For the rest of the day, Elias hunted monsters in the jungle energetically, a stupid grin plastered on his face all the while. Whenever it began to fade, he recalled how much his social life was progressing ever since he started dungeon delving, and the grin would return. Not only had he made two friends, one of whom he had a crush on, but they had even talked about forming a party already. He was ecstatic!
By now, the initial excitement he’d felt over being able to gather exp had faded significantly. Killing the weak monsters of the jungle had become little more than a monotonous chore. After perfecting his hunting strategies, it felt like he was beating up an endless line of training dummies. Even his improved Vitality and Strength attributes made little difference, as he kept moving deeper into the jungle whenever the monsters became too easy to deal with.
Thankfully, being able to delve deeper into the jungle made finding the monsters easier, since they were more tightly packed the closer he got to the jungle’s center. It wasn’t a dramatic difference, since he was still far away from the core area, but it was a noticeable change nonetheless. As a result, the rate at which he gathered experience improved.
It only took Elias seconds to put down the monsters he found, but it took him minutes to actually find them. Therefore, the time he spent locating the monsters was the true limiting factor on his experience-gathering rate. In turn, this was limited by the speed in which he could move through the thick jungle foliage. For this reason, as the day neared its end, he decided to spend the experience he gathered to level his Agility for the first time.
Congratulations! Your Agility is now level 7.
The increase in his Agility attribute immediately made Elias feel lighter on his feet, even though most of the benefits would only come after training. It felt like his muscles had always been cold and he finally managed to warm them up for the first time, like he’d just received the best massage of his life. He threw a couple of punches in front of himself to test the difference and noticed his movements felt smoother and his balance steadier.
Satisfied with what he could already feel, Elias readied himself for the real test. He began walking forwards at a relaxed pace and noticed that he was indeed able to slip through the dense jungle foliage with slightly greater ease than before. The difference wasn’t overwhelming, but it would definitely help him move faster and tire less while trekking through the jungle. Plus, the improvements he felt now would only grow as he trained the attribute further and continued leveling up.
Done testing the changes he felt from leveling his Agility, Elias began heading back to the clearing for dinner. There, he bought the cheapest meal he could find: a chicken noodle soup, which still cost him over ten thousand energy. Then, after he was done eating, he immediately headed back to the jungle to continue leveling up. He didn’t even bother to look for Marco so that they could eat together, since he knew that the man would be eating dinner at home that night.
As he walked deeper into the jungle, Elias once more felt a strong sense of satisfaction over his choice of profession. Even though he was still a newbie and fighting these weak monsters repetitively could get boring, he couldn’t imagine himself pursuing anything else. Even now, the variety of creatures he fought kept him on his toes, providing great training despite being relatively weak. The smaller monster-types even managed to surprise him occasionally with some kind of special attack that forced him to adapt quickly, while the larger ones often required creativity to take down without much effort.
Every moment he spent in the dungeon—even if just grinding for experience—reassured him of his desire to become a powerful adventurer and explore the dungeon’s deeper zones.
By the time he should be heading back, Elias had already accumulated a total of 8,740 exp, which brought him more than halfway to being able to bring his Agility to level 8. The increase to the attribute improved his mobility in the jungle so much that he had already decided to level it again next. Briefly, he even considered grinding late into the night in order to do so before going back home, but gave up on that idea after thinking further. After all, he didn’t want to make the mistake of arriving tired for his mother’s hellish training again.
The next day, Elias held his head in his hands as his sister droned on non-stop about wanting to become an adventurer. Ever since their visit to the dungeon, it was all she talked about, all day long. It was already getting on everyone’s nerves, and he suspected that his parents would pick up the pace of her training sooner rather than later, if only to shut her up. So, when his dad asked to speak to him before his training session, he eagerly took the opportunity to escape her voice.
