Chapter 10

  Training Montage!

  Dun de de, dun de de, dun de de, dun de de,

  Dun de de, dun de de, dun de de, dun de de,

  Dun de de, dun de de, dun de de, dun de de,

  Dun de de, dun de de, dun de de, dun de de.

  _, _, _, _,

  Dun, Dun dun, Dun, Dun dun doon,

  _, _, _, _,

  Dun, Dun dun, Dun, Dun dun doon.

  In Elijah’s mind, he looked exactly like the Italian Stallion as he trained his arse off. He was a fan of the iconic character. Growing up in the countryside, technology was decades behind the rest of the world. Elijah still had a video player at home. That may have also been because of his family's relative poverty, but that didn’t matter to him. He had grown up with a bevy of classics other kids his age had never heard of.

  Sweat poured off his naked brow, evaporating in the heat of the ever-present sun. Dying to that monster had been… unpleasant, but when he respawned, it went right back to being a tree. So long as he kept his distance, there was nothing to worry about. So that’s what he did; he ran down the endless, gentle hill into the distance, away from the monster.

  He found out, after many gruelling hours under the summer sun, that the world wasn’t actually endless. At some point, he knew not when, it looped around on itself, putting him back where he started.

  This did at least mean he couldn't get lost, but he did have to be careful to always avoid the trees.

  Running, as an exercise, wasn’t producing much fruit. Apparently, when a stat reached the first Threshold, it was exponentially harder to train. Where Elijah had been able to earn several points in Endurance during his time in the Slime Trial, he hadn’t yet earned one here. That didn’t matter. It was still a great way to start his routine, and it gave him a goal: get all his Attributes above 10 before moving on.

  The teen rested beside his heather mattress, hands on his knees, sucking down breath. He had passed it thirty times which meant he was done running for the day. Once he recomposed himself, the next thing he needed was water.

  So far, he only had two ways of getting it. Gather as much water mana as there was in the dry air, make his mana imitate water mana, and let the water mana motes feed off it to produce water.

  There were a few problems with this. First, the water mana motes always took more mana than he would like. It took time to concentrate on the mana in his body and change its form. During that time, the mana, with no self control, would invariably drain him dry, leaving the lad with a splitting headache; not the best thing after a long run.

  The second method required he first take the mana into himself. To do this, he had been evacuating his own mana, and the blood that carried it, out of a region, say his arm, before letting the sparse water mana diffuse into the void. Then he would control it and expel it as a ball of water.

  The biggest problem was time. In this arid arena, it took a while to build up water mana to create enough of liquid to quench his thirst. This, in turn, led to excruciating pain as he watched his arm turn funny colours from the lack of oxygen.

  There had to be a better way. His best technique was copied from a monster, and designed for its physiology.

  After recovering from running or “Endurance training,” as he called it, Elijah began his next attempt at a constructive exercise, learning to backflip. It had really embarrassed the young man that he hadn’t been able to. He was determined to change that.

  In an attempt to increase his Agility, Elijah was half flipping onto his heather mattress. It was slow and painful, but he was approaching something close to his goal. While definitely not the best way to learn, he didn’t know any better. Sometimes, something was better than nothing, another pearl of wisdom his grandfather had shared.

  Agility had already passed the first Threshold however and did not appear to be leveling up any time soon. Once the young man thought he had made enough progress, or was too sore to continue, he moved onto the next exercise.

  Wisdom was his lowest stat and he had been scratching his head in an attempt to find some way to train it. After the more physically demanding exercises were finished, Elijah spent at least an hour meditating on Wisdom. After more than a week of this routine, he finally came to a conclusion.

  With some annoyance, he admitted to himself, there was none. Wisdom could only be gained through experience and not manufactured. When he was sure of his conclusion, he gave up on the pointless exercise.

  Wisdom +1

  Well, that was both frustrating and rewarding. Though it did prove he was wrong, which was invaluable information to have. Apparently spending enough time contemplating something, he could improve the Attribute. Elijah decided to take time to meditate on his issues whenever he could going forward.

  He dismissed the mixed emotions the unexpected success had brought about and moved on to the next exercise in his ‘daily’ routine.

  Intelligence was at 9, only a point away from reaching the Threshold. For however long the lad had been training, he didn’t know, as time was difficult to track in this timeless place, he had been challenging himself to solve mathematical questions in an attempt to increase his Intelligence.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  He sat, cross-legged, in front of his cleared section of dirt, stick in hand. He would warm up with factorisation. After he had separated a cubic equation into its factor, next came integration. Then trigonometry. Then expressions of imaginary numbers. Then matrices. And finally a unique problem, which he would construct for himself each day.

  Today’s problem:

  Four points are chosen at random on the surface of a sphere. What is the probability that the centre of the sphere lies inside the tetrahedron whose vertices are at the four points? (It is understood that each point is independently chosen relative to a uniform distribution on the sphere.)

  This was a head scratcher. It took him nearly three hours. But when he finally got it, the rush of dopamine was only rivalled by the second one that came when a new notification appeared

  Intelligence + 1

  New Threshold Met!

  You have reached 10 in Intelligence! This would be the cap for Race: Elijah, but the System allows you to push beyond your limits! Having reached the first Threshold, you are now smarter; calculations that would have normally taken minutes can be done in seconds. Intelligence can no longer drop below 10.

