There wasn't much sunlight left, but Max judged he had enough time to eat some of the skewers before starting the fire. Although it wasn’t that cold inside the cave, it was extremely dark. The fire could illuminate the cave and allow him to take a closer look and see if there was anything useful.

Max hurriedly ate five of the skewers, just enough for the Minor Regeneration bonus to kick in. Then, he moved all the items into the cave including most of the dry wood. He left himself with just enough material to start the fire. Now that it was dusk, the fire would be easily noticeable, if it was lit outside.

After the embers were ignited, it was quickly moved into the cave and placed on the pile of sticks and dried leaves that were prepared beforehand. He made sure that the fire was further away from the entrance and closer to the hole. Max knew that the Formation was likely failing and didn’t want any light to leak outside the cave.

Slowly as the flames came to life, the cave was illuminated. The cave was much smaller than Max imagined. The entire cave was about the size of his room back on Earth. During his arrival, he thought there was some kind of altar or table near him. But now with the light, he could see that was not the case. The “table” was actually a box.

Extremely excited, Max rushed to the box. This was the first thing aside from the Formation that was human-made, or intelligent-creature-made since he wasn’t sure if there were any humans in this world.

The box looked like it was made out of some kind of wood. Upon closer inspection, a better description for it would be a chest. It had one long hinge in the back which looked to be made out of metal. There was some writing on the lid, but it was too dark for him to read.

It didn’t look like there were any latches or keyholes but felt like it was stuck on something. Max tried to lift the lid, but it only opened slightly. It turned out, the lid was just extremely heavy. Seeing if he could get any clues from the writing, Max went back to the fire and grabbed one of the branches, and used it as a torch. It started to dim as soon as it was pulled out of the fire. Since it didn’t have any added fuel the branch just burned itself.

Hovering the flame over the box, the characters were foreign to him. He had hoped that the “Common Tongue'' skill would kick in. But it seems like that skill only works for verbal language and not written. It wasn’t too big of a surprise, the skill also didn’t work on the Runes in the Formation.

‘Could these also be Runes?’

Taking some time to memorize the first character, Max tried his trick with the Runes from the Formation. This time, however, he didn’t learn anything new. Using Analyze on it, it returned with basically no useful information.

Analyzing…

Item: A Chest ???

Max guessed that the characters were just regular writing from this world and weren’t new runes. His Analyze also didn’t give him any more information on the box either.

Max didn’t want to damage the chest, but it could contain important items for his survival, it could also give him a clue as to how he got here and where “here” is. Reluctantly, he went to retrieve the Chi-Infused Rock. He first wedged the sharp end of the rock between the lid. Once in there, Max pushed down on the rock. He put all his body weight into it. The lid opened slightly, but as soon as the weight was removed, it closed again.

From that experience, three things were evident to him. First, the lid wasn’t locked, it was just really fucking heavy. Second, his bodyweight certainly had gone down due to his hospital stay, but the extra points in Constitution did seem to help him regain some of his lost mass. The last thing was that the Chi-Infused Rock was very sturdy. Even after putting his entire weight on it, the edge didn’t crack. He should have probably thought about that before using it as a wedge, this was one of his two weapons.

Max also tried carving a hole in the chest with the Chi-Infused Rock, but after giving it a good few hits, there wasn’t even a mark left on the chest. It seems to be even more durable than the hawk’s skin.

Now that Max knew the chest couldn’t be broken into and only be open, he had a new goal and that was to increase his strength. His current Strength Stat was at 9. He didn’t have any Free Stats left from leveling, but the Weakened Body status was still active.

Weakened Body - Your body is in a weakened state. All physical stats -3.

If he got rid of that status and with the help of his System Pioneer and Cultivator bonus, he potentially could gain up to 4 extra points across all his physical stats. Max wasn’t sure if his strength would grow linearly with the stat, but if it did that would make him almost 50% stronger.

‘Would that be enough to open the chest? It’s hard to say, but even if I couldn’t open the chest at that point, my survivability should still improve. Who knows, maybe at that point I could even beat the hawk without getting lucky…’

Max wanted to start his workout right away, but his stamina was still low from his treks up and down the rocky path. Instead, he decided to finish the second half of his dinner and let his stamina regenerate a bit more before starting the workout again.

Checking over his character sheet, he focused on the Minor Enhance Regeneration buff.

Status effect - Minor Enhance Regeneration

For consuming the flesh of a spirit beast, gain a 5% increase in health and stamina regeneration for the next two hours.

Max spent the next hour working on the feathers. He wanted to create some clothing for himself. He was tired of being naked. Taking the medium size feathers, they were broken down into their components. What he really needed was the vane of the feather, which is the soft part of the feather. On a normal size hawk, the vanes wouldn’t be longer than 2-3 inches on the longest feathers. But the vanes on this feather were at least 6-7 inches. Weaving the vanes together created a thin but very sturdy string

Max made two strings about four feet long. The next step was to pick the largest feathers and make small holes in the shaft of each feather at its base. The smaller of the two Chi-Infused rocks was perfect for that job, all it needed was a bit of pressure on the shaft of the feather. Once that was done, he threaded the thin strings through the holes that he just created. Looping it around, Max effectively made a poncho.

For the second part, Max drilled holes towards the middle of the shaft. He weaved in a second set of feathers there, he made sure to leave two openings for each of his arms. There was a lot of trial and error but he finally made it work. His poncho-shirt came down to his hip. The next step was pants but he found that there weren’t enough feathers left. Resigned for now, he made a mental note to get more feathers in the morning.

Checking his character sheet, Max saw the Minor Enhance Regeneration blinked a few times and winked out. Max’s HP was full at 49 and his stamina had also recovered substantially and was at 36. When he checked it right after “dinner”, it was at 3 points. That meant his stamina regeneration was about 16 per hour, not counting the Minor Enhance Regeneration.

16 was more than his Endurance stat. Max pulled up the description for Endurance.

Endurance - A physical recovery stat. Determines your stamina and health regeneration.

*Calculation: 10x1.3=13

‘So Endurance affects health regeneration and if he recalled correctly, Vitality also affects stamina recovery.’

Vitality - A physical recovery stat. Determines your health and stamina regeneration.

*Calculation: 7x1.3=9

‘Aside from the calculations, the only difference between the two is the order of health and stamina in the descriptions.

Max was starting to get an idea of his regeneration rates. If he was regenerating 16 points of stamina per hour, then it’s possible that the stamina regeneration calculation is Endurance + one-third of Vitality or 13+3.

If his HP regeneration also followed the same logic, then it would be 9 from Vitality and 4 from Endurance for a total of 13 per hour.

To prove him right, Max felt a small change in his character sheet. Now under his HP and SP, he had a new set of regeneration numbers.

Name:

Max Oxford

Level:

4

Cultivation:

Body Tempering 3rd Stage

Age:

23

Progress:

24/86

Progress:

7/150

Status:

Weakened Body

Titles:

System Pioneer

Realm Walker

Cultivator

Traits:

Quick Learner

Cultivation Body

Skills:

Analyze

Common Tongue

HP:

49/49

SP:

36/53

CHI:

NA

HP Regen:

13/hr

SP Regen:

16/hr

CHI Regen:

NA

Stats (Multiplier:1.3x)

Strength:

9

Perception

13

Constitution:

20

Intelligence:

22

Dexterity:

11

Spirit:

1

Endurance

13

Vitality:

9

Free Stat Points:

0

‘Another mystery solved.’