"No!"

Bazel cried out in pain and fear.

"I'm going to break!"

Paris stood with one foot on his back while holding his arms back.

"Quit being a baby!" She looked like she was enjoying inflicting pain on him, "Even if you do break, Risken can just heal you right up."

She pulled his arms further back.

"Aah!"

Risken didn't revel in other people's suffering, but he couldn't help but laugh at the sight in front of him. When Paris suggested they do stretching exercises to help limber Bazel up and make him more agile, this wasn't what anyone thought she would do.

It looked like some new form of torture.

Paris actually came up with training for all three of them to do for the rest of the day. She said they shouldn't waste any time and sit around, then gave them assignments.

Samara's task was to meditate, which was supposed to increase her spirit and eventually give her more aether reserves. She sat cross-legged on the edge of the flat area where they were camped – which was basically a cliff. She held her hands out to the side with her thumbs touching her middle fingers.

She had a frustrated look on her face, and Risken suspected she wasn't having an easy time "clearing" her mind like Paris told her too.

Risken's task was much easier than those of his comrades; Paris told him to exercise. He did alternating sets of push-ups and crunches while watching the comedy unfold before him.

Paris was now twisting Bazel's leg in a direction it didn't look like it was supposed to go.

"Please!" Bazel shouted, "I'm begging for mercy here!"

"And you shall have none!" Paris threw back her head and laughed like a maniac.

Risken couldn't help but wonder about Paris. She admitted she was from another world – a place called Olympus – and she clearly possessed great knowledge and power. He wondered if she was really the normal person she pretended to be.

There's something… strange about her.

He didn't realize it the first time he met her, but after spending a couple days in her presence, Risken noticed something.

Paris didn't have the normal reactions of a human.

Where most people would be scared or anxious in some situations – like the harpy attack earlier – she always had a cheerful expression. She didn't seem to have any sense of danger or caution, either.

When the harpies had started bombarding them with rocks, Risken remembered seeing her smiling as she pranced through the falling stones – like it was a fun game. Meanwhile, everyone else had been a bit more frightened by the danger. And it didn't stop with her emotional reactions, her physical ones weren't normal either.

She didn't sweat or get tired, and for that matter she didn't even show signs of exertion. Where a normal person would have a little trouble climbing up the mountain path, she bounced along as if it were nothing.

There were other things, too.

Paris was exceptionally beautiful, her angelic face rivaling any noble Risken ever met. Her long blonde hair looked like spun gold, and her skin didn't have a single blemish on it. Her figure was perfectly proportional as well, with an hourglass shape and perfect roundness on her breasts and backside.

She almost looked like depictions Risken had seen of the All-mother, except younger.

And that was strange in itself. If she was actually the age she looked – around eighteen – then how was she so knowledgeable and strong?

There was a presence about her too, like she was the biggest person around despite being a head shorter than Risken himself. Neither Bazel or Samara had brought any of this up, but he couldn't imagine they didn't feel it as well.

Paris let go of Bazel's leg and he flopped to the ground, prone. He groaned a bit and looked like he might pass out. Paris slapped her hands together as if dusting them off and looked at him with a satisfied smile.

Risken stopped doing crunches and sat up.

"Lady Paris?" He held up his hand to get her attention, "If it is not too presumptuous of me, I would like to inquire about your person."

"I've got nothing to hide!" She stood with her feet shoulder width apart and put her hands on her hips, "What do ya wanna know?"

Risken didn't believe that for a moment, she was definitely hiding things.

"I mean no offense," he pointed at her, "but how is someone of your stature so powerful?"

"Ah," she grinned and winked, "looking for the secret to being buff? Well, I exercise quite a bit, it's kind of a family tradition to stay in peak physical condition. Me and my siblings are a bit obsessed with it actually. Any free time I have is spent building myself up."

It didn't escape Risken's notice that her answer was a slight deflection. As a noble, he had lots of experience in navigating conversations with people who were trying to hide information. Basically, she turned his question around and made it seem like he wanted the information to better himself instead of fishing for details about her.

Interestingly, she offered up some details he didn't ask for as well.

"You have siblings?" He asked, "Are they here?"

"In the dungeon? Yes." She nodded, "I have two brothers and a sister."

"Still, you are quite young to be as strong as you are."

"You think so?" She tilted her head and batted her eyes at him in a cutesy way.

She didn't admit to being young, only asked him if that was what he thought. It was another deflection.

Risken was only getting more suspicious of the woman. At first, he suspected she was someone who had been empowered by the magic of the dungeon, but now he thought it might be more than that.

First, he would need to determine if the dungeon could make a person like her.

"So, realistically," Risken continued, "How high can we get our stats? If we are to continue training as much as you do, what will the limit be?"

"For now, you can only increase them to twenty," she crossed her arms, "but, if you rank up, you will be able to increase them to forty."

"That is, rank 'D'?" He asked and she nodded, "Then, achieving higher ranks opens up a new limit as we progress through the dungeon?"

"Exactly." She said, "Each new rank will give you a new cap for your attributes. The aether technology we use inside the dungeon has the ability to change your body and make it better, elevating you above what a normal human can be."

That information was new. If each rank raised the bar another twenty, then achieving rank "A" would allow a person to raise all of their stats to one-hundred, and there might be ranks above that.

Risken couldn't do math as well as Bazel, but he suspected there was some sort of exponential increase with each new rank. With the little experimentation he had already done, it seemed that a person's number indicated exactly how good that stat was.

For example, if a person with ten strength could lift one-hundred pounds, then a person with twenty could lift two-hundred. So, the person with twenty strength was exactly twice as strong as the person with ten.

But what about a person with twenty-one strength?

