“Tyler… this is not an inn.” I said.

What we were currently looking at was a very big, thick, tree. Now that wasn’t too surprising, there were many, many trees here. This whole city seemed to have adopted width as a concept. It was definitely as big as a house though…. No even that’s not really correct. It was a house. I could see windows, its own courtyard, multiple stories, and more. Honestly, just looking at it and having walked through the city had started to make me feel… weird. I knew cities were big but this… I’ve been in three cities while back on earth. I remember a lot of tight buildings, right next to each other. But here, despite the many people, there was just so much open space.

It was fascinating. And strangely mildly disturbing. As if it felt like the world had suddenly become infinite.

“Oh. Huh.” Tyler responded.

“Oh?” Called out a voice. “Now that’s a sight for sore eyes.”

I turned and saw a plump little elf walking towards us. Bells were ringing in my head, not alarm bells, but ones reminding me of my grandma.

“Now dearies, are you interested in my property here?”

Konohora gave Tyler a glance. “We were merely seeking an inn to rest at.”

“Pshh, an inn she says! What you fine folk need is proper accommodations! And this here property will do you well. Why, it was made back in…”

My vision was still going black, my brain overloaded. I didn’t have time for this, sadly.

“M’am,” I interrupted. “Do you stay here or do you sell homes?” I quickly asked.

“Why, I’m the best in the business of Rothark’s Homes and Estates! I’ll find you a perfect place to-”

“We’ll take it.” I said and she and everyone else blinked. “How much is it?”

She smiled like a cat that caught the canary. “The rent is merely thirty silver a month for a period of twenty five years.”

“Thirty silver?!” Riary gasped.

Honestly, I thought it was an amazing deal but Riary clearly didn’t. That shopkeeper from long ago had explained money to me and I had listened. The Merchant’s Guild had long, long ago, set the currency on things. Even the worth of coin itself didn’t fluctuate too much usually. I didn’t understand the reason but I wasn’t a fantasy economist either. It could be mapped well enough to dollars anyway. One dollar, one copper. One hundred copper equals a silver. One hundred silver equals a gold.

So the rent was merely $3000 a month.

For a massive two story house, with a massive courtyard? Fuck, it was basically as big as four to six houses. Not exactly a house but not quite a mansion. I’d have had to pay like a million or two million dollars to buy this place back on earth and renting, if it was even an option, would certainly reflect that.

“Konohora, negotiate. I’m going to go sleep.” I said, sad I couldn’t be a part of that. I wanted to negotiate with fantasy real estate owners over a massive tree house too! Come on!

Still, I hadn’t been joking. My vision and body were failing me. It wasn’t exactly something that could be healed, I was over stimulated. My power had no off switch but now it was being absolutely beaten down by pressure. This city, Prinsk, could beat the shit out of Vanessa without breaking a sweat. And even then, her power in comparison continued to startle me. But the point was that it was like I had been thrown from sea level to the deepest ocean floor. I almost stumbled into a random room. The second I saw a bed, I fell, crashing into it.

****

Force. Pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. It was my own mistake or choice. My dreams were haunted by Happy and the gems, visions of dying over and over again as my heart was ripped out, as my flesh was set aflame, as a sword came for my neck, as my body was broken apart into pieces only to reform, and more and more.

And all the while, a terrible pressure pounded down on me. Choice, but not. Perspective shaping the way. What you believe is what you get. What you want to feel is what you will feel. Reality… is malleable at the best of times and stuck at the worst of times.

Something within me stirred, something deep, deeper than all the rest. Pain lanced through me, remembered pain. The hell gems energy, seeping out, feeling like I was being skinned alive. My screams of agony, my torture, my feelings of torment. Growing deeper, darker, down. More down.

Down down down.

Falling.

Screams, screams of agony. Pain, pain, pain.

Seeping into, overtaking me.

Pain pain pain. The screams are getting louder. The flesh is weak.

The soul begins to awake. The barrier, the barrier begins to fall-

I woke up in a cold sweat, quickly checking the soul-mental barrier inside me. Still solid, still no issue with it. I took a deep shuddering breath. If that ever broke… I’d die instantaneously. And it would literally be thee worst way to go. You just don’t get worse than remembering all of hell and all of its many, many tortures.

