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/Later.../
/Splash!/
"AHHH… Finally some respite." Dale said as he relaxed in the bathtub, letting his head submerge in the hot water
He checked the in-game time through his System Menu as he looked at the bubbles rise.
'Two weeks have passed… And in a few hours, the 2-week growth period will come to an end and the Villagers will return to normal.'
'The Villagers grew, learned new things, developed techniques, improved themselves…'
'Some got new Classes, others simply grew further down their own paths, others did not change much, but their mentality improved.'
'Some straight out transformed...'
'Resko has changed, hopefully for the better, but despite it all, I can never forget what my goal is...'
/Splash!/
Dale breathed in a large breath of fresh air.
"It's hard to believe how much this changed… From the start, I underestimated the effects my actions have brought this place."
"The 2 weeks of intensive training plus the blessing of a God…"
'The players have also somewhat gotten used to their lives here in Resko and have started to explore further outside… With mixed success.'
'Most cannot dive into the forest due to how dangerous it is, so the majority choose to go to the desert, as it was the sole area they could explore.'
'But unfortunately, the desert is mostly empty, and they do not have the time or the resources to explore it.'
'The same can be said to me, despite me knowing that there is something there.'
'After all, some of the mines I was tasked with exploring are now located in the desert, because at the time, that wasn't a fucking sea of sand.'
'And in there, if the players don't die of boredom, they'll die from some strange desert monster or abnormal condition such as dehydration.'
'Albeit scarce, if you're unlucky to meet anything, you can be 95% sure it'll have shown itself because it considers you dinner.'
'In the Desert, beasts will only appear to those they deem weaker than themselves, it's their surviving tactic, and this makes things extremely annoying.'
'So the last option would be to follow the only roads available, or to walk in the line between the forest and the desert and see what they can find…'
'If you follow the street long enough, you'd eventually go somewhere, right?'
'Unfortunately, the path eventually leads to the desert, vanishing in the sands...'
"However, due to this, there has been a rise in PKs, in other words, Players killers, or whatever you want to call them."
"I like the term 'Loot Pigs' as they drop more loot when I kill them." Dale said with a small smile as he thought of the many players he killed over the last few days
The situation within Resko was very complicated, to say the least...
"People can be complex, and at the same time simple."
"The players are between a rock and a hard place, those being the Forest and the Desert."
"And when give these players a path, regardless of the situation, someone will try to make use of this by waiting there..."
'Such is simple Human nature.'
"I'm only doing my part in making the world a better place..."
'But... Just like them, it's time…'
"I need to explore outside."
'Everything's changed… Starting tomorrow, I'll seek out my destiny outside.'
'The Village will be completely fine without me, despite my growth these past 2 weeks, I was still outclassed by several others…'
'They are more than capable of going on without me, after all, they did so for a century.'
"Speaking of them, I'll need to visit some people before I go…"
After thinking for a little longer, Dale opened his Status to take a better look at it.
"A new Skill, and a new Effect, great."
'It's getting quite big… And my Skill Slots are almost at the limit. It may come a time when I'll have to choose whether to pass one on or switch them.'
"Apart from the people that decided to start with a random character, everyone has 10 Skill Slots."
"Once you reach the maximum value, you can still receive Skills, but they'll be sent towards a special storage otherwise inaccessible."
'At any point in time, you can switch your Skills, but the higher their Level and rarity, the higher the cost, this can only be done at the Church.'
'So in a sense, you could say everyone can have more than 10 Skills, but if it's difficult to maximize one, what to say of over 10...'
'Having several Skill loadouts is nothing but a pipe dream, even if you have loads of money.'
'I'm lucky that so far, most techniques I learned are being absorbed into Spear Technique, hence my Status isn't full of weaker combat Skills.'
"Thanks to that, or perhaps due to my diligent training, Spear Technique went from 4-Star to 5-Star within those 2 weeks, I consider this a massive growth and I am very satisfied."
