For the first time in many years of teaching, Hans felt nervous walking to the front of the Forgeborne training room to start a class. A few days of awkward conversations and strange looks from everyone he encountered in Gomi made him even more sensitive to the unusual nature of his presence. All of these people-

  Well, maybe it was presumptuous to believe that all of them attended his funeral.

  Most of these people had attended his funeral. They saw his body. They saw it burn. And now he was teaching a class.

  Was it stranger to see your teacher come back to life or to be the teacher who came back to life?

  Hans took a deep breath.

  “Alright, circle up, everyone,” Hans began. “We’re going to start class. The Gomi Games are coming up, so we’re going to mix in some competition practice. Some of you will be in the same brackets, but I never want a training room to divide into teams or factions. You’re all comrades now, so if you end up going up against someone you’ve been training with in here, that’s just how it goes. But, before that, there’s probably something we should talk about.”

  Nervous laughter swept through the class.

  “I really died. I’m really back. I’m not an undead, and I can say that because we checked. Devon splashed some Holy Water on me, and it didn’t burn. I’ll answer your questions about all this as best I can so that we can get it out of the way and focus on training.”

  Terry raised his hand. “What was the afterlife like?”

  “Never saw it. I died, and then I woke up in the dungeon.”

  Young Charlie was next. “Did you expect to beat the armorbacks when you stepped in to help, or did you know you’d die protecting that party?”

  “Wow,” Hans replied. “You guys aren’t pulling punches. I was escorting a party through an armorback run, that is true, but I didn’t step in to save any adventurers. They were dealing with two armorbacks when I heard a child crying for help. I followed the sound and got ambushed by armorbacks. More than there should have been if the section was culled regularly as reported.”

  “It sounds like you’re suggesting…”

  “That I was murdered? The party I was escorting was the party responsible for culling armorbacks for the previous five cycles. My best guess is that they used Bard magic to Charm a few armorbacks into hiding each run and then used a Ventriloquism spell to imitate the sound of a scared kid. I didn’t suspect foul play until I heard the story they told you all about the incident.”

  A visiting Silver Ranger asked, “Why would they want to kill you?”

  “Let’s limit the questions to my resurrection only for now. I don’t level accusations lightly, and there is a lot left for me to figure out, but as the witness to my own murder, I am confident in what I’ve shared.”

  “Is anything else about you different? Other than the eye?” Those questions came from an Iron Archer.

  “All of my old injuries are gone. I feel like I did when I was twenty-four years old.”

  “Did you gain anything new?” a Bronze White Mage asked.

  “Like skills or knowledge? Nope. Pretty vanilla resurrection in that sense.”

  The room laughed.

  Pogo went last. “You don’t have to answer this, but what was it like to die?”

  A few adventurers in the room shot the young tusk Rogue dirty looks, and a wave of whispers suggested that several more agreed that the question was in poor taste.

  Hans held his hands up to calm everyone. “Pogo knows my policy on honesty, and I don’t mind that he asked that question. Just means he’s braver than most of you.”

  The Guild Master grinned at the sheepish faces he saw.

  “What was it like to die?” Hans repeated the question to himself. “It happened quicker than I expected. There wasn’t any life flashing before my eyes or serene acceptance about my fate. It was fast. It was violent. I had an instant where I saw my death coming, and all I felt was fear.”

  The training room was perfectly quiet.

  “On that cheery note, let’s talk about pretend swordfighting for trophies.”

  The class that day was on coping with extreme aggression in a competition. While many Fighters stepped off their starting line calculated and reserved, willing to circle slowly until the right moment presented itself, others launched an all-out assault the moment the referee signaled the start of the match. That tactic could be effective because many competitors grew accustomed to the controlled nature of sparring in the training room. In those cases, competitors didn’t expect such direct pressure, nor did they have an answer for it.

  The first technique Hans taught was to swiftly sidestep as many times as it took for the opponent to slow their assault. He told the class to expect to have to sidestep several times and to change directions periodically. The natural instinct was to retreat–backpedal with your shield up–but that ran you into the edge of the arena after a few steps, and it allowed the opponent to build even more momentum.

