Active Quest: Host a field trip to New Gomi for Gomi’s children.

  Luther, Galinda, Roland, and Uncle Ed volunteered to chaperone the cockatrice chicken field trip alongside a few parents. Olza intended to go as well, but she had an order to finish for the next caravan on top of apprentices of her own to teach.

  “Final bag check!” Hans announced to the crowd of children in the campus courtyard. “Follow along with me as I list off our supplies, okay? You should have your bag, a bedroll, a waterskin, a change of clothes, a journal, and a pencil.”

  “What if we packed snacks?” Harry, the smith’s son, asked.

  “Good news, everyone,” Hans said, grinning. “Harry brought snacks for us. I’m just kidding, but you do have to share with me. Anyway, is anyone missing anything? Put your hand up if you are.”

  Two hands raised. Galinda stepped in to help one of the children while Uncle Ed went to the other. One forgot a pencil, and the other misplaced their waterskin. With those problems remedied, Hans continued.

  “We’ve got a little bit of a hike ahead. We’re going to visit the watchtower and stop there for a little something to eat. Then we’ll move onto New Gomi.”

  “My dad said it’s called Luther Land,” Chance, one of Hans’ original Gomi students, chirped.

  “Places can have more than one name,” Hans replied. “Besides, someone gets grumpy when we call it Luther Land.” He made a show of poorly hiding a finger pointing to Luther.

  “Har har,” Luther said, rolling his eyes.

  “Before we leave, I want everyone to look around at our chaperones. Chaperones, please stand and raise your hands.” The adults did as Hans requested. “These people are helping me keep you all safe, so if they say something, please listen to them.”

  And with that, the group set out. Soon, the field trip was through the main gate and into the farms. Eventually, they reached the watchtower, and as Hans and Galinda distributed snacks, Luther explained how Dunfoo built the artificial sun and how the town used imps and manpower to permanently hang it from the dungeon ceiling. Then he made sure to highlight the role the guards played in the town’s safety and slipped in a mention that the armorbacks wore vests sewn by their teacher, Shandi.

  Once every child had food, Hans and Galinda drifted to the back of the group to listen along with everyone else.

  “I never said, ‘thank you,’” Galinda mentioned quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Hans asked.

  “When you died, I regretted not saying ‘thank you’ for what you’ve done for Gomi. Thank you, Hans.”

  A powerful sense of humble fulfillment caught in Hans’ throat, the kind of feeling that only sparks when someone you respect and admire validates hours and hours of your efforts.

  “That means a lot,” Hans replied. “Quite a lot, actually.”

  Galinda pulled Hans into a hug and patted him on the back as she released. “Please don’t die again soon.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Maybe Mr. Hans could answer that better,” Luther said, projecting his voice to the back.

  “I’m sorry. What was the question?”

  “The question was, ‘Will there be more torcs?’” Luther repeated.

  Leave it to children to ask the hardest questions as though they were simple. “We don’t think there will be, but we put a few things in place in case there are. This tower is part of that. Usually, the earlier you catch a problem, the less damage it does, so the guards here are very important. You’ve all seen how hard it is to pay attention in a long class, right? Imagine having to be that focused for eight hours straight, and if you aren’t, someone could get hurt. Yeah, I see the wide eyes. It’s a big job to be a guard, and it’s a lot of work.

  “So we have the watchtower, but we also do regular patrols. Every regrowth, adventurers scout all around Gomi to see if anything changed. If the dungeon adds something we don’t expect, they’ll see it. And then we’ve got guards at every dungeon access point, including the Tainted Caves where the torcs grow. Mr. Dunfoo gave us enchantments for that door too. New Gomi has a drawbridge we can raise, and we have guards at the tunnel as well.”

  Another hand went up. “Is it more dangerous to live in a dungeon?”

  Hans looked across the group to see if Luther was going to step in. The tusk only grinned and shrugged. He wasn’t rescuing Hans from that question.

  “That’s a good question, but it’s a hard one,” Hans answered. “No matter where in the kingdom we choose to live, there is always the potential for danger. That doesn’t mean you should be afraid all the time, but it does mean that you have to be aware of what’s around you. Leebel’s Rest is closer to more monsters than probably any other town out there. At the same time, you all know we have teams of adventurers culling those dangers regularly, and we just talked about a few of the safeguards we have in place for Leebel’s Rest specifically. Personally, I feel safest down here because I know we have so many hardworking people looking out for us.”

  “Why do you live in New Gomi?” Oh good, a question for Luther.

  “When I moved down here, New Gomi was the only town in the dungeon,” Luther replied. “Leebel’s Rest hadn’t been built yet. I got used to it being home, I guess.”

  “Mr. Luther is being humble,” Hans interjected. “He and Miss Olza pioneered farming in the dungeon, and they only had Summon Light torches. Without those torches, it was perfectly black, so dark you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face. He was alone down here for a long time before more people moved into the dungeon with him. All the farming we’re doing now? That wouldn’t have been possible without Mr. Luther.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Even from the other side of the group, Hans could see Luther blush from embarrassment. The children looked at the tusk with a new gleam of admiration in their eyes.

  “People like Mr. Luther are what really keep a town safe and healthy,” Hans added. “There are hundreds of others like him who have done more for Gomi than any adventurer. Most of us don’t learn to see the importance of their work, so we’re never aware of it, even if it’s all around us.”

  Luther inclined his head toward Hans and wiped the corner of his eyes.

  “Everyone, pack up!” Luther said. “Let’s get to the next stop on our field trip.”

