All in all, last night was actually pretty good! Sure, sleeping on slightly uneven ground isn't that comfy, but it wasn't too bad. A little bit of healing would fix him right up.

His primary focus today would be to grind more strength. He could likely get two points today, but he'd need tons of protein in return and would need to start hunting, most likely, tomorrow. He didn't have all that much space in his backpack for lot's of food because everything else he brought.

Time to grind more strength! Yay....

...

At the thirty minute mark of exercise healing, healing magic leveled up and decided to stop for a bit. Thirty minutes wasn't that much and the healing magic helped but wasn't really quick, and he only used it once he would get sore enough. Exercise healing was effective in getting strength quickly as it helped to restore muscles. But one problem, it didn't restore stamina, but health. Invigoration and some healing spells could restore stamina and he knew one.

I can't believe I actually forgort about Energy Infusion! I mean, it's not the most efficient of spells... It should help but it's probably not worth it, maybe I could make a different stamina restoration spell? I have experience after all.

Health and stamina, like mana, was a form of energy held within living organisms. But they work different than you'd expect. You don't always die when HP hits zero, though that's what usually happens. The energies all in some degree act as a sort of metaphysical barrier of sorts. 

For example, let's say you have ten health and a tiny cut, just enough to bleed, makes you lose one health. Would ten of these cuts kill you? No, but they'd degrade the 'barrier' of health, leaving you weaker. The same principle applies with the other energies albeit to a lesser degree. Once your stamina hits zero you typically faint or lose health, nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand you do both, mana will do the same.

Skills and spells can manipulate these energies, and people can as well with enough practice. Many physical skills use a mixture of all energies with stamina being a majority, while spells all use mana, sometimes in combination with other energies.

Jackson's Walking Skill uses and manipulates stamina to make walking more efficient so he had a bit of experience manipulating it, but it was the walking skill so that bit of experience was just that, a bit. Unarmed combat was mostly him being a bored kid and punching air, he did have a few days worth of actual practice with it though, that quickly stopped though cause the little self defense training he got wasn't good because that place kinda sucked.

The spell energy Infusion was essentially a mana to stamina conversion spell, but was still inefficient and still relyed on energy in the body, albeit, to a lesser degree.

Maybe absorb stamina? No, that'd also be hard to learn and I'd need something to both practice and use it on. Why does magic have to be so complicated?

Eh, I'll go without for now, plain healing is good enough and I need to get back on working for my stength points. ...i could also just use it more often to make it more efficient

... 

Jackson sat down at the newly made fire with a book, some more beef jerky, and extra sore muscles.

Invigoration wasn't the best for healing, there were plenty of downsides, Invigoration healing was typically used to stabilize or just keep someone alive, all good healers learned it but it wasn't what people focus on, dark and light healing were what people focused on. Dark healing is for cleansing the body and light healing is for restoring it.

His healing was a compliment to what healing should be. And that was why he was in this state. Drop of life is a channelling skill, 2mp/s, of course you could modify the spell a bit but that's typically what the base of it is. Jackson typically used this in bursts so his mana could regen and because he never lost that much health to need to use it more. He didn't have high stats so using it in bursts was better. Of course with the low stats, little healing, and high cost, he would lose mana quick. But to actually use it more effectively you had to focus, which he didn't do to his full potential, so now, he was out.

All that aside, he still reaped the rewards.

...On a side note I should change my level up notifications, they're kinda gross right now. Haven't leveled this fast for a while to actually want to change them.

After a bit of mental magic Jackson changed the display.

Still both ugly and clunky it still worked better than four windows distracting him. They only existed in your minds eye in stressful moments but otherwise blocked your vision.

Jackson then just plain old pulled up his stats to see his progress

Still under first enhancement threshold. A while off mostly because of magic stats.

To make it worse his sub class barely gave any free stats because of the one preallocated stat it has on top of being a sub class.

This class also had reduced Exp gain from killing, which honestly wasn't that bad a trade off because you could level it up just by reading which Jackson was more than content with. 

The crackling of the fire did well to relax him. His sore muscles definetly in need of being less tense. 

Thankfully animals and most monsters in this forest will run at sight of fire

Jackson stretched and let out a yawn. 

That'd be scary, heh, a deer could probably give me a heart attack if it just walked over here with a fire burning, a wolf would be 1000% more heart attack inducing.

He looked down to the book in his hand

Only in storybooks.

...

Frick. I actually shot it, it actually hit! 

Jackson winced. 

Sorry little buddy... Need food too, I hope it was a quick as it seemed to me.

That poor rabbit looked so dang adorable Jackson teared up a bit, just a bit though. He knew adventurer work could get bloody, but he was determined. He picked the bunny up, tied it to a rope and held it, trying to both not break the arrow and not get blood all over himself. He did not want to deal with that stain.

He walked down to the river a bit excited from the new skill he got.

There was another skill he wanted but he could try later. Archery was pretty fun! It was really satisfying to hit a target, especially after so many misses. So many misses.

As he got the river he also got to work, he had to bleed the rabbit first so he took some rope and tossed it over the thick branches of an older tree. The rabbit was light, but not that light so he chose a bigger, older one. Then he tied the rabbits feet to the rope and hung it upside down. Then came the hard part, emotionally at least, it was easier than killing it though. He pulled out the arrow than prepared himself. He slit the rabbit's neck, and dang that's a lot of blood. He originally shot the rabbit in the neck so pulling the arrow out showed a... gruesome example, but this was a lot of blood. 

Jackson had other things he needed to do though. Like make a table from scratch, or at least a place to finish butchering the rabbit so a flat surface would also do. 

Jackson took his axe off his waist and sighed.

"This is going to take a while."