“Running errands again, Arthur? I wish my son knew how to spoil his parents, sometimes…” the young butcher in front of me grumbled.

“Your son is only five years old, Garnt. Don’t you think you’re being a little unreasonable?” I asked with mirth.

Garnt chuckled and handed me the assortment of meat he had prepared for my family. Now that little Amber had been born, my parents were too busy fussing over her needs to worry about things like small errands.

I bid our local butcher goodbye and walked home, unbothered by my slow pace. It occurred to me that I had never taken the time to explore our little town, since I had been too busy training as a kid. There wasn’t much to explore, mind you, but still. There was something about satisfying both nostalgia and curiosity simultaneously that made taking my time worth it.

After a few minutes of walking, I approached our little bakery. An expensive sign had been placed on the inside of our newly installed windows, letting all passer-by’s know that the bakery would no longer be doing at home deliveries. Due to the recent increase in popularity of my parents’ little business, the task of running all over town had become too demanding. Back in the day, my parents had introduced that delivery service because it was a great way to increase our monthly profit, which was necessary to stay afloat at the time. Now, however, such a service was no longer necessary, since my parents had acquiesced and accepted the 1000 gold coins I had forced on them. With such a large amount of savings, they could’ve retired right this second if they wanted to. Being the hard-working people that they are, though, they had their own pride and were intent on continuing their work in full force after Amber got a little bigger.

I entered our home, noticing that my parents were quite busy coaxing their little new-born to sleep. Amber had been a difficult baby so far, apparently. I had nothing to compare it too, but apparently my first few weeks had been much calmer. In my mind, that just meant that Amber was energetic.

I headed to the kitchen and stored our meat in an enchanted frozen locker, which had cost 10 gold pieces. To the average citizen, that was a fortune. Only the wealthier townsfolk could afford such appliances, and we now belonged to that category.

With that all done, I notified my parents that I would be heading out for the day to train. I could only barely make out their muffled assent as Amber continued to cry, though.

-scene transition-

A few minutes later, I arrived at a familiar small clearing in the forest. This had been my main training spot for several years and even now it served that purpose. A few weeks ago, after Amber’s birth, I had made a training schedule that I would be following for a few months. Since I decided to take a break, I might as well use this time to tier up a few more skills, so that I could get the best class possible.

At the time, I had first taken another look at my status screen.

Name: Arthur Titles [Dark prodigy] Class: [Overloading Death Knight] LVL 50 Strength 304 Constitution 300 Dexterity 300 Intelligence 100 Wisdom 263 Affinity 599 Free stat points 0

Skills:

Passive:

[Dark radiance core](63%), [Dark flow sight](0%), [Cascading mana-intrusive Swordsmanship](13%),

[Mental palace](N/A), [Dark Form](48%), [Overload Aura](67%), [Weak mana sense](N/A), [Blackened essence(formative)](0%)

Active:

[Ghost apparation](19%), [Corrosive mark](0%), [Relentless orbs](0%), [Overloaded sword](81%), [Dark Blade Maelstrom](76%), [Aura step](41%)

After some deliberation, I had chosen a few skills to work on for the next few months. I couldn’t work on all of them simultaneously, since that would be too inefficient and time-consuming.

The ones I chose were [Dark radiance core](63%), [Overload Aura](67%), [Overloaded sword](81%) and finally [Dark Blade Maelstrom](76%). These four skills were the closest to the next tier and were all tier 3. Therefore, they wouldn’t take an absurd amount of time to train. [Dark form], for example, would only really increase in proficiency when I was seriously wounded and near death. As a result, it would naturally progress while adventuring.

To facilitate my efforts, I made a training schedule, that still gave me some time to spend some time with my family in the mornings.

07:00 – 08:00 wake up and meditate in mental palace.

08:00 – 10:00 spend time with family/running errands.

10:00 – 12:00 practice [Overloaded sword] (continuously increase pace of skill-usage and improve mana generation to keep up)

12:00 – 13:00 Break time

13:00 – 15:00 practice [Dark blade Maelstrom] (continuously increase size of the maelstrom and improve mana generation to keep up)

15:00 – 18:00 experiment with [Overload Aura] (come up with new and fun ways to improve control over overloaded mana, while also increasing size and detail of constructs)

18:00 – 20:00 meditate in mental palace.

