8. Training Stats

Alistair’s next day started better.

When he woke, his legs no longer felt as though they were being torn apart from the inside. The sharp pain from the first run after his escape had faded enough to leave room for the older aches. His body seemed determined to remind him that one bed and a few nights of sleep could not undo years of damage.

Even so, the improvement was relevant.

He lay there for a moment, feeling the difference, and was grateful he had already spent his free points. If he had waited, he might have thrown them into STR or VIT on impulse.

As he washed and did what he could to make himself presentable, another memory made him grimace for an entirely different reason. Last night, after coming back from the sewer and leveling, he had been too tired to wash properly. So he had used a clone for part of it.

The memory was deeply unsettling and embarrassing. No one had ever served him before, and the servant being himself only made it worse. Either way, he decided not to do that again unless he truly had no choice.

When he went downstairs, the innkeeper was gone. A boy a little younger than him sat behind the counter instead, looking bored.

Alistair asked about breakfast.

Naturally, the inn charged for it. The price was a little painful, but with more shards in his purse than he had possessed at any point since his escape, he decided to be sensible. Better food would help. He remembered enough from home to know that rest alone did not build a body. Food was important too.

Of course, his parents might also have lied to make him finish his meals.

He sat near the counter and waited. When the food came, he was almost embarrassed by how much he enjoyed the first few bites. Warm food in the morning still felt like something meant for wealthier people.

Only after starting did he notice another guest a few tables away eating a much better meal. Extra dishes, more bread, and eggs. For a moment, Alistair thought he had been cheated. Then he realized the obvious. The man had probably ordered and paid more.

He called the boy over and asked. The answer was exactly that.

When Alistair, without thinking, asked why no one had mentioned the better options, the boy only shrugged, though his glance moved from Alistair’s clothes to the other guest’s.

Alistair felt heat rise to his face and wished he had not asked.

He had always paid attention to his surroundings, especially danger. That had often kept him from the worst punishments. But suddenly, he had started to notice smaller things that he might once have missed. Finer details, expressions, and things people did not want to say aloud.

WIS was probably responsible. It had doubled, and something was bound to change because of it.

Flustered, and suddenly wanting to prove something to a boy he did not even know, Alistair ordered extra dishes.

The egg was especially expensive. He realized his mistake only when the boy asked for payment first. By then, pride had trapped him.

He could have taken the words back, but doing so while the boy stood there waiting would have made his embarrassment worse. So he paid and sat there with the bitter feeling of having wasted shards for the sake of pride.

When the extra food arrived, though, he ate every bite. If he was going to be foolish, at least the foolishness would not be wasted.

By the time he left the inn, his mood had improved somewhat. The food sat warm and heavy in his stomach, and he chose to think of it as an investment. He vaguely remembered young men in his village carrying stones and logs for training, then saving shards for eggs afterward. They had known what they were doing.

He reached the steward’s office not long after.

The clerk had already returned to his usual state. Yesterday’s curiosity was gone. He handed over the tools with the same lazy indifference as before, and Alistair had to stop himself from hurrying the man along. There was no point in making enemies because of a few moments of delay.

Soon he was back in the lane near Ropewalk, and the work resumed quickly.

He used Worker to clear and drag, and Digger to break and loosen. Two bodies felt right for the task. Three would have been useless in those tight passages, and using only one would have slowed everything too much.

But this time, instead of resting while the clones worked, Alistair made himself do something with his own body too. He trained.

He knew nothing fancy or refined. Only rough ideas remembered from a childhood that had been stopped too soon. Weight for STR. Repetition for STA. Persistence for END.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

So he gathered stones where he could stay hidden and began lifting them.

The exercise was awkward and crude. He knew that. Somewhere on Emerier, there were likely people who could have told him exactly how to train properly, what he should eat, how he should pace himself, and how to avoid wasting effort. But people did not usually give that kind of knowledge away for free. Information, like everything else, cost shards.

Survival, better food, and proper training all demanded more of them. Even hunting in the nearby nest isle, which was done to earn shards, would require considerable initial investment.

For now, Alistair could only lift stones and let the clones clear sewage.

By noon, he knew he had been too ambitious.

Mentally, he was still holding together. The Worker and Digger clones needed very little close supervision by now. Their tasks were clear and repetitive. Even so, the repeated summoning, the split focus, and the strain of training at the same time were draining him fast.

He had chosen stones because running openly would have been too visible. He had expected weight training to be easier to manage. Now he could barely move his arms. More importantly, something deeper was running low. He felt it each time he summoned a new clone. The skill became harder to use. It felt like the end of a full workday, not the middle of one.