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Since most people in Ekralas didn’t have much reason to buy large rocks, I hadn’t really considered their use as training implements. While blocks might be used for construction, being able to make exactly the shape and size you wanted was best for training purposes.
I could certainly say most people didn’t have uses for hundreds of pounds of weight very frequently. I was extremely certain most people didn’t have reason to want to lift a ton, or more than a ton. Of course, strong warriors were an exception to this. People liked knowing how strong they were, comparing numbers, things like that. While Strength was a number that could be compared, actually using it was generally more effective. Otherwise, people could just quote whatever they wanted. I could say 1400, and people would be like “ooh, that’s a big number too bad you probably made it up”.
But if I lifted a two and a half foot cube of mostly granite, they understood better. Lifting over a ton of material showed a point. That said, perfect cubes weren’t really… optimal for lifting. Thus, shaping gathered pieces of rock into a three foot across sphere was more appropriate. It was about the same amount of weight- more than a ton. It also took up much less space than something like, say, Socks.
Training Strength more wasn’t really necessary, but I had a point to make to myself. If I were to compare myself to someone from Earth, sure I could beat any of them… but based on my estimates my base Strength wasn’t necessarily much more than what some people had achieved without any magic involved. Everything beyond that was certainly a magical increase, and the fact that I could achieve what I did basically involved magic too. With all my advantages, I had to be able to achieve more. Was there any point to it? Certainly.
Anything that let me hit it would likely immediately regret it, but monsters weren’t people. It wasn’t like adventurers stopped getting stronger as they went up in levels, and monsters weren’t constrained by the whole thing of having a particular size or shape of body. Even if I’d had a weapon big enough to smash through the rock boss we came across, I don’t know if my Strength could have gone further than half an arm at once. Against anything our level? I was more than capable of overpowering it. However, I wasn’t worried about fighting anything our level. Our party had that completely under control, even without me. Fighting things above our level, things that were naturally strong or people that stole attributes from others… those were what I needed to be concerned about.
I didn’t think we would run into any more soon- the boss we had fought above the ruins was only so powerful because it had been around longer than it should have been. The natural state this dungeon made things in was much weaker. Still, I had the chance to train now for when I might need it later.
Cubes and spheres were nice and all, but I made all sorts of different shaped things to support training myself in different ways. I made a sort of bench shaped thing that went over my back for pushups. I could add more to it as I wanted to, since it was all just reformed rock. It was a useful ability, and though I couldn’t say anything I did looked good, functional was all that mattered.
I even made a massive weapon-thing. It wasn’t a sword or hammer or anything, basically just a grip on a big block of stone for me to swing. This was much less than a ton- both because swinging something was much harder than static lifting, but also because it would just break otherwise. If the grip was the right size, there was only so much force it could handle. I managed to surpass that limit with reinforcement magic, though perhaps steel might have done the job just as well. However, purchasing a large chunk of steel wasn’t possible at the moment anyway. Maybe in Ekralas I could have something like that, but rock was free- I just took some of what was leftover from the monsters we had defeated, which was placed very separate from the archaeological remains. Nobody really wanted it, and it was easier than carrying some from the dungeon.
It wasn’t like I exclusively trained Strength… that just required the most work to actually provide a challenge that would promote growth. Everything but Luck could be trained with some work. To promote the best kind of growth, that meant a lot of sparring- with various people from the expedition. We could all learn from each other and make each other stronger. Some people were better than me in every area- except for Strength. There were people who were faster, tougher, able to last longer… I wasn’t going to try to match myself to all of them. I couldn’t, both because they had attribute points to distribute to those areas and larger bonuses from classes… but also because I knew I couldn’t be the best at everything.
However, just because I couldn’t be best at everything didn’t mean I couldn’t be good at everything. At least competent. That was what a Jack-of-All-Trades was, after all. I wanted to learn some new skills too, but I wasn’t really sure what would be good. For the moment, keeping up with the various types of magic filled the rest of my free time- and I got plenty of training in earth magic from the excavation process.
All of the party were members of The Guild. An archaeological expedition was certainly a worthy cause, and we didn’t have anything specific we had to do, but we needed to be strong enough to handle ourselves. I knew the others worked hard in their own areas. Halette could pick out details at seemingly any distance, but she wasn’t just born like that. She trained it, just like everything else did for everything they had. Except Kantrilla’s Luck- she insisted that couldn’t be trained, and that was probably true… but it was also impossible to say she didn’t deserve it, with how much she cared for everyone- even those she didn’t really know.
—–
Finally we arrived at a large structure, not buried as deeply as some of the others… or rather, it had been larger to begin with. The palace of Namoth, where the king had lived. At least, that was what we were told- and it made plenty of sense. There was a lot more marble compared to granite and gneiss and sandstone and… I wondered where the rock came from. The dungeon, obviously, but it was made of some sedimentary and some igneous and really pretty much everything. Each creature was just one kind, but overall? It could be anything. Unfortunately, dungeons remained hard to figure out. At the very least, the stuff was formed by magic. It didn’t seem to be pulled from elsewhere, but that was all that was really known. Making something from nothing took an extreme amount of energy, but most of it got reused so if there was an initial amount of material or something… that would be enough. That did lead to a question for Sage Norwood. “Does that mean we can reduce the dungeon activity if we cart out the rock? If so, does that apply to other dungeons and the equipment in it?”
He nodded, stroking his beard as he looked over the wall I had been unearthing. “A good question that has been asked before. Most dungeons don’t have so much that can be removed as this one. Even in dungeons with equipment, that equipment is a small part of the mass. Still, ten or twenty percent of some creatures being removed… that could be part of why exploring dungeons help. Killing the monsters has similar effects, because it takes energy to reform them anyway. As for this particular dungeon, I suppose if we took the effort to cart out all the rocks we might reduce activity significantly.”
I nodded, “I thought so. Actually… I suppose that makes sense. That could be how Khyrmin manages a dungeon all on her own… since she takes all of the physical parts out of the dungeon. Or not. She’s kind of a one-person-army.”
Sage Norwood acknowledged that observation, “Indeed. I haven’t seen the dungeon in question, but I would imagine it’s not just the removal of physical goods that makes it possible. Not many individuals could pull that off.”
“Not in Othya, at least…”
—–
The entire excavation became focused on the palace once we reached it and confirmed that was what it was- it had only been clear it was a large structure before we unearthed a portion of it. While other buildings had some bones from dead bodies… the palace actually had more, especially grouped in the front rooms. It wasn’t a castle, easily defended… but it had room for people to gather and solid enough walls. Perhaps some people had taken a last stand within its walls. That was what the remains of bodies and equipment told us, anyway. I found that story somewhat hard to read, but Sage Norwood was able to provide some insight into at least some more probable details of how things might have gone.