The next morning I wake up to my alarm and go down for breakfast. I decide to save the meat I cooked last night for lunch and purchase some bread to turn it into sandwiches and get some eggs and bacon for breakfast. About the time I finish Saila comes in and sits with me. He explains to me that he wants to increase my stamina, strength, intelligence, and wisdom. He claims to have all of my stats within 20% of each other. He tells me that eventually, I will want to learn some spells to go along with my elemental bonuses such as healing or adding elemental damage to my arrows with an imbue skill, or straight out spells for things like rock monsters. Also having higher strength will help me with my overall damage and give me longer range options than just a dagger for damage. He explains that the more options I have, the better my chances of survival.

I ask him about spending my stat points from leveling, and he says to me. “That’s a personal question. You can use those points and boost your stats to the point I suggested. However, you have to realize that we are working on diminishing returns. When you have lower statistics, you can boost them easier through training which I am sure you have noticed. The higher your stats, the less you are able to gain them. I would suggest saving all of your points until your statistics all get over 100 then spending them once you know more what your actual needs are. That being said it is none of my business if you want to spend the points as you get them and thus bypass all the training I will be giving you. The training is hard, it gets more difficult over time in fact, but if you cannot see the benefits you will gain by the hard work, then there is nothing I can say to sway you.”

Knowing that it would just require hard work and I would gain extra statistics over time almost giving me free levels I decided I would do the training as long as possible so I asked him what would be required. He said “Hard work is what is required. First every morning you will go to the training yard behind the OAC, there you will find a backpack and wrist and ankle packs that will hold weights, you will start at the 5lbs overall additional weight and run the course with that until you are able to complete the obstacle course with that weight. You get three chances per day doing the obstacle course. There are three additional tasks that are to be done between each of your attempts. All of these are to be done under the additional weight. First, you will do calisthenics for thirty minutes after which you will make your first run of the course. Second, you will run laps around the yard running full out for 5 minutes, then jogging for 10, then back o running. You do this for 30 minutes total then you rest for 15 minutes before your second attempt at the course. After that you will train using the sword and great sword at the pells, then in a skirmish with other fighters training there. After which you will make your final run of the obstacle course. On the day that you successfully complete the obstacle course with that weight, it will then be increased to ten pounds until you can complete the course with that weight. I am sure you see where this is going?”

I nod my head to Saila, and he continues “After you finish the training it will most likely be near lunch time so you should eat and then go back to the OAC and take up missions as necessary to train and to keep yourself fed and sheltered in the inn. Keep in mind though that this is not all to be done. Afternoons will be devoted to strengthening your mind. You must be back in town by 3PM to report to the mage school where they will assess you and decide how best to bring up your mental skills. As you earn money you will be able to buy training in spells as well, just keep in mind it will cost about 25 silver to learn even a basic spell. Once they release you, then you are free to do what you wish, though I would recommend sleep because it all starts over again tomorrow. Any questions?”

I ask him, “What about gaining a beast, what would you recommend to that department?”

Saila shakes his head at me, “You can gain a beast any time you are able to, but I would recommend learning how to hunt by yourself first. Get comfortable with yourself and increase your skills before you try to tame a pet. Eventually, you might lose a pet and then lose your life because you do not know how to handle yourself alone. Get a foundation first before you gain a pet, after all with your low archery score you would be very likely to shoot your pet, rather than the monster.”

“OK, that makes sense to me.” I agree with him.

With that, he stands up and tells me “I will leave you then with your training. If you have any questions, just leave a message for me at the OAC, and I will join you for breakfast or dinner. I would also recommend that you do some tasks with others that you will meet at the training grounds. They will be your colleagues, and it is beneficial to have people who you can call on for help if you need it. There are quests you can gain out in the wild occasionally that will require others, unlike the OAC board. Once you feel that your training is done, let me know, and we will go from there. Training is for your benefit, so it’s up to you as to when you are done.”

