I just didn’t want to deal with this. I had hoped that I would be able to relax a bit, but it seems my wishes will not be granted. To escape at least only for a moment, I jumped into the river and let myself sink to the bottom. Being surrounded by the darkness helped centre me a bit. But I wasn’t going to get a moment of rest.

A notification informed me that my fitness enhancement had levelled up and since it was already at level 19 it tiered up and gave me an option of abilities to pick from.

I swam to the surface and pulled myself out of the river. Today I had also gotten two levels in basic swimming which I guess was good. The choices weren’t that’s good and I might have thought about this more if I didn’t have other things on my mind.

There was an ability that might have potential called equilibrium. I picked it and it turned out to be a passive ability which means that it might actually be good, but it will also lower my energy regeneration.

To get my mind off my other problems I dived a bit deeper into the ability and found it to be quite excellent. If it was active and I was training, it wouldn’t allow me to overtrain in a certain area. So, no chicken legs for me. Instead, it will transfer some of that improvement to my other body parts. If I still want it I could probably overwork a certain area but why would I want to do that?

Having nothing else to distract me I went back to my main problem. The thing that pissed me off the most was it was completely my fault. When I put my traits inside the energy core it gave them a chance to improve.

Giant amongst men was an interesting trait as it incorporated others into itself getting better even without my energy core. It was supposed to be a passive trait helping improve all other traits that it absorbed but now it also had an active component.

I am quite certain that enriched body, my most problematic trait thus far is also one of the causes of my current problem. In all honesty that trait should have been too powerful for the giant amongst men to absorb but they were just two similar in their purpose so unfortunately, they were able to combine. One example of a trait that could have combined was giant amongst men was my vampire senses, but they were a bit too different and at a similar strength level, so they didn’t.

Now I was paying the consequences. In this world, everyone that gained strength quickly at an early age develops faster. Giant amongst men pushed that speed even further. I was supposed to reach full maturity by around age 16 but apparently, that was too long. The trait was acting like me reaching my fully grown stage what as important as a newly born horse being able to quickly get on her feet and start moving.

Now I had until I reached 14. I couldn’t even imagine how fast I will start to grow. At least I shouldn’t have any bone density or any other problems by growing this fast but I’m pretty sure I will lose a lot of flexibility and speed if I don’t keep up with my training.

Then there was the problem of my tier. The trait also didn’t like that I was still at the first tier. To complete this process that it already started I needed to reach the second tier before the uncomfortable feeling in my chest goes away.

To maximize what my trait is giving me I would need to reach the second tier just before my next birthday. It was a tall order as any monster under the first tier barely helped level up my classes. I would basically need to grind the whole time if I want to make this work. Even then I was sceptical that I could find so many opponents. I will most likely have to risk my life and venture into more dangerous areas to be able to keep up.

Then there was the problem with my equipment and clothes in general. Why do I think that I have to go around wearing a caveman setup? I also had to do so much training if I didn’t want to be a slow brute. But if I were to succeed, I honestly felt sorry for whoever my opponent in the future was going to be.

Still, I was quite angry. I had planned on reaching rank two by the end of next year not by the beginning and I would have so much less time to work on my other project and fully concentrate on my commitments.

I noticed I was pacing quite a lot and my breathing had become shallow. I stopped and centred myself. “Rich you have been in similar situations to this. As always accept the bad and turn it into an advantage.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It was at this moment that I heard Francis amuu quite loudly trying to get attention. I started to run towards there but even while moving I focused on the barn to see what was going on. My run faltered and a smile came to my face. Some of the chicken eggs had started to hatch and one chick was already running around. I still walked quickly there and started to herd the running chick to its mother and otherwise checking the health of the newborn.

It appeared that this attention was good enough to finally tier up my animal handling and animal training. While still helping the newborn chicks I looked over my options. Animal handling had three interesting choices.

Skill changes

Skill increases animal handling level 20 is upgraded to advanced animal handling level 1

Choose one of the following abilities

Animal welfare

Handling equipment

Sleeping touch

Sleeping touch was the most general out of them as I expected it to work even with humans, but the applications were limited. The handling equipment was interesting, and I wondered what it did. Perhaps when Goose was big enough with this ability, I might be able to design a saddle so he can take me flying.

I was leaning more towards animal welfare. I had other abilities and traits that helped me with this but nothing specific. So, this ability should help bring everything together and help me properly take care of my animals even when they started to gain more evolutions.

You have gained a new ability: Animal welfare level 1

For animal training, there was only one real option to pick. Training plan development sounded like it would go extremely well with animal welfare, and I am in dire need of my own training plan for the coming months. I picked that but before I could start messing with the new abilities, I noticed that my apprentices were coming out of the house and preparing to leave.

I informed them of what was happening and that I might not be able to help them as much as I first thought. They were worried about me, but I reassured them that I was going to be all right but that as time went on, I might become irritable and if that happened, they should inform me immediately.

We gave short goodbyes, and I moved back to deal with the newborn chickens. While doing so I started to mess around with the new ability training plan development I got. It turned out to be fascinating.

For it to work you need a target and what the target needed to achieve. For these chickens, it was quite easy to determine. They just needed some good food that had plenty of protein and to run around so their muscles could develop properly to grow up healthy and strong.

I tried to make a development plan for a chicken to be able to pull a cart. It just straight didn’t give me an answer. But there was a brief moment where it started to consume energy and quite a lot so perhaps if I had enough energy and it was strong enough it would actually try to make a development plan that would make that happen. If that was truly the case, then I might have underestimated this ability by quite a lot.

I messed around with it a bit more before I turned it on to myself. At first, I tried to just make a training plan on myself getting stronger by about 20% and the development plan it came up with was to just wait for two months doing anything I wanted.

Now I know I was going to start growing larger but that amount of strength gain sounded crazy. Then again, the strength difference between someone who’s five feet and someone who’s five feet five is quite big of course assuming the same training regimen and everything else.

I had to test this ability multiple times before I was able to figure out how to add variables that I was currently under. When I added the target goals that I wanted to achieve the ability started to demand a lot more energy and eventually I was forced to supply it with my core energy so it could continue its work. It took five hours and most of my energy reserves when the strict training regimen started to appear in my mind.

Just in case I wrote some of it down into a notebook, but the ability also had a perfect recall function for this information. The good news was that I was right that my trait was going to supply everything needed for my growth but the further goals that I added also required specific nutrition. There were even a few potions listed that I had no clue what they would do other than help with my development.

For the next eight months until my birthday every hour, every meal and every exercise had been planned out even factoring in how many first-tier opponents I had to fight. It wasn't all bad as there were entire days that were free but there were, for example, four months in, a week where I only had five hours to sleep total the rest of the time was endurance training.

I also expect that if I can exceed this program, it would adjust itself to keep up with my improvements. For a second I felt like the later years of the war when everything was planned out and even when there were changes, I didn't have a moment of free time. This seemed a bit better.

I once again centred myself with my eyes closed and prepared for the coming months. When I open my eyes once again, I was ready to do whatever was needed to take full advantage of this opportunity.