Chapter 8: Moving Up

  A new quest was something Alex was not expecting right now. He knew that getting more of them was possible, as Sylvaris had mentioned them when they were talking about experience points. But this almost felt out of the blue, just like that badger ambush had.

  But, what if it wasn't out of the blue? He side eyed the badger corpses, wondering if it was the system that sent these things his way. If not directly, it might have influenced them to some degree, nudged them down a line of choices that brought them here to me.

  If that was the case, then the system could very well be doing that to Alex as well. The quest came up right after he had been thinking about the possibility of a pack, and how or when he'd have to take it down. Either the system could read his thoughts and set up the quest in response, or it was anticipating him and trying to nudge him down the path that it wanted.

  "I don't like being controlled, " Alex said out loud into the darkness of the trees, "So this better not be an attempt to push me into some agenda." He waited a few seconds, almost expecting a new screen to pop up in response.

  The system didn't seem to hear him, or if it did, it didn't deign to give a reply. Alex waited in silence before he smiled.

  "Okay then, keep your secrets."

  He decided it was time to finally get moving again and got to the job of skinning and preparing the badger kills. The knife let him make short time of the job, but it was still dirty work. He gathered up the pelts and set them out by the fire to dry, then got to work of portioning out the meat. The rest he threw out into the darkness away from his camp. The smell of blood and death would attract other beasts, so Alex made sure they would find their meal away from his current home and flung the remains of the three beasts as far away as possible.

  At last he sat down on his log by the fire, and prepared for the part that he had been anticipating since he finished the fight. It was time to see what kind of experience he earned, and to figure out how to spend it.

  He mentally brought up the notifications from his fight earlier, and compiled them all into one screen for easier display.

  "Finally, progress!" Alex fist bumped the air and smiled. On the inside he was dancing about like a three year old hoped up on a birthday cake sugar rush. On the outside, well he was still doing a little cha-cha while sitting on the log, but far more subdued.

  Why such a big difference with the amounts though? He noted the wild swings in the experience he earned for the kills. A difference of thirteen points didn't seem like much but Alex was used to the standardized rewards of the RPG games from back home.

  In the games he was used to, a killed forest badger would give a set amount of experience every time. As you got stronger, some games would throttle back the experience earned until you eventually gained nothing. This was done by developers to have players move on to actual threats, rather than just sitting there and farming experience on low levels mobs. That tactic was called "grinding", and it was slightly a controversial thing.

  Some gamers lived by the grind, and some games were even designed around the idea of grinding. Some players though, hated it, and felt a game about just doing the same thing for hours and hours was not at all fun and in fact killed the experience of escapism of video games. A lot of people were trying to leave a work life of repetitive tasks, not extend it further in a video game.

  Alex was of the former group. He thought the grind haters as dumbasses who like to just get flashy quests, rush the main story and finish a video game entirely in two hours then never pick up the controller again.

  Alex on the other hand, lived the grind, he loved it actually. He just liked seeing numbers go burr, and there was no better feeling of seeing a level-up or skill-up after days and days of work. As a consequence, he never liked games that throttled his experience gain just because he was stronger than the monsters.

  He wasn't sure if that throttled drop off was a thing in this new system, but the set reward for standardized mobs didn't seem to be applicable here. It didn't take much thought for Alex to realize why.

  "Those badgers were of different strength," he said to himself, "The smallest one probably gave me the forty-eight drop, and then up from there. They might have had different stats as well, so they would give me different gains."

  It was an interesting bit of information that Alex decided to file away for later. For now, there were decision to be made, and experience points to spend. His excitement was building in him even before pulled up his current experience and stats. He was able to mentally alter what info the system showed him, and he only needed those two features right now.

  He had quite the pool of points right now, and Alex only took a few moments to look over his current stats to decide what he wanted to do. It would take the majority of the points he had, but Alex wanted to push his Agility up past 100% and get the base stat up to three.

  Alex wasn't certain the base stat amount would increase if he got it 100%, but he was willing to bet every experience point he had that would be the result. It made sense to him no matter which way he looked at it. If he was wrong, he would still have his agility stat increased which was the stat he felt was helping him the most. It certainly gave him the leg up in that last fight, letting him more easily dodge and counterattack.

