But for a Slime

At level five, as expected, all his stats were at five, ten or seven point five, in the case of his IQ for the latter, for his forester job. His nervousness regarding intelligence long mitigated by what he viewed would be an easy, if long path to enhancing his basic capabilities independent of the jobs. The villager's slow and simple responses and speech had made him very nervous. The only people in the village that had responded to him quickly and intelligently had been the blacksmith and the drunken priest.

Now, Joe considered the learning stat to be the most important. All his strength depended upon him increasing his job which depended upon the learning stat. The faster his learning increased, the faster his jobs did and the faster his basic abilities increased. If he did well enough, he would be able to be fast enough, smart enough, and strong enough regardless of the capabilities, or inherent flaws, of any job he chose to take.

Tomorrow morning would see him choosing another job, but now he cared little for what it was, anything would be beneficial. As he came into the village, the sun still quite above the horizon, Joe stopped and considered. Changing my job now would be smarter, right? I can run straight out into the forest tomorrow and get to it right away. Then I'll have quite a bit more time in the afternoon for planning and maintaining my martial arts.

Joe considered for a moment then turned to Garnedell and waved him on into the inn.

"Go ahead and eat, kid. I'm going to run over and swap my job out again! I'll be right back to join you," Joe shooed the boy in and mimed eating before pointing at the inn and Garnedell.

The boy nodded and headed into the inn and Joe turned his feet towards the setting sun and increased his jog by quite a bit to quickly arrive at the shoddy shrine. He noticed that some people were still gathered around his scribbled notes from this morning, but thought little of it and ran around the group. He slipped through the town quickly, his movements sure and rapid before he settled into an easy lope that would normally have left the boy far behind and gasping. The kid is quite weak. Why is his endurance so bad? I would assume these villager kids would be, if not strong, really wiry and robust, what with all the physical labor. Joe's mind wandered through a possible training regimen for the boy, but then reconsidered as he remember the boy had joined him in his katas and stances. Those could be quite grueling, and Joe decided to continue observing.

As he jogged towards the priest's shrine, he took some time to quickly double check his forester job information, including any new skills so that he could write down accurate information in his log. With some disappointment, he realized that he received nothing but some stat gains from the forester job, and closed the window and returned his concentration on his running.

He quickly arrived at the priest's shrine and pounded on the door once again, this time showing little concern for any courtesy. It turned out to be a good idea, since Joe found the priest came out much quicker and without shouting, although his mood and attitude were still quite atrocious. The priest grumbled, scowled, and growled at Joe, but fumbled through his arcane ritual before flinging the status update at him and stumbling back into his room. The same popup was displayed before him and Joe had now learned to open up his own available jobs status, showing he now had three jobs with levels next to them. He glanced over the listing, and almost considered just going down in order when he stopped to reconsider. I get better stats from certain jobs, so… wait. The stats don't affect me. All my capabilities are determined by my earth stat, the only stat that seems to be affecting me is learning… and maybe luck? Although I haven't seen anything useful from that. Maybe I should just do… wait… learning!

Joe glanced through the list of jobs again and evaluated each of them more carefully, attempting to see if one of them might give him more returns on the one stat that seemed to matter to him at this time. So, are any of these more likely to make me a better learner? Where would you put the learning stat. It definitely isn't the physical domain, fisticuffs and martial arts. Those come from practice. Or is learning and practice conflated? Hmm… Joe's mind meandered through the possibilities, but couldn't really make a quick choice of it, and finally just decided to look at each job individually. But after he had gone through the listing, he realized he had no clue anyway, and finally just chose villager. Let's just go through the list!

He quickly flipped open his stats and, as expected, found all his stats zeroed out for the villager job. It was with a bit more trepidation and a bit of excitement that he hovered his finger of his main status display before he finally stabbed it. He quickly flitted over the various stats, his eyes crunching a bit as he considered the numbers. He wasn't sure about the some of the more convoluted numbers, especially his IQ, but all the rest of the numbers matched up as having gained ten percent from his three currently leveled jobs. Joe's grin split his face, and he jogged back to the inn with bounce in his step and a small laugh on his lips. Let me double check the IQ numbers back at the inn, but I think they're right!