A week had passed since the battle with the giant frog and during that week a lot has happened. Nick had managed to create another spear entirely from scratch with the shaft being made of some trees branch that had fallen some time ago but hadn’t started to rot yet. He carved it carefully with the  cleaver that his mom used to cut the heads of the fish before gutting and cleaning them.

This cleaver was a very old and heavy one that weighted at least 1.5 kg . It was a plain cleaver that looked like it had been just cut out from a bigger piece of metal and just shaped to resemble a clever. It was also a really old one at that had been used to end the life of poor unsuspecting creatures for at least 30 years, 30 fucking years.  It was even older than he was.

The head of the spear was one of the teeth of the dead leopard taped to the shaft with duct tape. It was really a sturdy spear that had quite a weight to it. He  also created entirely from wood some small javelins to compensate for the lack of a ranged attack that was made very clear from the battle with the giant frog. If hr had the javelins before in his fight with the frog he wouldn’t have to get close to the target in order to attack it but just hit him from a distance and then wait until it was no longer a threat to give the finishing blow.

.....

Jack was looking at thin air from someone else's perspective, but he was actually seeing his progress.

' During that week I had dramatically  grown in strength by raising my stats, learning  some new skills, but also improving old ones.'

The way he raised his stats and skills was a little different from the previous time entirely because of the red marble he found in the skull of the dead panther. After he came back from gathering food and water in the forest the rest of my time was dedicated solely to training his body. He started to do every type of training exercise he could think of like pushups , situps, squats, running, jumping etc. He also did a lot of stretching until he felt my muscles give up from the strain.

After pushing his body to the limit he then started to absorb some energy from the marble. He  didn't absorb all the energy from it but only as much as needed to complete revitalize him and then went back to doing the exercises. He also used the skills be had as much as possible becoming more used you them.

The results were great but the process was a very long, boring, repetitive, and exhausting.  That left him heavily tired mentally, but all that was offset by his fast growth during this time.

“HAHT HAHT HAHT HAHT HAHT HAHT.....

He was trying to gather his breath from a round of exercise he just finished and sat down on a chair I had brought out from the house. He was sweating bullets and his skin was as if I had just been steamed alive, his whole body was hurting.

After sitting down he just grabbed a little pouch that was hanging down his neck.There he had stored the marble for safekeeping and there was no place more secure for it than there. It also served like health potion when he got injured , bringing him to fighting condition in short amount of time.

"Haha , this is so refreshing."

He started absorbing energy from the marble making sure to enjoy the feeling that came with it, like tiny little hands massaging his sore muscles repeatedly. During the week of repeated use  the marble  had shrunk more than half of its original size, but that was okay because the results were very good.

After resting for five minutes and recuperating his stamina he looked at his stats again.