[Congratulations! Through effort, your skill, Pugilism, has leveled up!]
[Pugilism: Level 9?10. Rank: Novice]
Jack could barely breathe, he was so excited.
Freakishly out of breath too, but mostly excited.
“Yes!” he wheezed from his position facedown in the grass.
He honestly wasn’t sure how long he’d been exercising, but given how far the sun had moved, it had been a while. He’d taken frequent breaks and even found a pot of rainwater nestled beneath a fruit tree grove nearby. He’d eaten a few of the apple-like fruits that had fallen off the ground after inspecting them and making sure they weren’t poisonous.
They weren’t. If anything, they’d given him a considerable boost to his energy levels.
[Name: Honeymallow]
[Rarity: Mundane]
[Description: A fruit native to the kingdom of Kieheart. Slightly increases stat and energy recovery over the course of five minutes.]
So far as Jack could tell, the whole stat cost and recovery aspect of this world’s magic was basically like six different types of mana bars. When he added a point to any one of them, he increased the max capacity of that pool. Normal activities like walking, eating, or talking didn’t use up any of them, but anything that required a lot of concentration or exertion did.
The more he worked on his fighting technique, the more of a feel he got for each stat involved.
Jack used a bit of perception to spot weaknesses in his technique, but less than he’d imagined. When he’d first started, it felt like he could generally sense every muscle group, his breath, and all of the videos, classes, and practices he’d experienced back on Earth. It wasn’t anything even close to eideticism, but neither was it mere recollection. It was like his body wanted to learn, wanted to know how to increase its power and efficiency of motion.
And the more he focused on these aspects, the faster his skill grew. He assumed this was the 5% increase to mastery proficiency the otherwise passive skill enabled, and he was loving every second of it.
Additionally, he could feel he’d used a lot of dexterity, a good deal of strength, and a ton of constitution. The last one felt strange, but the best thing he could relate it to was lung capacity. There was a definite sensation of feeling rested and full of oxygen, and feeling like he couldn’t breathe.
In the same way, it was like his entire body had seriously boosted his sensitivity to how much energy he had in a given moment, and he could fairly accurately track how much it could actually give before he couldn’t go any further.
And like all those online videos had told him, his body could give way more than his mind would normally let him.
But here on Aethros, it was his mind that pushed his body to its utter limits.
Sadly, over his four-or-so-hour workout from hell, he didn’t gain a single stat point. He didn’t even know if that was possible. Even with that minor disappointment, he couldn’t deny how much more attuned he was to where his body was at.
All of that was well and good, but the true icing on the cake was the final notification he received, and what finally caused Jack to stop in his ceaseless pursuit of skill levels.
[New quest unlocked: The Way of the Pugilist (Skill quest)]
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ QUEST OBJECTIVES ║
╠══════════════════════════════╣
║ ║
║ ? Defeat enemies only using hand-to-hand ║
║ techniques. [0/10] ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════╝
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ QUEST REWARDS ║
╠══════════════════════════════╣
║ ║
║ ? Rank up skill to Apprentice ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════╝
It wasn’t anything spectacular, but he just had to assume that with the rank-up came a whole new field of power and growth. Now, Jack wasn’t confident that the keyword ‘defeat’ meant he had to beat someone in combat or kill them. A part of him was worried he’d have to face down ten orcs with nothing but his fists, but if he could just find a couple of dudes in town that wanted to brawl and he best them, maybe that would be enough for the system.
Just to be sure, he collected his breath and went through the most complex drill he could think of for the next twenty minutes. Nothing. No skill EXP, or any other indicator that the skill was continuing to grow.
If I had to guess, I’m going to need to complete this skill quest before I can level it up again.
It was an annoying, but also common, bottleneck in a lot of games he’d played. It frustrated him that he couldn’t just grind out more levels whenever he wished, but after he caught his breath again, it made a certain amount of sense.
Sitting within the relative haven of the tall grass, he worked it out aloud.
“This world works on effort,” Jack remembered. “But just pushing harder in a task doesn’t make you better. You need milestones. Someone to check your work.”
His mind immediately drifted to Collin, and he frowned. If this whole System had his personality, they were all doomed.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Jack really wanted to go back to the farm and talk this all over with Olric. But when he remembered everything that had happened that morning, the guilt gnawed away at his resolve.
No, Jack thought. I’ll do a sidequest or two, get some levels, and then go back and apologize.
Maybe with a few more levels, Olric would see that he wasn’t avoiding him, just working hard to get to his class as quickly as possible. And once he knew about Soul Fusion’s prerequisites, Jack was sure the farmer would understand his drive.
I’m not avoiding him. I’m just doing what needs to be done. This will help him, too… right? The quicker I get strong, the sooner I can banish the darkness!
That gave him another thought.
What if I level up my other skills?
He quickly pulled up his other skills and perused the list. The sword mastery was out of the question. Even if he managed to find a blade suitable for the task—which he seriously doubted—he just couldn’t justify the risk of discovery. If they found him with a blade, he’d be arrested or even executed for that.
But once they got hold of him, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out that he was the Banisher they were hunting.
No. He’d need to try to gain some skill levels in other areas, and then double back on the sword mastery once he knew it was safe.
And he found a sword, of course.
“What about blunt weapons?” he wondered.
Jack stood up and retreated to the honeymallow grove. It took him a couple of minutes, but he eventually found a tree with a withered branch. It came off after a few sturdy yanks, and he spent the next little bit tugging off all of its extraneous limbs. When he was done, he had a four-foot-long stick that roughly approximated a club.
He gave it a few test swings.
