Hans found Galad in a far corner of the Tribe farmland, helping a crew build a home for one of the refugee families who arrived last fall. The Tribe made good progress on getting all of them houses, but having to first erect the palisade around the barns put them behind.

  The true heat of summer had nearly arrived, so most of the men wore only pants as they worked, Galad included. The tusk was as muscular as Hans expected, but he was surprised to see that his collection of scars resembled that of an adventurer.

  From a glance, it appeared that Galad had been cut across the chest and back by a sharp blade on at least three occasions. A gnarled flower of scar tissue was visible low on the side of his ribs. In Hans’ experience, an arrow was responsible for those types of scars. If the arrow didn’t pass all the way through the body, the barbs would tear out more flesh when it was pulled free, no matter how careful you were. Lastly, Galad had three scars that appeared to be from stab wounds, thick lines no more than an inch wide. Hans had always found it odd that wounds so severe could leave no more than a small scar.

  “Galad?” Hans called.

  Galad looked up to see who spoke. When he saw Hans, he returned his focus to shaping two boards to interlock. “Guild Master.”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  The tusk nodded and told the rest of the men that he’d return shortly. The pair walked around one of the fields, using distance in place of privacy.

  “You were right. My behavior wasn’t appropriate.”

  Galad didn’t reply. He simply watched the ground and listened.

  “Talking to you as if you hadn’t made sacrifices was wrong too,” Hans continued. “I know you and your family have done a lot for Gomi, and that’s just the bits I know about. I insulted you and disrespected you. I’m sorry.”

  The pair walked several quiet steps before Galad finally spoke. “Galinda made me aware that I was unfair to you. My sister and I… Our parents didn’t force us into this. For its peculiarities, the Tribe has always emphasized freedom for its citizens. We had a secret to keep, yes, but the Tribe had no say in anyone’s coming or going. That extended to us too, and our parents were supportive of it being our decision.”

  “Galad–”

  “I have more to say to complete my thought, Mr. Hans,” Galad said gently. “We chose to stay, and in staying, we had mentors and teachers. My parents, of course, but really we learned from all of our elders. Some more than others, sure, but we had no shortage of instruction or guidance. You had no such choice, and no such support.”

  “I chose to go to Gomi.”

  “Yes, but are you living the life you envisioned with that choice?”

  Hans couldn’t help but laugh and shake his head.

  “That’s what I mean when I say you didn’t have the same choice as myself and my sister. Our choice was a seed to be nurtured for years and years before we were responsible for any of our brothers and sisters, and we had a full understanding of what that would entail. Your choices were adaptations. I knew what seed I planted. You, however, had to pick a seed and then hope that what you wanted rose from the dirt.”

  The Guild Master didn’t reply.

  “Both choices are meaningful, but they are very different. If I am reading you correctly, you do not disagree with my being upset, however.”

  Hans nodded.

  “My reaction was not helpful, and I judged you unfairly. I apologize.”

  “I talked to Luther when I was up the mountain. He helped me a lot.”

  Galad said that sounded like the Luther he knew. He shared he was still sad his best friend relocated to the dungeon. He missed both Luther’s friendship and his wisdom. Galad relied on both to overcome difficult times.

  “I’m no Luther,” Hans said, “But you can come to me any time you want.”

  “We should have made that arrangement many months ago,” Galad said, an embarrassed half-smile on his face. “And likewise, of course. I suspect we have many more adaptations ahead.”

  Approaching Gomi from the direction of the Tribe farmlands, Hans saw a cluster of children near the front gate. She was only a smudge at this distance, but he guessed that the one three times as large as any of the children was Galinda. As Hans looped around the outside of Gomi, more of the scene came into view.

  The children stood on wooden platforms set in the palisade trenches, keeping them at ground level for their project: Painting Gomi’s walls. Each child had a two-palisade canvas to call their own, but there were still disputes over borders from time to time, a stray brushstroke–intentional or not–triggering a crisis between neighboring canvases.

  Like the art they left for Hans over the winter, every primary color was present on the palisade walls–as high as the children could reach to paint, that is. Hans saw several pictures of families standing with their homes. A few drew crops and vegetables. Several drew Galinda, Galad, or Charlie. One painted a potion bottle frothering over with a green foam. When Hans got close enough, he found Willow behind the brush.

  Galinda waved to Hans but stayed with one of the youngest children, helping them manage their paints.

  Hans walked partway down the road out of Gomi to view the scene from a distance.

  What a thing for an enemy to see when they first arrive.

  Slipping by the children with only a few hellos was a minor miracle. He had never seen them so committed to a task or project. He wondered what Galinda said before the painting started that connected the children so deeply to decorating the palisades.

  “He returns,” Olza said with mock enthusiasm. She stood outside her shop, brooming dirt out the door and off her stoop. “Feeling better?”

  Sheepishly, he said he was. “I’m sorry for the other day.”

  “You didn’t do anything to me other than give me homework.”

  “Homework?”

  Olza sighed. “The manual?”

  “Right. Sorry for that too.”

  “Please stop apologizing to me. Do you have a minute? I can walk you through my notes if you want.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Hans followed Olza to her back counter and sat on a stool while she fetched her things. She returned with the manual and a journal. She set them on the counter but kept her hands on them, as if ensuring Hans didn’t take them.

  “I’ll tell you what I learned, but you have to pay a toll.”

  “What? A toll?”

  “Let me say something, as someone who cares about you. That’s the toll. When I say ‘let’ I mean that you have to listen and think long and hard before you react.”

  “Okay…”

  After a deep sigh, Olza said, “We need to figure out your depression or anger or whatever it is, and we need to slow your pace. Burnout makes the first thing ten times as bad.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. You and me. People help each other, you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. We can talk about the manual now. It’s killing me that we aren’t.”

