With 14 free stat points to spend, I could raise my spirit all the way to 20. With the way my skills are going, doing that would make the most sense.

Before, she had saved her stat points because she didn’t want to commit them without knowing how useful they were going to be. Now, however, how she was developing meant that it was no longer a worry for her.

Pulling up her stat block, she saw how her spirit read a value of 7, put in her 14 stat points, and, upon confirming the allocation, her spirit value read 24.

A bit confusing. Would prefer it if it listed my base spirit separately from my effective spirit.

And just like that, the interface changed to accommodate her request.

Name Unnamed Level 5+ Health 100/100 Stamina 32/100 Essence

1/100 Power 5 (5) Constitution 5 (5) Endurance 5 (5) Vim 6 (6) Essence

5 (5) Spirit

20 (24) Stat Points 0

Awfully convenient; could I have done that before or has something changed? Note to self: explore the customisability of the interface.

With her increased spirit, that brought her essence regeneration up to 480 per day, or 20 per hour. That meant she would regenerate enough to kill a boar in a bit over an hour.

Now I wish I spent those points sooner.

With a sigh, she committed her last decision to do with the interface, spending her skill point to purchase [Meditate].

[Meditate] (1/10) -Learned

Regeneration is multiplied by 1.12 while senses are subdued absolutely

She began with a little test, taking a seat on the dirty, cold ground as she activated [Meditate].

As it turns out, even with her eyes closed, she could still summon the interface. This, combined with how it doesn’t seem to emit any light on its surroundings even though she could clearly see it, cemented her suspicion that it was directly interacting with her mind rather than physically existing.

She contented herself to sitting still until she regenerated one point of essence, both for the breather—[Meditate], unsurprisingly, helped to calm her frayed nerves and relax her body—as well as to see just how quickly it worked.

No sound entered her mental landscape. It was completely and utterly silent. The only sight was that of the interface; even her body did not have a visual there.

It was an extremely odd and alien feeling; she could not feel herself in the real, concrete world, all physical sensations dissociated from her present mind, but it was not uncomfortable

Compared to [Leech] and [Cleanse], this skill was surprisingly easy to ease into the use of. In fact, she didn't really have to do anything special; once she settled down her mind, focused on the internal energies of her body, she could feel the visceral, resonant energy of her body speed up ever so slightly.

Her time was quickly up; she was only waiting for three and a half minutes before she saw her essence point tick up by one, whereupon she promptly exited her meditative state and picked up her things before walking away from this hill.

A shame that [Meditate] blocks the senses; I’d have kept it on all the time otherwise.

Walking back, the night sky had truly begun to reveal itself. The ground was partially illuminated by the moon's reflective sheen shining through the leafy canopy above but the overall forest was a dark and haunting place; each bush was shadowed and deep, each tree covering a large swathe of ground with an inky black shadow, and even the dirt no longer had its warm, brown tone to it.

But the woman’s mind was too tired to pay this any attention; she took in the sights for what they were; a beautiful forest in the night. Her mind didn’t whir with crazed thoughts over the dangers lurking in the undergrowth nor did she tire herself out by worrying about what was not the case presently.

The walk back was a slow and sombre one; her body ached and she was thinking about the boarlings that she had killed. Was it the right decision? She didn’t know and, more importantly, who was she to judge?

From a utilitarian perspective, they allowed her to level up and eliminate any witnesses; in furthering herself, killing them was the right decision.

But morally? Ethically? They were boars, yes, and they’d grow up to be killing machines just like all the other boars she had encountered but they were still babies. Was it right to kill the babies because of what they were?

It was a pointless ethical dilemma; they weren’t human and so there was no reason to impose human morals onto them. In this forest, in nature, it was kill or be killed. There was no reason to continue ruminating on this topic; she could only feel herself becoming more sombre by the second.

When she finally arrived, she reconstructed her small door, padding it with dirt and mud so it would blend in, and pulled it into place as she had crawled inside her hovel.

Totally enervated, she quickly fell asleep.

The next day, she woke up totally [Rejuvenate]d; her health was full, her stamina was full, and even her essence had been completely restored.

Strange. Normally, a workout like yesterday would leave me incapacitated for the following day. Is this a benefit because of my vim? Or just a side-effect of having stats in general? More to explore.

