"You sure this is a good idea?" Hendricks asked.

"I can control my Body stat well enough. Learning to fight in melee is incredibly important and he has an interest," I replied. Young Michael stood ready a short distance away. "No skills or external energy manipulation."

"You said that already, let's start," he replied impatiently. Hendricks backed away and I took a stance.

"You can attack whenever you want," I said. Young Michael kicked off the ground. Slightly poor angle, since he was out of contact with the ground at the apex of his movement. He was struggling with his new Body stat.

He aimed a punch at me, and after a glance at his body position, moved to my left slightly. He had used a feint and moved in the opposite direction than I had. After a minute of trying to hit me, I called for a halt.

"Your movement was barely acceptable. You were kicking off too hard. You should always know where a solid surface is, and be within kicking distance to adjust your trajectory. Your burst applications of Body were well done, but again, you need to work on controlling your direction," I said, and he nodded.

"Your punching form is well done. And you had good aim with those throwing knives as a back up weapon. The biggest problem are your feints. They aren't good enough. For someone with enough in Perception, they will be able to see where you are putting your energy. Your feints, didn't have energy, I knew you weren't committed to them."

"I could have adjusted quickly and it helped conserve energy," Young Michael countered.

"You need to mix them up more then and use them less often. Your martial arts is mediocre compared to someone who knows what they are doing. If you go into a fight thinking that your fighting style will help you win, it won't," I explained harshly.

"But it worked well against the other kids I trained with," he replied.

"Kid, what kind of opponents does your hero fight?" Hendricks asked. Young Michael looked confused. "I try, but sometimes his head is harder than you would think for how clever he can be."

"What Hendricks kindly pointed out, is that I am considering people like the Divine Empress that have real close combat skill, not regular people who don't know how to fight with stats and martial arts togeather. Even if you had the same number of stats as she did, she would see instantly through such feints. The best option are attacks that force your opponent to react, but don't overcommit you."

"Oh," Young Michael said.

"You are decent. But you wanted me to honestly assess you. Compared to most other people, you are decent, but your fighting style is nothing special. While picking up crystals, I suggest you focus on managing your energy and movement. In the harsh environment of a level 7 zone, you should make a lot more progress. After that, fight level 4 monsters, until you can beat large groups easily. The learning experience from fighting level 4 monsters will help you out a lot in the long run, it did for me," I replied.

"I will do that Michael, thank you," Young Michael said.

"Feints don't work on monsters, or at least low level ones and the kind of feints you do. Monsters will hammer out any weaknesses in your close combat fighting style. There is nothing scarier than someone who knows what they are doing, fighting in melee," I replied.

"It is hard. You really have to be able to put fear aside," Hendricks added.

"You want to spar?" I asked him and he quickly shook his head.

"I know where I am good at. Mid-range and support attacks. That was why I wanted to train up your mini-me here. We would make a good team," he replied.

"Teamwork is important. While I outpaced my team, having people you can trust is important. Especially in high level fights. The other thing you need to work on, is direct energy manipulation. Speaking like this," I used energy manipulation to speak.

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"Don't I need a higher Channel stat?" Young Michael asked. I smiled at that.

"You do have the stat unlocked?" I asked back and he nodded. "Then you need to work from there. Make it a hobby. You might have noticed that I am doing something a lot of nights. I am trying to get better at manipulating sound. It isn't simple. But the main thing, are other techniques." I turned and punched towards a boulder here in the darklands.

The boulder exploded. "That wasn't a skill, was it?" Hendricks asked. I nodded at that.

"You projected energy from your fist, but how?" Young Michael asked.

"It is a cheap trick and weak. But you just asked how. Created a ball of force energy and released it. Once it impacted, the force dispersed. The more you learn about energy the more you realize that you don't need skills. They are helpful and you should get them. But there are a lot of techniques you can develop on your own, if you are careful and work at it. The Channel stat helps quite a bit. But it another thing that you can train, even if that training is slow. Fighting curse damage and other esoteric affects you will run into with level 5 monsters, is something you will need good energy manipulation for," I explained.

Young Michael punched out. There wasn't even a bit of air movement. "It is something you will have to work on long term. But it is a personal skill, not a system skill. And while stats make it easier, it can be trained," I repeated.

"Thanks, I will have to work on that," Young Michael said.

"Come on, let's get to the grinding spot, so I can start tomorrow. Lots of crystals to pick up." I could see Young Michael let out a quiet sigh at that but he didn't complain. It was amusing to have someone so young around.

It was a long hard road to the top, but if he wanted to work at it, then this was what needed to be done. He had done the easy stuff and the baby monsters so far. But true skill meant one had to work day after day to get better.

That was why I didn't treat these grinding sessions as just grinding sessions. I worked to improve my aim, speed, and precision while fighting against level 7 monsters. The recent increases in the Mind stat helped, but I had been doing such things even before the increases. It helped that the level 7 monsters changed what they did in response to my actions, unlike lower-level monsters that operated more like a simple computer program with only so many outputs.

When your life was on the line, you couldn't just put in the time like it was a 9 to 5 job. If you were going to be serious, then you needed to be serious. That was the kind of mentality that separated people like me from people like Hendricks. He was solid and dependable, but he clearly treated combat in a way that allowed him to handle the stress long term.

The new math I had worked out showed that getting to higher and higher amounts of stats would take a depressingly more amount of points than I had thought. Which was why over time the differences between various mindsets would become apparent.

Young Michael was still young enough and his personality wasn't set in stone that things could change over time. The experience he had grinding with me, would let him understand what it took to reach the top. One had to focus on grinding enough that it was a constant, day after day. That training was built into grinding so you constantly improved.

It wasn't enough to get stats. Doing that was for people who were focused on just surviving, but not looking for anything else. This could be for various reasons, having giving up, putting their faith in me, and wanting to be safe to a certain degree.

Or they could have actually worked out the correct math and realized the nightmare that lay ahead of them at the higher value of stat points. While it might be possible for me to grind more quickly, it was unlikely. The main way I got monsters in level 7 zones, was having them come to me.

While I could make certain adjustments to take on more at once, I was already killing them fairly quickly so the numbers never built up to a dangerous level. Going faster would mean chasing down monsters which would be inefficient. I suppose it might be possible to move back and forth between two zones, which might allow me to double my grinding speed at most.

That was if I could find a large enough clump of level 7 zones. This was the biggest clump I had found so far, which was why I was here. I could grind into the night and level 8 zones as well. There were changes I could make, but the improvements would be harder and harder to make happen.

While I would improve in combat, actually increasing my grinding speed would be more difficult to find a suitable place and then push myself to reach those new heights. If zone layout wasn't a problem, then I could see eight level 7 zones being the limit. Level 8 zones had too many environmental hazards for other people to even risk picking up crystals. There flesh would instantly melt.

Around 1.2 billion points per day would be my max grinding speed with an optimal zone set-up. And that was handling double the amount of level 7 monsters and grinding into the night and pre-dawn as well.

As we left the darklands to go to the grinding spot I remained deep in thought about how I could increase my speed. All my stats would need to be brought up to 300,000 and then I would need to get Body to a million stat points. I could also look at upgrading the rest of my skills and look for other high-level zones at that point. Also clear the towers in level 4 and level 5 zones.

The first step was to get a lot of stat points. I was already pushing myself quite hard with my grinding. If I was going to last thousands of years, then I needed to keep my grinding sustainable. That thought made me chuckle. Sustainable grinding, kill everything, but in a way you can mentally handle.

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