The Only Thing I Can Upgrade is Strength chapter 20

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Though I no longer found myself so afraid of fighting wolves, I decided it was not yet the right time to do so regularly. However, horned rabbits were getting harder to find in the snow- either because they hid or were actually less plentiful. Thus, I came to the decision to get another job- not as an adventurer, but a plain and boring ‘real’ job.

This wasn’t me giving up on my career… quite the opposite. This was merely preparation for future adventuring. I still went to train with Sgar almost every day, but into addition to that I worked my job. The job itself was also training. I got a job at a warehouse, lifting boxes and other heavy labor. When I had shown up to apply for the job, I had gotten doubtful glances. After all, the job notices required more than 200 Strength. A quick glance at me would make people think of 80 Strength at most. However, I quickly demonstrated that I was actually more than capable of what they needed. Sure, my reach was a bit short, so I sometimes had to stand in awkward positions that were less efficient for lifting… but I was enough stronger than required that I could still manage that. That was only at the beginning, too.

My Strength continued to grow, from one to several points per day, until the base reached 150 after about a month. Then it slowed down… but it didn’t stop. I don’t think it was that I was incapable of growing as quickly, but merely that I wasn’t working hard enough. I tried carrying more at once, but there were limits on that because of the size of boxes. Still, I was satisfied with my slow growth of a point every day or two, especially since it came with consistent wages.

I also took up jogging. Instead of going out in nice running clothes, I wore my armor and carried my weapons with me. After all, that was the way I was normally going to be equipped. Even though I spent much more effort on that, my Constitution only grew 1-2 points per week. There wasn’t much I could do about that, and since I couldn’t supplement it with points from leveling, I would probably need to maintain such training to not become completely unbalanced in my attributes. Except that was happening anyway, because Strength still grew faster than everything else, even without counting bonus points from levels.

Luck… continued to grow in chunks, though it quickly slowed down. I still went to see Kantrilla almost every day, because that wasn’t the reason I wanted to talk to her anyway. She was nice, and one of my few friends. She even came to watch me train with Sgar sometimes, on her days off. That was usually only evening sessions though, because the morning sessions were rather early. After those, Sgar had to go… do whatever it was he did. It wouldn’t be hunting wolves, so there had to be something very dangerous wherever he went. I often saw him return to the guild covered in blood… and sometimes some of it was even his.

There weren’t that many people at the adventurer’s guild here in Trona, but something else became ever more clear to me. There weren’t any low level or young adventurers but me. In relation to that, I learned some more about how experience worked. Non-adventurers got levels too, though usually far fewer.

The first way was through time. Just being around, one would absorb some experience from the atmosphere… apparently. That was why me being level 3 was so surprising to Sgar. By my age, I should have been level 4 or 5 just through natural processes. I wasn’t surprised, though, because I’d only been in this world for a few months. I wouldn’t expect an infant to be even level 1.

The biggest and most obvious way of getting experience was killing monsters. If you did that, you could see the experience come out. Apparently it gravitated more towards those who were already stronger, and who actually contributed to killing the monster, so power leveling wasn’t simple… but some people did it anyway. Sgar said those people usually got killed when they tried to fight alone, because all they had was a level and no combat skills.

It was the killing of monsters that contributed the majority of experience to adventurers, and was also responsible for experience gathered by others. Healers who healed adventurers got experience. Some people said they took some of the earned experience from them, but Sgar said that was stupid. Most likely, they just absorbed small amounts of experience that were lingering around the others. Either way, he told me that worrying about a little experience compared to getting a wound healed was a waste of effort. After all, fighting while injured was more dangerous, and so I would either have to waste time not fighting or risk even worse injuries, all for avoiding a potential small amount of experience loss. Nobody had ever been observed to delevel from healing, though apparently people could delevel if they didn’t absorb enough experience regularly. This was mostly the case in high level retired adventurers, because most people got enough to keep increasing from the natural experience that was around- though most non-adventurers only grew to level 10 or 15 throughout their lives.

One exception to high level non-adventurers were healers- though many of them adventured as well- and crafters. As long as they worked with monster materials regularly, they would absorb some experience from that. Sgar mentioned that some people tried just leaving high level materials around, rubbing them on people, or breaking them to try to release experience… with mixed results. Generally, it would be a colossal waste of money to have them without using them for something practical, or the materials would be a very low level and thus not particularly helpful. Nobles would often do this for their children to help them get a few early levels, but that also had some risks. For example, if they spent their points in the wrong places, it could be a waste… and subsequent levels were harder to get. Of course, no attribute was useless- but it depended on what you wanted to do. Nobles could make plans for their children, but they couldn’t absolutely force them to spend the points how they thought they should. Especially since they couldn’t check except through looking at results.

In this manner I spent the winter months training… and I found myself much more confident to go back to adventuring in the spring. I would even fight some wolves… but hopefully in small numbers.

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