Strength

With the completely unnoteworthy loot catalogued and sorted, we turn our attention to the rest of the room. Ayre in particular makes his way to the far end, where the largest of three doors awaits us.

It doesn't take much examination before the results are announced. "This one is locked."

"That makes sense," I nod with my hands on my hips. "That's obviously the way forward."

He looks back at me with a frown. "It makes sense to me to have the door forward locked to prevent access, but why do I get the impression that's not why it's obvious to you?"

I smugly hold up a finger. "Obviously, the way forward is going to be locked when there are other routes to go. Why make the one we're supposed to take so obvious if you aren't going to force us to go the other directions first?"

That gets three sets of eyes staring at me, but it's still Ayre that addresses my genius deduction.

"That … Remmi, dungeons aren't built by people!"

I frown thoughtfully as I rub the back of my head. "I didn't say that they were?"

"Then what is it with you and talking about all of this like it's planned?!"

"Oh, come on," I protest, "it makes sense like it is!"

While we're going back and forth, Korrigan goes over to one of the side doors and narrows her eyes at scratches and etchings there.

"This … looks like writing," the girl observes insecurely. She looks around for anyone else to give a second opinion. "Does this look like writing to anyone else?"

That interrupts me and Ayre, and we start for the door to see what she's looking at.

Still, Ayre slips in a correction. "Even if they look like people, dungeon monsters don't speak anything but nonsense. I don't see why the dungeon's attempts at writing would be any different."

"Maybe it sounds like nonsense," I argue on the way over, "but you and I know for a fact it's not. We've communicated with dungeon monsters."

"You've communicated with them," the archer counters back. "All I heard was arr, yar, fiddledy-dee."

I suppress a giggle at Ayre's recitation of pirate gibberish actually getting translated to my concept of pirate gibberish.

Leuke makes it to Korrigan's side first while we're arguing, and looks up at the door frame. What he says immediately puts us to silence.

"Hall of Strength."

Korrigan looks up at him in surprise. "You can read it?"

He looks down at her and rubs his head with a grin. "Well, it just looks like normal Imperial Common to me …"

"It doesn't look anything like Imperial Common," Ayre disagrees.

"I can read it, too," I put in from beside the elf as we all look up at the script. "That means the System is translating it for us."

"The System?" Korrigan repeats.

"The Essence System that governs everything to do with Essence," I provide readily to the girl. "One of the perks of being a Hero is that it translates languages for us automatically into our native tongue. For example, I don't actually know Imperial Common. I've never heard a word of it my entire life."

I pause, though, thinking of a particular swear word. "Well, that's not quite true, I have heard–"

Ayre's hand immediately slaps over my mouth. "That wasn't Imperial Common! And I keep telling you to forget it!"

Korrigan's eyes go back up to the script over the doorway. "But it's translating this?"

"Yup," I chirp after easing Ayre's hand down away from my face. "That means it's definitely some kind of language, if only whatever the dungeon core thinks is words. We're reading its intent, even if it's no language that's ever existed on the surface."

I turn to the other direction and peer at the doorway on the opposite side. "It's too far away to tell from here, but I'll bet that's an inscription over that door, too. These must be some sort of trial rooms we're supposed to pass before we're allowed to progress through the dungeon."

Ayre sighs and crosses his arms. "Can't you just say the key to unlock the door is down one of these paths?"

I just give my friend a boggled look. "That is what I said," I insist, and start forward for the door.

"I'm going to hit her again," Ayre mutters as he follows me like I'm his leashed toddler.

The new room immediately blocks our view with a mighty hill, studded with obstacles like walls and outcroppings, so that there's no straight path to the summit. At the base is a round boulder of native stone, almost as tall as I am.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out the purpose of this room, which is probably the point. It will, however, take a strongman.

I reach over and clap Leuke on the pauldron. "Well, I'd say this is all you!"

Okay, maybe it doesn't take a genius, but perhaps 25 Intellect is still a little too low. He looks back at me with a confused expression on his face. "What's all me?"

I point to the boulder. "This is the Hall of Strength, so the trial is obviously a test of brute force, getting that boulder all the way to the top of the hill. Ayre, Korrigan and I definitely aren't specced for that kind of thing." I grin at him with a sideways wink. "Lucky for us, we brought the world's strongest Hero with us today!"

