Barry was stirred awake as the morning sun cast a pinkish light across his face. He squinted and stirred. The moment his eyes adjusted he let out a terrified scream as he was met with the sight of the open jawed, fanged mouth of the ratbear mere centimetres away from his face. Jolting to an upright sitting position his heart stopped racing as he realised the creature was dead. The beast’s head was resting unnaturally to the side, it’s neck red raw from the strangulation of the chain which was still wrapped around the base of its skull. Now fully alert Barry’s mind moved to his aching body. His left thigh burned, his right shoulder stung, and his head was ringing.

“Argh, what is that smell?” he complained to himself as a horrible stench entered his nostrils.

Turning his head Barry realised both he and the ratbear were surrounded by a collection of bones, blood, and innards from the snarlers that the beast had yet to devour before it met its doom. It was these deteriorating corpses and piles of innards that Barry realised were causing the awful smell.

Forcing his eyes to focus, Barry looked down at his own body. His right shoulder remained dislocated from his fall, although most of the feeling in his arm had returned. The skin around his right wrist was partly degloved, a result of the prolonged tightening of the chain around it as he hung from the tree earlier. A chunk of flesh on his left thigh was still missing and he watched in real time as the remaining muscle fibres gradually formed and made connections, something that was equally as disturbing as it was interesting. As the thought of healing entered his mind, Barry decided to open his status page to check his current status bars. His health was sitting around one quarter, even though clearly many hours had passed. He wondered if perhaps it took longer to heal when your injuries were more severe, as he had felt that he was close to death towards the end of his battle. Both his mana and stamina bars were around half full, also recovering slower than he would have otherwise expected. Changing his focus, he decided to look down at the rest of the information on his status screen.

Status Screen:

General stats:

* Race: Human

* Power level: 3

* Class: None

Soul magic stats:

* Magic level: 3

* Primary affinity: Illusion

* Secondary affinity: None

Soul item stats:

* Item level: 4

* Item name: Aura chain

Soul stats:

Physical stats:

* Vitality: 14 + 5 = 19

* Strength: 1

* Stamina: 2

* Dexterity: 2

Mental stats:

* Mana: 4

* Perception: 2

* Manipulation: 1

* Willpower: 2

Titles:

* None

Other:

* Free points: 0

Skills:

* Expert linguist

* Inspection

* Item duplication

* Rapid recovery

Barry wanted to analyse his stats properly, but the pain he was experiencing was far too distracting. The only thing he truly managed to take in was the fact that his vitality was ridiculously high in comparison to his other stats. But he wasn’t complaining, it was this very stat that had kept him alive. He once again attempted to utilise his rapid recovery skill, letting out a disappointed sigh as it still failed to activate, still being on cooldown. With no other options but to wait for his body to heal Barry interlocked his fingers and leant forward, placing his palms around his left foot. With gritted teeth he slowly leant back, causing his arms to traction and stretch. As his eyes began to water from the discomfort, he forced himself to ignore the pain until eventually his shoulder popped back into place with a satisfying clunk. Instantly the pain in his shoulder dramatically lessened and he rolled his shoulder back and forwards, satisfied that it was positioned correctly and proud of himself for remembering how to do this. All that time spent bed bound meant he had watched a lot of television. Reality, anime, action, comedy and thankfully, documentaries. He recalled watching a particular documentary on the lives of prison inmates, one of which showed a particularly hypermobile man who regularly dislocated his shoulders during prison brawls and had learned to relocate them using this method. Barry had found the whole thing fascinating, although he never imagined it would be a skill he’d ever need to utilise.

Now with two fully functioning arms Barry decided to untangle his chain that was still wrapped firmly around the ratbears neck. He then fought through his remaining pains and climbed back up to his resting branch.

“Anything had to be better than sleeping on top of that bristled smelly ratbear,” he thought as he wriggled to find a position of comfort, using his hospital gown as a blanket.

Once he had snuggled into position, shaded from the rising sun, he relaxed somewhat and mentally recounted his battle. “I am one lucky son of a bitch,” he thought as he analysed the many mistakes he made and how he had stumbled his way to victory.

After a few more hours of rest and recovery Barry was finally feeling well enough to get up and about. His wounds had closed over and he although they still stung, he felt he had regained near enough to full movement back. He clambered down from the tree and brushed the leaves and sticks from his gown. Not that it made much of a difference when the whole thing was covered in dried blood and berry stains, but it still made him feel a little better about himself before he put it back on. He gathered a few berries and gulped them down, feeling his mana and stamina fully recharge. Afterwards, he grasped his chain tightly and recommenced his march towards the ominous purple light. Barry wished he’d come up with a better, more efficient strategy but he hadn’t. All he knew was that he needed to get stronger, and to do that he had to continue training and battling beasts. As he marched on, shadow fighting with his chain, he occasionally paused to look upwards as he got the odd feeling that he was being watched. Seeing nothing, he shook his head and continued forward.

