Chapter 31: Grinding

  "Lance, now!" Holly called out just as Allie finished the chant for her spell.

  Lance dashed forward, his spear held tightly in his hand and closed the distance between himself and the badger warrior. As he arrived, Allie's spell finished.

  Light shot from her outstretched hand and into the badger's face. It transformed into a flash almost instantly, covering the beast's field of vision. It reared back from the sudden brightness, slowing its charge just enough for Allie to leap to the side.

  Lance struck like a viper. His spear snapped forward and pierced the creature's eye. Unlike Alex, he didn't need to hammer the back end of his weapon to have it pierce the cranial cavity. Because the beast was still in the middle of its charge, it did that part for him.

  The beasts crashed to the ground and slid for a couple of feet before stopping. It was dead before it even finished moving.

  It wasn't nearly as much experience as Alex had gotten from the first badger warrior. He had landed the killing blow on that one though, and he only did superficial damage on this one. It was another aspect of the experience system that he was figuring out. The system knew how much each person contributed to each kill and spread the experience accordingly. Allie didn't even harm the beast, but Alex knew she got even more experience than he did.

  Damage itself wasn't the only factor. Otherwise, how did healers and tanks ever get experience? No, the system was complicated, strange, and an asshole. But it was a fair asshole.

  "Nice one Allie, that was a direct hit." Holly said.

  "I'm getting way better at this now, yeah," Allie said.

  When Allie was first learning the spell, she wasn't as accurate. She never missed her target, intent played a role in the casting of her spell so it didn’t really miss, but she did have to aim to make sure she hit it in the eyes, and not just its face in general. Her first attempt had certainly distracted the beast but didn't blind it.

  "We can clean these fuckers up in no time now," Alex said. "That was much faster than trying to line up its charge on Garret."

  "For sure, the other team is going to fall behind and be begging to borrow our lucky lighthouse." Holly giggled and nudged Allie's shoulder. The girls smiled at each other and started to chat quietly.

  Alex handed Lance once of the stamina potions. Lance popped the cork and took a small sip of the green liquid before handing it back to Alex. They had douns out that drinking an entire potion wasn’t needed to get an effect. The stamina potions were potent enough that taking just a bit could give the feeling of having rested for an hour or so. It kept all of them going after the last few hours, otherwise the constant fighting would have had them exhausted.

  There was a quarter of the potion left, enough for five sips or so. Garret was carrying another potion, and they had already finished off the third one they had bought from Celeste. Alex wished he had purchased more. It would be his turn to take down the warrior next, and that was always tiring.

  This was the third badger warrior they had killed now. At least the third Alex was a part of. Allie, Holly, Lance and he had split into one team to hunt. Eric, Devon, Henry and Garret were together not far off.

  Of course, Cole was still with Alex. Still with his hands tied.

  Peter was with the other team as well. They admitted they each were getting a very small amount of experience just being close by. So coming along was probably the correct choice for them.

  With Allie's spell, they were killing the new badger warriors surprisingly fast. Each warrior had two or three of the smaller forest badgers with them. They would take out the small ones in the start of the combat -usually within a few seconds or so- then they all would focus on the warrior badger.

  Learning to aim their spears precisely for the lethal attack was a bit tricky at first. But after a few attempts, just like with Alex, everyone began to get used to their increased stats. Alex was pretty certain some system shenanigans was mixed in there somehow, but everyone was becoming damn good at fighting with their weapons. Hitting a lethal strike each time the badgers were distracted by Allie’s spell became the norm.

  "Let me rest a bit to regain my aether, then we'll search out another." Allie sat down and closed her eyes.

  This was another part of the magic system they had learned thanks to Allie gaining her spell. Since spells were cast using the aether inside one’s core, one would run out of energy rather quickly and have to use the [Condensing Spiral] gathering technique to collect more.

  Allie's wisdom stat meant she had enough total aether in her mage core to cast the spell twice before she ran dry and had to refill it. Since the spell was a light element one, her gathering during the day meant she could get all the light affinity aether she needed.

  Since she was attuned to two elements, both light and dark, her progress for attuning her mage core was horrible when trying to use the gathering technique during the day, but that didn't matter for refilling it with aether.

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  "Five minutes boys," Holly said.

  They both nodded.

  Alex sat down and began meditating as well, pulling out the Condensing Stake and placing it between himself and Allie to help speed things up. Meanwhile Lance cleaned off his spear and watched the surrounding foliage. Even when resting and meditating, everyone was wary of any other badgers that could come along attracted by the noise of the fight.

  Alex kept using the aether gathering technique whenever he could. He knew such short sessions wouldn't increase his core's progress much of anything. A single sand speck added to the beach.

