It trained you.
When you learned a new skill, it was like your body picked up muscle memory alongside your avatar.
Kind of like watching a thousand YouTube tutorials, but faster—and way more hands-on.
Folo could feel it happening already.
When he skinned the rabbits now, it wasn’t just the game doing it automatically.
His hands—real hands—twitched slightly, as if they knew how to angle the knife, where to cut along muscle and bone.
It wasn’t perfect, of course.
He wasn’t suddenly going to wake up a master butcher ready to chop up prime rib.
But he was getting real practice.
Real instincts.
Enough that if he wanted to, Folo could probably walk into one of the meat stalls back home—the ones always screaming for more help—and actually get hired as an apprentice butcher. No longer just a scrub, with enthusiasm.
And in the slums, that wasn’t a small deal.
Butchering paid way better than running deliveries.
Sure, it was messy, bloody, and rough on the hands—but it was stable work.
You didn’t have to sprint through crowded streets for pennies anymore.
Ren had known this about Towerbound, of course.
It was one of the reasons he’d fought so hard to set up the helmet share in the first place.
It wasn’t just about earning money inside the game.
It was about upgrading their lives outside of it too.
Piece by piece, job by job, skill by skill.
Even grinding rabbits could mean something now.
Even skinning low-level trash monsters could open up a new future.
And for guys like them?
That was enough.Yeah, they’d talked big—about running the world, escaping the slums, making it to the top—but deep down, Ren knew the truth. The guys would’ve been happy just earning enough coins for some cheap beer and, if they were lucky, marrying someone who’d move with them into a better dorm with working plumbing.
But he wasn’t going to let them settle for that.
He meant it when he said he’d make their little ten-man dorm something else. Successful. Wildly successful. Beyond anything they’d ever dared imagine.
The rest of the six-hour shift turned into pure, relentless grinding.
Ren and Folo settled into a rough but steady rhythm—
spotting rabbits, sprinting into position, fighting, healing, skinning, and gathering.
Now that Folo had his skinning skill up and running, every Horned Rabbit they dropped a slab of Rabbit Meat. Usually.
Sometimes, if luck was on their side, a Rabbit Heart would drop, a rare ingredient needed for low-level stamina potions. Rabbit liver.
Horned Rabbit Horns kept dropping too, and instead of running back and forth to the Hunter-Mentor like idiots, they stuffed everything into their inventories.
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The plan was simple: grind until their time ran out, then haul it all back at once for experience and some extra loot.
There were a lot of fights.
Folo, equipped with his basic ranger bow and his newbie skill—Charged Arrow—was starting to get better.
Charged Arrow was simple but effective:
the longer he held the charge, the stronger the shot became.
It used up more focus points the longer he held it, but if he charged up to Level 3 (out of a max Level 4), he could kill a rabbit cleanly in one shot.
The important thing was: in Towerbound, you didn’t miss randomly.
The system didn’t allow that.
If your shot connected, it connected—unless the monster managed to dodge or block.
It wasn’t based on dice rolls.
It was based on what you did.
That meant if Folo’s arrow missed, it was either because he wasn’t aiming properly, or because the rabbit juked at the last second.
Not because the game was screwing him over.
In the beginning, Folo still panicked a bit—releasing early and wasting power.
But after a few close scrapes, he figured it out.
Pull. Hold. Watch the charge meter climb.
Release clean at Level 3.
THWACK.
Rabbit down.
Meanwhile, Ren played clean-up, throwing Basic Heals every time Folo took a hit, and occasionally whacking any overly aggressive rabbits with his battered wooden staff.
It wasn’t smooth.
It wasn’t pretty.
But it worked.
By the time their six hours were almost up, they had a respectable pile of rabbit meat, rabbit livers, herbs, and horns stuffed into their bags.
Finally, with Folo’s timer running low, they headed back into the starter village.
