I woke up and decided, today was going to be the start of training for myself. The people in the town are going to need a few days to get everything back in order and collect the information we need going forward. This would be a great opportunity to pump my stats like every other protagonist who got power randomly.

Until now, I haven’t really thought about min-maxing my time. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take advantage of the time compression that seems to happen within the Library World. If I stay in the Library World for three days of real time, then I can get a month of training in with the time difference. This is a huge boost and a good chance for me to train Tom up some too.

I got out of bed and went to Tom’s room. Of course, he was awake already. I looked at the time on my phone and it was approaching six in the morning. Tom got into the bookstore pretty early every morning, so I guess he still gets up early out of habit, even in the apocalypse.

“Hey man, you trying to go through our anime training arc?”

Tom looked at me like I was an alien. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, I figured we’ve got some time before the town is ready to move forward with anything else we have planned at the moment. It wouldn’t hurt to spend a few days training in the Library World. We can knock out a month of prep over the next three days and then check in with the town.”

Tom looked apprehensive “That sounds like a lot more work for us to go through. Come on, where is the beach trip and fanservice?”

“You know that’s not how these things really work. We aren’t in an anime; this is real life. Come on, I need you to focus. You’re not going to benefit from the system like I will, but you can take this time to familiarize yourself with some of the updated knowledge in the Library World. I have corrected combinations of books that change the way you understood a lot of topics previously.

He seemed to brighten up a little bit after mention of that. You really must enjoy reading to open a bookstore, so the prospect of new knowledge is probably enticing for him. I opened a door to the Library World and stepped through with Tom following me.

“Robert!!!” I heard my name being yelled across the area as a blue orb came flying at my face. “I’ve been missing you so much! Now I get to spend a whole 30 days with you!? Alright, I have so many plans. We’re gonna get so much playing done, I hope you’re ready.”

“Ava, good to see you too! You know I plan on doing a lot of training in this period, but I’m sure we can make time to play games occasionally. Also, Tom won’t be as preoccupied as I am, so maybe he can keep you company when I’m too busy?”

“Sounds good to me Robert! I’m looking forward to it, so don’t forget about me. Come on Tom, I’ll show you around the selection of books and recommend anything you’re interested in.”

Once the two of them were busy it was time for me to form a training regimen. I need to get my stats up and this system seems to require physical means for improving Strength, Vitality, and Dexterity. I can level up Intelligence while doing the physical activities by queueing up creations with my ability.

I haven’t verified if quantity or quality determines my leveling speed with creations. So, this should be a good time to check that out and plan future developments. I’ll start out by creating multiple copies of something simple and small, like crystals. I’m sure I can find some use for them in the future. I’ll queue these up to create continuously one after another and fill a small shed with them. They’re only going to be a few inches long, so they shouldn’t take up too much space. We’ll go through this for a week and see what kind of gains we have after that week then move to something more complex or larger in size for a week.

For the Strength Training, I am going to give weight training a try. There are six major muscle groups consisting of the Chest, Back, Arms, Shoulders, Legs, and Calves. Most recommendations from doctors are to complete exercises with enough weight to fatigue your muscles after twelve to fifteen repetitions. They also recommend training all groups at least twice a week. However, they don’t have a system to improve their body, or the advanced techniques theorized in the combination of documents I have so far.

So, I am going to be working out all muscle groups every day. Instead of using typical weights, I have opted for a resistance system that can deliver up to a thousand pounds of resistance. I can use this machine in various workouts and adjust the weight digitally for easier control and improvement tracking.

Vitality seems to be focused on my health and the limits of my body. I predict it will improve alongside the raise of Dexterity and Strength. Just in case, I am going to focus on aerobic exercises to warm my body up before Strength Training and after my workout is complete in order to cool my body down.

I have something pretty fun for training Dexterity. There was an anime I watched one time where they had a spinning Wing Chun dummy for training. I think this is an excellent exercise to use for testing my Dexterity and improving it. Hopefully, I can familiarize myself with some basic martial arts moves at the same time. I’m also going to work on hand movements for improvements in the small motions I make with my hands.

Once I had a plan, I started to get everything in order for the training. I went a little bit away from the small house and created a gym building to put everything in. The building isn’t very large at roughly thirty-five feet wide by fifty feet long, but it would do more than I need to it to for now. I created a room for the storage of the crystals in the gym and got to work on the equipment. It took me a little over 6 hours to get everything together, but I was rewarded with a nice notification upon completion.

You have created a training area inside the Library World. Your brain isn’t the only muscle you need to improve to succeed. Special benefits provided for all who train in the area.

Improved training effectiveness +30%

Higher Chance to Learn Skills

Stamina Drain -30%

“That was a huge improvement! I had no idea there would be bonuses depending on what kinds of buildings I formed in here. I wonder what other options there are?”

