Everlasting Journey 4 Putting In That Work

"Ding! Swoos.h.!.+ Klang!"

Two blades repeatedly clashed against each other.

"Not bad kid! You're still relatively s.h.i.+t with a sword, but you'd at least be able to survive an attack from a couple of rabbits. In the last couple of months, you've improved like crazy." complimented a large man dressed in black armor. He had told Aithen to call him Sir Kenzo and in return for having Aithen clean his clothes, he would help Aithen improve his swordsmans.h.i.+p skills. Currently, he had Aithen matched up against one of his subordinates as he watched on.

Aithen attempted to respond but was way too occupied with trying to breathe and preventing his opponent's sword from dismembering his body. At the moment, he was facing a guard named Kairo. He was relatively tall and lanky with olive-colored skin but was much stronger than he looked. Aithen had yet to finish growing, so his opponent had a large advantage in terms of reach. Aithen had been on the defensive the entire match so far, and as their fight progressed, he realized that unless he made a move now, his opponent would easily win. Waiting for an opportunity to move in close, Aithen saw his chance when Kairo raised his sword to deliver a heavy attack from above. As the attack fell, Aithen slid to the right, parrying the blow to his left and stepping inside his opponent's guard. Once inside, he placed his right leg behind Kairo's and shoved him with his shoulder. Aithen brought his blade down and stopped it above the fallen Kairo's chest.

"I think I'd be able to survive more than a rabbit's attack, don't you?" Aithen replied happily to Sir Kenzo.

"Hate to break it to you boy, but finally winning a match against Kairo after he's won at least ten against you doesn't make you anything special. And on a more important note, you and I both know he wasn't using his full strength to attack you with those blows, but considering your strength, I'll give it to you today. That was excellent work! We're done for today though, so be on your way!"

"Yes sir!" shouted Aithen as he began to jog off.

'Of course he didn't use his full strength! System, display Kairo's stats.' thought Aithen.

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//STATUS//

Name: Kairo

Race: Human

Strength: 1.8

Agility: 1.9

Const.i.tution: 1.6

Intelligence: 1.0

Skills: ????

Spells: ????

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'With stats like that if he used his full strength it wouldn't be training it would be murder!'

Before getting too far away, Aithen also requested that the system display the stats of Sir Kenzo

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//STATUS//

Name: Kenzo

Race: Human

Strength: 4.1

Agility: 3.6

Const.i.tution: 4.2

Intelligence: 1.3

Skills: ????

Spells: ????

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'This s.h.i.+t stay surprising me! How does someone even get their stats that high? The Star Shadow Breathing technique gradually loses effectiveness as the stats increase, so it'll probably be useless after my physical stats. .h.i.t around two, maybe three.' thought Aithen.

More importantly, though, these past few months have garnered Aithen a substantial amount of System points. On top of that, sparring with different knights daily had at the minimum brought his swordsmans.h.i.+p skills up to the level of the average n.o.ble headed to the magic academy, most of whom had been taking lessons from a young age. Despite feeling sore, Aithen was extremely satisfied with the work he had done, there was still a few weeks left before they reached the ocean and his physical stats were nearing one each. Actually, after tonight's knight training, his lowest stat, const.i.tution, should break above the one point mark, allowing him to complete his first quest.

'System, the points are for the shop function, right? Is there any chance I'd be able to look at the shop right now?'

[Yes they are but you can't check it yet. Soon though, you just need to reach at least five hundred System points before you can access it. Don't think that the shop will be that expensive though, some things can be bought for a mere ten points, but don't expect them to be that useful.]
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'No problem then, I'll have well over five hundred points after tonight's quest completion.'

Making a little bit of a detour on the way back to his carriage, Aithen stopped by a river to wash up before dinner, it was nearing late afternoon and they'd probably start serving soon, n.o.body wanted to eat in the dark. Splas.h.i.+ng his face with some water and trying to rinse any sweat he could out of his hair, Aithen noticed something s.h.i.+ny in the water. Reaching down, he had to move aside some pebbles on the river bed to get it out but eventually succeeded. It turned out to be a pretty bland looking silver ring, and it was too big to even fit his middle finger, but Aithen wasn't gonna accidentally throw away something that could be magical, so he kept it in his pocket, planning to put it in his bag later on.