What a horrible dream.

I sat up, my body frankly covered in sweat, and grunted. I felt like someone had rolled me over with a few dozen semi-trucks and then had a professional boxer rearrange my organs for a few… days. My whole body felt sore, even though it was fine. It was just my head.

There was a mental ‘weight’ I hadn’t ever experienced before. Well, no, that’s not true. Just not this mental weight. It was constant, never ending pressure. Even here, in our house, the B-Ranks could be felt inside my mind. All of them had so much strength that their waves were like a heavy stone being thrown into a pond, constantly. If it was before my Analyze, analyzed itself by accident, I literally wouldn’t be able to approach this city.

Frankly, terrifying.

Still, there was nothing for it but to adjust. It, still sadly, wasn’t an injury that could be healed but a new set of stimuli I had to get used to. I shuddered to think what an A-Rank or higher could do to me. I’d probably just pass out and go into a coma as my brain was pureed.

Walking out of my very nice, very wide, bedroom (it even had a shower in here!), I went out to check on the rest of my party. I hadn’t noticed before as I practically stumbled in, but there was a living room here, with a couch and everything. Seemed a bit odd at first, for a number of reasons. Namely, while it did have a couch and a few comfy reclining chairs, namely there was a big table in the middle with chairs. And sitting there were my three team mates and allies in this world.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

They noticed my approach, even giving me their own looks. Riary’s total disinterest, Tyler’s worry, and Konohora’s gentle smile.

“Are you feeling better?” She asked.

“Yeah, it’s sadly still pretty intense but I’m adjusting. Just give me a few days.”

“Days?” Riary said with a frown.

“It’s not like I can turn my Ability off. I can feel damn near every B-Rank in the city. It’s like being constantly hit with a Tsunami while being crushed to death, over and over again. Worse, all of them are moving most of the time or sometimes release abilities or powers my Ability can feel but doesn’t know or understand, leaving blank vague spots. Like being hit with black dark spots. Not to mention their own Abilities which my power can barely comprehend.”

Riary looked at me in surprise.

“You can feel all that?”

“Yeah. But it takes time and ‘evidence’ to really chew through. If someone is just standing still, I can know how strong they are and maybe whether their a mage or not. But if they use fire, water, earth, or etc, it will take a while unless I actually see them using it.”

Riary frowned again, muttering to herself briefly, clearly thinking.

“You said time though. As in, you could be able to tell everything about a person, given enough of it, even if they don’t do anything? Your Ability let’s you see how strong, and how people are strong?”

I nodded. “It’s actually even more annoying than that but yeah. It…” For a moment, I really felt like keeping secrets but beyond the major two I already had, I really didn’t want to add to the pile. “...can actually tell me everything. About anything.”

“So it even works on items and tools? That’s-”

“No. It tells me everything. All information. Age, how lucky, how charismatic, level of expertise, color, what you had for breakfast, it can theoretically tell me every single answer to every single question regarding anything I’m in range of. I only figured that out during our… trip. I just use it, to tell how strong people are and how people are strong, because I don’t yet know how to change it and even then, it’s just too much information. Do you know much information is just in ‘strength’ alone? Bone density, tensile strength, speed, reaction, intelligence, general danger level, it all combines into a wave of pressure that just slams into my brain. Constantly. From every person and everything.”

Now it wasn’t just Riary, but Konohora and Tyler who looked shocked. I had given an overview of my powers before, even talked about how they upgraded, but I had never laid it out so cleanly.

“That’s… amazing.” Konohora said.

“Overpowered much…” Tyler mumbled in shock.

Riary, however, stared at me with a frown on her face. She crossed her arms and began tapping lightly on them, brows furrowed in thought for a long while. Eventually, she sighed and a blue flame appeared in front of us all.

