It began like any other snowfall, but it didn’t stop. For two days, the snow poured from the sky, so thick that daylight felt like the late minutes of sunset. No color, just variations of gray.

  When it stopped, Hans could lean out his apartment window and touch the top of the accumulation. If the guild hall door was six feet tall, the total depth of the snow was in the realm of eight or nine feet, Hans estimated. He felt the urge to be more accurate than that, but by the time snow got that deep, did an extra foot make that much of a difference?

  The snow outside was irrelevant with his fire inside burning hot and strong. He could wait for the snow to melt on its own, if he wanted.

  He glanced at his indoor pile of firewood and saw that he was wrong. He couldn't wait that long. If he rationed it, he might be able to stretch his supply to late tomorrow.

  Or he could go outside and get some.

  And the guild hall should be accessible in case of an emergency.

  And someone as old as Mayor Charlie shouldn’t shovel that much snow.

  New Quest: Be a decent human being and help with the Gomi Snow.

  Cursing the whole way, Hans dressed for the weather and pulled a shovel from guild storage.

  The guild doors–both the front and the side door that led to the training yard–opened outward. They cracked enough to leak snow inside, but then they stopped. Hans could break the door attempting to force it open and still not get through the snow.

  A fresh stream of curses poured from his mouth. As he climbed the stairs to his apartment, a memory came to him.

  He was sitting at a campfire with Gret, Boden, and Mazo on a summer night. While Hans made notes in his journal, Gret attempted to assemble a travel crossbow he recently purchased. The selling point was that even a small crossbow was bulky and awkward for an adventuring loadout, but this particular crossbow packed down smaller than a light bedroll.

  And Gret couldn’t figure it out.

  He cursed louder and louder each time he dropped a screw or misread a step in the manual.

  “So Gret,” Mazo said, “I’ve noticed whenever you’ve got one of your little projects…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You get pretty angry. Maybe these kinds of things aren’t for you?”

  “Huh?” Gret said, looking up at Mazo. The prod and stirrup of the crossbow–the former being the “bow” portion of the weapon and the latter being the foothold one used when cranking the device–fell off. Gret yelled.

  “There was the potion launcher, the armored tent, the auto dungeon mapper, the spring boots, and the hookshot…”

  “What are you saying, Mazo?”

  “You get mad, every single time. If you have to put it together, we know we’re in for an angry night.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Gret said, returning his attention to the assembly manual, squinting to read it by firelight.

  “Excuse me?” the halfling seemed ready to stand and throw hands.

  “It’s a guy thing. You have to get angry and swear when you work on stuff. The rage is part of the process.”

  “That’s the–”

  Boden, lying on his back, arms crossed, a hood over his eyes, cut Mazo off. “He speaks truth,” the dwarf said. “My pa roared like a furnace. Whether he was changing a drawer handle or building a toy for my sisters, hardly stopped to breathe he cursed so much.”

  “I think they’re right,” Hans added. “Never thought about it, but I’m the same way.”

  Mazo shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “The universe is full of mysteries,” Boden said, still not stirring.

  “See?” Gret asked. “Dwarves are the best at building things. If they do it, it's like a law of nature or something.”

  The memory made Hans smile. He frowned again as he climbed out his apartment window with a shovel in his hand.

  If Hans lived in a just world with benevolent gods, nowhere would get this much snow. Ever.

  Accessing his firewood was his first priority. Digging out his neighbors wouldn’t matter much if he went home and froze to death after.

  When he first began, he attempted to dig a trench as wide as the doorframe. That felt proper, logical. Soon, he was content with the narrowest path possible, like he bargained with an invisible spirit, looking for any way he might reduce the project by even a single shoveful of snow.

  Hans was soaked with sweat by the time he uncovered the corner of his firewood pile. He carried several armfuls into the guild hall, stacking them against the wall. He wanted the option to not shovel if this happened again tomorrow.

  When he delivered a batch to his upstairs apartment, he looked out his window at the neighborhood. He could see the top of the back gate from here, and it looked like it was slightly ajar. He suspected they dug out just enough for a person to walk in and out. The gates being stuck open or closed was equally unacceptable.

  He felt bad for the guards doing the digging.

  As he panned to view the rest of the town, he saw the statue of Devon standing proudly, unobscured by snow. At first, he thought it was odd that someone uncovered the statue and nothing else, but that wasn’t possible. There’d be tracks.

  The ward inside must generate heat.

