I

Eva sighed. She'd done it. The battle really had been a tough fight for as short a time as it'd lasted. She felt exhausted, beaten up, tossed around, and toyed with. However, she also felt a strong sense of accomplishment.

The room she found herself in was slightly different from the ones of the other break rooms. It had a new door that was placed in the wall to her back when she’d first arrived. Other than that, it looked similar enough. Eva doffed her gear and put on something more comfortable. There was another letter from Alexandra on the table.

Congratulations on completing Basic Training. You have three options in front of you. The first is to say you are done. You can go home with everything you've gained so far, knowing that you are more prepared for what is to come than almost anyone else on Earth. The second option is that you can stay here and train in the room provided to you. Here, you can fight against whatever opponents you like in order to train your Skills. You will not, however, gain any more Stat Points. Finally, you can continue on to Novice Training. The Challenges are harder, but the rewards are also greater.

It is my sincere hope that you will continue rather than say you are done. For as much as you've learned so far, you still know very little. In order to face what is to come, you need to be at your best. Humans are fractured, and they fight over every little thing. Humans will deny the truth in front of their faces if it goes against what they believe. This is our weakness. Adaptability, curiosity, and teamwork are our strengths. Humanity will need guiding lights in the days to come. Be that guiding light.

Alexandra

Eva rolled her eyes. It was a little sappy, in her opinion. She'd already resolved to make use of this opportunity as much as possible. A shining light for humanity? That crap knew where it could go shove itself. She looked at her challenges and was happy.

Down to Basics✶

Complete Basic training

Reward: 20 Stat Points

Century★

Complete the 100th level

Reward: 10 Stat Points

Take the Crown✦

Kill the Goblin Lord and steal his crown

Reward: 5 Stat Points, Goblin Lord's Crown✹

She'd gained a few levels to her Skills as well.

Throwing▲: 3

Polearms▲: 6

Unarmed▲: 4

Swords✦: 7

Shields✦: 4

Charge▲: 7

Infuse Weapon✦: 6

Medium Armor✦: 3

Pierce✦: 3

Air Resistance✦: 3

Fire Resistance✦: 2

Earth Resistance✦: 3

Water Resistance✦: 1

Dodge▲: 9

Poison Resistance✦: 5

Finally, her Status looked pretty good.

Name: Eva Greene

Health: 230

Stamina: 240

Mana: 230

Strength: 24

Dexterity: 25

Agility: 26.4

Endurance: 24

Wisdom: 27

Acuity: 25

Intelligence: 26

Willpower: 23

Vitality: 23

Perception: 25

Available Stat Points: 45

[Skills]

[Status Effects]

Eva used the bonus from killing the boss to repair her vision, which gave her 6 Stats—three to Dexterity and three to Perception.

Unlike with previous break rooms, this one had no time limit. After six days of constant fighting, she decided to take a day off. Before going to sleep for the night, Eva cleared her mind of the stress and considered what Skills she had and what Skills she may want to get in the future. With 23 days left, she would make the most of them while also keeping herself sane, too. The baths helped, but she could understand why even a god would want to rest every 7th day.

II

Eva woke up the next morning and had breakfast. After that, she dressed in comfortable clothing to begin her day of rest. While she felt somewhat lonely, she was used to it. It had been months since she saw one of her friends in person, and it would be only three more weeks until she was out of this place and talking to people again—if she wanted to. Past experience said she probably wouldn’t give a damn.

The first thing she did when ready was to sit on the floor in the middle of the main room of the rest area and meditate. She missed the calming aspects of it, having been too busy with chores and work and stress to make time for it. Her mental state had suffered since she'd stopped, and today was as good a day as any to get back to it.

After an hour of mindfully relaxing while also sometimes concentrating on various topics that had come up since being sucked away to wherever this Training was, she was rewarded with something she had half-expected to exist. It was still a welcome surprise.

Basic Skill Learned: Meditation▲

Basic Meditation▲ Lv 1

1% increased recovery speed of health, stamina, and mana while meditating

Seeing that her efforts were rewarded in some way, she decided to keep at it for a little longer. Two hours later, it was level 2. With her legs decidedly asleep, Eva spent time moving around and exercising. She found that the effort she was putting in with bodyweight exercises barely made her sweat. Just having those Stats really did make all the difference.

The rest of the day passed in similar fashion, with Eva trying out different ideas when not eating or bathing. Some were met with success, like Meditation▲, while most—like manipulating mana—were seemingly failures. When she felt somewhat tired she went to bed. Eva found sleep slow in coming. Self-reflection eventually told her that it was from her apprehension of going back to fighting monsters when she woke up in the morning.

