Chapter 7 - Training Hall
Liam opened his status screen to see his health slowly dropping one point at a time and considering that he had only 10 health points currently, he held his breath and stared at the screen even though he was sure of the outcome.
His health in fact dropped all the way to 3/10, but then it stopped there. The boiling water now felt cool and refreshing to his body, the various essences thoroughly mixing together.
As time ticked by, the deep dark red color of the liquid in the cauldron slowly started fading, all essences now little by little getting absorbed into Liam's body.
He closed his eyes enjoying the warm and nourishing sensation. Within an hour, the dark red liquid turned almost completely transparent and colorless. However, the next instant, the color started changing again.
The clear and clean water now started slowly becoming muddier and muddier with black oily filth floating on top of it.
And surprisingly, Liam himself was the source of this filth, his pores leaking the greenish-black sticky liquid.
After absorbing the essences of various herbs and bones, his body started expelling the copious amount of impurities present within the flesh and bones.
Soon the entire cauldron was pitch black in color and the water had transformed into a thick oil.
"Bleh! I stink!" Liam pinched his nose and stepped out of the cauldron, tracking the dirty filth on the floor of the crafting room.
Each room had an attached bath and toilet, so he directly stepped into the shower, scrubbing himself until he felt clean and fresh.
Though he still looked like a bag of bones, his body now had a healthy glow and his skin did not have a single blemish.
The pimples and freckles on his face had also disappeared giving him a neat look.
Liam then quickly threw his shabby beginner clothes back on. There was an automatic reset rune on the cauldron, which when activated completely cleaned the cauldron inside out.
So he opened his inventory space, which only had 10 slots, and tossed the cauldron in one of those 10 slots.
"Hi. I am done with the crafting room." He handed over the medallion of the room back to Lana, who now stared at Liam even more incredulously.
She could see that he had somehow transformed a lot in such a short amount of time!
She wouldn't exactly describe him as good looking because he still had a very off putting body as if he was just skin covering a skeleton, but his features were sharper now.
His pitch black eyes looked unfathomably deep. Lana gulped without realizing that she was openly ogling at the young man.
She wanted to ask him how he had done it, but unfortunately, he had already walked out, only his back visible at a distance now.
Liam summoned his status screen to look at his basic stats again.
______________
Name: Chang Liam
Species: Human being
Gender: Male
Level: 1 [0/200]
Title: Rolling in Debt
Class: N/A
Health: 50/50
Mana: 70/70
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Stamina: 10
Intellect: 14
Strength: 10
Defense: 11
Vitality: 13
Agility: 12
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"Hmm… Not bad, but I can do better." Liam clicked his tongue and walked over to his next destination which was the main training hall of the town.
Though this place was far less crowded than the novice village, the training hall still had a lot of people coming in and going out.
There were also several players on the ground in front of the tall rectangular brick wall building, attacking scarecrows relentlessly using all sorts of weapons and even basic magic spells.
This space was meant for learning and practicing basic skills from the instructors of the training hall, but some people stayed longer than necessary and repeated the same set of actions over and over again.
This was admittedly one of the strategies to gain bonus stat points, but albeit a very time-consuming and boring one.
For instance, if one swung a sword continuously a hundred times or a thousand times stretching out their stamina almost until it broke, it was possible to get 1 or 2 stat point boosts for stamina.
However, to receive this benefit again, they would have to swing their sword a million times for the next stat boost reward.
So ultimately, it was not an efficient way to spend one's time, but some perfectionists still preferred fighting for every bit of advantage that they could grasp.
Liam even spotted a couple of women in the group who were swinging their swords without taking a breather.
At this point in the game, women were truly very rare so he couldn't help but give them a glance before turning his attention back to the instructor who was sitting at the corner on a wooden chair, with a stick on his lap.
As soon as Liam's gaze fell on the middle-aged man, the man's eyes also swept over to him, meeting his gaze. Instantly a domineering aura seeped from his body.
Other players might have been at least slightly intimidated by such a strong violent aura, but Liam simply nodded at the instructor and walked over to one of the empty spaces on the ground in front of the training hall building.
He, of course, did not plan on doing the mundane exercises which others were doing. There was no use chasing over every single stat point.
He had a lot more important things to accomplish before his time ran out!
He placed the rusted sword he was carrying back into his inventory and then took a deep breath before slowly starting to perform a series of movements.