Caterpie's Finishing Moves and Compound Finishing Moves (Please Keep Reading)

Mark's Hiding spot was not far away.

Caterpie glanced sideways and could even see the reflection in Mark's eyes beneath the moonlight.

After all these days, could these Caterpie really not guess that their master had been hiding in the tree all along?

Caterpie shook its head. For some reason, it once again felt that the Caterpie here were very stupid.

It was already stupid enough. How were its own kind even stupider than it was?

After a dozen breaths, the Caterpie at the rear finally completed their encirclement and joined up with those in front, forming a ring around it.

Caterpie remained where it was without moving.

Whenever it faced a situation where it was surrounded like this before, it would feel at least some pressure.

But this time, it felt surprisingly relaxed.

Without much thought, Caterpie moved the moment it saw the encircling Caterpie Group rush at it.

Tackle (Power-Up Tackle), charged-up enhanced version!

Caterpie lightly arched its body. As it gradually lowered its center of gravity, a faint green glow appeared over its surface.

After forty-seven years of continuous training in the Dream World, Mark and Caterpie had further refined and perfected Tackle (Power-Up Tackle).

Aside from the basic instant, cannonball-like Tackle, they had developed an even more advanced "power-up" technique. It was more powerful, but its drawback was that it required several seconds to more than ten seconds of charging before use. It was fine for attacking targets, but difficult to use against opponents of comparable strength.

In Caterpie's own words, it gathered and accumulated that warm current even further before releasing it all at once.

As the warm current continuously gathered, Caterpie's body developed a tearing sensation along with numb, aching pain, and the feeling grew increasingly intense.

Whoosh—

Considering that this move was too powerful and might kill its own kind.

Caterpie did not accumulate the warm current to its physical limit. As it released the warm current, its arched body shot into the sky at an angle, then shifted direction and transformed into an emerald-green aerial bomb plunging rapidly downward!

Boom!!

The ground cracked apart, forming a crater over two meters wide. Blue-green energy surged wildly outward, creating something similar to a shockwave that blasted dozens of Caterpie into the air.

Though the more distant Caterpie were not thrown away by the shockwave, they were still knocked sprawling by the impact.

In fact, Caterpie had deliberately aimed its Tackle slightly off target because it was worried about killing its own kind. Otherwise, the result would have been even better.

Of course, compared to the forty-seven years of training in the dream, this move still had many problems when used now.

The first was the charging time. Compared with using it in the Dream World, its charging speed in reality seemed much slower, as if it had become rusty.

It should discuss it with Mark and further optimize the charging time.

Besides that, after descending from the sky and crashing into the ground, Caterpie found its head feeling a little dizzy, while the joints throughout its body ached faintly. Clearly, its body had not adapted to the recoil from this kind of impact.

So next, it needed to improve its physical strength...

Tackle (Instant Strike)!

As it thought, Caterpie's body suddenly blurred.

A Leader's Guard rushed to Caterpie's side and launched a Tackle, but it hit nothing but air.

The next moment, a lingering afterimage gradually solidified, and Caterpie appeared behind the Leader's Guard.

Bang!

Tackle (Instant Strike) was extremely fast and reasonably powerful. The Leader's Guard was sent flying several meters before rolling to a stop in the grass.

Compared with testing the charged version of Tackle (Power-Up Tackle), Caterpie was much more satisfied with its test of Tackle (Instant Strike).

It did not pursue that Leader's Guard further. Instead, it nimbly weaved through the Caterpie Group, occasionally using Tackle (Instant Strike) to appear behind targets trying to attack it, striking later yet arriving first as it counterattacked in advance.

It was different now.

It had found the reason it felt so relaxed despite being surrounded by the Caterpie Group.

Caterpie remembered that in the previous battle, whenever it used Tackle (Power-Up Tackle), it would always take one or two attacks afterward.

But now, even if it wanted to get hurt, it would be difficult.

Tackle (Seven-Stage Combo)!

