Skill Upgrade

The night quickly passed after Leon stopped his weapon smithing and went to sleep. His exhaustion hit fast, as he still wasn't used to his extra stats from his equipment. He didn't even have time for dreaming that night and he woke up early to begin the next day.

It wasn't much different than his other days, eating, and whittling for a while had become a hobby and he didn't plan to stop it. After that however, he didn't go hunting straight away. He had a week to at least get the bonus done and until he figured out what the hidden quest might be, he wasn't going to try and actively search for it.

It was better to survive and live another day than to risk it over something unknown like that.

Instead, he took the time this day to figure out the whole durability problem. In order to keep living like he was before, he couldn't rely on his normal clothes and weapons. His weapons were already on the brink of breaking while one wrong move in a fight could result in his clothes breaking and leaving him naked in the snow of the high mountains.

It was not a situation he wanted to get into plus, if making clothes was anything like his crude weapons he made, he would be getting buffs from those items. As such, he brought out one of the wolf carcasses to skin fully.

He had done skinning before, but no where near as often as he would have liked. If he knew the world would turn into a game, he would have tried to get those skills before...

...Ha. No he wouldn't.

"These are perfectly good clothes brat, now I gotta make my own clothes." Leon complained to the sky above.

*ding!* [Deal with it you old coot!]

The old man grumbled to himself as he began working. Taking a crude bone knife, he carefully cut into the skin just below the anus of the wolf and cut his way toward the lower lip of the head. He also made sure to cut down the length of the limbs and to not pierce the body cavity and risk its guts spilling out.

He gently slid the knife in between the skin and muscle of the creature in preparation for the skinning. Before he did that however, he split open the sternum and entered the chest cavity to remove all the organs inside.

He worked quickly and quietly like he had done hundreds of times before until all of the guts were out, paying special attention when taking out the bladder to prevent the meat from getting contaminated. Once that was done, he could continue with skinning the rest of the wolf by cutting away the membranes that connected the skin to the muscles.

It took a while, considering it was different using this bone tool rather than his normal knife. Leon wasn't spiritual or had faith of any sort so he normally just let nature take its normal course after finishing the skinning and gutting. The body would become part of the soil eventually and with it being winter, decomposition would take even longer.

He did have animal skin blankets in his tent so if this attempt at making clothes didn't work out, he would just turn it into another blanket.

*ding!* [You have obtained Wolf meat x3 (cooking ingredients) and wolf hide x1(crafting materials)!]

For his efforts, Leon got what he was after.

"It quantify items?... this is weird." He mumbled to himself.

In his hands were no longer the messy, bloody meat and hide of the animal he just skinned. Instead, was a neat, fresh stack of wolf meat with no hint of fat or muscle in sight while a gently folded wolf skin was next to it.

The system was strange, in that it finished the end product for the 'Player.' It was made to 'perfect' the human error that might have been made in the process which left Leon with a perfectly skinned wolf.

Even the remaining corpse of the wolf was picked clean, leaving only pristine white bones... it was unsettling.

"Are you sure this isn't cheating as well?" Leon asked the system.

[No, its just how it works. Until you humans can do these actions perfectly like the system can, we will be here to finish the process. Just deal with it. Hmph!]

Leon grumbled again, as he did not like the system's way of doing things. How is this supposed to be skinning? There was nothing 'survival-like' about it. In the end, he could only sigh and move on.

He couldn't control the system and there was no point in arguing either. He got what he needed in the end anyways.

Picking up the meat, he thought about the inventory again to open up his system page. Since the meat was not apart of a corpse or a living creature, it now fell under the category of crafting materials.

Crafting materials could be just about anything, as long as they were not living and not a full corpse. Why he couldn't put a corpse in his inventory when he clearly had the room, Leon had no idea. Don't question the system.

"So I didn't get a skill huh?" He mumbled to himself as he also picked up the bones and pelt to put in his inventory.

He was after another skill, one that would make the skinning process easier like with the woodworking and weapon smithing skills. That way, it wouldn't take 2 or 3 hours just for one body. He needed more experience with skinning according to the system before he could receive its skill.

With that, he continued skinning, bringing out another wolf corpse and going through the motions again. He took a break for lunch before continuing until it got dark, in the end getting through 4 corpses.

*ding!* [Your proficiency in Harvesting Materials has increased! Material Harvesting (F) has evolved into Material Harvesting (E)!]

"So I already had the skill... does it encompass everything related to material harvesting? Like mining for ores or picking fruit off a tree?" Leon asked.

[There is a mining skill, but that is mostly because it is related to the smithing branch of skills. Material harvesting is merely a skill that increases you efficiency and possibility of gaining more items that you take from nature itself.]

"Its possible to gain more items?" Leon seemed a bit confused.

[Hehe, listen well old man! When your material harvesting reaches higher levels, what you would normally get 1 animal skin out of skinning an animal, would lead you to getting two or 3 for the price of one! Isn't that amazing? Aren't I a genius?]

"So where do the other skins come from? Do they appear out of thin air? Seems like cheats to me." He grumbled again.

[You ungrateful little bi-*swish*

[Ugh!!!]

"So I just keep doing what I normally do and eventually I'll magically get more skins out of one animal? *sigh* whatever... Hm?" Leon mumbled before he got another notification.

*ding!* [You are the 9th person in the world to evolve a skill to E rank! Congratulations! A special reward will be placed in your inventory.]

"What's this about?" Leon asked as he opened up his inventory to the special reward. The gift looked similar to the previous one he got, but maybe less lackluster due to it not being as much of a grand achievement as being a first awakened.

[You evolved a skill, what does it look like? There will be many achievements for the first of anything, no matter how miniscule it may seem. Its to encourage Players to become the best at whatever they can.]

Leon thought for a bit longer, before ignoring it all together. It wouldn't change how he was going to live, he just wasn't expecting another 'cheat' package after something so small.

He was a bit curious how others managed to upgrade their skills but it must not have been much different than what he did. Some skills seemed to evolve faster than others but the main concept of all skills was repetition. The more you did something, the better you got at it. Because he had harvested a ton of materials over the last few days, he managed to upgrade his skill quickly.

If other people had been out fighting monsters constantly, it wouldn't be a surprise if they also got an E rank fighting skill. From the knowledge he got, he knew that skills also had a set experience number, similar to the numerical value of stats, but could vary a bit between skills.

All he knew right now was that F rank required 100 exp to evolve into E. He wasn't exactly sure how that exp was accounted for but it wouldn't be hard to guess that one harvested material would probably equal one exp. Or possibly one hour of work equals one exp, something like that.

Curious, Leon moved over to his skills to look at the upgraded description of Material Harvesting.

{Material Harvesting (E) - You are competent in harvesting basic materials.

- You can harvest materials of E rank or lower consistently

- You have a 1% chance to earn double of a material harvested. }

What the bratty system seemed to say was accurate, as it should be. He had a chance to earn more materials off of something he would normally only receive 1 item from. Along with his 'Protagonist' bonus, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that he might hit this 1% more times than he would like.

[Open the gift already or I'll take it back!]

"Shut it." Leon grumbled but still moved over and clicked on the special gift.