“This is getting creepy,” Olza said as Hans moved the broken doorway to the side with both hands. “You want me to go in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure I like that you’re secretly playing in strange basements.”

  “Just follow me.”

  Olza grinned and let Hans lead. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, she looked around at the stone walls, dirt floor, and low ceiling. She didn’t look impressed.

  “Do you recognize this?” he asked, directing Olza’s attention to the trapdoor.

  Crossing the room for a better look, she paused halfway across and looked at the trapdoor cockeyed. “That’s the golem door.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d recognize it.”

  “I’ve worked on top of or next to it for hours and hours. I think I’d know it by touch even.”

  “I have news,” Hans said.

  “I gathered as much. Is it good or bad news?”

  “It’s good. The dungeon core does what I ask. I haven’t really pressed it, but so far, anything I tell the roots to do, they do it. I’ve made sure I was awake for resets, by the way. If there’s an overgrowth because I did something dumb, we’ll know right away, and I’ll fix it.”

  Olza lightly kicked the encased hinge of the trapdoor. “The golem is down there? Cog and all?”

  Hans nodded. “My first test was a box goblin. Showed up here no problem. I’ve confirmed I can grow monsters where I want and change parts of the dungeon in specific ways. Like sealing the core chamber. That’s a small thing, and that was just as easy to suggest as putting a horny golem in the basement.”

  “Are you removing the gazers?”

  “Trying to modify the Tainted Caves is on my list, but I’d like to run the gazers a few times before I remove them, assuming the core allows it. Why do you look surprised?”

  “You were very vocal about how you felt about gazers in the dungeon,” Olza replied. “I would have thought that was the first thing you’d do.”

  “Totally fair. If Devon or Mazo moves on now, I can manage the cull. Or, I will be able to with a bit more practice. That wasn’t an option before.”

  “Right, right.” Olza stared at the ground, so deep in thought she started chewing at a nail.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I’m trying to put some ideas together.”

  “Well, feel free to take a minute,” Hans said, stepping onto the trapdoor. He slowly sank straight down as his cave crawler ability phased him through the metal. “I’m going to take care of the golem. Gruwalda iron makes it not even a real fight. I feel like I’m murdering a villager.”

  Olza shook her head and laughed.

  “How weird is it to watch this?” Hans asked when he was up to his shoulders.

  “It’s pretty odd.”

  Three minutes later, Hans was back up the stairs with a blue cog in his hand.

  “Can you come with me to Mazo’s lab?” Olza asked.

  “I’ve got a class. Would afterward work?”

  “Yes, thank you. It’s nothing urgent yet.” Olza followed Hans up the creaky stairs. “I bet folks will be happy there’s more valorite coming in now.”

  “Well… I’m donating every other cog to Gomi. I’m keeping the others.”

  “For?”

  “A gift to myself.”

  When class wrapped up, Hans walked out the front gate and down the path to Mazo’s witch hut. Maybe it was all of the hubbub around Hans dying and the fae showing up, but she hadn’t extended her evil forest lady theme. It was all the same skulls and meaningless bobbles.

  Hans knocked on his way down to announce himself.

  Olza didn’t stand when he entered, and Mazo didn’t even look up. That didn’t offend Hans. He knew how she was when she focused and didn’t take it personally.

  “I think you can help me,” Olza said, “but it would mean recording you using a dungeon core ability.”

  “What am I helping with?”

  “I’ve not worked on it as much as I should have, but do you remember Dunfoo’s work with shadow scorpion enchantments?”

  “I do.”

  “If you’re okay with it, I want to compare the mana pattern your ability makes with what we record when we try the enchantment.”

  “Shit. That’s smart.”

  Olza smiled. “I understand if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Just like that?”

  Hans looked at Olza suspiciously. “Should I not want to do this?”

  “I don’t want you to feel like a lab rat.”

  “If it was Mazo asking, I’d feel that way.” Hans and Olza both turned to see Mazo’s reaction. The halfling scribbled onward as if she hadn’t heard Hans at all. She might not have.

