“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work gains success. Greatness will come.”
The Rock
“97, 98, 99, 100” I finished the last press-up. The morning’s warm-ups had grown a little excessive, but the stats, alongside my traits, meant that it was, in the end, just a warm-up. My skills didn’t hurt either, especially the higher-tier ones. “Why not add a little weight?” I asked. Now that it was no longer particularly challenging doing them, just time-consuming, I thought that extra weight might be the next step forward.
“Do you want to end up stunted like Arawn?” Namir critiqued. “You are still growing. We don’t want to harm that growth, slow it down, or damage it. Skill, speed, and strength should only be pushed against your vessel’s weight. Otherwise, you are more likely to break your body than you are to build it.” He explained in detail. The limiting factor to my training remained my age and size; my vessel was only so old and big. Still, the warm-up was a breeze with my skills and stats. I felt superhuman and could easily understand the difference between the nobility and the commoners if this is how they felt. It would be easy to think of commoners as lesser people when through wealth, power, skills, and stats, they physically were. My cousins tried to keep me grounded, but I was outpacing their growth, catching up to and overtaking them, especially now that I had consolidated my physical skills into higher tiers.
The healing didn’t hurt, either. The near-constant healing for everyone was the only reason I hadn’t left them behind altogether. The bishop moved around, restoring minor injuries before the next warm-up exercise. The greater the effort, the greater the progress, but it still took time to build up the muscles. However, Namir took the availability of healing to mean he never had a reason not to have us working at our best for every exercise. As he had the support of a healer ready and willing to help, he could push us past what was physically safe and have the bishop put us back together again. A group effort meant that we worked hard to pull one another along.
“Next,” Namir shouted. We switched to sit-ups. It wasn’t quite P90, Insanity, or any other fitness programs I had tried on and off back in my old world. But there was a certain joy to the morning training now that I had consolidated all my skills. My many Tier 1 skills had consolidated into the Tier 4 skill Iron Man at level 62. “97, 98, 99, 100.” I finished the last sit-up. As Namir had pointed out, as children, we should only work against our body weight rather than resistance bands or weights, but it was still quite effective. Watching the numbers increase was somehow more addictive and slightly less narcissistic than looking in the mirror to measure our progress.
“Next,” Namir gave only enough time for us to pass by the bishop before moving on to the next exercise. “97, 98, 99, 100.” I finished the last squat. We had not arrived at our numbers overnight, and it had taken us a full year (16 months) to build up to this, gradually building up to what we could now do. We were all little monsters, or at least we would have been in my old world. Here though; this was just a morning warm-up, getting ready before our martial training began.
“Next,” Namir continued to push us through the exercises. He only held our performances against our own times, numbers, etc. Still, he gave us enough time for a quick brush by the bishop before we headed off on our lap around the island. I no longer had my Running skill but did not need it with my Iron Man upgrade. I could easily keep up with my cousins, and sprinting across stone and dirt wasn’t too challenging once you could run on water. Honestly, the most difficult issue was keeping my feet from slipping and gaining enough traction to take the corners. I could only utilize the skills Dart and Flash Step on the straights, and when we had first started our runs, my slips and falls had meant that I needed the bishop’s healing more than most. Now though, we had created a circular running track along the island’s shoreline. This allowed everyone to focus on our speed and helped us level our skills faster. Namir was not satisfied with this, though, as he felt it built poor habits. So he insisted that our morning run now included an uphill sprint cross country to the top of our mountain followed by a descent down the other side. As we continued to carve the mountain’s walls, this became increasingly difficult as we ran out of natural rock capable of being climbed and had to go single-file through some of the chokepoints we had left.
Then came the descent. It was easy to want to fly on the way down. However, although we were not naked like the Greeks at the Olympics, I was not allowed my purple robe, which I had developed into a basic flight suit. This left me without a way to simply fly down. The skill, Flight, helped me achieve some lengthy glides, but my lightly clothed body left little for the skill to work with. Not everyone could keep up with the pace I was able to set, so depending on their speed, some of my cousins ran around the mountain rather than straight up and over it. They would meet us on the other side where we had started from.
Lady Acacia may have decided to share some of our time with Namir, but that did not mean she couldn’t add additional challenges and make the best use of it. The few cousins alongside myself who had gradually grown past the simple race around the isle and now raced up to the top found our female cousins waiting for us there. “Ready, aim, fire.” She shouted as we cleared the top of the ridgeline. Our female cousins threw their spells at us, using the spell craft they were learning from her. It added a certain level of complication to our run that Namir was perfectly happy with. When we skipped the cauldron garden and raced around the outer edge without skylining ourselves at the top, they began waiting for us on the ridgeline instead. After much trial and error, we found it easier to simply crest the ridgeline and meet them within the cauldron.
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“Nerano bala!”
“Dynamo bala!”
“Phos bala!”
The girls shouted out in a chaos of Spellcraft that covered the garden. After an accident or two with plants, they were now restricted to water, force, or light balls which they threw at us as quickly as possible. Over the year, they had worked up different ways to target the same person from multiple angles.
This was where my extra skills came in particularly useful. With my HUD up, Echolocation, Seismic Sense, Sense Mana skills, and Super Senses trait, I always knew where they were waiting to surprise me. The extra minds helped in pointing out the incoming dangers. However, having been frustrated in their inability to get me, the girls seemed to have worked this out and now organized themselves into a semi-circular pattern to cover the entire garden and worked together in pairs to take me down as I could easily dodge any single well-placed throw. Nevertheless, I wasn’t wholly defeated by this development, though getting through the gauntlet unscathed now took cheating.
