SnowRabbitInnkeeper

In case it gets confusing the pink lettering is the boost from [Freya's Own], the gold is [Wandering Queen]'s static bonus, the salmon is the bonus from being close to Arthur, and the Cyan is from [Arcane Gunslinger]. These are used to highlight the bonuses in each [Title]'s description as well.

Samantha's PoV

It’d been about three weeks since the awakening, as some of the group had been calling it. Arthur put Dean and Lilah in charge of training. The evil man had devised an obstacle course from hell, and once people could handle the course, Lilah began moving stuff around and throwing stuff at us, and giving us makeshift satchels full of rocks.

At least the kids enjoyed it, especially since their stats seemed to grow even faster, though not quite catching up to their parents, they felt like they had superpowers. They would sprint through their slightly smaller course with the boundless energy that only kids have, and when they finally got tired, they acted like mini Lilahs for those still running. A number of them had gained a [Throwing] skill.

When I asked how he came up with the idea, he said he started with running for endurance training, and then thought of how to train other ‘physical stats’, as we had dubbed the stats on the left side of the block, and realized the obvious choice was an obstacle course. Running would train Endurance, along with Strength and Agility to a lesser degree, the obstacles would force you to jump, dive, and swerve around them, which would help with Endurance training as that was more difficult than just running, but it also trained Strength and Agility much more efficiently. Lilah justified the projectiles as Constitution and Vitality training, since you had to rely on your senses to notice if they were coming your way, and then think fast enough to dodge. I think she stumbled into that, and was just bored before that. Luckily, Arthur made her give us at least a whisper of notice, although it was more to train our senses further than anything. Getting to do the same to the two of them when they trained was my only consolation.

Respite came in different forms of meditation to train our Clarity, Will, and Attunement. The sessions were led by those with magic or qi based [Classes], such as myself. We had an advantage of being more aware of these fantastical energies, and so we quickly figured out what works. Though, we obviously didn’t anything close to a perfect technique for any of the stats, since we were constantly finding improvements. Since these sessions were right after physical training, it wasn’t uncommon for you to come out of your meditation with a Vitality increase. In fact, although I hate to admit it, the rest meditation provided was better for increasing Vitality than whatever stat the meditation was supposed to raise.

Robert, a painter and guild member back on Earth, had [Classes] based around painting with mana to cast spells and enchant stuff. When he was testing his [Class] [Skills], he found that painting more details increased his Dexterity, and so he led drawing classes using sharpened sticks and berry juice on the cave floor. Those with crafting [Classes] compatible with bushcraft found something similar when doing their work, and so those who found the drawing classes too easy switched to practicing bushcraft to train Dexterity.

On the topic of berries and bushcraft, we had been sending scouting parties out to forage and get water. It was also in the hopes of a Wisdom increase, since the stat is closely tied to nature in the lore. Each group had at least one person with a [Skill] similar to an identify or appraisal [Skill] common in isekai stories. Until about a week in, their [Skills] were able to tell them what was poisonous, but not how poisonous. After we could tell what was survivable, we started to eat some of the less dangerous stuff, both to save the safe stuff for emergencies, and to train Constitution. Daniel, one of my husband’s soldiers, gained the first [Poison Resistance] skill not long after.

I hosted lore tutoring sessions toward the end of the day that I had started in hopes of better preparing those unfamiliar with V.o.V. for what may be out there, but they had only gotten more popular once one of the children reported a notification about an Intelligence increase.

The amount of time spent on what activity differed for each person, as each person’s [Classes] focused on different stats, but everyone did a little bit of everything at least. Outside of what became known as the ‘stat block’, people did whatever they could think of to train their skills without killing anything, as the stat increase from leveling could’ve affected their stat gain from training. Unfortunately, no one’s stats had increased since yesterday. We figured that our stats only increased as much as they did because we just arrived.

Today, we will be going on our first hunt. I looked around the group assembled for the hunt. The group was made of Pvt. Thompson, Pvt. Decker, who was now a forest elf, Dean, Arthur, Lilah, now a gnome, and me. Of course Ember an Odin would also be joining us. They’d already grown a fair bit, and Arthur had been training them by having them run the obstacle course with him and by playing various games. I checked my status page one last time before we set out.

(Awakening)

(Now, 3 ½ weeks later)

My stats had made good progress in the time frame, but I regret the stats that could’ve been gained if we had more efficient training methods. My [Teacher] [Profession] also ranked up. It must have been from leading the tutoring and meditation sessions. The other noticeable change was my skills. Even though I put a little less time in them since I focused more on stats outside of the required training time, my skills had leveled more than what most of the others reported, on top of the new skills the stat training resulted in for us all. The 15% boost from [Wandering Queen] really put in work.

