Chapter 15
As the fight progressed, Greem was realizing, more and more, what his weaknesses were.
His below average Physique was one of the biggest weaknesses. Even with the help of the mighty Chip, he found that he was not as strong as he had originally thought.
His Agility of 4 defined the speed of his reflexes, movement, and the flexibility of his body. Although the dynamic vision provided by the Chip allowed him to roughly guess where Mary was moving, his overly ‘clumsy’ and ‘slow’ body was having a hard time keeping up with the guidance of the chip.
Therefore, most of the time, even though Greem knew in advance where the attack was coming from, he was unable to defend fast enough. Often when the sharp claws passed his body, his flame was mere inches away, but he still couldn’t even touch the tips of the fringes of Mary’s dress.
Hence, within the huge Arena, Greem was restlessly waving two huge fireballs and doing everything he could to land even the slightest blow on his enemy. However, it seemed he was unable to do anything except receive wounds and groan as the pain from all the wounds added up. As for Mary, she was like a red ghost who drifted from place to place, seeming to blink in and out of reality as she dashed around Greem. Quite frequently, the dreadful flames almost touched her body, but they were unable to cause her any harm, as she was moving with great speed and agility.
Fortunately, Mary was just playfully evaluating Greem’s fighting ability, so all her attacks were only causing minor flesh wounds. If she had been serious, Greem would have long since been sliced into chunks of meat. But even so, having his body scratched by Mary’s blade-liked sharp claws, left Greem with countless scratch marks, and blood all over his body.
Although the wounds on his body wouldn’t get him killed, they brought Greem a great deal of anger and humiliation.
A month ago, this Mary was only a beginner Apprentice, and she was not stronger than him. Because of that damn mutation, caused by magical contamination, she was now able to twist Greem around her little finger, like he was nothing. This exploding anger was continually suppressed by Greem, as he knew he was unable to defeat Mary, but he was still doing all he could to chase her flashing red shadow with his raging flame.
He had some basic healing medicine in his room. After all, in order to survive in the Tower, medicinal paste and poison antidotes were must have items.
Bearing the pain, Greem applied the medicinal paste to his wounds while grimacing. Immediately, a sensation of tickling that made him crazy came from the wounds, but soon after, it was replaced by a cold sensation that soothed his mind, and the pleasant feeling of having his flesh regenerating followed. Hence Greem started the slow process of healing.
After he finished applying the medicinal paste, Greem decided to look over the other parts of his self-test report.
Surprisingly, the torture he had gone through, just now, had increased all of his attributes, and it even increased his Experience by 12. Greem couldn’t help breathing out a long sigh. Did this mean his path to becoming strong was going to be filled with misery?
After wallowing in misery and slightly suicidal thoughts, Greem took a deep breath, then lay down on his bed and started his daily meditation.
Once again, he had arrived in the Spiritual Dimension, which was filled with countless bright specks of light. This time, the light orb representing Greem’s consciousness transformed into a ferocious monster which had hundreds of tentacles from its body. Under Greem’s control, these Spiritual tentacles kept poking and swimming around, reaching out and grabbing at all the Fire Elementium swimming nearby.
In the past, Greem had only passively absorbed the Fire Elementium that came close enough to him. How could that be compared with his current efficiency, as he was actively absorbing them? With his current speed, one round of meditation would yield ten times what previous meditation had.
It had been a long day for him. So many things had happened and he was too busy to attend to them all. This was the first time he had been able to catch his breath all day and he found himself to be exhausted. Therefore, before he could check the results of his meditation, he fell asleep.
…………
At dawn the next day, Greem woke up to the sound of heavy knocking at his door.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s me, Tony. It’s time…”
Greem’s lips twitched. He realized that six days had passed since his last inspection trip, and that it was time for them to do it again!
As he was getting up, he quickly glanced at the results of last night’s meditation. He was filled with joy as he saw that his Spirit had increased from 8.07 to 8.15. A single night of meditation had increased his Spirit by 0.08…. Didn’t that mean that, even if he didn’t spend any time studying Magic books and just did basic meditation, his Spirit would reach the level of Advanced Apprentice Adept in three months?
This wasn’t the only good news.
His Fire Arrow spell would be solidified in 1 hour. In 1 hour, he would become a beginner Apprentice who had mastered more than one Magic Spell. He would no longer be a rookie who could be bullied by anyone.