Evening.
Verum stumbled out of the training hall, his body was quite energized, but his mind was fatigued, a bit more than what could be considered okay. All was not bad though, Mana manipulation leveled up 4 times, he got something called 'Fire manipulation', and even his WIS went up by 2 points.
He walked to the barracks, and opened the door. The people inside had been chatting, but they stopped when he entered, got up and stood at attention before he could wave them down.
"Huu, you don't need to be so formal all the time, K?" He said with a sigh. "Whatever, just tell me where Jason is if you know." Then, hearing a response, went back out towards the warehouse. Reaching there, he saw him standing there with the door of the warehouse open, seemingly inspecting it's contents.
"Something wrong?" He asked, startling him.
"Forgive me sir, I didn't know you were out."
"It's alright, something seems to be troubling you, what is it?"
"It's the warehouse sir."
"What about it?"
"The space, sir, with our current resource gathering speed, we do not have enough space to even fit tomorrow's resources, I fear that we will need a lot more space than this to be able to store them."
"Why's that? I thought that we had some amount of space, what's taking it up?"
"It's mostly wood sir, it's occupying 8 slots!"
"Eight? That would be 4 thousand wood? How much are they bringing in? Argh! Just.. Tell them to go to the mine! We need more stone anyway."
"I shall do that sir, but what should we do about all this wood?"
"For now, when you are free, transfer half of it to a corner of the training hall. I'll make it useful for training. Anyway, I did no come here for that."
"Sir?"
"You know I said that I would be giving magic training, right? Well, I've decided to make it get more results than jus normal training, from tomorrow onwards, you all are going to spend at least 3 hours trying to come up with new spells and increasing your control of mana, so get a good sleep, you are going to need it. Good night."
"Sleep well, Sir!"
As Verum walked away, Jason how many spells it would take to earn his lord's approval.
*****
The next morning, Training hall.
"Let's commence, shall we?" Verum was surrounded by people in fighting stances, but had a relaxed looked on his face as he said those words.
Since yesterday, he was feeling uncomfortable since his EXP points stopped at 499, not going any higher. He was perplexed but soon recalled something that was a common theme in fantasy related stories. A Break-through in strength after a hard battle or effort. And that prompted him to have a battle with all of his men, at the same time, thinking that maybe this will make him advance.
"3,2,1 Go!" He said, and 4 of them immediately rushed him.
'Their teamwork has improved, I have not taught them this, they should be practicing without me knowing.' He thought, as he evaded the first two attacks and used them to counter the other two. 'However.' He punched out, knocking back one of them, 'This is not the effort of just training.' Jumped up to evade a leg sweep, did a split-kick, hitting two in the face, then drop-kicked another.
'The mobs should be the cause.' The fight continued, and slowly Verum began to lose ground. He started getting grazed and hit, so his started using Battle Aura, which immediately brought him a bit of breathing space, the pressure slows down their movement, and slightly enhances him as well.
He alone, however, could not compare to the endurance of 15, even if he was better at them in combat, he was not a super-human, and therefore, could only go so long without taking a rest. He again started to lose, getting hit by punches and kicks, he was getting overwhelmed as he gritted his teeth, trying to keep up with the movements of 7 people at the same time.
He was now covered in sweat, bruised, and exhausted, yet he had a huge grin on his face as he fought them off. 'Guess I'm a battle junkie huh?' He thought, 'Ugh! At this rate, there is no hope of victory. But I am not intending,' "TO LOSE!!" He shouted, startling his men who quickly retreated.
[Level up!]
[You have unlocked 'Inventory'!]
[Since you have broken through 'Improving', you have received +3 to all stats, and +1 stat point per level up!]
He did not pay notice to the notifications, and instead just rushed at the one's in front of him, now in pincer formation, and quickly started taking them down in a few hits.
It only took two minutes before all but one of them were on the ground, only Jason remained standing while the others recovered. Verum looked at them all for a moment, before bursting out in boisterous laughter. It continued for a moment before stopping.
"Heh! I'll have to thank you all for letting me find out more about myself, it feels great to fight without needing to worry about injuries and stuff, from now on, all of you will break through using this method, and this method only. Understand? Good. Now then, tell me, how many of you are at level 10? No one? Okay, doesn't matter, just remember that when you reach level 10, stop hunting, and train until you reach the bottle-neck, then call me, I will help you to break through."
After giving them some pointers and advise, he walked out the training hall to get some water. But was stopped by someone.
"My lord!" Verum turned around, and was a tad surprised. "Aren't you the mages? Where have you guys been? I haven't seen you guys in a while."
"We were protecting the woodcutter dwarves sir, but now we are just training to improve ourselves."
"Okay, so what's the matter?"
"We found fruit sir, an entire orchard it seems like."
"Fruit?"