Barry walked for an hour or so through the ever-changing forest. Beyond the section with the small shrubs and large maybe-oak trees, he came across a more tropical forest area. The ground was dominated by many bright green ferns that seemed almost prehistoric in design. Some were tree ferns with up to four-metre-tall central stems and an umbrella of long, lime green, leafy extensions cascading down from this central point. Others were smaller, ground covering ferns, barely a foot tall. These plants instead spread outwards with soft, wide leafy projections. At regular intervals between these shorter ferns were compact, one-metre-high plants that, instead of leaves, had curled up, spiral like fronds that reminded Barry of a snail’s shell. It was overwhelmingly beautiful to look at and Barry has never seen so much green in one place. Unfortunately, he found it difficult to relax as the dense greenery made it hard to see potential opponents, and the humidity was making him sweat profusely.

So far Barry had only discovered one new type of beast in this tropical region: a small, frog-like creature. The beasts were around one to two feet tall with two large eyes atop their head. They stood on all fours, but instead of soft webbed feet, they had sharp clawed paws. Their bodies were leathery to touch and covered in tiny green scales that seemed to reflect light, making them extremely difficult to spot amongst the thick plant life. It seemed to Barry that the camouflaged beasts knew where he was, far before he noticed any sign of them. The frog creature’s method of attack was to open their wide mouths, shooting their extremely long, powerful tongues forward. Their tongue would wrap around him, usually attaching to a limb, before they propelled themselves forward by rapidly retracting the tongue, causing them to rocket towards him. As they approached, they would unfurl their claws and the second they reached his body they would start tearing and slicing repeatedly. They would release a series of grunting sounds as they attacked and before long a group of them would be latched on and assisting in the assault. Inspecting one of the beasts Barry gained some further understanding of his foes.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Inspection:

Beast: Hopstriker

Level: 3

Stat: Perception

The first time one of these little beasts had appeared Barry got quite the shock as before he could even react or fully appreciate what was happening, a muscular wet tongue was wrapped around his leg. Within moments the beasts tongue retracted and the body of the hopstriker was upon him, scratching with its arms and legs rapidly, attempting to slice him open. Barry panicked, stumbling around whilst beating the top of the frog’s head with his fist. However, after thirty seconds or so of genuine fear, Barry started to realise that although the creatures looked intimidating and dangerous, they weren’t actually doing any real damage. By now he had three of them attached to him and his health had hardly budged. It seemed all they could do was cause some surface scratches, barely able to break through his skin. Grinning, Barry was once again thankful for his ridiculously high vitality stat which he assumed was the reason for the hopstrikers being unable to truly injure him. Now the only issue was how to get them off him.

He tried slamming them into the trunks of the fern trees but that didn’t work. Beating them with his fist hadn’t helped. He tried smacking them with his chain, but they were usually in difficult to reach spots on his body like the back of his arm, and he found it hard to generate enough power with his swings. A couple of times he even jumped up and landed down on the ground heavily, squishing them between his body and the earth, but all that Barry managed to do was wind himself. Just as he was running out of ideas, he got his answer as the first of the frogs that had latched onto him fell off on its own accord, exhausted and breathing heavily, having expended all of its stamina. It seemed Barry’s defences were able to far outlast the hopstrikers endurance. Barry looked down at the frog, grasped his chain tightly and swung down heavily, battering the helpless creature until he felt an influx of energy enter his body. After a few more minutes the other two frogs dropped off and quickly suffered the same fate, pushing Barry’s item level up to five as they were slain.

Soul item level 5 achieved – Milestone ability granted:

Ability choices:

1. Retraction: soul item can be retracted and stored within one’s body and summoned again when desired.

“No choice?” complained Barry to himself, “And what a weird skill.”

He couldn’t hide the fact that this skill was fairly underwhelming, but he figured it did have some uses. Being able to retract his chain would mean he didn’t have to carry it around everywhere and he could have his hands free.

“Beggars can’t be choosers I guess,” he muttered as he tested out the ability.

The chain started to retract into his palm, disappearing link by link until there was nothing left. Barry could then summon it again as it appeared segmentally, fully appearing in around one second. At first, he found the sensation of the chain disappearing and reappearing odd and disturbing, like a metallic worm burrowing around in his palm. But within a few minutes he had become familiar and comfortable with the ability. Additionally, Barry found he could swap which hand the chain was summoned to at will, and that if he retracted half of it, he could summon the other half to the opposite hand, giving him two small chains instead of one long one which he found kind of cool. Thankfully, he also found that the chain was able to be summoned and retracted through his gloves without damaging them in any way. However, any further practice was interrupted as another frog latched on to his leg and Barry huffed in irritation.

