Finding a free stall, I filled a basin with water and started cleaning the dust off my body. As the water started covering me, I immediately felt relief in my sore muscles, the pain washing away with the accumulated dirt and filth.

Taking a look at my palm, I felt the sting where the machete had bit through the flesh. It slowly healed as well, the superficial injury fading to barely a scratch in just a few minutes.

Glancing at the sun, I saw that it was well past noon, closer to dinner time. The time I spent training had felt like only an hour or so, but in actuality I had lost most of the day. I had zoned out before; getting too focused on my work was a pretty common occurrence for me.

But this felt like something else. Something more. Curious to see if my status could give me any hints, I pulled up the alerts I had been ignoring for some time.

*ding!*

Combat Skill:

Novice Swordsmanship: 3->6!

Current Stats:

Strength: 10->11!

Agility: 10->11!

Dexterity: 9->10!

Constitution: 12->13!

My improvements were great, leaving me in a far superior position compared to yesterday, but there was nothing here to explain my odd mental state. Deciding to disregard it for now, I found my clothes and started pulling them on, only to realize that the fabric on them was fraying and pulling apart.

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The threads were brittle and scratchy in patches, as if parts of my shirt had been sitting in the sun for months. Checking over the rest of my gear, I found that my shoes were similarly falling into pieces, my leather belt was starting to crack and crumble, and the sheath of my machete was almost falling apart.

Pulling my weapon out again to take a closer look at it, I noticed that the blade was tarnished and worn in small spots all over, with little patches of orange rust popping up across it. The handle didn’t look much better either, as it too was breaking and falling apart. The damage was subtle for the most part, not something I would have noticed unless I looked very carefully, but sure enough, everything I had was slowly breaking into pieces.

Pulling on my clothes despite the damage, I ran back over to my apartment and searched through some of my old clothes there for something else to wear. Dressed once more, I decided to bring my machete over to the crafting setup to see if they could figure out what was going wrong with it.

Donny was working away, swinging his hammer down on an anvil, shaping a long piece of metal that glowed with an orange light. I felt awkward approaching him just after snapping at him, but decided that ignoring the issue would only make it worse later. With a sigh, I came forward and annouced myself.

“Hey, Donny.”

Instead of saying anything, he just glanced up at me and huffed, a tounge of flame lashing out over the metal he was working on.

“I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I snapped at you when you were just worried about me, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

Setting his work down, he glanced up at me, staring at me with his reptilian eyes.

“Fine. It’s all cool. But I was seriously worried about you, there. What even happened?”

“I honestly don’t know. I think I just got way too into leveling and got my head lost in the clouds. I’ve definitely been under some stress lately.”

Closing his eyes, he let out a long puff of smoke.

“Yeah. I can understand that. Just… be more careful in the future.”

“I will. By the way, can you take a look at my machete? I noticed some rust popping up on it, and wanted the opinion of someone who might know better.”

Passing the blade off to him, he took it carefully into his claws. Slowly, Donny looked across the blade, tested the edge, and looked closely at the handle.

“Honestly, Vic, it just looks like it’s old. I’ll clean the rust off and oil it to help protect the metal. In the future, try and clean it regularly and apply a light coating of oil every once in a while. Should be fine.”

I nodded, taking the weapon back into my hands before returning it to it’s sheath. Bidding Donny farewell, I returned to the training area. Though I wasn’t planning on working on my swordsmanship any more, there was one part of my abilites that I’d been neglecting.

Magic.