  Shuffling to the side kept your back off a wall and forced your opponent to adjust. Moving swiftly in a straight line was easy. Maintaining an ultra-aggressive assault with pivots and turns, meanwhile, was a difficult proposition, especially for an opponent who was wary of exposing themselves to danger.

  The second technique was a bit more daring. Instead of forcing your opponent to chase you, this tactic met power with power, mixing in a bit of misdirection for good measure.

  Instead of sidestepping, Hans showed his students how to slide backward at the start of an opponent’s charge and then blast forward again with a shield bash. The idea was to rapidly expand and contract the distance between you and your opponent to disrupt their timing and sense of range. Furthermore, an opponent was likely to overcommit to the bumrush the moment they saw you retreat.

  “A friend of mine won a match with this technique,” Hans said as he wrapped up his demonstration of the maneuver. “He slid back, got low, and powered forward. His opponent fell into his shield, and then Boden pumped and drove. Poor guy went all the way over and fell real strange on his side. He didn’t breakfall, so his arm broke instead.”

  After a few more rounds of drills, Hans assigned sparring partners and started rotations. There was an odd number of students, so he joined as well.

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

  He wondered to himself if he felt this good when he was young but didn’t have the awareness to realize. As he thought about it, he decided that back then he didn’t have the context of feeling like a beat-up old man to know how good it was to be young and healthy.

  His muscles surged with electricity, like they pulsed with energy and power. His brain worked so quickly that a match felt like slow motion. He saw every detail, every shift, and every opening, and he could seize an opportunity in an instant. Years of practice and experience were like being clairvoyant. He knew where to be and when. He predicted every attack and saw through tricks and feints.

  Hans lost count of how many rounds they had done and looked up to see most of the class sitting against the wall, exhausted from training. Meanwhile, he felt fresh. Though sweat ran down his body, and the heat of combat wafted off of his skin, he wasn’t tired.

  “Still sparring or are you done for the day?” Devon asked. His back was turned to Hans as he thumbed through the barrel full of training swords to find one he liked.

  “I’d go another round.”

  “I mean, if you’re too tired, I understand.” The Paladin grinned.

  Hans smiled back. “I’ll manage.”

  “Stop at downed or go to yield?” Devon asked. Downed meant halting combat as soon as one person was off their feet or yielded. Go to yield meant that the match didn’t stop until someone admitted to defeat. If one person went down, the fight would continue until they surrendered.

  “Yield.”

  Devon cracked his neck and hopped on the balls of his feet a few times. He stopped and set his stance, his shortsword and shield raised into a guard.

  And the match began.

  The Paladin opened with a lunging thrust. Hans parried it easily. Devon came again, this time with a backhand slash as he pivoted to face his opponent. Hans leaned to the side and felt the wind of the sword barely miss his lip and cheek.

  Then the pair exchanged a flurry of attacks, parries, blocks, and dodges. From the outside, the fight looked perfectly choreographed, as every attack was met with the perfect response, neither man compromising position or technique. They never hesitated, and they never slowed. The sound of wood on wood was like a drummer keeping a fast beat, the pause between strikes immeasurably brief.

  For Hans, the fight was pure flow. He trusted his body to attack and counter according to its training while his mind watched and strategized.

  Devon swung low to strike Hans’ leg and allowed his shield arm to drift a little too low to accommodate the strike. Hans punched Devon in the face with his sword hand, staggering the Paladin before his sword could find its mark.

  “Pretty slick for an old guy,” Devon said, unable to contain his smile.

  The Paladin reengaged with a series of feints before committing to another thrust, beginning the exchange of blow-for-blow attacks all over again. Devon parried a slash and got inside of Hans’ guard, entangling himself with the Guild Master. Locked in a clinch, neither man could get the range or angle they needed to use their sword.

