My hands were sore and ink-covered. So was my poor blouse, but that could be taken care of later. Class was done for the day, I had enough time for a quick rest before I met up with the others for a simulation dungeon run. It astounded me how exhausting just trying to memorize a small dungeon map was. I supposed the brain was in its own way a form a muscle and it needed exercise too.

  I decided that before I took everything back to my room, I'd stop by the cafeteria for a little pick-me-up before exercising the rest of my body. One thing I had learned quickly in the harsh sword and spell training is that you couldn't sustain yourself on determination alone; you needed sustenance. Ink stained clothes and hands be damned.

  I found the cafeteria thankfully sparsely populated, which meant shorter lines, and the good stuff was unlikely to be gone yet. Good being in a relative sense. The food came with the tuition, and it certainly tasted like it. I was likely spoiled not only by the upbringing but by the delightful fare at the Jeweled Bower. Nothing filled a hungry stomach like some of Manya's stew!

  However, beggars can't be choosers. Well, I suppose they could be, but it wouldn't be advisable. I looked at my options with mild derision, but chose what seemed best for this time of day and got out of the way of other students who were waiting on me to move on.

  After sitting down with my tray of food, which included bread, cheese, and at least three puddings. I may dislike most of the fare here, but their puddings were incredible, and the person making sure we didn't grab too many wasn't looking, so I decided to be a bit naughty and grabbed myself some extras. I picked one of the further corners of the massive room and did a little people watching.

  Dungeon School was an interesting mix of individuals, much like the rest of Revenstahd. All sorts of species and social classes are mixed here. Station didn't matter here, as we were all training to do dangerous, inglorious work, all for coin. I wondered to myself how many were like me, attending out of a lack of anything else to do, and how many were here because they wanted to be.

  While dungeoneering was the main focus, Dungeon School provided training in a great deal of the ancillary fields related to it. Smithing, alchemy, artifice, research, medicine, and more all with a focus to helping those who dove deep in the dungeons to search them for riches, and to get stronger to fight the monsters that wandered freely. For some, dungeon school was a foot in the door to becoming a hero, to others, they would likely go no further than delving.

  Monster hunting outside of a dungeon was particularly dangerous. The monsters acted sharper of mind, and were often evolved to deal with other monsters as well as hunters. Dungeon creatures were dangerous, but in a different way. They acted, for lack of a better term, predictably. Once you figured out their patterns and behaviors, you could muddle your way through, even if you were weak. Wild monsters were beings of chaos, every single one of them a unique challenge. They would ravage towns, even cities, and had no boundaries to contain them. They attacked out of hunger, spite, or some other unknowable goal.

  Dungeon monsters at least had the decency not to chase you out of the dungeons. Once you left, the dungeon was done with you. That kind of security was a comfort to many dungeoneers. Wild monster slayers were a special kind of crazy.

  I finished up my snack, and returned to my room, and grabbed my things for the simulation run. I noticed that everyone else's gear was gone, so it looks like they were going to beat me there. No worries. Plenty of time. I checked my timepiece to be sure and swore. It had stopped ticking. I forgot to wind it! I cursed my oversight and grabbed everything quickly, stuffing it haphazardly into my bag.

  I swore again as I tore down the dorm hall with my gear bag in tow. It was undignified, but it was the middle of the day, and hopefully no one was around to see it.

  -

  The Simulation Hall was a massive building on the campus of Dungeon School. Its facilities could create a false dungeon, complete with magical constructs simulating monsters. It was a huge open area with a tiled floor that could raise up in various configurations to approximate the layout of a dungeon, and could even set up traps, locked doors, and more. It could even simulate flooding in some areas, fire traps (illusory of course), and more. It was a marvel of magical and mechanical engineering. Sadly, it could only do single floors, so no stairs. Yet. They were researching how to expand their simulations to multiple-floor dungeons, but that wouldn't likely appear during my time at the school.

  The only thing it couldn't simulate was the strange mana effects, which were still something of a mystery about the dungeons they were working out. It also didn't have a real core, so we couldn't easily practice proper pruning. That required a whole different setup.

  Today was about fighting and getting more confident in our skills in combat. I need my companions to be ready for anything, and Myth especially needed to build her combat confidence.

  I shuffled myself into the locker room area, changed into my armor, checked my sword, and tied my hair up as best I could to keep it out of the way.

  I came out of the locker room to see my companions waiting with a heavily muscled and tusked orc, the Dungeon Referee, looking irritated. To be fair, he always looked irritated. I imagine being in charge of a bunch of 20-somethings with little to no life experience all loaded up with swords and other sharp implements, with a helping of overconfidence and a poor concept of mortality was more than a little challenging.

  His name was Kugarth, no surname, and he would get upset if you called him mister or sir. You referred to him by name, and that was it. This, from what I remembered from my lessons on orc culture, their name served as a title and had a great deal of importance to them. Adding to it in any way was an insult. This had been the cause of many accidental fights amongst orcs new to the city, from what I had been told, but many learned to accept that many didn't know their ways.

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  Kugarth was a mountain of an orc. Scars and muscles, long bristled hair, and tusks. Orcs looked much like a large human, with a boar's head on top. As I said, he always had a stern look on his face, but I had learned through my interactions with him during previous times in the simulations, his sternness came from a place of concern. I wasn't clear as to his reasons, but he treated everyone as if we were his children, and to an orc that meant making sure we were strong.

