Exactly eight hours would come to pass before Elizabeth awoke completely refreshed after getting much-needed sleep. It was about time for her to eat again, so she cooked herself another simple meal, a Bacon Omelet. As she ate, she reviewed the gains she had made through meditation by checking her Status.
Surprisingly, not only had her reserves of Inner Strength jumped from 54 to 198, but her Cooking Skill had even gained some experience; although, it didn't Level Up.
The Bacon Omelet had been as satisfying as any other meal, but perhaps because its preparation was much simpler than the Chicken Fried Rice of the day prior, Elizabeth didn't gain as much experience. There was also the more-than-likely probability that gaining experience would become more difficult as she progressed through the levels of a skill.
Regardless of the reason, Elizabeth wasn't too bummed down. She knew there would be many chances going forward to improve her skill, but now the priority was increasing the capacity of her Inner Strength as well as leveling up. She almost felt inclined to go straight back to meditation, but given that she had a deadline to complete, she decided against that decision in favor of trying out the Inner Strength Conversion for Stat development.
It wouldn't do her much justice to cultivate an absurd amount of Inner Strength only find out her Inner Strength Conversion produced meager changes to her Stats when the time to finally test it came.
At the moment, because she had invested her Stat Points in only Speed and Intelligence when creating her character, she only needed to train the remaining Stats; the ones that were trainable, anyways… Her eyes narrowed at the accursed "Luck" Stat.
She needed at least 12 points in every Stat as well as 100 units of Inner Strength to officially become level one. Thus, for this little test of the Inner Strength Conversion Skill, Elizabeth decided to go for a run.
She almost couldn't believe it at the moment, as the concept of exercising was unfathomably far removed from her game-oriented mind. But for the sake of not angering the gods that had cursed her, she put away her newfound depression and left the house once again.
Fortunately, for as antisocial and inept as her past would make her out to be, Elizabeth wasn't clueless about exercising. Even without direction from the grimoires she had absorbed, she probably knew more about nutrition and bodybuilding than the average personal trainer.
Knowledge, she had in droves. It was just putting to use for... well, anything besides gaming that had previously never even crossed her mind.
She stretched properly for the imminent run, appraising her new athletic clothes all the while. Despite it being summer, in Miami of all places, she dressed rather conservatively as he opted to put on a jacket with a fitted top underneath and some sweatpants; all white, of course, for even she wasn’t willing to be more daring before the subtropical summer.
Upon completing her warm-up stretches, Elizabeth made sure to lock her home and its gates before taking off in a light jog. As she settled into a steady rhythm, an invisible film of pearly white energy visible only to Practitioners of Inner Strength began to subtly glow on the surface of what little exposed skin she showed off. With the Innate Conversion Skill’s initiation, every minute of jogging thereafter led to a prompt of Inner Strength being exhausted.
Much to Elizabeth’s amusement, she barely felt any discomfort even as the minutes passed. All the while, she failed to notice her heart rate climb. Her body didn’t even slightly perspire, and her muscles felt as if they were even being used. Even as the prompts from her Status Function informed her that her Inner Strength reserves were being gradually exhausted, she strained to notice even the slightest difference in her body.
‘Maybe this whole “training to become a god” bullshit won’t be too bad,’ Elizabeth mused to herself as she came to a stop. Upon reaching five kilometers from her home, she decided it was for the best to return as she more or less got the information she wanted out of this test.
In the half-hour she had jogged, every minute she persisted through the steady-state cardio that was jogging, her Endurance Stat would rise by 0.01 points. It wasn’t exactly an impressive amount, then again, she was hardly exerting herself.
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Elizabeth retraced her route back home and just as the time made it so she could claim she ran for a full hour, she reached her destination. An hour-long, ten-kilometer trek about the Miami Beach area net her 0.6 points of Endurance at the cost of 60 Inner Strength.
