The Strongest Spellblade

I slammed into a hard foam block and bounced off. Stumbling back a step. The sensory training room was designed to help me improve my Darkness Vision. It was pitch black, no hint of light. The entrance had two sets of doors and a thick curtain, to ensure no light got inside this room.

The foam blocks moved about controlled by various mechanisms. I had to run around the room and not run into anything. This was to improve my Focused Breathing and Focused Running skills as well. There was no danger, but running into one of these foam blocks was incredibly disconcerting.

I could barely make out vague shapes in the darkness. I could feel my skill Darkness Vision, slowly improving, but skills took time and sensory skills, which were mostly passive, tended to be harder to level than active skills. At least they were easier than resistances for the most part, being a lower tier. I just couldn’t push my sensory skills to the limit in a life threatening situation safely.

For the resistance training, there had been other Alchemical mixtures being used that imparted different effects. From allowing the transmission of lightning, arcane, fire, and cold damage. It was incredibly difficult and painful, since I felt those skills improving so slowly despite my regular sessions every other day.

I could feel a new skill as well, most likely Skill Control. When combined with System Sense, I had much better control over which of my passive skills were active or not. It was a vague sense with most skills being hard to grasp onto with the skill. But I had a good grasp of my only tier 4 skill, Pain Immunity.

It would block out all pain unless overwhelmed. I could feel that it wouldn’t increase in level unless overwhelmed and my resistances would barely increase unless I focused on keeping this skill deactivated and suffered immensely during resistance training.

Skills were about imparting the knowledge onto one’s soul. For resistance type skills, that knowledge was about the minute changes one’s own Mana would make across their body to better deal with damage. Other skills one could use Mana Manipulation to unlock for try and forcibly improve, but resistance skills were too delicate and there were too many variables to easily do this.

Perhaps my mother with her insanely high stats and other skills could have used some form of Mana control to better increase her resistances, but that wasn’t possible for me and I had been warned heavily not to mess with my body with Mana Manipulation unless I was supervised and had explicit supervision and instruction.

Similar to messing with one’s soul. It was too easy for a mistake to bypass a one’s own defenses since they were working with their own Mana. Danger Sense wouldn’t trigger in such a case. While my mother hadn’t said anything, I had enough issues from messing about with my soul that I was content to wait for the Professors at the College of Advancement to teach me, even if I wanted to learn spell skills and other Mana based skills.

Even when I had asked about all my Mana reserves just sitting there, going to waste, it was always about my foundation. Ensuring that I had a solid foundation before rushing ahead with higher tier skills.

I slammed into a hard foam block that had swung into my path. I stumbled back a step and then started running again. That was really frustrating, but that was the point. This was a training facility. If it wasn’t frustrating me this much, then they were doing a poor job with all the gold I was paying them.

At least my tuition would be covered at the College of Advancement. While it was tempting to take a six month long break until the start, I wanted to see how much I could improve on my own. It was a challenge from my mother. I knew in my heart that my way was best.

If she wanted to wear herself out and become single minded on her path, that was fine. But I was young and she had at least a century to get to where she was. While I didn’t know how old she was and wouldn’t dare to ask, it was at least a century.

My father was young compared to her. But she also had a lot more Vitality, meaning she would live for far longer. Before I had never really considered this issue, but more recently I had been thinking about it after running into dwarves and elves. They had an easier time increasing their Vitality stat, but some of their other stats they struggled with. Elves struggled with other physical stats besides Vitality while dwarves struggled with mental stats.

These were just generalizations, but the claim made by the Eldarin Empire was that they were manufactured slave races of the distant past. The dwarves and elves hated this explanation and each claimed they were the first race, not humans. Their high Vitality also made having children more difficult, which was why the Eldarin Empire had beaten them back over a millennia ago through sheer numbers. While the dwarves and elves had won some battles, they had lost wars due to their lacking populations.

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It was also what made my birth so difficult for my mother. Requiring an immense amount of money and resources. It was easy to forget this, but I was her precious child, she had sacrificed time and effort to have. Even if my father paid the bill, I had no doubt that she had to call in favors from specific people to help her conceive.

