I had no choice at that point. I told him how I changed my visualization to include the hammer’s follow-through. I could see before even starting the swing that it would Shatter the head of the dummy and continue the strike to the chest of my target.

It was changing the first part of the skill. I changed my visualization.”

“You should not change how you envision the skill, It is dangerous you fool!”

“But it worked, and all I did was enhance my vision. I had noticed as the skill had improved as the vision that I was using had become more refined and clearer. All I did was accelerate that process.”

“Shut up you FOOL! What worked once is not going to work every time. And that pain that you experience was just a taste of what can happen. Learning too many skills or improving too fast can result in your body, or mind being unable to adjust. The best that can happen then is that you die, the worst is that you become an abomination, losing all sense of humanity.

That is why the summoned are such double-edged swords.

Here are weights you can use. Use them to improve your body. Your strength, by lifting the largest weights that you can. Increase your endurance by lifting smaller weights and holding them for long periods of time. Take the smaller weights and swing them around as fast as you can to improve your speed.

Robert, You still have to reach level 3. Slice was not the skill I expected you to learn but it will do.

Fanny, I expect improvement as well

And Fonial you must improve your strength and either endurance or speed.”

At that point, Steven just marched out of the shielded area.

I thought that endurance made the most sense to try and improve. So I thought about what I had learned about physical training back in my old life. Some level of muscle confusion and core training made the best thing to try. It was very annoying that Steven just dumped the weights and some cryptic instructions and then stormed off.

The problem is that this is a different universe where your expectation actually does affect the outcome. As I had discovered with ‘Strike’ a better visualization had a very significant outcome on the results. So I wondered what Steven was telling me the truth or did it just depend on what my expectation was?

After all the attribute ‘Body’ felt more like an overall catch-all, rather than an individual attribute.

The other hypothesis that I had was that stress had some type of effect. It increased the chances of improvement. It was not at all clear what the relationship was. As an IT specialist, I was comfortable with the concept of the complexity of algorithms. So even when you did not know or understand the relationship in detail you could make some assumptions about the order of the complexity. The problem that I had here was that I had too few data points.

My guess was that at least at the start things felt linear but that did not mean that I had any idea if the relationship was dependent on a particular skill. It was related to the current level of the skill, the total number of skills, or the total number of the levels for all the skills. What’s worse, many of the potential relationships start out looking linear, as the dependent variables change in value the relationship may end up being polynomial. So the decisions I was making now with insufficient information were going to influence all my future time in the universe. I would have thought that those that had summoned us had a good understanding of what worked and how it worked. But Steven was certainly not sharing that information if it existed.

So anyway while the weight seemed like the solution that was required I felt that I needed to build my core first. Sit-ups were one option, but the thing that resonated the most was the plank exercise. So rather than trying anything complex, I started with the standard position of facing the ground resting my elbows on the ground, using my toes to lift my feet, and then straightening my body and holding.

My new body was impressive in comparison to my old body. I soon realized that while it looked impressive, in actuality it was only a little stronger than my old body had been when I had been at my fittest. The only thing that I was aware of was that all the injuries that I had accumulated over the years were absent.

In minutes my belly was painful, and my calves felt as if they were on fire. Then my biceps started to cramp. I held it for as long as possible but in minutes I collapsed. I took a short breather to recover. Then I kept going back to the exercise. Held it as long as possible, Starting again just as soon as I had recovered enough that I could get back in position. I did notice that in comparison my recovery was better than anything that I could remember in my old world. Professional sportsmen and women would have been amazed not at my ability or form, but at how fast I recovered. After a while I wondered after many cycles I had not gained any attributes, since visualization had an effect on skills, maybe the same thing would occur with attributes as. So I built an image in my mind of the perfect plank position and tried to fit my body into that image.

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It was not long after that I received my first notification that my attributes had improved.

Attribute improvement - Endurance +1

Over the next period, it felt like an hour, but I had no way of telling the time at this point, I had a series of announcements

Attribute improvement - Endurance +1

Attribute improvement - Endurance +1

Attribute improvement - Strength +1

Attribute improvement - Endurance +1

Attribute improvement - Body +1

But at the end of that time I had reached a point that I was not able to even lift my shoulders off the ground. My face lay in the sand, while my body had reached new heights I had consumed all of my available power. So of course I get a title upgrade.

Title improvement - Utterly Exhausted II

Knowing that I have achieved Steven’s requirements, in fact, exceeded them many times over. I decided that I could relax a little. And pretend that I was following his instructions. So once I had recovered enough to stand I took the middle set of weights, extended my arms at a right angle to my body, and held the weights for as long as I could. There was some strain, and over time it did increase.

After about ½ an hour by my guess my grip could no longer hold the weights. I had expected that it would be my biceps that would fail first but it had got to the point that the weights just slipped from my hands.

I had thought that this exercise would work my endurance, but it appeared that at this point my grip strength was insufficient to tax it.

Worrying that Steven might return or that whoever was watching from beyond the shield would become interested. Life was hourly becoming more complex. It was bad enough yesterday yet already today things were worse.

I noticed that both Fanny and Robert were destroying their corresponding dummies with greater speed.

I said to them “There is no point doing that anymore, you have mastered the skill beyond anything that these dummies are capable of withstanding. Let's follow Steven’s advice around building up our attributes.

My guess is that endurance is going to be important given how we are being trained. So focus on holding these weights for as long as you can. Then switch to the lightest weights and try to move as fast as possible. There should be a chance that this will improve our strength as well.

Each time you get an improvement we should let each other know.”

Surprisingly both stopped what they were doing without argument and started the exercises. I did not introduce the plank to them as I feared discovery. The rest of the day moved slowly but with mutual encouragement, I gained 3 more endurance, 2 strength, and 2 speed.

Robert told us that he had gained 2 in endurance, but he was excited about the gain of 4 in speed. Given his choice of weapon, it did make sense that he would value speed over strength. Most exciting for him was that late in the day he gained a point in the attribute Body. I was watching him at the time and there was a shimmer and he simply grew. He had been a slim and relatively short individual. Now he was visibly taller, and had developed a tough wiry look.

Fanny also gained a point in Body. But as I was not watching at that particular instance so it was hard to detect any changes. She told us that she had picked up 4 points in strength 3 in endurance and none in speed. I wondered about the difference as after all we were doing the same exercises but gained very differing results.

The sky was still light. I least expected his return at any point.

It was not long before he returned,

“Robert Have you achieved my requirements? “

“Yes” was the simple response, without any indication that he had exceeded them.

“Fanny Have you achieved my requirements? “

She responded “Yes”

“Fonial Have you achieved my requirements? “

“Yes” was my response

“All right then follow me”

He returned us, by the quickest route that had used so far. It almost felt direct. Once we reached the barracks, he said “There is a problem on the frontlines, You are needed on the Goblin frontlines. We need to accelerate your training. So tomorrow will be harder.”

At this he left the barracks area without even entering the mess hall

I piped up and said “before we separate since we are a team now. I think that we should room together. I want to talk through what we have learned about how to survive Steven.”

Since we were the first to return, We just moved into one of the rooms as a group.