While Nik had originally planned on going down towards the lake he had stopped after coming within a couple of hundred meters of it. He now stood under one of the tallest trees in the entire forest.

He had put down the remaining fabric of his sweatshirt on the opposing side of the tree and after some initial failures decided on walking around the tree to measure its diameter.

He had wanted to do since he was honestly shocked by the size. First, he had tried to measure by walking next to the tree in a straight line but decided that this was not doing the tree justice.

The circumference is 2 times radius times pi, so let’s say pi is equal to three. Nineteen steps each of let’s say 1-meter length… oh wow is it like 12… This tree is huge. That’s larger than my parents’ flat in the area it covers.

Nik had started seriously entertaining the idea of living in the trees after his second to last monster encounter and looking at the size of those trees he felt affirmed.

Nothing short of an actual dinosaur will be able to reach me up there. Well, I too fall into that category, kinda sucks, to be honest. Flying would be hella awesome now, I could just hop on up there and would be save from anything. Hmm, except flying things.

It wasn’t like Nik didn’t want to climb up the tree, but he had made similar experiences to those made by cats. Getting up a tree proved to be fairly easy in most cases, getting down not so much.

Even without that fear Nik would have had only a very small chance of getting up the tree. There were zero branches in the lower 20 maybe 30 meters Nik estimated. To add to Niks’s disappointment all of the tall trees around him shared that characteristic.

Eventually, he decided that dwelling on that fact any longer would lead to nothing Nik started undressing and put his clothes to his bundle of iron-rich rocks. The last days had left him continuously slightly drenched in sweat and it was time to get rid of all of the unpleasantness surrounding lacking hygiene.

Jogging down to the river he mentally glanced at his stat overview.

Health

363/380

Stamina

238/410

Mana

95/100

His health had gone down during his flight and subsequent relocation, a worrisome development, especially since Nik could not figure out why.

His stamina use was pretty normal for a whole day walking and some running beforehand. Nik had made another discovery during his hiking. His stamina levels had not increased after his flight but continuously dwindled. With just the same rate as they had on all the previous days. For now, he could think of two reasons why that was. A stronger body needs more stamina to sustain the proportionally stronger body or his stamina only regenerated while not using the stat.

Halfway to the lake, Nik thought back on his trip he hadn’t run anymore since he had escaped the Teeroxes remembering his success in using mana with his running. He was fairly eager to use his partially upgraded skill again but had to conserve mana for what he was gonna try next.

Nik was gonna use [Haste] for the first time. Initially, he had wanted to use the skill immediately but held off in the fear of harming himself. He wasn’t sure how exactly the skill would function, but it said “Increase movement speed drastically” and while Nik was all for speed he found his kinesthetics lacking. So he made the plan to initially try the skill out in water.

The shore was kind of disappointing. It was a pebble beach, broken up by larger rocks every dozen meters. Nik had hoped for a stretch of sand or maybe grass right down to the water. A place where you could truly relax. Still, pebbles were better than a bunch of fist-sized stones, poking deep into you when you lay on them.

The good thing was that the larger stones were large. Nik had started worrying that he would not find a good substitute for an anvil in his upcoming projects. All he had found so far were rocks the size of his head and they would not work as a solid foundation. Of course, he had found huge boulders on the mountain and he had on where he appeared but he was not going to go back to either place for some time.

Man, I should have really identified the rock I appeared on. I bet it has to be something good. It had a slight metallic structure to it. But whatever now I am gonna swim.

Slowly Nik stepped into the water, expecting a nice slightly cool temperature.

The water was freezing. Only one foot was submerged in the water but Nik shivered all over. Maybe I don’t smell that bad after all. And there is no one around to complain… Ahh no, I really don’t wanna be sweaty.

Grimacing Nik stepped into the water with the other feet and slowly stepped further into the lake. Shivering all over his body he soldiered on.

How is this water so cold? The sun shines on it for at least a third of the day. I mean sure glacier water but this has to be just above freezing, but this water is basically not moving. Wait what if this lake is like super deep. There is a reason that deep lakes dont get very warm and I think it has to do with water density in the depth or something.

“Hmmm.” he hummed and slowly moved out of the lake again. Nik still planned on washing himself and trying out [Haste] but he felt like he had to acclimate himself to the water temperature. Some people swore on breathing techniques to adjust themselves to low water temperatures, Nik only wanted to slowly get used to the temperature.

After entering the water the third time, Nik shrubbed his body with his hands. An action that certainly cleaned him but not to an extend Nik wanted.

Further into the clear water Nik located sand, the second best thing to a sponge or scrubber. The action of retrieving the sand from the ground forced him to go underwater. An action he had dreaded until now to prevent getting a cold.

The sand escaped his gathering tries again and again. Cleaning with sand underwater didn’t work well as shrubbing his skin on the surface but he lost at least three quarters each time he picked sand up.

