Once inside the game, Noah made his way to the forest. The moon was high in the sky and monsters gained strength thanks to it, they also rewarded more experience. Making haste, since he got only 2 hours before his work, Noah arrived out of the walls and made a beeline for the forest trees.

Like the last time, he got ambushed by the little critters, two at the same time. Noah rapidly found out that the power boost was not light, the horned aberrations were faster and hit harder, actually the damage he suffered was doubled. Counting that there were two little pests, he realized that his grinding session might turn out to be harder than anticipated.

‘better focus on dodging and striking back when I’m safe.’

While jumping around he misstepped and got two notifications.

-5! -5!

Another hit was allowed before he could get up, the rabbits turned out to be faster too.

After another few minutes of constantly dodging and some rare counterattack, Noah was able to slay the first one and this allowed for an easier time with the other. The experience gain was not that greater than in the day, only a 20% increase; counting the doubled damage, increased speed and ferocity, it wasn’t really worth to hunt in the nights. Checking his status screen to see the exact exp, Noah noticed an interesting fact, his dodging(passive) experience bar increased and he was pleased with it. Apparently, the growth in difficulty was good for raising his proficiency faster. The other day he could hardly gain any experience after dodging the rabbits for some time, but now it increased by 3%. It only took 4 minutes to slay the two horned rabbits, he could level it before leaving for work. He also noticed that enduring body got a bit of experience too, maybe due to all the jumping around, or was it because of the rabbit hits? He decided to figure it out with the next monster.

Having rested until he fully recovered, it was time to look for another test subject. He needed one that was alone or the experiment could become dangerous, basically, Noah thought to get hit a few times while e monitored Enduring Body exp bar. It only took one minute for him to find a lone horned rabbit, it was now time to lure it and get hit; thinking of efficiency, he used focused strike on his victim, spending a total of 30% of his max stamina he achieved a good -16! Bringing the bunny health, with the follow up strike, at 3/4. Making sure to have enough hate, he stood firm and let the bunny bite, skewer and scratch him; a horned rabbit can manage an attack every 2 seconds, sometimes less if it chains up the right attacks. Noah had 110 life points and took around 5 damage per hit, he could last close to 40 seconds of attacks from the horned rabbit. To refill his stamina bar in combat, 30 seconds were necessary; being able to look at some number, made it easier for him to formulate a plan: It was possible to get hit for 20 seconds and then starting with focused blows one after the other while dodging.

Executing this grinding strategy bore his fruits and he was able to get a lot of experience on enduring body, validating his theories that it could grow by taking damage, there were increases on focused blow and r dodging proficiencies too. Deciding to stick with this strategy for the rest of time, he kept on slaughtering bunnies. After a couple more rounds he found that dodging was close to leveling up after the private training with Dominik, so he went back to aggro at least two bunnies and focus on evading.

After the two hours were up, he got a nice sum of 1 level up in dodging(passive) and 1 for Enduring Body too. The exp for focused blow was soaring up as well, it was a nice grinding session too. He also looted some pocket change from the rabbits, apparently to skin them a special ability was required and he couldn’t stock their meat inside his inventory if firstly they weren’t skinned.

Noah went back inside the walls before logging out, and while traveling he took some time to admire his updated status screen.

Name: Pestilence Race: Human

Class: Tamer Profession: N/A

Title: N/A Alignment: Good

---Attributes---

Max Health: 110 Max Mana: 110

Stamina: 100

Strength: 11.5 Constitution: 10

Endurance: 11.5 Agility: 13

Dexterity: 10 Intelligence: 10

Wisdom: 10 Charisma: 10

Faith: 0 Luck: 1

Unallocated Point: 2

---Skills---

Tame lv1 Companion lv1 Dodge(passive) lv6 Focused strike lv3 Enduring Body(passive) lv3

He still had those unallocated status points and decided, after doing a few researches on the forum, to spend them and try out his two level 1 skills.

‘I’m also going to ask Dominik where I should focus in order to grow my class’.

Logging out, he made haste and changed in a tracksuit, since he had to walk for 20 minutes he should exercise a bit to compensate for having skipped exercises day.

With his slow jog, it took only 15 minutes to reach the destination. He passe by the park where he rested and practiced Dominik’s swordsmanship the other day. At the place he got instructed on the matters that needed to be attended, he got to take care of the gardens today.

Vupe’s cemetery was an ancient built facility that constantly got expanded every year, it had a large garden and was definitely too big for only one person to take care alone, there were at least 4 people doing public works every day. Today Noah was given responsibility for a recently built part of the graveyard, it was less difficult to clean the gardens there. He just had to sweep the leaves aside and collect them, he was allotted 2 hours of works which left him with another free hour before needing to get back at the training grounds with the battalion and Dominik’s tutelage.

While enjoying the small breeze that Noah felt hitting him, he also immersed himself inside the harmony produced by the swinging branches and fallen leaves that got transported by the wind.

It was a nice and relaxing time and he couldn’t stop himself from replaying these few days memories and adventures. After all, everything was new to him, experiencing hardships with companions, exerting his body to the limits, feeling like a kid again while dancing with an imaginary sword in hand at the park… all these new feelings that he was experiencing were thanks to Vesper.

Noah was happy while working and he enjoyed the atmosphere there, it was so peaceful and kept working happily for two hours. When he ended his tasks, he stayed some time to enjoy that mystical feeling that could be found only in a cemetery. There was a small garden away from the tombs, he used to go there in these past months that he came here to accumulate credits to join Vesper.

It was isolated by his surroundings by a hedges circle, in the middle of it there were two big redwood trees with a few benches facing them.

Noah sat there and enjoyed a nice breather then, after 10 or so minutes, he wanted to experience again that joyful feeling he got the other day at the park while performing the sowrdance . He looked around for a branch with a length similar to a short sword and then got in stance, he quickly found out that he was more familiar with those movements than last time; what differed was his speed, apparently he overcame his real body abilities with the virtual one. What crossed over was his ability to control the body and perform those strikes. He even tried to use focused blow but got no result, indeed he was extremely relaxed while getting ready and then, with lightning speed, he was able to strike but there was no power boost effect. In the end, it as useless to practice anything other than the sword dance, which he did with all the figures he learned so far.

After 20 minutes of dancing and another 10 of recovering from the fatigue, Noah got ready to walk back home and train under Dominik tutelage before the battalion training began.