Connor had already decided they were leaving.

  Not should leave. Not maybe leaving. Leaving. Immediately. While they still could. While most of their people were still upright and breathing.

  The ops team’s arrival should have been the end of it. That had been their moment to run. The team had appeared from nowhere and poured around the transfixed group of trainees, and even yelled at them all to run.

  Connor had tried to pull his team away at that point, tried to make them listen, but everyone wanted to watch the ops team save them.

  Throwing back their cloaks, the team had drawn weapons and pushed the bear back down the path like they had been trained for this very moment. Maybe they had. They were using big guns. Assault rifles of some kind. And, although Connor knew little about guns, they were the first visible Earth tech he had seen on Earth3.

  Then the ops team went down. It happened so fast. They were winning, then they were dead.

  Seeing the last man go down—still visible on the path, leg bent wrong and unmoving—was the point where Connor’s brain finally caught up to reality. This wasn’t the forest challenge anymore and now there was a body count.

  “We need to go,” Connor hissed, loud and urgent, watching as Ethan and Brandon fell back into the trees even as he spoke. “Now! This is done. The flag isn’t worth it.”

  Emily didn’t answer right away. She was staring down the path, eyes unfocused, hands clenched so tight around her weapon that her knuckles had gone white. Brandon swallowed hard and nodded, but he didn’t move.

  “No one’s calling it,” Brandon said. His voice sounded thin. “They’re still—”

  “—they’re still idiots,” Connor snapped, harsher than he meant to. He forced his voice back down. “Look at it. Look at that thing. Even the ops team is out. That was the line.” He looked around at his team, shocked that he was having to try and convince them. “That was the line guys. We go now or we’re all dead.”

  The bear moved again, stiff and enormous, half-dragging one wounded leg but still very much alive and very angry.

  Connor felt a sickening mix of adrenaline and clarity. The path behind them was clear enough and the forest to either side was dense but navigable.

  They could still leave. But ahead, Alex and the rest of A Class weren’t retreating—they stepped forward and made a line across the path. Crazy.

  He had just started backing up when Emily rushed up to join them, standing behind Alex and Sarah, hand raised to launch a blast of her radiant energy bracers. As he watched her go though, he saw something that made him pause.

  There, on the ground at the edge of the path, was the flag. For half a second his brain refused to process what he was seeing. The flag just lay there on the dirt and leaves. Alex must have tossed it aside at some point and no one was paying it any attention. He quickly moved over and squatted beside it. After examining it for a moment, he unclipped the fabric from the pole with quick motions and stuffed it into a pouch at his belt. The pole he tossed into the underbrush, over a nearby fallen log. No sense leaving it behind.

  Ahead, the bear roared again and Connor felt a sharp, unexpected twist in his chest. He didn’t like Alex. He’d never liked Alex. He was too quiet, too confident, too earnest, too willing to step into the spotlight. And he always acted like leadership was just his, no question. It was infuriating that everyone seemed to just listen to him, making him right more often than not.

  He stood back up as Alex started shouting orders. Connor grimaced despite himself.

  Alex’s voice cut through the chaos, grabbing everyone’s attention—clear, pitched, confident. Connor hated that it worked. Hated that people responded immediately, that even those who looked half-shattered and completely terrified; they still moved when Alex spoke.

  Spread out. Don’t stack. Leave a lane.

  Connor scowled. It was a good strategy. Not flashy maybe, but they were all in survival mode here now. But the fact that they were building a strategy and not running was insane.

  Connor eased back to the rear, shield up, sword low, watching.

  He told himself again that the best play here was for them to all scatter. Run in every direction. The bear might get one or two of them, and that was awful, but the rest could make it back to basecamp. Or at least survive long enough for a bigger team to come in and deal with the bear.

  Mel started to play, hands shaking, and he felt a strange pressure ripple through him like static under the skin. He had no idea what she was doing but he didn’t like being messed with and that instrument was built to do something—he could feel it.

  As much as he didn’t like it though, it seemed to work on the bear, which slowed and tilted its head to look at them.

  Connor swallowed. Good. That’s good. Now it’s time to go. He took a step back, about to yell out that they should all run again. Ethan and Brandon were standing in the trees aiming towards the bear. He could probably convince them though.

