In the afternoon, Amelia decided to show his uncle a few martial arts movies where there were characters who used daggers. Emilio was kind of stumped by how he was supposed to grab the weapons. Who would have thought he had to pick them up pointing to the other side compared to kitchen knives?

  Watching the movies, Emilio decided that he could imitate the characters while practicing. Copying moves from a fiction might not be the best of ideas, but it was definitely better than whatever it was that he was doing before.

  After watching two movies, Emilio was kind of excited and decided to go back to training with his daggers. Even though he had spent the morning doing quite an extreme regimen, he didn't feel tired at all.

  He concluded that what he considered energy was what the System called Vitality. Thinking about this matter, Emilio realized that in just a few days all his birthday wishes became true. In a really twisted and almost djinn kind of way, but true.

  Amelia seemed to be on the road of being successful, having earned 3 Stats in the Trial (and 3 free Stats) she was on the way to showing her worth to the System. So this counted as her being successful.

  Nicole had to stay way longer in the United States, so he had to spend more time with his niece.

  And he also had more energy, or Vitality as the system called it. And even if his wish referred to the Energy, he was going to be able to raise it too.

  Does this mean it is really my fault? Emilio questioned himself.

  He didn't really believe it was his fault but the coincidences were frightening. He quickly eliminated the dangerous thought from his mind and focused on training.

  This time Amelia went with him to train. The first thing they did was to test each other after their Stats upgrades. Amelia was strong like a bull. Not only that, but fast and agile too. But she did have a big problem. She might have been really strong, but she couldn't keep exercising for more than 10 minutes. And we are not talking about a girl who didn’t do any exercise before, but one who loved to play sports.

  Even like that, her stamina had decreased significantly. Well, not decreased, but her body was too strong for the amount of stamina, or Vitality, she had. That meant that she couldn't sustain herself for too long, but when she could move, she was a monster.

  This single day of training taught them more about what each Stat means. There were obvious synergies between them, but also disadvantages if they were too far apart. A strong Body without Vitality couldn't keep up in long periods of time, but Vitality without Body meant you were basically a tireless, long living, normal person. Well, and also with super healing. Emilio’s case was the extreme of healing with his Skills, but he also believed that just the higher Vitality made one heal better.

  Emilio also discovered how useless the gun with just one point Energy really was. After teasing her niece for a while he received a shot to the arm (together with a scare of his lifetime).

  The Gun looked like a real gun, even a fancy one. But the bullet was a translucent ball that when it hit Emilio it left just a bruise. It was kind of a nasty bruise, but not enough to go to the hospital in normal circumstances. And that was considering the gun was a Rank 1 [Medium] quality, so it should have hurted really bad.

  The problem was that it used Amelia’s Energy as a base, and it was just 1. That meant that even for a regular body the damage wasn’t that bad. In the case of Emilio, he just healed it passively in a few minutes. Another detail to note is that it didn’t sound like a gun at all. It had no gunpowder so it was like it had a silencer included.

  Overall, it was quite a weird experience getting shot by that gun. It was just like a silent gun that shooted nothing only to realize you had a bruise. It was comical and scary at the same time. At least until Amelia could raise her Energy, then it would just be scary.

  Given that he couldn’t really get hurt with the gun Emilio decided to train with his niece by becoming the target. He would try to dodge the gun and reach Amelia, while she tried to shoot him.

  This training would go on for a little while until Amelia tired herself out. After this, while his niece recovered, Emilio kept training with his daggers, but this time he was trying to imitate the movie characters. With this method he was doing much better. Not good, but better. Actually, one could say he was doing bad. After all, he was still getting hurt. Less than in the morning, but he was still cutting himself with sharp daggers.

  Who would have thought that imitating movie characters was a bad idea? Well, a bad idea if you don’t have super healing. If you do, then it is just not the best idea.

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  Either way, this time he did feel he was slowly getting better. He was hurting himself less and the wounds were less severe. Maybe, in a few training sessions he would finally stop hurting himself and be able to really use the daggers, right?

  They both decided to not completely expose their Skills with each other. Given that they had no input when they were being selected and that all the people just had random Skills they decided it was better for them to be private.

