He looked at the stick and was unable to see what she was getting at. Was this some sort of prank that she was pulling? She looked at him as though she was handing him a treasure.

"A stick," Ken said, his eyes half-opened and lips curved down in a frown.

She noticed the dissatisfaction in his tone and ignorantly pulled another one out. "Fine, I’ll give you two," she said, and then shoved them into his hands. Ken was about to flip a fuse, but the system came on.

[You have gained parts of a lesser world tree, do you wish to absorb?]

When he saw that, he instantly realized what she had given him, and his expression shifted a bit. He looked at her, flushing away the frown that he had on his face.

"Thank you for this."

She smiled and replied, "Don’t let anyone know that I gave that to you. Even among the elves, a single branch of that size is worth a lot, and many of them have to do a lot of good for society to be awarded one," she explained the importance.

"I see, thank you." He was now even more pleased about what he had received. He may be a proud fellow, but he never forgot to thank people for their help when it came.

"Here is another promise, if you manage to train with it and actually make a pretty good improvement, I’ll be sure to reward you with something greater."

After saying that, she turned around and walked off before vanishing into light and leaving Ken there alone. He looked at the sticks in his hands, small as fingers, but with the potential to make him even stronger, and that was always needed. The chase of strength never ended.

He headed back to his camp and sat on the ground cross-legged. It was time to get to business. First, he wanted to see what his strength looked like now after that whole night of training and punching trees.

[Name: Ken]

[Race: Human] 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

[Mana: 10/10]

[EXP: 50/400]

Level 4

Strength: 220

Speed: 235

Stamina: 250

Ken looked at his stats with evident shock on his face. The growth had almost doubled from what it was, he was now in the two hundreds. A smile crept onto his face as he clutched his hands tight.

"A month and this is the progress, I don’t think I could have asked for anything better."

Now what came next was finding out the reward that he had gained. He opened his inventory and right there was a book.

"A book?" he muttered as he summoned it. It landed in his hands, the rough brown leather back pressed firmly against his palm, the smell of a new book wafted into his nose, and it was exhilarating to say the least.

There was no name, no description, just the back of the book, so like every normal human, he flipped the book, and right there he saw the title written in bold, and it was in English, an immediate reminder to Ken that he didn’t know how to read the language of this world. Heck, he didn’t even know how he managed to communicate with them so clearly.

[Introduction to QI]

He read the name of the book, seeing a pretty familiar two-letter word used by the Chinese to signify energy. He recalled doing a six-month retreat with monks and they taught him of internal qi, the balancing of energy and using it to fight.

’I’m not sure if what those men called Qi was real, but I did come out of that retreat a whole lot stronger and more refined, they definitely did something right.’

He stared at the page for a while and then finally flipped the page to the next. And there he saw the drawing of human anatomy, but rather than showing organs, it showed some glowing orbs at the center of the body and many other places, and they were all labeled.

Ken was about to read everything inside the page when suddenly, as usual, the system interrupted.

[Do you wish to absorb this book?]

It was a system book, so it made sense that the system was capable of doing stuff like that with it. Ken saw that and didn’t need to ponder much. He read a lot growing up, martial arts and techniques, and he never tried to cheat his way into information. But the case now was heavily differentiated. Not only did he need to be fast, the system itself was already a cheat, so he was past the stage of worrying about that.

"Absorb it."

Immediately, the book vanished and Ken felt an influx of information rush into his mind so fast that it would give a normal person a headache, not him though.

He sat there as the surge continued through his mind. After a while, it finally stopped and all the information about the introduction to Qi was now well seated in his mind, but knowing was vastly different from understanding. He would still have to understand it by himself and ensure that he did it very fast.

The information about Qi was not so different from what he knew about it from Earth. It was an internal energy that allowed one to be much stronger. But that was not the part that intrigued Ken, it was the way it was cultivated within the body, growing this energy at the core, or as it was called, the meridian. He needed to form the meridian and then store this qi within it, and when he needed to use it, he would channel it into his body and increase his strength several fold.

"This is amazing." He couldn’t help but say out loud. It was like mana, but rather than spells, it increased the strength of the body, something that someone like him would really, really benefit from.

All he needed to do now was start the cultivation process.