Blake woke with a start, heart pounding. The coppery scent of blood sent him into a momentary panic as he tried to process his jumbled memories from moments before passing out.

  He had won. Everything was ok. Blake didn’t know how long he had been passed out from blood loss and pain but if the state of his injuries was anything to go by it was a while. Every scratch and wound inflicted upon him had scabbed over and healed to a degree. He was by no means an expert in spiritual realm healing but if his past experiences were anything to go by it had been at least a day.

  That sent another jolt of panic through Blake as monsters respawned daily in dens but he quickly remembered that once the sub-boss was killed the respawn rate dropped to the region average until the sub-boss respawned in 2 to 4 times as long. That left him with a week before he had to worry about monster spawns.

  The monsters outside the den would also see a drop in spawn rate though the difference was smaller at only a 50% increase in spawn time. Blake looked around at the chamber he had collapsed in. It was a horror show of blood and gore. Monster bodies were strewn everywhere, rotting slowly in the damp underground.

  The dim lighting from the sub-boss’s horn did not help matters. Everything looked worse in dim lighting. Struggling to his feet Blake began to shuffle towards the corpse of the sub-boss. He was too weak and tired, despite his day of rest, to collect all the rabbicorns but he wouldn’t risk leaving the best prize behind.

  If Blake waited too long the corpses would begin to dissapate into the ambient energy of the spirit realm. The rate of dissolution depended on the local energy density as well as the strength of the corpse. The relative strength of the monsters meant dissolution was not much of a concern outside of a den but inside he had three to four days before everything dissolved.

  Any sort of processing, or in some cases just harvesting, prevented this strange phenomena but the process was not well understood. Blake grabbed the knife he had tied to his belt and began to saw into the sub-boss’ skull carving out the horn. The sub-boss was massive and he was in no state to carry the whole thing out so he would have to settle for just the horn.

  As he worked to harvest the monster Blake thought over what had happened. Something was wrong with this den. The number and density of monsters were unheard of for tier 0 and, if Blake remembered correctly, was never seen below tier 6. Information above tier 5 was heavily censored so he didn’t even have confirmation that it was seen there.

  Then there was the sub-boss. Not all bosses were the same but depending on the region’s theme there were certain variations. For a rabbicorn region, Blake had heard of a rabbicorn brawler or a horny rabbicorn.

  ‘People are so immature.’ Blake thought to himself.

  Rabbicorn brawlers were a rabbicorn evolution that stood at approximately five feet tall as opposed to the basic rabbicorn’s two feet. They have thick muscles that they use to quickly pounce on their opponents before rapidly punching them into oblivion. Brawlers were the most common form of evolution for rabbicorns and could even be seen as the standard monster in higher tiers.

  Technically all boss monsters were just higher tier variants of their region’s monsters but due to either having magic but being too weak for tier 4 and above or some other unique traits, not every boss type is seen as a common monster. Brawlers were one of the few that you were almost guaranteed to run into at some point.

  Horny rabbicorns were a more rare rabbicorn evolution that focused on the use of their horn. This evolution had a couple of variations but the core thing was their horn got stronger and sharper and the monster became more intelligent and capable of strategic use of their natural weapon.

  Horny rabbicorns were the brain to the brawler’s brawn. In some cases, a horny rabbicorn could have magic that was cast through their horn. The weakness of the horny rabbicorns was their physical strength. They were larger than a basic rabbicorn but smaller than a brawler at only three feet tall.

  Sometimes they were more nimble to support the use of their horns as weapons but it was more typical for their horns to be supernaturally powerful and large to make their use easier with a more limited physical capacity.

  Looking at the sub-boss he had fought Blake couldn’t help but wonder what it was. The monster was much taller than him which put it well over six feet tall. That alone discounted both the brawler and horny rabbicorns. This monster had the physique of a brawler but it didn’t come at the cost of its horn which looked developed enough to belong to a horny rabbicorn.