  That made Hans grumble anew. He had looked forward to the statue being out of sight for as much of the winter as possible.

  Despite his initial good intentions, Hans gave up on digging down to the ground for his path to Charlie’s. The monotony lowered his standards to the point that he was fine with stamping down two or three feet if it meant less work.

  Then he faced a new dilemma.

  Should I dig Olza out? Or would that be weird because of the whatever? Would it be weirder to not dig her out? What would digging to Charlie’s but leaving Olza buried communicate?

  He ultimately dug her a path, but he didn’t knock on the door, as if the sounds of Hans’ digging and cursing right outside in the dead silence of winter would go unnoticed.

  Shortly after he resumed shoveling the route to Charlie’s, a wide, nearly flat wooden shovel burst through the snow in front of him.

  “Your path isn’t very deep,” Galinda said. She looked at the tool in his hands. “That shovel is really bad for snow.” She held up her wooden snow shovel. “Wider, lighter.”

  “Didn’t expect to see you out here,” Hans said, trying to disguise his gasping breaths.

  “We did not want you to be trapped by snow if you needed help.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “You were worried about me? I was worried about you guys!”

  “I don’t understand. Why?”

  Hans shook his head. Whatever he thought about that exchange didn’t matter. With his trench connected to Galinda’s, he could go home. Which he did, gladly.

  Quest Complete: Be a decent human being and help with the Gomi Snow.

  “Wait.”

  “What is it?” Hans asked.

  “We made muffins. Would you like some?”

  Hells yeah Hans wanted some muffins.

  New Quest: Acquire muffins.

  Quest Update: Eat muffins.

  The muffins were far warmer than Hans’ fingertips. He sat in front of his fire, hoping to thaw. The raspberry muffins, made from canned raspberries from that past summer, were delicious. Warm. Fluffy. Moist. Just the right amount of crumble.

  Galinda and Charlie sent him back to the guild hall with six of them.

  He wished he had six more. With great reluctance, he set two aside for later.

  Quest Complete: Eat muffins.

  He filled the pen from the terathan hive with ink and opened his manuscript for Iron to Bronze. With all of the blank books in Bunri’s tower, even his scratch paper was bound in hardback these days.

  The Adventurers’ Guild standards define Bronze-ranked adventurers as “Iron-ranked adventurers seasoned by several quests of varying objectives and difficulty.”

  In other words, field experience is the focus of this promotion over any major changes in performance. Where Silver and beyond demand higher and higher thresholds of skill and ability, Bronze puts that all aside so you can focus on getting your hands dirty.

  Some adventurers interpret that as meaning they no longer need time in the classroom or in the training room, that the rest of their growth will come from doing jobs. And chapters seem to largely support that notion. Adventurers are encouraged to continue training in combat and monster biology as part of that development, but it's purely optional.

  If our goal is to retain more adventurers in the transition from Iron-ranked to Bronze-ranked, the standard practice of treating Irons like mature, independent professionals is untenable. They are still students in need of instruction, guidance, and oversight.

  Ambition clouds the judgment of young minds. The mortality rate of Irons is always attributed to their tendency to overestimate themselves when they select jobs, yet we don’t account for that in our training methodologies.

  Ultimately, I'm encouraging chapters to raise their standards and expectations for this crucial rank promotion, both for the students but also for ourselves as instructors and coaches.

  To accomplish that:

  First, implement a mentorship program at your chapter, pairing Irons with adventurers of their same class, ranked Silver or higher. An Iron cannot officially accept a job without their mentor’s signoff, forcing the Irons to better assess what jobs are right for their party. When a mentor rejects an Iron’s job selection, the student still failed in the same way they did in the old system: They picked the wrong job for their group. Here, we stop that mistake at the door of the guild hall instead of letting it play out in the field. With this approach, Irons are not only safer, but they are more likely to learn how to better choose jobs.

  Job selection is a skill. And like all skills, we should seek to develop it with minimal risk to the student.

  On a broader, cultural level, we should eliminate the common denigration of lower ranks. Plenty of adventurers make a good living at Iron, earning Bronze more through time than any conscious effort to climb the ladder. Irons and Bronzes often do more jobs than all other ranks combined and not by a slim margin. They do an enormous amount of work in their communities, and it’s meaningful, impactful work.

  Most farmers grow to a size that suits their needs and then put their effort into efficiency rather than expansion. Instead of buying more land, they invest in better tools, and when those pay off, they use the extra profit to do right by their families.

