Chapter 7:

From the time he first opened his main attributes to his current age of 6, a space of a mere 5 months, Jung received more than a dozen skill options. But after the first 2 or so skills, Jung’s enthusiasm drastically dropped. Keep in mind though that just because he unlocked the skill doesn’t mean he can use them immediately. All unlocked skills are at level 0 and Jung needed to upgrade them at least to level 1 to make good use of them. Besides, the skills are things so mundane that he didn’t know why he needed to upgrade them since he is perfectly capable of using them without the system’s upgrade.

Jung hee learned that there are 2 kinds of skills available to him. The first one is what the system called general skills. These are mundane basic skills you use in your daily life.

It is not as if every mundane skill like sleeping, eating, sitting, etc. became system-generated and therefore needed to be upgraded, but there are still a lot of skills that Jung is able to unlock, like body conditioning, climbing, crawling, running, and other basic skills. He understood he could use all of this despite being level 0 since these are skills he learned as part of his daily life, but by unlocking them to level 1, the disparity is simply enormous. Running, for example, is just running, but by reaching level 1, it suddenly becomes even more. He simply knew where to drop his foot properly, the proper combo motion he needed to expel the minimum amount of energy, and the proper muscle conditioning to make him reach further beyond the normal runner and gave him a boost not only in speed but stamina and conservation of his inner energy. It did not make Jung instantly comparable to the achievement of an Olympic athlete, but with further training, he will be close enough. Further upgrades make it... well, more.

This means Jung has to spend 1 skill point on each skill to make it useful. And that is only the first level. Even so, he has almost 2 pages of listed skills on his status page.

The good news is that once it has been upgraded to level one, Jung can simply upgrade the skill by having a better fundamental understanding of the skill or by repeatedly performing the skill until his body becomes accustomed to it and retains muscle memory for the corresponding action. In other words, he can improve his general skills by simply grinding. Well, some of them. Of course, the system also gave him the option of upgrading them by allocating the required skill points in a 1 to 1 ratio. Level 2 is obtained by spending one skill point. Level 3 can be obtained by spending another skill point, then another, and so on.

But then there is also what the system considers as specialist skills. They too unlock easily enough by having the necessary requirements for it. However, the specialist skills are not upgradable by merely grinding the skill repeatedly. You have to pay an increasing amount of skill points to get the higher levels. Luckily, although the specialist skills are divided into multiple tiers, the skill expenditure is the same, but the requirement becomes higher.

The skill “literacy” was a perfect example of it. By spending 55 total skill points in the skill, he is able to reach the maximum level of 10 in the skill. However, by doing so, he depleted a significant portion of his reserve skill points.

Unfortunately, he realized that the skill points he received were not nearly enough to cover all the skill upgrades he wanted. And so he learned the hard way—to budget and manage his limited resources.

Because of this, much of his current focus is intentionally designed to help his parents in their daily lives. From the list of skills he unlocked, Jung hee upgraded only 3 of the 42 skills available so far. The last skill he unlocked is when he looks up and admires the stars and he is surprised he received the skill “Astrology.”

So for now, he deliberately concentrated on a few important skills.

Congratulations! You have upgraded the Specialist skill “Strong Back” to level 4.

-You can now carry 80% beyond your full body weight for the same distance a normal man can carry 1/3 of his own body weight. The distance you can carry still depends on your overall stamina.

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

Requirements: Body 1 (already met)

Current level: 4

Needed skill points to upgrade to the next level: 5

Remaining Skill Points: 61

Congratulations! You have upgraded the specialist skill “Thick Skin” to level 4.

-You are 20% harder to cut or pierce or bruised due to hardening skin.

Requirements: Endurance 1(already met)

Current level: 4

Needed skill points to upgrade to the next level: 5

Remaining Skill Points: 51

Congratulations! You have upgraded the skill “Swift Learner” to level 5.

The skill gives you a onetime 35% increase in your base accumulation rate for your XP points. May stack with further upgrades of this skill.

Requirements: Wisdom 1, (already met)

Current level: 5

Needed skill points to upgrade to the next level: 6

Remaining Skill Points: 36

That 3 skill upgrades alone cost him 35 skill points of his remaining 71, and so Jung made the most of it. He also upgraded another 12 general skills to at least level 1 and plans to upgrade them by simply grinding their levels. He’d been helping his parents around the house ever since he could remember and his early skill decisions were influenced by that reason alone. As a basic rule, he resolves to upgrade semi-important general skills to level 1, and then will only upgrade them by grinding the said skills; the rest of his remaining skill points will be used to upgrade specialist skills in the future. After upgrading 12 general skills, he has 24 remaining skill points total.

As the months pass by, he is able to upgrade a lot of the general skills simply by doing them over and over again. The skill "Running," for example is now level 5 just by practicing it every day. “Cooking” is at level 4.

Finally, he looks at his current status:

Name: Kim Jung Hee

Age: 6

Class: Peasant

Level: 5

Attributes:

Body: 1

*Strength: 1

*Endurance: 1

*Agility: 1

Mind: 1

*Perception: 0

*Intelligence: 1

*Wisdom: 1

Spirits: 0

Current XP: 14,002

Total XP needed for the next level-up: 14,175

Available skill points: 24

Available Attribute points: 0

Available evolution points: 0

Available Perk points: 0

Skills: (1st page only)

-Literacy lvl 10

-Strong Back lvl 4

-Thick skin lvl 4

-Swift Learner lvl 5

-Breathing lvl 3

-Running lvl 5

-Walking lvl 4

-Jumping lvl 2

-Climbing lvl 2

-Cooking lvl 4

-Creative Writing lvl 1

-Tumble Lvl 1

-Tasting lvl 1

-Smelling lvl 1

-Listening lvl 1

-Touching lvl 1

-Eating lvl 0

- Crawling lvl 1

-General Science Mastery lvl 0

-General Mathematics Mastery lvl 0

-General Tracking lvl 0

-Farming lvl 0

-Jogging lvl 0

-General Korean History Mastery lvl 0

-Body Conditioning lvl 0

-Astrology lvl 0

-Animal Husbandry 1

(continue next page?)

He scratched his chin absently as he double-checked his status. This is only the first page of many. He didn't bother looking at the next page because they were all at level 0. There have been a lot of changes since last year, and he still hasn't studied every skill and how it can help him. Jung is merely attempting to improve each of them to the best of his ability, but he doesn't have much time, and because he is still a child, his determination is frequently swamped by simple procrastination.

Moreover, it became clear to him that he could not upgrade everything or at least activate them like he wanted, so he needed to balance his points properly, and then those who are considered to be general skills could grind to the best he could with his limited time. That was the overall game plan he produced after thinking about it.

So far this is the best he could do, and truth be told he isn’t really disappointed. Still, there is no way to compare it and find out if he is doing well or not because, well, there is no one to compare himself to.

All he could do was simply live his life as best he could.