  The New Gomi tour started with the camahuetos. Though every child had eaten their meat at some point, few of them had seen one of the rhino-like cows in person. Hans explained to the group that the dungeon regrew every camahueto they ate, which wasn’t possible on the surface. Were it not for the dungeon core, food would be a much greater challenge in Gomi. Speaking carefully, he shared with the children how close Gomi came to disaster when the big group of refugees arrived last summer.

  Thanks to the dungeon and people like Mr. Luther and Miss Galinda, they got through it.

  Luther led the children to the tannery, which wasn’t so much a building as it was a designated area in the field. The tanning was done out in the open next to the camahueto pens. A proper barn for the work was one of many planned structures yet to be built but could wait due to the lack of weather in Leebel’s Rest.

  Luther told the children about the process of preparing and preserving hides, and then he narrated while one of the New Gomi ranchers demonstrated butchering a camahueto. The lesson focused on knife technique and the many types of cuts of meat that were possible from a single animal. Then they briefly discussed different methods for preserving the meat, like salting and then smoking. Due to the volume of meat the dungeon enabled them to produce, they had begun a large jerky operation so they could more easily sell extra meat to the merchants with less fear of spoilage.

  Next, they moved on to the cockatrice chicken enclosures.

  Hans led that lesson, emphasizing the potential danger the monsters posed to the farmers who tended them and harvested their eggs. He briefly explained how in the wild a cockatrice chicken ate the petrified statues that result from one of their pecks, which was why two camahueto statues were among the emu-sized birds.

  Returning to the theme of staying safe in a dungeon, he pointed out the two layers of fencing they built to keep one of the monsters from getting loose. He also emphasized the dangers Petrify posed and made sure each child saw that several Soft potions were placed around the cockatrice chicken enclosures at various points. If an accident happened, one of the farmers could pour the potion on the petrified victim as quickly as possible.

  The group arrived at the griffons last. Those monsters were by far the most popular among the children, and Hans knew that rotating through griffon rides for each child would use up the rest of the day.

  Shandi invited Honronk to lead this particular lesson, but he declined, suggesting that Devon and his griffon riders do it instead. So the Paladin and a lean, athletic tusk met the children at the outermost fence of the griffon ranch. The riders would have been starting training at about that time on any other day, but they were happy to host the children for an afternoon.

  Hans was relieved when he heard Devon start the lesson with an in-depth warning about how griffons anywhere else in the world were extremely dangerous. These particular griffons were only docile because of Honronk’s taming ability, but they were still powerful monsters with sharp claws and a bite that could sever an arm.

  Next, Devon showed them the griffon saddle–a Honronk design improved and executed by one of Gomi’s talented leatherworkers–and explained the importance of the various straps and buckles. Like it was with a horse, a saddle slipping mid-ride was bad for the rider, but unlike horses, griffons weren’t always upright. A griffon saddle needed to be secure from several different angles, and that was also why griffon riders strapped themselves to the saddle with a harness.

  At some point, Luther, Roland, and Uncle Ed slipped away and started grilling dinner for the children. When the smell of juicy steak reached Hans’ nose, he couldn’t wait for the griffon lesson to wrap up.

  Only Devon gave children griffon rides. At this point, the other riders likely had plenty of experience and could easily do the same, but everyone felt more comfortable with the Paladin being the one responsible for a child’s safety. That feeling only got stronger when half the town watched Devon fall out of the sky and walk away unharmed several weeks back.

  Everyone would get a turn, so most of the children ate while they waited. There was a small burst of unrest when Galinda pulled children away from the fence to eat, but Devon promised that he wouldn’t leave anyone out, even if his griffon got tired and he had to saddle another one.

  Hans and Luther sat partway up a small hill to keep an eye on the kids while they ate.

  “You’re really good with them,” Hans said.

  “I don’t know about that. It’s not hard to talk about things you do every day.”

  “I disagree. I think that makes it harder. It’s easy to forget to mention the subtleties of something when it’s routine.”

  “Fair,” Luther conceded. After a bite of steak, he added, “I’ve been thinking about moving to Leebel’s.”

  “Yeah? What brought that about?”

  “Charlie and Galad need help. That’s easier for me to do if I live in town, and our Chisel sessions have helped me a lot, I think.”

  “How does Maurice feel about it?”

  Luther chuckled. “He’ll hate it at first, but he’ll like the stimulation once he adjusts. That’s a damn smart bird, and there isn’t a lot to occupy his mind in New Gomi.”

  “Well, let me know when you finalize your plans. Happy to help you get your stuff moved.”

  “Appreciate it, but that shouldn’t be too hard. I don’t have much.”

  Harriet, the daughter of Gomi’s smith and bowyer, nervously approached the two adults. She was about Gunther’s age, but that frame of reference wasn’t perfect. Where she was in her early teens and looked it, Gunther could be mistaken for a young man.

  Still, she was far more grown-up than the Harriet Hans met in his first days living in Gomi.

  “Hey there, Harriet,” Hans said. “Something on your mind?”

  “The chickens… Umm… When they Petrify, what has to happen for that to work?”

  “Do you mean how do they Petrify their prey? With their beaks.”

  Harriet shook her head. “I know that. I meant how deep do their beaks have to go? Is it venom that makes it happen, or is it magic?”

  “That’s a smart question,” Hans praised. “They’re not venomous. The Petrify ability is more like a spell, and all they need to do is touch you with their beak. Only needs a tap.”

  To demonstrate, Hans lifted a finger and made a boop noise when he tapped Harriet on the nose.

  Harriet turned to stone.

  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.

  Plan for a possible encounter with Wargod.

  Host a field trip to New Gomi for Gomi’s children.