“Today we start your training. You’re probably eager to crack monster heads, but you need to understand the basics. We’ll begin with a lecture.”

Mad stood ahead of Zenos, his hands folded atop a tall, gnarled stick. It looked like a staff, but Zenos had watched him drag it up the hill along with the rest of the firewood. That morning Mad had started holding it like a real weapon, and the smiling adventurer began to look like a homeless wizard.

Zenos sat with a pouch of mixed nuts in his hand, he was still eating breakfast.

“I know how to fight,” he said.

“You may know how to fight your way, but you don’t know how to fight the adventurer’s way,” Mad said, knocked the staff end on the brick road for emphasis. “Dungeons are extremely dangerous. The guild has spent millennia perfecting its strategy for raiding, engaging, and clearing every dungeon regularly.”

Zenos crunched on his pecans as Mad raised leaned the staff on his shoulder and paced around.

“Now,” Mad said. “Listen closely. A raid is formed of twenty to forty adventurers. Each raid is comprised of an equal number of five-man teams. A twenty-man raid will have four teams and a forty-man raid will have eight teams. Understand?”

Zenos nodded. “I can do math,” he said.

“Raids will usually be arranged around one or more tanks that draw the attention of monsters,” Mad continued. “And those tanks are supported by healers who will keep them in the fight for as long as possible. Tanks are heavily armored men, but they are slow, and if they exhausted themselves attacking, they would have no mana for their defenses. Therefore, killing monsters falls on the damage dealers, or the DPS.”

Zenos frowned. “What does D.P.S. mean?” he asked. He had some apprehension for acronyms.

“Damage-per-Second,” Mad answered, planted his staff in the road. “It’s a value of how quickly you can kill a monster, calculated by the guild’s master arithmagicians. There are many different kinds of DPS across the guild, those classes based on spell craft, melee fighting, and fighting at a distance.”

Zenos raised his hand. “What are classes?”

Mad scratched his face. “Well, you could say they’re a broad classification of what you excel in. A wizard does not necessarily focus on magic, but they are good at it, and being known as a wizard can help you find a place in a dungeon raid.”

“Ah, so it’s an administrative title,” Zenos said.

“In a manner of speaking, but you should understand the guild does not select your class, and the adventurer may have just as little say,” Mad said. “Remember, I am Echokhet, which means I was born a necromancer before having ever seen a class-discovery altar. Some outside of the Echokhet are born with their classes, and those adventurers sometimes form great houses. If you ever travel to the mainland, you’ll encounter families of Warriors, Dragoons, and Marksmen. Heritage can be a powerful component in defining someone’s class.”

“So, who decides what class you are?” Zenos asked. “Do some not like their class?”

“The one that chooses…” Mad’s voice trailed away. He looked at Zenos with glassy eyes and a thin smile. “Yes, not everyone is comfortable with their class. They may drop out of adventuring, but many stay in the guild, either for the money or the protection. The one that chooses, though, the Echokhet call Khet. The Atilonians call her Gaia.”

Zenos’ eyes rounded. “Gaia?”

Mad nodded. “Gaia, Khet, Eve, or Draya, those are just some of her names,” he said. “She is the mother of the Pantheon, the mother to magic, and therefore to adventurers. She is also involved in dungeons, somehow.”

“Was she not banished in your world?”

“She was,” Mad said and sighed. He looked out over the tree line, toward the horizon where the sky met a distant sea. “The Atilonians would never blame Achlesial, but it’s held among the Echokhet that the Pantheon’s betrayal of Chotokhet weakened the bonds that prevented Khet from interfering in the physical world.”

Zenos clutched his hands in his lap.

“If there is disharmony in heaven,” Mad continued, “there is disharmony in the land, so the saying goes.”

“Do the Echokhet worship Gaia—Khet?”

Mad shook his head, set crestfallen eyes on Zenos. “She is loved, because she is the mother of our father, but she is also hated for all the havoc she can bring. Yet, we are filial to her. It is a complex relationship.”

Adohas has had its own encounters with the Director, it seems. Zenos turned his head down in thought. I doubt Achlesial had anything to do with her interference, because as Ghost said, the Director is everywhere. But something must have changed…. She would manipulate me whenever I strayed from her pre-defined scripts. Could this world have a script of its own?

“Am I losing you?” Mad asked.

Zenos perked up from his seat, eyes open. “No, I’m listening.”

Mad made a slight smile. “Well, please think about your role as an adventurer,” he said. “I do not know whether you will be a tank, a healer, or a DPS, and it’s possible you could serve many roles in your service to the Guild, but to fight as an adventurer means you adhere to that system.”

“When will I know?” Zenos asked.

“Either you use an identifying altar, or you discover what you are by the providence of the gods,” he said. “That’s all for your lecture, so if you’re ready, we’ll move on to more practical training.”

Zenos blinked. “Practical?”

Mad made a big smile.

The rest of the morning was spent at a dirt track in the woods. As Mad put it, ‘Adventurers had to stay active before raids,’ and a course was cleared for jogging. Mad made him run laps, do push-ups, and crunches. By the end, it was just past noon and the sun was high overhead. Zenos panted with his coat heaped in his lap. He was in his white, buttoned-down long sleeve, damp with sweat and dusted by pine needles.

