Life as a novice delver wasn’t a big change from that of a student. Duncan no longer had to share a barracks room with 23 other youths, but he still used the communal bathing facilities and shared the communal kitchen, dining hall, and training field. He trained with the same masters, and many of the same sparring partners. But twice a week he got to delve the goblin dungeon.

After the initial delve with Pyotr’s full team, Duncan settled into a normal routine. One or two novice delvers, two or three intermediate delvers (who each had a couple of years’ experience and had developed at least one full Technique for each of their affinities), and one experienced delver formed each group. One experienced delver could often clear the dungeon solo, so there was still a degree of safety, but that didn’t mean the experienced delver could necessarily clear the dungeon and protect their entire team, so there was still sufficient risk for the younger delvers to advance. The greater the peril one experienced, the faster one advanced, so the guild tried to balance the risk and reward. Teams of intermediate delvers ran the dungeon without any experienced delvers to protect them (and without novice delvers to hinder them) to increase their risk and reward. Once they reached that stage, they were able to delve the Wilderness dungeon if they had two experienced delvers with them. But that was a ways off for Duncan.

The goblin dungeon wasn’t nearly as easy with a normal group as it had been on his training run. His companions had only one or two Techniques, and those weren’t nearly as advanced as those of experienced delvers. Groups of mushroom harvesters could be a challenging fight for some groups, and the chieftain room at the end was almost always very difficult. Duncan quickly learned that he simply didn’t get used to pain. Being stabbed or cut or bludgeoned was always awful. The relief that accompanied healing magic was the only thing that kept him going. Some people with body affinities developed pain tolerance techniques, but he had no Technique for it yet, nor did he have the mind magic necessary for an ignore pain Technique. The one time he’d encountered a goblin shaman he’d discovered that being burned and electrocuted was no better than being stabbed.

He repeated the dungeon with a wide variety of companions. There were almost a thousand delvers in the guild, so the dungeons saw a lot of use. They were used to extract resources, treasure, and knowledge, and they powered much of the economy of the valley. Experiencing the dungeon so many times with so many people using so many different Techniques exposed him to a variety of risks and challenges. The dungeon rarely felt the same, even with similar creatures within.

Dungeons were fascinating things. They seemed to spontaneously occur where the ambient mana in the world pooled in sufficiently high concentrations that it would be harmful to life in the area. The delvers guild’s scholars espoused a theory that when it was empty, the dungeon generated creatures and traps and treasures. A group could clear a dungeon out entirely, but if it was left untouched for a short while, it would repopulate with new monsters. Given that dungeons almost always refilled with the same sort of creatures or traps, it was assumed that each had a static pool of monsters to choose from.

Dungeons also seemed to feed on those who died within them. Corpses (and any gear left on them) disappeared an hour or so after death, absorbed by the dungeon. And delvers couldn’t leave a dungeon carrying a corpse, be it delver or monster, even in an extra-planar container. The portal out simply didn’t work if you were carrying a corpse. If you died in a dungeon, it would be your final resting place.

While dungeons only needed a little rest between visits to reset, that wasn’t true for delvers. After each delve, Duncan returned to the guild hall in Stonewatch where the group leader would turn in the loot they’d collected (every group leader had an extra-planar storage space in a bag issued by the guild). Then he’d return to his room or the meditation gardens and meditate on the delve just completed. He’d review his actions, and those of his teammates, and study the tactics of the creatures they’d faced. In doing so, he built the foundations in his spirit that his Techniques would later build upon. Later, or the next day, he’d adjust his training to accommodate what he’d learned.

He made a list of the intermediate delvers he meshed well with – it was never too early to start thinking about a group when he reached that stage and could delve with a less rigid group composition. Very few guardians were anywhere near the ability of Pyotr, so it was rare that he came out of a delve without having taken at least some damage. On several occasions he joined groups that didn’t have a guardian at all – everyone had to face their own share of the monsters. Strangely, despite the wounds he inevitably received on those delves, those were his favorites. He just liked being in the thick of things.

Months passed this way, and he gradually grew stronger and more experienced, his nascent Techniques boosted by the risks he took in the dungeon, and by the training of his masters between delves.