I woke up in the morning with the sun shining on my face, one of the few windows seeming to have aimed directly for me. I glared at the window, sitting up, and noticed a notification I had absolutely not expected when I got up.

Due to training, your endurance has increased by one

Due to training, your strength has increased by one

    I wondered for a moment on why it had popped up now instead of while I was training, but was still grinning as wide as my mouth could grow. Most games allowed for training for stat points, but I had thought it impossible in this game. Turns out you just need to sleep for the stats to be applied, either that or it was some form of time based system. I hopped out of bed and then realized something even more amazing. I wasn’t sore! Pumping my fist in elation, I was ecstatic that the makers of the game had finally missed something. Grinning as I headed out of the door, I pulled up my stats page as I went.

Name

Rayth

Level

4

str 2

Grimoire

agi 1

Recipes

wis 3

???

end 2

???

vit 2

???

    I was starting to look like a pretty balanced character, and if I could reliably keep up my training, I’d be able to do pretty well on my spellsword build, though I wasn’t sure what the soft cap for training stats was going to be. Some games may have let you train infinitely, but with the realism included in this one, there was sure to be a point where it would be more efficient to simply fight monsters for stat points. Soon after, I arrived at the training hall, going straight to the left to enter the warrior training area.

When I got in, this time I saw far more people than last time, likely having learned about training stats the same way I had. I shrugged and quickly went over to one of the training dummies to continue where I had left off last time. After stabbing so much that my arms started to shiver from the strain, rather than take a break this time like I had last, I decided to push myself. I was no stranger to the feeling of exhaustion, having played sports in high school and I pushed on, knowing that could keep going at least until my arms started to feel dead. Unfortunately, even though my will to continue was strong, it wasn’t long before I had started to feel like my arms were completely unable to do any more. I decided that the best thing to do would be head over the the mage training area and see if I could learn how to increase my wisdom stat.

    Arriving at the mage training hall, I quickly went up to Olaf and asked him if there was any way to increase the wisdom stat.

    “You can increase it through meditation, you simply have to guide you mana through you mana channels and complete revolutions. It slowly tempers them and allows you to hold and channel more mana.”

    “Well, how would I do that? I have no clue where these mana channels are.”

    He shrugged. “Everyone’s mana channels are slightly different, simply pull your energy from your core and it should naturally start to flow on the path of the channels. It’s nothing terribly complex, but  it can require much time and dedication, the more you can channel, the longer it will take to improve.”

    I thanked him, and decided to start practicing. It reminded me of the ki that many eastern cultures talked of, so I decided to do the stereotypical thing and sat down at the edge of the arena. I wasn’t nearly flexible enough to sit in the standard lotus position, so I did the next best things and simply sat with my legs crossed. Focusing on the feeling behind my navel, I felt the mana in me, the trapped lightning like sensation, and slowly started pulling it out, this time not to my hand, but trying to guide it as little as possible and see where it went.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

It slowly started to flow down one of my legs, then spread out into my foot before collecting back together and moving back upwards. It then did the same for each of my limbs, before collecting around my heart and moving back down towards my navel. I then continued doing the same thing, slowly fading into a trance, focused on nothing but the sensation of my mana flowing, the pain from my muscles slowly fading into the background.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been doing so, until I stopped and looked up, the sun having reached it’s zenith. I had been doing so for maybe a couple hours, and hadn’t noticed the passage of time whatsoever. I shivered, that could be very good or very bad, losing time while leveling could set me behind, but the possible free stat gains could come in handy. I got up, and instantly noticed that my muscles didn’t seem to be nearly as tired. Maybe meditation had more benefits rather than simply being used to increase wisdom. I shrugged, and headed over to the warrior training area to practice my spear some more.

    Things continued in the same vein for the next few days, taking regular breaks in real to rest up and keep myself fed. gaining me a total of two wisdom, three endurance, one strength, and one agility. For some reason, the wisdom increase would actually pop up after meditation rather than in the morning. It was on the fourth day that something interesting happened. I’d finally gotten to the point where I could reliably hit the same area, or at least close enough, and went up to one of the instructors to see what to do next.