“Eli, I wanted to talk to you a bit about our fighting style, and the reason why I asked you to avoid showing it to others in public yesterday,” Peter said as soon as they were alone, his features serious. “Spirit Dancing is a very powerful fighting style–far more powerful than you seem to realize.”
“I never said that I didn’t think it was powerful,” Elias retorted, a frown forming on his face.
“I know, son,” Peter said patiently. “But you still don’t understand just how incredible it really is, even compared to other famous fighting styles. More importantly, you don’t understand how other people might react if they recognize it, and there are other people who know it. They would definitely recognize it if they saw you use it.”
“I can’t tell you why being recognized as a practitioner of this fighting style would be a bad thing right now, but you have to trust me that it would,” Peter said, looking Elias directly in the eyes, not a hint of mirth in his features.
Elias had only rarely seen Peter look as somber as he did at this moment, and decided to take heed of his dad’s warning. Either way, he wouldn’t even be capable of using the fighting style in public without tapping into some kind of tier 1 or tier 2 mana source anyways. Even tapping into the mana that emanated from Skills, like he did against Marco, only provided a small glimpse into the fighting style.
“All right, I won’t show it to anybody else,” Elias said, trying to match his dad’s serious expression. Peter looked at him evenly for a long moment at those words, as if he were trying to judge their sincerity, before he finally seemed satisfied and grinned widely.
“Thank you, Eli,” Peter said. “What I can tell you right now is that the true worth of Spirit Dancing will only become apparent after you master it fully, which will only be possible after you obtain your Skills. By then, I hope that the need for secrecy right now will make more sense to you.”
Elias nodded noncommittally at his father’s words, doing his best to mask his doubts in his expression. He had always believed that Spirit Dancing was an incredible fighting style, but he found it hard to accept that it was superior to every other style out there as Peter seemed to imply. He had seen countless amazing styles showcased in competitions worldwide on their entertainment system. At most, in his wildest fantasies, Elias had imagined his style being comparable to those top-tier styles, not necessarily better.
Elias’ training with his mom began soon after his talk with his dad. It was slightly different this time around, since he had raised his Agility rather than his Vitality and Strength, but definitely not easier. After a grueling full-body weight training session, he was made to do a series of one hundred meter sprints at his maximum speed. Unlike his previous training, which consisted of running the greatest distance he could in an hour, Vivian claimed this variation would be training all three of his physical attributes.
At first, Elias thought that this workout would at least have been quicker, if more intense, than his previous one. It consisted of short bursts of power instead of a continuous effort, so he expected to tire faster and be done. He was wrong. Whenever he started to get too tired, Vivian made him take a short break before continuing, ensuring that he could push his body to the limit with every sprint.
By the end of the day, he had completed nearly one hundred sprints over several hours and had to be carried back home until the recovery potion took effect. To his frustration, he even kept collapsing before the finish line on the last few sprints, and Vivian had refused to count those.
Not content to merely watch him training like she sometimes did, Isabela had begun copying his exercises this time. It seemed like she had decided that if their parents wouldn’t start training her foundation already, she would take matters into her own hands. Of course, she decided to call it a day after her tenth sprint, just when she was starting to really get tired. Still, she was clearly proud of herself judging by the way she walked back into the house, her chest puffed out and chin held high.
Elias exchanged an amused look with his mom when his sister left and they both chuckled at her antics. While he didn’t want to belittle her efforts, she hadn’t put nearly enough effort into that training session for either himself or Vivian to count it as such. There hadn’t been nearly enough suffering for that. Regardless, judging by the thoughtful look his mom had, Elias guessed that Isabela would get her wish soon enough.
The day after, Elias left the house a few hours before lunchtime to meet up with Marco and Rebecca. He left quietly when Isabela wasn’t looking, since she kept nagging him to bring her along with him again and he was tired of telling her ‘no’. For some reason, she seemed to think that he would change his mind if only she asked him one more time.
Arriving at the clearing, he met up with his friends near Rebecca’s father’s burrito stall and found a spot near the edge of the clearing to begin their training. Since the training ring was expensive to rent out, they had decided to merely pick an out of the way spot and limit the strength they put into their blows instead..