Pushing out her door, the woman was happy to see her camp went undisturbed the night before. The tendons that she had left drying had yellowed and become hard, all in the same place. Her fire pit, covered in rocks and mud when she put it out, was still in some sort of place.

Even when walking to the stream to gather some water to drink, the furs she had soaking there hadn’t flowed away. Retrieving them, she brought them back to her camp, quickly setting up some sticks and branches in such a way she could hang them on a make-shift dryer.

All it required was long branches (easily obtainable in a forest) and some twine she made from plant fibres, holding it all together.

Doing this, however, made one thing evident; she wasn’t going to be moving far today. The journey to the hill she had cleared out the day before was at least an hour to get there, and hauling the corpses back would take a lot longer. Not to mention, she’d have to do it multiple times if she didn’t want to waste anything.

Quietly, she apologised to those boars, for using them as combat practise, test subjects, and sources of experience, but nothing more.

So, the game plan for the day was made clear in her mind; grinding her skills. She was unlikely to face anything dangerous and so didn’t need to keep her essence high.

Calling up her interface to look at her skills, she noticed something that her exhausted brain must’ve missed yesterday; there was a ‘plus sign’ next to her level.

Once her attention was drawn to it, a wholly new and unexperienced panel showed itself to her.

You have reached level 5 and can now choose a Consolidation Boon

[Boon of Labour]

Effect: Non-combat skills level up twice as fast

[Boon of Body]

Effect: Physical skills level up twice as fast

[Boon of Mind]

Effect: Non-physical skills level up twice as fast

Hidden Boon

[Source of Spirit]

Requirements: Spirit is 2 times greater than any other stat

Effect: Spirit is multiplied by 3

Hidden Boon

[Lone Wolf]

Requirements: Have never been in a party

Effect: Intensity of all skills is multiplied by 2 when not in a party

This was… Unexpected.

Hidden… Boons? Consolidation boons? Is this like… Consolidating my own power? So, it takes my actions and adapts the system so it better suits me? This has gotten very interesting. And very difficult.

She looked around her location, seeing nothing but trees. The stronger I am right now, the better. I don't want anymore close calls.

Collecting a handy stick, the woman cleared out some flat ground so she has plenty of space to draw in the dirt.

Firstly, we can rule out the beginning three. Things levelling faster is nice and all but it’s not necessary.

200% more spirit means that my total spirit is tripled. Straight away, that boosts my spirit from 24 to 72. Quite a hefty boost.

That means… 1440 per day, 60 per hour. Very nice; about an hour and a half to regenerate to full.

However, [Lone Wolf] would triple [Well of Spirit], so that would bring my spirit around 640 per day.

From the get-go, it’s worse, but that’s only accounting for [Well of Spirit] with both. I should figure out the effect that using all my skills would have on my regeneration.

However, I'm going to need the values of my skills for that. Only [Leech] has levelled up, and to get reliable numbers would likely take days--I don't want to wait that long.

What about taking [Leech] as a baseline? Each level increments the numbers by 5? It's probably wrong but it should hopefully give me an idea without being too far from reality.

With that axiom in place, [Well of Spirit] would be an additional 65% spirit.

[Maximise Mastery] would be an additional 65% intensity.

[Meditate] would increase regeneration by 55%.

Complicated maths time. Let’s start with [Source of Spirit]. I have a spirit value of 20. That multiplied by 3 is 60. [Well of Spirit] takes that to 99, giving me around 2000 essence per day. A maximised [Meditate] brings my regeneration up to... Around 5000 per day. A huge improvement. I should really focus on grinding skills more.Okay. Next is [Lone Wolf].

In this case, each skill is doubled.

[Well of Spirit] goes from 65% additional to 130%.

[Meditate] goes to 110%.

[Maximise Mastery] goes to 130%

Total, that’s… Around 4500. About 500 less than [Source of Spirit].

In terms of pure essence regeneration, [Source of Spirit] is better than [Lone Wolf]. However, there are other ways to think about this.

For one, I could get similar skills as [Well of Spirit] in the future; skills that boost my essence regeneration. That would likely make [Lone Wolf] better then.

