Chapter 20: Strength and Vitality

"Missions are special tasks the Guild offers to its members to incentivize them to enter unpopular dungeons that have annoying-to-deal-with monsters or dangerous environments, offering money and sometimes even treasures."

"If you've entered a dungeon, it's mostly a peaceful environment somewhere in the wilderness, right? That's what most of the Novice-rank dungeons are like. Once you start entering harder dungeons, the environments will change for the worse. I have been to snowy mountain peaks, inside volcanoes, and even underwater. This is why it's incredibly important for us to analyze new dungeons before we send anybody inside."

"You wouldn't want to enter a dungeon and suddenly find yourself in the middle of an ocean and without proper swimming gear, right?" Jack said to them.

The newbies quickly shook their heads in a synchronized manner.

"Alright, let's talk about Stats now. I am pretty sure most of you are here for this topic since that's the case for pretty much all of my classes, and I have taught over 100 classes since I retired."

"There are five unique Stats you can increase in your Character Status— Strength, Vitality, Agility, Intelligence, and Perception."

Jack then changed the image on the projector and continued, "Let's begin with Strength, the simplest out of the five."

"Strength is pretty self-explanatory— the more Strength you have, the stronger you get."

"Each point you put into Strength will increase your overall strength by around 10 pounds or 4.5 kilograms, so if you put all of your stat points into strength, you'll gain about 50lbs of strength, not including your natural strength."

"Now, what do I mean by natural strength? Besides increasing your strength through the Character Status, you can train your strength naturally through exercises, and that's what we call natural strength. This stat is very popular amongst warriors or close-combat fighters, even tanks since they will have much more defense capabilities if they can endure more force."

"Furthermore, the higher your natural strength, the more effective your strength becomes, so I highly suggest you train your body even if you're putting all of your points into strength because those who don't train their body loses about 30 percent effectiveness compared to those who train their bodies."

'So I have about 750lbs worth of strength right now if not a little less since I haven't trained my body?' Lucas thought to himself.

If he added his available stat points into it, he'll have over 1,000lbs of strength, which is pretty scary if he thought about it, and he was only level 10.

Jack then said, "I know some of you are thinking that 10lbs per point is a lot, and I agree with you to a certain extent. However, that only applies to our world. In the other world, there are certain monsters with incredibly durable bodies, so you won't be able to hurt them without sufficient strength, much less kill them."

Someone then raised their hands and asked, "If that's the case, wouldn't it be mandatory to put some of our points into strength?"

"Yes, but not necessarily everyone must put points into strength, especially Players that are ability-focused. But I will get more into that later." Jack Newton said, and he continued, "Furthermore, your strength also increases naturally as you level up, so even if you don't put any points into strength, you'll still grow physically stronger as you level. Adding points into strength merely accelerates that process by many times."

After taking a moment to drink from his water bottle, Jack Newton continued the class, "For your second stat, Vitality, it increases your resistance to pain and improves the durability of your body, allowing you to take more hits and survive blows that are otherwise deadly for people who don't invest in Vitality."

"It's much harder to experiment and get exact numbers when it comes to Vitality, but research shows that someone with 10 Vitality will experience pain if stuck by someone with 10 Strength, while someone with 50 Vitality didn't feel any pain when struck by someone with 50 Strength, only feeling pain when they struck by someone with above 75 Strength."

"However, while being able to take more hits sounds pretty good on paper, it isn't very practical, since you would want to avoid getting hit as much as possible even if you put all of your points into Vitality since you never know what could happen. This is why Vitality is the least popular stat of the five. It is also the least experimented on since nobody likes pain."

"Of course, I am not saying Vitality is useless since there are some top Players out there that have increased their Vitality to extreme lengths. They can get hit by a train going at full speed and not receive a single injury. Though that requires extreme dedication towards Vitality, something not many people are willing to do."

"Alright, we have been here for an hour. Let's take a ten-minute bathroom break. Once we return, I will tell you about the last 3 stats and how you should distribute them." Jack said to them before leaving the classroom.