Frostbound

Congratulations! You have leveled up.

Ah, another one.

Building, testing, tweaking, changing, and re-carving all worked to give experience and it wasn't small either.

The grade and cost of the materials I was working with accelerated the level gain significantly. It was one of the main reasons my profession was so high level to begin with.

I had no hope of catching up to Vinny or Brayden, or any other crafter-focused person, but I was gaining on them somewhat. Both men in question already had their E-rank evolution, not desiring to wait on Jonathan to figure out if it was worth it.

Vinny became an even better blacksmith and Brayden did the same but with building. They made things constantly, raking in levels faster than I could hope to imagine. Just the time they spent working wasn't something I could match.

Before, when Vinny and I just started leveling up as blacksmiths, we kept a similar pace. Both leveling up at roughly the same time.

That didn't last long. When I went to go hunt, Vinny would stay in the forge. When I trained my skills, Vinny was in the forge. When I meditated trying to improve my Law, you guessed it, he was in the forge.

Our level discrepancy only grew.

I fell behind a level, then two, then 5, then 10. Now, he was somewhere in the mid 50s while I lamented in the high 30s. Reaching 38 with the most recent notification chime.

Usually, it would take longer for a person to climb in levels than this, but I had a few things going for me that were helping the process. The experience gained on crafts was dependent on the final grade along with the difficulty of crafting it.

A master smith forging a piddling sword wouldn't get the same experience as an apprentice smith trying their best to make the same piddling sword.