- Gnoll pelts
- Imp blood
- Camahueto horns
- Camahueto leather
- Camahueto meat
- Geode gecko oil sacs
- Minotaur horns
- Iron
- Fool’s root
- Poison goliath toad venom
- Green slime
- Alligator skin
- Alligator meat
- Harpy feathers
- Armillaria spores
- Armillaria plant meat
- Cave crawler claws
- Lamia scales
- Box goblins
Depending on how Olza’s and Luther’s reagent experiments went, they might be adding several new items to that list. Their valorite harvests were still a secret, and they also weren’t sure if the reagents from the lamia temple would–
“Very funny,” Hans said, referring to the inclusion of box goblins. He almost missed it.
Tandis gave a halfhearted effort to suppress her smile. “The adventurers are debating whether this was a weird dungeon core incident or if you are pranking them back.”
“I didn’t put the goblin there.”
“Well, you’re no fun. I thought you’d laugh at that at least a little.”
“It’s me,” Hans said. “I’m sorry. Was a tough day, and I’m tired is all.”
“You’ll get a break for the festival. You should really take it easy.”
Hans shook his head. “I’m on dungeon duty. A bunch of the Apprentices missed the summer festival that was thrown in their honor. Don’t want them to miss two festivals in a row.”
Tandis accepted his evasions and went back to discussing the dungeon harvests. They could use an additional harvest team to lighten the load. After the next dungeon expansion, growing the harvester count would no longer be optional. Not only was the volume of their yield increasing, but the physical expansion of the dungeon also meant far more ground to cover on foot with every run.
Hans guessed they might do one more suggestion before winter, but he planned to slow the pace significantly in those months. If he felt like he needed a break, then the Apprentices absolutely needed one. Their role in the operation was far more demanding than his. They couldn’t stop the dungeon from regrowing, but they could scale back training sessions and bump party sizes up by one. The extra body would radically reduce the difficulty of any one run.
The other points of business on Tandis’ list:
- Repairing the broken drawbridges
- Stocking emergency supplies in case a big snow cut the dungeon off from Gomi for an extended period of time
- Better preserving the food they bring out of the dungeon
- Using some of the fool’s root supply for a small still at the dungeon
Two of the carpenters were inspecting the broken lifting mechanisms on the drawbridge. None of them had built a drawbridge before, but they hoped to gather as many measurements as they could from surviving hardware. If they had enough clues, the parts they needed would be fairly obvious. Tandis would bring those sketches by when they were ready.
Emergency supplies were an easy yes. If they ran out of storage, they could use the dorms in the Forgeborne Mines, but with the new stable, they’d probably be fine with surface options.
For the food, Hans thought the current process of salting and smoking a batch of meat here and there was sufficient. If they ever needed more, a dungeon reset would fix that.
Tandis disagreed. According to Luther, each camahueto had roughly 300 lbs of butcherable meat if he mimicked the usual cuts farmers got from beef cows, so roughly 600 lbs of meat per dungeon reset. Also according to Luther, most farmers waited close to two years for a cow to mature to full size. Under less ideal conditions–poverty, mostly–cows got slaughtered earlier.
Every reset, they got roughly the equivalent of two beef cows in a few days versus a few years.
The alligators didn’t produce nearly as much meat, but the harvesters were still learning how to dress and process the creatures. No one in Gomi knew anything about alligators, so they had to make do with educated guesses and learn as they went. Currently, a 100 lbs alligator yielded 20 to 30 lbs of edible meat. They still didn’t know how many alligators lived in the Poop Puddle, but so far their biggest haul for a cycle was nine.
Armarillaria meat was like having an endless supply of carrots–their meat had a similar taste and texture when boiled. Hundreds of pounds of the stuff rotted on the dungeon floor after every run. Eating armarillaria didn’t excite anyone, but perhaps with some new recipes and an open mind, they could have a massive supply of one kind of vegetable, which was better than the current supply of none.
“I don’t disagree with you, Tandis,” Hans said. “I’d love to put every pound of that food to use, but we can only salt and smoke so much.”
“Over the winter, we can store more of it in the snow. Roland has some ideas for bear and gnoll-proofing those, but I got to thinking. Have you heard of the enchantments the nobles have for freezing food?”
“I have indeed. I can’t imagine how we’d find an enchanter with those skills near Gomi. And no, we can’t push it on Honronk.”
“Did you go on any winter jobs? Any place really cold?” Tandis asked.
New Quest: Use a cold weather job to preserve the dungeon’s food for longer.
Hans promised to think on it. The idea was a good one. He warned her that they’d likely fill that new area with food relatively quickly, and they would be back having this conversation again. No place to store the harvest meant letting the excess rot.
“I’m working on that too,” Tandis said. “I haven’t figured out how to do it, but if we could sell the meat in another town, we would waste a lot less. Cured meat can be good for five months or so if you store it right.” She added that she considered this her project, so beyond picking a job for a new suggestion, Hans didn’t need to worry about it.
