The sun had climbed fully into the sky, chasing the last cool shadows of morning when Beny returned to his plot of land. The Awakening Ceremony was happening right now in the town square, but he wasn't there. He was here, gripping the familiar worn handle of his hoe.
He had six days until the registration for the Island Tournament closed. Six days to turn the trickle of stat growth he'd achieved over a lifetime into a river—or, given the SSS multiplier, a raging flood.
He closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the faint, crisp words that had flashed across his vision: Stats Gain Multiplier (Tool Use): 10x.
It wasn't enough to simply work now. If he applied the old, steady rhythm, he'd only gain ten times his usual rate. To maximize the returns, he had to push his body to its absolute breaking point, earning ten times the maximum possible gain. Every moment of pain, every deep gasp for air, was no longer just the burden of labor; it was an investment.
Beny spat on his palms, gripping the hoe until his knuckles were white.
"Time to plant," he muttered, but he wasn't talking about seeds. He was planting raw, physical effort.
Day One: The Wall of Pain
Beny started by attacking a dense section of root-bound clay he'd been avoiding for weeks. This wasn't simple tilling; it was an assault. He swung the hoe not with leverage and technique, but with raw, youthful aggression, straining every fiber of muscle in his shoulders and back.
Thwack! The blade bit into the clay, jarring his arms up to his teeth. Thwack!
He focused entirely on the physical sensation. Every swing was meant to be the last, every push meant to fail. By midday, his shoulders were screaming. His lungs were burning like charcoal embers, and his forearms felt like lead weights. This was the fatigue of a month compressed into half a day. He knew, intuitively, that the Strength and Stamina he was gaining were immense.
He resisted the urge to call up the status screen. The numbers didn't matter right now. The feel of the effort did. He didn't want to get distracted by an ever-increasing integer; he needed to integrate the power into his body until it was as natural as breathing, a silent weapon waiting for deployment.
That evening, he stumbled home. He was drenched in sweat, covered in a thick layer of fine red dust, and the muscles in his legs were trembling uncontrollably. His mother, noticing his unusual exhaustion, forced him to eat three bowlfuls of thick rice porridge and sent him straight to bed.
He fully expected to wake up immobile. The pain was ten times worse than any fatigue he'd ever felt.
But the SSS-rank multiplier wasn't just about gain; it was about efficiency. When he woke up just before dawn, there was no stiffness. There was only a profound, almost unsettling readiness.
The residual ache was gone. In its place was a dense, thrumming vitality. He could feel new fibers knitted into his muscles, stronger and faster than before. His body had undergone the accelerated, ten-times-speed healing and consolidation process, completing the work of a week's recovery in a single night.
Day Three: The New Rhythm
The second day, Beny learned the secret of his new existence: Don't stop. The moment he rested, the multiplier effect slowed. Only constant, maximal effort yielded exponential results.
By the start of Day Three, Beny's movements had changed. He was no longer just relying on brute force. As his Strength increased, the tools felt lighter, allowing his Dexterity to come into play. He was able to apply his tremendous power with surgical precision.
Weeding was now an art form. His hoe blade moved too quickly to track, snapping off weed stalks exactly at the root crown without disturbing the delicate soil around his planted sprouts.
He switched to hauling water from the well, testing his raw, unassisted Strength and Stamina. The old wooden buckets were replaced with two massive clay amphorae he found in the abandoned shed. Each one, when full, weighed nearly two hundred pounds. Normally, dragging one of these across the soft field would ruin the plot and exhaust a draft animal.
Beny hoisted one onto each shoulder.
The immediate strain was immense—the muscles in his back screamed, and his feet nearly slipped in the mud. He took one step, then another, breathing in deeply, exhaling slowly. He focused on the burn, the sign of the 10x multiplier kicking in.
Five trips. He made five round trips, carrying a thousand pounds of water over a quarter mile of rough terrain, before he allowed himself a short rest.
His neighbor, old Mr. Chen, a farmer since before Beny was born, walked by, leaning on his own hoe. He stopped, staring at the five neatly clustered, massive clay jugs.
