Hans kept his arms close to his body to hide his shaking. If the others noticed, they didn’t say so.

  The hive the dungeon core based this design on started in an abandoned castle courtyard. Who built the original castle was unknown, which was the case for the majority of the ruins in the frontier, but the terathans made it their own.

  The courtyard that was once open to the sky was covered with web. This was the main thoroughfare for the hive. Groups of drones would leave to scavenge and hunt, bringing the spoils back to their betters.

  The adventurers encountered five drones on their way to what used to be the castle throne room. They went down easily enough. Izz and Bel’s Force Bolts punched right through their natural armor. Still wielding the valorite sword, Lee’s Push cut a drone in half and when her sword struck the chest of another drone, Hans was pleased to see the blade encountered little resistance.

  A typical blade could kill them as well, but the chitin made that process repetitive and tiring, requiring a few strikes to get beyond their hardened exteriors if your aim wasn't precise enough to attack at their joints, the least armored parts of their bodies.

  Just inside the castle’s primary entrance, castle stones the size of round-bails had been dug out and moved. Drones tunneled downward to connect the surface to the elaborate underground hive.

  That tunnel was covered in webbing and was almost perfectly vertical. That was fine for spider monsters but problematic for adventurers. At Hans’ suggestion, they used the castle’s original architecture to travel as deep as they could–five floors in this case. The drone tunnel passed through all of them like a toothpick through a sandwich, so when they reached the bottom of the castle, they lowered themselves by rope the last twenty feet.

  The inner hive was as he remembered, a dizzying network of rooms and tunnels that likely made sense to a bug monster but defied human construction logic. There were no straight lines. Tunnels were always circular, always bending this way or that. And no floor was ever really level.

  Three more drones.

  Another three drones.

  Hans warned that attacks from above and behind were a significant possibility. Thuz kept the party surrounded in the protection of individual Barrier spells to reduce the danger at least somewhat.

  Two more drones.

  Two warriors.

  Four warriors.

  “This tunnel will dip downward into the inner sanctum. They only build one entrance for that, probably to let the drones soften up any invaders before risking warriors and casters.”

  The tunnel descended to a new area like Hans said it would. They slew two warriors and the party came to a stop.

  “The hells?” Hans said.

  “I know those walls…” Thuz whispered to himself, equally surprised by what he saw.

  What should have been more terathan tunnel stopped abruptly at an alabaster wall with a fine wooden door. The wall was immaculately crafted except for a few chips around the doorframe. Hans stepped forward and ran his fingers across the sparkling white surface.

  “Even smells like it,” Hans said.

  “You all recognize this?” Bel asked.

  “That’s part of the Hoseki Chapter guild hall,” Thuz said. “I believe that is the door to Hans’ old office.”

  “Really?”

  “That was the only door on campus with that damage. An argument with Grandmaster Devontes ended with the Paladin slamming the door. The hinges and door were replaced, but they never repaired the damage in the frame.”

  “I can’t explain this.” Hans turned to address the party. “I don’t know why this is here.”

  “Our only choice is to continue,” Thuz said, “but seeing this invalidates one of our dungeon core hypotheses. Hans may be able to suggest structures not from a job memory after all.”

  “Or,” Izz began, “the core does not think of jobs the way we do. Perhaps the better hypothesis would be that the core can recreate any memory associated with danger or fear.”

  “This wall invalidates that version of the hypothesis as well.”

  Izz shook his head. “Grandmaster Devontes was overwhelmed with anger in this place. Though his heart is kind, one could argue his abilities are the most dangerous in our known world.”

  “Can we slow down for a moment?” Lee asked while Bel nodded in agreement. “Why would Master Devontes–”

  “Grandmaster,” Thuz corrected.

  “What?”

  “His current title is Grandmaster.”

  “Okay, fine. Why would Grandmaster Devontes ever be a danger to Hans?”

  “He has attacked Mr. Hans in anger before.”

  “Huh? What?” Lee said. When she saw Thuz was not joking, she sighed. “I'm learning Master Theneesa left out a great deal from her stories.”

  Izz said that was likely.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I'm opening it,” Hans said. “Guards up.”

  He gave the party a moment to ready themselves and turned the handle, pulling the door open. Hans' old closet office, all eighty five square feet of it, lie beyond. The smell of sweat-soaked training gear wafted out.

  All was as he remembered. The only stark change being the erasure of anything with words. All of his notes and charts on the walls were gone as were the words in his notes and books.

  He did really like that pen, though. The ink too. He stuffed them in his pocket.

  And that was it.

  “A bit anti-climactic.” Hans double-checked the drawers, confirming they were empty.

  “If this is the conclusion of this expansion, shall we begin our journey out?” Thuz proposed.

  The party agreed.

  Hans stopped briefly in Luther Land to warn the DCs posted there that a reset was coming. His party would run the Shit Shrooms to verify the terathan expansion was gone for good. Then they'd discuss a plan for culling its replacement.

