“I’m done. Take me back to my home.”

  “You made it a whole week when you said that you weren’t going to even manage three days.”

  “There you go. I gave twice the time.”

  “Can I convince you to finish the whole training arc? Only seven days left?”

  “You can try.”

  Eron regarded the pale, hulking man with the wild mane and shaggy beard of blond hair.

  “Alright, Ice Bear. Let’s look at your numbers.” He tapped and swiped on his tablet and slid it across the cheap folding table. His office tent was little more than the table, several folding chairs and a family-size E-Z Up. “Just one week and you’ve increased all your metrics. An overall 2.12% increase across the board in your physical strength and I don’t have a number for this, but toughing it out for a whole week around people has to be some baby steps improvement for that whole hatred of people thing you’ve expressed interest in fixing.”

  “I don’t hate people. I hate being around them. It’s a legitimate mental health condition according to the therapy people you keep sending.”

  “Hey, you can always not answer those calls. I’m glad you do. My dad once said to me that no man is an island or something like that.” He shrugged. “Right, back to the numbers. Good, right? I can only speak for myself, but seeing tangible growth has always been the best motivator to keep getting those gains.”

  “I’m not arguing that, but I’ve been really struggling to not beat the shit out of those Phoenix Dynasty guys and their shit talk. Fuckers! I already told them I can hear them just fine even if they whisper. And I almost snapped at those annoying kids yesterday just for being too loud at dinner.” Ice Bear took a deep breath. “They were just excited about their lifting that day. Right now, I want to take a swing at you for bringing me here.”

  “We can work out some of that frustration.”

  “No thanks. Feeling weak and helpless won’t make it better.”

  “Alright, let’s tackle this one at a time.” Eron held up a finger. “Phoenix Dynasty. Weak as fuck compared to you. You’ve got amazing strength, while they’re on the low end of incredible.”

  Ice Bear’s eyes narrowed.

  The loner was a prickly bastard.

  “Class 24 for you, but growing. Class 2 to 3 for them. Granted everyone’s growing, but your two percent counts for more than theirs. It’s just math. And I didn’t miss the looks on their faces when you transformed into your full Man-Ice Bear form for the max tests this morning. I figure those whispers are going to die down for the rest of this last week. As for the rest? Would it help if we got you more isolated?”

  Oddly enough, Ice bear was not a werebear. Not a single class in him.

  “You said part of this whole training arc thing was socializing.”

  “True. I mean, I respect your need for solitude, but it would be good if you had more connections to others that just might be able to understand you and your experiences. Alone is fine. It’s the loneliness that’ll lead to problems for you. And I’m speaking from my experiences. Look, I get it. It’s tough to connect with a bunch of kids almost half your age. And you’ve refused to work with your comparable peers. But, think about this… are you a hundred percent happy to live on Svalbard with nothing but monsters?”

  The hulking man hunched over and stared at the desert ground for a long moment before raising his head and gazing at Eron with ice blue eyes.

  “I want breakfast and dinner in my tent. I’ll try to socialize with my lifting groups and at lunch. I promise not to ruin the experience for these damn kids.”

  “Great!” He reached over and clasped Ice Bear’s bear paw-sized hand. “Good to hear!”

  Instinct forced the much bigger man to squeeze as hard as he could.

  Eron returned it in equal measure.

  “You know, Kristoffer, you might considering at least sharing your name with some of the others that you can tolerate.”

  Ice Bear— Kristoffer grimaced.

  “Hey, dude,” Eron chuckled. “I asked and you said you didn’t care what your codename was.”

  “You didn’t even try.”

  “It’s hard coming up with codenames, besides I figured you’d change it to whatever you wanted.”

  …

  “See, Aimara? I told you it’d work.”

  He hadn’t been sure.

  The best minds he had access to had given a collective shrug on whether the young woman’s magic gem increased her physical strength and durability based on her baseline.

  There was one other that could’ve given him a definitive answer, but her asking price had been too high and he had already paid her a ton for other things.

  The young woman frowned with that stubborn cast to one’s features when they would rather eat a toad than admit they had been wrong.

  “5% increase across the board with the gem! That’s, like, an exponential scaling off of your normal human strength level.”

