I spent the week making money and delivering wings to my new best friend. The material wasn’t worth all that much to him since nobody in their right mind would pay silver for spandex clothing, but I didn’t let that bother me. Honestly it was easy enough to ignore those little insults and criticisms when I was decked out in the sexiest, most comfortable, most practical outfit this world had ever seen.

“You look ridiculous.”

Jim laughed, no doubt jealous of my style and his new more taciturn replacement. Not that I could convince Reichken to join us, even when I offered to pay. The short maybe-dwarf clearly had no interest in the types of things that made people smile.

“I can’t hear you over the sound of how amazing I look.”

“That makes no sense,” Jim insisted, sounding absolutely ridiculous and looking totally bland with his boring clothes. “You’re talking crazy, Law, but that’s just every day for you.”

My buddy insulted me to my face while drinking a beer I paid for. Meanwhile, my new favorite person had completely shunned my invitation and refused to even pretend to have an excuse. Yep, it’s good to have friends.

“With my well toned muscles, a tight form fitting material that still breathes and has room for flexibility is a must. Not only does it show off how handsome I am, it even allows me to fight in it without tearing my clothes! I can even sprint around without getting naked!”

My buddy just smiled and nodded, sipping his beer more quickly the longer I went on.

“And all for the low price of twenty five silver.”

Not quickly enough it seemed, since he spat out a mouthful at that.

“You paid what?!”

I waved him down while also getting the attention of a waiter, pointing to give my buddy a much needed refill.

“You can’t put a price on looking good, Jim. Some things are priceless.”

He was coughing through the pain, clearly unprepared for ale to go down the wrong pipe. It wasn’t my fault that these people didn’t know a good thing when they saw it.

Fortunately, a gentleman came by and saved him from his untimely fate, giving him more ale to wash down the old. After a few pulls from his mug, Jim was back in the world of the living.

“You’re pissing your coin away,” were his first words, proving it had been a waste of time to revive him.

“Rude.”

That earned a sigh from him as he shrugged, obviously unprepared to argue from such a losing position. It may have also been possible that he wasn’t all that motivated to make me see the value of money on account of the whole ‘me buying him dinner and beer’ situation. That would also make sense.

“Anyways, how’s guard life? Is that like your profession or a class?”

Not that I was any better. I was still trying to fish for information. The bees were starting to give me so little experience that I knew I was tapping out soon. That combined with the incredibly lackluster stat gains I’d gotten was making me feel nervous about my abilities. As much as I’d tried pushing myself this past week, all I’d succeeded was making a lot of money. Which while nice didn’t help kill gods.

Probably. Maybe I could subcontract out the job though if I got rich enough. Something to think about.

“You know better than to ask those questions, right? Maybe you don’t but everyone else does. It’s bad form.”

I ordered him another round preemptively as an apology. Halfway through his next drink I tried another tactic.

“How strong are regular people? Like somebody who works for a living and doesn’t jump through dungeons for monster bits. Are they really weak compared to you?”

That got the guard to puff out his chest with pride, exactly the sort of reaction I was aiming for.

“Oh yea. I apprehend people on occasion and anyone who isn’t a stabilizer is pretty weak in comparison. Of course, I get a buff when I’m enforcing the law, but I’d be able to take most of them without it.”

Well that answered a few of my questions. Jim obviously had a profession or class for being a guard and it had a lot more abilities than mine did. Maybe I was doing something wrong or maybe the more advanced classes just got more goodies than brawler and pugilist. Either way, that all but guaranteed that he was a higher level than me. That left only one more thing to test.

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“No way. You? My muscles are twice the size of yours.”

“Really now?” My friend slurred his words just a little bit, and I prepared to prove my point. Pushing the mugs out of the way, I slammed my elbow down on the table and posed for the ultimate strength challenge. No cheats, no techniques, no buffs, just good old fashioned arm wrestling.

“Definitely. You couldn’t out muscle me if you tried. I’d bet a silver on it. Knowing you’ll lose and how poor you are, I’d put my coin against one of your copper.”

That got his attention, bringing him to put his elbow on the table as well. I really was more muscled than him, but my gains since coming here hadn’t changed my appearance. That being the case, there was no way to know for sure just how strong anyone was. At least, not without testing them directly.

“My good man,” I called out to a passing waiter. “Would you count down for us? I’ll tip you three coppers.”

The young man nodded happily and posed as our referee. He did a pretty good job too, placing his hand over ours before counting down.

“Three! Two! One! Go!”

