His fist slammed into the side of the wolf. He could feel the ribs crack at the very moment of impact. He watched the wolf arch sideways and slam into the ground with a loud thud.

With that, he had taken down the three wolves, but they were still pretty much alive. He walked over to them and, one by one, snapped their necks.

[You have gained 20 EXP]

[You have gained 20 EXP]

[You have gained 20 EXP]

Ken looked at the screen as the notifications rolled in, and a smile formed on his face. He clenched his fist hard. He was much stronger now. The system might have refused to give him a lot of good things, but regardless, he was carving it out himself. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

He grabbed the deer, used its horns to dig open the insides, and cleared it out with the stream water. It took about thirty minutes, but he managed to finish, and no other animal had come here.

He grabbed the washed meat and headed back to his clearing in the forest. By morning, when he arrived there, he picked up dried sticks and branches, anything to help make a fire.

He cracked rocks over each other on a pile of dried leaves and grass, and a single spark was all it needed to be lit on fire. The fire grew rapidly, and he very quickly set the sticks over the flames and made a fully functioning fire.

Then he stuck two large sticks into the ground with a Y-like separation at the top. He ran a stick through the deer and hung it over the flame on both standing sticks.

The flame immediately got to work, roasting while he stood at the side.

Rather than stand and watch, he decided training was best, so he walked to a tree, climbed on it, and used a branch to immediately start a pull-up session.

He kept going until he made it to two hundred, and that was when he noticed something was different. He didn’t gain any rewards when he did a hundred. It felt easy to do that hundred unlike before, but when he got to two hundred, it was a whole lot harder to pull himself. The same warning message to stop came, but as he didn’t, a notification followed.

[2 points added to strength and stamina, 1 point added to speed]

"Oh, I see, so when it gets easier, the work needed to level up gets harder, pretty streamlined and somewhat like real life."

While he was busy analyzing things, he sensed movement. He quickly let go, landing on the ground and getting ready. He thought it was probably one of the wolves again, but he was wrong.

Someone stepped up from behind the rock that was standing there, a girl. He could tell from her silhouette.

She stepped forward, and the light of the flames landed on her. She was a stunning young girl, probably around his age or a bit older, with skin as smooth as milk and pale as paper, deep green eyes that reflected the flames, and purely white hair with a streak of black. She had on a silver and green gown made to mimic the patterns of leaves. It stopped shy of her knee and also had no sleeves, so it held tight to her body.

Ken stopped for a moment as he looked at her. His guard was up, not because she showed up, but because he could see her ears. They were long and pointed.

The moment she noticed him looking at her ears, she very quickly threw her hands over them and covered the ears in something that looked like shame.

"Uhm, you don’t have to hide it. I’m stunned because I’ve never seen them before," Ken said. He might be a muscle head, but he was smart and read people like a book. Also, it was evident that she was insecure. Even a dumbass would know that.

She looked up when she heard that and then slowly took her hands away.

"Uhm, what are you doing here? Do you have any business with me?" he asked. She might look and seem harmless, but he had seen a lot of people like that, so he didn’t want to take the risk at all.

She shook her head and then spoke. "I noticed the flames during my night stroll, so I decided to check."

Her voice sounded like the kind of sound you heard to fall asleep. It was calm and sweet, but unshaken and very well articulated.

"Oh, I see. Forgive me for asking, are you an elf?" Ken decided to jump the gun and asked.

She nodded a few seconds later. "Have you never seen an elf before? Even in paintings?" she asked.

"Uhm, nope."

"Oh, I see. That must explain why you are not scared of me," she said.

"Scared of you? There are two main issues with that statement. Firstly, I am never scared of anyone. It’s an impossibility, and the second, why would I be scared of you?"

She heard what he had to say and then giggled. "You are funny, but that’s not true. Everyone is scared of something," she stated.

"Haha, not for me," he declared in pride. Then he looked back at her. "So why was I meant to be scared of you?" he asked.

She looked worried when he asked the question. Her eyes drifted side to side, then she took a deep breath. "This is my first time meeting a human that isn’t scared of me. I’m worried that if I speak, you’ll end up being one of them that are scared of me as well," she explained.

"Oh, I see. Well, you have my word, I’ll not be scared of you in any way at all. I swear that on my heart and soul," Ken declared.

Her eyes lit up for a moment when she heard that. Was there really a human that would actually not be scared of her? Could that really happen?