…

Jonathan was still lying down on his now familiar pile of leaves.

Throughout the past few days, he had devoted most of his efforts to his recovery attribute. Thankfully, Hendricks had fed him well, whether it was by orders of Louis or his goodwill.

Despite containing no meat, these meals were very important to him as the energy they contained fed his healing attribute.

Previously, his muscles and skin had been rendered useless, but they were now close to their original state.

His healing went so well that all he could now feel is a bit of soreness.

In addition to recovery, Jonathan would also put thoughts into his situation. Since he couldn’t determine the future, he tried to understand the past.

Now, he firmly believed in his theory that the two groups had met. As to whether there was damage to any of the sides, he had no idea. It would be extremely stupid for him to ask.

As they were the ones that gave out his name, they surely knew that he was taken away. In that case, there was the possibility for them to come back to find him.

‘However, that is very unlikely. Seeing how devious Louis is, he wouldn’t head back in a straight line to their camp, making it so they could be easily found. Furthermore, they must have found a way to ensure that they were not followed. If this camp is far from the location both the groups met, it’s very unlikely that my group would find me even if they went looking.’

This caused him to be a bit sad. He missed his other group a bit. The atmosphere there was much more “human” than here. Furthermore, he could be with Steph.

‘Anyways, if they were to find this camp, it’s nigh impossible for them to contend with them in fighting power. They would get shot down like prisoners at an execution. Guillaume definitely knows all of this, so I don’t think he will be willing to come looking for me, no matter how much he believes in me.’

This brought mixed emotion to Jonathan. It always felt bad to think you were important to people and then get thrown away. However, he knew these thoughts were foolish.

‘At the end, the group is worth more than a single man, no matter how important he was. Although I believe to have a significant impact in it, it’s not like I was the centre of operations. It might be cruel, but it is the wisest choice. In fact, I would’ve done the same.’

To Jonathan, putting rationality over emotions was a very important thing. Rationality looked at the bigger picture while emotions simply reflected one’s selfishness. Furthermore, emotions could be manipulated much more easily than rationality.

‘The only thing I can wish for them is to live on and get stronger. As for me, I can only depend on myself, no matter what they decide to do. If fate wields it, we will meet again…’

He couldn’t help but think of his last few words with Steph before he left. Perhaps that would be the last time they saw each other.

This world was cold a cruel. No bond was guaranteed, and no happiness could last without strength to secure it. The moment you got comfortable, everything could get stripped away from you.

Deep inside, Jonathan didn’t know who had to thank for still being alive at this point.

Despite his sadness, Jonathan pushed his past at the back of his mind. He couldn’t let the unchangeable shackle him.

His eyes once again turned decisive and flames of determination appeared within him.

‘No schemes are useful in front of overwhelming strength. As such, I must get stronger to secure my future.’ He couldn’t help but curse at Louis in his heart as he thought of this.

Perhaps he also had to thank Louis for pressuring him to improve.

Jonathan got up from his position and sat cross legged. A bit of soreness couldn’t stop him from doing this.

‘Observe, analyze, use, innovate.’ These were the four words that pushed Jonathan.

‘I have previously skimmed over the two first steps to use my attributes, making it so that it wasn’t as efficient as it could probably be. Furthermore, my arrogance made it so that I did not improve. Now, it’s time to restart the whole process.’

In his mind, he had to understand the find the how of each attribute. Then, he would understand the how and use it in its purest form. After strongly correlating the theoretical usage and practical usage, he could innovate upon it.

As such, he stood in this position for a good hour as he pushed his mental processing attribute to the max, using all his knowledge to the most extent he could.

Sometimes he would get up and move his body in a precise motion, then sit back down and repeat this. Every time he would do this, his movement would be more precise and smooth as the previous one. Sometimes they contained overwhelming force, sometimes subtle preciseness. Furthermore, he would never hit the side of the tent, despite being in a very confined space.

After two hours of doing this, he sat back down for good, all his thoughts forming a strong whole.

‘I have a certain base knowledge in sports, so I can use this to base myself off. The vertical jump is THE best indicator of athleticism, no matter what sport, so I’ll its three main components as bases. Control, speed and power. Let’s start with power, or strength.

Since the strength attribute strongly affects muscular build, it’s most likely an enhancement of hypertrophy. The cells become bigger, and they can output more strength. This affects the absolute strength, the most force I can potentially output. It is very useful for tasks and is mildly useful in battle without speed.

