Blake stared down at the corpse of a dead rabbicorn. It had impaled itself on one of his defensive spikes he had set up for the night. It had been three days since he had left his new forward base and he had kept up his search for rabbicorns to fight to no avail yet now there was one and he didn’t get a chance to fight it before it killed itself.

  While travelling Blake had found two more higher regions. One was at the same density as the first he had found while the second was close enough to his home region that Blake felt confident calling it a medium density region.

  Not wanting to get lost in crafting quite yet, Blake did not spend the time to create secondary bases to mark out the borders. Instead, he climbed the tallest tree he could find and quickly carved into the tops to make crude but recognizable shapes.

  Curious as to whether or not they could be considered totems Blake had attempted to activate his Talent on them. It failed. The information he got back was very clear that it could not in any way be considered a totem. It did however confirm that what he carved was important to the function.

  It could have been the symbolism of the carving or maybe there was a universal language he needed to learn, Blake didn’t know. While walking Blake spent time reviewing what he knew about totems from his research of old magic on Earth.

  Blake immediately wished that he had the superhuman memory he now had when studying magic on Earth as only small snippets of information stayed with him. The main thing he remembered was useless to him as it was reliant on a specific Talent.

  There is a famous awakened that went by the name Totemic Shaman. She was a powerful individual said to have reached tier 10. Her talent allowed her to create totems from mana that had various effects from shooting beams of lighting to enhancing mana regen.

  The fact that the effects were active and immediate told Blake that her form of totems was completly diffrent from what his Talent was pushing him towards. His were likely to be based on long rituals which lined up with ancient civilizations on Earth. He suspected that if he succeded in making totems they would have abilities more in line with passive effects and blessings.

  Until he had the chance to sit down and experiment with totems Blake wouldn’t know anything more. So he kept walking. Another three days passed and Blake found himself back at his base, the glade he called home.

  He did not intend to arrive there. In fact, he had been sure he was no where near there which was concerning. The forest was so uniform that he must have gotten turned around and walked in a curved line rather than the straight one he had thought he was.

  Knowing that he could not trust his sense of direction and having found rabbicorns difficult to locate Blake decided a change in method was due. He had another plan that he had originally discarded because of how time-consuming it would be.

  The plan was to find a border between regions and rather than setting one simple marker if the density changed he would instead walk along it marking it every few feet with sticks shaped into poles. To mark out borders between same density regions Blake would have to maintain meditation the whole time.

  This would take a long time to acomplish to any degree. Spirit realms were not infinite and lower tier realms were smaller than higher realms but even a tier 0 realm could be anywhere from 100 to 500 miles across.

  If the realm Blake was in leaned towards the larger side he estimated that even moving as fast as he could with his superhuman physique it would take ten or more days. To be moving at a relative crawl in circles to mark out the borders of the regions.

  There was a reason to mark out the borders of regions besides making navigation easier. Monster spawns depended on regions and there was a cooldown on how long a monster took to respawn after being killed.

  By marking out each region Blake could optimize his hunt for a fight. He could hunt for monsters one region at a time. After killing the monster, or monsters depending on region density, he could move on to another region while waiting for the first to respawn without fear of accidentally staying in one region too long and missing the opportunity to hunt.

  Before leaving the glade again to resume his expedition Blake took a day off to do a little crafting. He began working a totem pole for his main base and thought he would try his hand at making animals for the carvings since from what he remembered that was the common thing to do back on Earth.

  He only got a small amount done before having to force himself to leave again. Blake didn’t even make it to the border of his home region before he was attacked.

  To stay aware of his spiritual senses so as not to miss the regions border, Blake was half meditating as he walked. He might have noticed the rabbicorn earlier had he not been but he still had time to jump out of its way as the rabbicorn charged him from a nearby bush.

  Landing on his feet with ease Blake turned to watch the rabbicorn and froze. Memories of his first fight with a rabbicorn flashed through his mind. The pain of the rabbicorn stabbing him in the butt. The terror and helplessness of the situation.

  The rabbicorn circled around to make another hopping, charge at him. Blake snapped out of his state of terror to jump out of the way again before thinking better of it and going for a more controlled side step.

  The rabbicorn once again charged passed but Blake couldn’t help but notice it was… slow. He had plenty of time to think through everything he was doing before the rabbicorn could respond or make another attack.

  Blake was reminded that rabbicorns were known as great training monsters since they of no danger to even an untrained child. If he hadn’t been suprised by that first rabbicorn it would have been completly unable to do anything to him.

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  The horns were sharp, sure, but the rabbicorns lacked the Strength and speed to do anything with them. Confidence growing, Blake gripped his spear and slid into the fighting stance he had been practicing for weeks. As the rabbicorn circled around for yet another, identical, attack Blake stabbed out with his spear.

  His eyes closed a moment before the spear made contact. His fear, despite being weaker now that he found the rabbicorns less threatening, overwhelmed his mind for a moment. He didn’t want to see the rabbicorn escape his attack and return its own. Blake had no urge to face his own death.

  There was no dying, however. No pain of a rabbicorn horn stabbing him. There was only a soft thud. Peeking one of his eyes open Blake found the rabbicorn impaled on his spear. The spear was run straight through its chest and it struggled futilely to escape its death. Seconds later it fell limp as it bled out.

  Blake let out a loud cry of triumph. If asked in the future he would say it was a manly roar that was most defenitly not accomponied by a small jig. It was. It most certainly was. He had defeated his first monster without the use of traps.

