By that evening, I had settled in my new living arrangements and had my first real meal since I became a challenger. Bread and cheese in that medieval setting had been all well and good (not so much the militia rations) but I was used to eating much better.

Now, finally, I was going to take full stock of what I had gained from the Tutorial.

First, the money. I had learned all about the Federation's money system from the complimentary class the Federal Bank offered everyone in the tour group who opened an account.

In spite of my overpriced purchases in District 1 before moving down to 20, I had barely spent a drop from my bucket. This was because it turned out there were two forms of currency, Pencet for cents and Dolera for dollars, that were used for mundane things exclusively on this planet.

A single Wasnacht was equal to 10 “Small Wasnachts, or 100 Dolera. Those Brock Coins hadn’t been million-dollar bills, they had been hundred-million-dollar bills.

I would need to drop a few actual Small Wazzies to use a teleportation gate, and more than a few at minimum if I wanted to buy most anything that would be at all useful in the actual floors of the Tower.

Next were my snazzy new armor and weapon. I Identified each piece one by one. The armor had no special effects, though the damage it mitigated in total didn’t seem small to me. However, as long as I wore the entire set, I’d get another hundred Mana points.

As for the weapon...

Bronze

Magic Attack Power: 70

Magic Power +10

Restrictions: Can only be equipped by single element Fire casters. Requires Magic Power of 10 or more to equip.

Then, the spell books. All three spells had required Intuition well below what I had AP to pay for, so I put the necessary amount into that stat, and learned them all: [Lesser Fireball] [Lesser Telekinesis] and [Heat Object].

After that, I checked out my new class in more detail. Including the achievement reward , it had a whopping 28 Traits. One by one, I familiarized myself with each of them.

I fell asleep before I was done. Late the next morning though, it was finally time to Identify the strangest item I’d received. The Class Evolver looked like a completely ordinary glass bead, small enough to rest on the tip of my index finger. I used Identify…

Use to evolve a class to the indicated Grade.

Only usable in the .

I was afraid of that—what was revealed led to more questions than answers. Well, it was time to start getting some.

At the end of the welcome tour, Officer Polanski had recommended we all sign up for a Beginner's Class. We’d been integrated into the Federation, but there was a lot more we needed to know about the Tower, especially if we were actually going to climb it.

There were several magical and martial academy branches in the city, and each one held a Beginner's Class every month. I wasted no time signing up for one slated to start in a few days, using the communication function of my new smart device.

Next, I went back to the Federation Office to discuss letting Mewi know that I’d arrived. They kept me waiting for quite a while, and from the expression on the clerk’s face when they came back, it wasn’t good news.

“Mr. Lheticus, I’m afraid the person in question is currently participating in the Constant Competition and so we are unable to reach them at this time. However, his current residence is on Erkolls-13 if you would like to pay him a visit after the tournament is over.”

“Well, how long until the tournament’s over?”

“It only just started, so it will end in roughly two months.”

“Two MONTHS?” I didn’t want us to remain apart for two more seconds but apparently I had no say in the matter. After some light palm-greasing, I walked out with Mewi’s residential address and considerable chagrin.

Well, if you’re not going to meet with him for a while, use this time to learn more and get stronger for him.

In just two days, the Beginner’s Class at a magic academy began. With their help, I quickly absorbed the basics about the Tower and about Area 1—things like when you can attempt the next floor, city layouts, the Kinetice, and more details on what each stat did.

That last point was particularly important, and it made me very glad indeed that I had stockpiled most of the AP that I could afford to save back in the Tutorial. I had 17 points left, and I needed to spend them carefully.

By the time the Beginner’s Class was over, I’d made my final decision. Every single point went into my Magic Attributes, because one of the last things the class mentioned was the Virtual Arena which contained, among many other things, a method to increase the four basic physical attributes—strength, speed, stamina, and sturdiness by 10.

It was when I went to secure my membership to the virtual training space that I first started to get an inkling of just how expensive things could be in Area 1. The highest Level 7 membership would cost over a tenth of all the money I had earned from the Tutorial to set up, 12 “Small Brocks” and 12 Smekkers a month after that! The ten Brock coins I’d gotten from the Tutorial reward amounted to a healthy, but by no means truly wealthy, 10,000 of those—which would be less than 8,800 after the startup payment. No wonder I only had the bank’s Silver card.

The Level 6 membership cost only a tenth of that, and it had most of the benefits of the top-level option that I cared about, but I still agonized deciding between them because of the one thing Level 7 had that 6 didn’t that I wanted very badly: a “nutritional fluid” that apparently could actually raise Attributes.

I figured I needed all the help I could get there, so in the end I paid the more extravagant price. I wouldn’t be in danger of running out of money from this even though it was a good chunk, or even if I bought another membership for Mewi later, and that was assuming I didn’t earn even more from clearing the next floor even after the normal time limit of a year. It still hurt though.

Once the pod arrived and was all set up, I connected my smart device to it and set it to patch into Mewi’s stats feed in the Constant Competition while I was in the virtual world. It would have been nice to watch him compete live, but that wouldn’t be practical with x20 time dilation.

That feature was one I quickly became VERY glad was real and not somehow a scam, because it quickly became apparent that to clear all 10 levels of the 4 training courses was going to take me quite a while. Thanks to the nutrient dispenser, I could keep going in the virtual world without food or rest or sleep, too—though I did allow myself a few seconds every 5 or so times I failed a course to check on updates to Mewi’s performance. With the x20 time dilation, I could check on the same fight several times that way.

Other than that, I did my best to not give myself any real breaks. Whenever I was tempted to, I’d remind myself: Hey, that’s not a physical body you’re in. You don’t hurt with even the slightest real exercise like back on Earth. You don’t now, even—you only think you do because you subconsciously believe you should be. Free your mind, do you think that’s air you’re breathing right now?

The one exception was when I successfully cleared one of the levels, gaining a precious stat point. Then, I’d go into the list of Mewi’s recorded fight streams, find a recent fight that he’d won, and play one back while I rested.

After almost a year of continuous pod-based seclusion, during which time the Constant Competition progressed quite a bit, I finally cleared Level 10 on the last course I needed to. I was really surprised myself that I was able to keep it up for that long, even if I generally weathered boring circumstances pretty easily. I chalked it up to wanting to get as strong as I could for Mewi very badly.

Together with the points I’d spent on my Magic Attributes, my stats now looked like this:

Floor Cleared: Tutorial

Health: 210/210 (0.03/min)

Stamina: 270/270 (0.3/min)

Mana: 300/300 (0.1/min)

Strength: 13

Speed: 15

Stamina: 15

Sturdiness: 13

Mana Pool: 10

Intuition: 10

Magic Power: 15

Regeneration: 7

Psych: 3

AP: 0

For now, I was very well rounded. Going forward I planned to emphasize my magic stats, Speed, and Stamina. I was particularly happy with how much Stamina I’d gained from the training—250 points would fuel a LOT more Power of Imagination than I’d ever pulled off before.

My Regeneration was a little low, but this was a calculated risk. To not only buy a substantial supply of potions, but take them to the next floor as well was extremely expensive, but if I invested my entire current fortune, I could bring quite a volume of them inside my Spatial Compression Pack.

As for not putting any more points into Psych, that was another risk, but I did have a reason.

Conjecture #6: Since “hidden stats” were not normally able to be increased with AP, it was possible for challengers to raise them on their own, much unlike the usually visible ones according to the Beginner Class.

I wasn’t about to have my training end there, but for the next part I’d need to leave the virtual world.