“See how you’re overextending when you do that? It makes breaking your guard a lot easier,” Elias explained to Rebecca. Her brows furrowed in concentration as she slowly repeated her previous movements to verify the truth of his advice.
Elias could tell that Rebecca was putting a lot of effort into improving her fighting skills, even though it sometimes took her a while to believe or understand the relevance of his instruction. More than that, it was obvious to him that she did have talent for it, and had simply never had the opportunity to learn how to fight properly. Now, he could easily see her improving significantly in a short period of time just by fixing some minor issues in her form.
The greatest issue Elias had noticed in her form was that she put far too much power into every blow, making her strikes easy to either dodge or counter. Overall, it wasn’t a big problem, but it also wasn’t the only issue he’d noticed. It was only the most glaring.
Rebecca was simply too used to only fighting monsters. They didn’t think strategically or fight methodically, resulting in several shortcoming in her form that went unnoticed to her. After all, she had never been forced to fix these shortcomings, since monsters weren’t capable of taking advantage of them. At least, not in the early levels of the dungeon.
The sparring between Elias and Marco was a lot friendlier this time around. They had already tested each other previously, they now focussed more on technique and maintaining a state of combat trance while they exchanged blows. In many ways, their spar had become closer to a dance than a fight, with neither of them truly pushing to gain an advantage over the other.
The pair took turns sparring against Rebecca as well, but those bouts weren’t nearly as harmonious. She was still at the stage of improving her technique and form, and was nowhere near being able to enter a combat trance. In fact, even as their sparring was coming to an end, she still hadn’t been able to land a hit on either him or Marco even once.
“Let’s go eat something, already,” Rebecca said right after the three of them decided to end their sparring session for the day. “I can give my friends a twenty five percent discount on the burritos!”
“You can? Why didn’t we get that discount last time?” Elias asked, sounding indignant.
“We hadn’t been friends yet,” she answered.
“Now way! We’re going to the meat skewer stall this time–and you’re trying that chicken heart skewer I told you about,” Marco said, narrowing his eyes at Elias. “This is happening Elias. Deal with it.”
“Alright, I’ll go,” Elias said with a sigh. He had honestly hoped that Marco had forgotten about that damn skewer.
As they arrived at the meat skewer stall, Elias noticed that each individual skewer was a lot smaller than he had expected them to be. In order to satiate his hunger, he guessed that he would need to order a few of them. Thankfully, the stall offered a combo option that contained some of the most popular skewers they sold, including the chicken-heart one; all three of them ordered it.
As it turned out, Marco had a good reason for insisting that Elias try out that chicken heart skewer: it tasted really, really good. In fact, it was not what he had imagined it would be like and if his friend hadn’t specifically pointed out which skewer it was from among the others, he wouldn’t have guessed it correctly either. It tasted like a particularly fatty piece of beef, not chicken. Eventually, after all of them finished eating and resting, Elias said his goodbyes and prepared to enter the jungle to begin leveling.
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As he’d expected, his exp gathering rate reached new and unprecedented heights with his increased Agility. After consolidating the increase to the attribute during training yesterday, he moved through the jungle foliage with far greater ease than before. As such, he was able to gather the 6,000 or so exp he still needed to level his Agility again in what felt like no time at all.
Congratulations! Your Agility is now level 8.
Having reached his goal of leveling once, Elias took it easy for the rest of the day as he strolled through the jungle and hunted monsters for experience. Although he wanted to catch up with his friends in levels, he felt no need to truly rush. He was sure that his friends wouldn't leave him behind if he was late to reach the Beginner rank by a few days. Regardless, leveling all his attributes to level 10 was typically the quickest and easiest step in reaching that rank properly; perfecting one’s foundation was by far the hardest part.
