“If anyone is hungry, I was going to whip up an omelet,” Luther said.

  Another session of mitigating Cursed memories was over, and the group–Chisel, Hans, Devon, and Luther–collected their things.

  “I would love to, but I need to check in with Honk before I get back to rotation,” Chisel said.

  Devon’s face held a similar apologetic frown. “I promised a few of the guys that I’d give them some armorback tips. I’m tempted to bail on them for some Luther cooking, but I can’t.”

  “I could eat,” Hans said.

  At the start of winter, Gomi’s food supply was a top concern. No one was going hungry, but variety and excess were hard to come by, a problem the town worsened earlier that year by donating a chunk of their supply to a nearby town that had lost everything in a gnoll raid. If Gomi encountered a similar crisis, they might not have the stores to outlast it.

  But that problem was much smaller now. With an artificial sun lighting the farmlands around Leebel’s Rest, the combined growth enhancements of dungeon soil and bronzewood trees meant a steady supply of fresh food uninterrupted by the subzero winter raging on the surface. Those crops now included a smattering of fruit trees–oranges, apples, lemons–and a budding vineyard that would soon add wine to Gomi’s beer and fool’s root vodka exports.

  A dungeon-grown herd of camahuetos supplied the people with meat, all of the cuts and varieties they would get from a cow, and a new cockatrice chicken operation produced more eggs with each passing day. Roland and Uncle Ed had made building and designing those coops one of their winter projects.

  Since handling a cockatrice chicken could lead to petrification, even one under the influence of a Honronk Charm tattoo, they constructed a set of tunnels and chutes so that the chickens could be moved from place to place without direct handling. The tusks now manning that operation always worked in pairs with a batch of Gomi-grade Soft potions nearby. If someone got pecked, another person was on hand to cure the petrification immediately.

  So far, that had happened only once.

  Between those dungeon animals and Honronk’s nearby griffon ranch, New Gomi attracted a level of hustle and bustle that this part of the dungeon hadn’t seen before. Instead of perfect stillness and dungeon brick right outside his window, Luther and his pet zout Maurice awoke to the sounds and views of animals and farmers.

  Luther very much liked being on a farm again, even if it was far from conventional.

  “How’s the academy working out?” Luther asked, setting an omelet in front of Hans that was too big for its plate. “Let me know what you think of the recipe. This one uses ground cama-meat and then armillaria meat as a vegetable.”

  “Yeah, this is good. Really good.” Hans wiped his mouth. “Classes are still well-attended. The interest isn’t as high as it was when it first opened, but I think we all expected that kind of shift. From what I hear, student retention is their next big focus. Shandi and Thomas are optimistic about the future, though.”

  “They’ve really taken to the work, huh?”

  “They definitely have. The kids love them.”

  Luther set a bowl of meat and veggies on the table for Maurice and sat to join Hans with an omelet of his own. Months ago, Hans had been uncomfortable with a bird pecking away on the same surface from which he himself ate, but it didn’t faze him now. Maurice was basically family at this point.

  “What do you think about me spending a bit more time on other projects?” Luther asked, chopping up his omelet with a fork. “It would mean less time in New Gomi and probably a lot more time on the surface.”

  “I’d miss seeing you so often, but I know a bunch of people up top who would love to have you around more. Got something in mind, or do you just mean in general?”

  Wobbling his head, Luther replied with his mouth half-full of egg. “I got to talk with Galad a little bit before he went back up, and he’s been putting a lot of thought into what spring looks like for Gomi. He pointed out that we’ve never tried to accommodate visitors. Was always the opposite, actually. The fewer reasons for someone to visit and even fewer reasons for them to stay was good for the Tribe.”

  That part of Gomi’s history was recent, all things considered, but Hans got to live in that version of the town only briefly. As soon as the dungeon core was discovered, Gomi had to adapt, and the fallout of the orc war accelerated that change even more.

  Instead of hiding from the world, Gomi now worked to build a voice to represent its people in kingdom happenings, and visitors were becoming more and more commonplace. That traffic stopped when the pass snowed over, naturally, but they still had several dozen visiting adventurers wintering in their town by choice.

  “With the tunnel open, there’s even more of a reason for folks to come to Gomi, right? We’ve got stuff to trade and interesting things to see.”

  “That’s true,” Hans agreed.

  “Galad’s talked about running an inn since we were kids, and he’s pretty much decided that he’s going to build something like that at the top of the tunnel. Give people a place to rest and eat on their way to or from Leebel’s. But that got me thinking…”

  Luther reached over to a dining room chair stacked with Bunri books and loose pieces of paper. He chose the third volume down from the top, opened it to a dog-eared page, and set it in front of Hans. A sketched map of Leebel’s Rest highlighted a section of undeveloped town relatively near to where the ferry docked. In Gomi-speak, “undeveloped” meant that the area was still as it was at the end of the orc war, which is to say it was in various states of ruin.

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  “I assume we’re hosting the Gomi Games again. Galad will probably kill me for suggesting we build those grounds all over from scratch, but we also need a new home for the Fall Festival. If we clear all this out and make it a sort of multipurpose park and fairgrounds, we can keep all of that activity inside the walls and, more importantly, near a bunch of tusk businesses that serve those visitors. A tavern, a restaurant, a few inns. That sort of stuff.”

  “Definitely makes more sense than everyone sleeping in tents or dorms.”

