Now, as the “guest” had taken his leave, I had work to do. First thing was to deal with the mana inside of me. If Galdwin was to be trusted, any random no-name mage could simply wave his hand and turn me into a mush in a split second, as long as my cells were this saturated. Without assistance of a strong mage, my best bet would be to exercise and get stronger while using up the mana. At this level, any random exertion would do the trick.

Apparently, every jump in Tier would give you roughly 30% boost to your capabilities. While it may not sound much, it was a huge deal. If an opponent was 2 Tiers above you, you would seem as slow as a tortoise to him. Any attack you could do to him with cold weapons would be ineffective. And this was only taking into account the ability to dodge and speed. A level up would also increase the information processing capabilities, reaction speed, shock absorption and the amount of pure strength.

This massive potential of the inhabitants stunted the technological growth of the world. Imagine a scenario of a single Tier 4 going against 20 Tier 2 soldiers. While in abstract, the weaker majority could defeat the opponent, like ants biting an elephant to death, it would not be the case when magic materials came into the play. A noble could easily arm a single knight with a zorikanium alloy sword, which would cut normal steel as if it was paper, and a full suit of armor made of adamantium, which was apparently much stronger than steel. But a noble of same capabilities couldn’t possibly arm 20 weaker men with weapons that could penetrate the said armor, and armor strong enough to resist the blows of a zorikanium sword. It all came down to cost. For the same price, it was just better to train and arm a single man than to hire many weaker men. Thus, for the nobles, it was not cost effective to fund research that would help the majority get stronger. Only real development the world had seen in the last centuries was on metallurgy. But even then, it was not focused on the mass production of normal materials such as steel, which would revolutionize multiple industries, but on how to make already strong magic alloys better, which would give even more of a boost to the rare martial elite of the society.

“Boss, the equipments are ready”

I had decided to have some data on my capabilities before I started to train in a mana-rich environment. My body turned out to be superior compared to that elf, which had turned out to be peak Tier 2. With the genetic modifications of the 23^rd century, my body was much stronger than a base human. On top of that, while I had slacked a bit since, the training at the Martian Military Academy had been brutal. The 6 years I had spent there had pushed my body to absolute peak performance.

The new stuff was for the strength and hand speed tests. Reaction speed test was the easiest to perform, simply requiring my eye implant to paint targets in my vision, and my neural implant to measure the time I needed to lock on to them. Also, Josse took care of the need to make something for the information processing speed. Apparently, he had kept all the data of our game play sessions. Since we already had baseline information, all I had to do was to play a game or two with the AI to see if there were any changes.

“Lloyd, before you start training, I want to give a report. With the drone I managed to spot 6 villages and a town after the marshes. The villages seem to contain around 50-200 houses, and I estimate the population of the town to be around 3-4000 big. I couldn’t scout anymore as the drone’s operational range is small on planets with such dense atmospheres.  Also, I managed to spot an open-air coal mine alongside a copper and iron deposit west of here. There was a large limestone buildup way down south, not far from the river delta. There are also some places where the scanner managed to spot aluminum and titanium rich soil, but the deposits should be deep down into the mountains.”

“Alright, at least we know where to get materials if we run low on them for the forge”

Thus, I started the training. Training in itself was nothing novel. While the ship had the usual gym stuff, it lacked the equipment I frequented on the Academy. I lacked the stimulators that targeted specific muscles or the resistive equipment that pushed down on you harder during the start of the motion, giving me better twitch strength. The training had to be done the old fashioned way. 1 hour of running at the treadmill on the highest speed, followed by 2 more on a reduced speed with intermittent bursts of speed. A few hours of torture with the archaic devices took care of the hard-to-train muscles. The rest of the training was a bit more enjoyable, at least. High speed patrol around the ship, on the hills in full gear was much more tiring, and mentally active than running on a treadmill ever could. While the area was somewhat smooth and grassy, all it would take was a single missed step for the 60 kilograms of equipment to come down crashing, with the rest of my body, on top of a poor miserable ankle. While med bay could fix the bones easily, it would still mean crawling back to the ship and staying there for a few days.

The analysis on the elf DNA had finished while I was training, so Josse had to repeat  the report for me.

“While they are almost same as humans on the first glance, Scanner found a few differences. There are some parts where we have no idea what it means, but generally speaking, their DNA is more compact, yet not too different than a base human. Scanner computer report is not conclusive if whether conception is viable. It’s mainly due to the edits human did manually. For example, we have no idea how the cancer destroying white blood cells, which was changed artificially, would react with the elven DNA. After all, it was made specifically to work with humans. There are also some enzymes which their bodies’ make that we have no idea on their uses.”

In the end, scanner was a scanner, not a “Magical Analyzer 9000.” Without dedicated scientists and shit tonne of data, there was nothing much that could be done.

The few days afterwards were peaceful. Shit, Shave, Shower, train and play games for data. There wasn’t much to do this far out from civilization. The most interesting thing would be the ruins which Josse found at the south east. Josse’s expert opinion was that ruins were in that state due both artificial and natural means. Due time and hostile forces. Clearly, someone had tried to build a fort or a town there, only to be met with hostilities.

Another thing was the feeling the training had given me. Statistically, I knew that my power had gone up by only about 25 or so percent on average, but somehow I could feel my strength bubbling over. I felt as if I could punch and elephant to death with my bare hands, as if there wasn’t much that could stand on my way.

That wasn’t the weird part. It wasn’t even the second weirdest for me. After all, Galdwin had already told me that this would happen. The weirdest was the hormones, or lack thereof. My implants, which were monitoring my brain activity 24/7, claimed that my hormones were functioning normal. Such sudden changes in mood not being due to chemicals were the weirdest part, indeed. Second thing was the speed of improvement. From what little I had learned, while constantly taking Tier 0 cores, the ones lowly creatures such as goblins had, it would take at least 5 years to reach Tier 1. But it took me 3 days to reach the peak of Tier 0. Still, this was not too weird, as for one, my body was literally full of mana, and for second, it was too strong. A bit stronger than the elf’s, who was a Tier 2. It should be normal for these variables to affect the normal course of things.

After 2 more hours of training, I was lying in the medical scanner. I could feel it, and my body was burning. I could feel the mana. It was trying to gently warp my body, change it for the better. It was using up the mana inside of me at a ridiculous pace, as if it was a bucket with a hole. Yet it was no bucket, but a swimming pool. It was barely making a dent.

In the end, it took 4 hours of pain and grit teeth to level up. The process took a lot out of me, leaving me asleep in the scanner bed.

. . . . .

“Err, Boss? You should wake up…”

Physically, I was feeling a lot better when I woke up on the evening of the next day. If you didn’t count the slight woozy feeling, as if my brain and body was operating at different speeds.

“Alright, I am up. I think it might be better to get a sensory deprivation tank if we can. I haven’t slept peacefully even 3 times this week. Fantasy world be damned, I haven’t had it this bad since the Academy. I am going to get grumpy at this rate.”

“Lloyd, 6 boats are coming down the river. ETA 3.5 hours.”

Now, that would wake up even the sleepiest people, including me.

Monk_Origins

I wonder how the pacing of the story is going. On one hand, in just 32 pages all of this has happened, which makes me think it's fine, but one the other hand, a trending story on RR has the character go through death, transportation, choosing a back story, powering up to a reasonable level, and even damned tournament arc in less than a 3rd as many pages. Did I mention that it was trending already?

So, any thoughts? Is the story to slow? fast? or perhaps just fine?