The inside of the hive was exactly how I remembered it, down to the last giant insect. This time I focused entirely on defense, keeping my eyes peeled for each bee-ant and trying to take as few hits as possible. The good news was that their increased size made it impossible for them to attack me all at once, settling for the classic one at a time strategy. Sadly, there were still way too many for that to matter.

An insect flew towards me right as another barely passed my left shoulder, and my body went into overdrive. Caught in an awkward half lean movement to allow the stinger to brush past me, I chose to give up my position entirely, falling backwards as the bee approached. When yet more followed up, I used my falling momentum and arms to push myself back up like a backwards somersault that failed halfway.

The buzzing monsters flew past me on repeat as I tunnel visioned on their movements and the best ways to avoid them. I’d never be able to kill these things if I couldn’t at least do that. Eventually, my positioning failed me when I was assaulted from behind, allowing a stinger to puncture directly into my side. A few rapid strikes ensured that the creature didn’t survive, but the damage had been done and my movement arrested.

When the rest came for me in my moment of weakness, I threw the corpse at them with a splatter of blood and a grunt of pain before dashing for the exit. Yet another stinger found purchase on my left shoulder as I tried to duck out of the way, but I managed to use the added momentum to make the final push outside. With sunlight on my side and no army on the bee’s, I made quick work of the little shit.

“Stats.”

Lawrence Schlager

Classes

Brawler: 3

Ability Scores

Health: 484/1010

Strength: 83

Agility: 96

Resilience: 101

Awareness: 31

???

Passive Skills

Infinite Scaling

Unarmed Combat: 25

Pain Tolerance: 15

Masochist: 11

Active Skills

Dimension Tearing: 6

Jab: 1

I hadn’t been in there for too long, but the improvements spoke for themselves. If only there were a more efficient way of training resilience, then I’d be able to tough it out way longer. Once I could get tanky enough to endure anything, I’d be able to farm the combat multiplier and train my stats through the roof! Of course, if my resilience was that high then I’d probably no longer need it anyway.

Oh well, another training session in the books with a one day cooldown until I got my health back. What really annoyed me was how little I could do about it. A few glancing blows followed by two proper hits and I was left below half health with a full day of recovery in front of me. How the hell was I supposed to bulk up at any reasonable rate if this was the case?

Frustrated with my circumstances, I decided to peruse the menus for some inspiration before finding an unpleasant surprise.

Survival mode: Off

Experience gain: Default

Loot abundance: Default

I couldn’t change my multipliers anymore. How many of the options that I’d been given back in training camp were still available now? What if they could only be changed so much before making the whole thing come crashing down? I wasn’t about to toggle survival mode just to find out, so I’d just have to deal with it. Hopefully it wouldn’t matter too much.

With nothing better to do and some concerns coming in, I decided to add a twist to an old favorite. I went back to the flesh caves and sprinted all the way through and back, did a hundred one armed push ups, and then used my Jab skill on some of the more pulsating walls. This felt like a more balanced training routine, not that I was anywhere near a bottleneck for strength.

After doing that for an hour, I would walk outside, go through the portal to darkness, and do squats while straining my eyes. There was no way I could know the comparative efficiency unless I tried it out for myself, but awareness training in the darkness was a waste of time in general. However, if I could combine it with some light strength training, then maybe I could make it worthwhile. There was a chance that doing two things at once would just lower the rate of improvement for both, but I’d never optimize my routine without experimentation.

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It took a few minutes to find the optimal form, but my big numbers allowed me to try all kinds of things. Eventually, I settled on a one legged squat where my left leg was bent behind my right. I could only imagine trying this without my stats, but even this was relatively easy.

The main benefit was how quickly I could do them despite the restriction. Just like with the pushups, there was no point in the added difficulty if I couldn’t go fast enough. I was in a weird situation where my muscles would never realistically burn out, so I only had to focus on the exercises that would work me the hardest per minute rather than needing to worry about proper muscle training.

In a weird way I found it soothing. There just wasn’t anything quite like pushing yourself as hard as you could and not even budging. I could quite literally do this forever unless someone came along and stopped me or I died of old age. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. The former, obviously, I wasn’t that tunnel visioned.

