I reached level 8 not long after the first kill and Austin soon followed. For my new skill, I picked Penetrating Strike(Common).

Penetrating Strike(Common) – Enhances the next strike with mana, increasing the ability to penetrate thick hide and armor.

I needed something that could get through armor and this skill was perfect. I didn't know the exact difference between this one and Piercing Strike but I figured either would work. Piercing sounded more like a spear skill and penetrating more like a blunt weapon skill and that was what my axe effectively was now, but it didn't much matter to me.

I tested it throughout the day and it worked like a charm. Where my axe only sank a couple of inches into the skin of a boar, this skill would bury the axe head deep into muscle. It worked great and I knew my damaged axe wasn't helping matters.

After the hunt, I also finally passed the threshold of 1000 points and I could now purchase a skill from the pylon. This would be the first skill I got not from a class upgrade and I was nervous to see how many I could hold. There had to be some way to tell how full my spirit was right?

Austin and I finished our hunt without any injuries this time and made it back to camp with only light exhaustion. It may have been because we didn't fight anything above level 9, but who's to say?

I washed myself in the river, got a quick heal from Abigail, and after stuffing down breakfast, was off to the trench. The pylon upgrade kind of threw off our predictions of what direction the wave would come from, but we were still confident it would come from the south this time, so that's where we focused our energy.

Penetrating Strike worked wonders while digging and made getting through the hard dirt a breeze. I worked much faster than without the skill and only had problems when I reached large rocks in the way. A discreet use of Heavy Blow was all it took to make those go away. Usually, it would take time to dig the rock out before hauling it out of the trench but amazingly I never ran into any rocks today, just a bunch of little ones.

I focused more on my skills today than on the physical side of the exercise and tried to maximize my usage of my new skill. I wanted to learn it as quickly as possible and get familiarized with it before the wave tomorrow.

Austin had the Piercing Strike skill and we compared the difference between the two and it was hard to tell. They both did the same thing and the dirt we used to test it on probably wasn't the best choice.

Work flew by as my mind was elsewhere and soon it was over and we had time to do whatever we wanted. I spent the whole time thinking about which new skill that I wanted and there were just so many options.

There were generic skills like Meditation that I could grab or the more utility option of Cleanse so I could help keep the camp clean along with the food. There were resistance skills that looked like they would come in handy like Poison Resistance and Fire Resistance. Being at the common rarity they probably wouldn't do much but I would never know unless I got one.

I could focus on a weapon or armor proficiency and pick one of those but I wasn't sure I was ready to commit to a weapon yet. I liked my axe and shield but it's been the only thing that I used, I wanted to try out different things before I committed to buying a skill for them. I had no idea if you could remove a skill after getting it and it would be a waste of points if I didn't like it, but I could always go get more.

At the rate we were growing, Austin and I averaged 40 points a kill now and we killed over 8 boars a day. I wished it would be more but there was only so much time between sunrise and breakfast and 8 was already pushing it. Before we stopped using the spikes it was more like 4 or 5 a day.

Eventually, we would need to stop hiding it and dedicate more time to it, but so soon after Derek's death, I didn't wish to make anyone worry. They knew how difficult fighting could be and I couldn't sugarcoat it and tell them it was easy.

There was the brief thought of getting a magical skill like Mana Bolt or Ice Bolt so that I would have a ranged option that didn't rely on carrying around javelins but that was mostly because it would be cool. I mean who doesn't want to shoot magic from their hands? It wouldn't be as powerful as the mages with their better stats and wands to help them, but I could still do it.

Those thoughts didn't last long and I pushed them away to be more practical. Right now my biggest weakness during the waves was a skill for multiple enemies. Now that I had two powerful skills for single-target damage while hunting, I needed to focus on what would help during the waves.

After focusing on that, it made the list considerably shorter. I eventually narrowed down between two that I couldn't decide between, Whirlwind and Sweeping Strike. They both did essentially the same thing and projected a strike in a radius around my body.

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Sweeping Strike(Common) – Projects a blade made of mana out from your weapon that deals reduced damage to everything hit.

Whirlwind(Common) – After using a spinning strike, projects an attack made of mana outwards that deals damage depending on the distance from the center.

They both functioned as attacks that hit multiple enemies and functioned much the same way. Sweeping Strike would project my swing in a semi-circle around me while Whirlwind was the full 360 degrees.

Whirlwind didn't have anything about dealing decreased damage so it was most likely the more powerful of the two, but it came with the downside of being harder to control.

