"What do you both want to do in the future?" Li Mei asked after breakfast, tapping her spoon against the bowl.

Hana answered without hesitating: "I want to stay with you."

Otto glanced at Li Mei and looked at the ground, a pink tint on his fair face. He finally figured out Li Mei was a girl, and hadn't been able to look her in the eye ever since. "I'm your employee, so... I go where you go."

Li Mei glanced at Bao, who rolled three of his four eyes. "You'll have to be strong enough to stand on your own, you know? You have to be able to protect yourselves. If you wanna stay with me, you'll have to survive my training."

Hana and Otto both nodded, wearing determined expressions. "Yes!"

Li Mei sighed, but she was actually a little happy deep in her heart. But just in case they changed their mind later, or couldn't handle her level of training, she didn't allow herself to feel too pleased. "I won't make you do anything I can't do or haven't done before. I'll be training right alongside you. But even so it'll be difficult. You may even prefer to die! Are you really sure?"

Hana retained the same determined expression, while a flash of reluctance flickered across Otto's eyes. In the end, both of them nodded again.

Li Mei already had an established schedule for herself. Wake up, circulate mana, Training Room for an hour, eat, spar with Bao as a warm-up, descend into forest until evening, return home to eat and bathe, circulate mana again, study the Archives for awhile and go to sleep. She slept soundly for eight hours a night, considered quite short by Elysian standards since their days were 30 hours, but any longer than that and she'd start to feel sluggish and get headaches.

Otto and Hana weren't ready to explore the forest, so she broke her schedule to train them first. For an entire month, Li Mei and Bao only left the mountain peak to retrieve food from the forest. Otherwise, every waking moment was spent helping the other two get stronger.

They didn't have an Interface or Quests to grant stat points. They could only rely on Li Mei's foundational training, most of which involved merciless sparring or harsh exercise until everyone collapsed.

Hana preferred h.e.l.lish training to being a science experiment, and could feel her strength growing exponentially with each match. No matter how exhausted she was at the end of the day, Hana always woke up ready to go the next morning.

Otto, on the other hand, was far more reluctant. He didn't like fighting or training, but the mission with his teammates opened his eyes to the world's reality.

If he were stronger, could he have stopped them from killing civilians?

If he were stronger, could he have saved everyone from becoming soldiers in the first place by breaking free of Oriole's manipulative clutches?

If he were stronger...

Otto really didn't want to be stronger! He just wanted to live peacefully in a nice quiet home, perhaps take up gardening or tea brewing. But in such a dangerous world, where even a mission to a forest threatened his life, he had to be stronger to protect his future quiet life.

So even if he was reluctant, he still endured Li Mei's training. For the sake of his garden!

A month pa.s.sed in a blur of repet.i.tive exhaustion.

Li Mei finally deemed them ready to venture into the forest. Her old schedule was adapted to include magic sparring practice with Hana, and marksman training with Otto before they all descended as a group into the forest.

Hana was agile and dexterous, adept at manipulating mana into powerful fire spells to hit enemies from surprising angles. She learned by observing Li Mei, picking up the older girl's penchant for stealth, ambush tactics, and traps to handle most opponents.

She memorized everything Li Mei taught her like a dry sponge absorbing water. Medicinal herbs and poisons were of particular interest to her, and Hana started spending her free time in the evenings brewing concoctions with plants and materials they foraged during the day.

Otto was skilled at using the guns they looted from his erstwhile companions, and also displayed surprising capability in crafting. Originally Li Mei handed off monster materials just to see what they'd do with them, but after Otto's weapons turned out even st.u.r.dier than the ones she made herself, Li Mei shoved all responsibility for crafting to Otto's plate.

He was delighted by the task. It didn't matter if he wasn't as strong as the two younger girls, both of whom held a surprising amount of bloodthirst in their tiny bodies. As long as he could defend himself and avoid injury in combat, he was happy. Being able to support them with suitable weapons, tools, or even meals during rest periods, was much more satisfying to his heart than increasing his own ability to fight.

Bao, meanwhile, determined he didn't like seeing his new friends get hurt. Of their little group, the Fera was physically the strongest and most capable even if he couldn't learn weapon techniques like Li Mei or use flashy magic like Hana.

Fera knew instinctively what they had to eat to develop their bodies in certain directions. Bao hunted tough enemies on his own, with thick hides and muscles like steel, devouring them endlessly to increase his strength.