Even with skills to suppress stats, she wouldn’t be able to do that for 9 months, she would have needed Alchemical products to help her, expensive Alchemical products. With the estimate of around 20 stats per level for legends, that meant she had least 3,000 stats.

It was hard to imagine so many. Even spread across all 8 stats, that was an average of 375. And since she was a supreme legend, I had no doubt it was slightly higher than that. I would guess anywhere from an average of 400 to 450 per stat. While I might be overestimating my mother, it didn’t feel like an overestimation to me.

Stats increased power linearly. While the percentage increase was greater when someone was weak, it also meant that power didn’t decrease per stat when one became stronger. Tutor Damian had said that most people invested into Vitality to extend their life, especially after they had children.

It was harder with the elves and dwarves since their Vitality stat surged upwards initially during their youth. Efforts to have children so young had fallen flat in both societies. Both races had retreated backwards in the face of human expansion. The dwarves underground to focus on their creations and craftsmanship and the elves to various islands and deep forests they could more easily defend.

As my thoughts drifted too much I slammed into another hard foam block at head height and did a flip, before slamming into the ground. That was painful, since I was suppressing Pain Immunity right now to better level my other skills.

“Urg,” I let out a groan and got back up. I started running again. I had no doubt Thoron was enjoying controlling everything and having me run into the foam blocks. Healer Melon was mostly resting, but if my stamina reserves got too low, I felt them fill back up.

The ability to think while doing other tasks, might reduce my leveling slightly, but that was one of the small advantages once one’s Mind stat became large enough. There were hidden benefits that the System didn’t explicitly bring up and were gradual. For Mind, it was the ability to focus on multiple things at once without getting overwhelmed.

Vitality gave someone a more robust body and each healing point did a bit more. It was small, less than a single percent. Endurance did the same for stamina point reserves and allowed easier survival in hostile environments where the air might be more difficult to breathe. Strength improved impact resistance as a hidden benefit, Agility improved balance. Perception let someone’s base senses see further and boost sensory skills. Magic allowed for each Mana point to be slightly stronger and have better overall control of one’s Mana. Finally Focus granted greater resistance to mental illusions and social skills.

Second order effects were what these boosts were called. Many of them overlapped with the first order effects of the stats, like boosting reserve point regeneration. There were no third order effects as far as I knew, but I had never asked my mother. Or those might be things too small to easily notice unless a person had a lot of stats. Something to question her on, when I saw her again.

My left foot caught on a foam block, and I had to transition into a flip to remain standing. Tricky, moving in smaller foam blocks that were harder to spot, into my path. I could feel my skill levels going up quite a bit from this training. Not just this running in the darkness training, but all the training I had to undergo.

Even without having my status open, my System Sense was getting better and better. Especially on resistance training it was easy to feel the levels go up. While it had been frustrating to train with my mother in practical combat skills down in the dungeon, it was much easier to push forward mentally without her constant critiques and criticisms. I could have killed a level 100 monster and she still wouldn’t be impressed.

While I might argue with her, I also knew she was right. If I wanted to become the best, I couldn’t just sit around and enjoy spa days with chocolate every day. I had to keep pushing myself every day to increase my levels. That was the frustrating thing. If I worked hard and gained levels, she would take credit for improving my mentality. If I slacked off I would get blamed.

But I knew better than anyone, that the levels I earned would benefit me in the future. No matter how annoyed I was with my mother and how she pushed me, I knew it was something I had asked for. Even if training with her personally was a nightmare.

I had no doubt people would pay quite a bit for the privilege, but it was beyond frustrating to be constantly lectured. At least with this training in the training hall, I was in control of what I was training. I could feel I was making a lot of progress. I wanted to push myself to prove that I didn’t need my mother constantly hovering over me, to push my skill levels upwards.

Juking to the side I dodged a foam rod that swung at chest height. That would have been annoying, but I was glad I had managed to dodge one at least. That was when another foam road slammed into my chest and went slamming to the ground, my breath knocked out of me.

I recovered quickly and got up. I still had a lot of work to do. In time there would be a specialty gas released into the training chamber to block my Darkness Vision. There would be more adjustments always pushing my skills to the limit to improve as quickly as possible.