Peter walked through the city, delighting in the casual displays of power all around him. He saw a magnificent building advertising Communication services, the sign outside read ‘Tired of waiting weeks to send a message to your beloved across the empire? Done with letters going missing at sea? One silver per word with our world-class Communicators!’
As he approached the brown training facility he took a moment to watch a duel between what looked like two Elementalists.
A brunette woman with a nasty face scar and studded leathers was throwing out beams of highly condensed air at a man encased in ice. The woman kept just out of reach by manipulating her beams to push her sideways and backwards, trying to trip the man whenever she had distance. The man’s Ice Armor was proving too strong, able to get inside of her reach and swing a massive mallet directly at the woman’s chest. In a desperate attempt the brunette through a beam right at the man’s face, but got nowhere with the powerful Ice Shield. She went down in a heap.
The man walked over and held out a hand. A few seconds later the woman took it, grinning she said
“Thanks Rob. Almost 300 experience that time. Give me two minutes for my stamina to get back and let’s go again?”
Peter walked over to the two, “Hello. I just arrived in town today. I’ll be training for the tournament, how do I become a member at Paxton’s?”
The man, probably Rob, said “Hah, just got in today and you’re joining in the tournament? What’s your ele?”
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“Ah, I’m not an Elementalist actual-”
“Whoa, you’re a Mind? Large or Small objects? Or… are you one of them freaky Mentalists?”
“No, I’m a Strength variant, Leg to be specific.”
The woman snorted loudly. “Hah! A Leg? And you want to train here? And you think you can join the tournament?”
“Look,” Peter said “please just let me know where I can sign up. I’m here to train.”
Rob jumped in. “Paxton doesn’t accept Legs or Arms, except whenever he’s adding in a new course I guess, to build the thing. But if you want to embarrass yourself you’ll find him in his office inside, it’s in the back.”
Peter walked inside, feeling their judgment from behind. Immediately inside the building, he was overcome with a sense of exertion all around him. He saw people lifting impossibly heavy weights, running various obstacle courses, and even playing board games. Spotting the office all the way in the back, Peter couldn’t help but smile.
Time for step 2.
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It took thirty minutes of convincing, essentially all of the silver he had, and a promise to only train at night while he helped clean up during the day, but Brick Paxton finally agreed to accept Peter as a member, and gave him a cot in the storage area for when he needed to sleep. With membership came beginner manuals - training regimes for competitors with 0-35 in attributes. Peter set out to start cleaning while practicing the dexterity drills.
By nightfall Peter was 20% closer to level 9, the gym was far cleaner than just hours before, and best of all he wasn’t tired at all. As the other competitors started heading home Peter walked towards the weights - his intuition telling him the relative lifting struggle would be best for experience grinding based on the materials, and lack of partners, available to him.
One hour before the gym reopened for the day Peter finally hit level 9, again placing four points in Endurance and one in Intelligence. He slept for a single hour to get back to fully refreshed, then walked into the gym to start again.
Two nights later Peter hit level 10:
Ding! Congratulations, you have reached level 10. You have five (5) unallocated attribute points and one (1) unallocated passive skill point.
Peter didn’t even need to look through the skill tree. He’d been planning this for his entire life, and immediately made his choice.