Olza ran her finger along the scar on Hans’ eye. “What if I miss the eye patch?”

  Hans laughed. “I can wear it sometimes if you want.”

  “Might have to do that. It’s so strange that the dungeon core healed your injuries but left the scars.”

  “One of a hundred mysteries.”

  The pair sat on their rooftop deck in Leebel’s Rest. Hans had a bath and a shave, so he looked like his old self. Olza had her chair close and her arm hooked in his. She hadn’t strayed far since Hans came back from the dead, almost as though she expected him to disappear again the second she let go.

  “What do we do now?” Olza asked. “Do we just go back to normal now that you’re back?”

  “I wouldn’t say exactly how things were. I liked our life together. I don’t want to change that.”

  “What would you change then?”

  Hans thought. “I feel like I could have answered that question a hundred times over before, but now that the answer actually matters, it’s hard for me to come up with one.”

  Olza waited, resting her head on Hans’ shoulder.

  “Knowing I could make Diamond is a relief. That takes a millstone off my back, and it feels good to be free of it. At the same time, it hasn’t made as big of a difference as I expected.”

  “I’m happy for you, though. That bothered you for a long time.”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “Does this mean you’re going after a real Diamond boon?”

  Hans jerked his head and blinked. “Shit. I didn’t even think about that being an option. I am healthy enough now to do that if I wanted to.”

  “There’s actually an ‘if’ attached to that?” Olza asked. Her surprise was so great that she lifted her head and leaned back to see Hans’ face.

  “Maybe ‘if’ isn’t the right word. I do want that, but I’d rather go to Hoseki with you first. Show you the city. Introduce you to some old friends. If we took the long way back, we could stop at a few spots I think you would like. The Heiwa Hotsprings are amazing. The hike sucks, but it’s beautiful once you’re there. I’d like to see Kirakira Falls again. You’d love that too.”

  “That does sound nice. After that, you disappear to get your boon?”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that,” Olza said. “I’d miss you, but I know how much it means to you.”

  “And to Gomi.”

  “Does anything about your life here change?”

  After a pause, Hans said, “I don’t think I can answer that yet. I mean, yes, I’m sure I’ll see things differently, but there’s quite a mess to clean up.”

  “Not of your making.”

  “But it affects people I care about. Gomi went through a lot.”

  Olza nodded. “It’s hard to imagine you running through a terathan hive at the same time we were mourning you and trying to navigate diplomacy with the fae. You must have been so scared.”

  Hans blew air out of his nose, like a one-beat laugh.

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t admit this,” Hans said, “but I was having the time of my life.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was dead. My game was over. Anything I was afraid of losing was already gone. All I had was that one last shot at proving I could do it.”

  Olza chewed her cheek. “I think I understand.”

  “I know that’s strange, but the important thing is I’m here. We are here. Let me get the Association back on track, and let’s plan those trips.”

  “Only you would use your second life to go back to work.”

  Hans shrugged.

  “Are you ready for that, though?” Olza asked.

  “I still feel like I’m moving through an illusion, as if I were watching a dream and knew this wasn’t real. I was really certain I had died, and I accepted it. That was difficult to do.”

  “What does it mean that we can’t get to the hive anymore?”

  Mazo had said there was no entrance to a terathan hive in the dungeon core chamber, but Hans thought she was testing him when she said that. When he found out that she was serious–she really had visited the dungeon core and saw nothing that Hans described–Hans and Devon went to investigate. Mazo was right.

  The passage was not simply closed. The ceiling was smooth and seamless as if it had never been disturbed or modified. The only evidence that it was ever there was that Hans was back.

  “I’ve asked for more surface patrols,” Hans said, “and I’m thinking about asking the tunnelers to dig in that direction. It might not even be there anymore.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Hans hesitated to answer.

  “What?”

  “We have several strange conversations ahead of us, and that’s the first domino.”

  “I feel like we’ve talked about some pretty odd things already,” Olza said.

  “We have, but… I don’t think the terathans are there anymore because I asked the core to remove them.”

  “You made a blood suggestion?”

  “Nope. I just said it aloud.”

  Olza scrunched her face. “Could be a coincidence.”

  “It grew me like a dungeon monster. I’m a product of the dungeon core now. Ever since I realized that, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that I’m a part of this place. Like I’m made from the same stuff as the walls.”

  “That will pass.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Hans said. “I think I need to spend more time with the core to try to understand what I am.”

