Elicia grinded stones for over five hundred hours straight already.

She would take small breaks to heal with a basic healing spell, go to the toiled or to eat something, but she had been grinding 20/7 for the past 25 days.

She didn’t know exactly why.

She was feeling unbearable weariness and stress. She was feeling unbearable sadness and depression from hurting herself constantly with her own paws and fingers.

She had to cast heal on herself or her fingers would become sore. If it was the real world, then she would definitely had developed tendinitis.

Was this an efficient grinding method?

Kind of.

She would doze off and enter a half-sleeping state while grinding. She would also become extremely disperse sometimes. Others, she would feel as if she was a torturer, torturing herself. She would cry and whelp, asking herself why she was doing it. Why did she keep going on like that?

As for Jack… he was there. Sometimes. Sometimes he would just plainly sleep or go play outside.

He would go on multiple pauses and take long gold baths. He would even find time to masturbate.

He had a 10x increased exp effect active all times, so he only needed a couple hours to catch up with her. The rest of the day, he would go on playing outside or whatever.

And she would keep grinding.

It would be good for her to stop and grind less every day. She knew that she wasn’t performing at her best. Her mind was exerting a small effect over her brain, since it was overloaded most of the time - even a dragon needed breaks from time to time.

At such weariness states, she would receive penalties on her skill improvement. Ten hours of regular work would become the same as five of work in an exhausted state.

Then those would be further reduced. Until she was making barely any improvement at all.

‘Why?..” - She asked herself.

“Why…” - She muttered.

Then, tears would come out of her eyes from time to time as well. Usually when Jack wasn’t there. If he was, he would stop her from working and cast things like a recovery spell on her, or a “mind clearing” spell which would make she regain her sanity.

She could do it herself, but she wouldn’t do it. She just kept going on.