It seemed Barry’s high vitality was paying off once again as he more or less ignored the creatures and continued his hike through the fern forest. The hopstrikers all ranged in levels between one and four, and so far, none of them were strong enough to cause him any significant damage, the only real impact they had was to slow down his walking speed slightly due to the added weight. There was no visual difference between the higher or lower-level frogs apart from their size. With the level one hopstrikers being around a foot tall and the level four hopstrikers being closer to two feet. By now well over twenty of the creatures had latched onto him, sometimes up to five at a time, and yet his health hadn’t once dropped below ninety percent. Barry was almost starting to feel a little bad for the helpless frogs and their futile attack strategy, but it was amazing experience for him, and he had already gained two soul item levels, bringing his stat to level six, his power level had also reached level four from his efforts. Finally, after over an hour of this cyclic pattern of frog squashing, he received another series of messages in his mind.

You have slain Hopstriker level 3. (9)

Soul item: Aura chain has reached level 7.

Power level has reached level 5.

The death the hopstriker brought his total kills to twenty-seven. This included five level one, eight level two, nine level three, and even five level four beasts as he got further into their territory. It also meant that with his third consecutive soul item level up he was now level seven, with a power level of five, and six free points available. The moment his power level reached five he received an additional message in his mind that brought back his grin.

First one hundred initiates to achieve a power level of five achieved – bonus four stat points awarded to maximum stat.

“Looks like even the gods want me to keep maximising vitality,” Barry thought.

It was all starting to feel like more than a coincidence. Firstly, the abilities he had been able to choose from were both vitality based, then the gloves he obtained increased his vitality stat when worn, and now this newest bonus added stat points to his vitality outright. But whether there was some higher force involved or not it didn’t matter, it felt right to keep adding to vitality. It also felt good to know that he was doing something right so far within this training grounds. First one hundred to reach level five? The demon had said there were billions of initiates in the training grounds. Maths had never been his strong point, but Barry thought that the top one hundred out of billions seemed like a pretty good stat. He did feel a little bad with the way he had achieved the last few levels, basically cheating the system with his stupidly high vitality stat that meant he was currently taking no damage.

“The end justifies the means right?” Barry thought as he decided it was time to divvy out his stat points.

He continued his massacre of frogs for another hour or so, eventually taking his total kills to forty-five. This also helped him to achieve an item level of eight and gave him a couple more stat points that he could use as desired. With a full eight points to allocate Barry thought hard about his options. He knew at some point he would need to increase his strength; his illusion magic was fun to use and all, and he was sure it would provide some great utility in the future. But he wasn’t sure it would help him deal any real damage. He’d already seen how ineffective his chain had been against the high vitality ratbear from a straight on attack, and he was sure he’d soon face even tougher opponents. With that he placed two of his eight points into strength, bringing the stat up to level three.

Now he was faced with a dilemma. He had seen how important mana and stamina were for ensuring adequate endurance and access to his illusion magic during fights, and points into these stats would be undoubtedly useful. Some dexterity or perception would be nice, but with his high vitality numbers it meant he didn’t really have a need to detect or dodge incoming attacks at this stage. He could just sit there and tank them, especially if the hopstrikers were anything to go by. Willpower would definitely come in handy especially if faced with any manipulation focussed beings, but as it was right now, he didn’t think he really needed it. He simply couldn’t hide the fact that his eyes kept being drawn to the vitality stat which currently sat at fourteen plus five. If he added another six points to vitality it would be a nice round twenty, even before adding on the bonus from his gloves, and that just felt right. He also thought there would be a chance of another ability given the other milestone rewards he had received. With that he added all six remaining points into his vitality stat, and he was both relieved and pleased as the messages entered his mind.

First stat to reach level 20, Vitality – Milestone ability granted:

Ability choices:

1. Heavy fortification: Doubles the users vitality stat for ten seconds. 48 hour cool down.

2. Invulnerability: Blocks all damage that the user would receive from any source for one second. 48 hour cool down.

Now this was a tricky one. Both the skills offered were quite simply, amazing. For a start, invulnerability was hard to overlook. The ability to block all damage received from any source was unbelievable, especially at such a low power level. Its only real let down was the extremely short time limit. But heavy fortification was just as tempting. At this stage his vitality was so high that he was almost taking no damage anyway, and the fact that it lasted ten times as long as the invulnerability skill was a big drawcard. Barry was planning on continuing his vitality push at this stage given how well it had treated him so far, and with his low perception he wasn’t sure he’d be able to appropriately utilise the invulnerability skill, making the heavy fortification ability likely more practical overall. With that he chose the ability heavy fortification, although it pained him to say goodbye to the chance at invulnerability. As soon as he did so he received one final, unexpected message.

First initiate to achieve a vitality level of 20 achieved – bonus awarded. Duration of ability heavy fortification doubled.

Upon receiving the message Barry couldn’t hold back his excitement any longer as he yelled out loud.

“Hell yeah, I’m officially the toughest bastard in the whole training grounds!”

The message had confirmed that he was truly excelling, a genuine front runner in these trials. Barry felt as if nothing could strip him of this moment of joy. But all good things must come to an end, and sometimes sooner than you might think. For because of his loud outburst, he had attracted the attention of something frightening. A bellowing groan echoed behind him, and Barry turned to see the top of a massive three headed hopstriker appear around thirty metres away, its eyes locked onto his.