And now, it’s time for the last thing you’d ever expect: SCIENCE!

Back on Earth, in my quest to become a more resplendent ball of ultra-lean swagyu beef, I used to go on preworkout-fuelled research binges to try and max out my gym stats. To my dismay, what I eventually discovered was that

You can’t have it all

At the highest levels of competition, training for strength trades off with looking as good as possible. And the real rub is, training for longevity trades off with both. Your body just can’t handle all that extra baggage. Strutting around a stage at a super low bodyfat percentage is a burden on your whole system. So is waddling down the street like a domesticated manatee, deadlifting cars for fun while your heart plans an early retirement. Of course, most people who build this amount of muscle aren’t doing it naturally. I won’t say that what they’re doing is morally wrong - Actually, I can kinda see where all the steroid voodoo dolls are coming from. Like, suppose that you aren’t a very special human being. Average grades, average job. Left to your own devices, you would live, then drop dead, and nobody would give a singular fuck - least of all a woman. But by taking steroids, you can make a sort of deal with the devil. Your fire is gonna burn out faster, but you’ll burn a whole lot brighter while you do. Maybe bright enough to catch the attention of somebody special. For some people, it’s better than the life of loneliness and mediocrity they would have otherwise been destined for. It’s all a tradeoff.

Every muscle in your body is a tradeoff as well. According to a bunch of emaciated nerds, there are three kinds of muscle fibers in the body - slow oxidative, fast oxidative, and fast glycolytic. One of them is weak, but recovers quickly. One of them is really powerful, but recovers slowly. And the third is somewhere in the middle. Don’t ask me which is which. The point is, everyone has different ratios of these fibers, which is why some people are good at certain activities, and others are good at other things.

Apparently, genetics is supposed to factor into what ratios you get, but clearly nobody told my family - one of my older sisters made the olympics in the high jump, the other was All-American in distance running. As for myself, I was the strongest guy in most commercial gyms - I just never committed hard enough to become the avatar of meat that I could have been. No needles for me, thanks. Lifetime natty.

Mychal wasn’t interested in my fitness knowledge though. As the Castellan official charged with extracting useful alien technology from me, he mostly wanted to hear more about saltpeter. I told him I didn’t know anyone named Peter. Then I hyuk’ed and slapped my knee. Sorry boss, but if you want guns, you’ll have to invent them yourself. Then he told me he still didn’t have a room for me yet. It all seemed a little transactional if you want to know the truth.

Whatever… I’m fed. I’m happy.

I walked straight from my administrative appointment to magic, since on this particular day, they were on the same side of town. Overall, magic had been kind of a drool - we would get a precious nugget of cool shit, like hearing about a new power, and then we would get bogged down in hours of details about every single person who had ever had that power, where they got it from, and then a (un)healthy dose of academic debate on the topic - a bunch of pathetic egomaniacs slinging big words at each other. Dreck - as those asshats would say. The class definitely needed an ice knife to give it a sense of purpose.

Today, however, that was all gonna change. The whole class was taking a field trip to the transport hub, where we were supposed to (finally!) see some real magic in action.

The transport hub itself was an open-air facility, just one small office building crammed into the corner of a wide open walled yard. A long line of people, and a separate long line of carts wrapped around the block, waiting their turn to be attended to by teams of mages operating out of several stalls. As I looked on, a group of mages surrounded a couple of travelers and, trembling with effort, threw their arms to the sky, like they were taking over from Atlas or something. As their arms raised, rotating pink bands temporarily appeared, swirling around the travelers, who quickly vanished from existence. There were other stalls in the hub that seemed to be for arrivals - people would routinely flash back into existence, greeted by the same pink bands, and would be funneled into another security checkpoint. To the people here, it all looked very routine and unremarkable.

Another day, another miracle…

“Good afternoon, students!” said Gandalf the Drab. I still didn’t know my teacher’s real name, and I cared less every day.

“May I introduce to you all - Beta Wilhelm Snagthorn - the head of Castella’s teleportation division!”

Allow me to paint a picture of the man who stepped up next to our teacher. Dude was yoked like a dozen eggs. Stacked like a brick shithouse. Strong-looking like a strong-looking person. He had bushy brows, a short, trim grey beard that shaped up a blocky jawline, and somehow, managed to wear a faded blue floppy wizard hat without looking like a bitch. That’s the great thing about being yuge - you get a few extra “man points” that you can spend on special little excesses, like ordering a girly drink, or wearing up to one (1) pink article of clothing.

Now that’s what I call a fucking mage!

He carried a long mythril staff with him, almost like a cane, though he seemed like the last person who would need assistance going up and down the stairs.

