Delta galaxy training ground day 7 progress update, individual:

Power level: Rank 43

Item level: Rank 10

Magic level: Unranked

Total soul stat points: Rank 10

Wealth: Unranked

Vitality: Rank 1

Strength: Unranked

Stamina: Unranked

Dexterity: Unranked

Mana: Unranked

Perception: Unranked

Manipulation: Unranked

Willpower: Unranked

Ladder updated: Partially visible to all initiates.

Rewards:

Title: Early specialist (vitality) – maintained.

Bronze loot box (4): for achieving 4 ranked stats. 2 X loot boxes upgraded to silver for achieving top 10 ranking. 1 X loot box upgraded to gold for achieving number 1 ranking.

Barry smiled as he read through his mental messages. He grinned particularly wide when he reached the last line that mentioned his rewards. He beamed proudly seeing that he had maintained his rank one position in the vitality stat.

“Still number one,” Barry thought to himself with relief.

However, his smile quickly flipped to a frown as he realised that his position in all other categories had slipped, including wealth where he had dropped off the ranking list entirely. His thoughts were soon brought back to the positive aspects of the notification however, as a sparkling glow of light appeared all around him, followed by the emergence of multiple loot boxes in all directions around him. Despite the fact that he had only received four loot boxes, there were actually eight boxes of varying design resting nearby. Confused, Barry walked over to one of the closest bronze boxes and attempted to open it, but as he did a new message appeared in his mind.

This item is bound to another. You are unable to open this loot box.

Frowning, Barry stepped away from the box and instead tried a silver one to his left, but the same message appeared.

“Are you quite right?” huffed Tuti as she walked over to the silver box that Barry was standing next to.

“This one is obviously mine, can’t you feel the link.” Barry nodded, “Of course, these rewards are not just for me,” he thought, feeling rather stupid.

In fact, now that Tuti mentioned it, there was a strange something that drew him towards the four boxes to his left that he didn’t feel from the others.

“That must be that link she’s talking about,” he thought.

Barry glanced back at Tuti and saw her glaring at him, startled he took a step back.

“Woah, what is that look for? It was just a mistake, I’m not going to steal your loot if that’s what you’re thinking,” Barry stammered.

Tuti’s glare stared right through him, and Barry began to sweat from the intensity of it.

“Just how exactly did you get a gold loot box and a silver when I only got a silver and a bronze?” she asked with pressure in her voice.

Barry let out a half snort in response to the question, relieved that this was all Tuti was worried about and a little amused at her obvious jealousy. “Oh, is that all? I guess there’s no point hiding it. I got a gold loot box because I’m currently rank one in vitality,” Barry explained.

Tuti’s mouth opened in utter shock, and even Knob looked at Barry a little differently.

“What’s with those looks? You already knew I had a high vitality level,” Barry said wonderingly.

“Yeah I knew it was high, but not rank one high! There’s a bit of a difference,” Tuti exclaimed, still frazzled by the revelation, “So you have a vitality level of twenty-seven? That is massive for this stage in the training grounds!”

“Yeah, before boosts it’s level twenty-seven,” Barry confirmed.

“Wait, how did you know what raw vitality level I am?” he asked in confusion.

“You really are quite clueless aren’t you,” Tuti sighed, “The ladder of course, surely you saw that notification in your mind?”

In unison Barry and Knob said in equally muddled tones, “Ladder?”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Honestly, I think Swirly understands more about the training grounds than you do!“ Tuti huffed.

Swirly puffed out his chest and nodded at the comment and Barry couldn’t help but smirk at the sight.

“That’s right, I do remember seeing that extra line about a ladder being partially visible or something,” Barry said.

“I guess I might as well explain it to you imbeciles,” Tuti said sharply.

“The ladder is a way of seeing where you sit in comparison to the rest of the initiates with regards to stats and accomplishments. It seems that on day three your rank is mentioned but you can’t check it regularly. Now that it’s day seven we have been given limited access to the ladder allowing one to see their own position for your ranked stats in addition to the levels required for each ranking position, but not who is at each rank.”

“That is awesome! How do I check the ladder?” Barry grinned excitedly.

“Go to your stats page and near the bottom where it now says ladder, use your mind to focus and open it,” Tuti explained abruptly.

Without any further questions, Barry did just that.

