Alex jogged through the tree-lined path toward the unarmed combat yard, his boots drumming an uneven tempo against the packed dirt path that ran behind the cottages on the edge of the village. He was happy to realize that he was not out of breath despite the run like he would have been just a week before. Sunlight flashed between leaves overhead. He checked the time in the corner of his HUD again.

  08:59.

  One minute before morning training started.

  He mentally kicked himself. He knew he should have just waited until lunch to get his weekly pay. As it was he had run all the way back to the trainee hut and stashed the wooden briefcase in his bed and AND THEN sprinted all the way here to the training yard.

  He was doing better than the previous week, but his lungs still weren’t happy about it.

  The training yard appeared ahead, beyond the line of trees. He could see everyone already lined up in formation in the centre of the dirt yard. Alex ran around the edge of the wooden beam fence and burst through the outer gates.

  Reach stood at the front of the line of trainees, but his head was swiveled to the side as he watched Alex make his way into the yard. There was no way to tell if he had already started talking to the class or not with his crossed arms and unreadable expression.

  Alex skidded to a walking speed. If this were a videogame, he would’ve triggered some kind of You Are Late cutscene.

  Reach continued to look at Alex, one eyebrow elevated fractionally. The most devastatingly polite disappointment Alex had ever seen.

  But Reach said nothing.

  Alex stepped quickly and quietly around the outside of the formation and took his place at the very end of Class A’s side of the line. Danny gave him a sympathetic tiny grimace. Jay shook his head without looking over, like a disappointed older brother. Rae snorted on the way by. Mel and Sarah stayed silent, eyes forward.

  Connor Drake, of course, front and center of Class B, twisted half around so that his smirk could follow Alex all the way to the end of the line.

  Reach finally spoke. “Let us begin.”

  In Sir Bill’s weapons training class there was always a lot of giggling and maybe a little derision. In Vance’s physical conditioning class it was all groans and grunts. But when Reach talked, everyone listened. He had a gravity that demanded everyone’s attention.

  “Week one,” Reach began, pacing slowly in front of the line, “was about getting your feet wet and conditioning you so that you could survive weeks 2 through 4 of your training.” His tone was calm, even friendly, but somehow that made it more intimidating.

  “You learned the basics of both unarmed and armed combat. You’ve learned about the region of this new world that you exist in. You’ve been pushed through more situps and forced to run further than you ever have before. And you’ve been given a bio enhancement that amplifies all those other things.

  And some of us learned to see the magic of this world, thought Alex.

  “By now,” he continued. “Each of you should be at least twenty percent stronger, faster, and more resilient than you were when you arrived just 8 days ago.”

  A ripple of murmurs passed through the students. Jay flexed a pose and winked to Sarah.

  Alex didn’t doubt the number. After a week of training and ANIP response, stairs felt easier. Running felt smoother. His balance had improved. And by the end of the week he had already broken 200 lbs. with his bench press under Jays instruction. It would have taken months of work to get to that point just a year ago.

  Reach let the murmuring die naturally.

  “What I really want you to learn today,” he continued. “What you NEED to internalize, because this is critical to your future growth and success on this show, is that: You will get out of the ANIP exactly what you put in.”

  He stopped pacing and stared at each of them in turn.

  “The ANIP is not some Christmas gift that just gives you stuff for sitting on your ass. It is an amplifier. The harder you train, the more formidable you get. If you put in a half-assed effort… Well, it’ll just be a matter of time before you’re fired or seriously injured.”

  A hush fell.

  “I don’t know why you are here, and I don’t care. Some of you want fame. Some riches. Some of you are Geeks that thought you were going to some LARP-camp. None of that matters. From here on out you are Adventurers and explorers in a new world. That is your mindset. Forget the TV show. Your goal is to get strong, protect your team and survive. The stronger you are, the harder you train, the better you will look doing it.

  “If you want to survive and thrive, you will practice each skill you learn here for at least three hours for every one hour of instruction.” He lifted a hand. “Bare minimum. If you intend to shine on the Dungeon Inc show — and I know some of you care about that more than anything else — you must bring something to your quests that the other adventurers do not have.”

  Connor’s gaze flicked toward Alex. Alex pretended not to see it.

  Reach continued briskly, “Okay. Enough beating a dead horse. Before we begin today’s training, a few announcements.”

  Everyone straightened.

  “One: Starting today, each squad will work with Master Cho to refine your primary weapons. He will evaluate your instincts, posture, and potential. Trust him. Your classes with Cho will be individualized or in small groups, so everyone will have a different training time squeezed into your schedules. You can find your particular classes updated in your HUD.”

  Jay smiled and whispered under his breath, “Great, now we really get to learn how to do some damage!”

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  Danny elbowed him.

  Reach went on.

  “Two: By end of day Sunday, each team must decide on a squad name and select a squad leader. This is not optional.”

  That caused another ripple. Some excited. Some nervous. Alex looked over at team b and wasn’t sure if Connor or Brandon Ruiz puffed up more at the mention of a leader. It looked like they were going to have it out later. On his team the obvious leader would probably be Sarah. Maybe Jay.

  “And three,” Reach said, voice lowering just a hair, “as you all know, Monday begins the Forest Challenge.”

  Everyone went still but smiles could be seen on every face.

  Reach let the silence stretch.

  “This will be your first filmed, fully-monitored challenge. Your first chance to show Dungeon Inc.’s audience what you’re made of. But make no mistake: the forest around here is not the forest you grew up around back home.”

  His gaze swept across both rows.

  “Monsters roam it. Creatures stalk it. Some are cautious. Some are curious. Some are hungry. The animals are bigger and the predators more vicious. There will be 2 squads of company guards in the forest in the wings, and armed drones on patrol in the area. But they are there for emergencies only. This is your test and you will be expected to deal with any threat that comes up.”