He looks between us and the boulder several times before sighing and letting his shoulders slack. "I really was hoping this would be more fighting big monsters and tough dungeon lords …"

Korrigan holds up her arms in front of her chest with a determined look on her face. "We'll cheer you on from here, Hero Leuke!"

"Yeah," Ayre agrees, despite probably having the second-highest Strength in the group, "and we'll help guide you to the top by calling out obstructions, too!"

Leuke really is a pushover good boy. He just sighs at the doubling down from the other two and turns toward the boulder.

He squares up to it, bends down, plants his shoulder into it and begins to push. It starts to roll easily enough and his face lights up in a beaming smile.

"Hey, this isn't so bad!"

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"Don't get cocky," I advise him. "You're only just starting! That boulder's gonna get a lot heavier before you get to the top."

His smile almost turns into a pout as he continues pushing the boulder ahead of him. "You sound like Geold …"

"That's how you know I'm right," I counter back. "We'll follow behind you to catch you if you slip or need a hand!"

"I won't be very much help for that," Korrigan admits regretfully.

"Don't worry about that," I assure her. "You get ahead of him and start helping guide him around obstacles from that side."

She gives an actual pout. "So that the little kid you're escorting isn't hit by the boulder if it gets away?"

I pause and look back at her. Is that her hang-up? It makes sense, spending all of her time being treated like the child she is while also being told how great she is must really put her in an emotionally insecure place.

But I shake my head. "No, so that the squishy wizard isn't hit by the boulder if it gets away. You have the lowest strength and the fewest health points. The most you could hope to do if you found yourself in its path is jump out of the way, and I'm guessing your Agility isn't particularly stellar, either. The tactical location for you is out of the way of it in the first place, with a bird's eye view should anything go wrong."

I motion between Ayre and myself. "We may not be as strong as Leuke, but we've both got triple-digit Strength scores, and we're both Agility-based. If things go south, we've got the brute force to maybe stop it from rolling out of control, and if not, we've got the speed to get out of the way. Thus, the tactical location for us is down here, helping him out from this side."

Her frown softens a little. "So it's not just because I'm a kid?"

I sigh at having to repeat myself and cross my arms. "Korrigan, you came with us as a member of the party, and for the duration of this dungeon run, I'm going to treat you accordingly. I don't care about your age. I care about whether or not you can do the job. Part of that job is knowing your place on a team and doing your best to remember your strengths and weaknesses."

Ayre nods in agreement. "It's not a mark against you to have things you can't do. That will be the case no matter how old you are. That's why we make teams in the first place, to cover each others' shortcomings."

Leuke keeps rolling the boulder further up the hill. "Yeah," he grunts through the effort, "and if you can't keep up, then we can talk about treating you like someone that needs an escort. And that won't be a mark against you, either. It'll just show you where you need to focus on improving for next time."

The kid looks a little wet-eyed at that, so I clap my hands together to change everyone's attention.

"Alright, people, let's get into position! We don't want to wait until Leuke's got this thing all the way to the top!"

Ayre is giggling as he comes over next to me behind Leuke. "Look at you, being all leader-y."

And I most definitely do not pout at my best friend. "What do you mean? I'm totally the party leader!"

Now the elf is frowning, though it's thoughtfully. "Are you? Isn't only Korrigan greener than you? And if we look at it from experience with the world, even she's more experienced than you are."

"I'm a Hero, aren't I?"

"So's Leuke, and he's following orders." Ayre motions to himself. "On the other hand, I'm the most senior adventurer of the group!"

"So you call the shots, then," I gesture.

"Hard pass."

I wrinkle my nose at the archer's choice of words. "Are you trying to steal my slang now, too?"

He just shrugs. "What if I am? I was bound to pick up some of it sooner or later."

"But you still won't let me say--"

"FORGET IT!" Ayre shouts instantly, going tomato red.

That's when an ominous sound of gravel gives us both pause as little stones roll past us.

"Uh, I might need a bit of that help," Leuke mutters. "I think I hit a loose patch!"

He lets out a yelp as he loses his footing and the boulder starts backtracking.