  “Just don’t forget that you’re Hans. I’d still love you even if you looked like Bunri’s golem.”

  Hans laughed. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Olza went downstairs for a fresh pitcher of beer and refilled Hans’ stein when she returned.

  “Did the Association announce my death?”

  “The fae sidetracked that,” Olza answered as she sat again. “We were about to get a letter out announcing Devon as interim Guild Master when they arrived. A group from Hoseki University arrived a few days after the fae. It’s been a hard few weeks.”

  “So no one outside of Gomi knows I’m dead?”

  “Several adventurers left as soon as your service ended, and the University folk have been very interested in watching all of this unfold. We might not have sent any mail, but those people are out in the world talking about their experience in Gomi’s dungeon.”

  “And adventurers love gossip.”

  “Academics too. So a letter correcting the record is probably wise,” Olza added.

  “Good. I missed doing paperwork. That will give me an excuse to get back to it.”

  Hans took a slow sip. He found himself doing everything more slowly now, like he didn’t want to take anything for granted.

  “I wonder how this will affect attendance for the Gomi Games,” he mused.

  “I’ll support you diving back into work if you make me a promise.”

  Hans turned to Olza, an eyebrow raised.

  “This dungeon core stuff… I know it’s something you have to process, but I need you to promise to do that with me. No drowning yourself in work to keep me out.”

  “I did do that, huh?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he said, “I can promise, but that means it starts now.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Hans took several more gulps of beer before speaking again. “If I die again, would I just regrow? Or was that a one-time thing? Will my injuries always heal perfectly, or will I start a new collection? If the dungeon core heard me and listened to me, how deep does that relationship go? Why did the core put me in the terathan hive when it regrew me instead of in one of the other memories we’ve built? Why did the hive run on different rules if it was a part of the dungeon? The reset didn’t affect that section. Why? And those are just questions directly related to what happened to me.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “What questions are indirectly related?”

  “I don’t want to cause a panic,” Hans said. “We know that the orc Wargod can feel his presence appearing and disappearing in the dungeon, but the visit from the fae confirms that the sensation crosses planes. If it bothered the far-dorocha enough to visit us directly, that crushes any hope I had of Wargod ignoring us.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I doubt he’ll demand a meeting, so what do we do when he shows up?”

  “Between Devon, Mazo, the Merchant, and the Lady of the Forest, I hope we’d win.”

  “Dev has been training pretty hard,” Hans said, mostly thinking out loud.

  I should do what I can to help him.

  That was the impetus Hans needed to decide just how much of his old life was worth picking back up.

  Quest Resumed: Monitor for independently grown sections of dungeon.

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

  Quest Resumed: Continue the momentum of establishing a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

  Quest Resumed: Learn to help your advanced students as much as you help beginners.

  Quest Resumed: Decide how to manage breeding requests for monsters like mimics and shadow scorpions.

  Quest Resumed: Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Quest Resumed: Consider revealing the existence of the Blood wards to the public.

  New Quest: Plan for a possible encounter with Wargod.

  Gomi didn’t stop growing when Hans died.

  That was just as true for every other tragedy Hans had witnessed. No matter how great the loss of life or how loved the person was who passed, the problems of the outside world didn’t rest, so neither did anyone in Gomi. They mourned while their hands worked the soil and rebuilt the city because falling behind, giving the threats to Gomi the chance to catch up, was an insult to the memories they cherished.

  Seeing how Gomi moved on without him shouldn’t have been a surprise, but Hans found it oddly disappointing that all this continued forward in his absence. He imagined himself to be a linchpin, a critical component keeping a fragile system together, but that wasn’t the case. His friends and neighbors were resilient and determined. They carried on and made do.

  Man, dying made him even more melodramatic, Hans realized, laughing to himself.

  His hangups about his own mortality aside, Gomi’s progress was beautiful.

  With the fae manor gone, he could fully appreciate the completed fairgrounds. Though that’s what the townspeople called it, the area felt more like a beautiful park to Hans. Young bronzewoods stood with the grandeur of five-hundred-year-old trees, and a dazzling assortment of wildflowers blossomed beneath them. He couldn’t say why, but the variety of colors reminded Hans of fabric shopping with Shandi back in Hoseki, seeing an explosion of hues with layers and layers of all varieties of fabrics and dyes and styles.

  Hosting the Gomi Games on the Tribelands had a certain rustic charm that Leebel’s Rest couldn’t replicate, but the beauty of the underground park was enchanting. He had the urge to sit beneath one of the trees and read the same way he used to do at the Sword in Hoseki.

