My training continued nonstop for the next several days. When I started to tire, Master Reggie would explain to me in simple terms that, since I was intentionally being stupid, I should have much more energy than usual, so I shouldn’t need rest.

  Somehow, this actually managed to keep me awake and alert, which implied a whole number of things about how much power he had over me, none of which I wanted to seriously consider.

  Thankfully, things got better after the first day of training.

  The main issue was how I understood the system. It sounded so stupid that I kept second guessing myself, causing changes in perception—Reggie calls them commands—to fail.

  Only after a dozen hours could I finally acknowledge that this was a real, legitimate game mechanic, supposedly seamlessly integrating with the stat system introduced in the first area.

  Master Reggie held a pencil in his hands. “Turn this butterfly into dust.”

  “Die,” I stated.

  The pencil shattered into a billion pieces, and those pieces vaporized, before catching with wisps of fire.

  Master Reggie brushed away the dust, nodding to himself. “Very good. How did you do it?”

  “Butterflies are fragile,” I stated. “And that butterfly is of unusual shape and color, which means it’s probably deceased. In that case, it should have turned to dust a long time ago. Since it forgot to, I just had to whisper a reminder.”

  “Oooh, very clever.” He grabbed a vase and held it up to me. “Use more of those double arguments, since if you fail one, there’s still another to fall back on. Now take this flamingo and make it a goose.”

  I had a lot of trouble making inanimate objects into living beings, but if I looked for the patterns within patterns, and thought of them like different parts of the living being in question, then I could change it.

  There was just one issue.

  Creating a living being took far more mental energy than I currently had, almost always ending with me as a raving mess on the floor. It should have been possible, unlike creating intelligent life, but I just wasn’t gullible enough to make it work.

  So we switched to a new method, enchanting.

  Master Reggie held up a soft round ball.

  “Is that a dog toy?” I asked.

  “An enchanted dog toy,” he corrected. “As I was saying, an enchantment is a way of mentally exaggerating one element of the object in question. For instance, dog toys are incredibly durable, since not only dogs but wolves also love to chew on them.”

  He handed the ball toward me, and I gave it a squeeze. It made a sound, but the actual process of squeezing it was far more difficult, as if someone had added extra springs into the ball.

  Master Reggie took the dog toy, smiling to himself. “This is a dog toy. Dog toys are incredibly durable, since not only dogs but wolves love to chew on them.”

  There was a noticeable ripple of energy, and the dog toy seemed stronger than it had before.

  Again, he handed me the toy, and I gave it a squeeze. This time, I couldn’t make a sound, even to the fullest extent of my strength.

  “How did you do that?” I asked. “Does it stack?”

  Master Reggie nodded. “An enchantment is a self fulfilling prophecy. You convince yourself that something has a certain attribute, and then you proceed to show this attribute. It will have been strengthened due to your perspective. Then you convince yourself just as you had before, adding in the new change. This is exponential, but also exponentially taxing. Humans have their own methods, which are stupid, by the way, as they’re so inefficient you need hundreds of enchanters to make one item of decent power. Now, explain it back to me.”

  “It’s not the same as adding power,” I muttered. “You’re merely convincing yourself that the base object is more than it is, and the object fulfills this model, growing stronger.”

  “While the other two methods of mental energy are most useful within the second area, enchanted objects will retain their enchantments no matter which area they go to. The union makes a pretty penny through enchanting the endgame level gear of high area players.”

  He grinned like a maniac, flashing his silver teeth. “Do you see where this is going?”

  I took Crapshoveler out of my inventory, and turned him over. “Can I enchant this?”

  “Can you?” Master Reggie asked. “Are you strong enough?”

  “He’s just a first area item,” I stated. “It shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Even though Crapshoveler was—as far as I could tell—virtually invincible, he did next to no additional damage. He did so little, I honestly considered trading him for a better weapon.

  Weapons in higher areas modify damage in different ways. In the first area, it’s additive, which means that all weapons are very good when you’re weak, but as you get stronger, they’re less useful. Second area weapons, on the other hand, deal damage using a multiplier and a condition.

  However, if Crapshoveler can keep an enchantment after my death, his power could become ridiculous.

  “When you enchant an item, focus on something that makes sense,” Master Reggie said. “It’s a shovel, so I would focus on digging, or on deflecting, not cutting or slicing. Make sure the enchantment is as efficient as possible. With several thousand stacks, a slight inefficiency becomes a big inefficiency.”

  I nodded. “Crapshoveler is a legendary item, which I obtained through a glitch. He is a one of a kind weapon, and he is the strongest digging-based item I have ever seen.”

  Crapshoveler’s edge seemed to sharpen.

  “I’d shorten it a little!” Master Reggie suggested. “And go big, or you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot around your seven hundredth stack.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Crapshoveler is the single strongest item in the first area. He is a shovel. Shovels dig.”

  My vision exploded into spots, and my stomach did flips. But the enchantment worked. Crapshoveler became noticeably heavier, with a finer edge.

  {NOTICE}

  [{Crapshoveler} has undergone a spontaneous evolution]

  [{Crapshoveler} has gained 2% Digging affinity]

  Master Reggie clapped his hands, laughing like a lunatic. “Very good! VERY GOOD! I’ll have you know that I was expecting somewhere around one and a half percent!”

  “Is that a big difference?” I asked, pushing myself up off the floor.

  “YES!” Master Reggie cackled to himself. “Enchantments are exponential. The stronger they are, the stronger they become, and the stronger they start, the stronger they end. I think you’ll have quite a bit of fun with this shovel of yours.”

  I concentrated again. “Crapshoveler is the single strongest item in the first area—”

  Master Reggie clamped a hand over my mouth. “Sorry kid, but you haven’t slept in days and you’re just a copper. A second enchantment would probably kill you. Get some sleep.”