  He didn’t feel the need to remind her that all of that wouldn’t have been possible without the special recovery items and treatments she had received completely free. One could gloat, but only slightly and with a mere pinch of the smug. Otherwise one became too insufferable.

  And he would hate for the youths to think of him as insufferable.

  Lame old man?

  Sure.

  That was perfect.

  A fond exasperation rather than annoyed contempt.

  “Now, if you would please hand your gem over.”

  She clutched the flat disk gem hidden underneath her shirt hanging from a simple twine necklace.

  “No!”

  “It’s just one more week. Think of the 10% or more increase waiting a mere seven days.”

  “But I’m sore all the time!” she grumbled.

  “Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Those highly advanced rest and recovery measures means that your soreness only lasts about an hour between every lifting session.”

  “Three times!”

  “You’ve gotten away with literally no exercise for this long. And how much have you gotten stronger in that time?”

  “I don’t know. I only found it last year,” she mumbled.

  Dubiously, according to her story and that of her family and fellow townspeople.

  Aimara lived somewhere on the border of the old nations of Bolivia and Peru. In part of the Amazon Rainforest that he vaguely remembered was known for jaguars.

  Ah, the Amazon, home to many and varied encounter challenges and spawn zones.

  He knew it well.

  “You want to be the defender of your town? You have to put in the work.”

  The young woman shook her wild tangle of blond hair.

  “I’ve been doing okay.”

  “But you can do better. Besides. We made a deal. You work hard and I get you an enchanted necklace for that thing than can’t be removed against your will.”

  “And you have to take me to a strong monster!”

  The magic gem took the blood and, presumably, souls of any living thing she killed and turned it into physical power. It appeared to be a cumulative effect.

  There was a reason he had singled her out for keeping an eye on.

  It wasn’t a big leap from powerful animals and monsters to powerful people.

  Luckily, Aimara had a good upbringing and was a good person overall.

  It was important that she stayed that way or one day she might be bathing in people blood.

  “I didn’t forget.” He tapped the tablet. “We signed a magically binding contract after all. You do your training arc and I shall take you to your monster within a month of completion of said arc.”

  His interminable to-do list included gathering a few tons of float stone to distribute to various and sundry people. That region had a good diversity of monsters that would fit Aimara’s capabilities and needs.

  However, strengthening her was a double-edged sword.

  She had found the gem inside the hollow of a tree at just the right time to save her from a giant giant anaconda.

  Such serendipitous events were, naturally, suspicious.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He thought of his sister’s ranger, Ghost Sorcerer, who had, apparently, discovered a spellcasting heart-engine-thing at the bottom of a lake when he had been barely older than a kid.

  Turned out it had been placed there through the spires by some kind of wizard-knight order from another world and they had called their mark in.

  Poor guy was gone.

  Had to serve or die.

  “Hey, if that thing ever tells you to replace your heart with it. Please don’t.”

  Aimara blinked, eyes widening.

  “Is that a thing that happens?”

  “Not exactly the same, but yes.”

  She nodded slowly as if he has the dubious one.

  “Seriously, do you want to have to work for some kind of knight-wizard order on another world?”

  A gleam entered her green eyes as she leaned forward on the cheap folding table.

  He glanced at the clock.

  There was time before her meeting was up.

  So, he told her a brief, condensed version of Ghost Sorcerer’s story.

  It wasn’t all bad.

  The Rayna’s Ranger had gone to the other world with the idea of trying to get his new order on Earth’s side against all the outworld invaders trying to do an imperialism and colonialism.

  …

  Kolton was a young man of mixed heritage.

  North American.

  Specifically, Canadian… had Canada still been a thing.

  More specifically, he hailed from Toronto on the coast of the Lake Ontario. Or what was once Toronto, but was now a place of scattered settlements interspersed with encounter challenges and spawn zones.

  They generally had a wendigo problem. And the last year or so had added a rabbit people problem. Although the latter was currently mostly an old America problem.

  The poor bastards bred fast and dug their warrens deep, which made completely eradicating them a problem.

  Eron was confident he could’ve done it had he been allowed to focus solely on the white-furred rape horde problem. Alas, the world was a larger place with many problems arising all the time it felt like.

