“All right you gobling shits, let’s get a move on!” The training officer loped off the training field at an improbable pace, and the Novices all raced to scramble after him.

Maiz ran with Hugan at his side, and was surprised to find himself capable--barely--of keeping up with the other Novices. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been though; after all, he’d gained another two attribute points in Strength, a gain he felt was completely deserved. It had taken several hours of sparring with Lila followed by a short sleep and another full day of work, during which he’d scrambled wildly to improve his understanding of combat and his skills as much as possible. He’d started that day out with enough energy to actually win a fight somehow, though he lost his bout against Lila again. However, by the end of the day his newfound endurance had run out, and he had been completely unable to practice again with Lila. She’d sent him back to his barracks in less than a minute, after a bit of good-natured ribbing. It was unclear how she was able to stay up so late and still perform in top physical condition, but if it was a skill, then by the gods Maiz would learn it at any cost.

Despite his lack of supernatural endurance-boosts, apparently pushing himself so far had prompted a relatively massive boost to his attributes. In addition to the two points in Strength, he’d also gained a point in Dexterity and one in Constitution. That made his physical attributes fairly normal for his age, finally. He doubted he would be able to continue getting such massive boosts to his attributes in such short timeframes in the future--after all, he still hadn’t gained a single point in Agility, Intelligence, or Wisdom. He was particularly disappointed in the latter two. After all, he had spent almost his entire time on the spell-testing field studying his Flaming Strike in painstaking detail, preparing to gain as much experience as possible in the coming battle. Speaking of which…

“You have three minutes to find a group, got it? Five people, no less.” The training officer said the last bit with a such menace that Maiz instantly knew what would happen to a group with less than five people after time was called.

They were standing at the mouth of a cave, in the farthest corner of the compound from its roadside entrance. The rock of the cave entrance was bleached by the sun, but still looked extremely menacing, like the craggy maw of some massive monster. Maiz could not see deep into the… was this the Dungeon? Either way, he could at least see that it slope downwards, appearing to open up underground.

“We have to find another person!” Hugan’s worried voice cut through Maiz’s preoccupation. He looked up to see that both Lila and Ziya had found them, their little party of four a pocket of stability in the chaos of Novices trying to find groups to enter the Dungeon with.

“I believe it may be difficult to find a fifth person.” Ziya said, just barely audible over the noise around them.

“Why?” Maiz asked.

“We have an… odd range of capabilities in our group.” At this she glanced at Lila, who bristled.

“What, do you have something to say to me?”

Maiz winced. When he had first brought up the idea of being in a group with Lila, Hugan had simply waggled his eyebrows before agreeing with a laugh. However Ziya had immediately warned him that Lila would be able to steal almost all of the experience for the run if she went with them. After Maiz had explained their conversation the previous night, she had agreed without further complaint. He hadn’t thought it would cause any problems.

“I don’t mean to offend you, but not everyone is as trusting as Maiz and Hugan. We will have trouble finding someone willing to risk being on the same team as you.” Ziya’s soft voice held no animosity, just cool logic.

The hard glint in Lila’s eyes lessened slightly, and she nodded slowly. “That’s true, I guess.”

Just then, Ziya turned and left their gathering completely.

“Ziya! Where--” Hugan shouted, startled, but cut off as she disappeared into the crowd.

“What?” Lila seemed enraged now. “Why does she care so much if I’m on the team? It’s not even like she’d lose any experience as long as she kept healing everyone! That--”

She too stopped speaking abruptly, as Ziya returned holding the wrist of a young man in the white tunic and pant of a Cleric.

“Ziya, there’s no way you can do well in a group with two… oh.”

The young man was looking at Lila with an expression of apprehension on his face. He then turned his gaze to Hugan, who smiled brightly. He barely glanced at Maiz before he spoke again.

“I suppose…”

“Thank you.” Ziya cut in, soft voice at odds with the clear note of command in her voice.

The other Cleric just sighed and nodded before turning back to the other three. “I’m Sifet, nice to meet you all.” As he introduced himself, spectral gren words appeared above his head briefly. Sifet-Novice Cleric.

Lila had a somewhat thunderstruck expression on her face. “Oh, it’s, uh, nice to meet you?” The statement turned into a question as she shot a look at Ziya.

“Clerics don’t worry about losing experience to strong fighters. As long as you think you can handle being short a combatant, I think this is the best solution.”

Both Lila and Hugan nodded at this, Lila sheepishly and Hugan enthusiastically. “Great idea Ziya!” Maiz half-expected him to pound Ziya on the back like he did to Maiz, but even though he raised his hand and stepped forward, he apparently decided that doing it to Sifet would be more appropriate.

“Hey there Sifet, I’m Hugan!” As he said the words and slammed the poor Cleric's back with an open palm, Hugan’s name and title also appeared above his head. Maiz watched the Sifet’s face carefully, but he gave no sign of recognition of Hugan’s rare Warden title.

Lila half-heartedly waved a hand in Sifet’s direction. “Lila.” Maiz waited expectantly, but no words appeared above her head. Huh. It was not uncommon for combatants to keep their titles hidden as a matter of course, but Maiz didn’t think it mattered in a training facility like this.

