9 Testing Conversion (1/2)

Eight hours came and went before Elizabeth woke up, completely refreshed after getting that much-needed sleep. It was about to time for her to eat again, so she cooked her self another simple meal, a Bacon Omelet. After she was done cooking, she reviewed the gains of her meditation through a check in her Status while she ate.

[*Inner Strength 54/54 → 198/198

*Cooking Level 1) 3/10 → 4/10]

The Bacon Omelet was god-damn satisfying, but perhaps because its preparation was much simpler than the Chicken Fried Rice of the day prior, she didn't gain as much experience. There was also the more-than-likely probability that gaining experience would become more difficult as she progressed through the levels of a skill.

Regardless of the reason, Elizabeth wasn't too bummed down. She knew there would be many chances going forward to improve her skill, but now the priority was increasing the capacity of her Inner Strength as well as leveling up. She almost felt inclined to go straight back to meditation, but given that she had a deadline to complete, she decided against that decision in favor of trying out the Inner Strength Conversion for Stat development.

It wouldn't do her much justice to cultivate an absurd amount of Inner Strength only find out her Inner Strength Conversion produced meager changes to her stats at the final moments.

At the moment, because she had invested her Stat Points in only Speed and Intelligence when creating her character, she only needed to train the remaining Stats; the ones that were trainable, anyways… She needed at least 12 points in every stat as well as 100 units of Inner Strength to officially become level one. Thus, for this little test of the Inner Strength Conversion Skill, Elizabeth decided to go for a run.

She couldn't believe it at the moment, as the concept of exercising failed to register in her game-oriented mind. But for the sake of not angering the gods that had cursed her, she put away her recently galvanized depression and left the house once again. The clothes she had purchased from Ducci were both ”fashionable” and durable, given that she had purposefully opted to pick athletic wear.

However, not a minute after she started testing the conversion rate of Inner Strength to Endurance, Elizabeth had to stop. She had forgotten to buy shoes as the side quest only requested for her to buy clothes, and had only noticed at this very moment that her current shoes would not do for the ”long distance running” she had planned to do.

Her previous shoes had not bothered her, as she hadn't really been running with them previously, but now, the uncomfortable and sluggish feeling couldn't be more obvious to her. Elizabeth struggled against her intuition to just forget about leaving the house and picking up shoes from the shopping plaza. But upon recalling the description of the her second sidequest, she felt it would be better for her in the long run to just get used to interacting with the outside world. If she didn't truly believe failing her missions would lead to death, or worse... she certainly wouldn't have entertained the though.

At least, that was the excuse she made up to justify her decision. In any case, right now it was still rather early in the morning as the sun had yet to rise. It would be best for her to leave now to avoid going to the store later on in the day, when more human traffic appeared. So once again, Elizabeth walked the two miles required to reach the shopping plaza and quickly purchased a couple sets of shoes.

This time, the experience was much less stressful for her as there had indeed been less people crowding around the mall at this pre-dawn time period. It was made even less annoying as Elizabeth wasn't assaulted by the unforgiving rays of the brutal summer sun. Rather, a gentle morning breeze further calmed down any frustrations she might have spurred by leaving the safety of her domain once more.

When she arrived back home with her shoes, she had already put on a pair since she left from the store, so all she had to do now was store the remaining pairs in her wardrobe before taking off to test the Inner Strength Conversion Skill. Elizabeth lived in a nice neighborhood where there were large stretches of sidewalks with very little intersections, so she hadn't the need to go to a gym for effective long distance running. She just picked direction and started running to a moderate pace.

As she entered a steady rhythm of running, an invisible film of pearly white energy seemed to glow on the surface area of her skin. With this barrier's initiation, every minute of running afterwards led to a prompt of Inner Strength being exhausted.