'This growth is also extreme when compared to most players, as in their case, raising their Skills seems different from HardCore players, albeit there is no way to actively prove that.'
'Players seem to be able to grow their Skills through severe repetition, but HardCore players seem a bit more limited in that regard.'
'In any case, 5-Star is the Average of the Skills you'd receive from equipping a Unique Item, although my combat sense is still being developed, it still speaks leagues of my progress.'
'Same goes for Mana Conduction and Close quarters Combat, they grew by half a Star and that's enough for me.'
"Of my two Mental Skills, one grew up by a star while the other one didn't grow at all."
'It's mostly due to the fact that Fighting Spirit is an Active Skill, while Stable Emotions is just a Passive, so it's very hard to grow unless I'm constantly stressed or in mentally taxing scenarios.'
'Not really ideal.'
'And finally, to end this talk about Skills, apart from Miasma Immunity, all of my Skills increased by 0.5.'
'Spatial Awareness, Vital Heart, and Confluence…'
'Spatial Awareness has become vital to me, if I can't properly feel the distance between my spear and my enemy, half of the fight is already lost.'
'It is also slowly becoming something akin to a Sixth sense, allowing me to feel my surroundings instead of watching them... the problem is that I have no idea how to train it.'
'Putting a blindfold on? That might work, but it feels a bit... Odd, I'll try though, perhaps raise the issue to Testros and the others?'
'Confluence on the hand is really hard to Level up, despite me using it every time I can.'
'I especially like to use it when I'm reading, I don't need to move much, and it normally works as long as I stay very very still...'
'When the Skill rose to 0.5 Star, I was even capable of turning book pages, allowing me to read while sitting on a chair.'
'Even then, I can't see when I'll be able to raise it to 1 Star... As even moving just a bit deactivates it, so apart from studying, I can't really use it anywhere.'
'I normally use it when I log off, but I also use it when I need to wait, such as sitting on a chair waiting for Yumi to finish brewing a potion, there isn't really a reason to not use it.'
'The Skill consumes 0 Mana, on the contrary, it helps me recover, so not using it every time is a waste, even if only for a short burst of time.'
'Though as I noticed before, I won't gain anything from using it for less than at least an hour, though I'm under the expectation I'll at least gain some Skill proficiency.'
'As for Vital Heart... It's difficult to say, I feel that using it every day is a waste, but it has some effect, it did grow after all.'
'The Skill has an extremely long cooldown, it was a Skill that delays my death, so I was always hesitant of using it, but for the sake of growing it, I always used it around lunchtime.'
'Although I don't know what the effects of such growth are, I had no opportunities to test it yet, and hopefully, I won't have...'
'Shit, I raised a flag...'
"Cough... As for Miasma Immunity… The reason it grew so much was…"
Dale took out a small vial from his inventory, it was a transparent glass casing, and it contained a purple liquid that was releasing a black fume…
[Miasma Concentrate
Effects…]
It was a vial of Miasma… But why would Dale have such a dangerous substance?!
"My greatest idea to date… Or worse."
"In the first place, I always lacked the means to increase my Skill and that was, exposure to Miasma..."
'After the Catacombs were drained, apart from the Fifth floor that I wasn't very keen on approaching, I couldn't really train my Resistance Skill anywhere due to how high my Constitution was.'
'Not to say the waste of time that was staying in the Catacombs... And risky.'
'So I thought, if I couldn't raise this Skill through the normal way, then I would make myself one.'
'Despite my willingness, I went to the Catacombs and collected many vials of Miasma on the 5th floor, even now, most of it had yet to wash away, remaining in small puddles through the area.'
'Then, I returned to the surface where it was safe and used this Miasma to… Wash.'
'It worked very well, albeit painful, it worked, it was like… Hot water, although it didn't burn.'
'The problem came when someone else learned what I was doing… And this bastard spread it to the village, and eventually… It reached Yumi's ears.'