Just because Elias was taking his time didn’t mean that his experience gains slowed to a crawl. At a relatively relaxed pace, he still managed to gather a little over 2,000 exp every hour–just as much as he had achieved while going all out before he began leveling his Agility. In fact, he found that the biggest difference between grinding at a sedate pace and trying to gain experience as quickly as possible was a positive one. Taking his time allowed him to choose his opponents more carefully and pay more attention to his surroundings.
Elias felt like this was how dungeon delving was really supposed to be like and he found that he preferred it this way too. After all, the road to becoming a powerful adventurer was long, and he would much rather walk it while taking in the views and enjoying the experience than rushing ahead. Not only that, but being impatient and reckless would be a fatal flaw when he finally started delving into the deeper levels of the dungeon.
By the end of the day, Elias had gained another 10,450 exp and a new appreciation for taking his time while leveling in the dungeon. Having avoided the larger monsters, he hadn’t hurt his fists nearly as much as he had the other day, and he wasn’t even particularly tired since he had been walking at a fairly sedate pace. All things told, it was a far more pleasant experience.
The next day, Isabela officially joined Elias in his training with Vivian for the very first day of her own foundation training. Contrary to how he had been like when he had first started, she was already fairly fit from a combination of being born with high attributes and having trained her combat skills with Peter for years. However, that did not mean that she was anywhere close to manifesting the maximum potential of the attributes she had been born with. After all, it took years of dedicated effort or a small fortune in training supplements and potions to reach that point.
Since Isabela had a good natural aptitude and time on her side, Elias honestly doubted that his mom would push her as hard as she had pushed him when he was younger. The truth was that there was very little to gain in increasing any of her attributes through training like he had. Therefore, she only had to get her effective attributes as close as possible to her real attributes before she turned eighteen. All things told, it was something that she should be able to accomplish in six years if she trained hard enough, even without relying on recovery potions and the like.
Elias watched as Isabela stretched with a confident smile on her face with a hint of pity. She really had no idea what was coming her way. Although she should be able to obtain the results she sought in time, he doubted that would be good enough for Vivian. Their mother seemed to believe that people should always push themselves to the very limit all the time, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary. In other words, while Isabela’s training probably wouldn’t be as hard as his had been when he was younger, it’ll definitely be far harder than hers had ever been before.
Their training session began easily enough, with Vivian flicking several tiny rubber balls at them to train their reflexes and agility. The rubber balls stung a bit when they impacted against his body, but it wasn’t so bad since they didn’t really hurt. Throughout this exercise, Elias was deeply impressed with how poorly his sister was faring. Even Kitty seemed to be in disbelief at how poorly her human was performing as she watched on from the sidelines. Somehow, she had failed to dodge almost every single one of the projectiles that their mother had thrown at her, including one that Elias was pretty sure had been aimed at him.
For endurance training, they were once more made to do a series of sprints on a one hundred meter long stretch. This time, however, Isabela was not allowed to quit after the tenth sprint like she had done when she was copying his training. No, Vivian forced his little sister to sprint as fast as she could over and over again, until she was wheezing in the ground, trying to catch her breath.
All things told, Elias still thought that his mom was going easy on Isabela, since she was only made to run to exhaustion once. Though, he supposed that the leniency was understandable, given that it was only her first day. After all, this kind of training was all about physically pushing oneself repeatedly, and it required a willpower that his little sister simply did not possess yet.
Isabela reaching her limits seemed to be a signal for Vivian to intensify Elias’ training further. It was like she wanted to use him as an example to show his little sister exactly the kind of effort she was expected to put into her training sessions. Consequently, Elias was struggling to catch his breath right beside Isabela in no time, his entire body burning painfully. At least he was given a recovery potion to aid in his recovery, as he was pretty sure that he was suffering from a heat stroke with how hot his body felt.
“Why are you the only one to get a recovery potion?” Isabela asked with a hint of resentment in her voice.
