Chapter 20: Power Up

  Time Remaining; 713 Days, 9 Hours, 56 Minutes…

  "You going to do this or what, I'm starting to feel strange watching you at this point," Garret said.

  Alex sighed but didn't move. He was standing at the bank of the river inside the forest next to the village of Vrung's Quarry. They were making their way back to the camp where they had left the rest of their squad when Alex said he wanted to stop at the river.

  As long as they kept following the river for the day, the two of them would make it back and not have to worry about getting lost. But, that fact wasn't the reason Alex wanted to stop there. It certainly wasn't the reason that he currently stood on the bank of the water while completely naked.

  Alex pulled up the system screen displaying his experience points and stats, looking over everything one more time before he truly committed to his decision. It took a little bit of math, but that was easy for him. Once he made up his mind, Alex mentally clicked on his agility, and quickly felt the rush of energy in his body coupled with the rapid fall of his experience point total. The feeling was intoxicating. The warmth and power that flowed into him, it was what Alex would assume any human made drug was trying, and failing, to replicate back on earth.

  His agility stat pushed past 100% and broke into a base four. He poured more experience into it, not letting up.

  The anticipation built inside his mind and body as he watched the progress. The experience points were dropping even faster now, as it cost more to increase the stat further. But that didn't deter Alex, and the rush of energy kept building. Once again the progress climbed up and pushed his agility into a base five.

  He only saw the change on his screen for a moment, able to enjoy the sight a fraction of a second before his vision turned into a haze of black.

  The soothing and powerful feeling of the energy enhancing his body fled, and it was chased by a clawing pain that climbed into Alex's skin and began attacking his very bones. Alex wasn't certain how, but he felt the tiny ruptures in his organs as the impurities in his body were squeezed and pushed together. His bones cracked as an invisible force squeezed down on them as well. Yet more of the black liquid seeped from his bones and mingled inside the other streams of ooze collecting in his body. All the while, Alex tried to scream, and found that he couldn't.

  It was a torture that he never imagined. Garret had warned him. He had seen what anguish his friend went through when he underwent the earth tribulation, the refinement. It still hadn't prepared him properly. His physical body was being crushed, twisted and squeezed internally in impossible ways and collecting all this blackish material toward his upper body. It filled his lungs, making him unable to breath. He tried to scream. Again. Still nothing.

  He felt his lungs collapse inward, pushing desperately on the liquid that filled them and eventually, he felt it shoot up his throat and Alex vomited a thick dark sludge all over the ground. This repeated, over and over again, Alex's body ejected the impurities it had collected.

  Alex found himself on his hands and knees an unknown amount of time later. His mouth felt horrid. The liquid-stench felt like it still coated his insides and he gagged trying not to taste it. Breathing was also a torture, as the smell was ghastly.

  "Damn, I think you beat the exorcism world record for vomit distance there." Garret was already beside him.

  "That was way worse than you described." Alex gasped out between breaths.

  "Eh, I ain't much of a words guy. I said it was bad, though you might have had it worse than me. You vomited out much more of this stuff than I did. " Garret patted his back in sympathy. Which only made Alex collapse under Garret's strength and further into the stained dirt.

  "Please, stop helping me." Alex groaned and began crawling towards the water.

  This was why he wanted to be at the river when he did this. Alex knew the refinement was a messy process. So taking off his clothes and being at the water's edge made sure he could dirty as little as possible and clean up right afterward.

  He scrubbed his aching body in the river for a long time. The stuff was just far too sticky to come off easily and Alex had to scrape off some of it with his fingernails before finally getting himself acceptably clean.

  "So, did you go for agility?" Garret tossed Alex his clothes and newly purchased leather armor. Meanwhile, Alex pulled up his notification.

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  Alex ignored The System's little quip and swiped away the screen. "Yeah. I figured if you were going to be the strength based melee tank, I'd go for speed." Alex dressed quickly, as he wanted to get away from the foul smell of the area as soon as possible.

  "Sounds good," Garret said. "I'll hold the attention and hit them hard. You come in fast and poke them."

  "You know that's not how it'll really go. This place may have stats like a video game, but the combat isn't turn based." Alex retorted sarcastically as he tied down the armor on his body.

  "I know, but its the fantasy of it, just let me have my childhood dream for a little, okay?"

  Within ten minutes, the two of them had packed back up and were headed south along the river. The bracelet Alex had gotten as a system reward was left empty for now as Alex wasn't sure what he wanted to put into it. The weapons and gear they bought wouldn't fit anyway. Instead Alex looked over his stats as they walked. He had spent seven hundred experience points to upgrade his agility. Which meant he still had a lot more to decide on.

  He wasn't going to be going through a second refinement, so spending the rest of his experience while they traveled wasn't a problem. Figuring where to spend the rest was the only issue. He began by starting to increase his agility once again and stopped very quickly into the process.

  Holy crap, that's a big price hike. Alex had figured the cost to enhance his stats would increase higher and higher as the stat went up. That was true for when he increased them from one to five so far. The difference now was, where each percentage of enhancement had cost four experience per percentage when going from a base four to a base five, the enhancement cost from base five to base six was ten experience points with each percentage. That was more than double the previous cost.

  So its going to cost a thousand more experience points to get to base six. That's too steep right now, I have other stats to worry about as well. Alex looked at his screen and began going over some quick calculations. He wanted to focus on agility but balance mostly everything else out, with vitality maybe being the second highest.

  Well then, lets get spending I guess.

  Alex felt happy with his choices. He put the most emphasis on his physical stats, as those were the ones he could leverage with his current capabilities and battle experience. As time went on, and if he managed to learn some magic, that might change. For now, I need to be realistic and stay alive long enough to make learning magic worth it. He thought.

  Willpower would be my greatest help in learning magic currently. The stronger my body gate, the faster I think I will be able to get a hang of the aether-gathering technique. Alex's hand felt for the small book he had in his backpack. The item contained the only knowledge they had about gathering aether and the beginning of cultivating his mage core. It was probably the most important item in his possession for Alex’s and his team's long term future growth. The ring was probably the second, now that he thought about it.

  He closed his status screen and kept walking with Garret along the river bank. The two of them wouldn't make it back to camp before night fall. So they would need to find a place to make camp for the night.

  Alex simply hoped they wouldn't run into anymore problems on their journey. Despite the fact killing more badgers or even some of the Kobolds would earn them more experience points, Alex just didn't want to start jumping back into combat just yet. He needed to familiarize himself with the new weapons they got. Get used to moving in the new armor. Lastly, to get accustomed to his enhanced body.

  Most of all though, he really wanted to start reading the aether-gathering manual they got from Celeste.

  He wanted to start practicing magic.

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