'Let's not talk about the scold I received, I'm still embarrassed...'
'Instead, I'll go directly to the help she gave me by concocting these.'
"Every day, I'll pour a single drop of this on my chest, and wait... Any more and I may be incapacitated for a few hours…"
"This is, after all, a heavily concentrated dose of Miasma, it is even denser than the liquid I almost drank when I went to the Catacombs for the first time."
'My body will fight the corruption of the Miasma, and this will result in the growth of the Skill, the higher it becomes, the more droplets I'll ad over time until I can just drink this vial entirely, at that time, I'll be immune to this shit, giving me a greater edge to when the time comes to face off against whatever is down there.'
'It works and is relatively safe as I could do many things to help my body fight it, just in the small chance something goes wrong.'
"Nevertheless, I have a plan to potentially Evolve this Skill… But that's for later."
/Splash…/
Dale got up from the bathtub, grabbing a small soap bar nearby to scrub himself with.
"Damn smell of blood, it's always so hard to scrub it off!"
...
/Splash!/
After cleaning his body, he returned to his bathtub to relax.
"My Skills weren't the only thing that changed…"
'My level increased and I'm almost 40 now, way ahead of the player average and the highest official Player that is just over Level 30 now.'
'Grandfather is about Level 28, leveling once every 2 or so days...'
'As expected, Leveling will become harder and harder as one's strength rises, and leveling methods are constantly being switched for faster and more efficient ways.'
'So much so the previous contender for highest Level has fallen, now standing at the 5th position… He probably stuck with a single method, only to realize too late that doing so is stupid.'
'Sometimes, Leveling can become slower, because players could prioritize other things over simple XP gain, though for the top level players, they'll likely farm gold and items in order to raise their Levels faster later...'
'That player decided to stick with a single area and farm nonstop, but when he realized he wasn't farming as efficiently as before, those that were behind him had already farmed items and skills, now being strong enough to raid better areas...'
"My stats have increased greatly, but I still lack considerably."
'I still remember, the basic Strength requirement to use Caladgolg is 300, I have about half of that.'
'But I'll reach it eventually, the harder I work out, the lower my Level will have to be.'
'And that is shown clearly on my Stats:'
[... Physical Training -> Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity +3…]
"After swinging my sword every day hundreds of times, this was the result, it may look small, but over time, this will accumulate and eventually become several Levels' worth of Stats."
'I can even imagine, the day I become Level 100, I would have at least 50-70 bonus Stats solely from training, which is nothing to scoff at.'
'That's why I have never skipped the morning training.'
"And what I gained today… The Mark."
'It's definitely tied to Tina, and I would even say it's the main reward for her, "Questline", it may very well be the questline itself...'
'But it remains to be seen how much it can grow, or if it can even give me something other than simple stats.'
"There is also the Skill, but I'll ask Tina directly."
"Oh, I almost forgot..."
[... Class: Alma Conqueror 1.7%...]
"I don't know what this means, it gives me zero to no changes, at least, I don't feel them."
'If after 2 weeks of meditation, it has grown by 1.7%, even if I were to spend my entire time doing so, it wouldn't have surpassed 5%, although we might've been very close to that value.'
'If I follow these numbers, with me meditating 24/7, after repeating this 20 times, two weeks of meditation, I would reach about 100%, and that would be a total of 40 weeks, almost a year of doing nothing but meditation.'
'Besides, there's no guarantee it'll simply grow at the same rate until then... Worst comes to worst, I would have to meditate for two entire years, perhaps more...'
'The progress bar may even stop growing for all I know.'
'I may be doing something wrong, but figuring that out isn't on my list of priorities right now...'
'In fact, there may even be an answer to it out there...'
"Perhaps with the very cult that created the term, Alma Conqueror?"
'It's a lot to think...'
Dale enjoyed the rest of his bath and left after he made sure he wasn't smelling blood anymore.
With a smile, he put on a fresh new set of clothes and left the bathroom.
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Notes