Delta galaxy training ground day 7 ladder:

* Individual

* Overall

Barry willed himself to look at his individual stats and found the information identical to the message he had received just a few minutes earlier, so he instead closed out of that page and focussed on the overall stats.

Overall stats:

* Power level

* Magic level

* Item level

* Total soul stat points

* Wealth

* Vitality

* Strength

* Stamina

* Dexterity

* Mana

* Perception

* Manipulation

* Willpower

Barry spent the next ten minutes or so looking through each of the thirteen individual ladder ranking categories one by one. The top one hundred levels of each were listed in order of highest to lowest, with the exception of the wealth category where they were all just numbers in the tens of thousands, with higher numbers representing greater wealth.

For the stats that he ranked in, Barry saw his current position was highlighted in his mind, making it easy to see where he sat in comparison to others. The information was incredibly interesting to Barry. For example, despite being rank forty-three in power level, the top twenty or so were quite a way in front of him, with the rank one already being level thirteen compared to his eight. His item level was pretty good, with the rank one being level twelve compared to his nine, but there were a lot of initiates in the top one hundred that were between level seven and eight, meaning his lead over them was minimal. The top ranked magic level was a whopping fourteen which was seemed crazy to Barry considering his was only level eight. The total soul stat points list was particularly interesting, currently Barry was rank ten, with fifty-four total stat points. However, the rank one hundred only had thirty-three stat points, and the rank one a massive seventy, meaning there was a huge gap between the best of the best and the worst of the best. For the individual skill stats it seemed that strength and mana were the most popular skills to level. The rank one in strength had a level of twenty-seven and the rank one in mana had a whopping thirty-two stat points. Barry’s twenty-seven in vitality was the equal second highest rank one stat out of all eight categories.

What was most impressive about Barry’s vitality, was that the gap he had between him and the rank two vitality initiate was the largest of all the categories. He had a seven-point lead over rank two in vitality, not to mention a nine-point lead over rank three, putting him truly in a league of his own. For the remaining stat categories all the leaders had levels in the low twenties, with the exception of manipulation where the leader had a level of nineteen, and finally willpower where the current leader only had a level of twelve. In fact, to rank in the top one hundred for either willpower or manipulation, one only needed a level of eight, in comparison to most of the other stats that required a level at least in the teens to rank. Barry could have spent all day looking through the different statistics, and he had a burning desire to get out and fight some more beasts. He felt a renewed sense of confidence and motivation to keep climbing the ranks and he figured that was probably the point of the ladder in the first place. It was easy to let your mind wander in this forest, and the relentless challenges and battles could quickly become fatiguing, so something like this was a welcomed positive boost to his mindset. But before he could head off on another adventure, he had something important to do. He had some loot boxes to open.

Bringing his attention away from his mind and back to the real world he was surprised to see that Tuti had already opened three of her loot boxes, the silver, and two bronze ones.

“Welcome back,” she said cheekily, “You need to work on that habit of fully disengaging from real life when you look through your internal stats, or you’ll be a sitting duck. You were just standing there, looking all dopey for over a minute.”

Barry nodded in agreement as the corner of his mouth upturned ever so slightly.

“Why haven’t you opened the fourth one?” Barry asked the vixant.

“Huh, what do you mean? I thought the rest were all yours,” Tuti replied with confusion.

At that moment both Barry and Tuti turned to face Knob who just looked down at the ground to avoid direct eye contact.

“Did you get a box too Knob?” Barry asked.

Knob squirmed slightly in response and rotated his foot on the ground causing a curved indentation to form.

“Yeah, I made it into the top one hundred for manipulation, so I got a bronze box,” Knob affirmed.

“Oh yeah of course, I should have worked that out from the manipulation ladder,” thought Barry, before turning to face Tuti, “So what loot did you get Tuti?”

“Hmm, I’ll show you after you open yours up. You too Knob,” Tuti declared with hands on hips.

Knob blushed shyly and hobbled over to his single bronze crate, and Barry did the same towards his own loot box stash. Knob went first, opening his box to find a small bronze amulet that glistened in the light of the sun. Barry quickly inspected the amulet to check its properties before opening his own box.

Inspection:

Amulet of minor stamina: A basic magical amulet imbued with the power of stamina. This amulet provides 1 additional stat point to stamina when worn.