  Even carving out two weeks for his training arc was already putting a strain on regional and local defenses.

  Eron slid the tablet across the dark-haired, light-skinned Kolton.

  He saw the resemblance in the shape of the eyes, nose and mouth.

  Probably, wouldn’t have noticed before his vision became superior.

  A distant relation that neither knew existed before recently.

  Apparently, Cal had known, but hadn’t said anything at Kolton’s request.

  Whatever had changed the young man’s mind wasn’t his business so he didn’t mention it nor did he mention Hayden’s name.

  If she wasn’t ready to meet distant family, then she wasn’t ready.

  Besides, he was still uncomfortable with the whole eugenics aspect of keeping an eye on Kolton’s family members for potential future electric-powered superhumans.

  “Congratulations, young man! You’ve managed to show a 7% increase in the maximum amount of time your muscles can hold your electricity. You’ve also increased your maximum capacity to generate said electricity by 4.2%.”

  “What about my lift numbers?”

  “As you can see everything increased. But, those are secondary. What truly matters for you are your powers. The electricity you generate and how much and for how long your body can hold it to turn into superstrength and all its attendant goodies. So, what do feel with those numbers? Feel right? You think you could’ve done more?”

  “I have no fucking idea. All I know is that I’ve worked harder this week than I have ever before and I thought I was already a hard worker. Workout, eat, sleep. I literally have nothing left for anything else. I’m surrounded by hot girls and it’s like I don’t even see them.”

  “Good. That means your head, the right one, is in charge and in the game.”

  “Yeah, for sure. I’m ready to keep at it. I’d like to double those numbers or more. It sucks that you’re only doing this for two weeks.”

  “There are other places you can get a similar quality of training.”

  “I’m not moving. We’re not moving.”

  “You don’t have to. We can set up portals. Or you can work out a shuttle or skyship situation. That’s not my business and I’m not about to butt in, you know how it is.”

  “Do you think we should move?”

  “Honestly, yeah. I haven’t talked to anyone in charge where you’re from in awhile, but I can see things from pretty high up and it’s not going to get better soon.”

  “But you can help.”

  “I am and I will, but again when I look down from above I can see a whole lot of places like yours. Some of the people you’re lifting with are in even tougher spots.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Well, things aren’t imminently dire. And I’ve got some good news. That power armor I promised you should be just about ready to go by the time you finish your training arc. They’ll need you in SoCal for a day or two to get it properly fitted, calibrated and all that shit. While you’re there. Look around. Talk to people. Decide for yourself what’s the better move or not, depending on what you decide.”

  “Is, um… she going to be there?”

  “Hayden?”

  Kolton nodded.

  “I have no idea. She’s in charge of the tactical team stuff, so probably? As I understand it she’s had to take a step back from fieldwork to run it. What’re you worried about?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Relax, they’re not going to draft you against your will. They don’t do that sort of thing. They’re not like those random monsterland warlord wannabes that pop up every once in a while.”

  Kolton sighed.

  “We had two back to back just last year. Things are going okay and then some asshole has to ruin it for everyone else.”

  “Three actually.”

  “What?”

  “There was one before the first one you’re thinking off. He had partially merged with a baby demon. I mean that in a literal sense as the demon looked like a human baby.”

  “Wait? What! Did you kill him? It?”

  “Nah, dude. I was busy in Antarctica. Had to fight a sexy eldritch thing.”

  He shuddered, thinking of its sexy tentacles and even sexier cilia. God, how he hated weird, multiple levels of reality bullshit. At least he had kept his Earthian virtue by virtue of his overwhelming superhuman might. Turns out overwhelming power was a pretty good defense at sexy eldritchness.

  It made sense on a conceptual level.

  The sun wasn’t going to be seduced by an eldritch thing, no matter how supernaturally sexy it was.

  Therefore, he wasn’t going to be seduced.

  “Eron? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, dude. A hundred percent fine. Only a little bit of PTSD from that one. Anyways. Where were we? Oh yeah! Demon warlord wannabe. You want to know about that whole thing? Ask around when you’re getting your armor. Hey! It could be a good ice breaker with Hayden!”

  …

  Things weren’t all good in the training arc.

  The numbers weren’t all going up.

