The Only Thing I Can Upgrade is Strength chapter 83

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Over the next few days in Amielas, there were both celebrations and a gradual reduction in population. The hydra boss had been defeated, but that also signalled the end of the hydra hunting season. There would still be a few around, but not nearly enough to support the number of adventurers that had come to Amielas. Fewer adventurers also meant less need for services.

We stayed for about a week. That gave my arm time to recover, and more importantly Alhorn’s ribs. While he could walk with broken ribs, that didn’t mean it was a pleasant process. Socks didn’t really show pain much, but she was less interested in playing for a while.

During that time, I idly asked Alhorn, “How much Toughness do you have anyway?”

Attributes weren’t usually discussed openly. At least, not in detail. While some people liked to brag about their attributes, they would probably gloss over a few. A big strong barbarian wouldn’t be interested in bringing up subpar intelligence, after all. In addition, nobody liked being told they were deficit in training certain areas. People did share such information, but usually not openly. However, among trusted party members such sharing became more common.

After telling me his Toughness, the discussion deepened into the entire party sharing their attributes and skills.

The first thing that stuck out about Alhorn’s attributes was the base values. Most of them were higher, even Dexterity that I theoretically had an advantage training. However, that was just a result of more time spent training… and possibly being a half-elf. I’d only been in this world for around eight months, so I was still a bit behind. Since I didn’t train in magic, I didn’t really have any chance to train Intelligence or Wisdom. I wasn’t exactly sure what was required for training Willpower, but if it was anything like Toughness it wouldn’t be pleasant.

From Kasner I learned that magic can be used without a skill. For example, when he removed the ice created by goblin mages and when he froze the hydra’s necks in a large block of ice. Once magic was formalized into a skill, however, it gained increased efficiency not just from the relevant mastery skills but also the skill.

“I never see you practicing ice magic,” I commented.

“Oh, I don’t practice ice magic anymore,” he replied.

“Why is ice mastery higher than lighting mastery then?”

“Oh, I used to practice ice magic- before I really took up adventuring, but then it hit me.”

“… What did?”

“A bolt of lightning. During a duel. It hit the other guy too, but I was about to lose and the lightning bolt took him out but not me. That’s how I knew.”

“Hmm.” I understood the idea, but if he was already that high in ice magic… well, I’d seen him use it to great effect when he did. Maybe he was some sort of ice magic genius? He certainly wasn’t poor with lightning, but since he hadn’t practiced ice magic in at least a year and still had a higher mastery… Well, I’d try to bring it up again later.

Halette’s Strength surprised me- but perhaps it shouldn’t have. After all, using a bow required Strength. Halette could theoretically fight in melee, but bow skills were apparently better suited to the beast tamer class. Well, I could certainly see how that would work out… especially with Socks.

From Socks- or actually from Halette talking about Socks- I learned that animals didn’t get levels or bonus points. They did, however, get a class bonus from the beast tamer which went along nicely with very high base attributes.. Also, apparently Bite was an active skill. Socks couldn’t use active skills much- a low mana pool from low Focus and a low efficiency and power from low Wisdom and Intelligence prevented that. On the other hand, it seemed Socks was within human intelligence levels- though only comparable to those well below the average. Still, she was quite smart for an animal- though I already knew that.

Kantrilla… had Luck. She had other things too, but her Luck was ridiculous. Apparently it rose on its own a couple times per month- for her entire life. If there were any real ways to train it, it would be hard to imagine how high it would be. Also… her Dexterity had been even lower before she put in the effort to train it.

As for myself… I still had Strength, and far, far too many different weapons I trained in. That was part of the Martial Apprentice class though.

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