After parting ways with Philia, I returned to the inn, had dinner, and took a bath.
Since I had stopped by the inn to leave my gear behind before taking on the requests, it wasn't very dirty. A quick wipe-down was all it took to get it clean.
"I've got mana training tomorrow too, so I'd better get to bed early."
Between mana training in the morning and tackling a mountain of city requests in the afternoon, my stamina had already hit its limit.
The moment I lay down on the bed, I drifted straight to sleep.
The next morning, after finishing my laundry, I got to work on strength training.
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You have trained your Strength. Gained 1 EXP. 79/100 until stat increase.
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I kept going until Amanda-san came by, bringing the stat close to leveling up. At this rate, it looked like Strength and Mana would increase around the same time.
After helping her finish the laundry, I hung my clothes up to dry in my room and ate breakfast.
Since I wasn't heading out of town today, I didn't bother putting on my gear. I left the inn just as I was and made my way to the Adventurer's Guild.
After greeting Reina-san at the reception desk, I headed straight to the training grounds.
"My, it's rare to see you without your gear, Erik-kun."
"Good morning, Olivia-san! Starting today, I'm actually planning to take on city requests in the afternoons for a while. Moving around in full gear makes that kind of work a bit awkward."
"I see. Reina-chan was complaining about the backlog of city requests piling up, wasn't she...?"
"Exactly. So yesterday, another member of my party and I decided to take on as many of them as we could."
After filling Olivia-san in on what happened yesterday, I began today's training.
The method was the same as before: burn through mana using Appraisal, then restore it using the training tool.
"Come to think of it, my Parallel Thinking skill leveled up yesterday."
"Did it now? How does it feel with the level increase?"
"It's great, honestly! The number of things I can process at once went up, which makes the training a lot easier to manage."
During our first break, I told her about the level increase for Parallel Thinking.
"That's wonderful to hear. Keep up the good work and continue raising those skill levels, alright?"
"Will do!"
With the break over, I jumped right back into training.
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You have trained Parallel Thinking. Gained 1 EXP. 21/100 until next level.
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You have trained Mana Control. Gained 1 EXP. 58/100 until next level.
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You have trained Appraisal. Gained 1 EXP. 25/100 until skill acquisition.
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You have trained your Mana. Gained 1 EXP. 81/100 until stat increase.
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Once the training session wrapped up, I checked my status screen.
Even though Parallel Thinking had just leveled up yesterday, it had already accumulated 23 EXP. On top of that, Mana Control had made significant progress as well. If I kept this momentum going, I would probably be able to raise its skill level tomorrow.
"Your experience is building up nicely. And it looks like you'll be acquiring the Appraisal skill before long, too. Do you still think we'll need those reference materials?"
"Going by the experience points, it certainly looks that way. But if I acquire it like this, I wonder if anyone else could actually learn it the same way."
We had talked before about establishing a clear training method so other people could acquire Appraisal too, but I wasn't entirely sure if my current approach would work for anyone else.
"There's no telling for sure. I asked an acquaintance to gather some materials on the subject, and they should arrive tomorrow, so let's look through them and find out."
With that, today's training came to an end.
After letting Reina-san know I was finished, I stepped out of the guild to grab some lunch.
Since I had another half-day of requests ahead of me, I decided to eat at a diner Reina-san had recommended to get a meal that would keep me full.
Once I finished eating, I headed back to the guild.
"Erik-kun, let's do our best today too!"
"Yeah, let's. Just make sure not to push yourself too hard, okay?"
"I was going to say the exact same thing to you! The number of requests you cleared yesterday was on a completely different level—it honestly shocked me."
"I told you I was good at cleaning. Besides, quite a few of them were quick jobs that wrapped up in no time, which helped run up the count."
Even among general housework, the workload for cleaning requests varied wildly. Some places had a mountain of chores like Marina-san's house, while others only needed a single spot tidied up. Since those quicker jobs were mixed in, it had boosted my numbers quite a bit.
After chatting with Philia, we went up to the counter and accepted our respective requests.
Just like yesterday, Philia focused on general assistance requests while I took on the cleaning jobs.
"Erik-kun, Philia-chan, don't overdo it, alright? Just working through them at your own pace is already a massive help to the Adventurer's Guild."
"Understood. We'll make sure to work at our own pace."
"Reina-san, have the next batch ready for us when we get back!"
With that parting remark, we left the Adventurer's Guild.
Heading out toward our respective job sites, we set to work clearing through the city's backlog one request at a time.