The sun was starting to shine overhead. It was 6:37 A.M. He had spent the last three and a half hours observing the monsters. Their positions, their movement patterns, anything and everything he could discern would give him the edge he needed to win.

"Know thy enemy and know thyself, and you need not fear a thousand battles," Erik muttered to himself as he finally finished his last preparation. He did his best to explore his newfound abilities, and there was only so much he could learn from watching and following the beasts, especially such an alien and bizarre species. He sure hoped that he wouldn't have to test out how literal the last part was.

He walked into one of the rooms containing a Shadow Beast. His right hand holding a knife with a blade the length of his palm and in his left was a wooden buckler. He had to dismantle a stool, carve a handle out of a kid's building blocks, and use a copious amount of glue and duck tape, but he made a decent enough shield in his opinion.

The fact that it looked like an amateur's first attempt at L.A.R.P and belonged in the garbage was irrelevant and something he pointedly chose to ignore.

Hey, if it works, it works.

His experiments with the corpse of the first monster showed that while it was very resistant to blunt force trauma, he had no problem cutting or piercing it. Its skin was almost rubbery in a sense, able to stretch and absorb impact well enough, but once there was a tear it was all too easy to shred. Their eyes were like glass orbs and were easy enough to smash.

They did not weight much and from testing their joints have a smaller range of motion that would be expected from a humanoid creature. Recalling his battle with it seemed to imply that they rely on ambushes with pounces and charges being their main method of attack, almost like a bull. He didn't notice it earlier because of how small his room was and his surprise of the situation, but it was now obvious to him while thinking calmly. In a one on one direct confrontation, it wasn't too much of a threat even to the average man.

Their attacks simple-minded and easily predicted and their range short. Sure they had surprising strength and durability, but only in comparison to their size and lightweight. If it wasn't for the shock of their appearance then they might as well be a child or street thug with a pocket knife in terms of danger.

Which is why he chose to only equip himself with a small and relatively lightweight shield and knife. The proper tools for the proper prey. While he could've used another pole or made a spear to give himself more range and safety, it would've wasted a lot of energy and time he didn't have to spare. After all, who uses an elephant gun to hunt a deer?

His target wasn't much different from the first of their kind he had met. Same short stature, same blade-like claws, and same shining red eyes. He wasn't sure if it was because they all came from the same batch so to speak or because they were in their infancy and had yet had time to develop their individuality as he had read from their profile. Whatever the case, he was immensely thankful as this simplified everything. Afterall he could hardly waste a week to observing and formulating a battle plan against a hundred monster, each with different random mutations, who might pull out some magical bullshit out of their ass to fry his ass.

Erik took a deep breath and cleared his mind of wandering thoughts. He bounced on his feet lightly a few times before he charged the creature. His shield in front of him as he smashed it into the torso of the creature, knocking the wind out of it, and pinned it to the wall. His dagger was held in a reverse grip as he stabbed it into its neck, cutting deep into the flesh and angled so that it would slip past the collarbone and behind the sternum, piercing its major heart. It couldn't do much more than gasp in pain and confusion before I had already stabbed it another two times on both sides of its pelvis area where it had two lesser hearts. I stepped back and watched for a moment as it fell.

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It was dead before it touched the ground.

200 Exp Awarded!

Deciding to take a quick breather and look through his status one more time, Erik noticed something surprising

Name: Erik Hunter Level: 1 Class: Blood Mage DEX: 10 INT: 11 VIT: 8 STR: 11(0.2) AGI: 12 END: 6(0.5) Title: N/A Health: 100/100 Mana: 110/110 Regen 0.2/Min 0.61/Min

His Stats went up without him leveling up or putting any points in it. Sure, it was a mere 1.5 in Endurance, 0.2 Strength, and a 1 in Vitality, but considering how low his stats were they were a relatively decent bonus. He was confused on why his Health and Regen rates didn't change though. What else could they effect with names like that? Deciding it was overdue from some closer inspection he read through the description of each stats more closely. It basically boiled down to this according to his understanding.

Dexterity increases control of the body and hand-eye coordination.

Strength was pretty straightforward, it increases the body's muscle power, and slightly improve your bones and tendons.

Intelligence was a bit of a surprise, it didn't make you smarter per se, but rather increases your capacity to retain information, cognitive processing speed, increase your mana pool, and a minor reflex and senses enhancement as a side effect. Mostly visual and audio.

Agility increases your reflexes, flexibility, and movement speeds.

Vitality it seems did, in fact, improve your HP and regen, along with resistance to diseases and toxins, although the last parts seemed like an indirect effect. It seems the reason why he didn't gain any more max HP was because "Humans" started out with 100 minimum regardless of what their actual HP was at the moment the tutorial started. It was a special effect to ensure everyone had a fair shot at least passing the first stage. This temporary buff ensured he wouldn't see any actual gain until he went past 10. His Stats were improving probably because of his recent surgery and recovery. 10 was the average for a decently fit specimen of his species it would seem. Considering his condition even with his ailment, he guessed his STR would end up at 12 and his VIT and END would gain another point or two.

Finally was Endurance. It improved his stamina and his body's durability along with a minor improvement to the efficiency in which his body stored and uses energy.

Reading through all the overly long description of his status page lead to an amazing discovery. He could earn stats through methods other than leveling up! Exercising, mental training, buffs! His venue for gaining more power drastically expanded! The best part was the System seemed to imply there was no actual upper limit to how many "Free" points he could get.

The human body had a limit. No matter how people try to deny it, that was a fact. We can only remember so many things, hence the invention of written language, we can only survive in a certain range of temperatures, hence we made clothing, and we could only lift so much. Our limits were hard-wired into our genetics. A certain frame can only fit so much muscle, our bones can only handle so much weight, but with this System, there is no such limit. An old man can gain as much STR as the current Mr. Olympia! An anorexic girl could outrun a horse!

Erik wondered how the System actually improved their bodies and the mechanics behind it, but alas he had a job to complete and so little time.

After his discovery, whenever he took a breather from his killing spree, he started to work on mapping out a workout routine. The plan was to get as much stats from working out and training as he could before he started using the ones he would gain from level up. He was already level 5 after clearing out this section of the hospital, but the Exp requirement was rapidly increasing. Because of the double Exp event during the Tutorial, he was gaining 200 per Shadow Beast, but he went from needing 1000 to 11,000 Exp to level up.

He was close to level 6 now considering it only took him a minute or two to finish one off. His progress was slowing to a crawl and he would to either find stronger preys or a more efficient way to kill these little buggers off. Who knows, maybe he'll gain a Title or achievement from all this

"Erik, The Shadow Beast Slayer!"... sounds really cool before you remember that these were basically vermin. Oh well, if he was going to be a gloried exterminator he'd be the goddamn best one the galaxy has ever seen. He sure hopes it didn't need him to kill a thousand of them to unlock if it existed.