Volume 4 Chapter 11 Fasting Practice
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
I’m just lying here on the straw, halfheartedly watching the spirits playing around me.
What are these spirits, anyway?
They look like something out of a Hida folk toy──round and chubby──or colorful, fluffy wool, or maybe floating water balloons.
They seem like it, cute and healing-type characters.
I don’t always get what they’re thinking, but they’re harmless and innocent if you don’t mess with them.
They don’t need to eat, ’cause they absorb the mana that cycles through the world.
Must be nice, not having to worry about food and shelter and all that.
Some people think the way spirits live, without needing to take life to eat, is the ideal.
There are even some priests who try to mimic the spirits by practicing fasting.
The idea is, if you can keep using magic to recover your strength without eating, you should be able to live just fine.
Hunger does put a penalty on your MP recovery, but there’s gear to boost you, and most temples are power spots with MP bonuses.
If you’re a decent priest, you can manage, I guess.
But turns out, most people give up on the fasting after just 3 days.
Guess you can’t beat the hunger.
People in this world don’t know real hunger, what with the abundant wall barley.
They’ve got no tolerance for an empty stomach.
And me?
Born and raised in well-fed Japan?
I’ve got no chance.
Even if I fail at fasting, realizing my weakness against desire… that might be a meaningful practice in itself.
That’s probably why a lot of temples include it in their training.
Too bad I can’t use my healing skill, “Healing Touch,” for this fasting practice.
Healing Touch just speeds up natural healing, and if I use it, it’ll just rev up my metabolism and make me even hungrier.
Apparently, with proper healing magic, like from a real priest, you can even reconstruct a body that’s lost limbs──just like a game, all with mana.
Even a frail, wasted body could be completely restored to full health.
If I could just dump all my overflowing skill points into healing magic… I’d evolve it to the most advanced level without breaking a sweat.
At that point, I’d probably surpass even the legendary high priests, right?
The thing is, the skill points only work on skills I already have, or any related skills that branch off from them.
Healing magic was never going to be my thing anyway, since I couldn’t use it from the start.
There are a few exceptions where seemingly unrelated skills can benefit too, but those are probably linked to some hidden parameters or something.
I laid back and checked everything out, but it looks like the skills I can actually upgrade are mostly Stealth and Searching.
The rest, like Meditation, have only gathered a decent amount of points.
Meditation is pretty useful, so I’ll just keep leveling it up for now.
The real problem is Stealth and Searching.
Both of them have already evolved past the so-called “Advanced” level, and now they’re breaking through.
If I push them further, my body won’t be able to handle the strain, especially Radar Scan──it still hurts my brain at full power.
So, the idea is to just level up and strengthen my body to handle it.
Leveling up requires experience points, but if I ask Lady Uno, I’m sure she could help me figure something out.
The problem is, I’ve got several reasons why I don’t want to level up.
The main reason I’ve been deliberately avoiding leveling up recently is that it’s way easier to gather skill points when you’re at a lower level, but there’s more to it than that.
This world’s leveling system forces your body to get stronger as your level increases.
I’ve been level 4 for a long time, so I really get it.
When I first hit level 4, it felt amazing──like I suddenly got way stronger.
But that borrowed strength never felt quite right, and after a while, it started to make me uncomfortable.
After Mr. Zenom scolded me, and I kept training with Ms. Ant and the others, I finally got my real ability to catch up to my level.
Moving with my true strength feels amazing──it’s like a direct line to my body’s limits.
It’s like when the motor assist cuts out on an electric bike.
This direct feeling is super important to me.
When I’m boosted, I get this tiny, weird sensation that messes with my senses.
The worst is taste.
My tongue goes numb, and I can’t even tell the difference between types of rock salt.
That cuts my enjoyment of food in half.
Smell’s the same.
No matter how much I boost my skill, if I can’t feel the real scent, it’s no good.
The aroma of food, the scent of flowers, even a woman’s body odor──all lose their charm with that slight off-feeling.
And touch──critical for a craftsman like me.
The thin rubbery barrier when touching a girl’s soft skin… it’s tear-inducing.
I regret not having my full senses during that night with Miss Floria.
Can’t ever forgive myself for that.
The higher my level goes, the stronger the assist gets, and the bigger those weird feelings get.
Some people would laugh it off, but clear, natural senses are everything to me.
Borrowed strength, no matter how strong, only gives me a fleeting sense of achievement.
No one complains about the level-up ’cause it doesn’t change your looks, but it’s like turning into a monster.
I’ve worked hard to get to a point where I can manage without the assist at level 4.
So I don’t even want to level up anymore.
I’d lock it down if I could.
Now I realize, this world’s experience and proficiency system, turning people into superhumans… it’s absolutely nuts.
Not many people complain ’cause it’s easy strength, but if you think about it, it’s just plain dangerous.
After all, when you push past your limit, your body feels like it’s gonna pop.
I’ve got to deal with the massive proficiency crammed into me, or I’ll burst like a balloon.
And I need to do it fast.
So, the plan is to evolve by reducing the MP cost of each skill.
That way, it shouldn’t be too hard on the body, right?
Normally, you’d increase the MP cost to beef up the power, but if we’re talking efficiency, then saving energy might not be a bad route.
When you use a skill while visualizing, it’s like water seeping into the ground – the proficiency just kinda soaks in slowly.
Slow and steady… but if the proficiency barely goes up, does that mean the skill is already maxed out?
It’s not a game, so maxing out doesn’t mean it’s over.
But growing beyond that seems like a real pain.
If we have new skills and max them out, we can spend a good chunk of proficiency.
But coming up with new skills is always a struggle.
I guess we just gotta push and see if we can manage one a day.
Even if we grind for ten years, we probably won’t hit 4 thousand skills.
Can we even have more than a thousand skills to begin with?
In games, there’s always a limit to how many skills you can have.
The proficiency numbers are all over the place.
If we don’t change our approach, we’ll never get anywhere.
We need to create skills that are meant to waste proficiency, ideally something that lets us spend all of it at once.
There might actually be a skill like that, even with this vague idea.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
Thanks for reading.
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