According to what Paris said, the dungeon did transform people in some magical way. Even though she called it technology, it was far beyond anything he could comprehend and might as well be magic.

"What rank are you, Lady Paris?"

Paris winked and stuck her tongue out.

"I'm not telling!"

Yes. She's definitely hiding something.

■■■

Peton sat on a log next to the fire that Tarken had just started. They were on a job to kill something called a Gorgon, and find a person it had kidnapped. However, before they could deliver justice to the creature or rescue its hostage, they had to find its lair.

The part of the dungeon they were in was the thick forest that Peton had a hard time navigating. Tarken fared a little better since he didn't have much armor, but Peton was encumbered to the point that it made it hard to walk through the underbrush.

On top of all that, the sun was going down and the light was failing. Long shadows were being cast over the whole forest, and soon the fire would be their only light.

Since they were stopping for the night, Peton had removed his armor and now sat by the fire in a plain brown tunic.

"Are these tasks necessary to destroy this place?" Tarken sat at the other side of the fire and stretched, "I find it tedious. Plus, I don't see how this will help solve the problem with my brother."

"These tasks are only necessary in the respect that they give us more power," Peton explained, "It is that very power that I will use to destroy this foul place."

Peton still found it surprising how easily he had convinced Tarken to accompany him. He didn't really care much about the prince, and found him to be a man lacking in faith, but he was happy for the help.

Initially, Tarken just wanted to find his brother and leave, but Peton suggested that they could simply eliminate Risken and destroy the dungeon at the same time. He guilted Tarken into going along with it by telling him that it was his duty to do the will of the divines – as someone who was blessed by them from birth.

The fact that someone like Tarken could be blessed by the divines grated on Peton, though. He was an arrogant and self-centered man who never had to work for a single thing in his life. The blessing that the All-mother gave to royal families was automatically passed down through generations, but it was clear to Peton that Tarken took that for granted.

Maybe I'll kill him after we deal with his brother, Peton thought, surely the divines know he is an unworthy vessel.

"You still didn't say how this pertains to Risken," Tarken whined, "is all of this necessary to deal with him?"

"Like us," Peton looked into the fire as he spoke, "Your brother is gaining power in here. Do you think you can simply walk up to him and run him through?"

"I suppose not," Tarken leaned back and ran his hand through his red hair, "Do you know what sort of class he has?"

"No," Peton shook his head, "I haven't been able to find out. I asked around for information on him, but the heretics who live in this place are tight-lipped about other employees."

"Ha!" Tarken laughed, "They sure do have a strange way of talking about things, don't they? They make it sound like this whole place is a merchant company."

"They do treat it like a business. It's very queer."

"I'll say!" Tarken sat up quickly and looked into the trees, "What was that!?"

Peton heard it too, a twig snapping under someone's foot. It would have been hard to distinguish it from the crackling of the fire, but Peton was always on high-alert for such things.

Peton summoned his sword from his inventory and turned to the noise, "Who's there?"

A man stepped out of the shadows with his hands held up on either side of his head.

He was huge.

Peton himself was a big man – standing over six feet tall and weighing nearly three hundred pounds. Most of that weight was muscle, too. But the man approaching them was even bigger.

He stood at least six inches taller than Peton and had more muscle than he thought was possible for a person to have. He wore a simple sleeveless tunic and the skin of a wildcat around his shoulders. His short brown hair stuck up in places like a kid who never combed. He had a friendly smile, and was quite handsome.

"Woah there!" The man said in a sonorous voice, "I just saw the fire and thought to warm myself. If it's okay?"

"Who are you, first?" Peton asked.

"My name is Fyto," he shrugged, "I'm just one of the guys that was suckered in by this place."

"What do you mean, suckered in?" Peton didn't lower his sword.

"I mean," Fyto waved his hand around, "I thought this was a place made by the divines to bless the faithful, but it's really run by demons."

"You know?" Peton lowered his sword a little, "How?"

"I've always been faithful to the All-mother and her divines," he said, "and always relied on their guidance."

Fyto dropped his hands and looked around at the forest, "I just don't feel their presence here, if that makes any sense."

Peton lowered his sword completely and nodded, "It does, brother Fyto. I am a holy knight, more in tune with these things than most. I cannot feel their presence here either."

"A holy knight?" Fyto raised an eyebrow, "Why would you remain here?"

"I have my reasons."

"Peton?" Tarken looked over, "Are you sure about this guy?"

Peton put his sword back in his inventory and sat back down on the log.

"I have a good sense for who's faithful or not," Peton looked over at Fyto, "I think he's trustworthy."

"He looks like a vagrant." Tarken sneered.

"I'm a bit rough from living in the wild, I'll admit." Fyto said as he looked down at his simple clothes.

"Pay no mind to him," Peton said to Fyto, "Please, have a seat and tell me about yourself."

"Thank you."

Fyto walked over and sat on the log close to Peton, "So, what do you want to know about me?"

"You're a man of faith, so we could talk about that." Peton smiled, "Who do you pray to?"

"The All-mother of course!" He said with a chuckle, "But I also give thanks and blood offerings to Jongar. I believe one should always value strength."

Peton barked a short laugh, "Yes friend. I can see Jongar has blessed you greatly."

Fyto flexed one of his ridiculously muscled arms, "You think so?"

Peton already liked Fyto's company more than Tarken's. Tarken didn't like talking about matters of faith like that. Maybe he could convince the large man to help him as well. If he truly was as faithful as he seemed, he would agree to help.

Maybe the divines sent him to me, Peton thought, that certainly seems like something they would do, sending in more people to help destroy this place…

Peton offered a quick prayer of thanks to all the divines for guiding Fyto's steps. He looked over at the man and held out his hand.

"I like you Fyto, I'm Peton."