  Heck, it was glowing. If that wasn’t a sign of power Blake didn’t what was. There was a good chance the thing was magical and the sub-boss hadn’t seen the need to use it until it was too late. Blake had been losing the fight until the last moment when he threw himself at the monster in a last-ditch attempt to survive. Why would it have wasted its magic when claws worked just as well?

  The strangest part of the monster was the claws. He had never heard of a rabbicorn with enhanced claws. All rabbicorns had claws but they were short little things meant only to help them move. They were of no use as a weapon.

  The sub-boss had inch-long claws with razor-sharp edges that had sliced through Blake’s skin like it wasn’t even there. This was even more impressive when you took into account his enhanced Constitution.

  The creature was intelligent too. It had waited to engage Blake until he was tired from fighting what he estimated to be around 100 basic rabbicorns. It had kept calling reinforcements to keep the pressure up which led him to make small mistakes and take damage.

  Only when there were no more rabbicorns to throw at Blake did it attack. The way it fought was no less brilliant. It had charged exactly once before concluding it to be a useless method of assault and changing tactics. It had transitioned to unarmed combat if you don’t count claws as weapons, swiftly and not let up.

  It had realized that he needed space to properly wield his spear and had made sure to never give him that space. If Blake hadn’t given up on blocking and/or dodging its attacks the sub-boss would have won. He had to take a direct hit from the creature to secure his victory.

  The sub-boss had proven remarkably resilient as Blake’s hands almost gave out from pummeling it before it did. This was even more clear by the difficulty he was having removing its horn.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The strength of the sub-boss greatly worried Blake. He had been planning to speed run the rest of the realm to reach a peak density region where he could rapidly grow his stats but that wasn’t looking like an option anymore. If the boss monsters of peak regions were as overpowered as the sub-boss had been he was going to need to develop his stats more and get better equipment.

  The latter would be greatly helped by the horn and claws of the sub-boss. After finally removing the horn from the monster Blake began working out its claws. As he did so he fell deeper into meditation, mentally falling into the space where he could check the growth of his stats.

  After having to maintain meditation for such a long period of time during the sub-boss fight Blake no longer had any trouble meditating. He had been good before but now he didn’t think that even combat could disrupt his mental stability. That didn’t mean he didn’t feal panic and fear just that they would no longer overcome his logic to control his actions.

  Reviewing his stats Blake saw at least one reason why it had become so much easier so fast. His Will had reached not just the second threshold but the third. He hadn’t even known that was possible, he had assumed it would take entering a high-density region. Will was proving to be the fastest-growing stat. This was balanced out by being the most difficult to train.

  It had only been a month since it reached the first threshold and it had only shown minimal improvement during that time. The thing was, Will had not ever had a training cooldown. He didn’t have a method to intentionally train it besides living life but extreme moments of stress and internal conflict grew it like nothing else.

  Overcoming the trauma that was his arrival in the spirit realm had pushed it to the first threshold. The second and third thresholds had been driven by his fight with the sub-boss. He had been fighting for his life, on the verge of death, and in that moment Blake had steeled himself and risked everything for a chance at life.

  That moment combined with the stat growth bonus he got from slaughtering monsters drove his Will to such heights. Will wasn’t the only stat to experience such growth. Unlike Will, the other stats were limited in how much training could be done in one session but the growth bonus from the rabbicorns had helped bypass that restriction.

  Both Constitution and Affinity had reached the second threshold where they had stopped. It seemed whatever had allowed Will to surpass the second threshold did not apply to the other stats. While no other stats had reached the second threshold they all saw great improvement including the final spirit stat.

  The final body and mind stats reached the threshold and a little beyond. Blake could now sense exactly what they were. For the body stat, he labeled it Dexterity. It represented control over his actions. This was both fine motor control but also the ability to apply his Strength as fast as possible for speed.

  Now that he knew what the stat was Blake could trace back what training had effected it. There were two main components to developing his Dexterity. First was his Talent. He had guessed there was a physical component to the growth his Talent provided as the supernatural warmth wasn’t just centered around his brain but also spread throughout his body.