Despite its barky girth, it was surprisingly light. Grinning boyishly at his creation, he returned to his impromptu training circle. The wind bled through the tall grass and tickled his bare back. It felt so good on his sweat-coated skin that he took a moment to breathe in slowly. He closed his eyes.
Right. Let’s see if this works.
Jack got into a low stance and swung the club. It hissed through the air. He swung again, trying to focus on the weight of the weapon, how it moved through the space. He even went so far as to imagine one of the orcs he’d fought, picturing a clean sweep to first its neck, then its kidneys, and then at the back of one of its knees.
It was startlingly easy to recall its gruesome features, and Jack had to take a moment to recenter his mind.
It’s dead. I’m not, Jack reminded himself.
He got back into the center and swung again. This time, he focused on an old lesson he’d learned when he started his MMA training.
The punch starts in the feet, his old instructor would always say.
When Jack swung his club, he swiveling his back leg, twisted his hips, and did his best to rotate his shoulders and arms like levers, giving it every ounce of power he could muster. Something clicked in his mind the moment he finished the club’s arc.
[Congratulations! Through effort, your skill, Blunt Weapon Mastery, has leveled up!]
[Blunt Weapon Mastery: Level 1?2. Rank: Novice]
“YES!” Jack yelled.
He stared down at the rough-hewn weapon in his hands as if this was the first time he’d seen it. It hadn’t magically improved or anything, but it felt more solid. He could almost feel its durability tugging at the edges of his senses, like an estimate formed from some quick math he hadn’t meant to complete.
Yet, just at the tip of his awareness, he thought he could get a slight feel for how much punishment he could put this club under before it broke. The number wasn’t high.
“That’s seriously so freaking cool,” Jack muttered as the skill did its work.
He wondered what the other skills could do—how they might enhance his mind, senses, and tasks. Jack envisioned a mechanical skill effortlessly guiding his hands with a surgical sort of precision, tinkering with complex cylinders and valves as easily as breathing.
“Hell, that would’ve been nice to have back on Earth,” he commented dryly, and gave the club a few more test swings.
Then, getting more serious, he lowered into a deep stance and swung with the same ferocity and intentionality as before. He applied all that he’d learned over the years from MMA—on top of what he was freshly learning from the Aethrian skill system—to his attacks. He put every inch of his body to work.
His back muscles strained to keep his center of balance. His core engaged each time he began his next strike. He forced his grip to remain partially relaxed until just the right moment when his imaginary foe would collide with the haft of his weapon, then he shoved power into his grip so that it would endure the reverberations of the strike, just like what he did before and during his punches.
Relax. Move. Tighten. Pull Back.
Rinse and repeat.
Another hour slipped by without notice or care, but Jack’s efforts were soon rewarded.
[Congratulations! Through effort, your skill, Blunt Weapon Mastery, has leveled up!]
[Blunt Weapon Mastery: Level 2?3. Rank: Novice]
He got the notification right as he finished what would have been a vicious downward strike to an orc’s cranium, and was so elated he neglected to pull his attack at the last moment. There was a sickening and dry CRUNCH as his weapon splintered against the ground.
Jack fell to the ground alongside it, panting. He was elated and disappointed all at once, but took this as a sign to perhaps try out another one of his skills.
“While I’m here,” he justified, glancing around for the hundredth time to make sure no one was around. “And no one else is.”
He pulled up his skill sheet again.
He had no levels in whatever Cleansing Light was, and while the description helped a little, he had no idea where to begin with that one. Same with Soul Fusion, though his inability to cast that skill was obvious.
Inspect was slightly different, so he decided to give it a whirl. He glanced around at everything, growing accustomed to the odd new sense that was the magic of this world. It was akin to flexing a new set of muscles, but combined with the odd feeling of grasping for a second language. It was mental and physical, and after a while of Inspecting the grass, the sun, the trees, and his boots a dozen times over, a grueling headache began to form in the back of his head.
“Okay,” he drew out. “Gonna stop there. What about Relentless Spirit?”
He pulled up the description again.
[? Description:
When death comes knocking, rage answers the door. In the
throes of mortal injury, your body refuses to yield, drawing
on reserves of strength and endurance that should not exist.
Survival has never been so violent.
? Effect:
→ When mortally wounded, gain +50% to Resilience and Strength.
→ Effect ends when healed above critical threshold or after
1 hour.]
“It kind of reads like a berserker skill,” Jack mumbled, scratching at his chin. “But there doesn’t seem to be any of the drawbacks that a normal berserking skill has. No attribute cost either, like the Soul Fusion one has.”
Jack shrugged as the reason dawned on him, and he grimaced.
“Oh. Right. I need to be mortally wounded to activate this skill,” he recited, feeling ill.
For one terrifyingly honest moment, he contemplated what it would take to train this skill up, but quickly dismissed the idea. While he might’ve been willing to mostly kill himself if this were a video game, he knew with utter certainty that he couldn’t mutiliate himself on the off chance it might level up a skill he seriously hoped he wouldn’t need too often anyway.
What had Myrtle or Olric said, anyway? That constitution was the stat involved with healing?
He glanced at his current constitution.
Seven.
It wasn’t horrible—like his charisma stat—but neither was it remarkable. Nor did he have a clear read on what those numbers really translated to just yet.
“Just another thing I need to ask Olric, should he ever talk to me again,” Jack muttered darkly.
He rolled his shoulders and let out a long sigh. The grass around him swayed and danced as another breeze, this one stronger than the previous few, cascaded through the field he was in.
Jack stood up and noticed just how low the sun was getting. It was well into the afternoon, but it was his best guess.
Well, if I can’t level up my skills anymore, I guess it’s time to find me a sidequest.