Instead of answering her, Elias simply stared at her with eyes full of compassion and pity. She really had no idea what was coming her way, or the kind of performance that she would be expected to put out for their mother to be satisfied. The answer to her question was simple: she hadn’t received a recovery potion because she hadn’t pushed herself far enough to make good use of one.
Despite his good intentions, however, Isabela mistook his compassion for mockery and puffed her cheeks in indignation. It probably didn’t help that he kept making his trademark ‘this is delicious’ face while he drank his potion. Regardless, it didn’t explain how she came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to complain to their mother about “how unfair it was that he got a recovery potion and she didn’t”, even though they were now doing the same training.
Vivian tolerated no complaining, defiance, hesitation, or any other behavior that might be mistaken for disobedience from a world away, but only during training. Under normal circumstances, she was the most doting of their parents, bubbly and energetic at any given moment. Unfortunately for her, Isabela failed to realize that their mother would react to her complaining far differently than how she seemed to expect her to.
Elias watched on with his mouth agape as his sister enthusiastically put all of her effort and energy into digging her own grave. It was tragic, really, and he could only shake his head when Vivian decided that if Isabela had the energy to complain, she had the energy to sprint a “few more times”.
By the end of training, Isabela ended up getting her very own recovery potion after all. His sister was laying down with her back to the floor, her eyes blank and her face pale. She looked like she wanted to burst into tears, but obviously didn’t have the energy for it. Elias wasn’t even sure if it was because of Vivian’s particular brand of ‘encouragement’ or simply due to physical pain.
Kitty comforted her by kneading softly on her belly, somehow looking worried for a cat, and even Elias offered a few words of consolation. He knew well what his sister was feeling right now and was sure that a bit of encouragement would go a long way. He didn’t offer a hug though, as that would risk getting some of her vomit on his shirt.
The next ten days passed quickly as Elias continued to delve into the newbie zone of the dungeon and level his attributes. All the while, he kept to the relaxed pace he had set for himself and only gathered enough experience to level a single attribute per dungeon delve. Therefore, the level of his Strength and Vitality attributes soared to become equal to his Agility, at level 8.
Congratulations! Your Vitality is now level 7.
Congratulations! Your Vitality is now level 8.
Congratulations! Your Strength is now level 7.
Congratulations! Your Strength is now level 8.
With all of his physical attributes at a more respectable level, Elias decided on leveling one of his mental attributes for once on his latest dungeon delve. He considered leveling his Charisma attribute instead since it was still at a pitiable level 5, but decided against it after all. The problem was that, along with Spirit, Charisma was the hardest and most annoying attribute to train.
Training the Spirit attribute involved a lot of meditation or other exercises that helped strengthen it, all of which were difficult, time consuming, or boring. Elias’ training to learn Spirit Dancing thankfully served as a great substitute, since it required him to use his Spirit to feel the mana around him. For this reason, Spirit was the only one of his attributes whose effective level was already at level 10, having been trained to the pinnacle of what was humanly possible over the years.
Training the Charisma attribute, on the other hand, required a lot of reflection and introspection, being more akin to a journey of self discovery. Similarly to training the Spirit, it was usually a boring and lengthy process. Of course it was all worth it in the end, but Elias didn’t know what his parents had in mind to train his Charisma. Though, he desperately hoped it involved the use of potions, rather than trying to analyse his past experiences to learn more about himself.
The reason that Elias wanted to level one of his non-physical attributes was because he was curious about what it felt like to do so. Both his Intelligence and Wisdom attributes were already at an effective level of 7, so he would be able to feel the attribute he leveled expand slightly even before training it. After considering his choice for a while, he eventually decided on leveling his Wisdom first, though he couldn’t think of a good reason to choose one over the other.
Congratulations! Your Wisdom is now level 8.
As soon as he leveled the attribute, Elias felt a powerful tingling in his forehead, which concentrated on the spot between his eyebrows. Along with this strange feeling came the sensation of his perception of the world focusing and expanding at the same time. His senses had become sharper, allowing him to feel the world around him in more detail, and he could even feel his body better. It was like he was more in control of himself. Smiling in satisfaction at the level up, Elias opened his Status to see the progress he’d made over the last days.
