“What ordinary man could fight a soldier? And who amongst the common soldiery could fight an elite? Or a mage, or one of true power? There is no great wonder to the order of our society. Those who have power rule, and those without are ruled.”

Jaikard the Green

== POV: Zidaun ==

For all that I understood the protocols for dealing with suspected impostors or mental influence they could be quite tedious. With my very obvious change in appearance, even if was an expected possibility for an Adar under a very specific set of circumstances, due caution was needed.

However, none of Firi’s spells detected any problems, and the others’ inspections of me revealed nothing. Since Adar are almost immune to mental influence to begin with, that shortened the process, though I still found my eyes rolling multiple times. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that checking for issues was a smart decision, because I did and it was. Eventually my teammates switched modes.

I almost wished they would just go back to being suspicious.

“No Gurek, I cannot tell you anything about the dungeon, or why I changed, other than what I told you already. And that answer is not going to change no matter how you ask.”

“Aww, but I just want to know a few small details, it’s not like I really want any big secrets or anything.”

“I am sure.” I said. “However, little secrets add up to bigger ones, and I don’t think I could even answer half your questions. And it’s not like you don’t know this part of the deal.”

Gurek hesitated.

“Well, yeah, but all the little secrets about dungeons didn’t really matter before. Now… you’ll be leaving us.”

I smiled, the smile just a touch crooked. Firi and Inda exchanged somber glances.

“Well, actually, I will be staying here and you” I gestured to them “will be leaving.”

“You know what I meant! You will be leaving the team.”

I sighed. It was true after all.

“I know, but it is my duty to my people. You don’t have to understand, but I found the dungeon. And the dungeon,” I waved at my appearance, “altered me. It is an ancient tradition that I will stay here now.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Gurek said.

“No, you don’t. Regardless, look at this place,” I opened my arms to the dungeon as a whole and the massive room we were in, “judging off just this room, this place is huge. A massive dungeon for us to delve into. So, we probably won’t be separated for a while yet. And, well, they need to integrate a new seeker into a team. Honestly, it might not be this team if their skills are not a good match. Or you can take time off to delve here later. It could easily become really busy. Maybe I will see you all the time, but even if I don’t we can make the most of the time we have.”

Gurek nodded, followed by Inda and Firi.

Firi stirred as though to speak.

“No,” I said as I held out my hand to him in a sign to stop, “if you are going to say goodbyes or well wishes, save them. I haven’t left yet. Let’s save all of those until it is truly goodbye. Otherwise we will be doing it endlessly for days or weeks.”

Firi gave a jerky nod and then took a deep breath, his chest filling out. He shook his head and then smiled.

“Okay.”

Of course, Gurek took this as an excuse to start pestering me again. Honestly, I was glad for the distraction. Inda and Firi just chuckled.

I pointed at them.

“Ah! I see how it is. See if I help you two with anything. Next time he decides to prank you I will look the other way.”

Gurek eyes narrowed as he grinned at me slyly.

“Really?” He said.

I grinned back at him.

“Really.”

Inda grimaced while Firi sighed.

“There is no need to go that far, right…?” She said.

I just kept grinning at her.

“Shit.”

While I was somewhat relieved to turn away from more serious discussions, Gurek was starting to get annoying. If he kept it up long enough I was prepared to prank him, and if the others kept laughing about it I might prank them in Gurek’s stead.

Time to get the conversation to move along.

Disregarding,” I gave Gurek a gimlet stare, “any extemporaneous questions, did we actually want to explore this dungeon at some point, or just poke and prod at me until some other team arrives?”

Firi gave a dramatic sigh, his chest heaving, and winked at me.

“Well there goes all the fun. Guess we need to actually get back to working for a living.”

“Ha, as if you knew anything about work.” Inda said.

Firi just rolled his eyes.

We took the time for a brief discussion, now that we were back onto professional topics. I told them I had already tested out the dungeon’s rewards for magical items, and shared what it had given for them.

Since that was already taken care of, and we had no way to get into the dungeon’s first floor, we decided to go along with what the dungeon seemed to want of us and go to one of the other buildings.

The door to the small building we chose opened to an even smaller platform that transitioned into a spiral staircase. There was nothing special about the building, it was exactly identical to the others, with the notable exception of the center building. All were made of the same speckled basalt. We had simply chose this one as it was the closest to the northern wall.

The stairs opened out into a room of moderate size. It was roughly 30 feet on a side and 15 feet tall. The walls were some form of creamy white marble, lit with an ever-present soft glow. The room had two doors, both without handles, one at the back of the room and the other in the middle of a side wall. The middle of the room contained two hexagonal flat topped pillars. The two pillars were twenty feet apart, and identical as far as I could tell, with one exception. One pillar had a small cube of stone on it with a protruding handle.

I was about to ask if anyone had any ideas when I felt the familiar feeling of aura moving. A stone man, identical to the one from before, walked out of a wall and grabbed the handle of the cube. It brought the cube to the other pedestal and set it down.