  He didn't have a true downside to the decision, so he took a deep breath and mentally pumped his experience points into his Agility stat. The warm build-up of energy started immediately. The same tingling sensation erupting over Alex's skin and sinking slowly into his muscles and bones. It began to get stronger after a second as the experience points rapidly dipped lower and lower on his status screen.

  Alex watched as the number next to his agility increased, the rising percentage displayed matching the rising heat that was now completely filling his body. It continued to a point that Alex almost thought it was going to become painful, but it plateaued out instead and the feeling quickly transformed.

  The sensation became a pleasant feeling that wrapped up his entire mind, thrumming up and down his body. Before when Alex increased his agility, it was simply a warmth that crept over him like sunlight washing over your face on a cold morning. Now, it was like the sting of heat after a shot of vodka, but across his entire being.

  It peaked and then faded just as quickly, leaving Alex wanting more. He looked down at his hands and arms, flexing the muscles underneath. The quality of the change he felt compared to when he increased the stat before was unreal. The tendons and muscles felt like they had much more power ready to be unleashed.

  The sudden speed he knew he could now express was higher, even if he was still only standing in his camp site. He bent and stretched, finding he could reach every spot on his back, and he idly wondered if he could pull off the splits now. He didn't really try, that was a risk he wasn't willing to make.

  He instinctively knew he was still in the realm of normal human ability, but he was reaching the higher end. As before, a human back in his world wouldn't notice the huge difference, but Alex felt the change over the course of seconds.

  Alex focused on his status, bringing it up and confirmed that his Agility stat had indeed rolled over once it hit 100%, and it now showed his base stat at three. He was about start putting some more points into his agility, just to find out how many more it would take to bring it to 100% again, but he paused.

  He hadn't noticed it before, as he was so preoccupied with the thoughts about spending his experience, but now it jumped out at him.

  "When did my stats go up?"

  Now that Alex was looking at his status and he mentally compared it to when he last looked at the screen, it was undeniable. With a little easy math Alex was able to figure out his strength had increased by 1.5%, Vitality by 1.3% and before he put in his experience, his agility had increased by 0.4%.

  He understood his agility would have increased slower than the rest, as it was at a higher base. He also assumed his stats increased because of all the running around, campsite construction and climbing he had been doing. So working out and exercising seemed to be something that could still be done here, increasing his stats naturally instead of just through experience.

  Alex didn't know why he hadn't thought of it before, if he had simply subconsciously dismissed the possibility and instead went by the video game RPG rules of his home world. Now that he actually thought about it, of course he could work out and increase his stats. His body was still real, not just some game code and numbers. At least that was the theory he continued to work under.

  He made a mental note to try adding a workout routine into his day before pushing forward with spending his experience. Increasing his agility told him that amount of experience needed for improvement had increased once again. It now took three experience points before he saw percentage movement on his screen instead of two experience points.

  Okay, so its a hundred points for getting a stat to 100% between base one and two. Two hundred points between base two and three, and now three hundred to get to base four. Alex noted wryly to himself.

  He could simply assume this would continue as they went up, and he realized it would be spending thousands of experience before he saw any of his stats reaching the double digits. That would just be one of his stats as well, he didn't know the ins and outs of this system yet, but it would be obvious that having one stat immensely higher than the other would be a bad move.

  "Well, that doesn't mean I should keep hoarding these." Alex quickly finished spending his experience, and once the energy in his body died down he brought up his status.

  Alex figured trying to pump everything into Agility was not the smart move right now, and that was double when his strength was so close to the next threshold. So he was going to focus on his strength stat next.

  With it so close, I'm sure some intense work-outs over the next day or so will be enough. I really do need to add that to my daily routine. He set down his spear as he started crawling into his tent for the night. He tucked the knife under his pillow, just in case.

  Maybe I'll make it a morning thing. Then hunting during the day, and rest in the evening. Alex thought things over as he laid down finally. My other stats haven't changed at all though, so maybe I need to think about how to get those increased naturally too. It would be waste to be able to do that all this time but not taking advantage of it.

  His ideas swam for a few minutes. He was excited to get back to increasing his stats. Most of all though, he had decided to go back to his old squad tomorrow.

  They had a lot to talk about, and Alex had to admit to himself that he wasn’t sure how they would take seeing him again.

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