  Even with this being the case, Emilio already said that his Skills had to do with regeneration. Even if he didn't, it was kind of obvious after seeing him train for five minutes. At the same time, Emilio realized that at least one of his niece’s skills had to do with reflexes. This made them be kind of on par with each other if Amelia didn't use her strength and Emilio didn't use his daggers. If they did, both of them would be too dangerous to the other one. Amelia couldn’t heal like Emilio and her strength was too much for him to withstand.

  By the evening they decided to stop. Mainly, because Amelia was completely spent out, but also because they were both really hungry.

  After a good shower and throwing out another set of destroyed clothes they decided to go out to eat dinner. They were so hungry they decided to go to an all you can eat buffet.

  While eating they discovered that they were eating more than usual. A lot more than usual. It was so much that they were actually scared of being kicked out of the restaurant. Apparently, both of them needed a lot more energy than before and that meant more calories. Not only were they eating more, but they digested food a lot faster. Amelia just had an improved body, including organs like her stomach. At the same time, Emilio's blood was so improved by his Vitality that it pushed the food into being digested really fast. At least that happened until his blood recovered from the lack of energy from overusing the Vitality.

  When they finished the meal, Emilio was almost ashamed of the price they had to pay for all the food they ate. He decided to leave a hefty tip and they headed back home.

  Once they arrived, Amelia was so tired that she just went to bed, but Emilio was not tired at all.

  He decided to check his progress for the day in the System.

  Well that’s a good progress for the day. I might have to keep the same training regime for a few more days and then I can see what happens at 100%.

  When he thought about his training, he remembered that he destroyed two sets of clothes in just one day. He decided he might as well purchase some clothes online to substitute them. He decided to buy some cheap, low quality clothes in bulk to use as disposable clothes, because evidently he would keep destroying them.

  He bought enough for a month of his new regime, for sure bringing some confusion to some random merchant. Even though it was kind of expensive to get so many clothes, Emilio realized he was at a pivotal point in his life and he had to invest in it. If that ate his savings, so be it. In a time of change, if you are ahead you have to keep investing. He might even have a huge return on his investments if he was lucky!

  After buying his new clothes, he decided to browse the internet for public information on the Trials.

  Everyone was talking about the Monoliths and the Trials, but most was speculation or false information. As he kept searching, he realized he might be one of the best informed people in the world, at least as far as public knowledge went.

  There were a lot of theories online, some of which were quite interesting, others outright impossible. None of them considered the integration the consequence of a 35 year old software developer’s birthday wish. It was obvious that something like that couldn't be the reason.

  All that was certain was that the Stats were real, entering the Monolith gave one a weapon and going through the Trials might raise one Stat. There were some rumors about Skills, but they were not credible if you didn't already have one.

  Some useful information he found was that the Monoliths were all around Earth, even in rural villages. As a result, most governments decided not to control who could access them. He also found some statistics on what the natural Stats were on average. As long as you are relatively good at something that the Stat impacted, then it normally had 2 points. If you were really good then it was 3.

  For example, Emilio had 3 in Mind and Amelia in Body. The 3 meant that you might be a really good professional if you specialize in something that has to do with the Stat. It was also found that having 4 in a Stat means you are at a world level genius. Some of the Olympic winners had 4 in body and some of the most renowned scientists had 4 in Mind. There was no one found with 5 in a Stat, but the internet collectively decided that Einstein had 5 in Mind, which was not completely illogical.

  It was also found that people with chronic illnesses tended to have 1 in Vitality and that the oldest people had at least 3 Vitality, so the association with longevity was done by statistics.

  At the same time, the real meaning of the numbers showed how meaningful the Starter Trials were. Who didn’t want to become better than an olympic athlete or smarter than Einstein?

  Emilio also found some statistics about the Trials. No one could talk about what they did inside the Trial, but they could say which Stat they earned and how much. It didn’t take long for some statistics to appear.

  About half of the people didn't earn a Stat Point in the Trial, four out of ten earned one Stat Point, and only one out of ten earned two or more points. The information about how many people earned 3 or more points was not available.

  With the numbers known there was one thing he knew for sure. Both Amelia and him were in the top percent of people right now and they had a real possibility of becoming new talents in this era.

  Thanks for reading!

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