The giant, fluffy beast roared at Al, and he felt how it willed heaps of mana into its horn. He didn’t know what kind of earth spell it would use, or if it would be an earth spell at all, but he wasn’t exactly itching to know.

It didn’t seem to have many strong attacks, since a horn ram would break it's own horn first, so Al decided to circle the thing to attack it from its rear. But the bunny was faster, and just before Al reached it, it leaped several meters into the air leaving deep imprints on the ground. ‘Its paws are also infused...’

It landed some meters away, and finished its spell right after, firing it at Al’s feet. He leaped away as soon as he saw it, but he couldn’t imbue his legs with a lot of mana in time, and caught the edge of a deep, 10 meter wide pit that had formed with his previous position as its center. He quickly got himself over the ledge and dusted himself off.

The rabbit seemed to have exhausted all of it's mana as it was now sluggishly pawing its way towards Al. ‘These things really don’t know the meaning on retreat, huh,’

Back on Earth, most mana beasts weren’t this dumb. In fact, many became more cunning when they absorbed mana. Was that an adulteration by the System? Al left that in the ‘Ask god when I meet him’ pile and stabbed his needle into the beast’s side with movements honed by years of field work.

It didn’t kill it, which Al expected, but the Porcuspine didn’t seem damaged, so he started piling holes on the beast’s body until it bled out. He felt something grow in his mind when the rabbit stopped flailing about, and he checked his status to confirm.

Alberto Peñas

Age: 1 year

Level 2

Strength

G+

Dexterity

F-

Toughness

F-

Will

E-

Intelligence

E

Assignable

1

Skills:

[Mana Manipulation] (Mid)

[F Grade Core] (Mid)

[Body Enhancement] (Low)

As he expected, he had finally hit level 2. He also felt he was about halfway to the next level, since this beast seemed to have given him more experience than the Spiky boi. ‘Why do I keep making up these stupid nicknames?’

He quickly harvested the horn, and found it was actually about 30cm long. It was fused to the skull and seemed to somehow connect with the creature’s brain. After some post-mortem surgery ‘Or is it organ donation?’ He managed to cut it off and strapped it to his back along with his weapon.

He went to the stream to wash up, something which had become a habit, while he thought about the future.

‘I need to get to level 5 as soon as possible and get a class. Maybe there’ll be a special class if I get there while I’m really young’

On earth, he had gotten the rare class [Death Dancer] for putting all of his points into dexterity and being on the verge of death many times, and the Class bonuses had been incredible. Apart from the Class Skills he had been awarded at levels 5, 10 and 15, there was also the unlock of the Perception stat and the +75% experience. ‘If I got an epic class, it would be X2, right?’

He got out of the stream and started to wash himself, then realised it had gotten dark. He saw the light of a lamp in the distance, and walked towards it while he finished dressing. It was Khan-Wan, who was moving around rapidly with a worried look on her face. Then she saw him.

We’re gonna skip that part

In summary: Al was now grounded for a month.

He felt it was unfair, but there was no use complaining about it. Anyone would be upset if a toddler was gone up till nightfall and you found him having a bath in ice-cold water. ’In my defense, I was doing it to improve my toughness...’

The next month passed by pretty uneventfully. The first thing Al did was check the horn out. It transmitted his mana like copper would electricity, and seemed to make releasing it outside much easier. Unfortunately he didn’t have any real use for it, at least not yet, so he kept it hidden for now.

He also heard that Yuly no longer spent all day cultivating, though she still did it for a few hours every day. ‘She’s like one of those gym freaks back on Earth’

Al also did his own fair share of cultivating, and he was slowly progressing towards the next stage. One thing was clear though, it was much, much harder than the last.

It had also gotten a lot colder, and outside hours had been reduced to only last from lunch to supper. There was no time measurement other than the natural ones, like days, seasons and years, so the concept of an ‘hour’ didn’t exist. In fact, when he wanted to say ‘week’ he had to say seven days, and a lunar cycle for month.

Yeah, weirdly enough, the moon’s cycle was similar -if not identical- to Earth's, and the duration of a year seemed to be more or less the same too.

In any case, Al had also done a lot of simply jumping around the room, and after around three weeks he finally got the notification he had been waiting for.

Dexterity has reached F Grade

He found that practicing without [Body Enhancement] nor the Porcuspine was a lot faster. ‘Maybe because I reach my limits quicker?’ So he continued doing so for the last week.

When his isolation finally ended, he was ready to go kill some beasts again. And this time, they wouldn’t catch him.

There was a problem though, Khan-Wan was keeping a watchful eye on him now, so he would probably have to go during the night. Meanwhile he went to see Koro and Jiao, and found the latter sitting on top of the former as he did push-ups. And Koro looked different. Before he was big for a kid, but now he was kinda buff. It wouldn’t be anything impressive if he were 14 years old, but he was like 5 or 6 goddamit.

He approached them. “Damn Koro, you’re pilin’ some real muscle there,”

Koro looked in his direction, a bit confused. ‘Ah, that expression doesn’t exist in their language.’ But Al didn’t explain himself as he chuckled imagining a warehouse worker piling sacks of muscle on top of each other.

“Nevermind that. I’m surprised you haven’t challenged me already, big boy,”

Koro looked away and muttered something. “..ong ...nough”

“Sorry? I didn’t catch that”

Koro turned back and practically shouted “I said I’m still not strong enough!”

Jiao, still sat above him, said “What? But you’re like super-duper strong now! You can beat up anyone!” ‘Ok, I’ll admit I took some artistic liberties in translating that one.’

“Really? Everyone? Even me?” Al said with a skeptical look on his face, though in reality he was having the time of his life. ‘That was a hyperbole.’

Jiao’s eyes shot around the place as he muttered “Eh, well... that’s...”

So Al decided to just laugh it off and give his own training a bit of extra oompf.