SIAW Vol. 1 Chapter 5 (PROLOGUE)
Chapter 5 – Training : Day 60
My training reached its 60th day. As usual, I checked my stats on the display.
Name: Tenma
Species: Human
Level: 1
Gender: Male
Age: 14
HP : 69/69 (UP!!)
MP : 905/905 (UP!!)
STA: 67/67 (UP!!)
INT: 93 (UP!!)
STR: 181 (UP!!)
SPD: 101 (UP!!)
SKL: 59 (UP!!)
LCK: 50
Title(s):
Skill(s): Language comprehension – LV 2, Lifestyle Magic – LV 4 (UP!!), Appraisal, Item Box LV 1, Throwing LV 2 (UP!!), Magic Depletion Resistance LV 2(UP!!), Magic Recovery LV 1, Sleep Resistance LV 2 (UP!!), Quickread LV 2 (UP!!), Magic Detection LV 1 (UP!!), Sword Arts, Concentration LV 1 (UP!!), Targeting LV 1 (UP!!), Memory (NEW!!), Magic Power Manipulation (NEW!!), Hi-Speed Cognition (NEW!!), Sneaking (NEW!!), Presence Detection (NEW!!), Dismantling (NEW!!), Mental Fortitude (NEW!!), Poison Resistance (NEW!!), Paralysis Resistance (NEW!!), Night Vision (NEW!!)
My HP grew at a faster rate, albeit slightly.
It started about 10 days ago: I took some poison from the “Resources” menu, diluted it 10 times and tried drinking it. My body felt a little hot and my HP decreased by 1. Thus I advanced to the following step.
I maintained that state until my HP decreased to 5, then healed my status with an antidote. When my HP healed to full I started the process again — rinse and repeat.
It was a rather effective method, so I wished I could have come up with it from the start…but alas.
As a side effect, I also gained the Poison Resistance skill.
In the same way, I also acquired the Paralysis Resistance skill. I diluted a paralysis potion 10 times, so when I drank it my arms and feet felt just a little numb. After that, I spend every day in that slightly paralyzed state. Strangely enough, when I have such status ailments I feel that the usual training becomes more productive.
My max MP too is increasing at a nice pace, but for the past 10 days I have been using a new “doping” method.
If I use up all of my MP and wait for them to recover naturally, I can multiply the max amount of my MP by 1.005 per day, but if I use a MP recovery potion instead the multiplication rate falls to 1.002.
This method, however, allows me to speed up the recovery rate considerably.
I can thus recover many times per day, so in the end my max MP increases at a faster rate. Incidentally, a regular potion heals 100 MP, a medium potion 500 MP, a high potion 3000 MP, all in an instant.
It’s difficult to drink multiple MP recovery potions all at once, though, so I decided to use them alongside my natural recovery rate.
There is a limit to the potions available in the “Resources” menu, but I have been moving them to the Item Box every day, so I still had plenty in stock.
I have been also using STA recovery potions, so I always feel full. Hence, I haven’t been eating properly recently.
Thinking that I was going to keep this up for another month made me gag a bit.
～
The increase of the other stats was pretty much as planned.
I was going to keep up with this training until the end of the period.
Lifestyle Magic reached level 4, but it was unexpectedly difficult.
One month before, I thought that raising Sleep to level 1 would also raise the level of Lifestyle Magic itself, but it did not happen. Only when Time, Water and Fire reached level 2 did the level of Lifestyle Magic finally reach 4.
That was just three days ago, so I did not manage to level up Appraisal yet. I wanted to bring it to level 2 before the end of the training period, but I doubted it was possible.
Item Box did not move from level 1. It was the thing I used the most every day, but for some reason there was no sign of progress.
It might mean that the level up Appraisal and Item Box had a different, more difficult process than other skills.
～
Basically, all my skills leveled up at a good pace, except Sword Arts and Magic Recovery.
I was using recovery potions on the regular, so Magic Recovery not progressing was understandable.
On the other hand, Sword Arts didn’t budge an inch — maybe because I had no natural talent? When my parameters were set, I chose to not be especially good or bad at anything, but…
Might it be the influence of my past life?
The Memory and Hi-Speed Cognition skills probably came thanks to studying. The latter might have also been triggered by fighting against monsters, but I did not have enough evidence to draw a conclusion.
Sneaking, Presence Detection and Dismantling definitely came from my battle practice. Mental Fortitude was likely born from fighting and taking monster corpses apart.
I acquired the Night Vision after I started doing the training I used to do indoors outside at night instead. Differently from my old world, here at night it’s really pitch black, so even if the skill allowed me to see a bit, it was only two meters at most.
Acquiring the Magic Power Manipulation skill took more time than expected.
The book said it would take at least six months, so I should consider myself blessed to have learned it after only 20 days; I had become able to move the magic power within my body fairly quickly, though, so I expected to learn it sooner.
I fully realized I had learned it when I became able to move my magic power throughout my whole body and to expel it from a part of my body — in my case, my hands.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
I started thinking about what kind of training I should do in the last month.
At this point, I thought I didn’t need to bother with raising my species level.
There was no advantage to leveling it up in the training period: I might as well leave it for after I was reborn.
I thus decided I would keep focusing on my individual stats, with the help of recovery potions.
In terms of magic skills, I definitely needed to prioritize Appraisal.
I could see my stats now, thanks to the training bonuses, but I would not be able to after I was reborn. Thus I needed to level up Appraisal right now.
That would mean not spending any time in leveling up other magic skills, though. There were other skills I wanted…but Appraisal was still more important.
Another problem was that, at the moment, I had no healing-related skills.
According to a book I read, healing magic is categorized as Holy Magic, and it is pretty difficult to learn.
Alchemy skills, instead, were introduced as rather easy to learn. They used magic power too, but did not require magic skills.
I thus decided I would try to acquire Alchemy skills.
I wanted cooking-related skills too, but with all the recovery potions “doping” I did, I did not feel like eating anything. Learning cooking skills required more time than expected, so I gave up trying to.
I would have liked to have some sort of skill to boost my physical abilities, but I needed to level up Magic Power Manipulation first, apparently.
It was a skill that was going to be useful often, anyway, so I continued to practice with it.
Going outside at night made me realize how useful Night Vision could be, so I continued practicing outside at night-time.
～
Practicing actual battle was also important, naturally.
When I got a little bit used to it, I was ambushed by a Horn Rabbit. I felt something hard strike my back and fell down: I quickly stood back up and saw a Horn Rabbit charge in my direction.
I somehow dodged its following attack and managed to defeat it later, but I thought I was in trouble for a moment.
That’s what made me finally realize that I hadn’t been wearing any protection. A pretty fatal mistake.
After that I always wore armor and moved with more caution. That’s what let me learn the Presence Detection skill, probably.
As for now, I could defeat three Goblins — the fantasy world monster staple — with no trouble.