  “Okay. If you’re sure. Stand over there.” Olza pointed to an empty space next to a wax cylinder contraption rigged to a sort of vertical bell.

  This was the device that converted mana movement to soundwaves and then recorded those sound waves into a wax cylinder. Dunfoo had said that these cylinders were being used to store and play back actual music, but Hans had never seen it used for its intended purpose. Only nobles in Hoseki had, really.

  “We’ll need to do it a few times to make sure we’ve captured it all.”

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  “Whatever you need.”

  After winding a small crank, Olza leaned back, and the cylinder began to rotate. After a pause, she pointed at Hans. He used the shadow scorpion ability, triggering a rapid series of rings and chimes in the device. Those vibrations were recorded into the wax with a needle. Hans and Olza repeated that process two more times to be sure they captured the full reading.

  “Thank you,” Olza said.

  “Was that it?”

  “Yep.”

  “So you’ll use this to find out where Dunfoo’s enchantment is failing?” Hans asked, looking at the curious wax recording device more closely.

  “It won’t be that simple, unfortunately,” Olza replied. “We might find a clue that helps us determine what’s going wrong, but that’s a few steps away.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Before you go,” Mazo said, still not moving from her seat otherwise, “can we record Barrier as well? If we can determine how Wargod makes his Barrier stronger, that would help, right?”

  “Sure.”

  Mazo seemed to assume that Olza would do the recording. When the halfling didn’t move to do it herself, Olza frowned and repeated the recording process again. This time for Barrier.

  “So much for scraping the bowl,” Devon said outside of the gazer throne room in the Tainted Caves dungeon expansion.

  “You don’t have to keep me alive anymore, right?” Hans asked.

  “No, it makes sense. I didn’t think about the plan changing, is all. I’m good with it, though.”

  “Mazo?” Hans asked.

  “You two could probably run it without my help, but yeah, the plan is fine with me.”

  As always, the gazers spawned at four evenly spaced points on a raised platform overlooking a vast, circular chamber. A young gazer hid just above and behind the door where Hans’ party would enter, supported by two gazers to either side and then an elder across the room in a position of honor. On the ground level, twenty torc slaves were chained together and guarded by mojokas, one of which was an early version of who the orcs now called Wargod.

  The last time Hans did this run, he was Gold-ranked. They had used a formation that kept Mazo and Devon close by so they could aid their less powerful and far more fragile ally, Hans.

  With Hans’ new abilities, he was fragile no longer, and the new plan to clear the room reflected that.

  Last time, Mazo opened the conflict with an elder vampire ability that drained the life force of every living creature within its area of effect. That attack annihilated the torc slaves, thinned the number of mojokas, and wounded every surviving enemy except for Wargod and the elder gazer.

  She repeated that tactic here. Mazo shot her arrow of darkness into the air, and the room distorted and strained as the very fabric of life itself was drawn to the black point.

  Everything after was different.

  Devon ran in as soon as Mazo’s void ability timed out. He killed the gazer over the doorway with a swift Blade Beam. Mazo followed him on the back of a finger demon, and a fallen celestial flew over her head and into the room.

  At the same time as Devon’s entrance, right when the drain ended, Hans appeared behind the elder gazer, stepping out of the dungeon wall. He sank a sword into its back before it knew it was in danger. Three eyestalks spun to target him, but they fell limp before they could attack.

  In addition to Wargod, three injured mojokas were still standing, as were two of the young gazers. Unlike the mojokas, they hadn’t escaped the life drain unscathed.

  A dozen Force Bolts rapidly fired into Hans’ Barrier and then into Force Walls the Guild Master conjured, knowing his Barrier would never last as long as Wargod’s. The barrage filled the chamber with the sound of rocks bouncing off of glass. Wargod ended the volley when a Blade Beam arced at his back, launched by the Paladin charging into the center of the room.

  Two mojokas sidestepped Root Spears that burst out of the floor at their feet. The third was impaled, the force taking him off the ground and suspending him in the air like one of the tall ones, mounted for sacrifice.