Aside from the dense s.h.a.ggy fur on his body, his limbs began growing thick scales instead of fur, his awkward lean frame filling out into something st.u.r.dy and intimidating. Bone-like spurs grew on his elbows and down the length of his newly scaled tail, while his antlers changed and lengthened into crystalline horns.

Of course, Li Mei didn't forget to increase her own ability while coordinating with her allies. She didn't know when Faust would return, so she treated every day like it was the last opportunity she had to hunt in the forest.

Just like that, the little group of four settled into a comfortable team dynamic. Learning together, fighting together, growing together. A comfortable routine, rarely broken except when someone - usually Otto - was foolish enough to get hurt.

Another month pa.s.sed.

Then another.

And before any of them had realized, more than year had already flown by.

Li Mei sat in her mountaintop garden one evening and stared with a dazed grin at the many Interface windows floating in her field of vision, mauve eyes sparkling. Finally! After so long, finally it happened!

She maxed out the last of her base stats by completing a Quest regarding the Training Room, thereby completing the Skillset Quest, and officially broke free of the constraints of negative EXP!

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[Skillset]

★★★★★

- Raise all base stats to 10

- Learn 1 new stealth-type Skill

- Learn Throw Lv.1

- Raise Sense to Lv.4

- Defeat 10 enemies with traps

- Defeat 10 enemies through ambush

Completed!

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Reward: 2500000 EXP, Storage Lv.2 Upgrade, Acrobat Trait

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[Storage Lv.2]

Active effect. Allows storing of items in an extradimensional s.p.a.ce. Items stored exist in stasis, allowing the preservation of perishables. Multiple items placed in storage will not interact or mix with each other.

Opening the Storage window and intentionally focusing on an object within arm's reach will store it if there's enough s.p.a.ce to do so. Likewise, focusing on an item displayed in the Storage window will queue it for removal. You will have to designate an appropriate area, also within arm's reach, for the item's removal.

At Lv.2, the s.p.a.ce available for storage is 5 cubic meters.

Can be easily accessed via the bag icon under the minimap.

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[Acrobat]

Agile and flexible, your body is like that of a feline - or a monkey. You never lose your balance without outside interference, and walking on a thin wire is as easy for you as traversing a paved road.

Gain Skill [Parkour].

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[Parkour Lv.1]

Parkour allows you to get from one point to another in a complex environment, without equipment and in the fastest and most efficient way possible. Parkour includes running, freerunning, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, plyometrics, rolling, crawling and other movements as deemed most suitable for the situation.

Parkour involves seeing one's environment in a new way, and imagining the potential for navigating it by movement around, across, through, over and under its features.

At Lv.1, directing mana to your eyes highlights available surfaces you can reach with a cyan glow. Surfaces shown are only ones you can reach with your current physical ability. Detection range limited to within 10 meters of your position.

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NAME: Li Mei

RANK: 0 (100%)

HEALTH: 100%

AGE: 14

SPECIES: Human (? ? ?)

JOB: Disciple

CORE: 100%

C.GRADE:

C. QUALITY: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

MANA: 1000/1000

M. QUALITY: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

EXP: 2091

STR: 10

CON: 10

DEX: 10

INT: 10

WIS: 10

GIFT: [Barrier Lv.3]

t.i.tLES: [Disciple] [Experiment 44] [Illegitimate Child] [Sky Serpent Apprentice]

TECHNIQUES: [Celestial Crane of the Northern Winds (Apprentice)] [Hecatoncheires (Apprentice)]

TRAITS: [Acrobat] [Enslavement Bind] [Poison Resistance]

SKILLS: [Archive] [Concealment] [Fera Riding (Natural) Lv.5] [Parkour Lv.1] [Scan Lv.5] [Sense Lv.5] [Storage Lv.2] [Throw Lv.5] [Traps Lv.3]

SPELLS: [Barrier (Basic) Lv.5]

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EXP Store Unlocked!

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Skill Merging Unlocked!

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[Rank Up]

★★★★★

You have the foundation, and the time has come to put it to use. Your body is stronger than you know, you haven't fully grasped the limits of your own capability or understood what those wonderfully terrifying base stats really mean.

Face your shadow clone in a 1v1 arena to find out just how powerful you truly are.

Reward: Rank Increase, Unlock Lottery

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As soon as Li Mei accepted the quest, her body was surrounded by a sphere of cyan blue light before she disappeared without a trace.