  Hans chuckled. “Please.”

  Her first insight was a general observation that might affect how much they can learn from the manual. She found several entries that referred to “records,” “logs,” and “archives” that were not in the manual, meaning that some of their questions may not be possible to answer with the manual alone. They knew the blind spot was there now, though. That was helpful.

  Her reading began with Hans’ generation of adventurers because that's where his notes ended.

  The entry about his quest flashed in his mind:

  Hans the Adventurer – 3379.236, Path of Strength, Terathan Hive – FAILED x3

  She found that the labels like “Path of Strength” and “Path of Mending” came into use ten Guild Masters back. That particular Guild Master was one of the most prolific contributors to the manual in fact. Olza imagined him as a wise old mage with a long beard, but anyway.

  This Guild Master wrote that “Paths” represented broad categories of quests, and he believed these Paths could be used to predict the nature of a quest provided by the Takarabune.

  “Wait. What?”

  “That’s my question for you, actually,” Olza said. “You spoke as if the Guild always assigned quests based on an adventurer’s class or skillset.”

  “They did. I mean, I thought they did.”

  “There is so much left for us to read–gods do you adventurers love to hear yourselves talk–but it’s looking like the device emits a color when it’s used. The Guild Master who implemented the Path system went back through the quest entries from before his time and analyzed them several different ways, looking for trends. Before that, Guild Masters recorded the color, and a few early Guild Masters had theories about what different colors meant, but the Path Guild Master was the first to reach a definitive conclusion.”

  Olza opened the manual to a page she had bookmarked. She spun it around to show Hans.

  The left side of the page spread had a color wheel, the kind artists used to visualize the relationships between colors. This wheel was split into four quadrants, one for each of the four primary paths.

  The quadrant that went from bright yellow to a deep green was labeled the “Path of Healing.”

  The quadrant that went from blue-green to dark purple was the “Path of Mana.”

  The quadrant that went from violet to dark red was the “Path of Shadows.”

  The final quadrant went from red to a yellow-orange. That quadrant represented the “Path of Strength.”

  The right side of the spread summarized how the Guild Master arrived at this chart.

  By tabulating every quest entry that preceded him, the Path Guild Master found that the colors recorded by previous Guild Masters led to four broad quest categories. He suggested using those categories as a tool for assigning the right quests to the right adventurers. He also urged future Guild Masters to further divide the paths, believing Diamond quests could be assigned with more accuracy, matching the appropriate class to the appropriate challenge.

  Under the Path System, a quest that was blue-green and a quest that was dark purple were both assigned to the Path of Mana. Yet, they were on opposite ends of their quadrant. The Path Guild Master theorized that those differences in colors mattered, but the Guild didn’t have enough data to know why they mattered.

  “Every Guild Master after him ignored that part,” Olza said. “They all just logged what Path the quest belonged to and stopped at that.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I saw your note about the Guild Master–Otis was his name, right?–who had a bunch of Golds die on their quests, and I have a theory there.”

  Hans raised an eyebrow.

  “I think he was colorblind.”

  “He couldn’t see color?”

  Olza shook her head. “Someone who is colorblind can see colors, but they don’t see them the same way we do.”

  She explained that one form of colorblindness made reds and greens indistinguishable from each other. Those colors were on opposite sides of the color wheel, so if the Guild Master was red-green colorblind, a quest for the Path of Shadows and a quest for the Path of Healing would look the same. Colorblindness came in a few different forms–not just red-green–so a number of other mixups were possible.

  “Is colorblindness rare?”

  “I don’t know how much that topic has been studied, but it’s common enough that any reputable alchemy program tests their students for it.”

  “Oh, wow,” Hans said. “I can see how mistaking one color for another could be problematic when you’re mixing ingredients.”

  Olza nodded. “Yep. It doesn’t matter all that much for pretty much everyone else, but an alchemist grabs the wrong bottle? Boom. Anyway, before and after Guild Master Otis, failure rates are relatively even. The Path system might not be perfect, but the data suggests it’s relatively reliable.”

  “So that sharp of a change is probably more than bad luck. Interesting.”

  With the secrecy surrounding the device, Otis likely used the Takarabune in private. If no one else saw it in use, then no one could notice the real problem. Hans imagined Guild Master Otis despairing over his failures as a leader, searching desperately for the source but never knowing the problem was his own eyes.

  I’d lose my mind too.

  “Do you mind hanging on to that for a bit longer?” Hans asked.

  “Sure. This kind of puzzle is fun for me. Makes me miss spending all day in the library when I was a student.” She saw Hans staring at the manual the way a husband stared at his wife’s headstone. “...But that’s not why you want me to keep it.”

  “That’s part of it. The other part… I devoted my life to adventuring and to the Guild. I’m not the greatest of my generation or anything like that, but I’ve had some success. I’ve helped a lot of people. I’ve trained a lot of students. Seeing all of that summed up by one crossed-out line… It makes me so angry, Olza. At myself, at my Guild Master, at every Guild Master before him. I dreamed of leaving a more meaningful mark on history.”

  “That’s not how it is at all.”

  “I know that. But I also don’t.”

  Active Quest: Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

  Quest Update: Come to terms with being Gold-ranked, not Diamond-ranked.

  Hans rubbed his face. “I’ll be fine. All of these childish feelings… I’ll get them under wraps.”

  Quest Update: Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

  Damn it.

  Olza opened her mouth as if to argue but closed it again. She nodded, agreeing to hold onto the book and continue her research.

  “Thank you.”

  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."

  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.

  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.

  Talk to the merchant about training aids for lockpicking.