But maybe Lila had the right idea. When Sifet turned to him--having given Lila a rather deep bow of his head--Maiz said, “I’m Maiz. Nice to meet you,” not showing the Cleric his title either. Even though Spellsword wasn’t his real title, it was probably the most powerful one he had access to at the moment. Not to mention rare.

“So, uh, you all are sure you’re okay with having two Clerics on your team?”

Hugan looked as confused as Maiz felt, asking “Why not?”

Sifet looked slightly uncomfortable,but Ziya answered in her usual dispassionate tone, “The Dungeon can be difficult to challenge without enough fighters. One Cleric is good to heal any injuries after a fight, but at the Novice level we don’t have any spells that work during battle. You will also have to work to protect us while you fight.”

“Oh.” Hugan looked put out for a moment, but then he flashed a grin at them again. “Good thing I’m an expert at defense!”

Maiz was more concerned with something else Zia had said. “No spells that work in battle? You can’t use that Heal spell in a fight?”

Sifet shook his head sadly. “No, Battle Heal is an Apprentice spell. Our subjects have to be still for five seconds to let us use Heal on them.”

Huh. It hadn’t ever occurred to him before, but the Clerics only seemed to heal him whenever he’d collapsed, been immobilized, or otherwise incapacitated. Of course, that happened a good deal, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t noticed.

“Time’s up! Form up in lines!” All talking ceased as everyone scrambled to obey the training officer. Soon, the field in front of the cave entrance was covered in relatively ordered ranks of Novices, each in clear groups of five. The training officer casted a glance across the field and grunted. “Get your weapons, then.”

At this command, the order ranks broke a the Novices all raced to form a line at the weapons racks Maiz had just noticed tucked against the side of the cave mouth. Maiz’s own group also moved to join the line, though they did not hurry. After all, everyone would enter the Dungeon eventually, it didn’t matter if they were first or last.

It took perhaps twenty minutes before Maiz’s group reached the racks. They were much less orderly than the ones on the training field, but they had a large assortment of real weapons available.There were many iron swords, clubs, staves, and maces, along with various types of shields.

Maiz took a staff without a second thought. Hugan took a round shield as he usually did, and a smaller sword. Neither Lila nor the two Clerics took any weapons, and they moved off quickly. Maiz shot a glance at Lila, but she had her eyes forward, looking at the second line now forming outside of the cave’s entrance. Why hadn’t she taken a staff? During their sparring two nights ago, she had given him various useful pointers on wielding the weapon, even demonstrating a few moves or him. She was obviously extremely skilled with it, and if his matches with her were any indication, she also had actual skills related to its use. But she probably doesn’t actually need a weapon to fight in this Dungeon.

Over the course of the night of sparring and the previous day, Maiz had gotten a fairly good idea of what to expect of this run. The Dungeon was quite weak, the monsters they would be fighting only at the beginning Novice levels. Most of the time, if left alone, such monsters would apparently grow by defeating animals or other monsters that wandered into their Dungeon. However, since these were killed and reborn so often, they never became formidable.

Luckily--or rather by design--this particular Dungeon was perfectly suited for its use as a training aid. The main type monster encountered in the first area was a swarm of magically enhanced, unnaturally large insects. The creatures were apparently fairly easy to kill, but they would respawn from a protected nest every few minutes if the nest was not destroyed. Maiz had speculated aloud at whether the nest or even the Dungeon itself had any limits on how many times it could respawn the monsters, but Lila, and later Ziya, had both shrugged and said they didn’t know. Still, the fact that the insect monsters could be fought every few minutes instead of every week or so, like with other Dungeons, was likely the reason this particular one had been chosen for the training grounds in the first place. It was clearly an incredibly valuable resource, the kind that prompted the building of cities and even nations. The ability to train masses of young combatants, even just to Apprentice or Journeyman level, was not to be underestimated.

They waited for perhaps an hour, the line creeping forward slowly. Each group was allowed ten minutes in the Dungeon before a green robed runner, perhaps an Apprentice by his age, told them to leave. Most groups seemed fairly unharmed, though one group who had seemed particularly fearful on entering had been forced to leave early, all of them bleeding from multiple long cuts on their limbs, especially their forearms. They had stumbled out of the cave, expressions of horror on their faces, and stood still while a pair of Clerics stepped forward and healed each of them in turn. Maiz wondered both why they hadn’t been able to find their own Cleric to help with that inside the Dungeon, and how they had managed to escape. They seemed almost as new as Hugan and Maiz, and they had clearly been too weak or unprepared to fight the monsters. Perhaps they had killed off the swarm once, and then fled before it repawned? Either way, the training officer simply grunted, then sent in another group after a few minutes.

When their group was finally at the front of the line, Maiz was holding his staff rather tightly. The previous group, all hard-looking young women, had exited a few minutes previous without a scratch on them. Finally, the training officer waved them forward with his customary scowl. Shooting a quick, slightly nervous glance at his teammates, Maiz stepped forward and into the darkness.