But for a Slime

Chapter Twenty Four

When they returned from the priest and the curing, Joe had been surprised to find the party still going, but Joe didn’t feel like partying anymore. Joe offered to give the kid a day off, and Garnedell took him up on it, quickly joining the party as Joe disappeared back into the forest. When he returned and found the kid still partying, he left him to it, not wishing to interrupt since he really didn’t need the kid. Garnedell would be able to sleep in the next day as well and Joe would just go by himself into the woods again. He had made seventeen late last evening and returned home to sleep.

He ate the meal with the villagers still partying in the agora before sleeping to prepare for his long day of hunting the next day. Joe had already spent quite a bit of time on the party, the boar and bear hunt, and curing Garnedell’s curse. He didn’t want to lose any more days of his one year. According to his calculations, he had already used about one hundred and twenty seven days. He was a bit depressed when he finished the calculation, but when he ran the numbers for an absolutely perfect leveling schedule without any waste, he came to a time of a hundred fifteen days. That didn’t include the three days to find the village, putting him at a hundred eighteen days. It seemed he’d only lost a little under ten days, and Joe felt rather more comfortable with his efforts but only grew more concerned that he could reach at least a minimum of his intelligence stat. He should be OK to at least reach a decent minimum to give him what he needed to continue his growth after the year was done. Still, he worried about how it would affect his grinding speed if his stats became nerfed.

Joe woke the next morning, excited to return to his quest, both because of the wonderful curing of Garnedell from his curse and because he had been able to make level seventeen yesterday! He lay in his bed and glanced back at the small window outside and saw the darkness of early morning. As much as he wanted to escape to the forest and continue grinding up his stats, the darkness kept him locked in the room and his head flopped back to his pillow as he waited. He’d been waking a bit early each morning, recently, and hadn’t really thought much of it. It was still frustrating, however, and he could only think that it was the simple fact he was going to bed so early, compared to back home on Earth. No electricity and internet made it easy to head to bed early.

Joe sighed and turned to the only thing he really had to occupy himself and flipped open his stats. He glanced over his status with boredom and then almost flicked to another tab, his focus already turned to looking at the available jobs when he froze and stared at his status once again. Something’s… what’s wrong? He’d stared at his status almost every night and morning for so long that he immediately recognized that something was not right, and he turned his attention to it, going through it piece by piece. HP… MP… right. Attack and defense as well as for magic… ok. Strength. Dexterity. Same… no problem. Agility… Speed… huh? Speed? Where did… Endurance!? Why… Joe’s thoughts whirled as he stared at the new stats that suddenly appeared. And they’re already… leveled… somehow? What… happened? Why are they… Wait… check the rest! Joe continued moving down the various stats but found nothing new, the remaining stats unchanged, including both types of resistances. He turned back to the two new stats and pondered them. Why did they… suddenly appear? His mind began pondering over the last weeks and months but found little that could let him know what had happened. His speed and endurance were both strong, something he’d trained well back on Earth. Or probably to be more honest, something that had been beaten into him by his various masters.

I really don’t think… what changed? I… wouldn’t it have to be related… somehow… what happened with speed… although now that I think about it, the stats currently don’t really capture straight up speed… or endurance, so… His thoughts whirled, trying to find how the change could have occurred. This… it’s not new… I’ve always known this… shouldn’t it already be in the stats… maybe? I… He continued worrying at the issue simply because if I can’t understand the system… Worry settled into him and his thoughts dissolved a bit, no longer completely focused on trying to understand how the system had changed or how he had changed. He simply began to consider the entirety of the last several weeks. He thought on anything that had to do with endurance or endurance training along with maybe speed as well.

The only thing… maybe… Garnedell’s endurance is pretty weak… it’s why I thought about jogging to and from the forest with the kid… get his endurance up… work on his speed so he can escape… the upgraded slime’s speed caught me by surprise as well… but… is that… all? Just… realizing there are different stats? Maybe… acting on it… that was a couple days… weeks ago, right? What’s…

Joe spent the dark of the early morning staring at his two new stats and considering them. He was frustrated that he had to now go back and go through the jobs to fill in the missing stats as well, but didn’t really worry about them too much beyond that. Both stats were easily understood and self-evident, even useful. They defined an aspect of his physicality that the previous stats did not. Despite that, he found the changing system unsettling and found his mind worrying over it until false dawn broke the darkness outside his window. His anxiety had him sitting up and pacing the room when the light lit the room enough. He didn’t stay long as the floors proved poor at remaining silent under his weight, creaking with every couple steps and he finally decided to escape into the forests alone, Garnedell still snoring away in bed from the previous long days of partying before.