  Yet, we do not apply this logic to adventuring. We make adventurers feel inferior for not pushing to get their next promotion, ignoring that making a living at Iron or Bronze is perfectly respectable. That shame drives good adventurers out of the life at best. At worst, it encourages Irons to overextend themselves on jobs, trying to prove their grit. And they die.

  A competent mentor would help to stomp out the deceptions of hubris, and given enough time, shift the chapter culture entirely.

  Second, we need to–

  Hans sat back and wrinkled his nose. His attempt at framing the ideal management of students advancing to Bronze veered into becoming a manifesto somewhere in the middle there.

  The culture built by the Adventurers’ Guild was a collection of accidents rather than a result of deliberate planning. Like the fishing town that grows into a major port of trade, adding new roads and new buildings just kind of happens, so they end up wherever they can fit. A few decades later, that small fishing town was an urban labyrinth of streets and alleys.

  The Adventurers’ Guild as it stood today was a chimera of as-needed additions and fixes. Most of the ranting he now read back to himself was rooted in systemic problems, far from the purview of Silver or Bronze instructors like Marrok and Donbai from the Kohei chapter. They might have control over what and how they teach. While plenty of problems beyond the training room impacted students, an instructor wasn’t in a position to solve them.

  Worse yet, his behavior with the terathans was counter to what he had written, what he preached. He ignored intervention on taking the wrong job despite the concerns of people who cared for him and were perhaps the more qualified professionals by that point.

  So Gods damn embarrassing.

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

  The Guild Master rubbed his temples. Yes, his manuscript project could wait. The dungeon wouldn’t wait for him.

  The blacksmith’s shop was like a pocket of summer. Between the forge and the furnace, any snow within three yards of the shop was completely melted. Looking up at the snowline, Hans felt like he was at the bottom of a crater.

  The walk over hadn’t been all that bad. Enough of the residents quietly volunteered to dig their piece of a trench network. No one planned ahead, however, so the connections between trenches often had strange zigs and zags, the two tunnels being dug four or five feet away from a seamless transition, so someone dug a few feet to the side for a quick fix.

  The smith had done his part too. Perhaps even more than his part.

  That was probably Eduardo. Living that apprentice life. Poor kid.

  “Honronk sent this,” Hans said, passing the blacksmith the Gruwalda blade enchanted with Lesser Ice. “I’ve not tested it, but he confirmed the enchantment is live.”

  Rotating the blade to catch the sunlight, the smith said, “Feels the same to me, but I’ve melted all my mana receptors away years ago. Iron only for me. Can you feel it?”

  Hans shook his head. “I’m not sensitive enough either. We need something living to test it on for the enchantment to activate.”

  “Eduardo!” the smith yelled over his shoulder.

  Eduardo poked his head out of the fletcher shop. He was covered in sawdust. “Yes, sir?”

  The smith wiggled an eyebrow at Hans. When the Guild Master laughed, the smith said, “Nevermind. I found it.” He waited for Eduardo to shut the door. “Pretty good kid.”

  When the coast was clear, the smith pulled out a shield wrapped in burlap. It was wedged behind a pile of firewood like a piece of scrap. As soon as light hit the metal, Hans knew he was looking at a Gruwalda shield.

  “May I?” Hans asked.

  The smith passed it over.

  The shield had typical targes dimensions and grips. It fit as well as any of the metal shields he had commissioned in his early years. Gomi's smith could compete with most any smith in the kingdom it seemed.

  At any rate, Hans had long ago stopped spending big dollars on shields. The metal ones looked better, but they were heavy and expensive. Boden eventually pointed out that everything Hans would block with a metal shield could be managed just fine with a wooden shield. He was right.

  Higher-ranked jobs typically had bigger, stronger monsters, making a shield relatively useless, a heavy shield doubly so.

  The very things that made metal shields “better” actually made life harder for Hans.

  But the Gruwalda shield felt light yet substantial, like he was aware of its weight but wasn’t affected by it. When his fingers wrapped around the grip, he felt the same sensation as he had with the sword, a sort of uplift in his muscles and senses.

  “I’d like to see how this does blocking spells,” Hans said. “...that probably means we’ll cast on it until a spell gets through. Would ruin the shield for good. Are you okay with that?”

  “Can I watch?”

  Hans nodded.

  “Then we’re square.”

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

  New Quest: Test the Gruwalda shield with the smith.

  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."

  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.

  Learn the results of the high-potency Resist Magic potion test.

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

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

  Test the Gruwalda shield with the smith.