every reset, but we do have to cull any that we don’t use to keep the cages from getting overloaded. They’ll always be asleep if their particular armarillia is alive, so a quick poke down the hole will do it. Pretty simple really.

  “I have a few things to finish up, but we’re pretty much ready to put this to use. I’m getting some dueling runes so a spell doesn’t leave the pits and hit someone watching. Dunfoo has to make those special and isn’t entirely sure we can make it work since we want to turn off the part that protects the people, and therefore the monsters, inside. If it doesn’t work out, I have a few backup plans.

  “I want to label every enclosure to keep us organized. I’m looking into alternatives for potions for the sake of Olza’s apprentices, and I’m talking to Dunfoo about debuff enchantments. With those, we could send an ogre out with Slow, for example, to make things a little safer. He’s getting pretty annoyed with all my requests, but oh well. Then we need some first aid supplies and a few more types of weapons. The big part is done, though.”

  Hans looked up at Terry and Tandis from the bottom of the pit.

  “You guys okay?”

  Terry shook his head. “You know damn well we’re not okay. What job is this from?”

  “It’s not.”

  “Even less okay now.”

  Hans jumped back to the top of the pit. “You’re the first people other than Olza, Mazo, and Devon to hear about this,” he began. “Since coming back, I’ve learned that I can do anything a dungeon core can do.”

  “You grew this then?” Tandis asked.

  “Correct.”

  Terry frowned. “If this wasn’t from a job, wouldn’t the dungeon core reject it and hit us with an overgrowth?”

  “Ever hear the phrase ‘rules for thee but not for me?’ Mazo thinks that’s what’s happening. Whatever filter blocked this kind of stuff in the past doesn’t matter now that I’m not an outside force interacting with the core.”

  The old guard frowned more deeply.

  “I don’t plan to advertise any of this, but you two deserve to know. You do too much work down here to not be completely informed. I’m connected to the dungeon core now, or it may be that I am the dungeon core in a sense. We don’t know the exact mechanics, but that’s the working theory so far.”

  “So this ‘filter’ doesn’t matter anymore,” Tandis said with her arms crossed, her face creased with pensiveness. “What are the new rules?”

  “I’m running the Tainted Caves with Dev later to make the confirmation official, but all of the mojokas are gone, as are the tityos and the mimics. The golem in Bunri’s tower should now reset daily while the rest of the dungeon is on the old schedule. That will help with our valorite supply a bit.”

  “The new rules are that there are no rules?” Tandis asked.

  “Not exactly. I can’t leave the dungeon.”

  “Troll shit,” Terry blurted. “You’ve been topside a few times now.”

  “Remember the Polza roots from back in the day? I can go anywhere those go, so I’ve been spreading them around Gomi to give myself a little more freedom. The farther from the dungeon core those get, the harder it is for them to grow, so much so that I might reach a maximum distance eventually. As it is now, I can’t take the wagon road from the dungeon entrance down the mountain to Gomi because there’s a gap in the middle where there aren’t enough roots.”

  “Is that why the fae called you a creature instead of a human?” Terry asked.

  Hans nodded.

  Terry whistled.

  “I’d like to keep all of this under wraps. Gomi’s exports are already attracting a lot of attention. If it gets out that we have this much control over the core, I have a feeling that would tip the scales for greed, and we’d get overrun.”

  “How do we use a place like this without tipping our hand?”

  Tandis cut in. “We built it ourselves.”

  Hans pointed at Tandis. “That’s it. This was all a construction project.”

  “Seems like a tough sell to me,” Terry said. “The safer option would be to not show anyone that this is possible.”

  “Agreed, but that means not doing everything we can to prepare adventurers,” Hans replied. “I can’t send kids into the field knowing I held back good training.”

  Terry looked around the chamber again. “Appreciate the level of trust you’re putting in us.”

  “You two keep this place running. None of this works without the both of you.”

  “So, you thought about this, and poof, it was here?” Tandis asked.

  “I’ve gone through a few iterations to get it to this point. It’s been three weeks or so.”

  “Three weeks? You were that sure no one would accidentally open the door and find the stairs?”

  Hans smiled. “The door wasn’t there before. I was the only one who could get in or out.”

  Quest Complete: Run future tests in a secure part of the dungeon.

  When Hans visited the staging area for Buru’s lake project, he found only Becky and Becki lounging beneath a bronzewood tree. Becki lay on her side while her master lay on her back, using the warthog as a pillow. They snored gently.

  Scanning the horizon, Hans spotted two rowboats out in the lake. He was reasonably certain that the largest round silhouette was Buru, while the two smaller shapes in the other boat were Roland and Uncle Ed. Complete certainty from this distance wasn’t possible, but their movements suggested they were out sinking more bronzewood trees and Summon Light torches.

  Behind him, Becky yelped suddenly. Hans and Becki were equally startled by the outburst. Where the Guild Master jumped in place, the warthog squealed, thrashing as she attempted to stand with a dwarf lying on top of her.

  “Gods, Hans,” Becky said, hand on her chest. “How in all that is good and dwarven did you sneak up on me?”

  “I didn’t sneak.”

  “Bullshit. You stomp around like you’re juicing grapes.”

  “Do not.”

  “Becki?” the dwarf looked to her familiar and then back to Hans. “See? She agrees with me.”

  “Maybe you’re losing your edge? Getting sloppy in your old age?”

  “I hate coming in second, but if I can’t be the first person to kill you, I can live with that.”

  Hans laughed.

  “Did you come all the way out here to mess with my nap, or did you have something else stuck in your beard?”

  “I haven’t checked in on Buru in a bit. He’s been head-down on all this.” Hans gestured to the lake. “Didn’t seem like he would be back to runs any time soon, so I came by to say hello.”

  “That boy’s a stud,” Becky said. “He keeps finding ways to impress me.”

  “So he’s doing alright?”

  “He’s had some questions weighing on him lately.”

  “Like what?” Hans asked. “If it’s none of my business, that’s fine too.”

  “You caused most of them, so it is kind of your business. He’s having a hard time understanding why we need our Lady, and that came after he decided he didn’t trust her no more. I tried explaining how nature’s gotta persist in a way that’s tough for any of us mortals to get our hands around. He wasn’t having it.”

  “He shared similar reservations with me.”

  Becky stood, brushing little bits of dirt and grass off of her pants. “I get why he’s sore. Losing you was hard on him. Convinced himself that if the Lady had helped you in the snow, you wouldn’t have lost your eye, and then you’d have had no problem fighting off a few armorbacks.”

  “That’s not how I see it, but that doesn’t help Buru much.”

  “Aye.”

  “Do all Druids work with dryads?”

  “Not enough dryads for that,” Becky answered. “Most Druids have a Druid mentor, and that’s it.”

  “That’s good. I was worried that would affect his progress.”

  “Ain’t that simple. The Lady of the Forest speaks for nature, so Buru is basically sayin’ he believes nature is wrong. That’s odd territory for a Druid.”

  “I don’t understand. How is that odd?”

  “We’re passive folk. We flow with nature and all that, work with it instead of against it. I’ve never heard of a Druid pushing back on how things work. I don’t know what that’ll mean for Buru’s future. Makes me scared for him, Hans.”

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Complete the next volume (Bronze to Silver) for “The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers.”

  Learn to help your advanced students as much as you help beginners.

  Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Master your Diamond boon.