“When you see one of the druids or clan elders lifting, you know what it looks like; they use magic, sure, but if you know what they are doing, it is straightforward. For her? It has to be half a dozen different things all working in concert and all immensely demanding in precision, and that is just what she plainly admitted to in those books, imagine what sort of bizarre tricks she keeps to herself. You have seen how she moves, it almost looks like a spiritwalker in a permanent trance.”

Nodding, the other man agreed: “Yeah, I get what you mean. Whenever she moves it looks like that one movement has been practiced ten thousand times. I wonder if she transforms like the spiritwalkers do, that might be why she looks smaller than expected. You have seen the Ulf elder, the size difference is almost comical when she turns.”

The first man added: “By the amount of power she can generate you’d think she has a full S in Force, but she’s an A+; punching up by two full increments. No wonder Kyriak wants to see her for himself.”

“Do you think she could lift one of these?” the other Borean asked, nodding at the target block between punches.

“Maybe. Maybe,” the first man shrugged.

Zel enjoyed the similarity of thought between herself and these Boreans. However, she didn’t like listening in overmuch and didn’t exactly have much stretching left to do, so she finished and went on her way. Curious eyes fell upon her as she made her way down the street, and in turn, she took in her surroundings with the self-same curiosity. Many of the buildings gave off an aura of antiquity suggesting millennia of history, while everything retained an aura of unmarred newness. A giant man could be seen at the roadside replacing a broken cobble, and next to him, another was bending a section of copper pipe into shape with hand tools. Zel wondered if meticulous maintenance of infrastructure also somehow fed into the honor system, or if it was just a matter of the Borean culture. Perhaps different clans were responsible for ensuring their respective little slice of the city was well maintained. She also wondered how come Borean winds didn’t constantly blast through the city, but then, she figured measures against the winds would be among the most important things for an urbanized settlement in the middle of the permafrost.

A relatively brief walk had her find an outdoor gymnasium similar to the one across from the Hulson longhouse, just an order of magnitude greater in functionally every perceptible way. From the scale of it to the variety of equipment, it by far dwarfed the previous one. Sight of the place was preceded by hearing it, however; the sound of great drums resounded, and they turned out to be just another piece of equipment, with several of them lined up alongside great mallets. Their designs were such that their sound was minimized, and even then each drum-stroke sounded like thunder. Impressively enough, those using them maintained near perfect rhythm. The gymnasium was sectioned off by four obelisks at its corners, forming a barely-visible barrier about its perimeter, which noticeably dampened the sounds from within its perimeter.

Then, there came the thud of something of immense weight being set down, immediately followed by a guttural, primal scream. It was a scream that somehow conveyed a feeling of profound spiritual understanding for struggle and aspiration, and her eyes were immediately drawn to its source. At a glance, she thought that it had to be some monstrous bear who had cultivated a humanoid form, but it was not so. The figure was unmistakably human; incredibly hairy, fat, and radiating an aura of unimpeachable might, but human. Or… Was that aura just the fumes from his sweat? Zel couldn’t tell. He leaned back, placing one hand on his forehead as he screamed to the heavens. The boulder he’d just set down had to have weighed at least five or six tons.

The man was surrounded by several other, heavily-built men, solemnly nodding at… His lifting? Or was it his screaming? She couldn’t tell.

“He has uttered another holy verse…” one of them said with utter seriousness as the man-bear drew in guttural breaths and blasted gouts of steam from his nostrils. Not a wisp of Fog could be seen in his exhalation. She wondered if this was who the other Borean had claimed she would like to meet.

At first, Zel crossed the barrier with the entirely benign intent to lift heavier than anyone there and then leave, repeating the same process as she had at the Hulson gymnasium by going up through the various weights available. The boulders here were not just perfectly homogenous in weight, they were elaborately carved and had handles wrought of a cold-iron that didn’t conduct vibration into her hands. Soon enough she reached the same weight as the bear-man, and their gazes met. By this point, the weights demanded her to use her full strength alongside Fog-breathing and Thundercharger.

Instantaneously, a tacit agreement was formed. Without so much as a word spoken of it, the two of them had entered into an impromptu lifting contest, using the gym’s multiple copies of the same weight.

The struggle which followed brought the rest of the gymnasium to a halt, the gravity well of sheer primeval strength drawing in the attention of those present. Of those using the drums several did not stop their workouts, continuing to smash out a slow, steady drumbeat.

Boulder after boulder they squared off, eventually reaching the largest boulders in the gymnasium, which dwarfed the both of them combined several times over and were carved with images of the great beasts they supposedly equalled in weight. Extrapolating the weight growth up until this point, Zel was certain that even these didn’t cross the double-digit tonnage boundary.

There was no doubt as to Kyriak’s strength, but to all but the sharpest of eyes, it seemed as though he put every shred of his might into every lift regardless of whether it was a hundred kilos or a ton, emitting bestial grunts and screams as he summoned up the force to lift the weights. By contrast, Zelsys lifted in relative silence, but her effort was far more visually quantifiable.