Caterpie leapt lightly through the grass and shrubs, its body like a streak of green lightning flashing repeatedly across the battlefield. In an extremely short time, seven Caterpie were sent flying in succession, causing a chain reaction that knocked the Caterpie behind them into disorder as well.

Caterpie sensed the warm current inside its body.

Compared with its previous vague understanding, after these forty-seven years of training, it now knew much more clearly what this warm current was.

This warm current was a type of energy associated with the move Tackle.

In fact, not only Tackle—even its String Shot and the Bug Bite it had just comprehended possessed their own energies. It was just that the latter two had very little energy, and it was difficult for Caterpie to sense them.

It was no longer like before, passively awakening and stimulating this warm current solely through the technique of Tackle (Power-Up Tackle).

Now, it could actively influence and control the warm current to a certain extent.

The warm current stimulated by Power-Up Tackle was incomparably solid, with a feeling of continuous compression. More specifically, it compressed into a single point before erupting.

The warm current used by Instant Strike was ethereal and unstable, with a sensation of constant trembling as it was stimulated.

The warm current of Multi-Strike Combo mainly manifested in its flow speed and cyclical extension.

As for Adamant Penetrating Strike, it felt like a fusion of fierce force and rounded flexibility.

As it thought, Caterpie changed the order in which it used its move and warm current.

This time, it first guided the warm current to alter its nature, then let its body adapt to those changes and match the move.

As for why Caterpie was doing this, it was because it intended to use a compound finishing move forged through forty-seven years of training.

—Tackle Five-Shot Barrage!

That was Tackle (Power-Up Tackle) + Tackle (Five-Stage Combo)!

Under Caterpie's control, the warm current inside its body extended even as it solidified, gradually forming a sturdy ring. The warm current circulated endlessly within the ring, growing faster and faster.

In reality, Caterpie's body followed the changes in the warm current, naturally shifting its posture.

Its opening stance was similar to the charged version of Tackle (Power-Up Tackle). It once again arched its body and crouched, but this time it did not crouch very low, while emerald-green steam rose from its body.

The surrounding Caterpie seemed to sense danger and instinctively kept backing away.

Then, while the surrounding Caterpie watched in tense vigilance, Caterpie suddenly clutched its stomach and rolled across the ground twice as if it had lost its breath. It then coughed repeatedly, and the emerald-green steam over its body vanished.

Clearly, Caterpie's compound finishing move had failed...

On a treetop dozens of meters away, Mark watched Caterpie's condition with a slight frown.

"I remember Caterpie should have become very proficient with this compound finishing move in the dream. It almost never failed.

Why would it... I understand now. After the stat allocation dream ended, Caterpie ate a great deal, causing its body to grow further. Though it did not grow much this time, it still grew.

Besides that, Caterpie also comprehended Bug Bite from its bloodline genes.

This growth, together with comprehending Bug Bite, caused some changes to Caterpie's body. These changes have almost no effect on ordinary derived Tackle moves, but they greatly affect compound moves that require greater precision."

At that thought, Mark called out, "Caterpie, don't worry about those compound moves for now. Just test the ordinary derived moves."

"Sss!"

Hearing Mark's words, Caterpie stopped dwelling on it. Seeing that the nearby Caterpie had begun cautiously approaching, it used Tackle (Instant Strike) several times in succession to open up some distance.

A few minutes later, once it felt its body had recovered somewhat, Caterpie charged back in and continued practicing those ordinary derived Tackle moves.

On a treetop dozens of meters away, Mark opened the system panel and continued watching and thinking.

As time passed, Mark's brow gradually furrowed.

It was not that there was anything wrong with Caterpie's combat training.

It was the accumulation of its Experience Bar.

At first, things were fine. The Experience Bar increased quickly, even faster than it had before the stat allocation.

However, after more than ten minutes, the rate at which Caterpie's Experience Bar grew steadily declined. After half an hour, its growth rate had already fallen to half of what it had been before.

And the rate at which the Experience Bar rose was still decreasing.

The matter was already obvious.

With this increase in strength from the stat allocation, Caterpie had suffered an experience penalty...

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