Chaos Cycle: The Eye of Genesis

One point in intelligence gives exactly 10 points in mana, whereas an entire day's training in mana manipulations and meditation will get you or two points at best. Where's the other physical stat such as Strength, agility, constitution, endurance or resistance—every one of them grows at least four or five times faster with proper training, though it needs to be considered after all of them reach 50 mark, it would be far harder to train physical stat than mental stat.

Another magical thing about physical attributes was that they were connected. Surely if your constitution rose, it would be followed by your strength, agility, and vice versa. Similar things happen in between perception, intelligence, though it was on a marginal level.

"The best way to train after your physical body is saturated is to invest most points in one single stat at a time and train," Elior said to his three friends, though one of them was still unconscious. "Though it could create a little problem in the transition of the body, with a proper training schedule, it could be mended. 

"For example, if you invest 10 points in the constitution, and then train a couple of weeks vigorously to raise your strength, agility, and resistance, then by that time, you will have 2 to 4 points in all the three stats. 

"But if you chose to invest in two or more stats together, the boast would not be that apparent. I think the most important attributes are Intelligence, Strength, Agility, and Perception. You can ignore strength if you are a mage, and agility too to a level, but mage needs to have as high intelligence as their perception." 

Elior was looking at the pale-faced chestnut-haired girl when he said that. 

"Ileana, you are not a typical mage. Since you can play with all the five universal elements, your training speed would be the slowest. If you want to raise your training speed, there are two ways for you. The first is to abandon one of two elements of the five. It will surely rise up your speed in training as well as spell casting, but I won't recommend it."

Ileana nodded slowly. "And the other way?" she asked. 

"You are the only one in our group who does not need physical attributes, so you can invest your points in either Perception, or intelligence."

"Why not both?" Ileana asked, frowning. 

"You can do that, but it would not increase your training speed. If you invest in perception, the speed at which you differentiate magic attributes will rise, as well as the mastery in spell formula. It will not surely raise the power of the spell, but your spell will become more concise," Elior said. "As for Intelligence, it will raise your power in the spells, but creating the spell will take more time, and surely your training speed will drop.

"I'm telling you to choose one at a time. I think you have about 20 free attribute points saved up right? Put everything in one of the two, to have a boast either in training and casting, or in the raw power."

Ileana nodded, still knitting her brows. She did have over 20 points stacked up. Even without Elior mentioning, she had not invested the points before, knowing anything. At level 24, she has exactly 23 points saved. Now all he has to choose is between raw power, or concise spell casting as well as a boast in training. 

Unconsciously, her eyes drifted towards the three before her. Unconditionally, she was the weakest in the team, and investing that point in intelligence seemed the only choice for her as she liked to go hand in hand with them. But . . . 

"What do you propose?" She asked her best friend for advice in the end. 

Elior shook his head. "I will not answer that for you," he said. "I don't want you to be influenced by my answer, but choose what you think is right for you."

The knit in her brows tightened, and she sighed after a good minute. "I will go for perception," she said. "The training is already frustrating enough, and I don't want to abandon any elements for now." 

"Wise decision," Elior commented. "The points you got after this, you can invest them in intelligence. Surely we have two dungeon travel classes left before the weekend, and let me know if I could manage a couple of extra days from professor Aleister."

In the two dungeon classes, Ileana could level up two to five times, depending on her performance. So the point she would get will be 4 to 10, and if Elior managed to get the consent from Professor Aleister for any extra dungeon classes, that number might even double.

Elior was about to explain to Shin about his matter then, but found Lara already waking up, blinking at them. Ileana helped her hold the flask in her mouth as she slowly gulped down the contents. Her body cooled down even further as she sighed. 

"Are you taking a rest properly after leaving here?" he asked, eyeing her. 

"Yes," Lara answered, sitting straight.

"Doesn't look like it," Elior said, furrowing his brows. "Listen, Lara. Resting the body is an important part of the training. Out of all people, you should know it better than anyone. You have trained yourself in swordsmanship since you are little. Your moves are already polished, all you need is more physical and mana power. But that doesn't mean you have to train all the time.

"From what I can see, you are sleep deprived," he said, though he was the one to talk. "You meditate all night?" 

"Not all night," Lara muttered, flustering. 

Elior shook his head. "Ileana, I will give the duty to look after her. See if she takes proper rest every night." 

"Yes, sir," the chestnut-haired girl shouted, saluting. She was tired, so could not stand up in her salutation, though the others still broke a couple of chuckles. 

"Lara, I think you should not just practice with Shin," Elior continued. "As I said, you lack experience and so does Shin, so both of you should go and ask to practice with anyone in our grade."

"Brother, I don't think there's many that could match us, in our year," Shin said. "Surely, it's Leroy, Hasan and a couple of others." 

"That's why you two will go wearing those beautiful suits I made with my angelic arms," Elior said, chuckling. 

"Brother, you are the devil," Shin cursed. 

"Thank you," Elior laughed. "But seriously, other than the stats, experience is greatly important for you. Though the tournament will help, it's still far away, so you should do with what you currently have. Ileana, you can join them too."

"I wish, someday, I can make you go through all of these as well," his best friend muttered. 

"Shin and Lara, both mainly fight close quarters and their class also is similar, but both of your paths are entirely different. For a swordsman, close-quarter is the only option, but that was not true for Shin," Elior said, moving his eyes to Shin. "Lara, you need to have Strength, Agility at sync, and a good number in the constitution as well—you cannot let the constitution of a female ruin your career. 

"For you, I recommend the golden ratio of 2:2:1.5:1:1:1 in Strength, Agility, Constitution, Resistance, Perception, and Intelligence respectively."

Lara first furrowed her brows at the number first, but knowing her speciality that was not her mana, she nodded.

Elior moved to his good brother. "Shin, you would need intelligence the highest—not just because you lacked basic intelligence, but your future development will go that way as well." 

Ileana snickered out and Shin snorted, saying, "Haha, good jokes."

Elior continued. "You will need strength, perception and agility in sync. Your Wave Runner class can deal with both close or long-distance attacks, so you can guess why I told you that." 

In the previous timeline, Shin ignored Intelligence for many years—limiting him in his ability. Obviously, the would-be Storm Summoner would need a good amount of mana to call up the storm. 

"I recommend the ratio of, 1.5:1.5:1.5:1:1.5:2 in the same order. Meaning you got to work on both the hardest in both, physically and mentally all the time." 

"Brother, I'll die," Shin muttered. 

"Think of the promise I made to you," Elior said, trying to bring up his motivation, and surely it worked. 

Shin made a fist, with slight resolution in his weary eyes. "For me future girlfriend," he muttered. "I guess, I can suffer a little more." 

"That's that spirit," Elior chuckled. he looked at the two females of the group, and told them, "You two go back now. it's already dark. Take a rest first, then eat."

The two maidens nodded and were about to leave shouldering each other. While Shin stood up as well, wanting to leave with them.

"Shin, I did not tell leave," Elior said and stood up as well. "You will be here with me for a couple more hours." 

"Brother, why me?" Shin screamed. "What I did wrong? I wanted to rest as much as them." 

"Stop yelling and think about your future girlfriend." 

Shin's expression turned ugly, but he did remain in the training chamber. He looked pitifully at his brother, asking for not anything difficult for today. 

"Don't worry, I won't make you do anything today. To be specific, it's anything difficult.. I just wanted to teach you a couple of things about your class that you have not considered yet."