After eating the left overs, again, Joe decided to escape to the woods to continue his killing. Joe spent the next five days in the woods and Garnedell joined him as usual the next day for the last four days. With the fifth day, Joe grinned, awash with relieved success as he hit level twenty with his metropolitan class. He only gave a passing glance to his current status since the metropolitan job only gave a single point per stat, a job as basic as commoner had been. That meant that he had only gained a single extra point per stat for his base stats but when he glanced at his stats, he was surprised to see that his stats seemed to be much higher than they should be. He stopped to look over them, trying to understand as they seemed to be almost ten points higher than they should. Despite the discrepancy, he figured trying to figure it out would take a lot of time, paper, and thought which he didn’t have deep in the slime forest. Besides, he was much more concerned with what new jobs might have become available to him.

Status

Current Job

Available Jobs

Current Skills

Available Skills

Log

Joe McConnell

Status

Physical Resistances

Magical Resistances

HP

43 (138)

Physical:

Wind

3.30

MP

43 (100)

Piercing

2 (48)

Water

2.80

Attack

43 (181)

Crushing

3.25 (132)

Fire

0.50

Defense

43 (158)

Slashing

2.5 (39)

Ice

2.55

Magic

43 (100)

Magic Defense

43 (100)

Strength

53 (148)

Dexterity

49 (112)

Agility

46 (133)

Speed

44 (115)

Endurance

54 (193)

IQ

47 (132)

Wisdom

48.5 (105)

Learning

43.00

Luck

1.25

Joe quickly flipped over to the available jobs and smiled at what he found. His smile grew even more as he realized what had happened with his stats. Pay dirt! I can’t believe the way this system works. This… they want people to fail with this system, it’s the only thing I can think of!

Status

Current Job

Available Jobs

Current Skills

Available Skills

Log

Citizen

Commoner

20

Villager

10

Farmer

10

Waiter

10

Bartender

10

Chief

10

Day Laborer

10

Inn Keeper

10

Reeve

10

Forester

10

Trapper

10

Fisherman

10

Hunter

10

Miner

10

Baker

10

Cook

10

Metropolitan

20

Burgher

Waiter

10

Bartender

10

Day Laborer

10

Cook

10

Baker

10

Groom

Butcher

Inn Keeper

10

Merchant

Citizen

It became obvious where the extra stats had come from. It seemed that commoner and metropolitan inn keeper were the same job, but both groups had an inn keeper. There were inns and inn keepers in villages and in cities but it seemed that if one grew the inn keeper job under one, it automatically grew it under the other. But since he hadn’t unlocked the prerequisite for the metropolitan jobs, none of them had been available to boost his stats. Now, he suddenly had another six jobs adding their stats to his base. He almost giggled like a giddy kid trying to sleep on Christmas eve. Seems like there are still a lot of jobs I haven’t opened yet. Should I risk leveling cook to twenty? Will it release all those jobs under it? It seems like there are fifteen extra jobs under it! That was a lot of extra jobs, and leveling them to ten would only take about a half a day each! Fifteen jobs in seven or eight days and an extra fifteen points to his base stats. That was almost too good to give up, but it would take him seventeen and a half days to get the cook from ten to twenty and eighteen days to get citizen from zero to twenty. It seemed like the time was basically the same and citizen seemed to be opening up a whole new set of jobs although Joe didn’t know how many jobs would open up. But even if it was basically the minimum of a dozen jobs like commoner, it would be worth it.

Joe’s manic happiness hadn’t dimmed despite his uncertainty of his future job path. I think I’ll try the cook? It’s already ten. Jumping it up to twenty … time wise, it isn’t very efficient but I need to open up a lot of jobs, so… Ahh, well, probably should focus on the easy stuff still. Time to get back home and change my job!

Joe turned back home, calling Garnedell after him and the two made for the road and then jogged back home. When they made the village, it was still early evening and Joe dropped Garnedell off at the village before jogging on to the priest. But as Joe headed west out of the village, Garnedell came up to him, shouting for him to stop.

“Zhoe! Zhoe…No!”

Joe came to a stop and turned around, “Hey, what’s up Garnedell?”

“Zhoe no go.”

“Don’t go?”

“Priest go. No priest.”