They turned in all their collected Horned Rabbit Horns to the Hunter-Mentor, who gave them a small chunk of experience and a minor boost in favorability with the local hunters’ guild.
Ren barely noticed the system chime at first.
Then the familiar gold sparkle washed over him—
and a window popped up:
Level Up!
[+1 Attribute Point Earned]
Ren quickly opened his character sheet, grinning.
Level 2. Finally.
Normally, most clerics would dump their free attribute points straight into Wisdom.
Wisdom increased your total mana pool, your magic recovery speed, and made your healing spells heal harder.
More wisdom meant faster casting times too—huge for staying alive in long fights.
But Ren?
He assigned his point to Intelligence instead.
Why?
Because Intelligence boosted alchemy success rates. Of course it did more than that, but for REN that was all that mattered.
And that increased alchemist boost mattered way more to him than squeezing out an extra 5 HP from a healing spell.
Let other clerics worry about healing raid members.
Ren had plans.
Bigger ones.
And alchemy—real, high-level alchemy—was the key.
He hit “Confirm,” feeling a tiny rush as the point locked in.
In his past life, he’d dumped all 10 points into Wisdom instead of Intelligence—because, duh, everyone knew clerics used Wisdom. The stats even said so, plain as day. But it wasn’t until he hit level 10 that the truth slapped him: he was never going to play a normal cleric. Not with the way he fought, not with the way he thought. Those points had been wasted. And in Towerbound, there was no reset button. Once you put a point in, it was locked—forever.
Now, in his second life, he was already ahead. Already smarter about the build he’d need by level 10.
One step closer.
It wasn’t much.
One level.
One point.
One tiny step forward.
But in a world like Towerbound—and in the slums he’d come from—
one step could be the difference between drowning and surviving.
[Character Sheet – Ren]
Class: Cleric
Level: 2
Experience: 34/200
Primary Attributes:
Strength: 7
Agility: 8
Vitality: 10
Intelligence: 13 (+1)
Wisdom: 13
Luck: 6
Secondary Stats:
Health Points (HP): 120/120
Mana Points (MP): 45/45
Stamina: 110/110
Mana Regeneration: Slightly increased (from Intelligence)
Skills:
Basic Heal (Level 1)
Cast Time: 2.5 seconds
Mana Cost: 10 MP
Effect: Heals minor wounds for 20–30 HP
Current Equipment:
- Novice’s Linen Robes (Defense +1, Durability 22/25)
- Worn Wooden Staff (Attack +1, Durability 15/25)
- Beginner’s Leather Boots (Defense +1, Durability 20/25)
- Starter Belt Pouch (5 Inventory Slots)
- Cloth Satchel (Herb Pouch – 10 Slots)
Inventory:
- Starter Healing Salve x2 (restores 20 HP, slow-acting)
- Basic Gatherer’s Kit (Durability 18/20)
Herbs Collected:
- Thistle Rose x12
- Whisperroot x6
- Sunveil Fern x5
- Glowcap Mushroom x2
- Bitterthorn Leaves x7
- Frostmint x4
Ren closed his character sheet with a small, satisfied click.
One more level. One more point.
Nothing flashy.
But it mattered.
He leaned back against the village wall, watching players sprint past with wild excitement, most of them clueless newbies just trying to swing a sword straight.
Not him.
Every point of Intelligence meant a higher alchemy success rate later.
More difficult potions.
More complex concoctions.
More ways to break free from the gutter he was born into.
He wasn’t here to be some dime-a-dozen cleric, spamming heals in a third-rate guild.
He wasn’t here to play dress-up with shiny armor and big swords.
He was here to build something.
To take this second chance and run with it until they couldn’t mess with him ever again.
He cracked his knuckles, adjusted the worn strap on his satchel, and grinned to himself.
‘Next step,’ he thought, ‘get those roses back to Widow Shelly. Start unlocking the hidden quests. Get the lead before anyone else even knows the race has started.’
It was time to move.
***