“When I and Tyler arrived in that icy hellish wasteland…”

And so Riary began to go more in depth with her magic. She now had fucking ice flames somehow. Which could freeze things. No idea how that worked. But she went even further, roughly saying how long she should fight for, how long her magic lasted, her physical fitness level, and I realized what was happening soon. We were all laying it all out on the table. A complete and total break down of not just our abilities but our strengths and weaknesses. Information any enemy would kill to have. Hell, if people knew I could be overwhelmed with presences, I’d be fucked. Bring a few dozen extremely complicated and powerful people and I’d probably blank out for a second or two. Not to mention that my Power was basically insane. People would kill to have me or kidnap me if they knew about it.

Tyler went next and it was important info but shockingly, info I already had. After all… they were telling me how they were strong. Even Riary’s ice flames, I’d subconsciously known about to an extent, just not the full wordy explanation or extent of it all.

Though neither of them mentioned the power coming from their souls, strangely. I suppose it was less a ‘power’ and more a ‘boost’. I could already tell Riary’s would make her a better fire mage and Tyler would make him better at using Aura. Which I still barely understood, even being this close and fucking watching Tyler get stronger with it, but it’s not like I could use magic either simply because I watched Riary so whatever.

When it was Konohora’s turn, it was the first time I was actually shocked. I’d known her healing power was absolutely, totally, out of this world. I had literally never seen anyone with a stronger healing power, even while we were here. Apparently, it was because she could heal ‘A rank up’. She, all this time, essentially had the power of a B-Rank healer, even though she was a priestess of Truth. Still felt weird to me, but whatever. There’s not much more ‘up’ you can go, than being able to see through all lies. Pretty absolute, that one.

“And finally… I have not yet told anyone this. But it seems that my body was remade and reshaped into something else when I was influenced by the Life Gem, as we are calling it.”

Something else? I quickly focused my Analysis and could immediately tell what she meant.

“You…” I started, only to stop. Suddenly, it felt like my power might be an invasion of privacy in a lot of cases.

She smiled however, looking at the three of us. “My entire body now has much more life reinforced into it. As well, similar to the Gaieldr, I now generate life naturally from every part of my body.”

Tyler just looked confused. “What does that mean?”

Konohora just smiled. “When I was young, I was raised on church grounds with many others. Training was common for all but I greatly enjoyed it. I put in a great amount of effort, and eventually, was allowed to undergo warrior training. It is… absolutely brutal.”

I blinked at those words. Said from a truth priestess…

“They force you to exercise, fight, and grow stronger as much as possible, without rest beyond your nightly sleep. Your body eventually begins to break, unable to handle it. Muscles rip, bones break, organs fail in rare cases. They then heal you back up, usually forcing you to heal yourself. Over and over again. This causes a dramatic increase in strength and heaviness from reinforced muscle and bones. I am… slightly embarrassed to say that I… greatly enjoy it.”

What are you, a masochist?! Who would enjoy that?!

“The feeling of growing physically stronger has always greatly appealed to me. And now, my body naturally generates energy on par with, as a guess, weak C-Rank healing spells. My stamina has also greatly improved, as well as my physical fitness and strength in general. My body can now be worked to the point of breaking and heal from it as it’s happening, allowing me to exert greater strength for longer, as well as get stronger from it quickly.”

I squinted my eyes, looking at the smile Konohora had. I thought back to our whole trip through the jungle and came to an easy to see realization. Konohora… had barely smiled that whole journey. Oh she had, at times, but even then it was uneasy. I thought it was just, you know, everything but it was more than that. More than me, Riary, or Tyler… being physically weak probably bothered Konohora a lot. No wonder she was so gung-ho about this. She wanted to be stronger now, especially with her new natural healing.

Konohora was a work out fanatic, without a way to work out. At our power level, she couldn’t exactly lift weights or go for a run. Only combat would actually tire us out. Worse, she was the healer and so she always had to be ready to drop everything and dash towards the nearest hurt person, always keeping an eye out for it.

“That’s amazing.” Tyler said. Not only that, he then looked at all of us like we were the amazing ones.

Oi! Don’t look at me like that! Aren’t you a True Hero who gets stronger at a stupid pace anyway?! Don’t look at us we’re like the crazy powerful ones here you monster!

“So,” Riary said. “What now?”

“Now we should plan.” Konohora said.

And so it began.