He is going to Look Away from the............guiding activity............and focus on the training. Anyway, once they reach their destination, Conrad will unblindfold Aumento.

"Using the markings, figure out the way to the dungeon entrance." He will really need to know the markings this time, because one of them points to a false wall that you have to push on to reveal the correct way through. Also, he laid it out specifically to defeat the common 'follow the right wall' technique by not making the maze simply connected and by having the dungeon exit not be on the outside edge. Well, the training hall's exit is on the outside edge, but the fake dungeon exit isn't.

Okay.  Tim is fine.  He does take a second to get his head in the game and his other head out of it.  But he’s good.  It turns out that if you try to distract yourself from mediocre cod with dungeon sign flashcards on an app, you can successfully navigate a dungeon!  He almost overshoots one sign, but he successfully gets the ‘secret door’ without too much trouble.

"You have a good memory and good spatial awareness. Great work."

Now, Conrad will take out his phone. The DRT maintains an app to keep track of dungeons and espers — there are a bunch of different systems and apps that do the same thing, but they mostly have interoperability with each other because these need to be able to manage international espers and dungeons.

All these apps have at least some form of mapping software. Sometimes, dungeon layouts are simple enough that explicit mapping isn't necessary. But many dungeons are large or labyrinthine enough, or have some sort of complication, like being dark, such that it's necessary. And it's especially necessary if a single squad can't clear it in one go and has to do a handover. Conrad can show Tim how to operate it to mark the basic layout, dangers, secret doors, monster locations (though that isn't relevant now), dangerous terrain, Z-level changes, landmarks, and so on. The convention in dungeon maps is that the direction the entrance points to is always "north", and that the entrance is at the bottom of the map.

He'll ask Tim to input the path from the place they were at to the dungeon exit. He can traverse the path again if he likes to make sure it's correct.

That one is a lot harder.  He manages it until about halfway through, accidentally interprets a left as a right, and it all falls apart after that.

Yes, he definitely would like to traverse it again!!  And then is a little disappointed when he realizes he got the map wrong.

No problem! He's free to traverse it again and to use the previous markings as guides. It's better to do it all in one go, since this minimizes the time and attention you need to spend on mapping, but typically people stop every so often to update it. Conrad has the route memorized but that's in significant part because he's had four years of experience doing this.

Conrad will not point out the place where he made a mistake unless Tim requests a hint.

Right.  Once more, with feeling. This time he realizes the mistake he made, but that’s using scuff marks on top of the display.  Cool.  This is a really good training course, Tim can tell by how bad he is at this version of orienteering.

Conrad will check his work and pronounce his approval. "Great work. You're learning quickly! And this is your first time receiving any formal dungeoneering training?" He looks at Aumento and then at Sinkhole.

"At this rate, I'm going to have to come up with more things to test you on to fill up the time — I had planned a very stripped down, only-the-very-basics curriculum."

Carol is very proud of her puppy and more than a little smug.  “I’ve been working with him for about a month now.  I’ve been teaching him my style of dungeoneering for a little bit, but he could stand a little formal polish.”  Tim gets a little hair-ruffle.

Tim responds by gently attempting to armlock his partner and ruffle her hair in turn.  The conversation carries on like they aren’t roughhousing casually.  He’s used to it by now.  “Sinkhole’s pretty good at what she does, but she’s specialized.  I’m probably going to be a bodyguard, so I need to fit into all kinds of compositions, and I’ll probably have a DRT or SWAT team sometime as well.  So I need to learn to interface with them.”

This is certainly one of the guiding dynamics of all time.

"Teaching that is a little more difficult because, even though there's SOP, teams naturally get into dynamics." He looks at his watch. It's late afternoon.

"I'm going to teach you one last thing which is very important, and then we can end for the day."

And Conrad will proceed to teach Aumento about dungeon bureaucracy! Yes, even mighty fearsome espers must still do it, even more so if you're just a regular DRT officer. It differs based on jurisdiction, obviously, and Conrad will teach him the American forms, but basically all countries have variations on these.

There's a huge list of boxes in the forms, though some of them are optional. The map is one of these things.

You add tags on the dungeon based on its parameters, like its size and specific dangers (monsters, psychic ability, environmental hazards, shifting layout, etc.). Determination of rank is determined by central command and not field operatives, but you can make recommendations about what rank it ought to have.

