As Sevs was looking around, he caught Markus’s eye. Noticing something was off, he came over to see what was up. Susan had half grabbed the phone, the way adults do when you try to show them something. She was scrolling up and down slightly, but her mouth was still moving as she searched for words. Markus took a quick look over her shoulder. He gave a hearty chuckle as he clapped them each on a shoulder. “I see Sevs has made you a gift. He must like you. I don't think he has ever got me anything so nice.”

Susan started to find her voice. “...How?”

Sevs and Markus both looked at her like she had more to say. Not wanting to seem like an idiot, Susan searched for words. She stopped to lick her lips. “Like, how did you make this?”

Sevs switched his gaze to look at Markus, confused. Markus stepped in to rescue Sevs from the awkward position. “He is a bit of a programmer. Of course, I taught him everything he knows.”

Markus couldn’t help but slip in some bravado. This might have saved Sevs more than anything, as it completely sidetracked Susan. Still confused, Susan looked up at Markus and cocked an eyebrow. “Really? You teach programming to little kids?”

“Uhhhh, well, not normally. Sevs is a friend, so I made an exception.” Markus humbly clarified.

Susan and Markus went back and forth a few times, but Sevs stopped listening. When they calmed down enough, they would focus. Eventually.

***

On the way home, Sevs asked Father how he kept beating Markus. Father started chuckling. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell Markus. Okay?”

Sevs nodded. So Father continued, “You see, back in high school, I did four years of wrestling. Now that doesn’t completely translate, but a lot of the instincts do, and many of the positions are very similar. Maybe I will tell Markus one day, but for now, it's just too much fun.”

***

Sevs finished the last couple of customizations Susan had asked for. After he had gotten all of the information he needed from her, he asked if there was anything else she wanted. Luckily there was not much. Susan only had a few requests with color schemes and the like. Oddly enough, the name of the gym was Susan’s gym. That was mostly because she hadn’t considered it before. Put on the spot, Susan just stuck with what Sevs had chosen as a placeholder. This kinda made Sevs feel a bit sad. He had to agree with Father; it was not a very creative name. It also would not help with the quest very much.

Sevs worries were unfounded. Just as Sevs was putting the final touches on the search optimization, he received an update on the quest.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Congratulations! You have completed the Quest Help Susan succeed in her business. Through various actions, you have helped lay the groundwork for a successful business by helping retain key customers and providing a marketing tool.

Rewards:

Congratulations! You have learned the skill, Marketing.

You now experience increased speed in learning physical combat skills for the next few months.

Congratulations! Through demonstrated use of a skill, you have been awarded the skill Marketing. The material you create will be slightly more eye-catching when intended to draw the attention of a specific audience.

(Normal training restrictions suppressed)

Sevs looked over the notifications immediately. Seems that he still had a ways to go for the combat skill, or the system would have just given it to him. That’s not too unexpected. Marketing was heavily biased toward charisma-based builds, whereas physical combat was not. Still, he was planning on continuing to go to the gym for the foreseeable future. He would need to take advantage of the increased training speed. That was a reward he would not like to squander. Increasing the training speed of a particular type of skill was not that uncommon of a reward. It was usually only given out to help balance out builds. The system only seemed to give it for skills that opposed the player's primary focus.

Still, even though it was not an uncommon prize, it was much better than it could have been. The other option would have been EXP. That was the only reward tutorial quests ever gave out, as one can’t get skills or items in the tutorial. Sometimes players would talk about learning skills in the tutorial. However, that was not really learning the skills. The system would literally teach you the skills. For example, if you learned how to fence, you would know how to wield a rapier. But, you would not get the system skill until sometime in a main world. So you could not track your progress. You also didn’t have the advantage of an increase in power, a high skill level awarded. The increased training speed was also a good reward because Sevs didn’t want extra EXP. That would get him out of this world too fast. Sevs was not ready to leave when taking so many strides here. The progress he was making here was more than he could ever hope for. At this rate, he might enter a main world with skills that some people ascended with. While it might not help him ascend any faster, it would make the game much more enjoyable. With some luck, it would put him in a position that might let him stretch himself and eventually find what he was missing.

Sevs began to plan the rest of his time in the tutorial. First, he needed to take full advantage of the training boost. Also, he needed to continue lifting and engineering. Though he would like to work on his Leadership skill more actively. So far, it had been increasing passively, as he learned from Father’s teachings. Sevs was sure if he took more leadership roles, progress would be faster. He had yet to figure that out, unfortunately. Maybe the gym would give him more options in the future. Other than that, he would try to avoid quests to prevent any extra EXP he decided. He had enough of a foundation with a few core root skills and a couple others to counterbalance a little. It would be best to only train them up as high as he could until he started getting the mandatory quests around levels 12 to 14. Boy, was this a much more fun play-through than his DEX/AGI tries.