Jim was a lot stronger than I’d given him credit for. With my full strength pitted against his, he still maintained a deadlock for a full couple of seconds. So long as his enforcement buff wasn’t tiny, he could probably take me in a fight if I broke the law. That was… concerning.

His hand hit the wood first, and I bellowed out a war cry. Hell, there was a chance that he could take me even without the buff so long as he was sober. I definitely needed to get stronger.

Using my new copper to pay for the losers next round cheered him up and hopefully let him forget the embarrassment. Once again, my good friend had given me some incredibly important information.

After we’d finished up for the night and Jim headed home, I made my way out of town with my sack full of chains and rope. I hadn’t met any new lady friends or anything, but I had come up with an idea for weight training. While I was planning to break down some trees with my armored hands, I also purchased an ax to bring with me as well.

The goal was simple. Knock down some trees, make even blocks of wood, tie them together, and do squats. If that turned out to be too easy, then I had the chains for attaching more weight at the ends. Maybe that would be more trees. Maybe it would be big rocks. Either way, I was determined to make a gym.

Getting to the forest with my sexy, opaque, blue spandex outfit was incredibly easy and the speed of it was incredible. My carapace armor didn’t even slow me down, designed as it was around movement. Once I was face to face with my wooden opponent, I slipped the bag off my shoulders and withdrew my caestus, as Reichken had called them.

They were basically like hard mittens that were normally curled almost into fists with enough flexibility to wear and fully clench, like those martial artist gloves except designed to cause more pain instead of less. I doubted they’d protect me from frostbite, but hopefully things like that were restricted to survival mode.

I hadn’t used my new weapons yet since all I was killing were bees. With my improved strength, I was already overkilling them so adding a weapon just seemed excessive. But a tree on the other hand, that would be a good target. A day of punches and kicks had barely damaged one of these in the past, but I was stronger now. With my weapon in hand, I got into my fighting stance with legs spread and my shoulder back.

“Straight.”

My body rotated on its own, giving the attack more power than I’d never been able to achieve before getting the skill. The dark blue material covering my fist collided into the trunk of a tree wider than I was, and a loud crack filled the air. Emboldened by my power, I began to practice some light combos.

“Jab. Straight. Jab. Jab. Straight.”

The tree never stood a chance, accepting the beating it was owed. It knew I was here for revenge, for justice, for repaying the pain and humility of not being able to punch it down in the past. That, or it was a sedentary object with no means of protesting.

I burned daylight doing nothing but assaulting the tree as fast as I could. As far as my combo skill went, I really needed more variety. Not just because of the positioning of my body and how strong a proper uppercut or cross would be in those positions, but also because of cooldowns. A jab was fast, way faster than the five second cooldown on my straight. That being the case, I had to throw in five jabs for each straight, unless I was willing to throw pathetic unnamed punches. But why would I do that when my skills could do this?

The tree has cracked and fallen over after only a half day long assault. The mighty oak or whatever it was simply couldn’t handle ten hours of abuse from these hands.

Retrieving my ax, I got to work on the real business. Sadly, I was no lumberjack. Despite the incredible size of the original block of wood, I managed to get almost nothing usable out of it. Sure I was strong, but I had no technique whatsoever. That being the case, my improvements were more a liability than a benefit. It was annoying.

Determined to grind out a useful skill, I spent the rest of the daylight and all night chopping down trees with my fists. When morning arrived again, I took my ax to the recently felled victims. Hours later and still no skill.

Part of me wondered if there was a more practical way to do this, which I already knew there was. If I used the ax the whole time then I’d improve my skill with it faster, but that would defeat some of the purpose here. I knew, or at least suspected, that mastering my jab skill was what allowed me to become a pugilist. If that was the case, then my number one priority was to master straight. Getting yoked at the gym would be a needed step before my next level up, but I could figure that out eventually. Hell, with enough money I could probably buy a solution.

There weren’t any substitutes for personal power. If I messed up my advancement then I’d have to take a basic class or a sketchy advanced one. Neither of those was appealing to me, and I’d yet to find an enemy that could take a jab without dying.

Maybe it was time to finally broaden my horizons. Boldly go where some men have gone before but hopefully not too many. Not the caves of darkness where sketchy looking adventurers consider whether or not to mug you, but someplace new.

With a sigh, I took off my caestus and stuffed them in my bag. Ax back in hand, I started chopping down the trees the normal and boring way. If I was going to try something new and more dangerous, I’d need to get jacked first.