If you abort the mission due to danger, you can suggest which espers you think should be fielded — the app contains an esper database of those who have registered to help out the US DRT.

You also write down the number of kidnappees, injuries and fatalities among those and among your own crew.

You also write down what you yourself actually did. Where you went, what your role was. 

There are also additional forms that sometimes pop up that ask you certain weird questions — these are basically from dungeon researchers who want to obtain data. They can pull from action camera recordings — by the way, there is a place to upload that in the form — but sometimes they want to ask about your impression of the dungeon, or your feelings, so on and so forth. Technically, filling out those questions isn't required, but it's strongly encouraged because it's for the sake of Dungeon Science. 

oh no

Carol to the rescue!  Her take on these, is that you don’t actually need most of the form on any given dungeon.  She has a personal system that involves throwing out the parts of the form she doesn’t need, so it’s less scary than it looks at first glance.

For example, her last dungeon had major monsters, tons of traversals, but no environmental hazards other than falling.  So she only needed these sections…

That's a very good system! The form has actually has collapsible sections — Conrad forgot to show that functionality. Just be sure to put "not applicable" or "none significant" and not leave it empty. He will attempt to impress upon Aumento that the value of spending all this time writing is both to communicate information for people who will take over from you, and to provide data for your future self and researchers to improve dungeoneering in the future. You need to feed the statisticians good data! The future matters just as much as clearing dungeons in the present.

Conrad can either wait for Tim to fill it out, or he can take it to their silo as 'homework' and send it to Conrad before they meet again tomorrow.

Can he have three of these to do for homework, actually?  He can pretend he’s Sinkhole’s secretary and take notes on some of her dungeons for practice.  And then show them to Ferrer tomorrow, time permitting.

"Hm...I had only planned for you to do one for each day, but today you can do a form for the obstacle course with dangerous terrain, and this maze dungeon. Feel free to refer to the dungeon cameras to refresh your memory — we do this, too."

“Okay, that makes sense.  I appreciate it - I just really have to study to make sure this kind if thing sticks, you know?”

Carol smoothly takes a half step behind him and rolls her eyes at Ferrer.  Dungeon signs false at him where Tim can’t see her hand.

Conrad is confused??? Is Sinkhole trying to say that Aumento doesn't actually appreciate it? Did he feel...pressured...somehow, by Conrad? Both Sinkhole and Aumento are looking at him, though, so he can't sign back without Aumento seeing.

"I'm only strictly asking you to do the maze dungeon one. No need to do the other — I'm going to give you more practice in the coming days, anyway."

He looks a little off-put, did I say something wrong?  “I definitely want to do a few, so I know I’m getting it done correctly.  But if I’m getting the opportunity to do several anyway, maybe I don’t need to do extra.”

Great, I put my foot in it.  Hand in it.  Whatever.  “Timothy, you need to give yourself some credit, here.  You’ll have tons of opportunities to write these.  Hundreds or thousands of them.  It’s just a multiple choice quiz with an essay section and you can’t get it wrong.  Just report what you saw and call it good.”  She steps back in front of him and gives him a gentle-ish hip-bump of solidarity.

Given Ferrer’s Judo training, he might recognize that hip-bump as a potential start of a hip throw, if she’d bothered to follow through with it.

"Yes. For all that I talked up the importance of filling out the form correctly — which is true! — this is one of the few components of DRT life that won't lead to you getting injured or killed if you mess it up."

Conrad does recognize it but he doesn't comment on it, because they clearly have a very touchy dynamic going on. Which, like, he kind of gets it. Touching a compatible esper feels good. It's kind of awkward to look at, though.

He gives a somewhat reassured nod.  “Sounds good.  We’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

If Tim knew they were making Ferrer uncomfortable he would make Carol cut it out, but since he has no idea he won’t stop her!  Alas, preference expression is a difficult art.

"Do you want me to escort you to the mess hall or your silo or do you want to do so on your own?" Technically speaking it is his duty to escort them, but he has to do cleanup here and it seems like they both aren't liable to get lost or liable to get snoopy. It's extremely irresponsible of him, but. He is feeling kind of lazy and tired today.

“I think we can make it back on our own.  It’ll be part of my orienteering training, in case I ever get into a military base dungeon, right?  I mean, you can come with if you want to.  But.  You don’t have to?”

"Alright. Either of you can text me if you get lost. I'm going to begin cleaning up now and setting up the space for tomorrow."