Beam POV: Day 91

  Current Wealth: 197 gold 27 silver 14 copper

  Solitaire had blown the house up, and Phelia was pissed.

  Well, that was a mild exaggeration. As Solitaire was quick to point out- he hadn’t blown the entire house up. Just a tiny, shitty corridor, and even that had only been blown up “a little bit”. For some reason, though, this didn’t seem to actually mollify Phelia much.

  “You’re insane!” She’d snapped. “A madman, you’re a threat to us all!”

  “If by “us all” you mean the global, Capitalist hegemony responsible for the sustained oppression and exploitation of the working class,” Solitaire had replied, “Then yes, I am. You might say that my destroying that wall was merely symbolic of my intents to destroy the world order laid out by its parasitic oligarchs. That your brick and mortar was the stuff of oppression, and an indicator of what I intend for all of Capital.”

  Phelia blinked, staring at him.

  “What the fuck?! No, you’re actually insane, you just blew my fucking wall up!”

  “It was a shittily made wall.” Solitaire sniffed. “If you don’t want your things blown up, make them more explosion-resistant. I could recommend we build it with rebar, you know, that’s something your people are too stupid to have invented yet, basically-”

  It was not a very productive conversation. It was also one that begged a lot of questions, and I was quick in aiming some of the more notable ones at Solitaire.

  “Why did you blow up the wall?” I asked, which got a sigh from him.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” He grunted, as if it were somehow unreasonable to believe that the insane pyromaniac would ever even dream of such a thing. “It was an…Accident. A project I’m working on got a bit out of control.”

  That surprised me, it didn’t seem like him to make a mistake of that sort.

  “You accidentally set off some black powder?”

  Solitaire grinned.

  “Oh, this wasn’t black powder. I-”

  Whatever he was about to say next was interrupted by Shango’s return, our brother strolling in with Magnus in tow, and a newcomer by his side. Alora the Red Blade. He’d gotten her, then.

  I saw instantly where her nickname came from, the woman’s hair was almost crimson, that’s how red it was.

  “What’s going on?” Shango asked, while the woman remained silent. She seemed hardly impressed by us all, even by Nightne, and her eyes were darting around the room silently, thoughtfully. Solitaire was first in answering.

  “Phelia’s throwing a tantrum because somebody chipped a bit of wallpaper.”

  “You blew a fucking hole in my wall!” Phelia snapped. Solitaire shrugged.

  “There may have been a wall behind the wallpaper, at the time, yes. But it wasn’t in any of the parts of the mansion we actually use so I don’t see the issue.”

  He could have boiled Phelia alive and not left her skin as burning red.

  What followed was not a long argument. Shango quickly came to side with his wife, Solitaire called him a “cunt-struck traitor”, Phelia called him a barbarian and I had to step in before anybody drew any paranoid conclusions from the events. Most likely somebody whose name rhymed with Politaire. Soon enough Solitaire and I were making our way out of the room and to another part of the occupied wing, giving everybody a bit of time to cool down.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “He’s changed.” Solitaire growled, for the fifth time. “I swear, he has. That’s what women do to a man, you know, change him. Make him all malleable and-”

  “Solitaire I’m really not in the mood for your misogyny at the moment.” I cut in, deciding to just say it straight and hope it sank in. Fortunately, it did.

  “Fine. Let’s do the tests then, I need to wait for my ears to stop ringing anyway.”

  That, I have to admit, brought a smile across my face. I’d started to like the tests.

  First up was the sprint, and that was satisfying as hell. As of now, apparently, with my Speed stat hitting thirteen, I was capable of managing a hundred metre dash in seven seconds flat. World record breaking by a ludicrous degree, and I wasn’t running it on anywhere near as controlled a ground as the Olympics used. After that came the lift.

  We’d set up a sort of bench-press for testing that, and Solitaire used his ability to provide the weights by freezing carefully measured cuboids of ice. Thirteen Strength made me about equal to Argar, and Argar, it seemed, could use it to raise more than half a tonne.