I did all of my training just a foot in front of the portal since going further made it impossible to find my way out, but a sudden influx of light followed by something bumping into me mid squat distracted me while pushing me off balance. I spun around on the ground, prepared to fight whatever monster lived here and finally decided to show up only to see just a regular old guy. A dude, even. The man was clearly one of the regulars in the alliance even if I couldn’t place him exactly, and he carried all sorts of gear on him. He was wearing armor, had a sword strapped to his belt via a scabbard of some sort, and was carrying a torch high in his left hand. Strangely, the light giving flame was a flickering blue rather than the normal fire color, so that was almost as surprising as the man himself.

For his part, he just looked at me on the ground, confused before his eyes rested on my underwear. Clearly, he wasn’t prepared to meet anyone here, especially someone even more equipped than him.

“I don’t know who you are, but you’d better leave. This is our day for the caves, and I’m just willing enough to enforce it.”

The newcomer dismissed me immediately, stepping out of the way as four other people slowly trickled their way inside. Each face was vaguely familiar as one of those people lounging around the alliance when I’d first gotten there and when I’d been back. Perhaps this is how they made their money, but wasn’t this place danger level five or something?

“Did you hear me? Leave. I won’t say it again.”

The guy, who was evidently not just a dude, placed his hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword while looking down at me. Really, there was only one thing to do in this situation.

“My bad, I was just looking around. Good luck out there.”

I gave them a look of embarrassment while trying to leave, getting a good look at that torch as I did. If I could get something like that, then I too could come plumbing the depths for whatever money maker was hidden here.

“Wait,” another man from the group called out to me. Like most of them, he appeared to be quite dangerously equipped in armor and weaponry, but his specialty spoke for itself. He gripped a gnarled staff tipped with some purplish gemstone close to his body as he stared at me. “I don’t recognize you.”

I scratched the back of my head, using my newly improved awareness to keep track of these people and their level of weariness towards me. What I saw wasn’t terribly encouraging as hands slowly drifted to their weapons.

“I’m just a new guy trying to level up and make money. Haven’t figured out how to do either yet but I’ll get there eventually!”

I did my best to project an air of incompetence, hoping that would do the trick. Grips loosened all around as they came to the same conclusion about the stranger in his underwear, giving me the perfect opportunity to leave. This time, I wasted no time and made my way out as quickly as I could without outright running. Since I was only a couple feet away at most, it took all of two hurried steps.

I’d never been quite so happy to see sunlight in my entire life, but I decided against taking any chances. A naked man was obviously not worth mugging, but I wasn’t willing to bet my life on that. I sprinted back to the flesh cave, tearing up the patch of dirt to pull my belongings out of storage along the way. Once inside, I put on all my clothes with the exception of my pants, unwilling to be slowed down.

With that done, I sprinted once more, pushing myself to get to town as quickly as possible. I couldn’t see whether those people had stepped back outside to look for me but I trusted in my stats to get me out of harm's way.

Today reminded me of the real danger in going on these training sessions: I wasn’t alone. Even if the flesh claves had no monsters in them, training there at low health was just asking for trouble. In fact, training in a dungeon at all just opened too many opportunities for someone or something to come along and punish me for my arrogance. I needed to get stronger and fast, because anyone who could take on places tougher than the beehive was someone I had absolutely no business messing with. I’d only been joking with Jim when I’d talked about dying.

Once I got within shouting distance of the guards, I stopped to put on my pants. Then I went through customs, congratulated everyone on doing such a great job holding down the fort, and got down to business.

I needed to find a way to grind stats in the daytime that didn’t put me in super dangerous positions. When it was night, nobody would be going outside for work so that should be fine. But I wasn’t about to just sit around all day doing nothing, and I didn’t exactly have the funds to pass the time pleasantly anyway.

Then I had an idea. If I couldn’t afford to buy weights, what if I found someone who’d let me workout with their stuff? Maybe I could even get paid for being a mover or something. That could work.

With my dazzling charm and incredible wit at my side, I set off to find an appropriate venue to sell myself.