20:00 – 22:00 spend time with family

22:00 – 00:00 practice [Dark radiance core] by generating as much overloaded and normal mana per second as possible (ramp up until dark form can’t keep up anymore)

00:00 – 07:00 sleep

Now, I believe my little list needed to take account of some more context, in hindsight. Let’s begin by explaining why I spent a full three hours per day in mental palace. One of the reasons was to break up the monotony of practicing a single skill for hours. Another reason why is because I was afraid. I was afraid that I would get lost in my training again, that I would succumb to my affinity again. Mental palace was a precaution that kept me on my toes.

I dedicated one window of time to each skill that I wanted to train. My core skill and Aura were technically in use while I was practicing the other skills as well, but these two skills were extra difficult to train, so they warranted a window of time separate from my other training as well.

All In all, my schedule had proven to be rather effective so far. [Overloaded sword] had gone up by 8% and reached (89%), while [Dark Blade Maelstrom] had gone up by 9% and reached (85%) They were on track to tier up within another three weeks or so.

[Overload Aura] and [Dark radiance core] had, unfortunately, proven to be a bit more stubborn to get the hang of.

To start, it simply wasn’t feasible to push my mana generation to [Dark form]’s limit. The healing skill far outclassed my core, which didn’t regenerate enough mana to compare. My core was smaller and didn’t have much capacity, yet its mana generation was supposed to be quite incredible compared to other cores of its tier. Despite this, it often felt like my core as gasping for air, even in the middle of the night. There wasn’t enough mana in my surroundings to supercharge my core, which was necessary for my training. Even with my core’s ability to absorb minute amounts of mana with other affinity’s, it wasn’t enough.

This led to the issue I was having with [Overload aura]. I had made great progress on increasing my control by making more detailed and small movements with the overloaded mana. When it came to larger scale practice, however, I ran into problems. Again, I was just lacking too much mane to push my own limits. Whenever I tried something big with my overloaded mana, I would run out after a few minutes and the mana would dissipate.

Something you had to understand about all mana was that it wasn’t finite. However, mana would enter a state of inactivity after dissipating, which usually occurred after mana had been used by someone or something. In other words, it would take a few days for mana to become reusable after I had used it to practice, which meant that I was draining the mana around town faster than it could recover.

Thankfully, I had come up with a plan to counteract this issue. My hometown Rolla had a single dungeon, the goblin dungeon that I had raided and gotten Revan from. Something of note about this dungeon was that it’s caves were pitch black and generated a lot of dark-mana every single day. Enough to maintain my training even after I reached tier 3! Unfortunately, I couldn’t just use a dungeon as my private training ground. Don’t get my wrong, it’s not like anyone else ever goes in there, unless the appraiser has passed by and awakened a bunch of hopeful 18 year-olds.

The issue was bureaucracy. The mayor of Rolla was a kind old man, but I couldn’t just snub him and do what I wanted. Therefore, I had sent a letter to the townhall a few weeks ago, requesting permission to exclusively use the dungeon for two months. So far, I hadn’t received any reply.

Right as I was thinking about this, a cloud of dust appeared on the horizon. I squinted my eyes and nearly drew my sword, but left it in its sheath when I recognised the familiar black pile of bones that I called my familiar. Usually, I left him near the bakery to protect my parents in case of an emergency. He had taken to Amber like a fly to shit and had refused to help me with my training if it meant leaving the vulnerable little bun behind. At first, I found this tendency endearing, but after a few dozen torn-up trees, I was starting to get annoyed by it. Briefly, I wondered why he would rush over here on his own. Had something happened? I heaved a sigh of relief when I noticed that he was holding a letter between his teeth, stamped by our mayor. My parents had probably asked him to deliver it.

When he reached me, the horse-sized lizard demanded I pet him before he handed over the goods, but eventually Revan dropped the piece of paper and headed back home in a rush.

Sighing at his antics, I opened the envelope.

Dear Mr. Arthur,

It is with great satisfaction that I grant you the exclusive delving rights to our local tier 1 dungeon! Please make sure no problems arise within the dungeon during your stay.

By the way, congratulations on your placement in the tournament, young chap! All of us in Rolla are proud of your accomplishment! If you are ever interested in investing in our local economy, be sure to pay me a visit at the townhall. I’m a busy person, but I don’t mind making some time for honoured guests such as yourself!

If you have any further questions or requests, don’t hesitate to seek me out.

From your dear mayor, Barnaby.

I chuckled while I read the letter. Mayor Barnaby liked to brown nose rich and influential guests, everyone knew this. Apparently, I had joined the group of people he acted overly familiar with. Still, this time, it had worked out in my favour. On to the dungeon I go. If my estimates are accurate, each of the four skills I was working on should have tiered up by the end of this two-month period.