It was a spinning attack and dealt damage in the full circle even though allies could be behind me. Plus, I wasn't excited about turning my back to the enemy and breaking line of sight. Sweeping Strike looked like it would be easier to control and would only follow my swing, but it dealt less damage.

I was on the fence about which to pick so I thought to ask for advice. Abigail was always a good person to go to because she thought everything out to the last detail and would often catch something I had missed. I went to her before dinner and told her my thoughts on the matter.

She took a while to think it through before saying, "It's your skill and you can pick either of them you want, but you have to think about how often you fight alone. How many times will you have to be conscious of when you use Whirlwind instead of Sweeping Strike and is that as much of a detriment to choose the weaker one."

When she put it like that it was an easy decision. Whirlwind would be too situational and Sweeping Strike would be more useful. Without letting myself deliberate any further I walked to the pylon to buy the skill. It worked exactly like getting a class skill and after taking my points the skill was pushed into my spirit.

It felt a little different than class skills and felt like it was placed in a different part of my spirit, but I didn't have the best knowledge of such things so I chalked it up to happenstance. There was nothing I could do to find out.

There wasn't any pain and it certainly didn't feel like a strain on my spirit but I didn't really know what a spirit was or how to feel mine. Just another thing on a long list of shit I didn't know.

I was a bit sad to give up on the magical skills and the dream of slinging magic around but I promised myself the next skill I bought would be magical. It most likely wouldn't be the most practical with my lacking mana but I needed some joy and having magic would do that. I saw Alice and Rachel playing with magic every day and I wanted some too damnit.

I spent the rest of the day practicing my new skills and sparring with Austin. He went full offensive with his skill set and got yet another attacking skill. His new skill was Flurry. It increased his speed and he delivered a quick set of spear thrusts which were downright impossible to block.

The only thing I could do was cover as much of my body as I could with my shield and hope my fortitude was enough for the rest. He couldn't use the new skill long and it took a lot of effort to use. Not only was it mana intensive, but it also tired him out, the same with my upgraded skill Heavy Blow.

It took some kind of stamina energy to use that drained you and left you extremely tired if you used all of it. We theorized it had something to do with endurance but we couldn't be sure with our lack of knowledge.

I made the joke that I wouldn't be his tank forever and he would eventually have to invest in some defensive skills, but he just waved me off, saying offense was the best defense.

I didn't know how true that was but I left him to do what he wanted. I knew how I would feel about being told what to do and wasn't going to do that to another. He was close to buying a skill with points and he voiced his ideas to me about which ones he was thinking about.

He was in the same boat as I was and had high single-target damage but was lacking in the AoE department. Since he was putting off the defensive skills, I ignored those and focused on what would be good for him to get.

"Are you certain about the spear? Do you think you're ever gonna change weapons?" I asked trying to get some more information to go on.

"Yeah I quite like the spear, I don't think that I'm going to change." He said while twirling said spear in his hand.

"What about other polearms like halberds or glaives? They're similar." I was trying to see if it was the spear he liked or the range of a polearm.

"I don't know how to explain it but it feels right... the spear I mean. It feels comfortable to use and I've used different weapons for sparring, just like you have, but none of them feel the same." He said back.

There where times were we traded weapons with others to try and get a feel for something else but none of that helped me. I found I was absolutely terrible with a sword and didn't like the spear either. The only other weapon I liked was Mark's two-handed battle-axe and he wasn't keen on trading. I didn't wish to get rid of my shield but it was an option when I finally had to buy new gear, and the time to do so was getting near.

There were various area skills for a spear and the one that popped out to me was Spear Sweep, which was similar to my skill Sweeping Strike. It was more specialized for the spear but the only difference was most of the attack area was the shaft of the spear, not the blade, so it would have to be used effectively.

Flurry could be used to attack multiple enemies but that was more like quick stabs rather than a wide area of attack skill. Since there wasn't anything too good in that department and he was set on the spear, I suggested the Spear Proficiency skill.

It wouldn't be an active skill he was looking for but it was a passive one that helped with all usage of the spear. Since it was hyper-specialized to a single weapon it should have good bonuses as well.

He took my advice but didn't commit to anything. He still needed a few more points to buy one and talked me into a quick hunt before tomorrow's wave. Usually, we rested before the wave but a few boars where I let him get the killing blow wouldn't take long. Plus, he would have another skill to use during the wave.

People were still not convinced about the difficulty drop of the waves and were gearing up for a tough fight tomorrow. I wasn't one to speculate when we would all find out together.

It would either be hard or it wouldn't. I would make sure we survived all the same.