He had me show him that I could reliably do so, then got a predatory grin on his face before informing me that it was time for me to start sparring. I asked him about learning to slice first, but he informed me that that could come after I’d practiced my stabs against something moving. He went over to a chest, and pulled out some sticks, covered in cloth where the blades should be, a spear for me and a sword and shield for him. He then put them into a bucket nearby, making me wonder what it was when they came out covered in what looked like red dust, probably to mark where the hits were. He handed me the spear, then we faced off, me standing a around the reach of my spear away from him.

    The fight started with me stabbing forwards, aiming towards his head, but he simply batted it away with his shield, sending it flying over his shoulder, and stepped in, stabbing into my chest. I stepped back with a cough, rubbing what was sure to be a bruise, and backed off a bit, the instructor just standing there and letting me, the grin still on his face. The next thirty minutes or so went much the same way. I’d attempt to stab, he’s just step to the side, block or deflect with his shield, or simply lean to one side, and it would always end with me getting the red chalky substance on my chest, legs, arms, neck, everywhere on my body. My proudest moment was managing to step to the side and barely get scraped by his sword as it went by my chest. Throughout the entire thing, he’d berate me.

“Stab harder! Be more accurate! Change the direction the spear is coming from! You don’t have to aim at just the chest and head, put some variation into it, my feet and arms are both here, aim for them! Stop standing still and letting me hit you, MOVE!”

By the end of it I was exhausted, covered in bruises, and laying on the floor breathing heavily. I was completely covered in the red dust that we had been using to mark hits, and the only thing of his covered was his shield, and not even all of it was red. It had been far more effort trying to fight another person rather than simply stabbing at my target dummy, and far more painful as well.

I slowly sat up, my body aching and protesting at the motion as I went over to one of the sides for the arena and sat down and started to meditate again. The pain seemed to slowly fade away as I focused on my mana, taking away all the worldly problems as it slowly circulated. I continued to do so for what had to be an hour or two, then got up, the pain from the workout and getting horribly beaten having faded by a good amount. The sun was high in the sky, so I decided that I would get some hunting done, and maybe try to take on two wargs at once with my new cc spell. As I headed out of the training area, I passed by the instructor who had oh so kindly guided me, giving him a glare, and getting a cheery wave back.

After reaching the gates, this time I headed directly to the forest, determined to hunt enough wargs to turn in the quest. I hunted handful of the orbs on the way, trying out my new frostbite skill. When cast at them, a bit over half their body would freeze, and they would try for a while to escape it, leaving me plenty of time to cast a force bolt at them, this time killing them in one shot, likely due to my additional wisdom. Once I arrived at the forest, I wandered around, picking off solitary wargs, against whom the frostbite spell seemed to work wonders, allowing me time enough to cast two force bolts and then stab them when they came in to attack to finish them off, or simply launch a third force bolt at them. Once I’d hunted around 10 wargs and collected a handful of herbs, I spotted a pair of wargs, and slowly approached, determined to hunt them.

I made as little noise as possible moving in, and then slowly started preparing my frostbite spell, releasing it at the leftmost warg. With the ice crackling around it, the other warg instantly turned, and seeing me, started to run towards me. I had been prepping a force bolt immediately after releasing the frostbite pattern though, and released it before it could get closer than a meter to me. Impacting with a thud, I stepped in a stabbed out with my spear, grazing it’s neck when it lashed out with it’s front paw, prompting me to pull my leg back, as fast as I could, dodging the swipe, but putting me off balance enough for it to jump at me and bowl me over.

I took my spear in both hands and rammed it up as the warg attempted to bite down on my throat, slamming it upwards and off of me before it could reach, its back claws lightly scraping my legs as it went. I quickly scrambled up, and began preparing a spell pattern as it got up from where it had fallen, and released it as it finished, lightly knocking it back. I was about to go for the finish with my spear when the other one, who had managed to escape the ice, dashed in, clawing my left leg as it went.