  Galad’s inn was still a work in progress. The original vision had been too conservative, so now the building expanded into neighboring structures to find enough rooms to meet Gomi’s demands. The tavern component, however, was long complete, and it was already popular among Leebel’s residents. The townsfolk needed that community hub more desperately than anyone realized, it seemed.

  And the inn finally had a name: The Sleeping Dragon.

  While Hans was dead, Charlie and Galinda picked a home in Leebel’s and had begun the process of moving underground full-time. When Hans saw that it was almost precisely the same size as their home on the surface, he couldn’t help but smile. Everyone else used the open real estate of the dungeon city as an opportunity to enjoy more comforts. No one pursued an unapologetically lavish lifestyle, but even Hans and Olza didn’t pass up the chance to have a little more space.

  No, that was wrong. Dunfoo and Mazo weren’t shy about pursuing decadent luxury, but any good dungeon town needed an eccentric Mage or two.

  At any rate, the Mayor and his wife chose a residence that bordered the park. A view of glittering bronzewood trees and forever-blooming flowers was just outside of their front windows. During the day, bakery customers could sit at one of the little tables and enjoy the fragrance of wildflowers while they savored a sweet treat, and when Charlie and Galinda had dinner in the evenings, they could look out over the beauty of the park from the comfort of their apartment.

  Galinda had wanted to retain her role as Gomi’s unofficial gate guardian, welcoming all of the new visitors to town, and Charlie convinced her that moving to the park’s edge was the next best thing. This part of the city was becoming the de facto merchant’s district, so anyone visiting Gomi was likely to pass through this area before exploring the remainder of Leebel’s Rest.

  So when the town was quiet, Charlie and Galinda had a lovely park to enjoy. When a caravan or delegation was in town, they were right there to serve Gomi’s guests, whether those visitors camped in the fairgrounds or enjoyed a beer in the Sleeping Dragon.

  On more practical fronts, the dwarves had built a smith’s hammer powered by a waterwheel, and the tunnel between Leebel’s Rest and the dungeon’s true entrance progressed nicely. That project still had several months before it was complete, but when it was, the iron from the Forgeborne Mines could more easily be sent down for the craftsmen in the dungeon to use. As a result, the few tradespeople who lingered on the surface had begun to make the move into the dungeon as well.

  The smith and his bowyer wife were one such pair. Their children, Harry and Harriet, lived in the dungeon full time so that they never missed a day of school. In a few weeks, both of their parents would have their shops fully relocated to join them permanently.

  “So much happened while I was gone,” Hans said as he followed Mazo to the Tainted Caves.

  “Yeah, I imagine coming back from the dead has its oddities,” Mazo replied. “The upside to you being dead was that I could get more lax with mimic security, but now that you’re back…”

  “Very funny.”

  “I think you’ll be impressed.”

  Hans nodded. He typically expected to be impressed when Mazo committed to this level of buildup. He found it hard, however, to keep his mind on research. “Can I ask you something about Bridun?”

  “Of course,” Mazo answered.

  “Did Devon talk to him? About the incident. Directly, I mean.”

  “He’s pretty upset with himself over that.”

  “Devon is?”

  “Bridun played him, and Devon had no idea. Vaglell is wise to Sense Truth it seems.”

  “Bridun beat the Paladin ability?”

  Mazo wobbled her head. “Not beat, navigated. ‘There were several more armorbacks than normal, and Hans tried to fight them.’”

  “Ah, so technically not a lie.”

  “In retrospect, all of his answers were like that. ‘Hans risked his life to be a hero.’ ‘He separated from our group to fight them himself.’ ‘We didn’t see the fight but heard him yell to run.’”

  “Damn. Yeah, he had to know what he was doing. In Devon’s defense, he didn’t have a reason to think of that conversation as an interrogation.”

  “That’s what I said as well, but you know how he is.”

  At the entrance to the Tainted Caves, Hans emptied his pockets so that he’d have fewer items to count on his way back out. He entered with only his sword and let Mazo lead him to a bronzewood door set into what used to be nothing more than a damp cave wall.

  She opened it, waited for Hans to step into the vestibule, and shut it. Then she opened the second door to access the mimic lab.

