Tect had 2 and a half days till his sword was done. His time would be spent preparing practice dummies and training his mana control.
But immediately upon exiting the mine Tect found the sun had set, in his eagerness he had failed to properly keep track of time. So Tect built a fire and roasted some delicious purple carrots he found before turning in for the night. Anticipation made it hard to sleep that night, thoughts of slaying dark lords and evil beasts filled Tect's mind, while he may be incredibly mature Tect is at heart an average 16 year old, and what sixteen year old doesn't dream of being a famous hero. Azulak saw all of this, but he hadn't openly told Tect about how he was so intimately linked to his mind, most people would be horrified, but there was no way to stop it so best not to speak of it for now.
Tect awoke the next morning still feeling tired but he was eager to begin his day. He walked to the nearby stream and began his daily exercises. In his excitement he realized he had reached a new record, but the next motion suddenly became almost impossible to complete. It felt like his body was locked in place and it took all of his strength to push forward. Sweat poured from Tect's body as he struggled to reach the next pose.
"I… Will… Not… Give up!" Tect grunted through clenched teeth. Tect forced his joints to move, the sound of his bones groaning was like a deep wind rushing through a mountain pass. Finally something popped and Tect collapsed to the ground. On his finger the ring housing Azulak pinged.
"Congratulations Adventurer, you have reached phase 1 of The Swordsman's Physique. 10 Merit points granted."
Tect was startled, "What the hell was that?"
"The Adventurer's ring has an enchantment that recognizes achievements and grants rewards. Remember I said it was a device used to gather lifeforce for the God of Adventurers, Ardent. In order to gather life force efficiently Ardent in turn grants power to the Adventurers. Lucky for you Ardent is a low level god, so i'm sending all the life force you gather to Kopal. Unlucky for them, you can still earn merit points and spend them. We will have to get that option unlocked by someone at the Adventurer's guild though, I can't seem to do that."
"So basically, it is worthless?"
"Not quite, Kopal is god of Invention. So When someone dedicates themselves to invention they generate holy power for Kopal, how many beings are out there inventing anything right now? Humans and Elves all rely on magic and their culture doesn't value invention. Dwarves will invent on occasion but it's very low level. Redesigning a sword, or designing a house doesn't work, unless it involves using a new technique or material, so generally Kopal is starved for energy, plus Ardent is one of Lumnos' children so fuck him anyway."
Tect laughed, sometimes it was hard to remember that Azulak had been a massively powerful dragon.
"Alright, I get it, but right now none of that helps us. What does this Phase 1 Swordsman Physique do for me?"
"Don't know, I can't wield a sword. I can tell you that as dragons grow our physique naturally levels up and we get stronger, can wield more mana, our bones and scales get harder, and we process energy more efficiently, so I'd say it probably does good things related to the muscles needed to wield a sword, maybe flexibility or stamina?"
Tect began to rise, his sweat stunk like a tavern outhouse, so he jumped into the water. His body did feel lighter, and more flexible so that was good. Even if he didn't know what exactly a Phase 1 Swordsman Physique did it surely wasn't bad. When Tect got out of the water he spotted a slime cleaning up the sweat from the ground, as it was doing this it began to glow. When the glow stopped the slime had gotten twice as big, and something was floating inside of it, but it was hard to tell what. Tect thought nothing of it and proceeded to gather sticks and limbs from the forest.
It took Tect a few hours and many trips back and forth from camp to the forest to gather enough sticks to get started on practice dummies. Next on his list was hide and straw, so Tect headed for the fields south of the forest to hunt a few animals and gather grass. Before he left Tect made some room in his spatial bag. His camp was soon filled with the chest from the storage room, it was an odd sight, a small tent, and a dozen chests. In any other location he would worry about being robbed, but here it was perfectly safe. With the new space in his bag Tect hurried south to the plains.
When Tect reached the plains he noticed a few groups of animals he could hunt. First there were the small groups of cows and sheep, but then Tect noticed that there were a few animals he hadn't seen yet. One was like a very large chicken, they seemed to stay in groups of 3 to 5 and looked absolutely delicious. Tect could use the feathers for a few things, the clan could make arrows, or fishing lures with them, they were a good find. The other creature was a pig of some kind. It was hairless and pink but definitely looked like a pig, There were four that he could see. 3 were off on their own rooting around at the edge of the forest, and one was in a shallow pool of mud by the forest stream, it took Tect a minute to realize that it also had a few piglets with it.
"The pig skin would be great for dummies right?"
"It's ok, the cow skin would be a bit better though."
"Yes, I agree. The pig skin is definitely the best."
