Gunther ran into the guild hall, finding Hans sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the hearth.

  “Mr. Hans! …Mr. Hans?”

  “Aaaaaayyyyy Gunny. What time is it?”

  “Almost lunch,” Galad said, coming in behind the young tusk. “Gunny, how about you go see what Mayor Charlie is baking today?”

  “I know you’re trying to get rid of me.”

  “Only because Mr. Hans is unwell.”

  Looking at Hans, Gunther seemed to agree. He ran out the door as fast as he had run in.

  “Sorry,” Hans said.

  “What can I do?”

  Hans waved Galad off. “I’m fine. What’s up?”

  Galad watched the Guild Master pull himself up onto a bench like his legs didn’t work. Hans’ slow movement gave Galad plenty of time to work through one of his thoughtful pauses.

  “Well? Out with it.”

  “Uncle Ed has returned. I thought you’d want to know and hear the report from him.”

  “Give me the high points?”

  Galad stared at Hans and said, almost reluctantly, “The war is still considered ‘won’ but the roving bands of orcs are a bigger problem than previously believed. The towns who can afford it have adventurers or mercenaries running regular patrols, looking for signs of orcs. Business with Doorstop is good. Ed met two tusks in Raven’s Hollow. They weren’t necessarily receiving a warm welcome, but nobody was locking them in a stall either.”

  “Got it.” Hans' eyes felt heavy. Too heavy to hold open.

  The tusk opened his mouth as if to speak, but he thought better of it. He turned for the door, but turned back. “You shouldn't let the kids see you like this, Hans.”

  “Huh?”

  “We all enjoy a drink, but the kids look up to you. If you’re going to celebrate, we need to keep it away from their eyes.”

  “Celebrate? Celebrate?!”

  “I only meant the expression. Nothing more.”

  “Whatever.”

  With a sigh, Galad said, “I suppose this is the wrong time for this conversation.”

  “What conversation?”

  “About you being a good example for the kids.”

  Hans stood from his chair and still had to look up to make eye contact with Galad. “I can’t be a Guild Master every hour of every day. I’m tired of being the example, the teacher, the leader. I get to have a break.”

  “I understand.”

  “The hells you do.”

  “You don’t think I know what it’s like?” Galad moved toward Hans like a fighter at a weigh-in. “You think I am not hounded with questions and concerns and whatever else is on the minds of our neighbors each and every day? You think I haven’t lived that for decades?”

  Swaying slightly, Hans said, “Fine.”

  “Sober up, Guild Master. We don’t get to crack. When we do crack, it’s in private so our brothers and sisters don’t have to carry that too. That’s how it is.”

  With a flick of his hand, Hans spun and walked away from Galad.

  “Very well,” Galad said.

  The door slammed so hard papers blew off of Hans’ desk.

  What does he know? Holed up in Gomi his whole life. Bah.

  ***

  Hans set the Takarabune manual and a notebook on Olza’s counter. The alchemist was in the back, but she yelled a greeting to Hans all the same.

  “I’m leaving the manual with you. I need a break.”

  “Yeah, that’s no problem. What did–” Olza stopped dead when she saw Hans bedraggled face and hair. “Are you okay?”

  “Yep. Just going up the mountain.”

  Olza looked at Hans suspiciously and asked if he could deliver seeds to Luther. He agreed.

  She reappeared with a pouch. “There are four batches of starcup seeds in here. I also have a few vegetable seeds that–” She reconsidered Hans. “I should probably write this down for you.”

  She folded her note and put it in the seed pouch.

  “You alright?”

  “Yep. Just tired.”

  “You don’t smell like tired.”

  Hans insisted he was fine and made for the door.

  Olza called after him. “Wait, you’re going up the mountain right now? It’s so late. You’ll never get there before dark.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  He shut the door behind him.

  ***

  “Gods, Mr. Hans,” Sven said. “Coming out of the woods like that at this hour, I thought we were under attack.”

  Hans kept walking. “When’s the next reset?”

  “Should be tomorrow.”

  “Good. Tell whoever was supposed to do a run that they only need to do the iron elementals and ogre valley. They can leave the rest.”

  “Mr. Hans?” Sven said to Hans’ back as he continued toward his cabin.

  “Enjoy your shift on watch,” Hans said without turning or stopping.

  “Yeah, sure…”

  ***

  Hans slept for a few hours and was up before sunrise. He packed his gear but decided against bringing it. A sword and a shield would be enough for today, so that was all he carried past the sleeping adventurers and harvesters to enter the dungeon.

  He needed a fight. When he was in a fight, he could think of nothing else but the present. He couldn’t brood. He couldn’t despair. He couldn’t wallow.

  He needed the peace of combat. Desperately.

  With a brisk jog, he passed through the bayou and into the Regenerating Castle. For the first few floors, he didn’t draw his sword. He bashed through skeletons with his shield. As they fell one by one in rapid succession, his pace never slowed. His breath never quickened beyond disciplined and controlled. His inhales and exhales had the consistency of a metronome. Training so much with his growing crop of students restored much of his adventuring endurance.

