[NR] Grinding Montage - Chapter 429 (Patreon)

It took Jason two hours and change to kill that first earth elemental with just his fists. Maybe if he wasn’t capped on Toughness, it would have gone faster, but each punch was the same as the last. He hadn’t even used any fancy punching techniques. Just simple, straight punches.

Though even if his Toughness was started, that didn’t prevent it from growing in the background. In fact, that two-hour fight ended up growing all his stats. Not by much, after all, it wasn’t a tough fight, but something is better than nothing.

{+3 Strength, +5 Toughness, +2 Agility}

The new stats didn’t change much, though this boost to Agility was enough for the base stat to hit 100 exactly. A nice round number that felt important even if it wasn’t. More interesting though was the increase to Strength.

Jason had mostly fought the earth elemental the way he did to prove he could. If it was giving points to Strength, though, that is a different matter. The only question is how long it would help.

The previous fight had been so boring, that he had paid attention to the messages. So while seeing the wrap up message that declared all the gains at once seemed positive. Jason had seen the actual points where he would have gained the stats. Suffice it to say, most of the points came in the first hour.

In fact, Agility only gained points in the first ten minutes. Because sure, he was jumping around and dodging a lot, but there was no challenge to it. On the other hand, and why he is hopeful, Strength actually gained points in a fairly linear manner.

Now all Jason needed to do was let his fists recover some. While they had held up pretty well, he wasn’t going to test how much they could take. Though it didn’t take long for the internal bruising to vanish thanks to the untainted core effect of his cultivation.

The flesh wounds were a little more stubborn of course, but he didn’t mind them. Jason was mostly certain that because of his abilities the cuts wouldn’t form scars and cause flexibility problems later. Though it did feel like his hand was covered in paper cuts.

A thoroughly unpleasant experience to which the best solution is to distract himself by punching more things. At least that is Jason’s plan. So he once again approaches the rock fall.

This inevitably leads to more earth elementals. Though this time two popped out. Not what Jason wanted so using war stomp, the second elemental is broken apart by way of flower roots.

That still ended up taking a good half hour or so and Jason suffered a few big hits, dropping him to half health. On the other hand, he also gained a decent chunk of deferred Toughness, though more importantly some instant Strength and health.

{+2 Strength, +4 Toughness, +20 HP}

It had been quite a while since he last received more HP. Though taking enough damage to go down to half health is probably a decent enough reason for it. Jason grimaces, there should be an alternate method to grow his health besides taking all the damage. Then again, the System might be restricting such things to force people into depending on their level and rarely bonuses.

Not that there is much he can do about it right now. All there is to do at the moment is bash rocks all day and night. An easy enough task that ends up taking another week.

A real snail’s pace and after the third day Jason wasn’t even receiving a point of Strength every fight. Though his HP did crawl upward at a steady rate. Well, it did after the first day when he started letting the earth elementals get a hit in now and again.

{+10 Strength, +2 Toughness, +117 HP}

Looking at total stats gained is impressive. Jason is particularly happy with the HP as it basically doubled his base HP. Though Strength was a head scratcher. He was almost at 90 points in it and the stat still hadn’t starred.

Jason could only shake his head at this. He knew it likely had something to do with his unique constitution. A normal creature of flesh and blood will have their Strength limited by things like their muscles, bone structure, and tendons. All things that Jason doesn’t have to worry about.

In theory, his body could have unlimited Strength. Jason highly doubted that would be possible while he was in NeoRealm. Not that unlimited Strength is really that large of a bonus as long as you still have a mortal lifespan. It just means you can continue to gain strength no matter what and diminishing returns will kick in long before it gets too crazy. Plus, it isn’t like others can’t exceed themselves. That is sort of what the bottlenecks and having a starred stat is all about.

Breakthrough and you can increase your strength again. Nevermind that most players and locals will never experience this. They all just depend on the System for their stats and those aren’t limited by what their body can handle.

This can cause some silly situations, but believe it or not, dumping all of your points into Strength doesn’t equal a good build. While it is generally advised that you don’t try to balance all your stats, most people will swear by some ratio or another. Stuff like needing enough Agility to make all those Strength points useful. After all, literal infinite Strength would be pointless if you can’t ever hit anything.

Not that people aren’t constantly trying, especially at the lower levels. Dumping all the points from the first ten levels into a single stat is even somewhat popular, as the beginner gear can offset the greed. Some even take it further if they have a team lined up. After all, it doesn’t matter if you can’t hit a moving target when you have other people to make sure the target doesn’t move.

Jason didn’t really approve of that sort of set up though as it makes the team brittle.