My sense skills and Insight finally gave me enough information to sense when they were about to throw, and I developed a new skill, Danger Sense. I could easily detect when they were about to throw and dodge using my Quick Reflexes skill. Frustrated by my increasing ability to avoid their spells, the girls had developed a blanket bombing technique of bombing the area I was crossing with as many spells as they could throw, where quantity had a quality all of its own. This seemed to be what finally pushed the Danger Sense skill into existence. It not only worked on their intent to hit me with their Spellcraft but also the sheer chance something would hit me. It also gave me the nudges to spin, pause or leap to evade spells that were lobbed in triplicate in my direction.
Descending into the garden, I had discovered that the best defense for this section of the morning warm-up run was a good offense. I would attack, or rather, run at specific individuals. The closer I could get to someone, the more care the girls had to have in throwing their spells lest they hit their own side. Once I was within the semicircle, they had to slow down or hit the other cousins on the other side of the circle. Dart and Flash Step were the best skills in getting me through their barricade of bodies. Once I was past them, it was back to sensing where the projectiles would fall to get out of the garden without being knocked over, tagged with light, or generally soaked.
As I cleared the ridgeline once more, they gave up on me and turned to tackle my other cousins following in my wake. The benefit to slowing down slightly was being able to hide in the pack, but that had never really worked for me, with Aleera always leading the rest in aiming for me specifically. So I never slowed down any longer. Having cleared the ridgeline, it was time to make my way down. Without my robe, I couldn’t manage upward flight, but the skill still helped my descent, using the wind to let me leap down the side of the mountain. It was instrumental in allowing me to descend the sheer walls we had gradually carved into the island without following the specific paths or rope ladders that were part of the route.
Grinning, I graced Namir with a bow when I arrived back at the start. In my former life, I had been relatively fit; but my skills and traits made the morning games against my cousins the most entertaining portion of my day. It was no longer Namir against the lot of us, but my cousins trying to keep up with me, with Namir as referee. The challenge was that they had grown alongside me as well. With everyone’s skill increases and growth, the games grew a little dangerous, but that was what the bishop was here for. His presence meant we could go further, push harder, and do more than would otherwise be allowed.
Level: 25
Title: Lord
Métier: Singer Lv 8
Metier: Sailor Lv 5
Name: Callen Kai Silversea
Age: 6 years (Old world 8yrs) 1 month
General Experience: 795,694/819,200
Health: 1110/1110 Stamina: 1110/1110 Mana: 1110/1010 Psi: 1110/1110
Trait: Long-Lived, Fast Learner, Super Senses, Source of Mana, Quick Witted, Celerity, Durability, Supreme Strength, Charming, Lucky
Vitality: 111
Endurance: 111
Strength: 111
Dexterity: 111
Senses: 111
Mind: 111
Clarity: 111
Magic: 111
Charisma: 111
Luck: 111
Free Points: 291 (Locked)
Skills Tier 1:
Singing (LV75) Sailing (LV75) Trading (LV75) Meditation (LV75) Time Sense (LV75) Knots (LV50) Draw (LV50) Listening (LV50) Stitching (LV50) Humming (LV50) Drumming (LV50) Whistling (LV50) Sneak (LV50) Ambidextrous (LV20) Farming (LV50) Acting (LV50) Balance (LV50->51)Insight (LV40 ->41) Glide (LV40) Poise (LV40 ->41) Grace (LV40->41)Charm (LV40) Composure (LV40) Lie (LV20) Appeal (LV20) Ambidextrous (LV20) Sight (LV20) Scent (LV20) Detect (LV20) Taste (LV20) Silent Step (LV20) Deft touch (LV20) Posture (LV20) Dance (LV20) Inspect (LV21) Riding (LV20) Cook (LV20) Sketching (LV20) Drafting (LV20) Blacksmithing (LV10) Carpentry (LV10) Mining (LV10) Teaching (LV10) Measurement (LV 10) Etiquette (LV20)
Tier 2:
Sense Mana (LV60) Quick reflexes (LV60) Eavesdrop (LV60) Linguistics (LV40) Memorisation (LV40) Recall (LV40) Composition (LV40) Pain Tolerance (LV30) Stealth (LV30) Spellcraft (Lv50) Spellsong (Lv50)Order (LV40) Transplant (LV20) Misdirection (LV20) Knife Arts (LV20) Haggling (LV20) Mind Sense (LV20->21)Observe (LV20) Martial Arts (LV20) Cruising (LV10) Poison Tolerance (LV10) Treasure Sense (LV5) Intimidation (LV5) Dart (Lv 10->11) Heal (Lv10)
Tier 3:
Expel Mana (LV60) Mana Manipulation (LV60) Gale (LV60) Echolocation (LV60) Absorb Mana (LV40) Boil (LV50) Ignite (LV40) Melt (LV40) Command (LV40) Freeze (LV20) Bargain (LV20) Deception (LV20 ->21)Analyse (LV10) Racing (LV10) Smuggling (LV5) Seismic Sense (LV10 ->11) Flash Step (Lv 10->11) Danger Sense (Lv 1 ->2)
Tier 4:
Parallel Processing (LV35->36) Stone shaping (LV30) Material Manipulation (LV30) Mana Drain (LV 30) Seafaring (LV5) Block Status (LV5) Flight (LV15 ->16) Iron Man (LV62->63)
Tier 5:
Mind fortress (LV21) Multiple minds (LV3) Omniglot (LV25) Polymath (Lv10) Weapon Prodigy (Lv20) Music Prodigy (Lv30)