Ayre and I immediately jump forward to throw our shoulders against the rock in his stead. A moment later, I engage Empower, because this thing's heavy! How much has Leuke's Strength gone up since I saw his sheet back at the High Temple that this was easy for him?! With Empower, my Strength is higher than his was back then, and even with Ayre helping, I can feel it pushing mightily down on me.

"So this … is how it was for … Sisyphus …!" I grunt as I try and just hold the boulder in place, forget trying to move the blasted thing. The footing doesn't help; Leuke was right, it's loose, not as bad as actual gravel, but barely holding together. Maybe with proper leverage, Ayre and I could manage to roll this thing uphill, but it never would have been easy.

"Stop … navel … gazing," Ayre growls back at me.

Leuke recovers quickly and comes to our rescue. Almost immediately, the weight disappears from our shoulders as he completely takes over. "Thanks for the save, you two. Good work!"

"Ah, no problem," I hiss as I roll my shoulder out. "Just doing our part …" The boy's strength really is freakish. Not that I'm about to complain.

With the three of us triangulating for him, and Korrigan given the heads up to keep an eye out for more soft spots like that, we make our way to the summit without any further major incident. There are portions Leuke has to roll it sideways while still keeping it from rolling back down, but generally, we make pretty steady progress until we reach the top.

Once there, Leuke sighs a bit, resting against the boulder. "Now what? Did we complete the trial?"

"Nothing's happened yet," I tell him, looking about to confirm that statement.

Korrigan's at the other side of the hill, and she points down into the pit. "Hey! There's a village down there!"

We all come over to look, and sure enough, further down into the "valley" is a wooden mock-up of a village, complete with little wooden people and houses. Toward the back and to one side is a temple, but to the other side is what looks like a mill. I can even just make out a cloud of flour drifting around it in the air.

"What's a village doing here?" Leuke rubs at his head, clearly at a loss for an explanation.

I, however, grin. "What, never went bowling?"

Korrigan looks over at me, tilting her head. "What's bowling?"

My grin widens and I inhale to answer, but Ayre steps in front of me.

"Don't encourage her."

I frown at my best friend for taking away my fun, but Leuke is still trying to figure it out.

"What are we supposed to do, then?"

"Probably flatten as much of the village as we can in one roll with the boulder," I explain, pointing to the aforementioned rock. "The more we destroy, the higher our score and the better the reward, I'll bet. It's a test of ogre strength, after all."

But the good boy frowns at that. "I don't like the idea of destroying a village …"

"It's just a mock-up," I assure him. "There's no real village there, especially not in one room of a dungeon."

"It's necessary to proceed," Ayre points out, as well.

Leuke sighs. "Fine. I just push it down, right?"

"If Hero Remmi is right," Korrigan corrects, "you'll want to aim it to hit as much as possible."

"Maybe the temple is worth extra?" Ayre guesses. "Ogres are clearly supposed to be evil, according to this test, so they'd be opposed to the Holy, right?"

Leuke is just about to line the boulder up with the temple according to Ayre and Korrigan's guidance, but I hold up my hand.

"Wait," I say. "Aim for the mill."

All three of them stare at me like I've lost my mind. "But you said we wanted as many points as possible," Ayre objects.

"I know what I said," I reply. "Trust me, aim for the mill. You hit that, and we'll blow whatever the top score for this thing is out of the water."

The three of them look to each other for a long moment, but exchange shrugs, deciding it's worth a try. A short amount of adjustment later, and we're ready to launch.

Korrigan seems more excited than any of us. She's pumped up, swinging her arms up into the air. "Give it a big push, Hero Leuke!"

With a roar, and what I expect is some sort of attack skill, he slams his shoulder into the boulder and sends it careening down the hill toward the unsuspecting village.

It slams into the front gates, shattering them, bounces over the market place, flattens what I'm pretty sure was supposed to be a guild hall, bounces again, and comes right down on top of the mill. Bullseye!

The next instant, the air absolutely detonates, the shockwave flattening the rest of the wooden props and setting flash fires around the remains.

"Woo-hoo!" I shout into the stunned silence of my teammates.

They turn toward me stiffly, as if their own necks have gone wooden. Ayre points to the catastrophe down below. "Remmi … what in the eleven hells was that?"

My grin widens to previously unseen widths. "Flour."

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