  It had taken days of searching to find something to fight and was preceded by weeks, if not months, of training to make him stronger and more comfortable with a spear but he no longer had anything to fear from the rabbicorns.

  He wanted to fight another immedietly but it had taken a week to find this one so it was unlikely he would be able to anytime soon. Instead he set off to begin marking the borders between the regions.

  Blake had technically met one of the goals of his expedition by killing a rabbicorn one on one and could justify ending it there to go back to his base and do some crafting but he didn’t get everything he wanted out of it.

  Facing his fear of rabbicorns and fighting, in general, was only one of the things Blake hoped to get out of his fight. The other thing was he wanted to forge his disparate skills into a more wholesome combat style. The rabbicorn had died in one hit giving him no time to do that.

  Fighting more rabbicorns would let Blake get used to applying his combat skills but he would need a more difficult opponent to push his skills together. He would need to enter a medium-density region. It was the only place with stronger monsters. Well, there were the high and peak regions but Blake didn’t even entertain the thought.

  Weeks passed as Blake marked out the borders of the low-density regions. Once or twice a week he would fight and kill a rabbicorn. He no longer froze up when fighting but they kept ending in one strike. He did try to extend the fight a couple of times but even a grazing hit was enough to debilitate the rabbicorns making them useless to train against.

  While marking out the border of the low regions Blake continued his training. Unfortunately, like when Strength reached its threshold, the memory and affinity stats could no longer improve no matter what he tried.

  He hadn’t spent much time on crafting so memory wasn’t pushed but to keep track of the regional borders Blake was constantly meditating and stressing his affinity. Nothing changed. There might have been ways to continue improving his affinity in the higher regions but while he was more confident in his combat skills he had avoided leaving the low regions. He hadn’t even marked the higher region borders.

  It was only after finishing with all the low region borders that he was pushed forward. While the thought of fighting stronger monsters terrified him, Blake couldn’t help but admit that he was excited to fight in the medium region.

  Combat had always been Blake’s plan for supporting himself. Before awakening, he had dreamed of having a magic Talent that he used to blast away monsters. It wasn’t until he had actually had to fight monsters that he realized something about those dreams.

  In all the dreams he had he was always safely away from the monsters. There was no tension of the fight, no pressure to improve. Instead his imagination had him using an overpowered Talent to overwhelm his opponents.

  To a Blake who had spent months training every day and working hard to improve his combat abilities that was nothing but an impossible childish fantasy. Sure, there might be people who could coast by on a Talent perfectly suited to killing monsters but they would always be weaker than someone who put in even a modicum of effort to get stronger.

  Blake wasn’t even sure he would like to have a Talent that could overwhelm monsters so easily. Pushing himself to improve had become a part of his personality, something he took pride in. The idea that he didn’t have to train to improve his Strength and overcome challenges was anathema to who he was now.

  Talents were supposed to be a reflection of who someone was but when Blake had gained his he hadn’t felt it. Sure it was a cool ability but he wanted magic not a manaless crafting Talent. Now though he could see. This drive for independence and self improvement had always been a part of him it had just taken being isolated in a forest full of monsters for months to discover.

  His Talent was perfect for him. The more he pushed his crafting skills the more he grew. The skills his Talent gave him were the perfect foundation to push even more. Everything about his Talent was about maximizing how much and how effectively he could improve himself.

  Knowing that with time he could create magical effects with totems meant that even magic wasn’t off the table for Blake. He would just have to work for him. That suited him just fine.

  Blake’s Talent, in return for not giving anything upright, had the potential to do anything. The only limit was his own imagination and will. He would not stop, could not stop improving. It was a part of him now, a fundamental aspect of his personality brought to light by his Talent.

  Blake was meditating when he came to that realization. Vowing to himself to keep pushing forward despite the effort was a tipping point. With a click, he felt another stat reach a threshold. Feeling it out he classified it as Will.

  Will, the mental strength to push through the hardest of lifes trials. It was part of the third grouping of stats that Blake had tentativly named spirit. With two chains now identified he could see there was only one left in that grouping. He still couldn’t tell how many stats were in the body and mind categories but they felt the same size as spirit so he suspected they would have three as well.

  Despite knowing there was only one more stat within the spirit category Blake could not identify what it was. He could see it was underdeveloped compared to all his other stats. The force the chain that represented the stat was exerting to keep him in this realm was equal to what he could sense of both the body and mind categories combined.

  He suspected that he hadn’t trained this stat at all. While traveling Blake had continued to train his physical resiliance which he was all but certain was a body stat. His Talent kept pushing his mind forward as well. Spirit was the one category he did not understand well enough to train.

  It was only by chance he had stumbled upon affinity while trying to deal with his own trauma by meditating. The Will stat was the accumulation of his experiences in the spirit realm so far. Neither was something he had gone out of his way to train.

  Whatever the third spirit stat was he would have to hope he discovered it eventually. If not than he might need to find another way to ascend. Blake didn’t think he would need to fully develop every stat to ascend to tier 1 but he didn’t know how many would be needed.

  He also suspected there might be other benefits to developing his stats prior to ascension. He had nothing to base his theory off of but he was hoping that a higher affinity might give him a better idea of the benefits to developing his stats.

  New stat unlocked Blake set out for one of the medium realms he had found. In his time marking the region boundaries he had discovered multiple so he went to the closest one relative to his home base.

  It was time to fight stronger monsters.

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