As they traveled Jake was impressed by the road they were following , it appeared they used Sandmages to compact a common traveled road and they also put 1 meter high border walls built from compacted sand to try and keep the road clean. This was a regular job for sandmages that kept them busy , while there are also jobs for adventurers to keep the roads safe from roaming monsters.

Generally close to civilization most monsters were eradicated but this was hard to do in the expansive desert so they could only try to keep the roads as safe as possible. Some monsters were kept alive to breed more for food purposes such as food , leather and other uses they have. For example there is a special type of Fish which blood’s drinkable and has the same effect as water for Humans. This was discovered by an alchemist in collaboration with a chef.

Maria also quickly explained the currency which luckily was the same as the other countries. It was the simple 100 copper -> 1 silver , 100 silver-> gold. And each coin had a special coin for 1, 5, 10 , 20 , 50.

Food and drink was generally measured in coppers , clothing in silver , weapons and armor you started reaching in the early gold. Most people on average earned a few gold a month in total with which you can live Okayish.

As they travelled they also explained a bit more about attributes to him. So the baseline was 10 for every point above 10 they gained 1% effectiveness. So for example with 10 strength you can bench press 80kg. with his 25 strength he can bench press 92 kg. 115% of his base.

This was the same for dexterity. That's why they were traveling about 7 km/ an hour at a light walk speed. With vitality it was harder to measure what the precise effects were but generally it was your body healing itself better and ur skin becoming as tough as leather at later levels, it also slowly raised your endurance allowing you to perform tasks longer.. And ofcourse the increased lifespan. Which seemed to double at every threshold of a 100 , from base 100 years. But most people were generally happy with 200 years because it was hard to fit with other builds.

Wisdom and Intelligence are also the same. Intelligence is basically a multiplier for your spell in the form of the amount u can summon for example Conjure sand spell , or the Power of a spell in the form of Firebolt , or the duration of a buff spell. While wisdom helped u to think faster and how the mental resistance worked was also a bit unclear but it is generally believed it was the Int score of the attacker versus de Wisdom score of the defender where the defender had a bonus depending on level difference and if they knew they were being attacked or not. That's why with 100 wisdom u are safe against most conventional means of mental damage.

As Jake was absorbing the information the travel went by quickly , with the stats increase they could keep walking longer and because they all had the adventurer class they didn't have to sleep as much. But they only traveled when it was light.

After 2 days they arrived at Qasioun where they rented an inn. Where David started him with basic spearmanship instructions and Maria started teaching him about mana.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

For mana she gave him a quick rundown of how it worked. There was basically mana everywhere in the world with some places having more and some places having less.

Most people can cast spells about 5 times a day without having trained their mana well. Mana well was basically the gathered mana in a body. The only known way to increase it was to meditate and focus on the mana around you and try to gather it back into you. I asked if there were skills like mana manipulation or mana vision and she answered that sadly no there is no such skill. There were the respective manipulations of some classes that you unlock at level 50 like sand manipulation , fire manipulation etc. but no general manipulation.

The tactic was to empty yourself of mana and then meditate and try to gather mana back to your mana well. And slowly overtime you increase your mana well. That's why most mages spend a few hours a day working and the rest meditating if their income allows it.

Jake spent the following week training his mana Well by emptying himself with minor Heal and following the drills of David on spearmanship. By these activities he slowly raised his level to 5. On advice of his tutors he put this into Vitality. Which was comfortably sitting at 30 now. He also felt the effect of his Chosen class , quickly adapting to the spearmanship training and understanding the lectures of Maria better. Of Course he could remember it all thanks to his memory but remembering does not equal understanding sadly.

He learned that when his level hit 25 he could select skills for his classes. Even the third one he unlocks at that level , so even when he unlocks his last class at level 50 he gets his starter skill + 2 skill/spell choices. They also took him on excursions around the town to slay low level beasts. These monster habitats were kept alive an hour away from Town to help with levelling.

The first monster he battled were black scorpions around 50 centimers long , it looked the same as a regular scorpion but its stinger had a decent range and they were quite quick. He felt he still wasn’t mentally prepared but David and Maria standing guard a few meter away from him gave him some confidence. His spear was roughly 1.5 meter long. While wielding it 2-handed he had roughly a reach of 2 meter.

While roughly circling the scorpion and doing a few feint jabs he waited it calmly out. The scorpion was testing the waters with his pincers , while his stinger stood ready. The scorpion was getting impatient and tried to grab the spear with its pincer. Jake was prepared for this and quickly pulled the spear out of the grab , then he jabbed the eye of the scorpion with it and he struck true. The scorpion, hurting and angry rushed onto him. Jake ran away keeping his distance and looking for an opportunity , luckily with his spear he had more range than the stinger.

As the scorpion was running at him he jabbed the other eye and struck true. Now there were only the small eyes on the sides left , but with the main 2 eyes blinded it was as easy as keeping his distance and stabbing the critter a few times till it died.

And he gained another level becoming level 6. It seems you get no notifications for leveling up or killing something. After getting into the groove he killed 9 more scorpions that day and reached level 7. He continued training for another 3 weeks, in which he reached level 12.

He killed a lot more seemingly monsterfied insects and animals. Like bigger spiders , bobcats and Jerboa. Luckily the biggest difference with earth was their size and not their strength and speed. Because they were all low leveled, more kept to acclimate young people with fighting different kinds of beasts.

His vitality was now 37. And tomorrow would be a big day because he would finally enter the Qasioun dungeon.