But, even disregarding that speculation, [Lone Wolf] applies to all my skills which means it would apply to [Leech] as well. Currently, the only skill I really use that takes essence is [Leech], and [Lone Wolf] would double the damage of that without increasing the cost. In other words, it halves the essence it costs, provided I'm interpretting it right. To deal a certain amount of damage, it takes half the amount of essence and so would take half the time needed to regenerate that essence.

In which case, it seems that [Lone Wolf] would be better. Although, I would need to level up my skills a lot more to see it benefit me more than [Source of Spirit].

So, the choice is between an immediate benefit or major long-term gains. I mean, it’s obvious.

Planting her stick in the dirt, she gazed upon the numbers one last time, making sure they were all correct, before confirming her choice of [Lone Wolf].

Almost immediately, a sudden well of energy erupted inside her body. She felt her muscles convulse slightly as a wave of revitalisation washed over them.

And then, in the next instant, it was gone, the feeling as ephemeral as a ghost.

Strange, she thought before checking through her skills and seeing that they did show the increase the boon offered her.

There was even a nearly empty page that held her singular boon there, as if waiting for her to fill it up.

Satisfied with her choice, the woman returned her mind to what she was thinking about before all this distraction occurred.

What skill to level up next. First of all, she wanted every skill to get to at least level 2 so she could see how much it increased but the issue there was she wasn’t entirely sure how to level the skills in the first place.

[Leech] was obvious; all she had to do was spend essence on it. But [Well of Spirit]? No clue. Meditation was probably how much essence, health, and stamina she regenerated, if it wasn’t based off how much time she spent in that state, while [Maximise Mastery] was probably based off using essence as well.

When she levelled [Leech] up to level 2, that was done using [Maximise Mastery], and she kept using maximise whenever she used any skill as it didn’t really add to the cost.

[Cleanse] was the last on her list of priorities; it wasn’t clear what effect levelling it up would have and it was working perfectly fine currently.

What the woman settled on doing was spending all her essence on [Leech] and then meditating to recover it, all the while using [Maximise Mastery]. She planned to do this for all of the day and see what happened so she could adapt her plans appropriately.

To spend 100 essence on [Leech], however, required many, many plants, and she wasn’t in the mood for deforesting her current camp so off to the stream she went.

The 15 minute journey, combined with another 15 minutes, led her to a nicely dense bit of forest a fair distance away.

Quickly, she got to work.

She couldn’t use every two skills together unfortunately—first tested with [Leech] and [Cleanse], subsequently tested with [Leech] and [Meditate]—so she stuck with using [Leech] with [Maximise Mastery] as she watched her essence, keeping tabs on it.

Recalling all the times I’ve used [Leech] since the level up, I must’ve spent around 50, maybe 60, points on it. Will it level up after 100 total, just like before, or will it be different?

As it turned out, once her essence ran dry, there was no delightful notification waiting for her.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t dismayed by this fact—rather, she was expecting it; a skill taking longer to level up each subsequent level was typical, after all.

So, instead, she found a thick, tall tree with low-hanging branches and clambered on up to a wide branch which she could reasonably and stably settle herself onto.

After that, she closed her eyes and sunk into a meditative state, a skill far easier to activate the first time around than the others.

Maybe because I’m used to [Meditation] it was easier?

She didn’t know how long she was going to wait for—certainly not the whole time it’d take to regenerate to full; that’d take too long—but every 20 minutes, she regenerated 13 points of essence and consequently used those on [Leech].

The third and final time she did this, however, she finally received a notification:

[Leech] [Level up]

Yes! And what does it look like with [Lone Wolf] and [Maximise Mastery]?

[Leech] (3/10) -Learned

Drain 56 points of health from a living entity

Range: 12m

Cost: 4.2 es/sec

Holy shit. I’m so much stronger than before. [Lone Wolf] is incredibly strong; does that mean not being in a party is a very big downside? Not like it affects me that much currently.

That means I only need around 15 essence to kill a boar. With [Meditate] and [Maximise Mastery], that takes me only 23 minutes to regenerate that.

23 minutes. That’s far, far less than 4 hours. Hours that I’m never going to get back.

With a sigh over realising how much difference a single day could yield, the woman began to trek her way back to her camp.

Even with all the growing she was doing, there were still things that the interface couldn’t help her with.