The last item, distilling at the dungeon, was an easy yes from Hans. He suspected their supply was more than sufficient to support both a small still here and a larger still in Gomi, but he asked Tandis to talk to Galad about how much root he needed for his operation. The Gomi still hadn’t been cheap, so he wanted to make sure they got their full use before skimming fool’s root from the top of the barrel for their own entertainment.
Terry knocked on the cabin door and poked his head in. Hans invited him to come inside as he and Tandis were just wrapping up.
“One more thing from me,” Hans said, “Please ask all of the Apprentices to meet in the training room at sunup tomorrow. We’ll have everyone up here because of shift rotations, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Are we in trouble?” Terry asked.
“No.”
Tandis thanked Hans for his help and lingered, wanting to finish her detailed notes before running around the campus.
Hans asked Terry what he needed.
“Wanted to check on you for one,” the Apprentice said. “The temple seemed pretty rough for you.”
“Are you okay?” Tandis asked, her head popping up with concern.
“I’m fine.”
Tandis sighed and turned her attention to Terry. “Is he okay?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Our Guild Master is made of some tough stuff. He just had to see a monster take the form of his perfect love.”
“Lamiae sound terrifying,” Tandis said. “I know the scales are really useful but having those things near Gomi… Eesh. So creepy.”
“What do you need, Terry?” Hans asked again.
Terry said he had another idea, and since Hans asked him to share them, he came here to do just that. Hans gestured that Terry had the floor.
“Can a Blue Mage learn to do the perfect love trick?” he asked.
“The illusion?”
“Yes. Could a human Blue Mage learn and use that ability?”
Hans didn’t know where this was going, but he already disliked the neighborhood. “Why?”
“High-end escorts. A once in a lifetime experience that you’ll never forget.”
“Oh gods,” Tandis said, quickly collecting her things.
“If you ask Mazo if it’s possible, I’ll consider it.”
Tandis laughed. Terry frowned.
“I’ve got a bit of a headache,” Hans said. “I’ll talk to you two again tomorrow.”
When he shut the door, he was glad neither Tandis or Terry asked him to describe what he saw when he looked at the lamia matron.
The next morning, every adventurer in Gomi was in the Forgeborne Mines at sunup, as Hans requested. All of the Apprentices, one Bronze, one Silver, and three Golds. Tandis and Gunther watched quietly from the back.
Well, not every adventurer in Gomi. Lee wasn’t present.
“Once winter gets here, we probably won’t get a chance to all be together like this until spring, so I’m glad everyone made it. This won’t take long. Just some housekeeping to cover while we can.”
Quintin raised his hand.
Hans raised an eyebrow. “Umm… yes, Quintin?”
“May I say something before we start?” The Guild Master agreed. “Kane and I would like to announce that our cohort is now called ‘the Crawlers.’”
While Hans closed his eyes and released a long, slow exhale, the other Apprentices applauded the name, but not all of them.
“Not brave enough to be the Shit Shrooms, eh?” Terry said with a grin.
“The what?” Hans asked.
“He means the armillarias,” Quintin clarified.
Hans shot Terry a dirty look. Terry pointed over his own shoulder. “Bel came up with that one, not me. Besides, the real name is pretty damn inconvenient.”
When the group settled, Hans returned to his reason for calling the meeting in the first place.
“As you all might be aware, the Gomi chapter of the Adventurers’ Guild is kind of different from the rest of the kingdom. The rate that all of you have improved… It’s remarkable. Your hard work is essential, of course, but having the dungeon as a training tool has helped us immensely. If you don’t believe me, any of the upper-ranks will tell you the same.
“The problem we are starting to face is that the encounter ratings and adventurer rankings established by the Guild are increasingly difficult to apply here. Because of how we train in Gomi, we have Apprentices fighting a lamia matron. That’s unheard of in any normal chapter. Look behind you, Izz and Thuz are nodding.”
“You are all quite lucky,” Thuz said. Bel added that she agreed.
“That concerns me because those ranking and rating systems are designed to protect you. It’s not an exact science, but you can quickly assess a job or a situation and have a good idea of your odds. The way we’re training here messes all of that up, and I’m worried it might get one of us in trouble someday.”
Hans solution: Add a parallel ranking system.
The Adventurers’ Guild process would still apply, with the same standards for knowledge and proficiency for earning each rank. In simpler terms, if they hadn’t trained to fight a monster in the dungeon, default to the Guild encounter ratings. If the Guild said a monster was Silver, and you were at Iron in the Guild rankings, you should get to hoofing it out of there right away.
If you fought ogres in the dungeon and encountered an ogre in the wild, then the Gomi rankings would apply.
“The dungeon will be divided into sections based on Gomi ranks. Any section above your Gomi rank? Stay out unless an instructor is escorting you. The dungeon as it is today, every section up through the lamia temple, is for Gomi Irons. Apprentices are allowed to run sections with permission only. Bunri’s tower is the exception. Gomi Irons can kill the imps on the roof, but anything deeper than that is a Gold encounter. If you’d like to die early, ignore that advice.”
