[Chapter 31: Muscle quest]

For the past week or so I’ve been leveling a great deal of skills, old and new alike. They’re sure to bring up my capabilities drastically. But despite my great number of skills, I can’t help but feel like I’m lagging behind when it comes to pure stats.

If I wanted to get stats fast I could always level up a couple of times like before. But after last time with the goblins I decided to lay off fighting monsters for a while to shore up on the countless weaknesses I learned I had. No, that was never an option.

The solution is simple, I need exercise to get my stats up. Especially since in many novels gaining stats through exercise gets harder the higher your stats are, making it important to get as much as you can early. That seems to somewhat apply here, but I think it’s mitigated somewhat by the stat improvements being skills and as such should be limited somewhat if skills cap at level 10 like I believe they do. All evidence points to me being fine, but if not… well that’s for future me to deal with.

Back to the skills, my physical skills given me stats when I level them by doing exercise related to the stat, or maybe it levels as I grow physical stronger from the exercise, either way doesn’t matter, I do the exercise and I get the stats. I’ve already been doing the hundred sit-ups, push-ups, and squats with a long run alongside my normal day-to-day stuff, but obviously I need to up my ante. I mean look at them, two at level 3, the rest at level 2, unacceptable. Even assuming most of them are closer to the next level than not they are still comedically low for something as important as stats. Time for a change, no more fancy experiments for a while, the last two stats are a lost cause, but the physical stats are doable, I’ve got a forest, I’ve got healing magic, let’s get swole.

My plan is as simple as it will hopefully be effective, I walk out into the forest eyes peeled. It takes a while but I find what I’m looking for, a big rock, bigger than my axe and hammer combined. Squatting down, I wrap my arms around the miniature boulder. Taking extra care to lift with my legs, while magic can probably fix back problems I’d rather not have deal with having them till my magic gets to the point that it can do that, because I am not going out to find a healer because that would inevitably get ME WRAPPED UP IN SOMETHING STUPID! It is quite heavy and nearly as unwieldy.

So carrying the rock I take a deep breath, preparing myself, but first I have to drag it back to the river. Once there, with a slight bought of hesitation before I begin barreling down the riverbank, running at the fastest I can while holding the rock. My breath grows more and more frantic with every passing second, my running turned ragged near-instantly, only my level granted stats allowing for this to be possible at all. Within minutes I’m too exhausted to continue, the rock falling out of my hands and barely missing my feet by a couple of inches.

 Gasping for air I sit on the rock, an unintended side benefit, waiting for some of the exhaustion to go away. And when my breathing grew to resemble normal, I picked up the rock once more and began running again.

And for a while this became my life, running with the rock for everything I’ve got. It’s at times like this that remind me exactly why I enjoy the thought of being able to live completely by myself so much. Because if anyone saw what I was doing they’d probably either laugh at how stupid I look or think I’m dying. By the end of the first day I realized that I probably wasn’t going to be getting any running skill from this.

By the second day I saw my first bit of progress, a decent amount into the day of doing little other than my crazy training plan.

[Skill level increased]

[Strong arms| lv: 4]

[+4 str]

The third day was rather dull a sort of boring nature to the entire thing, that I luckily couldn’t comprehend all that well due to nearly keeling over from exhaustion for most of the day. Even with all the practice, holding the stone and running takes most of my concentration to maintain.

Day four, well you know how on the first day I nearly dropped the rock on my foot…

[Skill level increased]

[Healing magic| lv: 2]

[Control Healing magic with 20% efficiency]

And without all the crazy magic experiments, it left me with plenty of time just meditate and give that mana straight to my core.

[Skill level increased]

[Basic mana core| lv: 5]

[Mp is increased by 25%]

With what happened on day four I figured that it was a good idea to spend day five finding a way to decrease the physical strain that my training puts me under, I don’t want to decrease the load or anything, but feeling like every organ involved is attempting to commit mutiny via immolation can distract me and cause me to perform certain stupid mistakes. Scouring my memories for any potential solutions, I remembered a story where breathing right granted special stamina granting properties, and while I don’t expect it to give me the power of the sun, it was at least partially based in fact, real athletes control their breathing I believe? Testing the theory, I took my exercises a bit slower so that I could practice different ways of breathing in the hopes of finding one that works. It took the entire day, greatly lowering the overall benefit of the exercise while trying, but success was found.

[Obtained skill]

[Breathing| lv: 1]

[Stamina consumption from physical acts are decreased by 2%]

A small increase, but anything’s welcome. And with what I’m doing I doubt it will stay at level 1 for long.

On day six I recommitted fully to my exercising, with breathing in form, deep breaths through the chest, I went at full speed, though according to my skills that grew.

[Skill level increased]

[Swift legs| lv: 3]

[+3 agi]

Day seven saw no skills level up, but with the introduction of breathing my running became easier as my lungs take longer to feel like they’re on fire.

The seventh day should have heralded the end of this little endeavor, but I felt with the gains I was getting I felt like going on for a few days more.

[Skill level increased]

[Tough body| lv: 4]

[+4 end]

Day eight brought no increases to my physical skills, but my continued practice of weapons brought up one I wasn’t expecting but was very pleasantly surprised with.

[Skill level increased]

[Intermediate sword proficiency| lv: 6]

[When using a sword damage is increased by 48% crit damage by 12% and crit chance by 16%]

Day nine proved my point on breathing’s level true as well as another increase of str.

[Skill level increased]

[Breathing| lv: 2]

[Stamina consumption from physical acts are decreased by 4%]

[Skill level increased]

[Strong arms| lv: 5]

[+5 str]

On day ten I began to pick up the pace as my new stats made it easier to keep up.

Day eleven was quite fruitful when it came to skill levels.

[A Skill has evolved]

[Intermediate bow proficiency| lv: 1]

[When using a bow accuracy is increased by 12% damage by 11% and crit chance by 11%]

[Skill level increased]

[Basic mana core| lv: 6]

[Mp is increased by 30%]

[Skill level increased]

[Basic mana reinforcement| lv: 3]

[Str, Agi, and defense by 10X% with X=Int*0.3]

[Skill level increased]

[Swift legs| lv: 4]

[+4 agi]

Day twelve gave nothing skill wise, but I kept at it, figuring that I’ll stop at the end of the second week.

Day thirteen, the second to last day of this crazy training session, it’s still not easy to keep doing this, just more manageable. I don’t think I would be able to do it if I wasn’t physically seeing the numbers go up, but I can, and that gives me the will to do this.

[Skill level increased]

[Tough body| lv: 5]

[+5 end]

Day fourteen, the last day, I went all out for this one. I pushed myself like I never did before knowing that the end was in sight. And I’m glad I did.

[Skill level increased]

[Strong arms| lv: 6]

[+6 str]

It was long and kind of tedious but looking at the increase in my stats and skills tells me that it was worth it.

Oakpoke

Recently this series hit 10,000 views, I don’t know what that means, but it’s still a cause for celebration.

To all the people that read and supported me this far, I just want to say thank you.

Hopefully I’ll continue to create a series you all can enjoy.