As long as I’m well-fed, I can deal with this, he thought. But my stats aren’t increasing at all.

“Feeling good?” Mad asked from his perch on a boulder above the track.

Zenos raised his arm and waved with the back of his hand. He said nothing.

“If you’re still feeling up to it,” Mad said, “we could move on to a little combat training.”

Combat! I can’t improve with exercise, but I can level up. In that case… I have to kill something. For a moment, Zenos saw the top of that dark hill, where he had first killed Atilonians. He imagined the leaves of the black oak were painted in blood. As long as it’s not an NPC.

“What sort of combat?!” he shouted from the trackside.

“Automatons!”

Mad led Zenos down the hill, away from the track. They walked late into the day, through the woods until the path became so obstructed by yellow leaves, it was hidden entirely. Still, Mad knew the way, and guided Zenos into a hidden valley of white-wood birch trees.

“Here they are,” Mad said, and pointed with his improvised staff.

Zenos stepped forward. Ahead of him, scattered alone or in small groups, were men of copper and bronze. Those that stood upright were approximately seven feet tall, but the majority had slumped, and their long arms dangled to the ground. The closest one was moving and although it was covered in moss and green woodland growth, it still gathered yellow leaves between its simple three-digit hands. Zenos watched it deposit the leaves at the feet of other automatons, and in that way some piles had grown so tall that they reached their heads.

“These are automatons?” he asked.

Mad nodded. “The Adheimers used them for labor in the dungeon,” he said, “but they weren’t built by the Bastilhasians, or the Archurians, or the Olemenites. They are part of the dungeon in a way, and they’re resistant to the dungeon’s corruption.

“Usually.”

Zenos glanced at Mad and the seasoned adventurer smiled at him. “These ones have wandered into this valley,” Mad said. “Since they’re harmless, nobody bothers with them, but that makes them good target practice.”

Zenos nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll give you a test,” Mad said and pointed at his own chest. “Bring me the crystal heart of one automaton. It’s a gem in their breast; you’ll know it when you see it.”

“I don’t even have a weapon,” Zenos said and looked at the automatons. “And you want me to defeat a metal man?”

Mad nodded and placed a knife in his hand. “You know how to use that, right?”

Zenos looked at the knife, it was the same seven-inch blade Mad always used. The edge was worn, but the leather handle fit well in his grip, and when he examined it, a notification appeared.

[Friend’s Trusted Knife. Quality: ???? Damage: 10] it read. There were other attributes, but they were also hidden behind question marks.

Zenos closed the notification and nodded to Mad. “This will be more than enough,” he said.

Mad stepped back. “The automatons will be passive until you touch them, so try not to aggravate more than one at a time,” he said. “I’ll be watching from here. Go on, have at it.”

A breeze blew through the valley and Zenos started toward the automatons, crunched the leaves beneath his boots. He twirled the knife in his right hand and picked his target: The moving automaton he had first laid eyes on. It made meandering journeys away from the others, so he wouldn’t have to worry about space. Although he couldn’t tell how much HP it had, he could see the name [Automaton] displayed in white above its filled health bar.

When he was a few feet away, Zenos held the knife close to his stomach, gripped it with both hands, and charged the automaton. He struck its thigh with the tip of the blade as it bent down for leaves.

[0 damage dealt.]

The automaton dropped its leaves and stood straight. Zenos heard the clockwork machinations ticking within its chest spin loud. Its head cranked and turned sharply, and Zenos saw its featureless face first hand. It had no eyes, just depressions where the sockets would be in its smooth, bronze mask.

Run, Zenos thought.

The automaton rotated in a flash, swung its long arms with reckless abandon.

Run!

Zenos turned and slipped on the leaves, dropped below cleaving arms. That fluke of luck saved him, but the automaton had already raised both arms over its head. Zenos bounced up and narrowly avoided the pummel that launched dirt through the air.

Meanwhile Mad had found a nice tree to lean on while Zenos was chased around the valley.

This dagger is useless! Zenos shouted inside. He ducked beneath low-hanging branches and weaved between bushes, and the automaton plowed through them all. And there’s no opportunity to attack, the automaton just spins whenever it wants!

Soon he was cornered, chased to the end of the valley where the hill was too steep to climb. There were rocks to his left and right, and vegetation all around. His only way out was through the automaton behind him.

I can’t beat it without taking a hit. Zenos panted as he turned to face his dogged pursuer. There are gaps in those bronze plates. If I could just pry the plate open, I could get the gem, but I’ll get hit. I can’t beat it without taking a hit. Not without taking a hit…. His eyes flit around his HUD. He checked his HP, which was at 80 after his morning buff had ended, and he wondered if he would have enough health to absorb the injury.

How much damage could it possibly do? he wondered and turned his knife in his hand. Just one hit, but if I can fit this blade through its armor, I’ll have leverage. I can win.

He charged. The automaton spun, but it swung its long arms early, and at the end of its spin its torso was locked to its gimbal. Just one hit, Zenos psyched himself, just one, just one!

The knife slid straight through a vertical gap in the automaton’s chest and Zenos’ eyes lit up.

[0 damage dealt.]

Zenos pushed on the handle, but the armor wouldn’t budge. He glanced up and saw an arm fall toward him.

[Your shoulder was hit for 700 non-lethal damage.]

[You are unconscious.]