III

When she did continue the following day, she found she had nothing to worry about. Though the goblins of the first ten levels had been replaced with hobgoblins, they were easy enough to kill. Even the teams of hobgoblins weren't too bad. She'd fought worse to complete the waves from the last ten levels several times already. The hardest fight of those levels was the 10th level boss. It was a bugbear, and it was a challenge. Its physical abilities shocked her and caused a handful of deaths before she was able to understand how it attacked, defended, and moved. Compared to her first time through those levels, though, it wasn't nearly as bad.

The rewards—as promised—were better. Each level gained her two Stat Points instead of one, so she got 20 out of those levels. Additionally, the reward for killing the boss went up as well, gaining her an additional 5 points. Though she had 70 points, it was not enough to break through any of the Stats.

As she had only spent an hour or so on the first ten, Eva continued to the second ten. Like the first time through, they were slime-based. Similarly to the first ten, the 'boss' of the slime section from Basic Training was the main thing to fight in Novice Training. It made little difference to her, though. The slimes were pretty easy to kill the first go around, and even killing a bigger version only slowed her down a little. The 'boss' of the group of five levels was about the same size as the normal ones but with a crown on its head. It died about as quickly as the rest despite dealing a bit of damage with its air elemental attacks.

The same pattern held true for the skeletons. They melted against her attacks like they had the first time. The only slight difficulty being the 'boss' which was some kind of necromancer alien. It wasn't human, but it was humanoid. It had skeleton guards that it would raise again and again until she killed the necromancer first. A pain in the ass to be sure, but not that difficult once she understood what to do. She didn't die against it, though she did enter the post 20th level break room pretty banged up.

After lunch, and an hour's Meditation▲, she decided to continue on. Getting to at least level 30 would be a good goal for a day of fighting. The early levels were a lot easier now that her Stats and Skills had grown. Her main goal for the day was to break through the first of her Stats. Given how she fought, she wasn't sure whether to take Strength for more power or Willpower for more mana. It was something she could wait to decide until after she got through level 30.

The zombies this time around were faster than the first time, but otherwise remained easy targets. Eva had faced faster and more deadly foes many times before. The boss was a different story. Like the first time, it was an amalgamation of the bosses of the three prior sections. This time the zombie was not riding a horse. Instead, they were separate creatures. This made the fight more difficult, but not tremendously so. Still, she did kick the bucket a few times before finally getting the fight right.

The Challenge for 25 gave her another 10 to go with the 10 from the five levels, bringing her total to 110. She had a little less than an hour to figure out what she wanted to do. Her fights didn't usually end because of her not being able to hit hard enough. They ended because she got hit repeatedly or hit hard a couple of times. The increase in mana would be nice, but she had a decent amount already, enough that her Infuse Weapon✦ Skill would last nearly 25 seconds of continuous use. That made her choices either Vitality or Agility. Which she chose came down to whether she thought she'd be facing bigger hits or lots of smaller ones. If what she knew of the levels to come, it was the smaller hits that would do her in. Eva chose to unlock Agility first.

Checking her Challenges revealed that breaking through one Stat was in fact a challenge.

Breakthrough✷

Breakthrough one Stat into the next grade

Reward: 100 Stat Points

This just meant that she had enough to use for Vitality as well, which is exactly what she did.

Despite her best efforts, it took Eva the rest of the day to complete the following five levels. The lesser air elementals were a pain to be sure, but the air elemental that followed as the mini boss was what proved to be the real challenge. An exhausted Eva hit the bed that night after a long soak in the bath.

IV

With how difficult the levels were becoming, it took her two days to get to level 50's break room. After ten days of this hell, she'd completed 150 levels in total. It was a good accomplishment, but it was also draining. If all went well, she'd get to level 450, but with how much more difficult everything was becoming, she knew that was unlikely. It was during this time that she got a couple of Challenges completed that really summed up her experience thus far.

A Thousand Deaths By One Cut✦

Kill 1,000 enemies with one attack each

Reward: 5 Stat Points

Millemorts✦

Die 1,000 times

Reward: 5 Stat Points

Finally, she got Dodge✦ up to Novice✦ grade and made her choice on how to upgrade it.

Novice Dodge✦ Lv 2

Increase Agility by 12% when avoiding attacks

Increase Dexterity by 2% when avoiding attacks

It took another four days to complete the next 50 levels. After level 60, Eva had enough points to break through another Stat. She chose Willpower. Getting to 100 gave her enough points for one more since the bonus for the boss gave 40 in addition to the 80 she got from the levels. She used those points for Strength. Levels 91-100 were the same kind of defending challenge as in Basic, except that the forces were the undead controlled by necromancers. It took her a while to complete that one.