  They all add up though, every grain counts. He reminded himself.

  Despite already knowing what he would see, he brought up his core status.

  Still no massive change, just as he expected.

  It was going to be a long journey for any of them to reach the next tier of the mage core. Alex had done the calculations in his head and figured he would need over thirteen months of using the gathering technique four hours each day to reach 100%. Though the Condensing Breath item helped a lot, by itself it simply wasn’t enough.

  Again, that was with his current willpower stat, and not using any optimized environment for gathering fire aether. If he could find a better area to gather fire attuned energy, or even get his hands on one of those special gathering techniques that Celeste had mentioned, then things would speed up.

  Willpower should be the next stat I bring to five then maybe? He thought as he gathered mana. Maybe hold off on vitality right now. Especially since pushing the magical stats up could mean getting a spell. Didn’t Allie say the system message told her it was because her first two refinements were magical stats though? I already refined my agility. Perhaps sticking with vitality would be better after all. It was a complicated situation, and Alex didn't have all the information he needed to make the best decision.

  If I choose this incorrectly, I could ruin my whole character build entirely. Maybe even shoehorn myself in a melee class and not even get spells.

  Alex knew this wasn't completely true.

  Celeste said even melee fighters in this world used magic, they just used it differently than typical mages. And there wasn't even any actual class system, which Alex had been disappointed to learn at the time.

  Each person simply had a unique build with their combined stats, spells, abilities and techniques. The latter two of which Alex still didn't know anything about either. He got an ability when he refined his agility, but it appeared to be a passive boost, and one that everyone got after refining a stat. There was still so very much for Alex to learn.

  "All done," Allie stood up.

  Alex rose with her and stretched. His joints and spine popped loudly as he twisted and turned. All this sitting was going to kill him before the badgers ever did.

  "My turn to kill the next one," Alex smiled and lifted his spear to his shoulder.

  The spearhead glinted almost as brightly as the fire that danced in his eyes.

  ***

  Alex quickly went through all his kill notifications from the last couple hours. It was a decent haul. Their team alone brought down another four badger warriors and their smaller sidekicks. It was quite a hefty amount of kills and a nice haul of experience to go with it.

  With a little bit of math, Alex knew he had enough experience to bring either his Willpower or Vitality up to five. But, it wasn’t yet enough to do both. He had been thinking over what to do while Allie sat to regain her aether energy after their most recent fight. She was almost finished and he still wasn't sure.

  I can just wait to earn that last chunk so I can do both at once. He thought.

  It was taking a higher risk if he waited. Pushing up his vitality would mean a lot for the fights to come, especially against the den mother, which Alex assumed would be the boss fight for the quest. He hadn't been taking any risks regarding his stats and experience points since he got here. Allie went for it because she knew it was best for the team, and it paid off for her.

  Could he do the same?

  Alex closed his status screen. He would wait. It would be worth it, or at least he hoped it would. Alex couldn't be the one taking the easy road while all his friends around him were taking risks for the group. It wasn't like he had to wait much longer. He was just under one hundred and thirty experience from having what he needed.

  Besides, isn’t that what the system wanted anyway? Push for power. Grand feats, legendary achievements. All that stuff.

  Alex once again looked at the countdown timer for the System Trial Quest. The numbers loomed in the corner of his vision like the blinking red and blue headlights of a police vehicle.

  [Time Remaining; 710 Days, 10 Hours, 22 Minutes…]

  It just seemed like they were running out of time. Nearly ten days were already gone and what did they have to show for it? Some mortal grade weapons, basically no progress on my mage core, and a useless arm. Alex looked down at his limb still wrapped up in a sling and sighed.

  They were killing these things at an ever growing pace, but they needed to find the den or hive or whatever it was and kill the boss to complete the quest.

  It was a conciliation that they were racking up experience points and general combat experience. By this time, they were almost all toying with the littler badgers, and the warriors just needed a moderate amount of teamwork.

  From what Alex heard from the other teams, Garret was having a blast fucking around with the magic ring he got from the Worldteacher hidden quest. The guy was apparently able to double or even triple his jump height and distance with the ring. He could even use it three times before it drained all the aether from his mage core and he needed to meditate to recharge.

  He was jumping onto badgers from above and across tree branches.

  “Like a shinobi.” in Garret’s words.

  Alex was just glad everyone was managing well. He could only guess what the morale would be like if they couldn’t handle the fights at their current strength.

  "I'm read-" Allie was just about to stand when Devon came barreling through the trees and brush in front of them.

  "We found it," He said, ignoring all the raised weapons pointed at him.

  "We found the den."

  ?