“Hey kids!” he spoke, in a deep baritone voice befitting of his fleshly mantle. “Welcome to the hub! By a show of hands… who here wants to be rich?”

I raised my hand. Apparently I’m kryptonite, because as soon as I did, everyone else decided not to. Sylvana rolled her eyes at me.

Alright, this proves it. Nothing I do will ever be correct to her.

“Only one of you has a brain? Alright…” Wilhelm shrugged.

“As your teacher has no doubt informed you, not all magic is created equal - some disciplines are wildly profitable! This is because there’s an almost unlimited demand for them - and never enough people who can supply them. I’m talking about healers, sound amplifiers, telekinetics… and of course the mages who work here: Teleporters.”

We had most certainly not been informed of this. Our teacher made an annoyed expression - making money was apparently beneath such a dignified man as himself.

“That’s why, as part of Castella’s year of study, every single student gets to try out for the team over here.” Wilhelm continued, unperturbed. “We need as many able hands as we can get! Trust me - you want this.”

Wilhelm held up the cane.

“Behold - the Staff of Aetheria! Or as we call it - the stick.”

That one got a couple of chuckles.

“Centuries ago, this mysterious relic dropped into the middle of Aetheria. Its power is that it can transport people to the location where it first landed. So, we did the sensible thing and shipped it halfway across Alterra, where we’ve been using it ever since to foster relations with the Aetherians, connect communities of innovators, and most importantly, make oodles of money.”

He said it jokingly, but our teacher once again tutted his disdain.

“It runs on explosive magic, so you won’t all be adapted to it. You, sir! With the shackles. And the brain.” he said, pointing to me. “Why don’t you be the first challenger? Step forward.”

I did, wondering what the fuck I was about to blow up.

“Now pay attention.” said Wilhelm. He brought out a small wooden crate, then stood facing it. He held the staff horizontal, centered around his body. Then, he brought it up to his shoulders and, bending his knees to provide some momentum, quickly thrust the staff as high as he could reach. The crate disappeared in a pink banded flash, only to reappear a few minutes later at one of the return stalls. It was the same motion that the other mages were doing, but with the staff in hand, I recognized the motion instantly.

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It’s just a push press!

Wilhelm handed me the staff, which I handled like it was made of glass - this was clearly one of the most valuable objects in the entire kingdom, and I was not going to be the asshole sex-offender Calderan from Sol who destroyed it. That would be a bad look.

Another crate was placed in front of me. Time to see if all my training was paying off.

I brought the staff horizontally up to my shoulders.

Nothing so far…

The problems started when I bent my legs and tried to lift the staff off my shoulders. I felt a resistance similar to that of the knife, right before launching a projectile. Similar, but much, much more powerful. I struggled underneath the weight for a bit, repeatedly pulsing with my legs and arms, but that sucker was glued to my shoulders. Time for a crazy idea.

If I can’t press the weight… I’ll deadlift it!

I lowered the staff to my ankles, then straightened back up in a powerful thrust - and the strangest thing happened. Nothing at all. No resistance. I tried using a hang clean pull motion, abruptly swinging the staff back up to my shoulders, but the result was the same - no strange force tried to halt the staff’s motion through space.

Curious… but the lack of a result is still a result.

For the first time since joining the magic class, I felt like I’d actually learned something important about it.

Finally though, I admitted defeat, the sweat of shame running from my brow.

“Maybe I’m just not adapted to it…?” I coped desperately.

“Maybe. Or… you’re weak as shit.” Wilhelm confirmed. A couple people in class laughed, absolutely delighted at the news.

That’s fine - they’re just nobodies anyway. Especially the bitch with pink hair. I can’t even remember her name… Silver? Stevia? Fuck knows.

It sucked to hear, but he wasn’t wrong. I needed to bulk, starting yesterday.

While the defeat stung, my consolation was that nobody else in the class could raise the staff either. The magic course didn’t exactly attract the biggest and strongest students - just the weirdos with unusual problems. That’s what Stella told me, at least.

After class, I approached Wilhelm, because when you’re a weirdo with an unusual problem, it helps to talk to as many people as possible about it.

“What’s explosive magic?” Wilhelm repeated, confused by my question. “They haven’t even taught you that?”

“No sir.”

“Oh dear… I heard the course had gotten worse since they lost that knife… but it’s a whole other thing if they aren’t even teaching you how to learn magic.”

He took a few seconds to calm himself down, visibly irritated.

Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree here…

“Alright, look,” he began, finally collecting himself. “There’s three kinds of magic. Explosive, Dynamic, and Static. All three of them require a special kind of motion to cast. Explosive magic requires fast, explosive movements. Dynamic magic requires slow, powerful movements. And static magic usually requires you to hold tension in a position. Make sense?”

