Doing what I could to ignore the strange dream, I quickly left the apartment. Though I felt fully rested, only a few hours had passed, and I still had plenty of sun left to continue my training. The only remnant from the previous day was a mild soreness in my muscles.

  Pulling up my status, I took a closer look at my progress, pulling up some of the alerts I had been ignoring. Hopefully that would give me a better idea of what to work towards.

  It seemed my night of hard labor came with advantages beyond increased security. Ignoring that for now, I continued reading.

  I scowled, taking in my updated information. There were just four days until the next wave; three until we needed to strike at the cultists, and I still had so much to work on.

  I was satisfied with my progress in swordsmanship, and though I wanted to spend more time working on it, I knew that I needed to work in other areas first. The way I could see it, I had three main areas where improvement would lead to sizable increases in power.

  First, my stats. Each point increase in stats provided a decent increase in power. Even compared to yesterday before I spent the night working, I felt stronger. My feet were more stable. My body was sturdier. I could only imagine what having something like twenty strength and agility would feel like.

  My memories turned to the first real fight I had been in; when I rescued Kaitlyn. I only survived that fight becauase my base stats were so much higher than my enemies. As time passed, that advantage would continue to shrink unless I stayed ahead of the curve.

  Recalling the pleasant sensation of absorbing mana I was tempted to spend the next few days constantly hunting monsters to icrease the quality of my core, but I didn’t think that was the best use of my time. Increasing core quality primarily increased the upper limit of my stats. Before I went on a monster killing spree, I first needed to find a stable way to increase my current values. Pulling up the information on General Stats once more, I reread the description.

  It was rather clear cut now that I understood the system better. By exercising, I could increase my stats up to their maximum. Because I was a monster, to increase my maximum stat values I needed to focus on developing my core, and eventually evolving my species.

  The second thing I needed to focus on was magic.

  Storm magic was powerful. Ignoring that ability, even though it wasn’t my forte, was foolish. I would continue what I had started yesterday; using my mana just as fast as it regenerated. That would increase my intelligence and wisdom as well as my skills, killing two birds with one stone.

  The final area of improvement I could think of was rather simple.

  I needed more combat experience.

  Every fight I had been in so far had improved my overall capability by leaps and bounds. I better understood my skills, how to use my body, and how to dodge attacks. It all came down to practice. Over the next couple of days, I would fight as many things as I possibly could, until combat became second nature.

  With new goals in mind, I set out into the woods.