Steam curled from the spout of a black iron kettle, carrying the bitter scent of toasted barley across the porch decking.
Kaelen Vance sat on the edge of his wooden cot, rubbing the sleep from his eyelids with the sleeve of his padded wool bathrobe.
Twenty hours had passed since the night attack. The late afternoon sun slanted across Cold-Spring Grotto, filtering through the cedar needles and warming the porch railing.
He blinked twice, letting his eyes focus on the glowing characters hovering in his peripheral vision.
[Track 1 (Cultivation Vessel): 630h / Multiplier: 631x] [Track 2 (Martial Combat): 630h / Multiplier: 631x] [Track 3 (Alchemy & Comprehension): 140h / Multiplier: 141x] [Reserve: 46,500 Mid-Grade Spirit Stones (+500 Daily Syndicate Yield)]
Six hundred and thirty hours, with the grotto vault now sitting at forty-six thousand five hundred Mid-Grade Spirit Stones after the dawn syndicate drop.
That was twenty-six days and six hours of continuous, unbroken slacking. The multiplier on his first two tracks sat at a monstrous 631x.
At the current multiplier, one minute of active practice would yield six hundred and thirty-one baseline hours of cultivation for an ordinary disciple.