Nik lost his patients after several minutes. That’s enough hygiene, let’s do some magic testing. As far as the student was concerned that was the first real magic skill he had gotten. Sure he could hit a little harder with [Lesser Hammer Strike], [Stealthy Movement] almost allowed invisibility - if he would ever have enough mana to satiate that skill -, and maybe running used some mana now as well, but nothing was really flashy.

As a child, Nik had always dreamed about doing magic like a hero in many stories, but on earth that had not been an option, sure there were card tricks and all, but the lack of knowledge on how something works doesn’t make it magical.

For his testing, Nik had come up with several ideas. First and foremost, all the experiments would take place in the water for now. Things he would try were figuring out what types of movement haste increased - the was no limitation in the skill description so he was hoping there weren’t any -, how much the spell actually increased his movement speed, for which he built two small pebble hills at the bank, and lastly how much the spell actually drained.

As a baseline for his experiment Nik both jogged and swam between both of the pebble clusters. It took him around ten seconds to traverse the distance in a light jog through the water.

He did plan on trying the skill with [Running] as well, but not for now. Thinking about “drastically” made him weary. It was one of those relative words that could mean anything. In an experiment “drastically different” result could mean a deviation of 10%, in terms of movement speed he would title the speed change from carriage speed to car speed drastically which would have to be at least a factor of 5 by his estimates.

[Haste] might as well be useless if it really is a factor of 5 without boosting perception and actual comprehension speed, possibly even a danger to himself. That was also the reason why his first experiment was to sit down and just move his hands.

After taking a measurement for his swim speed, which turned out to be abysmal at around 30 seconds Nik left the water and sat down on the stony beach.

Trying to calm down from being far too excited he took a few controlled breaths to regulate his nervousness.

“[Haste]!” Nik meant to say, just for a coolness factor. If anyone had observed him they would have heard something different. “Hasshh” would be the closest approximation. In his eagerness, he had activated the spell before he had finished speaking and his newfound speed had even affected his speaking.

Wooow, this is so trippy Nik thought as he moved his arm around in front of him. His arm moved faster than ever. Whereas he would have seen the movement without [Haste] as a blur, he now saw almost nothing, only the hint of a shadow.

His movements had to be controlled differently as well, Nik could no longer react to his own movements but had to predict what would happen. And he struggled with that. After a single try, he stopped trying to get up. He was gonna learn that for sure, as it was essential if he would ever fall down while running but for now he was just happy with moving around on his knees.

His knees would have accumulated a few scratches if his health had not acted as a buffer or heal. He still wasn’t quite sure how it worked. He also noted that his stamina had dropped by around 50 points, his mana was down at 62.

Nik was about to move back into the water when he realized that he could not use [Haste] for some time, the feeling of trying to reconnect to the skill was similar to pushing through some jello. He assumed that meant that either his body or something else was not ready for him to use the skill again. Using his [Internal Energy Sight] he quickly realized what was wrong. His muscles and tissue were usually permeated by small amounts of stamina. Right now there was an apparent lack of any throughout his entire body. His mana situation seemed to be better, but the streams usually present in his body seemed dimmer.

So how does that work? I have over 200 stamina left, where is it? Considering the fact some more he realized that it would be fruitless and moved on to observe the resource usage of the skill.

Hmm, so that is only two more uses for me until I run out of mana. Both, [Haste] and whatever is happening to [Stealthy Movement] are either really inefficient or I just don’t have much mana.

I do want to have 100 Strength just so I can brag to myself, that would make me 100% stronger than I was before leveling. No 90% stronger, hmm, what should I do. While I really wanna have some more mana, I should not be investing too much in that stat. My class doesn’t give me any stats for neither wisdom nor willpower. I probably don’t use any in smithing. So should I only invest in my more physical attributes? That seems kinda silly. On the other hand, if I only put points into Vitality does that make me almost immortal? Maybe I wouldn’t age. Much to consider.

Feeling his skill almost ready Nik moved into the water. He wanted to try all possibilities, swimming, jogging, [Running], and his amplified [Running] version. It seemed like he would have to pick two.

The mana boosted version of [Running] obviously costs mana and since I will be low once I am done with the testing I shouldn’t put additional strain on my resources. If I go too far I might not even be able to do a second test.

Swimming is one obvious choice here. I was really slow before, thus boosting my speed there should give me a more precise result when comparing the standard speed with the [Haste] speed.

I already have my value for jogging and I think using that baseline would give me a better result, it also has a lower possibility of me face diving.

I am saving testing with [Running] for tomorrow then I guess.