Name: Elias Oliveira
Exp: 60
Spirit: 10
Skill: None
(21.000 exp to level)
Wisdom: 8
Skill: None
(17.000 exp to level)
Intelligence: 7
Skill: None
(15.000 exp to level)
Charisma: 5
Skill: None
(11.000 exp to level)
Agility: 8
Skill: None
(17.000 exp to level)
Strength: 8
Skill: None
(17.000 exp to level)
Vitality: 8
Skill: None
(17.000 exp to level)
While he leveled his attributes in the dungeon, Elias continued to train his foundation with Vivian. That, compounded with his ostentatious consumption of recovery potions, led to his body undergoing a transformation these last days. His stick-thin figure filled up with muscle and his complexion started to look healthier, and even his skin seemed to become a fuller color. For the first time in his life, he was beginning to feel satisfied with his own body.
These changes allowed Elias to finally understand just how much of a disadvantage he had truly been in due to his lacking physique. He could now move faster, with greater ease, exert more strength, and simply felt more solid than he even had before. He also stopped receiving the occasional stare of revulsion when he went out. At one point, he even received a flirtatious look from a girl, to which he had no idea how to react since it was something that had never happened to him before.
Lastly, Elias continued to meet up with his friends to train in the dungeon’s clearing before entering the jungle to level up. Their friendship improved greatly during this time and ehh felt like the probability of the three of them actually forming a delving party increased with every meeting, making him giddy with excitement every time he thought about it. He just couldn’t wait to start dungeon delving with some actual friends. Despite how he loved being an adventurer, walking through the dungeon by yourself could get boring sometimes.
“So… I only need a few thousand exp more to raise my Intelligence to level 10. I’m definitely going to be able to gather that much today,” Marco said one day as they were having lunch together after their sparring session.
The news made Elias freeze for a split-second, his breath catching in his throat. He had been expecting something like this ever since Marco mentioned that all of his other attributes were already at level 10, but it still caused his anxiety to spike. This meant that after today, Marco would have all of his attributes at the level cap of level 10 like Rebecca. More importantly, since his father would help him perfect his foundation, he would be reaching the Beginner rank soon, bringing a renewed sense of urgency to Elias.
“Already? Damn–how long do you think it will take until you manage to perfect your foundations?” Elias asked, his shoulders slumping somewhat. He wanted to sound happier for his friend, but he just wasn’t feeling it. Rebecca nodded along to his question, making it clear that she was also interested in knowing the answer.
“I’m not sure when exactly, but my dad said that he was taking me somewhere to perfect my foundations the day after tomorrow. It should take around a week or two, I guess. He actually didn’t tell me where we were going,” Marco answered, failing to keep the excitement off of his voice.
“Wow, that’s–that’s very quick,” Rebecca said, her eyes widening slightly in alarm.
“Yeah, it is, but I’m not bringing this up just to show off. I was thinking, why don’t we all delve together today?” Marco said with a wink.
“Even if we end up sharing the exp, you will probably gain it at a similar rate if we go into the core area of the zone,” Marco said looking at Elias. Then, he turned to Rebecca and continued, “and you wouldn’t take any of our exp either, since you’re already at the level cap. This would be like an experiment anyways, to see if we worked well in the dungeon. What do you say?”
“I think it’s a good idea, but I can’t, unfortunately. I already have a group slotted in for power-leveling this afternoon. I can’t just cancel on them last minute,” Rebecca said, clearly disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to go.
“I’m in!” Elias said, agreeing to Marco’s suggestion enthusiastically, his heart beginning to pound energetically. His sudden change in mood was so drastic that it even drew a light chuckle from Marco and Rebecca both.
“Alright, let’s go then!” Marco said, matching Elias’ mood.
