Later that day, the Barrais get back home and news of the place up river being named Bennett town spreads. An interesting diversion, but compared to a tenth of the town vanishing one night, relatively small beans. Though with the report on what they had been doing, more people connected what happened in Wolf's Rest to the disruption in Bennett town.

Of course, since the Barrais were publicly out of town and because of a few well-placed words, people figured out a specially prepared "truth" about the situation. That "those who had vanished", actually had just left after getting a report on what happened. That they were afraid of reprisal. The Barrais even managed to slip in the cultist's actual plan to take over.

Suffice it to say, people soured on the cult real quick. Though it certainly helped that those who had "left" were all pretty insular. So, as always, it was much easier for the community to rally against them. And so it wasn't long before things returned to normal.

Well, for most of the population. Ace, Jim, and the other core members all began to train a lot harder. With the secret of the twelfth floor revealed, they had all soon gotten to experience the kobolds on the thirteenth floor. In fact, they had all ignored the normal path until this point as they didn't want to walk into unknown danger.

And none of them had managed to clear the kobold camp or retrieve the mithril ingot.

Not to say they hadn't killed each member of the kobold camp at least once. Just that even in their best attempt so far, they still had to retreat. In fact, that time ended with some of them needing more than a day to completely heal. An oddity when healing magic means most injuries are fixed in moments.

The problem they were having was near universal. People hadn't put enough focus on skill growth. Which Ace found highly ironic. They had literally just kicked out a cult focused on leveling skills, only to find out they should have been doing so as well.

Well, to be fair, the crafters hadn't fallen behind. It was only combat skills that suffered. After all, they fought the same enemies over and over. Even if Doyle's monsters were tougher than most dungeons would have at this point, variety is the spice of life. Everyone in town has gotten used to the current selection of enemies. This was especially true for those farming the sixth floor. In fact, those farmers had not only stopped gaining skill levels, but regular levels as well.

To be honest, people like Ace who are trying to gain power wouldn't normally stick around the same dungeon for so long. Rather, they would be traveling to various dungeons, searching for new and more difficult challenges. Though even if they did stick to one place, there would normally be more of a wild monster presence to deal with. At the moment, wild monsters are few enough in numbers that they can avoid humanity. Both to their benefit and detriment.

Ace didn't have a solution for this problem. So, it is a good thing Jim became the local Guild leader as that gave him access to some information that others didn't get. Not that it was stuff the town wouldn't have figured out, eventually.

Jim sat across from Ace, "Everyone eventually will have one of their skills' growth slow to a stop. This generally comes down to two reasons. A bottleneck or needing a new direction."

Ace, "Wouldn't a bottleneck be obvious, with the levels suddenly stopping?"

Jim shakes his head, "Both sides are the same issue, just coming from different directions. Either way, there will be a slow down before skill growth completely stops."

Ace, "Then what is the difference if they're the same?"

Jim gestures at himself, "A bottleneck represents having what you need."

Jim then does a sweeping gesture away from himself. "On the other hand, a slow down represents a lack of what you need.

"The reason for this difference has to do with what fuels skill growth. Skill levels don't get harder. What would gain you a level up in the single digits, can gain you a level in the four digits.

"The trick is that repeated actions gain you less and less experience. So that action that gained you a skills second level could gain you the skills two-thousandth level as long as you waited till then to repeat it. Even then, you'll generally have done other actions that were similar enough to have still reduced the experience gained from the action."

Ace, "And how do you know a bottleneck from simply lacking something? In fact, how does a bottleneck even develop? Couldn't you just find something you're lacking to continue leveling up?"

Jim laughs, "That would be nice. It would make a lot of people's lives so much easier. After all, out in the wider universe, they have access to what is basically the Internet's big brother. If just finding a new direction was all you needed to break a bottleneck, no one would ever be stuck in growing their skills."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Ace, "But nothing you've said now or in the past has pointed towards any other interpretation of things. If forging nails stops raising your blacksmith level, you can just switch to making something else."

Jim, "Bottlenecks come about when your skill is stuck on something you already know. If leveling a skill is like building a tower, a bottleneck is as if you skipped building one of the important supports. You've simply reached as high as the skill can go without building up that support. Everything else you learn while stuck is like having the supplies to build the tower being delivered. You have it, but you can't use it."

Ace, "So it doesn't matter if I'm stuck at a bottleneck because once I break through I'll gain all the built up levels?"

Jim laughs, "Good joke. As if reality was that kind. You'll probably gain a few levels, but the material being shipped in is concrete and that stuff doesn't last."

