It took Blake three days to finish the trench and fill it with more spikes. Despite creating his elongated chisel tool to help dig he was only able to get two feet down before the ground became too hard to continue digging. He was relying mostly on his hand only using the digging tool to help break up the soil.

  It was hard back-breaking work. Blake had never been someone who worked out. He did his mandatory physical training as required by school but although it was meant to prepare someone for combat in the spirit realm you had to actually care about your physical abilities to get much out of it. He had always thought of himself as more of a mage than a fighter.

  He regretted that attitude now. His fear of being attacked drove him to push himself far beyond what he would normally be able to do. Had he not feared for his life he would have given up, or at least procrastinated, within the first hour or two of work. Instead, he worked himself until he could move no more before taking a break. The moment he could he got back to work.

  Blake knew intellectually that he couldn’t actually die in the spirit realm, at least not at his level. Should he take fatal damage his spirit would return to his body to recover. It would reset his tier and take time depending on his tier before he could return but it wasn’t the end.

  As you rose through the tiers your spirit became more and more connected to your body making dying in the spirit realm worse. Injuries would start to cross over and recovery could take years at the higher tiers. At tier 0, however, Blake would take at most a month and his body would be completely fine. The most he had to worry about was mental scarring and a weakened Talent upon his return to the spirit realm. His Talent would be locked until he returned to the spirit realm after dying.

  Despite this being the case Blake was terrified of the thought. The pain of his fight with the rabbicorn was still clear in his mind. No matter the reality of the situation his emotions were a firm drive behind his actions. As he completed more and more of his defenses his nightmares did ease back somewhat as he felt more safe.

  Besides having completed his initial defenses so fast there was another benefit to having worked so hard. Blake found that he had grown noticeably stronger since arriving in the spirit realm. This wasn’t just the normal growth you would see on Earth when putting in hard work but something supernatural. If he hadn’t known better he would have thought that he had been consistently going to the gym for months from how much he had grown.

  Blake’s body had hardened removing the thin layer of fat that covered his body. He had never been fat and chubby by any means. He had looked quite thin in fact, but what meat he did have on his bones was not muscle. Now he had bulked up somewhat with clearly defined muscles and abs. He was very excited by the abs.

  Something he had noticed as he pushed his physical body was that a subtle warmth had suffused his muscles. This wasn’t the warmth of an overworked body but rather the supernatural warmth he felt when he had first arrived in the spirit realm as well as every time his Talent activated. The warmth seemed to be a sign of the spirit realm improving him. That suggested to Blake that his Talent was improving him in some way beyond the information gained. How? He wasn’t sure. It might have just been what allowed his future crafts to be slightly better without needing to improve his crafting skills but his instincts were telling him that wasn’t it, or at least that wasn’t all it was.

  Done with his work on the initial base defenses Blake collapsed into his leaf bed. He was still dirty but had gotten used to the smell of being covered in grime so he didn’t bother to create a new clean bed every night. He was tired enough from creating the defenses that it wasn’t worth the effort. He did start a fire to ward off the darkness. It helped his mind settle enough to fall asleep. A benefit of pushing so hard was that he was too tired to let his worries keep him awake.

  That night was the most peaceful sleep he had gotten since the rabbicorn attack. He still had nightmares but they weren’t so bad that he woke up screaming, or at all. Getting up for the morning Blake had to decide what to do now that his initial defenses were done. When he had completed the trench his Talent had activated but the information he had received did not give him any obvious way to improve it.

  With no clear task in front of him, Blake found his mind starting to wonder and he felt that he needed to do something to help him stay away from dark thoughts. He chuckled at the realization he had become one of those people who felt the need to be constantly doing something productive. He had never thought he could be such a person.

  Before the rabbicorn attack, he had focused on the idea of creating entertainment and comfort so that he could laze around and not do anything. That idea now sounded torturous to him. He still liked the idea of comfort but entertainment so he could laze around and not do anything productive? That was no longer something he desired.

  Since nothing came to mind on what to craft Blake decided to try something else out that would help him no matter what he decided to do later. He was going to workout. Not having any workout equipment and not finding the need to make any he dropped to the floor and began doing pushups. He was surprised to find that he could complete 30 without much effort. Before entering the spirit realm he might have been able to do five on a good day.

  Switching between exercises Blake did a variety of body weight workouts such as squats, handstand pushups, and pull-ups using a sturdy tree branch. It took an hour to work up a good sweat. At that point, he stopped thinking that was the end of what he could do that day. It was only natural that working out every day or two should be his goal so he was surprised to find that after half an hour his body was fully recovered and ready to go again.

  That supernatural warmth had suffused his body already subtly improving him. Blake was not in touch with his body enough to tell how much he had improved but he knew that he had. For the first time in his life, he was excited to workout. It was a great way to distract his mind and unlike on Earth, there were immediate improvements to motivate him.

  Like that, a day passed. Blake worked for an hour then took a break to recover. It didn’t always take only half an hour to recover. As the day passed it took more and more time so that by the end of the day he was no longer able to recover within three hours and called it a day. He was disappointed that he couldn’t workout infinitely but had seen clear improvements by the end of the day and suspected that in another day or two, he would have to come up with exercise equipment if he wanted to keep improving. He could work on his endurance to an extent with just his body weight but he didn’t weigh enough to keep increasing his strength indefinitely.

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  While he was feeling more comfortable now that he had defenses set up, Blake still made sure to light a fire before the sunset. It still brought him a sense of safety and there was no reason not to besides the dwindling supply of fallen branches within his immediate area. He was going to have to start removing branches from the trees directly soon.