Ava came floating over, having navigated Tom to some books that would keep him occupied for a while.

“There are plenty of options when creating buildings and structures in the Library World that will provide benefits for you and those you bring into it. They operate like blueprints that adjust their bonuses depending on the equipment you place in them. Take this training building for example. The benefits are available because of the combination of items placed within it, but if you were to learn improved equipment schematics and install them in place of these, the benefits would improve. You will discover them as you go along and test things out, I don’t have a comprehensive list of everything that will work. So, be sure to test out all kinds of things if you get ideas on a building!”

Hmm, Ava did point out some good food for thought. I’ll think over it during this month and try to come up with ideas to test out in the future, but I need to get to work right now.

Just like that, the week flew by. It was a lot harder than I expected, as I’m still pretty much just a regular human with a below average physique. However, after a week I have seen improvements in all of my stats, and I even gained 2 skills.

Strength

7

Health:70

Mana:195

Stamina:45

Intelligence

18

Skills

Quick Study: You are able to read and comprehend knowledge better than most.

Information Construction: You can use known data to recreate tangible items at the cost of mana.

Training Fool: You can train your body for longer than others without tiring.

Crystal Newbie: The path of the crystal is just beginning, can you see the prisms?

Vitality

9

Dexterity

8

While it might not look like much, the improvements in my physique for just a week of work seem to be substantial to me. I improved in every statistic by 2 steps. I’m still not quite sure what the Crystal Newbie skill is for because the description is not helpful at all, but a skill is a skill so I guess there is nothing I can do about it.

Now that I have familiarized myself with the workouts and figured out my limits, I can push past those day by day and redefine the limit for the next week. I should have improved gains since I’m not wasting any time figuring everything out. It looks like I achieved equivalent results to my body training by making the crystals. For this week I am going to queue up a bunch of bots for Minerva to use while we expand. These take up a large chunk of my mana capacity for each one due to the complexity and should be quite the opposite of the constant use of mana by making the small crystals.

One more week later and here is what we’re looking at.

Strength

11

Health:90

Mana:225

Stamina:65

Intelligence

24

Skills

Quick Study: You are able to read and comprehend knowledge better than most.

Information Construction: You can use known data to recreate tangible items at the cost of mana.

Training Fool: You can train your body for longer than others without tiring.

Crystal Newbie: The path of the crystal is just beginning, can you see the prisms?

Vitality

13

Dexterity

12

I was able to improve significantly more after I familiarized myself with the workouts and cut out the time I wasted learning. The gains from more complex machines that drain a large portion of my mana all at once seem to provide better increases in stat gains. Because of this, I am going to continue making drones for the remainder of the time in here. I didn’t gain any skills this time, but I have a feeling I will get something once I cross a threshold for the number created.

Tom has been steadily working through the various books in the Library and comes to work out with me occasionally. We play games with Ava every night, even though she wins every time after the first game or two. It has been a pretty good time so far; we will have to make the effort to spend more time in the Library World after this.

After a whole month in here, I was feeling kind of stir-crazy and wanted to get back out into the world. I acquired two more skills over the last two weeks and major gains in stat points.

Strength

19

Health:130

Mana:285

Stamina:105

Intelligence

32

Skills

Quick Study: You are able to read and comprehend knowledge better than most.

Information Construction: You can use known data to recreate tangible items at the cost of mana.

Training Fool: You can train your body for longer than others without tiring.

Crystal Newbie: The path of the crystal is just beginning, can you see the prisms?

Martial Arts Beginner: You have tread on the path of enlightenment, how far will you go?

Machine Maker: You have a familiarity with machines, improving them by 5% over standard schematics.

Vitality

21

Dexterity

20

I am quite happy with the improvements, as I am significantly more powerful than I was as a normal human. I can lift hundreds of pounds with ease and run a mile in less than three minutes. I don’t get tired even from running an entire 5 Kilometer race.

We have a storeroom comprised of thousands of the little crystals I made during the first week. I’m not sure what to do with them right now, but I’m sure we can figure out something to do with them. In total, I ended up making right at a thousand drones over the 3 weeks. This should improve our network and allow us to explore much further than before. The benefit of five percent better machines was just like a cherry on top of the sundae for me.

Tom has been able to enlighten himself on many topics while we’ve been in here. He also worked out with me occasionally so his strength and stamina should be marginally better. That will definitely come in handy as we continue to grow and build. We decided that we would be returning to the Library World to do things like this as often as possible in order to make use of the time compression. However, we were both ready to get out of here and back into the real world. There are still many goals we need to finish and 3 days away from the world was plenty of time for the town to finish the tasks we set for them.