Heads nodded, tentatively.
“Let’s put the new system to use then,” Hans said with a smile. “Honronk, come up here.”
All of the Apprentices–the DCs, the Minotaurs, and the Crawlers–looked to one another in confusion. Izz and Thuz began to clap, Bel joining soon after. As Honronk approached the front of the room, Hans presented the Apprentice Black Mage with a necklace bearing two circular tokens, one iron, and one wood.
Hans clapped for Honronk, signalling the rest of the room to join. Much to Honronk’s dismay, the Guild Master asked him to stay up front.
Holding another necklace up, Hans explained that the iron token and the wooden token fit together, the result of a careful collaboration between Galinda and the smith. If the tokens were connected, a Nightsight enchantment would activate. When they were disconnected, the enchantment deactivated.
“Honronk didn’t make the necklaces, but the enchantments are his handiwork,” Hans said. “His isn’t enchanted though because he kind of already has a Nightsight enchantment.”
The Apprentices laughed.
One by one, Hans called up each of the DCs–Terry, Buru, Chisel, and Yotuli–presenting them with their necklace and congratulating them on their promotion to Gomi Iron. Petal seemed especially proud of Buru, chittering softly as she ran around his neck with the iron token in her mouth.
“We have one more promotion to do,” Hans said, revealing a necklace with three tokens–one wood, one iron, and one silver. The silver token was shaped like a diamond instead of a circle. “Becky, come up here.”
Startled, the dwarf composed herself and gingerly stepped to the front. Hans had never seen Becky blush before.
“This one is long overdue,” Hans said. “Becky was a one-woman Guild chapter for many, many years. She has likely done more for Gomi than anyone will truly know. She always steps up when you need her, and she doesn’t half-ass anything. Were it not for her, actually, none of us would be in this room today because I would have died in the first month of my time in Gomi. That’s not an exaggeration.” Hans turned to address the Druid directly. “You earned this well before we met, but I’m honored to be the one that gets to promote you to Silver. We’re lucky to have you. Your promotion will be Guild official, and of course you’re ranking up to Gomi Iron as well.”
Becky’s beard quivered, and her eyes shined. Hans draped the necklace around her neck and gave her a hug. She hugged him in return. He thought his back might break.
Hans dismissed everyone standing up front with him, permitting them to return to their place in the audience. As they did, everyone present clapped for them again.
Later that day, at about noon, a wagon arrived to collect everyone heading back to Gomi for that rotation. Hans had his full camping gear carefully packed into his rucksack and was ready to depart on his own adventure when he saw that the wagon wasn’t arriving empty. Lee climbed down, carrying her standard adventuring loadout by the looks of it. She glanced around the campus like she was the new kid in class, nervous and timid.
“It’s good to see you,” Hans said, setting his bag down to speak with Lee. “What’s on your mind?”
“Izz and Thuz talked to me, but you probably know all about that.”
“I asked them to consider it. I didn’t know they had, and I’ll never know what you talked about unless you tell me.”
Lee nodded. “I’m an adventurer. It’s who and what I am. I tried really hard to pick a different life, and I still probably should…”
“But you can’t.”
“I can’t. Adventuring is what I know, and it’s how I see the world. But… I’m scared I’ll let my party down again.”
Lee knew that Hans disagreed. The Silver Spellsword in no way let anyone down, but he didn’t poke at that wound. “How can I help?”
“Izz and Thuz said I should talk to you about easing back into it. I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a lot of practice with adventurers like me.”
That was true. Over the years, he had talked to far too many adventurers trying to bounce back from tragedy. “There’s not a strategy guide for this,” Hans said, “and gods, I wish there was. This is always hard, and everyone takes it differently.”
Lee nodded.
Hans studied the Silver’s face and said, “Getting off the wagon was really hard for you.”
“Yeah.”
“Is the idea of stepping back into the dungeon today or tomorrow sounding even harder?”
She said that it was.
“There’s more to adventuring than dungeon crawling. I’m about to head out to explore a spot in the forest I heard about. Not expecting to fight anything. Just taking a long walk to sight-see and do some camping. How about we make that your first step back into adventuring instead of doing a run?”
“I’d like that.”
Quest Update: Visit the ruins at one of Gomi’s former Diamond quest locations before the snow begins.
Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):
Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.
Mend the rift with Devon.
Complete the next volume (Iron to Bronze) for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."
Visit the ruins at one of Gomi’s former Diamond quest locations before the snow begins.
Explore the idea of training “dungeon lifeguards” to accompany adventurers in training.
Await the arrival of a safe for the Gomi chapter.
Complete construction of the Takarabune (still need diamond, scarlet steel, celestial steel, and mimic blood).
Fix the two broken drawbridges.
Use a cold weather job to preserve the dungeon’s food for longer.