  The lab occupied a singular room similar in dimension to the Forgeborne training room. Unlike the training room, the lab had no pillars disrupting the flow of space, leaving everything here open and surprisingly airy. The room was still mostly empty, as the project was relatively new, but the far wall had a series of cages and pens with several tables and workbenches positioned nearby.

  Honronk sat at one such table studying a set of notes intensely. Chisel sat across from him but jumped to her feet when she saw Hans. She gave him a hug.

  “I still can’t believe you’re here,” she said.

  “Me neither. How was your trip?”

  “It was good, but it feels silly to talk about a vacation, considering. How much has Mazo told you about this project?”

  “Not a word.”

  Chisel looked at Mazo excitedly.

  The halfling laughed. “Yeah, go ahead; I’m tired of talking to him anyway.”

  Chisel grabbed Hans’ arm and dragged him to the enclosures, directing his attention to one specifically. Hans looked inside and saw an assortment of rocks. None were much larger than a grapefruit.

  “Getting them to breed was pretty easy,” Chisel explained. “We’ve learned that the clever hunting tactics we associate with mimics develop later in their lives. The mimics in this enclosure are all babies, and you see how they’re pretending to be stones?”

  Hans nodded.

  “Whatever the nearest object is, they mimic it. If I pulled the real rock out and put a book in there, they would all turn to books. Same thing happens if it’s a brick or a figurine. An adult mimic is a bit more selective about setting up a hunting spot, but the young mimics just copy whatever is closest.”

  “That’s interesting. So they get smarter over time?”

  Chisel nodded excitedly. “We’re hoping to figure out how that happens. Do their hunting instincts mature naturally, or do they actively learn to be better hunters? For example, does a mimic in a busy dungeon get better at hunting than a mimic living in isolation?”

  “It’s a bit scary to think that mimics have that level of intelligence, but it makes sense for how many problems they’ve caused.”

  Walking by multiple enclosures that had yet to be put to use, Chisel pointed to one that repurposed several statues from the Gazer Vacation Home. These were the prostrate worshippers of the giant gazer idol.

  “We had to breed two mimics near the Standing Stones to get one small enough to transport into the clean room,” Chisel explained. “Honronk hasn’t tattooed these ones yet, so we’re just observing for now.”

  “Which one of the statues is a mimic?” Hans asked, thinking that the bowing goblin and the bowing kobold looked suspicious.

  Chisel grinned. “This was our first observation, actually. They’re too small to mimic entire statues right now, but we taught them a trick.”

  “Taught?”

  The White Mage pointed to the goblin statue and then directed Hans’ attention to the same goblin head sitting on a table nearby, outside of the enclosure. “When we separated the head and left it in the cage with the mimics, they not only mimicked the item but also attached themselves to the statue’s neck.”

  “So that goblin statue…”

  “Has the head of a mimic.”

  “That’s a quick adaptation.”

  Chisel nodded excitedly. “One of our ideas is to train mimics to replace specific objects, like commanding a mimic to become a tent or a saddle or a bedroll.”

  “What’s the use case?”

  “Utility. If one mimic can replace several bulky objects, the utility goes up.”

  Hans frowned and turned to Mazo.

  “What?” Mazo asked innocently.

  “That doesn’t sound like an experiment that ‘never leaves the clean room’ like we discussed.”

  “In my defense, you were dead.”

  “How many weeks will I be hearing that excuse?”

  Mazo wobbled her head. “I’d make that guess based on months instead of weeks, if I were you.”

  Hans sighed.

  “I’m just messing with you,” Mazo said. “Do I want to take mimics into the real world? Yes, but I have no plans to. All of this is academic. Just seeing what’s possible.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Mazo grinned.

  “Honronk?” Hans asked, looking over his shoulder to the Black Mage.

  “We discussed a mimic wagon that can propel itself instead of needing something to pull it.”

  When Hans looked back at Mazo, she wandered away, whistling casually as if she never heard Honronk sell her out.

  But that did solve one of his open quests:

  Active Quest: Decide how to manage breeding requests for monsters like mimics and shadow scorpions.

  The answer was “no.” Mazo was already pushing boundaries, and the kingdom didn’t need shadow scorpions getting loose and breeding within its borders. It definitely didn’t need mimics doing that either, but that went without saying.

  Quest Complete: Decide how to manage breeding requests for monsters like mimics and shadow scorpions.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Monitor for independently grown sections of dungeon.

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

  Continue the momentum of establishing a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

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

  Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Consider revealing the existence of the Blood wards to the public.

  Plan for a possible encounter with Wargod.