Noises could be heard inside the forest, pain filled screams sounded almost every few seconds.

After leveling up, Noah roamed the forest with better efficiency thanks to his increasing experience in direct combat. Dominick was right, he was much stronger than a wolf with his above average stats and sword-wielding ability. He could achieve a wolf kill every 5 or so minutes and reached level 4 rather quickly but it was impossible for him to cause such a ruckus, it sounded like dozens of wolves were being beaten simultaneously. At the current time, Noah was just standing firm and horned 2 was no more, fallen by a severe bleeding like his old companion.

A wolf came flying towards him and another was laying to his side ready to join the carcasses count; Dominik was turbinating in the midst of 10 wolves, it was a massacre. Every hit of him caused a beast to get in a critical condition or directly killed it, waving between lunges that came from every direction he struck back without hesitation, he never stopped: form their first contact to the last hit only 20 seconds or so had passed.

Noah was a bit alarmed when horned 2 got in range of a resting wolf pack, they didn’t notice the laying beasts until it was too late, a price that was paid by the little follower. In turn, Dominik got it action right away and gave Noah a display of correct application of his teachings. He never stopped and dodged every attack aimed at him while constantly counterattacking, doing both with only one action some time.

Sheathing his sword, the instructor spoke: “ this was unexpected but nothing really is predictable when traveling in the wild; now let’s skin them, I do 7 and you do 5”.

Noah felt awestruck and a bit of fear for the man that accompanied him until now began to form inside of his mind, standing among so many wolves body made him more intimidating. His recent display were it looked like he was playing around with those beasts that could do short work of Noah, didn’t help either.

While constantly replaying that massacre in his mind, Noah skinned 3 bodies of his share; every attempt turned out to be a failure, a wolf body was bigger and needed more work than a rabbit one.

Looking at Dominik and seeing he close to finishing his share, Noah focused back to his work.

The fourth one was almost a success but, in the end, he failed at properly separating the fur at the belly region.

“ you did a good job with this one, take a rest before trying your hand again. Now go and collect the meat and fur that I piled up over there”. Turning in the direction he pointed at, Noah could see a pile of 7 furs stacked on top of each other and a small mountain of meat. He wondered if it was possible to store all of this inside his inventory, reaching there he touched the meat while thinking of storing it inside his storage. Suddenly, a prompt appeared asking him how much he wanted to put away; shortly after Noah was back with his inventory weight nearing the limit. He knelt down near the last wolf body and began to work, deciding to go slowly this time, his knife cut a hole and began to separate the fur.

After 5 minutes of slow and precise work, he got rewarded by the long-awaited prompt.

Congratulation! Skinning lv.1 obtained

After many tries, you were able to successfully skin a beast obtaining fur and meat from it.

Each level in this skill will grant you some dexterity point and an easier time, with the system help, while skinning.

It sure took long to acquire this skill, almost a dozen carcasses were necessary before obtaining a success. Dozens of unpleasant actions that he had to repeat and will have to repeat in the future.

A strong resolution was necessary if he wanted to achieve something and a way to sustain his pet army was indeed a necessary thing to learn.

Storing his spoils and turning to Dominik he said out his thoughts about the near future and possible development: “ Instructor, I was wondering about all these skills that enhanced my physical ability. Is it possible to learn a lot of them and increase their level indefinitely?”

Dominik contorted his brows as if going into deep thinking, snapped his tongue and looked straight at Noah, overall his demeanor looked like a combination of serious and annoyed. Holding the instructor and wolves scenes fresh in his mind, Noah started to get afraid of having messed up with that question, albeit he didn’t know how. He began to worry.

After a full minute of silent gazing between the two, Dominik opened his mouth and laughed, he began: “ little kid, you really have some ambitions! The look in your eyes was something else. It passed a lot of time since I could pull a joke out in the wilds, thanks”.

His hands were trembling from the hitching, he could feel his face turn hot and red. The simulation was so good, it turned out that these NPCs could even make a fool out of someone! But in the end, he laughed too, he was really done in by the fear.

“ Enough with that. Your question was legit but my answer won’t satisfy you in the least. No, you can’t increase in proficiency indefinitely; skills have a level cap at which they either stop, usually level 10, or evolve in a better tier. An instructor needs to have max level in the skill they want to teach and this is why it is really hard to come around stats giving skills, they are really hard to master. Take for example enduring body, that skill is maxed at level 10 but then it increases in tier, repeat it 10 times and it gets hard to master. You could learn it only because I was your battalion instructor.”.

Noah gaped in amazement at Dominik’s enduring body level, every tier increased the difficulty of gaining experience and he could guess how hard it was to get it that high. He also felt ashamed after hearing his explanations on tiers and level cap, he should have looked for such a basic information on the forums.

“ I see, thank you for clearing my doubts as always. I think that we can go on now, let’s find some wolf so I can try to tame one! “.

He was really thankful to Dominik, the big and experienced man was keeping up with him and his stupid questions; always ready to give out explanation with great care and his benevolent aptitude in his regards, only contributed at increasing his admiration for him. Noah felt the joy of having a reliable companion which was also his guide on this foreign world. It was a strange sensation to express and even to digest, he felt attachment to Dominik, he began to consider him as a real teacher and felt the urge to show him his respect.

Giving some thoughts about this new, unexpected matter, he stood up to leave the small clearing where the fight took place. New preys awaited them, he wanted to find a wolf to tame and try out some serious hunting. Thinking about his level ups, Noah opened the status and invested 4 attribute points in charisma.

Noah leads the group with Dominik right behind his shoulders, he picked a direction that didn’t lead to the distant howlings and stood at ready with his large knife in hand and entered the wilderness again, moving bushes and walking between tree trunks.