Frostbound

I was bummed that I didn't level after the wave but it made sense, I leveled not too long ago, and asking for another so soon was greedy. I was still keeping a pace of more than a level a wave, so it wasn't like I was falling behind.

In 6 waves, I leveled 8 times. 7 if you exclude level 1 since that was given to me. Worse than the scout that visited but still better than most of my family. The lowest level among us was Diana at level 5. She hadn't been doing much and none of us felt right about asking her to.

Besides her, the next lowest level was 6, with several people there. Not everyone participated that much during the waves and they certainly didn't go out of their way to hunt. That was fine with me, not everyone excelled in one area, they could just focus on their professions once they got one.

We had done it enough times that the clean up was a breeze and the rest of the day melted by. Since Austin and I hunted in the morning and fought in the wave, we decided to give our bodies time to rest before we began again tomorrow.

We both had bite marks in various places and scratch marks here and there that still felt tender after getting healed. I was in no mind to push it and didn't wish to reopen old wounds, so it was a light workout and magic practice for the rest of the day.

I kept putting off training my perception because it never seemed to do anything, but I went out of my way to dedicate an hour or two to it. I couldn't keep ignoring it forever, even though I wanted to.

It paid off because the following morning's training notification finally had an increase in perception. The stubborn stat finally decided to go up after two weeks. It only increased by one, but it was still something to celebrate. Now I had officially trained all of my stats by at least one. Everyone had probably done that as well but it was a nice feeling while it lasted.

Austin and I started our hunt the same as we usually would and noticed that we were slaughtering these boars now instead of the fights they used to be. My upgraded skill along with both of our new ones made the fights a lot easier than they had been, now we had to decide if going for level 10's was worth it.

Fighting a level 10 was considerably harder, but well worth it in satisfaction. Not only did it feel better to fight something that was an actual challenge, it was more rewarding as well. It was hard to explain, but the level 10s gave us chunks of experience compared to below that level.

It would still take a decent number of them to level off of, but considerably less than fighting level 8s. We both agreed to risk it and started searching for level 10s to take down. We still killed all of the lower-level ones we saw but it wasn't what we focused on anymore.

When we actually encountered the evolved boars, we got more serious and fought defensively, slowly wearing the creature down. It was similar to the last time we fought the earthhide boar but it went a lot smoother.

Instead of feeling like we were wielding feathers instead of weapons, it felt more like the fight it should have been. Penetrating Strike easily chipped through their hide, and Austin's quick stabs were enough to overwhelm the poor thing.