"Beny," the old man wheezed, adjusting his straw hat. "Are you… hauling water for the whole island? Who helped you bring these jars over here?"
Beny wiped his brow, the act a familiar facade of exhaustion. "They were already here, Mr. Chen. Just putting them to use."
Mr. Chen frowned, looking over the boy's massive, freshly-tilled, and perfectly weeded land—a patch three times the size of any other farmer's, completed in a fraction of the time. "You've done the work of four men this morning, son. Don't burn yourself out before the sun sets."
Beny merely smiled—a genuine, satisfied smile this time—and walked back to the well, the empty amphorae balanced lightly on his arms. He was not four men. He was one boy with a factor of ten.
Day Five: The Superhuman Farmer
By Day Five, the process had evolved past simple hard work. It was now a form of aggressive meditation. Beny's body was no longer fatigued; it was an engine that required constant fuel and was capable of seemingly endless output.
His speed was terrifying. He could scythe a full row of stubborn, dry stalks in the time it took a regular man to take one full swing. His movements were fluid, his balance absolute, his technique flawless—not because he had trained it, but because the Dexterity gains were so rapid that his body was instantaneously finding the most optimal movement path for any task.
He found himself inventing new forms of work just to challenge the multiplier. He didn't just dig; he threw the dirt ten feet away into a neatly stacked mound. He didn't just haul; he sprinted with the full water amphorae. He even started practicing his balance by walking the edges of the irrigation channels with two full baskets of heavy potatoes, training his latent Agility.
That evening, he stood in the center of his plot, which now looked less like a farm and more like a perfectly sculpted earthwork ready for inspection. Six days of work had been completed in two, and three days remained. His body felt lean, solid, and capable of anything. He still looked like a ten-year-old boy, but his posture was different, his gaze sharper, and the underlying mass of his frame was dense and powerful.
He flexed his hand, the calluses thick and hard. He didn't need the blue screen to know he had reached a level of raw, unaugmented strength that would put him into the top tier of any standard B-Class warrior, and he hadn't even started training with actual weapons yet. All his power was baked into his everyday actions.
He had become, simply, a machine of rural efficiency.
Day Seven: The Unseen Stats
Registration Day.
Beny spent the morning relaxing, preparing a small, perfectly pressed canvas backpack with a single dried fish and a canteen of fresh water. His work was done. His field was immaculate.
As he was closing the gate to his small yard, a disaster struck. The old, rusty pin holding the gatepost upright snapped, and the entire wooden structure—a solid, aged oak post anchored in stone—began to topple towards him.
It weighed well over three hundred pounds. A week ago, this would have been a near-fatal accident.
Without conscious thought, Beny reacted. His right hand shot out, not to block, but to catch.
His hand met the raw, splintered oak post as it fell. The impact was immense, yet Beny felt almost nothing. The post stopped dead, mid-fall, suspended by a single ten-year-old arm. The raw force of the stop should have shattered his forearm, but the muscles along his bicep and shoulder, hardened by thousands of multiplied water hauls and hoe swings, simply absorbed the shock.
He held the gatepost up for a moment, waiting for the familiar ache. Nothing. He felt the light, constant thrum of energy—the residual effect of a week's worth of accelerated growth—and then, with a light grunt, he gently pushed the massive post back upright, balancing it precariously against the broken pin.
He stared at his hand. No tremor. No redness. The dust had barely settled.
He had stopped a three-hundred-pound object mid-fall, effortlessly, using less than ten percent of his maximum exertion.
It was time.
Beny walked toward the town, a boy in a dirt-stained shirt and well-worn boots. He was not a Knight, not a Mage, and he hadn't checked his stats, but he didn't need to. He carried the confidence of a warrior who had been tested by the most brutal, reliable method in the world: the grinding demands of the soil.
He was a farmer, and his strength was absolute.
This chapter establishes Beny's true strength and determination through the physical description of his work, preparing him for the challenges ahead in the tournament without revealing the specific numerical value of his SSS-rank power.
How do you feel about the pacing and the focus on the physical transformation? We can now move directly into the town and the beginning of the tournament registration.