“Not bad,” Barry thought after reading the description.

“Cool necklace, what’s it do?” asked Tuti who had crept up close to Knob who was struggling to get the amulet up and over his head due to his long, matted, muddy hair.

“Can’t you just inspect it?” asked Barry, confused by the question.

“Not without touching it. Have you forgotten I’m a vixant, not a human!” Tuti spattered, seeming almost offended by the comment.

“Oh yeah, I totally forgot about the whole race skills thing,” Barry admitted, “Wait, so what is your race skill?”

Tuti’s eyes rolled in a not-so-subtle action, “I feel like I’m constantly explaining things to you! Ugh, anyway the vixants have an amazing race skill called creature communication. Basically, as we grow stronger, we can start to build a way of communicating with a variety of beasts one way or another, something that most other races aren’t able to achieve. Beasts are an amazing source of information you know. The connection is especially strong for your bonded beast if you possess beast mana, that’s why Tuti and I are able to understand each other,” Tuti explained.

“That’s awesome,” Barry confessed.

“Very awesome,” Knob added before dropping his head back down towards the ground sheepishly.

Tuti and Barry shared a surprised look for a moment, it was one of the first times Knob had spoken without being directly asked a question.

Barry smiled, “Maybe he’s getting more comfortable around us,” he thought.

Finally, it was time for Barry to open his loot boxes, under the watchful eyes of the rest of his group. Starting from bronze and moving up to gold he popped them open, inspecting the goods inside and reading the description out loud to Tuti.

The bronze box contained a stack of yellow-green spiked herbs called spindleweed, and the description only said that they were a common herb used in alchemy for a variety of potions.

“Boring, I’ve got heaps of that stuff,” said Tuti mockingly.

Moving on to the silver boxes Barry received another pair of hiking boots identical to the ones he was already wearing. Given his were still in good condition he decided to give the new set to Knob, who was still trudging around in bare feet, and not by choice like Tuti. Knob’s eyes welled up slightly at the gesture and graciously accepted the boots, quickly putting them on over his grazed feet. The second silver box contained another vitality infused mushroom. When he saw it Barry furrowed his brow in disappointment, given he still had quite the stash of these things in his spatial storage sack. He decided to give this to Tuti so she had some ready to go, in preparation for their next battle, and the vixant happily snatched it up and placed it in her own storage locket. So far the rewards had been a bit of a let-down compared to the other times he’d come across or been rewarded with loot boxes. However, there was still one bright glowing beacon of hope in the shape of a box, shining with brilliant gold right in front of him.

Barry bent down and clicked open the latches of the gold loot box. He lifted the latched lid ever so slowly, building the suspense. Tuti and Knob stared down at the golden light emanating from inside the box as if they had never seen such beauty in their lives, eager anticipation evident on their faces.

“Maybe they haven’t seen a gold loot box before. I guess it would make sense, it’s no wonder they are so interested,” thought Barry.

Finally, after much frustration from Knob and Tuti, Barry fully opened the box and stared down at the item within. Inside the loot box was a long piece of thin, matte black fabric. It had a silky texture, and its surface was embroidered with a series of fine, silver symbols along one side of the fabric. The item glistened with a subtle magical aura, and Barry grinned, immediately knowing he had received something useful; he just wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was yet.

“What is it?” Tuti blurted, at the very moment that Barry began to inspect the item, once again reading it out loud for her to hear.

"Headband of mind fortification: An empowered headband worn by the mind monks of Azura. This headband grants 3 additional stat points to the wisdom stat. This headband also passively provides additional resistance to external mental attacks."

“Amazing,” thought Barry, as he beamed from ear to ear. “This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for. Well, a shirt might have been nice, but the ability is great.”

“Wisdom, how boring. And a headband, I’m not sure you can pull that off,” whined Tuti.

“Did you already forget about the whole mind control thing and how wisdom would have prevented that from happening?” said Barry sarcastically towards the vixant.

“No, but if this guy is on our team, then I figured I don’t have to worry about it anymore. And there’s so many more stats that are better than that to level up,” she explained.

“I’m not sure that’s the best strategy but it’s your choice I guess,” Barry smirked.

Putting his headband on he grinned, “I look like a total badass,” he thought.