  To his right, Hans saw Mazo’s fallen celestial enduring a flurry of Gazer Beams and fireballs, struggling to get within striking distance. Its attention occupied, it didn’t see Hans’ Blade Beam zip across the room and cut into the back of its bulbous, floating body.

  When Hans turned his attention back to the orcs, he saw that Devon had cut down the other two mojokas. Wargod threw a handful of glass bottles between himself and the Paladin. They shattered, summoning six twisted versions of torcs who raced at Devon with lurching, unnatural steps. Devon’s form blurred as he hacked through the mob in a succession of Dash attacks.

  To Hans’ left, the final young gazer shriveled beneath a torrent of broken glass. The moment the glass halted, a fallen celestial struck the monster’s side like the very body of the angelic being was a spear thrown by a giant. The blow pinned the gazer to the wall. The monster managed a few poorly aimed beams from its eyestalks, but none of them hit their mark.

  Hans lunged at Wargod, swinging his sword with controlled ferocity. His blade bounced off the Barrier again and again. A shockwave emanated out from Wargod, blowing Hans back several yards.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Hans saw Devon cut an angle, putting himself directly behind Wargod. Without slowing his blows, Hans used a Force Push backed by the strength of the orc’s own magic, borrowed from later in life when it became a lich.

  Wargod flew backward. Devon’s celestial steel sword burst through its chest. The orc twitched, unending hate flaring in its purple eyes, and died. Devon let the monster slop off of his sword and fall to the ground.

  “That cave crawler shit is scary,” Devon said, wiping his blade on Wargod’s robes. “Thank the gods no other monster developed that ability.”

  Mazo looked around the room with her arms crossed, studying the aftermath of the battle.

  “You’ll probably be able to solo this soon,” she said after a time. “You won’t have any issues once you put the work into summoning spells. A few acorn soldiers and a couple of demons–you won’t need Devon and me to back you up.”

  “I have a long way to go before that,” Hans replied.

  “You don’t have to take the high ground here and play humble.”

  “I’m getting better, sure, but if Wargod or Devon’s god came after me… I don't want to get overconfident is all I’m saying.”

  Devon sheathed his sword. “You said no god hunting talk.”

  Mazo laughed. “We might be justified at this point, actually.”

  “Except I can’t leave Gomi.”

  “That’s not confirmed,” Mazo replied.

  “For me it is. I’m not hunting anything down, not now, not ever.”

  “Buzzkill.”

  Hans stood over the body of Wargod, thinking. “Why does he have the enchanted jawbone here but not with the tityos? Is that a question we’ve asked and answered?”

  Mazo came up next to Hans. “He may have lost it or replaced it sometime in between.”

  “That’s not odd?”

  “Could be, or it could just be the nature of physical objects. Things break, wear out, get lost, and so on.”

  “I hope you’re wrong about being limited to Gomi,” Devon added. “The three of us could conquer the frontier.”

  Hans looked around at the many corpses in the room. “Maybe. I will miss traveling, but I’m content with Gomi. Being strong enough to look after the folks here is enough for me.”

  “It’s never enough,” Mazo scoffed. “You’ll see. Not knowing your full potential will drive you to madness.”

  “Is that how you feel?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Devon?”

  The Paladin shrugged.

  “All of this is a bonus for me,” Hans said. “I should be dead. I wasted too much of that life being pissed about the things I didn’t have or couldn’t do. I’m not doing that again.”

  Mazo raised an eyebrow. “Let me know if you still feel that way a year from now. Shall we have a picnic, or should we finish the cull like grownups?”

  “Let’s get to it.”

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

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

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

  Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Master your Diamond boon.

  Get Dunfoo the materials he needs for a Holy enchantment.

  Get Dunfoo the materials he needs for a Holy enchantment.

  Learn more about the limits of the dungeon roots.

  Test the extent of your dungeon influence.

  Brainstorm more competitive dungeon games.

  Run future tests in a secure part of the dungeon.