Cursing, I turned to face the new threat, both of us circling, as the first warg slowly started to move towards my back. Before it could reach me properly from behind, I dashed forward, stabbing out at the undamaged warg, and caught it square in the neck. It pulled back again as I felt an impact on my back, knocking me forwards. I twisted around, knocking it off me but getting some nasty scratches on my back in return, and slashed out with my spear from my back, but only the shaft of my spear hit it with a meaty thwack. I pulled my spear back in and rolled to the side just as the warg I’d stabbed in the neck landed where I had been. It was wheezing now, a constant stream of blood leaking down to the forest floor. I prepped a spell pattern while the two wargs were both in my vision, and both wargs jumped towards me, so I simply made an intentional mistake, smiling as all three of us were hit by the explosion.

I got up coughing, to see both the wargs down for the count. I stepped forwards and poked both with my spear to be safe, then put my hand on them, turning them into pairs of warg skin: damaged and warg tooth: damaged. I smiled, drank a health potion, and sighed. I only had one left, so I probably shouldn’t try to hunt two of them for the time being. I wandered around the forest for a while, hunting  until I had around twenty warg skin and teeth, and finishing the amount of herbs I would need to complete the request again.

By the time I was done, I was once again exhausted, and empty on health potions. One of the wargs had managed to catch my hand in its teeth as I was trying to prepare a spell pattern, which had then exploded leaving both of us damaged. The spell pattern mistakes seemed to be doing more damage now, seeing as it still took out approximately the same amount of hp that it had when I’d only had one vitality. Maybe the fact that my wisdom was higher now had something to do with it. I headed back to town. I was going to hunt a few more orbs on the way so I could afford to buy some more potions, and I wasn’t going to turn in my warg skins until I had thirty enough for the quest.

On the way back, I spotted something very odd. It was a bundle of branches, like a bush without leaves, with a pulsing green mass inside of it. As I approached, thick vine like tendrils snaked out of it, holding it up off the ground. Holding my spear at the ready position, and dropping down to a crouch, I saw more of the vine tendrils snaking out, waving about as it slowly walked towards me. I instantly prepped my frostbite spell and launched it. I wasn’t sure what this thing was, but I was going to find out when it died.

The spell pattern flew down, impacting on it’s main body, freezing it and two of the vines holding it up. The two frozen vines shattered, too brittle from the ice to hold the thing up, but two more promptly replaced them, and it soon shook off the ice and started approaching, shrugging off what ice was left on it. When it got closer, it lashed out with one of the vines, but I stepped to the side, dodging it, stabbing into the pulsing green mass in the center. It screeched in response, making me wonder how it was even making the noise.

I resisted the impulse to cover my ears, and twisted my spear before pulling it out and stabbing back in again. This time, it batted the spear away with one of its vine tentacle things, sweeping my spear to the side of it. I quickly pulled my spear back in, but not quickly enough to avoid getting slammed in the chest with one of its limbs, feeling far heavier than it looked. I got knocked back a few feet, but managed to keep my legs under me, and started prepping another frostbite, seeing as how it had seemed to be quite effective the first time.

It swung another of its limbs at my head, but I ducked down, paying careful care to the spell pattern to avoid the explosion. Releasing it, this time aimed towards the bottom, I released it, and with a crackling noise it froze all 5 of the limbs it was using to hold itself up. The frozen limbs soon collapsed, having the whatever it was fall to the floor before it could get more of its vines under it. I ran forward, stabbing in as deep as I could to try and kill it, and then watched as its flailing limbs collapsed, limp in death.

I sighed. I hadn’t quite taken enough damage to warrant a health potion, that one hit had only taken about a quarter of my health. Luckily, frostbite seemed to be very efficient in lowering its limb count, if it had kept the extra two I had frozen in the beginning it may have been a much harder fight. I then walked up to it and put my hand on it, finding out it was a treant, getting rewarded with four Treant Vines. As the body disappeared, I realized that I could have chopped off the nine vines I had counted, making me start to think that maybe I should find someone to teach me how to harvest those things properly, rather than this goddess stuff. I headed back to town, musing on why we got so much less with the automatic harvest system. Slaughtering the couple of orbs that tried to attack me, I soon arrived at the gates, but held off on selling the loot I had acquired as I didn’t have enough for any of the quests. Seeing as how the sun was almost down, I bought some meat buns at the store I had gotten the skewers from, and headed off to the barracks to rest.