  But then it was too late. The bear charged and the two classes responded. Immediately the air was filled with streaks of light racing towards the animal, exploding across its head and shoulders—hardly slowing it down. Connor didn’t understand how though, he could feel the thumps from some of those impacts in his chest even as far away as he was.

  Then the bear just vanished, again, and Connor felt his stomach drop.

  “Move,” Jay yelled from the front of the group and everyone scrambled for the edges of the path. Connor didn’t need to be told twice. He threw himself sideways into the brush, rolling, coming up with his shield raised and his sword angled forward.

  The bear reappeared almost on top of where Alex’s line had been. Since joining Dungeon Inc. and learning the truth of Earth3, Connor had imagined the monster fights he would have. Slimes, giant frogs, goblins, ogres and more. He had rewatched all the old episodes of the show during his time back on Earth and memorized each monster's habits and tactics. He had thought through how he would approach each battle…

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  But this? This fight was different. The bear had shrugged off everything that had been thrown at it. It was a killing machine. Its tactics were superior armour, brute force and unending aggression. Plus it seemed to have magic and could teleport. Other than Jay's massive axe, their weapons barely hurt it. It hadn’t liked the ops team's rifles, but mostly ignored them as easily as the arrows jutting out of its hide. Connor had no plan for this. No strategy for dealing with something that was closer to a force of nature than it was a creature.

  But there stood Alex, just behind Jay and Sarah, directing everyone's action. Still casting, still holding everyone together. Looking, for all the world and the viewers back home, like he was in complete control of the situation. Connor didn’t like him, but it was hard to not admire him, just a little, in this moment. At least, right up until the moment the bear turned and swatted Alex like he was a bad puppy.

  Connor’s breath caught as Alex went down hard on the edge of the path—tumbling and sliding across the ground. He lay there, convulsing and although Connor couldn’t see him very well from where he was standing, he could imagine the massive wounds those claws would have just caused.

  It was too late to run now. He knew it. They were probably all going to end up like Alex. But maybe if he helped, they would be able to keep the bear busy long enough for the next ops team to get to them.

  With that thought, he moved. You didn’t have to like your team. You didn’t have to be friends. But you had to have each other's backs when things went south. Connor had played competitive sports his entire life. And while A Class was ‘the other’ team most of the time, for this fight they had joined up—and you took care of your teammates. That belief was wired deeper than his newer dislike for Alex or any one person.

  He watched Sarah grab Alex and haul him backwards just as the bear slammed into the ground where they had been. Jay screamed Alex’s name and ran around the bear to plant himself between his fallen friend and the enormous, roaring threat. He screamed right back at the bear though and swung his axe about in giant looping arcs designed more to hold the bear in place than hit it.

  Shit Connor thought. He hated Alex and he liked Jay, but he didn’t want to see either of them dead. Then he was running and there was no more room for thought. He surged forward with all the speed he could muster and arrived just as the bear reared back, off balance but with one paw about to descend down onto Jay.

  He lifted his shield to block the raised arm. The impact when his shield met the bear’s paw rattled his bones all the way down his back. The force nearly drove him to one knee, but he held his footing and, shrugging the paw off to the side, stabbed upwards into the thick muscle of the bear’s neck as he lunged inside its reach. Hot blood sprayed across his arm, slick and steaming.

  The bear bellowed and staggered.

  Jay’s axe came down in a blur, the head accelerating unnaturally at the last second. Connor thought he could feel the shockwave, as the axe tore into the bear’s already wounded side. The monster reared back from the blow but quickly returned in a ferocious attack.

  Dancing sideways as the bear slammed back towards the ground, Connor slashed hard at a falling limb. He felt resistance give way and smiled as the animal recoiled yet again.

  This wasn’t a duel. It was a pile-on. Arrows thudded into flesh. Hiro appeared beside the bear and actually punched it in the face with a glowing fist as Brandon and Emily blasted away with their long range attacks. Sarah seemed to be everywhere at once, blade flashing relentlessly.

  Connor wasn’t sure how much damage the bear was actually taking, this wasn’t like a video game and there was no health bar hovering over the animal’s head that he could look at, but it was starting to back up.