  He said he knew everyone needed sleep, but this was a necessity. Terathans were far too dangerous for them to sleep half a day before eliminating them completely.

  When the adventures were ready, Hans spilled a generous amount of blood on the dungeon core. He didn't know if that mattered, but he was willing to open his veins completely to undo the terathan expansion. He'd rather die than be the one who unleashed those monsters on Gomi.

  Hells, a hive in a place as remote as this would have plenty of time to mature completely. The residents of Osare and beyond would be helpless if terathans poured through the pass when the snow melted.

  The orb flickered a brighter purple. Hans took that as a good sign.

  When Hans first visited this field for real, it was dense with near-harvest stalks of corn. The lesser fire elementals that had wandered away from the forest fire wove through those stalks, torching everything they touched.

  Fire elementals, like the iron elementals from the Forgeborne Mines, were territorial but lacked the ambition and creativity that drove monsters like goblins to explore and seek out new prey. Where fire elementals differed was their love for fire. They were drawn to anything that could burn. Like wild dogs smelling meat, fire elementals couldn’t help but seek out more fuel.

  Because lesser elementals were roughly the size of halflings, finding them in a corn field was maddening. He ended up putting Mazo on his shoulders so she could get a better view of what rustled and smoked. Mazo hated every second of that piggyback ride. She found it to be demeaning.

  The dungeon core produced an unplanted field, offering a clear view from the border of the Shit Shrooms all the way to the far dungeon wall, with Nightsight activated that is. Like Luther Land, the Shit Shrooms and its new addition were completely dark, lacking the permanent dusk that the core applied to some expansions but not to others.

  The recreation ended before where the treeline would have been in the real version, giving the lesser fire elementals an open clearing to roam between the dungeon wall and the split rail fence bordering the corn fields. At this distance, the elementals looked like candle flames.

  Presently, they seemed to have just realized the fence was flammable and were in the early stages of burning it down.

  Bel and Izz snuffed them out with the fanfare of blowing out a match.

  “Thank gods that worked,” Hans said. “We won't go that long between expansions again. I'm content to not repeat the experience.”

  “Too bad you can't use these fields,” Lee said.

  “Why couldn't you?” Hans asked.

  “The fire elementals.”

  “Just have to kill them before they get to the fields.”

  “Every reset?”

  Hans nodded. “For what Luther is seeing from dungeon soil, it would be worth the trouble.”

  “Gomi invents the oddest professions,” Lee said.

  Quest Complete: Get it together like a real adventurer, and clear the hive.

  He considered using the ladder to enter his cabin through the trapdoor, sparing him a brief walk through the snow, but Hans was unsure he could lift his arms that high. Or his knees.

  The sharp cold of the Dead End Mountains descending into winter wracked Hans as soon as he opened the door. His muscles seized against the frigid air, his body instinctively huddling into itself to preserve its heat. The shock to his system coupled with sunlight–even if it was filtered through gray clouds–was also strangely refreshing.

  Snow found its way into his boots and his progress was slow, but he made it to his cabin. He shut the door behind him and slumped to the floor right there.

  Never again.

  New Quest: Plan the next expansion to prevent the dungeon core from acting on its own.

  Feeling more paranoid than usual, he crawled over to his footlocker. The Takarabune manual was still buried at the bottom, just as he left it. He looked forward to having the book locked away far below the mountains.

  Unequipping his gear was a tedious process with all the clasps and buckles of his armor. He left each item on the floor where it fell. When he was free of its weight, he dropped his wet shirt and his pants as well.

  He looked at his hands. They still shook.

  Adjusting his focus, he looked over his own body, taking in all the scars he collected as an adventurer, permanent mementos of difficult moments and close calls. Claws. Fangs. Knives. Swords. Arrows. Falls. The newest, the burn up his right leg from the orc battle, still felt tight and sore.

  He replayed his breakdown in the dungeon, watching himself forfeit his sanity. He abandoned his weapons and his place in the formation. He thought of only his fear, forgetting his party’s safety entirely. He was that desperate to flee.

  He heard Thuz say, “Were you any other adventurer…”

  Were he any other adventurer, he would deem himself unfit. Thuz was right. Whether it was terror or hubris or shame, that didn’t matter. He put others at risk, and he was a hypocrite for insisting that he was an exception. No one was an exception. Exceptions got adventurers killed. He used to believe that. He still believed that.

  He had to.

  He promised he would never be that adventurer, yet here he was. Refusing to quit. The decision that seemed plain and obvious when he was a young man watching an old-timer unravel was suddenly not so clear now that he was the old-timer. Now that he was the one faced with hanging up his sword.

  You had a good run, Hans.

  Quest Abandoned: Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Mend the rift with Devon.

  Complete the next volume (Iron to Bronze) for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."

  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 high-potency Resist Magic potion on a diamond elemental.

  Make and test valorite armor and shields. Bonus Objective: Think of more cool items to test.

  Deliver the Takarabune manual to Luther for safekeeping.

  Plan the next expansion to prevent the dungeon core from acting on its own.