"Are… Are you listening to me right now?"
"Shhhh Azulak, the bacon is getting away."
Tect clearly had ulterior motives for choosing the pigs, but then Azulak remembered… he could taste what Tect did, he immediately stopped trying to get through to Tect and let the boy be.
Tect chose a lone pig from the group, it would be a bad idea to kill the mamma pig, she was basically infinite bacon. He drew the short sword and slowly snuck up on the pig. As he got to within a few yards the wind turned blowing his scent right to the pig. The pig had lived it's entire life in the wild, it had seen the eagles, and the giant lizards gobble up whole piggy families. When this new strange scent hit it's sensitive nose it immediately reacted. The pig tossed his head back and gave a loud squeal before running into the forest. The rest of the pigs all ran for the cover of the trees and Tect took off in pursuit. Many people think of pigs as fat lazy brutish beast, and they would be wrong. The cunning of this particular pig was astounding, without a second thought it had warned its kin, and began leading Tect into the only part of the forest the slimes didn't tend. It's not that they didn't want to tend this area, but the pigs had found that the green slimes had a pleasant flavor due to all of the vegetation they consumed, so no slimes could enter their territory to clean out the brambles.
For nearly two hours Tect chased the pig, a few times he thought he had it, only for him to trip unexpectedly over a root, or log. It almost seemed as though the pig was planning it, and laughing at him. Unfortunately, in the end, the pig escaped and Tect could only dream of bacon.
"Well, that was a huge waste of time, but your stamina and agility have improved quite a bit. Perhaps the pig should supply his services as a trainer in the future. Hahaha." Azulak was very amused at the events of the last two hours but Tect was not. Still stewing over his failure with the pig Tect stepped into the plains again, he was ten yards from a young bull. Tect glared at the bull, then snorted and began stomping his foot. The young bull couldn't hide his surprise, "Who the hell is this little green guy trying to challenge. I'm going to stomp the shit outta you." Tect couldn't speak to the cow, but when the cow turned, lowered it's head and stomped, it was pretty clear what would happen next. The cow charged towards him with murder in it's eyes.
"Perfect, a dumb beast charging head on at me. This one I can handle." As the cow was nearly on top of him Tect took one big step to the left and slashed up from the ground with his short sword. Blood sprayed from the bull's neck like a fountain and it fell, it's forward momentum carried it forward another dozen feet, even causing it to flip once. Tect quickly put it's body in his spatial bag, he had room for one more, but after watching what happened the cows all ran in the opposite direction before Tect could even store the body. Now he could only choose sheep or chicken.
Tect approached the chickens, if he couldn't have bacon, then maybe he could get some chicken and a few eggs. Tect was the master of stealth, or so he thought, he crawled on his belly towards the chickens, the wind was to his face. The chickens would never smell him, and they truly didn't. As Tect reached the clearing where the chickens made their nest he pushed aside a small amount of grass to peak into the nests, when he did it wasn't cute little mother hens he saw, Tect seemingly had the worst luck of any hunter in history. You see, when Tect parted the grass to peak in he just so happened to come eye to eye with the rooster who ran this flock. The Rooster who just happened to be mid mount on a very pretty young hen. The hen in question immediately freaked out and ran off squawking her head off. The Rooster was understandably very upset by this turn of events. Slowly the rooster rose to his full height of nearly 4 feet, even more impressive than his height was the six inch razor sharp claws that tipped the middle toe of each foot.
Tect would cry right now if he could, instead he bowed his head, "Dear Chicken Lord! Please forgive this fool! I did not mean to cock block you!"
Azulak lost all semblance of dignity he had. "Buahahahaha, you really couldn't just run. You risked your life for a cheap pun!"
The Chicken had no means of knowing it was being made fun of, it swung its head down intending to peck Tect to death. At that moment Tect rolled to the side, his sword flashed out and took the head from the chicken.
"I will risk everything for cheap puns sir. Do not doubt that." Tect laughed at his immature joke from a few moments ago. Tect sheathed his sword, bagged the rooster, and looked at the chicken eggs in the nest. He had no way of knowing whether the eggs were fresh or not, or even how well developed the chicks were. "I guess I didn't think this through really well."
"Just grab a female chicken. We can tie its feet together and stake it out so it can't run off. It'll probably start laying eggs in a few days, you feed it some grains and veggies, it'll tame up in no time."
Tect grabbed a chicken, it scratched the hell out of him but he managed, he used some rope from the spatial bag to tie its legs together, and carried it back to camp. Thank god there were no aggressive predators, because this chicken was loud.