Arthur had speculated that our [Titles] worked somewhat similarly to the king and queen in chess. The [Primary Title] gives a boost to their troops, and the [Primary Title]’s death would likely result in total loss against an enemy with a similar loss, making him a major object of protection, like the king. Meanwhile, my [Secondary Title] is further boosted by the [Primary Title], and focuses on self buffs, making me a powerhouse, like the queen. I was inclined to agree. Just looking at what was visible through the Status page, the 25% effect increase makes a massive difference.

I was damn ready for this hunt. A scouting party had climbed the mountain earlier today, and spotted a long winding break in the trees they think is a river. It’s likely the source of the stream we had been collecting water from. It will be a gathering point for creatures we can hunt, but more importantly, it’s our best bet at finding civilization.

The hunting group strode out of the cave unimpeded. Once we had started increasing our Strength, we realized the makeshift barricade at the cave’s entrance wasn’t protecting us from anything, and was only able to give us brief warning if something broke it. Because of this, it had been decided to only put it up at night.

We trudged through the jungle on one of the trails that had been cut over the past few weeks. It wasn’t long, but every foot of unimpeded travel was a blessing when a quarter of the vegetation in this jungle had an effect like poison ivy that was as bad or worse. That another quarter was straight deadly was just another reminder of how unfriendly this jungle was.

“Remember everyone, our goal is to find civilization, or to get our levels up by one in each [Class], whichever happens first. We need to raise our levels just once to see if it raises the training limit, but if we find friendly civilization, they can answer all our questions. We’ll move at this pace towards the river until we can hear the water running. Once we can hear it, we’ll slow down and sneak along until we can identify the path it takes. After that, we’ll travel up river until we accomplish one of the objectives. Mark the trees along the way so that we can take this path later,” Arthur spoke with a serious expression. Watching him in his capacity as a soldier was still very new to me. It was novel, and I felt like I was seeing an entirely different Arthur. I would be lying if I said the difference wasn’t a little scary, but there were also… other, feelings mixed in. Like appreciation, security, and trust, obviously. Certainly nothing else. Anyway, it was my turn to speak.

“Let me know if you spot anything so I can use [Observation] on it. Wouldn’t want to accidentally challenge a level 100 after all. They’ve been spotted by a couple other scouting parties. Most of them appeared herbivorous and non-aggressive, but they didn’t get to that level by being weak or letting predators kill them.” The reports also said that they were insanely beautiful, but that didn’t seem like something important right now. They’d probably heard it by now anyway.

We reached the end of the trail and Arthur stopped. “From here on out, we’re to stay silent. Only speak up when something’s coming at us. Use hand gestures for all other communication. Use your weapons to push vegetation away; you can level [Poison Resistance] when we’re safe at home.”

We tried, but it didn’t last long. Sure, we stayed silent, but within ten minutes, everyone had given up on avoiding everything but the most poisonous stuff, instead focusing on getting used to the constant itching. We didn’t find a monster under level 10 until we heard the rushing water of the river. Pvt. Decker was the one to spot it. We were so on edge, even those in front of him knew something was up when he stopped, just from the loss of his footsteps. He pointed up into the treetops, and I saw it. It was one of those birds that constantly had bloody beaks, like the one which had eaten that massive squirrel we had seen when we first got here. I used observation on it quickly.

[Blood Parrot lvl. 9]

I held up nine fingers. It was a little high, both because we didn’t want to put ourselves in too much danger, but also because we didn’t want to level up more than once for each [Class]. However, Arthur still gave us the go ahead, and I aimed my rifle. It was agreed I would take the first shot against anything off the ground since out of the ranged attackers in the hunting party, I had the smallest mana signature when I attacked, and only for a moment.

Although it’s faster and easier to use [Magic bullets] in a fight, I had loaded mundane ammunition into Smoke Shot before we left. I can only keep a magic bullet conjured for a couple minutes before they dissipate, and conjuring them increases the time my target has to detect my mana signature before I fire. However, a benefit of magic bullets is that they’re much quieter. To compensate, I chose to use [Wind Magic] to enchant my shot.

I covered my rifle with wind mana at the same time as I was enchanting the bullet, and pulled the trigger. The only sound was the crack of lead burying itself in two feet of wood. The parrot turned and tilted its head in time for almost all of its vision in its left eye to be taken up by a gray sphere. Then it had no vision, and I could see clean through its head, into the hole in the tree behind it. From me deciding on what mana to use to the bird dying spanned less than half a second. Dean was still raising his shield for the goddess’ sake!

[Magus Riflewoman Leveled Up!]

[Enchanting Markswoman Leveled Up!]

SnowRabbitInnkeeper

Does anyone know how to add a border in between table cells on Scribblehub?