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.