  When he encountered the goblins, he added his empty fist to his arsenal.

  At first, the goblins looked on in surprise at the sudden appearance of an adventurer with only a shield for a weapon and a lamp hanging from his hip for light. Their surprise soon turned to fear.

  Hans barreled through their numbers. Having walked this path so many times before, he knew where every goblin would be, so he could keep killing, barely ever having to pause.

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

  He struck goblins with the edge and flat of his shield. He threw fists, elbows, kicks and knees. One goblin he killed by grabbing it by the leg and bashing another goblin with its confused ally. Then he clubbed another goblin with the dead goblin.

  His hands hurt. Something was probably broken.

  He knew better than to do this barehanded. He should have at least wrapped his sword hand like boxers do. Like Gret taught him to do.

  Like Gret? Gods damn it.

  Drenched in sweat, he unsheathed his sword for the first time when he reached the shaman room. He charged in, holding his shield low to plow through the small sea of goblin grunts swarming the door, making a straight run to the shaman. A mana-made block of ice shattered on his shield. He was on the shaman a moment later, his shield hitting the shaman with the force of a runaway wagon. Hans’ legs kept pumping, driving the shaman backward into the wall. Its skull made a hollow thunk when it bounced off of stone.

  An instant later, Hans had an idea and his sword clattered to the floor.

  He dropped it on purpose.

  Hans grabbed the dazed goblin and wrapped his sword arm around its neck, holding it in a partial choke from behind. The shaman thrashed to free itself as it recovered from its daze. Feeling the arm tighten around its throat, it desperately shot off spells, trying in vain to hit Hans with something, anything.

  Then Hans heard it: the clop of minotaur hooves, approaching fast. The skeletal horror raised its great axe into the air.

  The goblin shrieked louder in a language Hans couldn’t speak or understand. The tone told him the shaman begged and pleaded for help and for his reanimated minion to halt. Monsters sounded surprisingly human in moments like that.

  Hans knew that weak necromancers had relatively little control over their undead. They could make simple commands, but they couldn’t truly puppet them, not with their skill level.

  The shaman was a weak necromancer. He told the minotaur to kill Hans, so that’s what it would try to do.

  Hans released the shaman at the last moment. The skeletal minotaur fell to pieces as its axe split the shaman in half.

  Hans snatched his sword from the ground and ran down the remaining goblins. Some stood to fight. Some fled. Some cowered. It didn’t matter. Every movement of his sword found a new victim, separating arms, heads, and legs from sickly green bodies.

  He jogged through the exit of the Regenerating Castle with the same pace he entered.

  Geode gecko. Imps. Camahuetos. Gnolls.

  Thrust. Slice. Bash.

  Gods what was that? Oh it's a bloody zout. Not Maurice though.

  Thrust. Slice. Bash.

  He stomped the last gnoll’s head to jelly. He looked around. Seeing no more enemies, he threw his sword and shield aside as he bellowed his rage. When his vocal cords began to fray, he collapsed on the floor, heaving deep breaths. Only then did he notice the wet feeling he had wasn’t sweat. He was covered in blood and viscera, as if he swam in it. It clotted and matted in his hair. It dripped down his face. It squished softly in his boots.

  He couldn’t say how long he sat there before he heard a voice say, “Hello? Is someone out there?”

  “It’s just me, Luther.”

  The tusk came around the corner with an enchanted torch in one hand and a sword in the other. He surveyed the bodies of gnolls–the pieces of them at least–before approaching the Guild Master.

  “I heard screams. Thought someone might be hurt.”

  “Nope. Sorry for the noise.”

  Luther studied the Guild Master. “Is any of that blood yours?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” Luther said, backing away slowly. “I’ll be in New Gomi if you need me.”

  “Luther.” Hans dug in his pants pocket and pulled out the pouch of seeds Olza asked him to deliver. In addition to blood, something that looked like dark maroon cottage cheese slid slowly down the leather.

  “Uhh.”

  “Seeds from Olza.”

  Luther pinched a corner of the pouch, trying to touch as little of it as he could. “...Thanks?”

  After a brief hesitation, the tusk left the Guild Master alone, sitting in the hallway, dripping.

  ***

  Luther was inside his house when Hans entered Luther Land. Maurice was likely with him. Neither came outside to talk with the Guild Master.

  While Hans had been away, Luther set enchanted torches around an open plot. The others he hung at the front doors of the structures in the town or near points of interest, like the well and the woodpile. Compared to Luther’s farm in Gomi, the patch was a large garden at best. An underground town only had so much space, after all.

  Hans drew water from the well and wiped himself down. All told, he needed four whole buckets of frigid water to feel clean enough for sleep.