  Glade Orisson’s weren’t.

  It was in fact the opposite.

  The twelve year old boy from Second Asgard needed low numbers.

  Eron found him in the medical tent with Doctor Vindaction Nov 68720 personally scanning and making minute adjustments to the armored exoskeleton that forced the boy to move at a decidedly unsuperhuman level.

  “What’s up, Doc?”

  The Threnosh’s expression was as if carved from marble for everyone else.

  Eron saw their right eye twitch.

  “Patient: Glade Orisson. Vitals within required safe ranges.”

  “How you feeling, kid?”

  The boy shrugged armored shoulders. He was monosyllabic at his most loquacious.

  He had lost both parents in a rune magic experiment gone wrong.

  The explosion had vaporized the pair and destroyed their lab, but they managed to shield him as their last acts.

  Instead of death, Glade got a massive dose of rune magic.

  They had only managed to save his life by carving runes directly into most of his bones and tattooing them into his muscles.

  The unintended result was that the rune magic created an infinite loop system in his body. Like the ouroboros devouring its tail. His mana would never run out, even as it fueled the runes that turned him into a massively superstrong superhuman.

  Of course, his numbers were theoretical because of the problem.

  The rest of his organs weren’t runed, which meant they couldn’t handle the strain of his potential superstrength.

  Until the armored exoskeleton he had been forced to stay immobile lest he give himself a heart attack or an aneurysm.

  The training arc was never going to do much for Glade in a physical sense.

  It was for his emotional health.

  Second Asgard thought that getting to know his hero might be good for Glade on an emotional level and keep his spirits up while they continued to search for a fix to his condition.

  “I got your numbers right here, kid!” Eron waved the tablet. “Mind if we go over them, Doc?”

  “You have my permission.”

  “So, you can see in this graph that you’re improving in your control of your armor. Your lifts are going up by a little bit, but here you can see that the levels of stress on your system are staying flat.”

  Glade nodded slowly as the artificial muscles around his neck forced him to move at an unpowered twelve year old boy’s strength level.

  Eron weighed the risks of asking Ms. Teacher to take a look and see if she had a solution.

  The main one was that she might decide Glade made for a good experiment.

  He didn’t trust her ancient, glowing ass.

  The one-sided talk continued while the doctor continued their work.

  Time dragged on and he could see that the doctor was on her third check when he decided to call it good and done.

  The Threnosh regarded him stoically with all the rage of a wolverine denied its carcass before they permitted Glade to depart the medical tent.

  “Okay, okay. I thought that was going to take all afternoon. They take forever, right?”

  “They’re nice,” Glade murmured. “They don’t treat me different.”

  “Ah…” Eron ruffled his hair. “Like you might break if someone breathes on you?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Yeah, dude. That sounds annoying.”

  It was late afternoon in the training compound.

  Only a few of the most dedicated trainees continued to lift, sending their grunts and yells into the cooling desert air.

  “So, the rest of the day’s a free day. Did you want to do anything? I think Lera and some of the girls are doing a girls only movie marathon. She said you’re welcome. How about it? Want to make all the other guys jealous?”

  Glade blinked up at him with absolutely no comprehension before shaking his head.

  “Yeah, a bunch of girls and you the only boy. Sounds kinda tough. I don’t know why I suggested that. That was very stupid of me. How about a flight to the top of one of these mountains?” He gestured to the looming peaks of the Andes Mountains in the east. “Or I can find a herd of guanacos we can bother.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s an animal. Not dangerous. Not monsters. They’re like a sheep-camel-giraffe, but very fluffy. Apparently, they’re not yamas. Even though they basically look the same. What do you think? Sound interesting? I think your armor has a camera. You can take vids and pics. That’d be pretty awesome, right? Showing yourself standing at the top of a mountain and, maybe, petting a guanaco? Shoot, do you want a pet? Although, it might be wrong to take a baby from its mother,” he mused.

  “No! I don’t want to do that!”

  “Yeah, for sure. What was I thinking?”

  Glade nodded hesitantly.

  They spent the last hours of daylight posing at the highest peak Eron could find and bothering a herd of guanaco.

  The animals might not have appreciated it at the time, but the presence of the two Earthians kept the hunting puma away.