  Five hundred and eighty kilos, that was about my limit. Also world-record shattering. After this came the not-so-fun tests.

  Solitaire heated up a bit of iron, and he stuck it on me. Barely. It was just a single strip, maybe half a square inch in area, held against the tip of my elbow. He’d done the same thing a while ago. I hissed, felt it burn as he held it there for exactly a second, then watched him pull it away. In a few hours we checked the mark, and kept checking it.

  I’d still gotten burned, but not as badly as before. That pretty much confirmed his theory on Toughness scaling up at the same rate as Strength. It also served as a useful reminder for me not to get myself lit on fire. We weren’t that durable. Yet.

  “Tests complete.” Solitaire smiled. “You’re getting dangerous. I wonder how stab resistant you are…”

  “Don’t.” I told him, cheerily enough regardless. Solitaire wouldn’t actually knife me without asking permission. Probably. I was fast enough to avoid it either way.

  He sniffed, put out at the denial, but clearly still pleased with our readings.

  “Well I can do some calculations anyway. Your skin should be closing in on the tensile strength of copper as things are. Not stab proof, but certainly stab-tedious.”

  Stab tedious was a lot less than I might have hoped for, but I’d just have to follow my usual tactics of trying not to get stabbed in the first place. They’d been working out well enough so far at least.

  “What do you think this does for my chances in the tourney?”

  His face fell.

  “Not…As much as it might have, honestly. You’re stronger than before but…Well, we’re dealing with people around the twenties range at the upper end. And the odds of you running into one of them are doubling with each round. Sorry man.”

  It was about what I’d feared, but still far from pleasant to hear it all put in such stark terms.

  I wasn’t that tough. Yet. But I had to be.

  Argar wasn’t hard to find, these days he was often outside- always a safe distance from the outer fence just in case anyone got ballsy with a bow- and doing his laps. I watched as he tore along the perimeter, face hidden behind his tool steel visor. I had to admit, it was impressive. And for several reasons.

  Just a few days ago he never ran anywhere he could walk, and even now he was still carrying around at least a few dozen pounds of excess fat. He had to be cooking himself in that armour, to the point where I’d be worried about him dropping from heat stroke if it weren’t for his impossible durability.

  But he was persevering, and much more than I’d thought he had it in him to do.

  “Alright Argar, up for a bout?!” I called out. He gave the gesture, the small, quick one that showed he was nearing the end of his circuit- and his strength- and implored me to hold still. I wasn’t holding for long. He finished quickly, always a fast bastard despite the size of his gut, and then he was standing poised and ready just a few short minutes later. For his ever-dwindling stamina, Argar sure as shit did recover fast.

  I limbered up while he rested, and soon enough we were going at it. We’d sparred so much, lately, that there was a certain rhythm to it now. But I still felt something off. It wasn’t that things had changed, now that I’d gained my extra levels. It was the opposite- they’d stayed the same. Argar swung just as fast as ever, his strength proved just as big an issue as before, and I was tested just as much in keeping from losing my footing against his onslaught. All despite being superior in every way to my previous self.

  Argar was stronger. He was faster, certainly tougher. And he was driving me back before I made the adjustment to stop restraining myself. Our sparring match didn’t last much longer after that, his already diminished stamina finished emptying itself out, and while he panted and recovered I eyed him in thought.

  “Let’s…Go and see Shango.” I told him, suddenly suspicious. We reached my brother quickly, and he soon understood what was happening.

  Shango looked at him the way I’d seen him look at a hundred others, eyes tightening and face twisting with concentration. Finally he spoke.

  “Strength fourteen, Speed seven, Toughness fifteen…Alertness ten. Level twelve. He’s improved.”

  Argar, clearly, wasn’t following much better than usual, but I’d committed the levels and abilities of all our members to memory. He had improved.

  Which made sense, because there was no way four days of training was enough to cause the kinds of change I’d seen in him. It looked like we finally had our answer to how people in this world got stronger.

  Pushups, situps, and plenty of juice.