  For a moment, he debated just burning his leather greeves and tunic and buying new ones. He thought better of it and scrubbed his armor too. Finding a set that fit him that well again would be a pain.

  As he approached his bed, which still felt like someone else's, as if he were a squatter, he ran through a mental checklist. Once he stopped moving, every muscle would go stiff and need days to recover.

  Satisfied, he fell asleep almost immediately.

  ***

  Hans heard the scratchy ting of a shovel hitting dirt.

  Waking in Luther Land was disorienting. Darkness underground was different from darkness on the surface. Night darkness felt like it had color and vitality while the dungeon darkness felt oppressively empty and lifeless.

  That doesn't make any sense.

  Sitting up felt like pushing against the hand of a giant pressing him back down. His muscles burned, and his joints ached. Standing and then standing up straight became two separate and very slow movements. His right hip and right knee popped into place when he extended his leg.

  His boots and socks were still wet, so he accepted that he would be barefoot for the next few hours.

  When he hobbled outside, he found Luther working by enchanted torchlight to prepare the soil in his new garden. The tusk said the kettle was still hot if Hans wanted tea. He did indeed.

  Maurice followed Hans into Luther’s house, watched him suspiciously as he prepared his tea, and followed him back out. Hans carried a dining room chair over to the garden and sat with his tea. The process of lowering himself was a slow, painful descent.

  “Did Olza tell you about the experiment?” Luther asked.

  “She started to but decided I wouldn't understand and stopped.”

  “She gave me four batches of seeds. One is plain old starcups, the kind you can walk outside and pick. One is enhanced to grow more quickly. One is enhanced to be more potent. And the last one was enhanced to be both potent and fast-growing.”

  “Sounds pretty smart.”

  Luther agreed. “She is planting the same four in Gomi so we can compare dungeon growth to surface growth.”

  Hans said that also sounded pretty smart.

  “Her directions for what and how often to measure are pretty strict though…”

  Laughing, Hans said, “How often you say? Can you tell time down here?”

  “The dungeon resets are my only definitive way to know how much time has passed. If you guys change that timing and don't tell me, well, that'll screw my brain up real good.”

  Hans laughed.

  Luther smiled. “You laugh, but imagine thinking dungeon resets were every two and a half days, but the cycles changed to four days without your knowing. You'd go crazy.”

  The tusk shared how living in the dungeon changed the way he thought about time, saying he slept when he needed to sleep. He woke up when he woke up. If he got lost in a book, he had no way of knowing if it was for minutes or for hours. With no real way to measure the passing of time, his “now” felt like a new version of the concept, the purest form of living in the present, perhaps.

  “Maybe you can tell how much time I've had to think,” Luther said with a chuckle. “I'm trying my hand at tanning camahueto hides. Thinking on whether or not I should harvest gnoll pelts too. Feels odd to do that. Can't explain why.”

  Hans could. Harvesting from anything humanoid made many people uneasy. Once your knife peeled away the surface, everything beneath looked too much like you. “You know how to process leather?”

  “Somewhat. I helped a neighbor for a few summers. Can't say I'm good at it, but I'll never run out of hides to practice on.”

  That was true.

  “I must ask,” Luther said carefully, as though he might retreat from the thought before the next syllable. “Should I be worried for you?”

  “Needed to clear my head.”

  “Did it work?”

  Hans shrugged. “Enough that I could sleep without drinking. But other than that, not really.”

  “It's odd, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It's odd that moving on is the expectation. Hells, I expect it of myself, but how do you move on when it follows you?”

  Luther read him precisely. Sighing, the Guild Master said, “I can't think of anyone who has. I've met people who were immune to it, but those are a different breed. Everyone else, though, they're changed. There's a single second with two different people on either side. The before and the after.”

  Luther nodded.

  “Galad made it clear I wasn't doing a good job of it. He was right, of course.”

  “He’s no good at it either.”

  Hans raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh yes,” Luther said. “Charlie and Galinda too. They've carved themselves nearly hollow trying to find more to give. If it weren't for quiet winters, they would've worked themselves to death years ago.”

  “Makes me feel a little better to hear that.”

  “I'm glad it's that way for you. For me, if my heroes can't do it, how could I ever hope to?”

  The Guild Master said, “That's the thing about heroes. They always end up being people.”

  Luther nodded slowly and moved to return to his work. “If you need to clear your head again, could we skip the yelling? It scared Maurice.”

  Hans looked at the zout. “Sorry, Maurice.”

  ***

  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."

  Expand the dungeon with resource-specific monsters for each of Gomi’s major trades.

  Find a way for Gomi adventurers to benefit from their rightful ranks in the Adventurers’ Guild.

  Secure a way to use surplus dungeon inventory for good.

  Confirm Uncle Ed’s decision on the Osare tournament.

  Finish transcribing the manual and decide on the next course of action.

  Help Izz and Thuz bring new opportunities to their home village.

  Investigate the locations of old Diamond Quests.