In the game, acquiring skills is relatively easy. As long as you get a skill book or have someone teach you, you can learn them, and the experience required for the first few levels isn’t much either. Reaching the beginner stage is something anyone can easily achieve with a bit of patience. However, as skill levels get higher, the experience required increases exponentially, making it harder and harder to level up as you go.

Sometimes, you even need to complete a quest attached to the skill’s advancement in order to progress.

For example, the previously acquired 【Japanese】 skill: proficiency mainly shows in how fluently you can speak and write. At LV1, people basically have to guess what you’re saying; at LV3, you’re not much better than a stutterer; at LV5, you can probably handle daily conversations smoothly; at LV10, maybe people will find your speech very pleasant and their impression of you will greatly improve; at LV15, you might even be able to inspire others, influencing them mentally just by talking... As for LV20, who knows what that would be like.

Henry Carter has been playing “Dragons, Swords, and Magic” for almost a year now. He’s seen countless players, but has never seen anyone raise a skill to level 20—the experience required just keeps increasing, while the experience you gain keeps decreasing. At LV1, casting Fireball at nothing gives you +1 experience, but when you’re trying to go from level 19 to 20, even blasting a dragon with Fireball for half a day might not get you a single point.

Still, having a high skill level comes with obvious benefits. Every five levels is a tier: beginner, intermediate, advanced, and master, for a total of twenty levels. Each time you reach a new tier, your character level increases, and you gain corresponding attribute points and passive attributes related to the skill.

The higher the skill tier, the more attribute points you get, the stronger the passive attributes, and the greater the boost to your character level. That’s generally how it works.

Because of this, leveling up in this game is relatively easy. For example, you could just go and learn ten languages all at once, raise them all to the beginner stage, and easily reach level 10—but your combat power would be basically nonexistent, not even close to someone who’s raised both Fireball and Ice Lance to the advanced stage—your character’s stats and combat ability would be far inferior.

As 【Ancient Swordsmanship】 reached LV5, his stomach started growling with hunger, and both his arms felt sore and weak to the extreme. He put down the bamboo sword and opened his character panel—

Character Name: Henry Carter

Class: High School Student

Title: None

Level: 【4】

Stamina: 19/150

Strength: 【11】 Agility: 【10】 Endurance: 【15】 Intelligence: 【19】 Charisma: 【25】

Skills: 【Japanese LV7】, 【English LV5】, 【Ancient Swordsmanship LV5】

Active Passives: 【Neat Handwriting】, 【Sword Specialization】

Inactive Passives: 【British Accent】, 【Dual Wielding】

Activatable Skill: 【Meditation Battle】

Equipment: 【Rough Casual Wear】, 【Bamboo Sword】

Money: 【88,945 yen】

Henry Carter scratched his head as he looked at his own character info, not sure if he even counted as human anymore. But for now, all he could do was go eat. You have to eat to live, that’s a must, and a full stomach also speeds up stamina recovery—thankfully, you don’t need to spend money on stamina potions or wait five minutes to recover two points, or that would really be a pain.

Stamina is pretty important—without it, practicing skills doesn’t give you experience.

He lifted up a tatami mat, took a few bills from underneath, and put them in his wallet. Looking at the little money he had left—eighty thousand yen sounds like a lot, but it really doesn’t go far—he figured he was familiar enough with the environment now, and he’d gotten pretty good at imitating other people’s speech and behavior. It was probably time to find a part-time job to earn some money and improve his life.

As he thought about what kind of job would be good, he put on his shoes and headed out. Only after stepping outside did he realize he’d gotten so absorbed in practicing that it was already night. The place he lived in was basically a slum, with none of the bustling city atmosphere. It was quiet and pitch black all around, with only the streetlights flickering at intervals.

The sound of the door opening and closing seemed to startle something. There was a faint noise at the end of the hallway. The apartment building was old and poorly maintained, and who knows how long the hallway light had been broken. Henry Carter glanced over but saw nothing, so he called out tentatively, “Evelyn, is that you over there?”

“Yes, onii-san!” Evelyn Taylor stood up, and by the light from the street, Henry Carter could see the top half of her head.

“Uh... can’t get in the door?”

Evelyn Taylor’s voice came from the darkness, sounding a bit dejected: “I accidentally lost my key.”

“I see... do you need me to contact your parents?”

“I have a phone, onii-san. I already called my mom, but she might be busy and didn’t answer... Um, you don’t have to worry about me, onii-san, I can just wait here.”

Henry Carter thought about it and realized there wasn’t really anything he could do, since they were just acquaintances, so he said, “Alright, I’m heading out then.”

“Onii-san, please be careful.”

Henry Carter went downstairs, looked back at the stairwell, and saw that Evelyn Taylor had disappeared again—she’d probably sat back down and hidden in the darkness. That reminded him of the past, and made him feel a bit uncomfortable.

He’d had similar experiences before. After his parents died young, some relatives took him in, but wouldn’t give him a key to the house. Sometimes, he had to sit at the door like this, waiting for the family to come home.