Max first made a fire to help him see better, while his eyesight had improved, the cave was still pretty dark. This time he had the fire even further into the cave. With the hole filled up, the cave felt more spacious even though the size of the cave hadn’t changed.

Max confidently walked up to the chest. He then slapped his arms a few times, he wasn’t sure if that would help, but he had seen gym bros do that to pump themselves up. Squaring his legs he got down into a squat position so his hands were low enough to grab onto the lid. Holding his breath, Max began to lift.

“Grrrrr.”

…

…

“haa…”

The lid was still way too heavy. This time he had gotten the lid to open maybe half an inch to an inch, which was certainly more than the last time he tried. That last time, he had even put his entire body weight on the Chi-Infused rock as a wedge. It might just be his imagination, but it felt like the wider the opening between the lid and the chest, the more resistance there was. It was as if there was some kind of spring in the chest that tightened.

“Ah shit, well at least that was a good confidence check.”

Max knew that he had four free stats saved up from his last two level-ups that he hadn’t used.

‘I have 14 points in Strength right now, the four points would put me at 18, and with the System Pioneer and Cultivator bonuses I would be at 19.’

After doing the math, he figured that would make him about 25% stronger compared to right now. He didn’t think that was going to be enough. Looking through his stats, he didn’t think any of the other stats would help him in this situation. He could wait another three days, at which he would get to the next cultivation stage and also level up. That would potentially give him another three points in strength he could use.

Trying to think outside the box, Max looked at a stat that he hadn’t given much thought to. And that was his Spirit stat which was sitting at one. The description for Spirit stat was:

Spirit - Your metaphysical capability. Determines your affinity with Chi and speed of cultivation.

*Calculation: 1x1.3=1

“Determines speed of cultivation, huh?”

Reading that, a few thoughts crossed his mind. If he added one of his free points to it, he would double it from one to two, would that also double his cultivation speed? And what would that mean? Surely it didn’t count his Midnight Dew usage as cultivating, or would it?

‘That would be pretty insane and feels like it would be a bug…’

His regular cultivation speed was already fast with the Midnight Dew, this would make it even faster. It would also pay long-term dividends in the future.

Max considered himself a man of science, he had a theory, now he had to collect some evidence. He had all the materials he needed, namely the free stat point. To be safe, he would only put in one point in Spirit to see if it increased his cultivation speed.

Opening his character sheet, Max mentally added one of his free points to his Spirit stat.

…

…

…

Nothing happened. It was not that Max didn’t feel anything different, but actually, nothing happened. He still had all four of his stat points and his Spirit stat was still sitting at 1.

“Hmm. Did I not do it right?”

Max tried again, and still, nothing happened. On his third try, his fingers were used to tab on the Spirit stat and nothing. He then tabbed on the numbers on the Spirit stat and tried scrolling it up, still no response.

“Did I break this thing?”

Having a bad feeling, instead of the Spirit stat, Max mentally added a point to Strength. And it worked, no issues. He tried taking back that change to no avail. His Strength stat was now sitting at 15 points.

‘At least I know it wasn’t broken.’

It wasn’t time to give up just yet. He went back to the Spirit stat and did the same thing he just did for his Strength stat, and nada.

“Okay, it’s not me. It looks like the system is just not letting me… That was good to know.”

Now Max was wondering if there were any other stats in his character sheet that he wasn’t able to increase. So far, he knew that Constitution and Strength seem to be fine and Spirit was not. That still left him with six other stats. He wasn’t planning on testing each one of them. That would be a waste of points and these points were important and hard to come by, he only got two per level.

Putting that aside, for now, Max wanted to see if his new increase in Strength did him any good in getting this chest to open. He didn’t think anything of it, but it was still worth a try.

As he thought, it was still too heavy for him. His one extra point didn’t feel like it did anything, the lid felt just as heavy as before.

Max was about to give up on the chest. It was fine if he waited another few days to try again. At his rate of cultivation and level-ups, he could probably get enough points in strength in a few weeks. While long compared to his current stay in this world, from another perspective, it wasn’t that terrible. Max had gone months trapped in a hospital and weeks just in a bed. That mindset helped him frame his timelines differently than the average person. He would think that experience had improved his patience.