  Danny swallowed audibly.

  “You will work hard this weekend. You will prepare,” Reach said simply. “Starting now.”

  With that, the sternness dropped from Reach’s face like someone flipped a switch.

  “Okay! Pair up! Warm-up drills for five minutes. Then unarmed sparring, Team A vs Team B. Show me what you’ve learned, people.”

  His voice boomed.

  Danny turned to Alex automatically, he hated sparring with Jay — the man-mountain, as he called him. Alex didn’t mind. Danny was a Legolas with a bow, but mid-tier in this class. Good enough to get a good warmup, but not particularly challenging to beat. He still seemed to be a little hesitant before doing anything that might hurt someone. It was a hard habit to break. You’re trained your whole life to ‘be careful’ and not hurt others… Now they were training to do the opposite.

  Danny dropped into position. Despite his hesitation with his grabs and punches, he knew how to move, and he’d been practicing his footwork obsessively.

  “You okay?” Danny asked as they took their stances.

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “Just thinking. I almost gave Reach an aneurysm when I was late.”

  “Reach doesn’t get aneurysms,” Danny whispered. “He hands them out.”

  Around them, other groups were working their way through the training drills. Alex and Danny loosened up and joined them.

  They worked their way through the various katas that Reach had drilled into them the previous week. The katas that Alex had been practicing every morning since. He felt looser than ever, more fluid as he moved from blocks to attacks: open-hand blocks, palm-heel strikes, elbow deflects, knee checks. Short series of fast, efficient moves with no wasted motion.

  It was essentially Krav Maga at the base layer, but after spending some time online Alex had come to realize that Reach had grafted other techniques onto it like some combat Frankensteining project.

  “Guard higher,” Reach called to someone behind them. “Feet wider. No, don’t hop! Slide.”

  Alex blocked Danny’s jab, swept Danny’s arm aside, and countered with a light tap to the sternum.

  Danny winced. “Okay, that was a good one.”

  “You’re dropping your right shoulder when you feint,” Alex said.

  Danny reset. “I hate that you can see that.”

  Alex smiled. Danny was fast. Rae too. Jay and Sarah were solid. Not just strong, but confident in their stance and stature. Ready to take whatever came. Mel was… well, Mel had her own style. Alex was pretty fast too, he had quick hands and quick feet, as long as he didn’t have to use them at the same time. But his real advantage came from observation and adaptation.

  He could see the moves, and he could see who was doing it right and who wasn’t quite there.

  He looked over at the fighting pair beside them. Connor and Jay.

  Jay was bigger than Connor by at least eight inches and his reach was enormous. But he wasn’t hungry in the way that Connor was. Jay was having fun. He looked at everything as just another exercise. Conner, by contrast, was desperate to win. And he moved like a coiled spring, fast and explosive, all sharp angles and overconfidence. His strikes snapped with precision and strength and he was relentless.

  Jay blocked two jabs, got nailed by the third, stumbled back, caught himself, then laughed it off.

  Connor didn’t laugh. He didn’t even blink, just queued up to go again.

  Alex quickly looked back at Danny. “Okay, again.”

  After a while Reach clapped once. “Ok! Find someone from the opposite team if you haven’t already. Loose circle around the yard — Rotating spars. Best two of three rounds per matchup. HUD will track points.”

  He gestured with a flat hand. “Class A moves clockwise. Class B stay where you start.”

  He looked at everyone, waiting long enough to catch every eye. “I want to see sweat and blood. This is for real. The creatures in the forest won’t hold back. The monsters in the dungeons won’t hold back. YOU will not hold back. There is nothing off limits in our spars short of killing each other. Is that clear Mr. Pham?

  Beside Alex, Danny stood even straighter. “Yes, Sir.”

  Alex looked in the other direction and saw Connor’s wide grin. He wasn’t sure if Connor liked the idea of open sparring itself, or just the thought of the revenge he was going to try and take out on Alex for beating him the previous Sunday.

  Danny whispered, “Nothing is off limits? Don’t like the sound of that.’”

  “Same. But I suppose it’s the best way to learn.”

  “Yeah, but the way Connor has been eyeing you up since you got here, I’m not sure how much chance you’re going to get to learn anything.”

  Alex looked over at Connor and sure enough he was glaring straight at Alex.

  ***

  You can tell a lot about a trainee by how they enter the training yard on day one. Some are loud. Some are quiet. Some are already performing for cameras. All of them believe, on some level, that they understand what they signed up for.

  The first week feels like a game. New gear. New rules. A fantasy made tangible. They joke about levels and loot and classes like any of that actually means a damn thing. They act like danger is just another mechanic to be mastered.

  The second week is worse. That’s when the confidence sets in. They’ve survived drills, won a few sparring matches, and their ANIP systems have started to make them noticeably faster and stronger. They don’t feel brave—they feel inevitable. Like nothing bad can happen as long as they keep moving forward.

  That’s why the third weekend matters. It’s the hinge. The moment where the math changes. Where they’re forced to reconcile the idea of being an adventurer with the reality of killing something that doesn’t respawn—and truly understanding, for the first time, that they don’t either.

  Most of them break a little on the third weekend. That’s what we want. Walking back to base camp covered in blood, looking dazed and confused. That experience teaches them to start taking the program seriously. I believe it saves lives down the road.

  A few decide they’re done after the third weekend. I respect that. It’s a hard thing to look yourself in the mirror in the morning and realize that you just don’t have what it takes to live in this new world.

  Every new cohort that comes through, I ask myself why we don’t just hire waves of mercenaries. It would be simpler. Cleaner. Fewer surprises. Less training.

  I suspect Dungeon Inc. would be a very different show if we did though.

  Training Journal Excerpt

  SCRY

  John Reach; Head Instructor

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