Arsenal was… kind of boring. By the time our crew made landfall and had eaten dinner, there wasn’t much to do aside from go to bed or start drinkin’. The rest of my group chose the latter, but I didn’t feel up to abusing my brand new liver on the eve of our hundred mile jog.

Instead, I went to my room to try and snag my tenth point of Strength by doing pushups, but after I got past one-thousand without any dip to my stamina, I figured that it wasn’t accomplishing anything. After discovering that I could now perform infinite pushups and was capable of handily winning any competition of arbitrary masculinity I was confronted with, I headed out to buy something that I’d forgotten to bring with me on the journey.

Exercise equipment.

Despite the late-night hours, I was able to find a few merchants who used the benefits of glowstone illumination to ward off the curse of blindness inflicted by the fearsome entity known as dusk, and who bribed the guards to let them stay open late and leave their clientele alone.

So, I bought a two-wheeled horse-drawn wagon, horse not included, and filled it up with fishing boat anchors.

I stuffed it into my Closet training room, removed the wheels, attached some rope, and started doing sled pulls, sled pushes, sled rows, sled presses, sled curls, and so many other sled-related exercises that I became one with my inner Siberian Husky and was overwhelmed with a desire to plow snow and howl at the moon.

I gave up some sleep to get it done, but was finally rewarded with a System message full of unfiltered disappointment at some point between the hours of “why are you up, go to bed” and “fuck it, might as well make breakfast”.

Why are you like this?

We know your ability says you gain stats through training, but do you know how boring you’re being? This was supposed to be a filler episode where you find a mutually beneficial solution to your problem by helping out the simple folk of Arsenal with a variety of laborious tasks using your heroic might!

They would have been both awed AND amazed at your feats of strength as you hoisted entire barrels full of wine onto an inappropriately high shelf! Old Man Tymithy’s horse just went lame and you could have helped him deliver a distressed crate of seafood! Now that fish is gonna’ spoil. You think Old Man Tymithy can afford ice?!

It was a whole fucking side-quest!

But, no.

You made a sled. And moved it around a bunch.

I’d tell you to go to hell, but you’re already a citizen for fuck’s sake.

You’ve earned +1 to Strength!

“Wow.”

Great, you have a Strength of ten. Congratulations, you earned it by being a gym rat.

By reaching a score of ten, you gain the trait Leverage! Leverage lets you use your Strength in ways that are normally dumb under the laws of physics. “That guy only weighs 100 kilos! It doesn’t matter how strong he is, how can he stop the momentum of a moving train?” Magic, that’s how.

Also, choose an evolution:

1) Nimean Weapon: Your Strength-based attacks are considered magical unless you choose otherwise. When you choose this evolution, select one offensive spell you know. You may add the effect of this spell to a Strength-based weapon attack for 1.25x its normal cost, rounded up. This spell originates at the point of impact.

2) Augean Effort: Your Strength score is considered doubled when used to alter terrain or structures.

3) Lernean Teamwork: Entities damaged by your Strength-based attacks take bonus damage from allies equal to your Strength score.

Now go fight something! I’m tired of this slice-of-life bullshit.

[You know,] I thought to Grotto, who was looking over the options with me, [I’m not sure I understand how these abilities work.]

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

[Really? You’re confused by this? The descriptions are exceedingly straight-forward, to the point where I believe that you should try to agitate the System more often.]

[No, I get what the abilities are saying, but not how they mesh with what you told me earlier. If my Strength score is based on the development of my mana veins and matrix, then how can I choose an evolution that doubles the score in relation to certain tasks, the way Augean Effort does?]

[There are two primary flaws in your understanding. First, the idea that magically-based systems follow an organized logic that is wholly trackable and predictable. I believe Seinnador already attempted to disabuse you of this notion, but I see that the guidance did not take.

[Second, mana may act in more potent ways when gathered in sufficient density and structured so as to invoke specific restrictions. Here, the ability only applies toward terrain and structures, so its application may become more potent.]

[Huh. You’re pretty helpful when you decide to answer my questions in a straight-forward way.]

[I will endeavor to continue holding your hand as though you are a dullard. We cannot rule creation if you are ill-informed!]

[Your recent mean-streak is less helpful…]

[My words are given with no malice. If you do not appreciate the honesty then you may refrain from seeking my guidance.]

[You’d just give it to me anyway.]

There was a moment of mental silence, where I imagined Grotto was waggling his tentacles within the Pocket Delve.

[Yes, you are right. I would.]

[Well, good time to remind myself that there is a mute button for this relationship.]

Nimean Weapon was cool. If I took it, every mundane melee weapon in my inventory would become capable of bypassing the basic level of resistance granted by Fortitude. The ability didn’t passively improve damage, however, but it gave the option of adding a spell to my attacks.

The most obvious choice was picking Oblivion Orb and adding it to a two-handed weapon to put a little range on the spell without dumping half my mana bar into mana shaping it. It would still tick up the cost from five to seven (damn you upward rounding, it should only cost six-point-two-five, where does the other point-seven-five go?!), but that was still a lot cheaper than the ranged edition of the spell I’d used on the c’thon.

Sure, it couldn’t hit a target from across the room, BUT, what counted as a Strength attack? What if I threw something really, really hard? Would that still work?

Augean Effort looked… exploitable. The word “alter” could mean a lot of things. Also, having my Strength score doubled likely did a lot more than just doubling how strong I was. My lifting capacity had been improving by ever greater increments with each new point of Strength.

Stats were, at least in some ways, geometric. Going from a twenty Strength to a forty may be more like a five times multiplier to the force I could apply, rather than a measly doubling. Going from forty to eighty? Yee-haw.

I salivated over the thought of busting through walls while yelling “Oh yeeeeaaaah!” like the motherfucking Kool-Aid man. I was already rehearsing my inflection for when I inevitably plowed through a door screaming “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”

It would also be good for creating traps, constructing defensive fortifications, building all sorts of other wacky shit, and landscaping.

Lernean Teamwork was the choice for a consistent boost to party damage. I already gave one buff to my team from Who Needs a Cleric? This would stack a damage modifier on top.

However, I wasn’t planning on mainlining Strength attacks. It was helpful for now because of my training stats, but the one thing I knew for certain was that I planned on using spells for a lot of my fighting. A plan that had, thus far, not been executed as well as it could have. I really needed more mana.

Also, Lernean Teamwork was boring, and the best catchphrase that I could come up for it was “Teamwork makes the dream work and our dream is that you fucking die!” Way too long.

I selected Nimean Weapon comboed with Oblivion Orb, because I wanted to hit things with a reality-erasing hammer. That sounded swell.

The following morning our group gathered at the eastern gate of Arsenal and the run toward the mountains was exactly as entertaining as you’d think it would be.

There were shitty roads, wide and fertile plains, farmland, cattle, horses, a butterfly that was fucking on fire and burned like hell when you got too close, and all the variety afforded by rural pasture and grassland.

My single solace for the mind-numbing jog was a delectable +1 SPD notification, which brought the stat up to seven. I wouldn’t make ten before the cave, but I’d already made more progress on the trip than I thought I would have.

We hit the pass north of Ravvenblaq, then turned west, moving along the wooded southern edge of the mountains, and made it to our meet-up point a day early. The night was filled with a thick sense of tense antici…pation as we set up camp a mile deep into the forest and prepared ourselves for what we might face on the ‘morrow.