“Sir, that’s the most sense I’ve heard in a long time.”

“That should have been day one!” Wilhelm fumed. “I’m not mad at you, by the way.” he quickly clarified.

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Those shackles…” he mused, “mythril?”

“So I’ve been told.”

His gaze had been repeatedly flickering to them all throughout our conversation - It was starting to make me a bit self-conscious.

Is this what having big boobs is like?

“Hmmm…” he stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Tell you what. If you ever get any of those things off, I’ll buy them from you. It’s very useful material. I’ll give you a better price than you’d get anywhere else, so come here first! Okay?”

“You got it.” I said, eagerly awaiting the day when I was no longer flat broke.

----------------------------------------

I dug into my roast chicken and potatoes with gusto. Thanks to Sylvana, I’d finally found the cafeteria for the rich kids, and I was never going back. Don’t get me wrong, the food at the other place was serviceable, but having the same stew every day was starting to kill my appetite… and therefore my gainz. Inexcusable. They even had big glass windows in the place, so I had a nice view of the sunset while my cantankerous companion and I ate.

“So let me get this straight…” Sylvana said, scrunching her eyebrows in concentration. “These… dating applications… are like a giant book of pictures. You put pictures of yourself into the male book, then you go through the female book and find which pictures you find appealing… the women automatically know that you liked them, so if they like you back, it tells you, and then you… get married?”

“Almost.” I said, “Once you match with a girl, then you arrange to go on a date. If that goes well, then you get another date, and maybe a relationship. If it goes poorly, then you never see her again. And if the date goes really well… then you also probably never see her again. So you’re really trying to shoot for the middle when you meet her for the first time.”

“What does that mean?” Sylvana asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

“It means shit was fucked. Everybody only liked the people they wanted, but never the people they deserved. Barely anybody was even going on dates, and among those people, nobody was getting married or having kids. It wasn’t a problem yet, but it was about to be.”

“Wow…” Sylvana said. “I had no idea. I’ve always been jealous of how well human men and women get along.”

I almost spit out my food.

How WELL!?

“Well, I don’t know how things are on Alterra… but it’s probably way better than Earth.” I managed.

“Why is that?”

“Because life here seems a lot tougher. The clothes don’t wash themselves. If you want to go somewhere, you have to walk. You can’t get a drizzle of chocolate syrup on top of your caramel macchiato. Men and women around here seem to need each other to survive. On Earth, they just… didn’t. So, the only people getting hitched were the people who truly wanted each other. And that wasn’t many people… because most of us weren’t very desirable.”

“I can see that.” Sylvana said playfully.

“Nah, you should’ve seen me back on Earth. I was beautiful.” I said, almost tearing up at the mere memory of my muscleness.

“I wish I was born a human.”

“Haha, yeah…” I trailed off. “What?”

“I left Leavenhelm because of how bad things were there. I didn’t want to do… the things they wanted me to. Earth still sounds better than where I’m from… if the worst thing that men and women did was avoid each other.”

Oh…

It was like I’d been dropped into a boss fight out of nowhere. I’d seen the elf city on Owen’s map, and I assumed that it was some mystical tree fortress utopia where sexy elves just fucked all day. I guess I really didn’t know shit.

“Well, at least you get those cool healing powers…” I finally said awkwardly. “I saw you in the market square once, before classes started. Looked like you were raking in the money.”

“Before the healing guild shut me down.” Sylvana said ruefully. “It was good while it lasted - except for the creeps.”

“You’re not talking about me, are you?”

“Nah, you didn’t have the guts to talk to me. I mean the ‘repeat customers’ - they didn’t even need to be healed, they’d wait in line for half the day just to say ‘Hey, I was wondering - do you heal broken hearts?’“ she pantomimed, half-closing her eyes seductively and pointing at her chest.

“Not bad… I should write that one down.”

Sylvana flared her nostrils and made oinking noises.

“Come on… am I really that bad?” I cajoled.

“There’s worse.” Sylvana admitted.

“Like who?”

“There’s that boy who’s always hurting you in the Coliseum. If you’re a pig, then he’s a boar.” she answered, wrinkling her nose.

“Ohh, you mean you don’t like Burt?” I asked, surprised. Burt’s reception from the Castellan womanfolk was universally positive - until now. “You’ve got good taste…”

Sylvana stuck her tongue out. “On top of being mean, he’s so big and strong. It’s disgusting.”

“You hate strength…” I wondered aloud, utterly bamboozled. On Earth, even some of the most hardcore man-haters I knew had a secret himbo fetish.

The more I get to know this girl, the less sense she makes…

At least she hates Burt.