Finally arriving back at the carriage, Aithen changed clothes and headed to dinner. He had done barely any talking to his fellow n.o.bles these past several weeks because, to be honest, he really could not find the time of day to bother trying to make conversation with them. He trained from early in the morning to dinner, like today, and then after that, he trained his breathing technique, washed up and went to bed. As part of this routine, he made sure not to accidentally enter anyone else's carriage while they were changing. Speaking of which, that girl whose breast he had touched had definitely noticed his face during the event because she had given him a rather threatening stare multiple times in pa.s.sing. However, it seemed that she understood it had been an accident, and chosen not to report something like that to the guards or even spread it amongst her peers. This left Aithen with a really good impression of her, as most n.o.bles would've jumped at the chance for extra gossip. She was also hot as h.e.l.l, which improved his opinion of her. He had, true to his word, kept his guard up around both Katherin and the brown-eyed girl. Checking their stats left him incredibly shocked.

============================================================

//STATUS//

Name: Katherine

Race: Human

Strength: 1.4

Agility: 1.3

Const.i.tution: 1.2

Intelligence: 1.9

Skills: ????

Spells: ????

============================================================

============================================================

//STATUS//

Name: *Brown-eyed girl*

Race: Human

Strength: 1.3

Agility: 1.4

Const.i.tution: 1.1

Intelligence: 2.4

Skills: ????

Spells: ????

============================================================

'How could these two girls have such high intelligence stats? No one else within their entourage, even Sir Kenzo, has an intelligence stat as high as theirs. From what I had a.s.sumed, the only way to increase the rating of a person's intelligence would be to study magic. Because everyone had a relatively similar level of intelligence it made sense, given that none of the people present here had practiced magic. Aithen figured this either meant that these two girls were incredibly blessed at birth or had somehow managed to begin their practice to become mages before even arriving at the academy.

Anyways, besides these two, he was left with very few reasons to interact with his future possible cla.s.smates. They seemed to have a better impression of him than they used to though, because no one went out of their way to mistreat him or give him ugly looks, besides that one girl.

Grabbing his dinner and making his way to a rock where he could sit and eat, Aithen thought about the concepts regarding magic that he had heard of in his past life.

Most of the time, in books or movies, magic was considered to be a gift that only some were blessed with. In other stories, maybe the entire population would be capable of controlling some form of supernatural power. Trying to connect some dots, Aithen figured that, a.s.suming his conjecture about the intelligence stat having some relations.h.i.+p with magical ability was true, it meant that it could be trained and strengthened in some form, just like what he had been doing with the rest of his stats. In a lot of those stories where magical strength could be improved in a somewhat quantifiable or even qualitative way, like levels or tiers, the characters would collect or absorb some form of energy from the world around them. Meditation was usually involved in these processes to acquire this "energy." Thinking about meditation, Aithen recalled trying it a couple of times in his past life, with little success. He had managed to quiet his mind and even found it to be pretty stress relieving, but he did not consider it worth the time that it took, preferring to work on his project.

Getting to this point, Aithen thought that meditating and trying to sense some magical form of energy would be a good idea. Although he didn't know where to start or what he would be doing, he figured there literally could not be any harm in trying. He decided that he'd go for it right before bed.

Finis.h.i.+ng up with his food, at last, Aithen rose and headed to his carriage to undergo some more training of the Star Shadow Breathing. It went by smoothly, and as he had predicted, his const.i.tution finally broke through to 1.0.

[Ding! Quest complete! Congrats on barely managing to catch up to the abilities of a normal HUMAN, which is sorta pathetic considering you're in a world of magic, but congrats nonetheless! Enjoy those six-hundred fifty System points from the quest, and don't forget the shop function is now available.]

'System, could you display my updated status'

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//STATUS//

Name: Aithen Valore

Race: Human

Strength: 1.1 (+0.4)

Agility: 1.2 (+0.5)

Const.i.tution: 1.0 (+0.4)

Intelligence: 1.2

Skills: none

Spells: none

System Points: 810 (+780)

============================================================

Aithen washed up in a hurry, eager to get back to the carriage and check the shop function. However, seconds after entering the carriage on his way back, the terrified scream of a girl caused gooseb.u.mps to rise on his skin, and even worse, accompanying the screams was the howling of what sounded like dozens of wolves. They were under attack!