Ace sighs, "Do you at least have an example? I don't think I fully get what you're trying to say."

Jim shrugs, "There isn't really a good way to explain it. Skill level represents a mix of general ability and knowledge with both being able to cap advancement. That doesn't stop you from broadening your knowledge base. However, you won't even rise above what you can currently do.

"Though I guess I can use a rough cooking analogy. Being bottlenecked is like you've learned to cook by recipe, but haven't expanded to figuring out how to adjust recipes. You can always learn new recipes, but you'll only ever be able to repeat those recipes."

Ace, "Still not seeing why finding a new direction wouldn't work just as well."

Jim shrugs again, "Like I said, there isn't a straightforward explanation. With the cooking example, add in a restriction on how good the recipes you can learn are or maybe limit the ingredients you have access to. A bottleneck at the simplest represents the skill having something included in it that you need to improve before the rest of what you know can advance.

"If all you need is instead to find a new direction? The act of looking for a new direction will help the skill level up as well because you're finding your limits."

Ace massages his temple, "Assume this makes sense to me and I'm not calling bottlenecks 'system nonsense'. What is the solution, since I don't think I've hit an actual bottleneck?"

Jim flashes a crooked grin, "But I already told you!"

Ace lets out a deep sigh, "Then tell me again."

Jim, "If all you need is a new direction, try new things. Even if you fail, it will still help."

Ace glares at him.

Jim, "I'll admit, having the Internet would make this easier. It's like having a knot tying skill and not having anyone to teach you new knots."

Ace, "If? If we need a new direction? How are we supposed to find it?! Or even start looking? I understand learning from failure, but you need something to fail at."

Jim, "Well, like with knots, you just have to start varying things up. Work with what you know, but change stuff. One knot requires you to put the end through the loop twice while another only has you do it once? What happens if you switch that around?

"Or more pertinent, I think only the Barrais have legitimate training in combat focused arts. And by that, I don't mean learning karate. Rather, I mean learning a way of fighting that has been actively used to fight other people, especially those who don't follow your style.

"Too many 'modern' martial arts are focused on sparring against others who know that martial arts. The actual effectiveness against people who know another style or are simply fighters tends to be hit or miss. So since we don't have a background passed down over hundreds of years to pull on, we need to start that foundation ourselves."

Ace, "It sounds an awful lot like you want us to wildly swing our swords at the monsters to try and find a better way to swing our swords. That sounds like a good way to die."

Jim shakes his head, "Not wildly swing our weapons. It would be much easier if we did have a proper combat art to work with. Even a pre-system one would at least have the progression of katas or something similar to guide us.

"As it is, anyone using a sword would be better off spending a few hours every day swinging their sword. Even just repeating the most basic swing is enough, as long as they keep adjusting to make the swing feel better. Then once they've figured something out, go into the dungeon and do some live testing.

"Did it work? If not, toss it out and start over. If it did? Practice it until you've engrained it in muscle memory and then start over. Trial and error. Of course, if we had some other monsters to fight, the novelty would likely be enough to spur growth. We just don't have that option at the moment."

Ace frowns, "Isn't that what we are doing already? Sure, we aren't practicing multiple hours a day, but we keep delving and getting better at defeating the monsters."

Jim laughs, "We're not getting better, we're getting more efficient. As for how long we train? A few hours is the minimum. Getting better at fighting is basically our full-time job now. How many full-time jobs do you know where someone only works an hour or less a day yet requires a lot of skill?

"No, we need to improve our actual fighting styles. Not just realize kobolds tend towards dodging one direction over another and thus to correct that direction. Yes, that is technically an improvement, but it isn't improving your combat skills. Maybe if you had a skill about killing kobolds it would, but none of us do."

Ace, "But how do I convince people to train that much?"

Jim, "Woah man, you are taking way too much responsibility right now. This isn't some colony sim where you're trying to min-max each person. They're all functioning adults.

"All your responsibility comes down to, is telling them about this and making suggestions. If they don't want to take your suggestions seriously? Well, that's on them. Plus, I doubt the other inner circle members would snub this knowledge."

Ace, "Well then why didn't you tell us this sooner?"

Jim, "Partly because I didn't realize how serious the problem would be. Though also because no one would have paid attention. We were not ready to hear that we needed to spend multiple hours practicing our sword swings or what have you. Now though? We've hit a wall and hopefully that will have woken us up to the necessity. It certainly did for me."

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