  It was the muscle memory of how to use the tools and equipment he made that triggered this growth. Muscle memory isn’t actually memory in the way most people would think of it. In reality, muscle memory is ingrained patterns that are grown into the muscle and nervous system. When his Talent improved his muscle memory it was directly growing the body into the needed shape which in turn improved his Dexterity.

  The other major contributor to his Dexterity was the intense obstacle course training. When Blake had first put his newfound Strength to the test he found he lacked control over his own muscles and was incapable of utilizing the full potential of his body without falling on his face.

  Looking back he could see that this was because of his underdeveloped Dexterity. He had made an obstacle course to practice using his body. This was the most direct form of Dexterity training he had. If he had a more difficult course to train on he might have unlocked his Dexterity much sooner given how much time he worked on his control.

  It went to show that developing his stats was not inherently safe. Blake would have to be careful to keep all his stats up or risk debalancing himself. It brought to mind the fact that he had never heard of stat training before discovering it.

  Was that for his own safety? Did the government restrict information on stats to prevent people from becoming unbalanced? Ascending was said to double your strength each tier did that include his improved stats? If so then any imbalance now would become a bigger and bigger liability as he ascended.

  The diffrence between his stats would essentially double each time along with his total strength which could lead to an imbalance that could kill him. From that perspective restricting information was a mercy. Blake could easily see people, himself included, only training one or two stats that they felt were relavent before ascending.

  From the governments point of view it would be better to have many weaker but higher tier individuals then a society of people who can’t make it past tier 2 because they were unbalanced. Blake shook his head. It was an intresting thought experiment but was irrelevent for him right now.

  He turned his attention to the newly unlocked mind stat. This one was a bit harder to name but Blake eventually landed on Celerity. It was the speed of his thoughts. The higher his Celerity the slower the world seemed to move around him.

  Unlike Alacrity, Celerity did not make him any smarter. It sped up how fast he came to conclusions but it would be the same conclusion no matter how high his Celerity. Alacrity changed his conclusion by enhancing his ability to compare information through multitasking and mental flexibility.

  Blake didn’t have any specific way he had trained Celerity but a lot of little things had contributed to its growth which had allowed it to reach the first threshold. Basically, he thought a lot. It sounded stupid even to Blake but thats what it came down to.

  The more he processed information the better he got at it. This was especially true when he worked to sort through lots of information as quickly as possible. For example, when he worked to analyze the information provided by his Talent.

  When Blake’s Talent activated it provided an info dump that he had to spend time working through. It was too much information for him to understand all at once which is one of the reasons he spent so much time meditating originally.

  Every time his Talent activated Blake spent time meditating and thinking through what his Talent was telling him. It allowed him to identify flaws in his work as well as get a better feel for the quality of his tools.

  This process of sorting through the information to draw conclusions was an excellent exercise for his Celerity. The higher his Celerity the faster Blake could utilize the information his Talent provided.

  There was another method of training his Celerity. Fighting had proven to grow his Celerity at an accelerated rate if he was pressed hard enough. Blake had taken to meditating while fighting to help him sort through everything that was happening and make intelligent choices. This was the work of Celerity.

  By meditating Blake was using his Celerity to its full potential to think through the fight before taking action. In easy fights, this didn’t matter as there was not much to think about but as he fought larger groups of rabbicorns the pressure of keeping track of them all worked his Celerity to the limit.

  Removing the last of the sub-boss’s claws Blake smiled. It had been a hard-fought battle that had left him heavily injured but the gains made it all worth it. He hadn’t noticed it at the time but reviewing his memories of the sub-boss’ death showed him how much of a stat growth bonus it had provided.

  It was significantly more than he could have ever hoped for, at least when compared to the other rabbicorns. Blake had noticed that the more rabbicorns he killed the less bonus stat growth he gained but that didn’t seem to apply to the sub-boss and the difficult fight already provided a significant bonus.

  All together Blake would estimate the sub-boss to be worth around 100 basic rabbicorns. Smile wide on his face Blake hobbled out of the den into the sunlight.

  Yes, it had been worth it. Now he just needed to prepare to do it again in the next medium region.

  Patreon