Ch 19 Grinding Part 1

On the morning of the second day of his holidays, Ron woke up to the sound of his alarm...

And once again the first thing he noticed was the feeling of being lighter and healthier than ever before...

Even without looking in a mirror, he could deduce that his body had improved, and so with a hint of excitement in his eyes, Ron called for his status screen immediately to see what his body's progress during the night was...

[Status]

Name: Ronald Weasley (Sam)

Level: 16 (05/340)

MP: 270/270

Physique [Max.]: 6.7 + 0.3 (Pending) [11]

Dexterity [Max.]: 5 [10]

Spirit [Max.]: 9 [16]

Perception [Max.]: 4 [10]

Stat Points: 1

Skill Points: 1

[Skills]

Transfiguration Lv5, Charms Lv5, Herbology Lv5, Potions Lv5, DADA Lv5, Astronomy Lv4, Flying Lv6, Dueling Lv6, Observe Lv1, Reader Lv1...

And what he saw immediately brought a huge smile to his face...

Not only had his physique improved a lot, but he had also completely digested spirit stat points... seeing such quick progress gave Ron such a high, that it was almost heartbreaking to know that only two or three more sessions later, it would all stop...

And that almost tempted him into putting his spare stat point into the Physique stat immediately to continue with these quick gains.

But ultimately he closed his eyes and restrained himself, as he had already decided beforehand that he needed to try putting one point into every one of his stat first, to see the exact effect they have, so that he could make an informed decision on his future build...

Having already concluded that a point in Spirit increased Mana while one in Physique improved his body's strength and stamina, the only ones left were Dexterity and Perception. And it wasn't very hard to comprehend what Dexterity could do, so...

Not wanting to become enticed into putting a point in Physique once again, Ron didn't waste any more time and immediately put his points into the... Perspective.

Perception [Max.]: 4 [10] -> Perception [Max.]: 4[11]

And after that, he waited... and waited, but even after a while nothing happened to the stat which meant that this stat was unlike the Spirit stat which had a small increment almost immediately after he had put his stat in it and then had slowly but automatically been assimilated into his body...

It seems that this Perspective stat was more along the lines of Physique stat which meant that he would need to find a way to digest it, as for the exact work... well he was sure that he would know about it in the future.

And while he was contemplating, his eyes fell upon a skill in the Status that he had been neglecting for a while... The Observe Lv1.

It's not that he was deliberately not using it or anything, it's just that this was neither a magical skill nor did it use any mana, and even after bombarding it continuously on all the objects he came across, it hadn't shown any sign of levelling up...

While other active skills like this at Level 1 would have only taken two to three successful executions to level up, and without levelling up it was too rudimentary to be useful as it only told him very basic information, like telling him that a pencil was a pencil or that his Mum's name was Molly Weasley...

So Ron had no choice but to conclude that it was a skill similar to the Reader, in that he would have to either depend on a quest reward or spend a skill point on it to improve, but he didn't want to do that even though he had spare skill points because...

He was saving that point for something special, something a lot more useful... for a skill that he would use for his whole life, a skill that at its very best could become a life-saving trump card for him... but that was all for after he had completed his revision and finished comprehending the books until the fifth year...For now, it was time to grind...

After quickly washing up and changing out of his clothes, Ron left the Burrow at crisp 5:15 in the morning...

And he came back at 7 almost one and a half hours later...

That was after considering that he had almost doubled the number of reps for each of his exercises... his new body gave him enough strength and stamina that it was now harder and harder for him to reach failure in each of his exercises.

If it went on like this, it wouldn't be too long before he hit a plateau and then he would have to increase the amount once again but then it would take too long to complete his workout, reducing his time for other pursuits... which was too inefficient.

So in the end he decided that he would need to up the difficulty instead of just increasing the reps in the future... And while normally the best way to do that for ordinary people would be to use weights, he wasn't going to do that.

After all, he was a wizard and he wasn't training his body just for aesthetic purposes or to be a professional bodylifter.

He wanted to be a competent fighter, a duelist good enough that he wouldn't die in his first fight against any run-of-the-mill Death Eater...

And he was sure that there were many drills and exercises that he could find that Aurors and other Hit Wizards used when they were training.

So his top priority after he completely digested his gains would be to search for information about these exercises... and he had a few people in mind who he could ask for help there.

But even with those exercises he would at most become an average auror considering the time constraint he was in... and the probability of an average Auror surviving the near future was very low, so he was going to need an edge if he wanted to be better than them.

And the best edge he had available to him was to improve his stats...

Currently, he only knew two ways to get more stats, one was by levelling up and the other was through quest rewards...

But the second option was a tough one, as going by what had happened previously, only the most challenging quests gave him those points as rewards and not only were those kinds of quests random, they were also as described very... 'hard'.

After all, to complete that previous quest, he had to survive an encounter with the bloody Bellatrix, and even then he only got one of each Stat point and Skill point, so as far as he was concerned it was not a viable safe option.

So that left him with the option of slowly raising his experience points by doing small safe quests and then he would eventually level up and get those coveted points...

This meant that his immediate priority was to find some quests to do... and considering that the only ones near him during the holidays (for now) were his family members, they were obviously going to be his first targets for his quest hunt...

So the moment he stepped foot inside his home after returning from his exercise, and saw that both his mother and father were inside the kitchen in the exact same position as yesterday, Ron didn't hesitate and immediately sent out a pulse through the quest search function in his System.

And the result was surprisingly... positive.

Both his mother standing in front of the kitchen island and his father sitting on the dining table eating his breakfast while reading the Prophet, had an exclamation mark over their heads, signifying that they had quests for him... and so he hurriedly opened them to see what they were.

[Quest: Magical Cooking (1)]

[Objective: Molly Weasley is well known as one of the most skilled chefs by anyone who has ever tasted her food. Now as her, son, you have an incredible opportunity to inherit a few of her highly coveted recipes. And to learn, you must work... so become her little helper and help her in the kitchen.]

[Reward: Exp +20, Cooking Lv 1, Magical Cooking (2)]

'That was from his Mum, and as for his Dad...'

[Quest: Ministry Corporate Slave (1)]

[Objective: Do you want a stable Job? Do you want to work for the biggest force in the Wizarding world? Do you want to do the same mind-numbing task every single day from 9 to 5 for the rest of your life? Then you are on the right path! Ask your father and learn from him what he does for a living, and how one can become a Ministry Employee without lining some pockets.]

[Reward: Exp +10, Ministry Corporate Slave (2)]

'Well, that is... something,'