I thank him for his time and finish my breakfast before heading over to the OAC. I go around to the back to see what I am in for and meet up with a trainer there. I explain what I am there for and he directs me over to the weight pouches and backpack, and I put them on. I then start doing the calisthenics to warm myself up before I make my first attempt on the course. I watch as other people run the course and it looks pretty difficult, only a few people actually make it through, and most of those are not wearing the additional weights. There are jumps, rolling logs, places where you have to go rope-to-rope, inclines, rope climbs, and then finally a hanging ledge across to the end platform. All of this is over water as well, so if you fall, you get to be wet too. Knowing this I remove my armor and store it and just wear regular clothes for the rest of training. I finish warming up and step up to take my turn at the course. I make it about ¼ of the way before I fall into the water when I was trying to go rope-to-rope and couldn’t hold on. Once I get out of the water, I go ahead and start my run around the perimeter. I can’t even make it through the first 5 minute running before I am out of breath, I try to just jog and run when I get my breath back, and I am down to near walking by the time I get to the 15-minute mark. I keep pushing as much as I can, and once the thirty minutes is done, I pretty much collapse. I don’t know how I am going to do this, I obviously am completely out of shape here. After I rest for the 15 minutes, I get up and make my way to the course start. This time I do not even make it to the rope-to-rope area I fall in after the third jump transitioning into a rope swing. I leave the water and dry off a little before going to the pells area and taking up a sword. I decide to go with a great sword first as my stamina is already shot so I would rather have the one hand sword last before my last attempt. Today I did not spar with anyone I just worked the pells, and for my final attempt at the obstacle course, I made it almost where I did the first time. By now I am exhausted and ready for lunch, so I head back to the inn and sit down and order a burger. I think to myself that I need to be careful with choosing an assignment. In my current state, something difficult might get me killed, so I need something fairly easy.

After I finish my lunch, I head back to the OAC and examine the board. It turns out that both the tailor and the alchemist need skins and herbs again so I take those as they should be easier than yesterday. I head out to the field again and gather the grass then turn back to the woods and quickly find the tree from yesterday to get the mushrooms. After that, I start hunting the wolves, but I do so a bit quicker than yesterday since I am on a strict time limit to meet at the Mages School in just under 2 hours so I have to kill 5 wolves, turn in everything and find the Mage School. Luckily the wolves are fairly easy to find near the same spots as yesterday, so I kill them without any great mishap and go back to town to do the turn ins. The downside is that the wolves yesterday gave me 20 experience each, today they only give me 15 experience I guess this is because I leveled up. Once I get done turning everything in and selling off everything I have 5 silver in my pocket, I will have to give up 1 silver for the inn room and meals, so that leaves me 4 silver towards buying my first spell.

I head to the mages guild and am sent to train with another initiate named Marla, she appears to be my age and is also an elf, and she stands about 6 feet tall and is very pale with platinum blonde hair. Overall at first, I find her very attractive, but as soon as we start talking and she finds out, I am an orphan her personality tells me that she is completely superficial. While disappointing, I really do not care that much. I am sure there will be other people to meet in the future. The trainers have us work together to solve puzzles, read books and answer questions based on those texts. Marla gets additional training because she knows some spells already and the teachers inform me when I learn a spell I will start that training as well. All in all mage training took another 3 hours.

At 6PM when I got out I was mentally and physically exhausted. I went back to the inn and cooked up the steaks from the wolves and then ate dinner before heading up to bed thinking about what a long day it has been. I finally decide to take a look at my statistics after all the work today to see what kind of improvements I got.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Personal Information

Name

Age

Class

Level

Faction

Alain

18

N/A

3

Vortex

Health

EXP /next level

Mana

49/49

375/400

35/35

Statistics

Strength

Stamina

Dexterity

Intelligence

Wisdom

6

7

11

5

6

Magic Affinity

Nature

Cold

Fire

Water

Light and Dark

8%

5%

1%

4%

3%

Combat Proficiencies

Stealth 8%

Dagger 13%

Archery 18%

Throwing 4%

Pugilist 2%

Acrobatics 4%

Sword 5%

Greatsword 4%

Defense Proficiencies

Dodge 9%

Parry 5%

Block 1%

Skills

Beast Taming

10%

Stat points remaining

10

Skill points remaining

2

Trade skills

Herbalist

4%

Skinning

1%

Alchemy

1%

Tailoring

1%

Cooking

9%

So overall I gained 2 strength stamina and wisdom and one dexterity and intelligence. That’s a great increase for a single day working even though it was very hard. I decide then to go ahead and get sleep since I am so tired anyway, tomorrow is going to be another early start to another long day.