  Just like that, three days of exhaustion caught up to me, and I passed out on the floor.

  Conservation of effort. If I can use a little effort to give myself more effort, then that effort must be regained.

  I slept for twenty five hours.

  When I finally woke, Master Reggie had me repeatedly enchant Crapshoveler, over and over, until I passed out.

  That’s when I started seeing progress

  {NOTICE}

  [{Crapshoveler} has undergone a spontaneous evolution]

  [{Crapshoveler} has gained 18% Digging affinity]

  ~

  {Crapshoveler}

  “A crap shovel that shovels crap”

  [+1 Str]

  [+35% digging affinity]

  In addition to the digging affinity, Crapshoveler continued to gain weight. At this point, the table groaned from beneath him.

  “That’s because of focus,” Master Reggie stated. “In all areas, the more power something has, the more metaphysical weight it has. You have made your shovel bigger, and more complex.”

  “That’s part of the template, isn’t it?” I asked. “If it’s true in all areas, there’s got to be a way to use it to our advantage.”

  Come to think of it, enchantments worked in all areas as well. Maybe not with the same efficiency as the second area, but they did work.

  On the last day of the week, maybe six days since I had entered the first area, Master Reggie decided I was ready.

  “Alright scrub,” he chuckled. “You’ve done everything you can, at your stage.”

  “Not everything,” I muttered. “I still can’t beat you in perspective.”

  “That’s because I'm a Tungsten,” Master Reggie stated. “If you had any idea what that meant, you’d be a lot more scared. Besides, I’m way stupider than you are. While you could spend the next hundred years enchanting Crapshoveler, blacking out for a day to a week to a month, I’d prefer you to start upping your rank. Your base mental power is incredible, sure, but we can make it far higher with a little exp. And for that, we’re hunting monsters.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have any issues hunting your own kind?”

  “Humans hunt their own kind.”

  “We do not.”

  “Oh?” Master Reggie scoffed. “Never heard of a loan shark, have you? Besides, I don’t know them, so why should I care if they live or die?”

  I shook my head. “Alright.”

  “Hey, you haven’t forgotten, have you?” Master Reggie asked. “The whole reason why I’m so interested in you in the first place? You’re still not strong enough to use that ability.”

  “Comostatis?”

  “You’ll probably have to be a SIlver before you can start using it.”

  From what I understood, the ranks went Dirt, Tin, Copper, Iron, Brass, with each rank being ten times stronger than the one before it. I assumed it continued with Tungsten, Silver, and then Gold, though a couple ranks of other materials could be around there as well.

  I was copper, and I would stay copper until I got Exp.

  “Can’t I use shock to make myself stronger?” I asked. “If I go through trauma, then my stats increase. That should be able to predominantly increase my rank too, right?”

  Master Reggie just looked at me.

  “That’s not stupid, that’s insane. If you get hit on the head too many times then you’ll fall into a coma. Plus, it's an additive increase, so it’d take forever to get real results. You’re better off with Exp.”

  Yes, but Exp doesn’t carry over between resets.

  I sighed. “I don’t suppose I could just summon an Exp orb, could I?”

  Master Reggie laughed. “There’s not many rules in the command system. Even so, you cannot summon elements from another system. So no creating Exp, or Strength, or whatever.”

  “Can you summon a blank orb, then fill it?” I asked.

  “Who cares? Now follow me! We’re going hunting!”

  That didn’t make much sense at all. When I created Exp orbs, where was the glassy orb part coming from? Was the Exp actually physical?

  The Gauntlet of Feasting made massive exp orbs as well.

  How difficult was that?

  I’d assumed it’d have to be relatively simple, for a monster to do it, but if other, more experienced monsters thought it was impossible…

  Whenever I die next, I’d have to look into it. If I remembered.

  For now, I’d get as strong as I could.

  Since this could be dangerous, I intended to go without my party, but Sern had to go, so Axel went too, so Junior wanted to tag along, so Rose was going to go with him.

  Eventually, I allowed Axel to come, but not Junior and Rose. They were too fragile.

  We followed Master Reggie at a distance, through the center of the capital. Here, just like the first area—there was a massive map on a board, filled with marks and chips. Unlike the first area, Union officials ran the board, processing requests from those in their system.

  And the whole board was a semi-physical hologram, probably created through enchanting or an ability.

  “You’ve gotta be in the union to use their systems,” Master Reggie stated. “Well, legally, anyway.”

  I suppressed a groan. “We’re not doing this the legal way?”

  “Not until you can beat their exam,” he said. “For now, just pick a spot. It’s not like they can stop you from seeing a map that big.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a red marker in the upper left corner, with a bunch of small red marks around it.

  “Those are wildbeasts,” Master Reggie explained. “Named by a human, obviously. Basically they’re anything strong enough to rate in terms of stars that aren't cores. Also that one must be pretty nasty to have so many marks around it.”

  I was almost afraid to ask. “What do marks mean?”

  “Players who died,” Master Reggie stated. “You’ll notice that those pins have metal ribbons attached to them, which indicates their rank. That monster killed a gold.”

  “A gold?”

  “Yep.”

  He looked me up and down. “Maybe pick something else, alright?”

  Sern squeaked, pointing to the bottom corner, where a tiny little pin had been notched.

  “There’s a little speck right there?” I asked, glancing toward her, spotting other symbols around the pin.

  “Ooo,” Master Reggie chortled. “A wrath. It doesn’t look like it's killed too many people yet, so it won’t be that strong.” He smacked me across the back, smiling wide. “You ready?”

  “Sure.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “So how on earth are we supposed to get all the way over there?”