  "Attention on me!" He barked at us. We snapped to, stood as rigidly as any soldiers in formation, and focused on him. Even Smitty followed suit, her permanent smile somehow turning serious.

  "You should know the rules by now, but just in case your little celebrations yesterday liquified your brains, let's go over them. One! Obey all Referee commands! Two! Do not use any high-level explosion spells! Three! If you need to stop, just shout out 'STOP' and the simulation will end! Four! Obey all Referee commands! Is that clear? Let me hear you!"

  "Yes, Kugarth! We understand!" We shouted back at him. It felt very similar to the training I had seen the house guards back home, but much less filled with insults and swear words.

  "Alta Marchesi! You have requested a combat-heavy dungeon today, is that correct?" He asked me after consulting a clipboard.

  "That is correct, Kugarth!" I responded quickly.

  "As the one who made the request, you are being designated the leader of your party during this exercise. You are tasked with making sure everyone makes it out in one piece! Do you understand your duties?" He glared at me right in the eye, and I glared right back at him.

  I knew he was doing this, both out of habit, but to get us used to the idea of danger, but I knew we would be ok. The look was to test my nerves, so to speak, to see if I would back down from the responsibility. I had learned that orcs were very keen on eye contact in much of their dealings with each other. I nodded in response, matching the intensity of his glare. I wasn't fond of being the leader, but I also wasn't going to back down. My pride, such as I had, demanded it. He grunted in as close to an approval as he could manage, and checked off something on his clipboard. He then handed it to each of us in turn to sign our names to it.

  Dungeon School was very fond of its forms, I had discovered. I shuddered to think of their records department. It was probably much like a dungeon itself.

  "Get into the staging area. When the light goes green, you may begin." He turned and walked off, and we likewise made our way to the indicated area.

  The staging area was a sealed box with a door, lit entirely by a red glow. The purpose of this was to get us ready for the dimmer conditions and to keep us from seeing the dungeon arrange itself. The layout was often randomized, and being able to see it from often provided an advantage.

  We set about checking each other's gear to make sure everyone had everything and it was fastened correctly.

  Myth had basic leather armor, light but strong enough in all the right areas. She normally didn't cast with anything but hand gestures, but apparently, she had gone out and gotten herself a staff with a focus crystal on it. Some mages found that funneling mana through a crystal first before casting helped with power and strained out some of the bad mana of a dungeon. No idea how true it was, but if it helped Myth, I didn't care if it was true or not. Thankfully, she also packed a dagger just in case.

  Smitty was clad in heavy plate armor, had her short spear, which was perfect for the narrow corridors of a dungeon, and a driver shield. A driver shield was a new bit of kit for her, but it was a very useful one. Smitty often acted as a defender of sorts for the rest of us, becoming an implacable wall as the rest of us used spells around her, and my blade caught whatever slipped around her. Her new shield had a mechanism that could drive a solid steel spike into the ground, strengthening her position and making it that much harder to move her. She could also use it to supplement damage if she used the edge of her shield to bash an enemy. As far as I knew ,she had never used one before, so it was going to be interesting adjusting to a change in her fighting style.

  Cori always had an interesting setup with her kit. It was leather armor, with cloth underneath, lots of belts and pouches, knives of multiple sizes, but the main thing that was always a standout was the strange crossbow she brought into dungeons. It was a normal size one, but it had a strange mechanism attached to it that would load a new bolt and cock the crossbow for her with the manipulation of side sort of sliding mechanism on the foregrip. It allowed her to pack a quiver full of bolts and fire them rapidly. She said she had invented it herself and was very secretive about the whole thing. She said they were common where she was from, but I felt a bit suspicious about that, but as per our policy with each other, I didn't pry any further.

  My kit was relatively simple. some plate armor, some cloth underneath, a dagger, my pouch of various things I would likely need in the dungeon, and my sword. My sword wasn't anything fancy, but I had been given it as a gift by one of my family's guards as I left the grounds. It was well made, unadorned, and weighted perfectly for me. I fought with it one-handed and kept my other free for casting spells. I had considered getting some kind of implement to go with it for focusing, but the one time I tried, it threw me off balance, and I never tried again. My fighting style I had largely adapted from both my spell training and sword training in my youth, and found that such a thing was not uncommon. Swordmages had specific schools of training, whereas sword-witches, as I was called, basically made up their own style. It was used as a term of derision in many places, but I wore the term with pride. I also thought it sounded mysterious and kind of neat, and I looked forward to using it in my self-promotion in the future.

  We each checked each other over, just in case someone missed something. All of us were satisfied.

  "You all ready to do this?" I asked, trying to keep my voice assured. We had never run a heavy combat simulation together before. Due to scheduling, we often just did pairs or at most trios. Even then, we focused on light combat, or trap and puzzle-heavy things. This was going to be different for all of us.

  "Ready as I can be," Myth said calmly. I couldn't smell her usual herbal scent. She was going into this clearer-headed than normal. Did she forget, or was she trying to wean herself off? No matter what, we would do our best.

  Smitty replied with an eager huff, which I interpreted as an affirmative. Cori just nodded at me as she checked her crossbow repeatedly.

  The silence stretched on for what felt like forever, and we just sat there waiting.

  The light turned green, and the door flew open.

  "Lets do this, ladies!" and we filed out of the room quickly and eagerly.