  He lamented his lack of an axe as being able to cut down trees would be quite helpful. If he had access to logs he would be able to create a real wall behind his trench. Right now there was a short dirt pile created from his digging of the trench. It could only barely be called a wall.

  Blake had tried to create an axe from wood but his Talent had made it clear after his first attempt that the wood was just not strong enough. He needed to figure out how to use something other than wood. If he could use stone that would be great but so far any attempt to break stone had been met with failure. He wasn’t strong enough. If he could push his exercise enough working with stone might become feasible.

  The next morning Blake resumed his workout routine. He was surprised to find that despite bulking up with muscle his hunger had barely increased. He couldn’t help but think how inefficient growth must be on Earth for this to be all the food he needed to grow so much stronger. He did learn something unfortunate about his future plans, however.

  Despite getting a full night’s rest and much more growth in his strength now that his body had some time, he still required more than half an hour to recover. It was only 45 minutes so it was better than it had been the night before but it wasn’t as much as he had been hoping. This meant that either he hadn’t waited long enough before going at it again or the stronger he grew the longer he would have to wait before working out again. He hoped it was the first option as the second could ruin his plans to workout until he reached the maximum potential of his body.

  With nothing he could do about it, Blake continued his routine. It wasn’t until the afternoon began to set that something changed.

  Blake was walking around the glade catching his breath following another intense session. With his increased strength the workout sessions had extended to almost two hours now with three-hour breaks.

  Blake heard a rustle from a bush just outside his barrier of spikes. He froze in fear watching the bush. A rabbicorn hopped out and lay eyes on him. The moment it saw him it charged. This one was slightly smaller than the first one he saw but no less terrifying to the man.

  To Blake’s surprise, upon reaching the barrier of spikes the rabbicorn attempted to jump over them rather than move between them. He had assumed the first layer of defenses would be useless against the smaller creatures which is why he had made the trench in the first place.

  Instead, the rabbicorn had jumped right onto one of the spikes. Its chest was impaled as it slid a good foot down the spike. Blake stood still, his breathing coming in small, irregular, gasps, as he watched the rabbicorn struggle to escape while bleeding out onto the spike. Five of the longest minutes in Blake’s life passed before the rabbicorns struggling stopped. He didn’t dare move for another five.

  Finally shaking off his shock Blake crept forward, spear held tightly in his hand. Reaching out he poked the rabbicorn with his spear. It didn’t react. He poked it again and again. With a bit more force he stabbed the rabbicorn through the head just to make sure it was dead. The skills he had gained with the spear from his Talent made it easy to take a proper, if unpracticed, form for the stab.

  Now confident that it was dead Blake was stunned. He had created these defenses for exactly this kind of attack but despite being proud of them he had never truly believed that they would stop a rabbicorn. He had built up these creatures as horrible monsters capable of overcoming even his best efforts. He had killed the first one with an accidental weak kick, sure, but it had badly injured him first.

  Now staring at how easily it had died with no effort on his part beyond creating the spikes in the first place he couldn’t help but recall what these creatures really were. The weakest type of monster possible. They were used as easy prey for beginners with combat Talents. Completely harmless by most measures. Except he had been harmed by them which had twisted his viewpoint. He had ignored what he had learned about them previously, almost seeing them as a completely different kind of monster.

  In a daze, Blake removed the monster from the spike and carried it over to the fire pit. He was hungry and the rabbicorn had already proven to be edible. Technically. He had gotten food poisoning last time but he was pretty sure that was because it was left in the open for over a day before he had consumed it. This time he was going to cook it immediately.

  Since he had gained a better idea of what he needed to do to extract the meat after his last attempt Blake spent some time creating a wooden knife with his focus on it being a skinning knife. It would help him cut open the rabbit even if it was crappy and improved his skill at skinning. In addition to the information on how he did the last time he got to work.

  It was still a messy job but his Talent told him he got at least half the meat this time and it wasn’t pulped. It stuck on his spear much better this time. Once he had gotten the fire started he stuck the meat over it.

  Like with the previous rabbicorn, Blake didn’t cook it all at once. He wanted to improve his cooking skills as he went. Last time he had been too hungry to do that to any measure of success but he had the time to try again now. His first attempt was little better than the previous rabbicorn. He didn’t want to have raw meat on the inside so he kept it over the fire longer than before. This left it burnt and disgusting but at least he had gathered a different data point than before.

  With information from both undercooked and overcooked meat, his second attempt of the night went much better. The outside was still burnt but the middle was almost perfect to Blake. He liked his meat medium rare and the meat was more medium.

  He only had enough meat for one more attempt so he decided to try something a little different. To help it cook more evenly Blake spent some time preparing the meat beforehand. He stretched it out making it thinner before sticking it over the fire. Taking a bite he moaned in satisfaction. If he had an actual stove he could have done better but it was delicious to him. If only he had some seasonings.

  Blake threw the body of the rabbicorn to burn it to ash. He had done this to the body of the first rabbicorn as well to help clean up. It was like a trash can for his little campsite. He had been surprised to find the horn of the rabbicorn didn’t burn and was curious if the same would hold true for the second.

  Blake stuck his spear back into the fire to burn off the remnants of the meat from it. He only kept it in there for a short time before pulling it back for fear of it catching on fire. It was wood after all. Examining the tip for damage he was surprised to find that its shape had warped slightly and changed color. It would have made sense if it had burned a little and been covered in ash but this was a change to the structure of the wood itself.

  Since he had not intended for anything to happen as he wasn’t crafting anything his Talent did not activate but Blake swore to explore what was happening the next day. He would make a new spear and stick it in the fire as part of the crafting process so that his Talent would give him information on how it was changing.

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