As she came to a stop and watched her Inner Strength begin to regenerate, she muttered, “Let’s see… 0.01 points per minute, per unit of Inner Strength. That be, what? A little less than sixteen hours of training to reach the 20 units of Endurance required for Level 5. With breaks included to regenerate Inner Strength, if I followed this pace with all my Stats, I could just barely meet the deadline for the Main Quest; only if I spent just about all my time training. Hmm…”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, “The Inner Strength Conversion Skill outputs permanent Stat increases based on the effort and Inner Strength offered…” She clicked her tongue, “Tch, I guess, I shouldn’t have celebrated such easy gains as it looks like I won’t be able to just cruise through this.”
A glint of light crossed her eyes as Elizabeth smiled and added, “Of course, I could Stat gains should come much faster if I started systematically training according to a developed routine. Obviously, simple jogging would only increase Endurance. But, interval training between jogging and running should increase both Speed and Endurance. Lifting weights could increase both Strength and Defence, and cultivating a martial art might even increase all four Physical Stats.”
“Speaking of cultivating a martial art...” Elizabeth checked her phone, her face carrying an unreadable expression. Atid’s Dojo was open for business.
On one hand, she instinctively abhorred and dreaded the idea of being anywhere near a gymnasium; much less enter and join one as a member. It just about took every ounce of tolerance in the totality of her essence for her to consider the prospect, a “good idea.” However, above her antisocial, irreverent personality, the one thing she hated above having to interact with others amidst a group, was losing time and/or resources to inefficiency.
Adrian didn’t become a legendary master of all RPGs without completing more than his fair share of MMORPGs. In the online world, he naturally had to communicate and even work together with others to pull off his uncountable list of epic achievements.
Now, Elizabeth would just have to suck it up and do the same; only, in person; where she couldn’t outright curse people out as incompetent; where she would probably encounter Practitioners of Inner Strength that could kill her on a whim; while training; by mistake…
“Fuck my life,” Elizabeth got the curses out of her system before she decided to leave for Atid’s Dojo.
Or, maybe not…
Elizabeth stayed locked with her, hatefully imprinting the image on her screen in her mind for a solid ten seconds. From her home, her current position, there was exactly a 10 mile distance to the dojo; a full 16 kilometers...
‘Jogging isn’t going to cut it,’ Elizabeth snorted as she opted to first meditate in her home before running off. Better to be safe and recover all of her Inner Strength, and not risk running out and becoming exhausted half-way to the dojo when she took off in a sprint.
She found a spot to sit down and assume a meditative posture, but instead of initiating a meditation for cultivating Inner Strength, she would just be promoting the recovery of her current capacity. In just five short minutes, her Inner Strength reserves were completely restored.
Prepared with her metaphorical tank of Inner Strength fully loaded, Elizabeth left her home and ran as fast as she could force her body to comply. Supplementing Inner Strength to her slightly improved Endurance, even as she ran like her life depended on it, she once again failed to struggle in the face of exercise.
Running at times at up to thirty kilometers per hour, Elizabeth struggled to see how such strenuous exertion only required a measly 2 units of Inner Strength per minute to sustain. Empirically, it was obvious that her current “exercise” wasn’t merely twice as hard as her earlier jogging. She was actually trying to run as hard and fast as possible, so why…
‘Oh, that’s right,’ Elizabeth felt like smacking her head for failing to realize it earlier. ‘My Inner Strength Conversion Skill is still Grade F.’ Naturally, she would have to improve the Skill by constantly practicing with it before it would increase and Grade, subsequently increasing its efficiency.
With that little mystery solved, Elizabeth focused on not getting run over by cars as she daringly ran through as many intersections as she could without having to stop unless it became absolutely necessary. Fortunately, it was still rather early in the morning and the streets weren’t clogged with hundreds of tourists blocking her ability to run maniacally as she did.
Though… Miami Beach being the commercial area that it was, was filled with intersections every hundred feet, forcing her to stop more times than her patience could tolerate. Dozens of curses bounced around in her head before she would eventually reach her destination a whole forty-five minutes after her sprint began.
She had accumulated 0.45 units of Speed and Endurance at the cost of 90 units of Inner Strength and aside from being a little red in the face out of annoyance for the number of times she was stopped in her path, she was hardly worse for wear.
Had she not been so bothered, she might have been amused to realize she could theoretically sprint for three quarters of an hour without a problem. With less than a full day’s worth of cumulative cultivation under her belt, she could probably contend for some world records…