  “Woo Hoo!” Elijah cheered. He had finally done it, and with a doozy of a problem to boot! It took a good few moments for him to get down from his intellectual high. He didn’t feel any different, but when he tried to divide 3456 by 17 and instantly estimated 203.3, he knew something had changed.

  With confidence, Elijah started his Dexterity exercises. The young man assumed the stat had started high because of his musical ability, but without a piano or guitar to practice on, this wasn’t a valid way forward.

  Instead, he had taken to learning finger tricks. The teen had once been mesmerised by a friend of his who was able to flip a pen over their thumb absentmindedly in class. Elijah had taught himself this trick but had not stopped there. By this point, he could flip one on each hand whilst juggling a third between his fingers.

  It wasn’t enough. No more stat points were earned that day, despite Elijah’s efforts. He was barely awake by the time he went to sleep. Despite his success, he was disappointed that he hadn’t managed to get the point in Dexterity.

  The next day, he woke up and started all over again. When he got hungry, he would eat bilberries and blackberries until his body needed more, then feed himself to the TreeAnt.

  His routine did not include Vitality as the only way he could think to train that would be excessively painful, and he had a feeling there would be ample opportunities to face such conditions in the future.

  It took a further three weeks of relentless effort, but at the end, Elijah received a notification that made it all worth it.

  Dexterity + 1

  New Threshold Met!

  You have reached 10 in Dexterity! This would be the cap for Race: Elijah, but the System allows you to push beyond your limits! Having reached the first Threshold, you are now more dexterous; movements that would have been beyond you are now trivialised. Dexterity can no longer drop below 10.

  Ten sticks whirled around the boy’s fingers without him having to spare them any mind. This was power! This was also more than enough training. Elijah was sick of it. From here on out, unless an unpassable opportunity presented itself, he would get all of his stats from Evolutions.

  With that thought in mind, it was time to kill a TreeAnt!

  ????

  Wood creaked with the wind. Not that which travelled the skies; oddly, there was none in this stagnant trial. No, the wind that moved this tree came from beneath. With each breath the sleeping guardian took, there were slight movements in the bark.

  It was subtle, incredibly so. Elijah had taken hours to realise there was any movement at all, but once he had seen it, he couldn’t unsee it. After spending so long in this Trial, spotting which tree held a monstrous secret beneath its roots was trivial.

  He swaggered over with nonchalance. Each time Elijah had sacrificed himself to the creature, he had tried to learn something new to aid him in this fight. Sneaking up on this thing was impossible. As soon as he came within six feet of the monster, it would react, no matter what.

  Since stealth didn’t work, the young man didn’t even try. He stamped a foot into range and then immediately jumped back.

  The TreeAnt woke up furious, as usual, and, as usual, attempted to smite the young man with an immediate attack. Lunging its back legs out of the earth, it was able to slam the entire trunk down on the ground, exactly where Elijah had stamped his foot.

  Elijah was already behind the beast. Though this opening attack was powerful, even with his increased stats, it would have turned the teen into paste; it had one major floor: it left the monster’s rear wide open.

  Using his newfound Strength, the young man slammed a sharpened rock into the gap in the carapace that marked the joint between the TreeAnt’s back leg and its abdomen. The creature thrashed in pain, but Elijah was able to both evade and snake in a kick that cemented his makeshift chisel in the joint with his recently acquired Agility.

  The monster rocked back, pulling the tree up right, then roared in pain as the extra weight caused its already injured appendage to snap clean off. In anger, its ant-head spat acid towards its rear. No one was there; Elijah had already circled around for another attack.

  With its head turned about like so, now was the perfect time to strike. Elijah stood above the exposed monster and withdrew the King’s sword, which immediately slid from his under-Attributed grasp, straight through the ant’s head, killing it instantly.

  Elijah stored away the weapon, dusting off his hands in triumph. Lovely jubbly. That was quick and easy, exactly how the young man liked his fights.

  …

  Only Elijah’s increased Intelligence saved him from dying a gruesome death… again. For the first time in the fight, the tree moved on its own, whipping a razor-sharp branch towards the teen's head. In the split second he had to react, he was able to figure out two things.

  First, the trajectory of the attack, allowing him to throw himself aside in the nick of time. The second thing he figured out was what the hell was going on. In milliseconds he was able to recall the description of the TreeAnt given to him by Identify. The Ant was only a bonded guardian into which the TreeAnt could place its consciousness. That is to say, the monster had returned its mind to the Tree now that the Ant was dead.

  Elijah caught flashing glimpses of the monster through his tumbling arms and legs as he rolled away. Three slits had opened up on the tree’s trunk. Two revealed wicked red eyes filled with murderous fury and grief, whilst the third unveiled a mouth filled with wooden, spiky teeth.

  It screamed. An ear-splitting sound that pierced the air. Roots rose like vipers from the ground. Elijah thought he was out of range, but he clearly wasn’t. He had been caught in the centre of a maelstrom of thrashing white death.

  Resolve filled his eyes as his agile dance barely preserved his life. Elijah was wrong; the fight wasn’t over; he had just started the second phase!

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