  “Exactly.”

  Hans studied the map for a moment while enjoying his meal. “Beyond doing all of the building, what else needs to happen for this to work?”

  “We’d need some folks willing to be the firsts. Someone to fix up an inn. Someone to open a cafe or a restaurant. That will feel weird at the start, but I think once the merchant caravans start coming into town, we’ll see more and more of that kind of activity.”

  “You’re thinking the merchants would ride their wagons all the way down here?”

  Luther nodded. “If we make it worth their while. I figure we let them set up on the fairgrounds and give them beds and food at no charge.”

  Hans looked up at Luther, confused.

  “Before the dungeon, the merchants couldn’t wait to get out of Gomi. Treating them well brings more business to Gomi and makes the tunnel ride a little more tolerable. I hope.”

  “Wow. You put a lot of thought into this.”

  “Living in Luther Land gives you plenty of time to think,” the tusk replied with a grin.

  “Don’t you hate that name?”

  “It’s grown on me. So, what do you think?”

  “I’m not much for business, but the logic tracks for me. Selfishly, I wouldn’t hate having a tavern and restaurant in town, or several, and I definitely agree that there are more opportunities for our people if we see more activity.”

  Luther leaned back in his chair, his plate already empty. “Here’s the biggest question I can’t answer: Do you think all of this works for a tusk town? We sometimes talk about plans around here like we’re just another town in the kingdom, but I got to believe more than a few people would be uncomfortable visiting a dungeon full of tusks.”

  Hans thought for a long minute. “You’re right. I hadn’t considered that. All of this has become so normal to me, I guess.”

  Seeing that the Guild Master was still thinking, Luther quietly waited. Maurice pulled potatoes out of his bowl and tossed them on the floor. He didn’t much care for potatoes, it seemed.

  “The worst kinds of people, and you know the kind I mean, are irrelevant because honestly, fuck ‘em. We don’t need anything from them, so if they never want to step foot in the Gomi Forest, fine by me. We could do all of this and not make a single copper and still be perfectly okay. This reminds me of a story Bel and Lee told me once. They bussed tables in Mikata, and they took all kinds of shit from patrons and their boss because they had nowhere else to go and no other way to eat. Our people will never be stuck in a corner like that.”

  “That’s true,” Luther replied.

  “The second worst kinds of people are the ones who hate tusks but are too cowardly to ever show it. Some of them are good at pretending to be nice. Others are standoffish. Doesn’t matter either way. I wouldn’t say they are welcome, but if they don’t start problems, I’m good with taking their money and sending them on their way. If they do want to mess with one of ours, well, our guards are almost all tusks, and they patrol with armorbacks. It’s not so easy being a shitbag when you have to punch up instead of down, you know?”

  The tusk across from Hans laughed. “Also true.”

  “That leaves your last two kinds of people. You got the ones who were taught to be afraid and untrusting of tusks but aren’t actively hateful. Might see more of those types with how low tusk numbers are in the kingdom now. They’ll have heard stories about the orc war and other nonsense but never have interacted with a tusk themselves. With how nice our people are down here? I think they’ll learn pretty quickly that tusks are people like anyone else.”

  “Who are the last kinds of people?”

  “Right. People like me, or Shandi, or Thomas. I want to say Dunfoo. He’s not racist. Just crotchety. But yeah, those are the people who don’t give a shit if the person pouring their drinks is a tusk or a human or a dwarf or a halfling. They care about how they’re treated. I’d go as far to say that the best of them prefer a place that isn’t all human. The world’s too interesting to stay inside such a small bubble.”

  Luther stared at Hans.

  “What?” Hans asked with food in his mouth.

  “Are you feeling alright?”

  “Yes…”

  “If you say so. I’m just not used to hearing you be remotely optimistic.”

  Hans wanted to argue but knew that he had no grounds to. “Between you and me, when people ask if I miss adventuring or I think about trying for Diamond again someday, I tell them I’ve entered a new chapter in my life and that I’m okay not making that rank. Part of me means it, but the rest of me is full of shit.”

  Luther snorted.

  “These days, that’s more true, though. The regret still stings, but I have an amazing life. Of all the places I could have landed, I made it to Gomi. I was part of building all this. I fell in love. And I’m surrounded by good people. Maybe I needed to lose the eye to really admit that adventuring was behind me, but I feel good. Really really good.”

  “I’m happy for you, my friend. Do you think the Cursed sessions are a part of that?”

  “It’d be foolish to think they weren’t,” Hans said. “I’m still not a whole person, but the dreams are rarer now, and I feel like I'm a little more durable. If I got rattled before, that was the end of my day. Went home and drank myself to sleep. I’m less fragile, I guess? Whatever it is, yeah. I think the work helped. What about you?”

  “It’s the same. I felt guilty wanting to mention it if you or Dev weren’t seeing progress. I could see that making someone in our situations a little raw.”

  “Even if you are ahead of us, it just shows that you’re smarter than we are.”

  “I accept that explanation as well.”

  Internally, Hans replayed and replayed the conversation he and Luther just had about Gomi changing. Hans kicked himself. Luther’s observations revealed that the Guild Master had not put as much time and thought into preparing for spring as he should have.

  New Quest: Prepare the Association for spring.

  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.”

  Establish a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

  Prepare the first collection of job debriefs for publication.

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

  Adapt.

  Enjoy it.

  Prepare the Association for spring.