As soon as the cube rested on the second pillar the door at the back of the room slid into the wall. I could see a room that looked identical through the door. The door closed a moment later and the cube vanished. A solid three foot cube of stone, with multiple handles, appeared on the first pillar. The statue went over to the first pillar again and tried to move the new cube. It did not succeed. Its shoulders slumped and it then placed both of its hands on the second pillar. The door in the side wall opened and it left. The door shut behind it, and small cube appeared on the first pillar again.

“Shurum’s shaft that was creepy,” Gurek said.

I couldn’t disagree. The statue didn’t move quite right. It was close, but that only made it more unsettling somehow.

Firi scowled at Gurek, obviously more concerned with his choice in language.

“Yeah, yeah. Not like the gods care about what I say about them. Besides, if they don’t want commentary they shouldn’t engage in their damn lovemaking in the sky where everyone can see it.”

Firi scowled harder and replied.

“That is a sacred event.”

“Well I damn well wish they would get on with it. Thaw is late this year and I am tired of the roads being iced over. Not to mention my own freezing b…

Firi was opening his mouth to reply, but Inda cut them both off.

“Not that this isn’t fascinating boys, but perhaps we should pay more attention to the task at hand.”

=

==

=

== POV: Caden ==

Hopefully, my tests would help me gauge a little about what my guests could actually do. Right now they were in the test of strength.

I would give quite a lot to be able to understand what they were saying.

They were arguing about something, through from the woman’s eye rolls and shaking head, it was not serious. Finally she cut them off and the plant man proceeded forward into the next room after a few words to the others and quickly moving the small weight to the other platform.

The three left behind panicked for a brief moment as the door closed behind him, but the weight’s reappearance where it had started clued them into the fact that they needed to repeat the puzzle.

In the next room the plant guy had taken a slightly larger stone and moved it opening up the next room and moving on again.

So far everything was working as I had designed it.

I had tested it all, of course. Moved the weights around to make sure that the puzzles worked properly and opened the doors. If someone was in a room for long enough the side door would open to let them out, just in case. Still, I was watching just to make sure it all worked properly.

A similar pattern happened with the other three guests, each ending up in their own room after a while. Occasionally one of the ones behind would be faster and rejoin a member of their group.

Everything proceeded as I thought it would, though the sheer weight of the stones they were moving around was pretty crazy. I didn’t really have a good way to measure the mass of the stones and compare them to my old world, but I was pretty sure I was looking at professional weightlifter levels of strength from all four of them.

And then, when the plant man finally got to a weight that he couldn’t lift, he surprised me.

I felt an almost itchy sensation as he tapped into my aura and used it to manipulate the stone of the floor. It lifted up the weight and moved it to the next pillar.

Huh.

Honestly wasn’t expecting that.

Regardless, or perhaps exactly because of my surprise, it was fascinating to watch. As he proceeded into the next room and did the exact same thing it was obvious that his use of my aura was substantially less efficient than my own. He was pouring far more mana into my aura to move the stones than I would need.

His technique was clumsy. My usage was a combination of instinct, admittedly a massive help, and technique I had perfected with much practice. Watching him use my power showed me different ways to do the same things. Most of what he did was less efficient, but little folds of aura here and there were actually more efficient.

Hmm, this might help me a little. I was always looking for ways to make my mana usage more efficient. I had unlimited mana at the moment, but I couldn’t know that it would remain that way in the future. I might unlock more titles if I got my skills up too.

While the amount of mass the man was moving around even before was impressive, now it was simply ridiculous. It had to be at least a few tons. He wasn’t terribly fast with this much weight, but still.

Admittedly he was borrowing my own power for this, and I had used it to shape the entire dungeon, but still.

The plant man kept moving larger and larger weights until he arrived at the last test I had prepared. It was a massive cube of super dense stone. The plant man had no luck moving it with tendrils of stone, but he eventually managed to move it by lifting entire sections of the floor and making a path to the next pillar. With considerable effort he was able to use tendrils of stone to push the cube until it was on the next pillar, though it had taken the man more than an hour to do.

This was definitely not the way I had expected anyone to complete this test, but it fairness he did manage to do it. He was actually pretty clever.

The others were not idle either.

The taller and the shorter man had proven to be quite different to each other in strength. The large man was able to move incredibly heavy weights on pure strength alone. Honestly, considering his larger frame, that wasn’t particularly surprising. Each had activated some form of skill as they moved the heavier weights that they managed. Faint ripples of light around their figures and a discharge of mana clued me in. They needed more and more time to recover before moving each weight. Ultimately the larger man went several rooms ahead of the other one.

What did surprise me was how the woman moved the weights. Not because she was strong, I was expecting that with the superhuman strength they were all displaying, and she seemed to have about the same raw strength as the shorter man.

No it was her magic. Instead of buffing her own strength directly, she did something that made the actual weight lighter. This had fascinated me and I watched her closely with one of my shards. I had no idea how her magic was doing it, but I really wanted to find out.

In the end the plant man had gone vastly further than any of the others, followed distantly by the larger man, the woman, and then the shorter man. As they each finished, the results of the tests imprinted themselves onto the identification crystals I had made for each of them.