While waiting for his spell to feel right again, Nik swam some laps. Well, what would have been considered laps in a pool. He was just swimming perpendicular to the coast to see how far he could swim and still see the ground of the lake. The water was surprisingly clear, which allowed Nik to see some fish. They actually did not look like monsters and even swam away when Niks shadow came over them.

With his skill finally ready Nik stood hip-deep in the water by one of his pebble piles and steadied himself to activate [Haste] again. As soon as he did he went down as to submerge himself fully into the water. Instead of going down however he had primarily pulled his legs up and was now submerging himself with a moderate speed. While he wanted to be annoyed by his ignorance he couldn’t contain the smile on his lips.

With one more breath, he became fully submerged and started swimming. Mid swim he almost had to stop from laughing. While he had realized that [Haste] wasn’t as effective in the water as on land he had felt another notification in his head.

He would bet his firstborn - if he had one - on the fact that it was a swimming-related skill. It was similar to many of the other skills he had unlocked. Upon reaching a certain threshold the skill was offered.

He stopped when he saw that he had passed the other pile of pebbles. 17 seconds, maybe even 16 or 15. That is really good. So [Haste] gives me at least an 80% speed boost in water, maybe more. It did feel a lot faster on land but that is probably due to the friction with the water and the amount of force I need to apply to push myself faster forward. I bet that I would be even faster with a higher strength.

As the effect was still lasting Nik carefully swam further towards the coast and slowly stood up to run back and get a time on jogging. All in all, he was quite successful. His movements had felt silly as he had to exaggerate them as to not trip from the resistance of the water. He had still about halved the speed with which he had jogged the distance.

Nik was gonna do some more testing with [Haste] once he had solid ground under his feet, confident that [Haste] could give him an even higher boost if he got used to the spell. But that was for later. In a spontaneous attempt to remedy one of his biggest childhood fears he swam out into the lake. He had never truly feared swimming in a lake, what Nik feared was not seeing anything below him.

Grinning and elated by the effectiveness of the new spell he swam out into the lake. His goal was to swim as long as he could see the lake bottom. After all, you didn’t need to overcome your fear in one day.

The swim proceeded nicely and Nik was once again baffled by his new physique. He had been swimming for 3 minutes already and he wasn’t showing any signs of tiredness. Additionally, Nik had stopped seeing the ground 2 minutes ago and he still felt alright. To achieve this state of fearlessness Nik had switched on [Energy Veil] and [Stealthy Movement]. The fact that the second skill worked in water was much to his surprise. Reducing the waves he emitted.

The next time Nik really looked around himself he found himself almost in the middle of the two-kilometer-wide lake. With wide-open eyes Nik looked around, realizing how far he had swum and that he had actually drifted slightly away from the course he had plotted. That was not what had made Nik look up from his trance-like condition.

What had really opened Niks' eyes what the new message that had appeared in front of his inner eye. It read “Deed: [Dungeon Visitor]...” at which point Nik hurriedly turned around, activating [Haste] and hurrying back to the shore.

Contrary to Niks’ expectations nothing happened on the way back. Something that confused him. Just about every time a message had appeared in his mind he had been in danger or close to danger.

Leaving the water Nik shivered. Not due to the cold, however. Just that thought got him to think about anything else but his impending doom. Not quite ready to figure out what might have almost cost him his life Nik went on to deliberate the fact that he was in fact not cold.

Is this vitality related, physique related, I guess it could also be strength or endurance. But it has to be a stat right. I was at least 15 minutes in there and it was freezing when I first went in.

Unsure of just about anything Nik tried to think about what he should do next. He had previously come to the conclusion that he had to use everything he could to his advantage, that included his class. He did not really expect his class to help him directly but if he could actually make something useful with his class and the empty skill slots for class skills his chances for survival would be greatly increased.

He had previously gathered some iron-rich stones, but they would wait. For now, he had some wood gathering to do. Getting charcoal was essential for medival smithing and Nik did not even see himself anywhere near that level so it would suffice, he hoped.

Irritatingly enough there was no real timber around other than some bark, small branches, and leaves. A lot of leaves, upon closer inspection they resembled needles which was confusing as all the trees he had seen here had leaves.

Annoyed he concentrated on the boxes in his head. Slowly a grin spread across his face.

Epic Deed: [Dungeon Visitor] - Move into the domain of a dungeon.

Nik Thems: {Extraterrestrial Human} Level up! You have accomplished the Deed [Dungeon Visitor].

Unique Deed: [Dungeon Vaction] - Move into the domain of a dungeon to relax.

Nik Thems: {Extraterrestrial Human} 2 x Level up! You have accomplished the Unique Deed [Dungeon Vacation].

31 Stat points have been awarded. Three General Skill Slots unlocked.

Race evolution.

Your Race {Extraterrestrial Human} is evolving to {Cosmic Human}. The full effects of the Race evolution will be reached and available upon reaching [Lvl. 25] in your Race.