That’s where the agility attribute comes in. It affects the rate of force development, which would be how fast one can develop force. This is extremely important in a fight where you won't necessarily have time to implicate all your strength in a movement. It also increases the velocity of your movements, making so you can a task at a fast rate.

With the strength attribute, this cause the creation of power. Power= Strength + Velocity. With Strength as the basis and agility as the development of strength and velocity, this makes it so that every one of your hits is more powerful. For combat, they are arguably the best dual attribute match.

An athlete with both these things would have a great vertical jump, but one ingredient would be missing to unlock their full potential. Control. If power is the bullet then control would be the barrel, making it so that the pullet could fulfill its purpose and not simply fly in a random direction.

Control affects your balance and coordination. This makes so that you can apply your power to the perfect place to be utilized by your body. If you want to jump up but you’re not able to perfectly place your foot, you could waste power in another direction. Control eliminates this. Things like antagonistic muscle interference are also removed.

Furthermore, control affects reactiveness, making so that you can effectively use the energy stored in your tendons and other parts of your body through perfect and quick movement. This would make it so that would have to “stomp” as much to execute a full power jump. Since stomping would take time, this is a great advantage in fighting too.

Additionally, control can allow you to use tools like guns and spears as if they were part of you, which is a great thing out here.

To train strength, it was simple. You executed a movement around 80% of your maximum strength repeatedly. I should aim for around 2.5x to 3x of my body weight gained from training. If I get too much body weight and not enough strength, I’ll just end up as a meat ball.

For speed, a variant of those exercises with explosiveness and 40% of your maximum strength helped. There isn’t much of an objective for speed, except to get faster.

For control, plyometric exercises are the go to. You can never have too much control, so non-stop training is my only option.

Now comes the healing attribute, arguably the most important factor in getting strength outside of eating predators.

The healing allows me to recover much more quickly, so I can train more and get more results out of each training. Some muscles that recover fast can be trained even more than once a day… Furthermore, I have a feeling that the healing attribute would also help strengthen the bones and tendons constantly, which is something no other attribute can go do.

This is extremely useful the more power I can output. Without it, I would snap tendons if I tried too hard. Furthermore, it also gives me extra pulmonary capacity since I can hold at least three times longer my breath then before. As for cardiovascular abilities, I’m not sure.

To develop this attribute…I have no idea. Perhaps more injuries? Nonetheless, it’s here. With time, I could find a way to make it progress.

Now, for the perception attribute. I don’t have any knowledge in brainwork, but I guess it amplifies the signal sent to your brain, like some drugs do. Furthermore, it also expands the perceivable range of things like sounds.

To train it, the only guess I have is that one would have to meditate somewhere and try to perceive things, getting more attuned to them. Perhaps if this attribute got pushed far enough, it could have a major impact in combat. If I’m able to sense/hear footsteps from far away or the wind moving because someone did something, it would be such a cheat thing for me.

Then, the intelligence or mental processing attributes come in play. From my experience, it increases your brain activity by a lot. If you were able to do 40+40 in .8 seconds, you can do it in .2 seconds now. Furthermore, it allows you to expand your thinking, having more imagination and considering more things.

To train this, you probably must use it. Exactly like how 40+40 would take a long time when you were 6, a long problem will be made shorter the more experienced with them you are.

Additionally, you can use the perception attribute in collaboration with the intelligence attribute. This would make it so that clues give much more information. For example, if I saw some torn branches, I would know that something passed by here recently, but with the intelligence attribute, I would be able to tell how tall it was, how fast it moved, etc.’

Finishing resuming his long line of thoughts, Jonathan took a deep breath. He didn’t have anything to write it down on, so he had to repeat it a few times. It was a good thing that he had a good head, or he would be bound to forget some parts of this.

‘Now, I simply have to establish my training routine.’

Using the same process as before, he peered into the knowledge of his previous world.

He imagined his end goal of his training, something like a better Russel Westbrook, and he made up his plan the best he could accordingly.

This whole process took about three hours. Once he was done, someone came to his door a few minutes later.

Unlike the usual Hendricks, it was a young woman who came.

“Hi Jonathan, I’m here to show you where you’ll work from now on.” She said

He had already informed Hendricks that he was healed, so he wasn’t surprised by this.

“Thanks. Lead the way.”

As such, he walked towards the place where he was supposed to work for the next few weeks.