  Connor saw it in the way the bear darted its eyes around the group, the way its weight shifted. This wasn’t a predator pressing an advantage anymore. It was now an animal looking for an exit. It was unbelievable, but together they were somehow winning.

  Jay took the first step towards the bear as it backed up but Connor and Sarah stayed by his side, each of them swinging and poking at the animal as it moved.

  Behind them, Alex shouted for everyone to move and they jumped to the sides as a wave of energy rolled down the path. Connor was shocked to see him up again, but there was no time for that as he jumped off the path. He couldn’t see what Alex did, but he felt it rip past him. Whatever it was felt electric and made all the hair on his arms stand on end.

  Ahead, the bear had more of a reaction. It looked like it had been kicked by something much larger than itself. Its head snapped up and back and its body followed as it rolled backwards onto its rear haunches.

  Jay didn’t miss the opening. Neither did Connor or Sarah as they lunged forward and drove their swords into the bear's chest, jumping back out of the way of its claws again before it could react.

  The bear roared and stumbled back a step. Then another. And then, as they continued to harry it, the animal reared up, spun around and fled. Crashing into the forest, awkward and stumbling on its wounded legs, it tore a hole through the undergrowth with a furious, pained roar and disappeared.

  Still, Connor held his stance long after the sound faded. His hands were shaking. He looked down at them, then at the path, at the blood and torn earth. He looked around at the people still standing, amazed that Alex was there, apparently unwounded.

  Slowly, he reached back and touched the pouch at his belt, feeling the folded fabric of the flag inside and smiled. It had turned out to be a good day after all.

  ***

  The training cycle for Dungeon Inc. is four weeks long.

  The program runs four weeks because any less makes it difficult for enough meaningful change in any of the trainees, even using the ANIP technology as a base for improvement. Any longer and the Dungeon Inc. audience starts to lose their emotional investment in these new, periodically appearing characters.

  So, four weeks. Four weeks to shape who they will become and four weeks to give them the best chance possible for survival in this new world.

  The first week focuses on training compression and physical conditioning. Trainees learn what is expected from them, receive their specialized equipment, and start settling into team roles. The ANIP accelerates their learning and training, amplifying every effort made. They learn what that means and how to trust it.

  The Forest Challenge, held on the second weekend, is their first public event—their official introduction to the Dungeon Inc. audience. It is not generally dangerous, but rather, designed to push the trainees and introduce them to the realities of their jobs as adventurers.

  For the first time they are out on their own in uncontrolled terrain with incomplete information, limited skills and only basic formed teamwork habits. And the threats they encounter are very real. The challenge teaches them a lot of invaluable lessons about their new reality that we can’t do in the training yards. Two of the most important are: how quickly theory and planning collapses in the wild, and how quickly the audience forms an unshakable opinion about you.

  After the Forest Challenge, there are two more major events before they graduate into full fledged adventurers and get their own chapter house.

  On the third weekend, trainees enter the Tournament. These matches are set up in a standard ladder structure and televised. Trainees fight one another for ranked rewards like special equipment, sponsorship attention, and influence over future team assignments.

  In the tournament, teams are stripped away just as everyone is starting to get used to relying on them. The trainees are pushed to their absolute limits and beyond through a long series of one-on-one fights that test their resolve, their will and their skills. The tournament creates storylines for the production team, but also lets us trainers see exactly what each trainee is going to be capable of in the future.

  The final weekend of training ends with the Trainee Dungeon.

  That name makes it sound pretty tame, but that is rarely the case. The dungeon is a minimally maintained pocket realm located near the village. Its structure changes a little between cohorts, although we’re still not sure how that works. Every team enters knowing the general shape of what waits for them, but not what they will find within those walls. The Dungeon will be populated with unknown mobs. We don’t even know where the mobs come from, and they are often different. Most of us believe these dungeons are porous and Earth3 is only one of the worlds they open up on… Regardless, the teams have to fight their way to the dungeon core (some bauble the production team sets up) and extract it.

  Those who clear the dungeon graduate. That’s when the real adventuring begins and by this point they are almost ready for it.

  Personal Program Notes

  Nathaniel “Nate” Cho

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