Chapter 17

Rob spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening testing out his new skill, Energy Thrust.

He had been waiting eagerly to reach level 10 in his Warrior-class and to unlock a new skill. Now that he had acquired that new skill, he found himself just as curious and excited to test it out. There was something about this new world, this Tutorial, this island, the Grand Authority System that filled Rob with glee and excitement.

He would do nearly anything to get more powerful in this new world. To gain more strength and power. To gain greater mastery with his spear. To unlock deeper and richer understandings of the system and all of its advantages.

And to do so while pursuing greater and stronger enemies and monsters. It stirred something deep in Rob.

He started with examining how much Stamina the skill actually consumed. Rob’s initial Energy Thrust had cost him 75 Stamina points, which he took to be the default.

He quickly then started exploring whether he could adjust the destructiveness of Energy Thrust by giving it more or less Stamina.

He gripped his spear and drew from the reservoir of Stamina inside of him, putting as much as he could into a single attack.

The white motes of energy exploded across Rob’s metal spear as he thrust it forward.

The extra powerful Energy Thrust cost about 150 Stamina, and it looked as if that was the soft cap.

The way Stamina worked alongside Energy Thrust was that it was a mixture of both drawing on an internal reservoir of energy and channeling that into the act of thrusting; which meant, he couldn’t spend two minutes “charging” his Energy Thrust, spending boat loads of Stamina points. He needed to draw upon that reservoir of Stamina points within the three to ten second confines of doing the actual thrust.

He wondered if there was a way to draw upon that reservoir of Stamina points with greater speed and velocity, so that he could tap into even more destructive versions of Energy Thrust.

It was at that point that Rob questioned whether or not momentum played a role here. Rob attempted sprinting before triggering Energy Thrust. He discovered doing that he could do an even more powerful attack at 200 Stamina point cost.

After that he attempted sprinting, jumping, and then triggering Energy Thrust. Such an attack was even more devastating at 250 Stamina points.

Interesting.

He hadn’t spent any Stamina points during his time in the jungle, running and jumping and fighting; but now that he had an ability that drew upon Stamina Points, such actions did affect one’s ability to draw into that reservoir of physical energy.

Rob also tested out using less Stamina and achieved slightly less impressive Energy Thrusts for a more reasonable cost of 35 Stamina points.

He then went over some math quickly in his head. He currently had a total Stamina point pool of 1171. That meant he could do seven powerful thrusts (with no running or jumping augmentations) and still have 121 Stamina points remaining, which left him enough room for one standard thrust or three weaker ones. If he didn’t unleash any extra powerful Energy Thrusts, he could get away with fifteen uses at standard power with enough room after that for one last weak attack.

Now that he was actually consuming his Stamina pool, it would be good to know how quickly it recovered. Health did not recover in battle, but out of battle was fairly quick to patch wounds and injuries.

He watched his Stamina points regenerate and roughly calculated that they were regenerating at 14 SP per second, which was quite a generous speed, but he doubted that would be the case once in battle. He imagined his Stamina would regenerate slower once in the heat of battle.

Rob knew he had done as much testing as he could out of battle.

It was now time to find a real case study for his new ability.

Twenty minutes later, Rob came upon a lone Jungle Lizard.

Rob snuck up behind it. He tightened his grip on the shaft of his spear and quickly drew upon his reservoir of Stamina and unleashed a sneak Energy Thrust upon the Jungle Lizard.

The spear attack flew forward. Bright luminescent energy shot forth from the spear tip as it crashed into the thick scales of the Jungle Lizard’s top half of its skin. A loud crack echoed through the jungle. Rob’s attack pierced through the lizard’s thick hide and into its vital organs.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The creature was dead within seconds.

Rob grinned. With the help of Energy Thrust, he didn’t even need to necessarily attack the lizards’ weak points. He now had a skill that could attack even the tougher parts of their exterior.

He also had quickly noted before the Jungle Lizard died how much Stamina he was recovering. It was definitely at a less rapid pace than it had been out of battle. In battle, it appeared as if his Stamina recovery was closer to 4.6 per second. That meant in a grueling fight that saw him get to lower numbers of Stamina points, he might need to wait up to 35 seconds before being able to unleash a powerful Energy Thrust. And 35 seconds could be life or death.

Rob was content that that was enough skill testing for the day and began to return back to his base camp.

But just as he got back he had a new idea.

I wonder…

Rob held his spear and applied his knowledge of the internal reservoir of Stamina and applied it to a slash rather than a thrust with his spear.