  Hans faked stepping away and bolted in for a swift leg reap. As the two went down to the ground, Devon twisted to reverse the position so that Hans’ back hit the dirt instead. Countering the counter, Hans scissored his legs to sweep the Paladin and ended up with his knee on Devon’s stomach, the point of his training sword against his throat.

  “Yield,” Devon said. “I guess I have to start being nicer to you.”

  Devon accepted Hans’ hand and came back up to his feet. The Paladin dusted himself off and looked up when he felt dozens of eyes on him. Every adventurer in the room was fixated on the match. No one spoke. No one dared look away.

  “If you watched that and thought, ‘Man, Hans got a lot better,’ you’re wrong,” Devon explained to the crowd in the room. “He was that good before, but he had two decades of scar tissue in the way. You were always learning from the best in the business. You just might not have realized it.”

  Devon offered his hand. Hans shook it and pulled him in for a hug.

  Soft enough that no one outside of the embrace could hear, Devon said, “I’m glad you get to be this Hans again.”

  “Thank you. Me too.”

  Hans stepped into the Leebel Academy and saw Thomas, Shandi’s fiancé, on his way out with an easel under his arm and a bag in his hand.

  “Is Shandi here?” Hans asked. “I heard she was looking for me.”

  “Hey, Hans. Yeah, she’s in the back classroom. Second one on your right.”

  “Need help carrying any of that?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I’m good. Thank you, though. You coming out to the Dragon tonight?”

  “Was thinking about it.”

  “You should. We’ve got drinking to catch up on.”

  Hans laughed. “Alright. I’ll be there if you’re going to give me the hard sell.”

  Thomas returned the laughter as he backed into the door to let himself out.

  At the doorway to Shandi’s classroom, Hans knocked on the open door to announce himself. Shandi waved him in. She was in the midst of organizing the shelf they used for activity materials–everything from chess pieces to fake coins for learning arithmetic. The walls were a mix of artwork made by the children and posters about math and the Common language. One had multiplication tables, and another showed a list of conjugated verbs.

  It reminded Hans of his original Gomi guild hall on the surface.

  “You called?” Hans asked.

  “You answered,” Shandi replied. She paused her work to give Hans a hug and then went back to it. “How you feeling these days?”

  “Not dead.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, I feel good. I appreciate you asking. How was the school day?”

  Shandi chuckled. “Exhausting, but it went well. I underestimated how difficult being a teacher was; that’s for certain. The new books have helped a lot, though. A few fresh stories for reading time has made a big difference.”

  “Excellent. We’ve got more on the way too. What can I do to help?”

  “Yes, right!” Shandi snatched a paper off of her desk and passed it to Hans. “We’re doing a unit on the lifecycles of birds. I know your schedule is packed, but I was hoping to convince you to host a field trip out to New Gomi to show the children the cockatrice chickens. If there are any eggs or freshly hatched chicks, even better. I understand if you can’t, though.”

  “Not a fan of cockatrice chickens?”

  “It’s not that,” Shandi answered. “We took a class out to see Buru’s pond project a few days ago, and the kids loved it. Makes me think we should do more excursions like that. Our youngest students will still have class, though, so I need to be here. If the trip wasn’t so long, I would go. ”

  Hans thought.

  “If you don’t want to, that’s fine too.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Hans assured her. “If we’re making the hike, might be a good idea to show them the rest of New Gomi. The griffons are always popular, but there’s also the camahuetos. Could show them butchering and tanning with those. There’s Luther’s bees too. He loves to talk about his bees.”

  “You can fit all of that into a day?”

  “I was thinking a camping trip, actually. We haven’t done one of those this summer yet.”

  “If you’re offering, yes, that would be amazing,” Shandi said. “I know you have more important things to do, though.”

  “Not at all. Nothing is more important to me than the kids in Gomi.”

  New Quest: Host a field trip to New Gomi for Gomi’s children.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Monitor for independently grown sections of dungeon.

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

  Continue the momentum of establishing a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

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

  Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Plan for a possible encounter with Wargod.

  Host a field trip to New Gomi for Gomi’s children.