As Max was walking out of the cave, he spotted the hoe that had been used to dig his new trap, he debated where he would put it. He could leave it inside to be used as an emergency weapon. He was about to put it next to the chest when a new idea sparked.

The chest right now sat flat on the ground, so for him to open the lid, he needed to be strong enough to lift the entire weight of the lid. But what if he didn’t? What if he could lessen the total weight he needed to lift?

Max grabbed a few of the smaller but still sturdy branches. He started removing dirt from underneath the chest, a bit from the front first. Slowly, he worked his way back. When he was finally done, the chest was sitting on an incline that was tilted upwards. He planned to get the chest on an incline by carefully removing the ground from under it. The further back he went the more dirt he removed. This way the weight of the lid was no longer evenly distributed all around. More of the weight would be resting on the back of the lid. The total height Max would need to lift the lid would also decrease.

The last part of the plan involved the little wolf. Max prepared a few of the logs each with a varying thickness on the ground next to him. Each time he lifted a bit of the lid, he would have Ma Erk stick a log in the gap so he could rest and recuperate and not have to start from square one.

The first time he did that, the stick that Ma Erk had wedged between the lid and the rest of the chest had snapped. Which had made sense, given how heavy the damn lid was. On the second attempt, he had the young wolf shove in two branches, one on each side and that worked. With each heave, the lid was open a bit more. Towards the end, because of the angle of the lid, it became less of a lifting motion and more of a pushing motion.

On the fifth repetition of lifting and propping the lid up, it was wide enough for Max to see what was inside. There was something, but even with the fire nearby, it was too close to see. By now, the lid was about 5-6 inches wide. Over the next quarter of an hour, With the help of Ma Erk, they continued to open the lid by a fraction each time. After three more repetitions of this, Max got two larger logs that were roughly the same size and leaned them on either side of the chest. This next time when he lifted the lid, the logs fell inwards, when the lid came down the two logs propped up by the lid.

On his last attempt, he switched it up a bit. He wedged a large log that could barely fit between the gap of the lid and chest. It was used as leverage and he pushed down on his end. He finally opened the lid all the way. That had been an exhausting endeavor, but he was excited to see what he had uncovered.

“I swear, if it was just some old man’s dirty magazines, I am going to flip.” Imagine that, this whole setup was just some guy’s fap cave.

After looking inside, he was not disappointed. The items in the chest had been shifted around from all the things Max had done to it but seemed to be still relatively in order.

Laying on top was a set of clothes. It was ruffled up a bit and had an indentation from where he had used the log as leverage to open the lid. The clothes made this chest opening worth it, even if there was nothing else in this chest, Max would still be satisfied. He had spent more time in the nude than he cared for. There was nothing wrong with being in the nude, and he would never judge people for that. But him, being in an unfamiliar world, and being in the nude, made him feel defenseless. The feather pancho had helped, but his little guy for the most part was still dangling outside.

One of the fears that had distracted him during the fight with Rik-re was what if he had been bitten down there instead of his shoulder. Would his new body still be able to heal him? He had spent too much time thinking about it already.

Max felt disgusting, he was grimy and sweaty. He hadn’t cleaned up after building the booby trap, instead, he went straight to opening the chest. Making it his priority, Max cleaned himself off using the water he had collected the previous day. He had almost used all of it before he was satisfied. He left one bucket worth of water for drinking needs. He could always go back to get more

Waiting for a bit for him to dry off, Max went back into the cave and got dressed. Unfortunately, there was only one set of clothes on the chest. There was a gray shirt, a pair of tan pants, and what looked like a dark green robe. As far as he could tell there weren’t any designs on them. Tucked away on one side of the chest, there was also a pair of shoes. He could see they were too big for him, even the things he was wearing right now were extremely baggy on him.

‘Damn, if this was the size of an average human in this world, I might be in trouble. Maybe I’ll grow into these. Who knows, cultivating could also increase the size of my body.’

Once the entire set including the shoes was put on, each article of clothing started to glow. This startled him, he acted fast to try to take them off, but it was futile. The parts that were touching his skin were stuck on him. Panic started to set in, he realized that he got too excited and might have done something incredibly stupid.

The outfit started to shrink, but before Max could worry if he was going to be crushed alive, it stopped. It was now the perfect fit. Once the glow had faded, they no longer stuck to his skin like before.

“Wha, what?? Magical Clothes???”