Damn, You Sneaky Bastard, That Arrow Was Brutal!

Two Soul Snatches, every skill hit, with two duplicates.

Compared to the first boar, where two out of three attempts had missed, the hit rate was worlds apart.

A new prompt appeared on the panel.

[Natal Talent "Soul Snatch" has leveled up! Level 1 → Level 2]

[Simultaneous activation limit: 3 → 4]

Gan Ming stared at the message.

Nice, four activation slots!

He opened the skill management interface.

[Currently Active (3/4): Fanged Charge (Passive), Bark Armor, Woodland Affinity (Passive)]

[Available Pool: Ambush, Gluttonous Recovery (Passive), Potential Stimulation (Passive)]

The activation limit had become four.

After weighing his options, Gan Ming decided to pull Ambush into an activation slot.

[Currently Active (4/4): Fanged Charge (Passive), Bark Armor, Woodland Affinity (Passive), Ambush]

[Available Pool: Gluttonous Recovery (Passive), Potential Stimulation (Passive)]

Ambush.

The second skill Master Pig had taught him!

With this thing, he no longer needed to sneak up on his targets.

A charge every fifteen seconds. Hit the target, stun it, then start hacking away the moment the stun ended.

Three slashes, then one charged strike for damage.

Bark Armor to absorb damage.

Woodland Affinity to restore health.

Healing as a safety net.

Ambush to open.

The whole sequence was simply perfect.

Gan Ming put away the two boar carcasses, rose to his feet, and looked himself over.

Iron helmet, leather armor, leg guards.

He still looked as shabby as ever.

But what he had on his panel was completely different from when he had first entered the woodland.

"Let's do this."

Gripping his blade, Gan Ming turned and headed deeper into the woodland.

The battles that followed became noticeably easier.

Spot a boar, open with Ambush.

A gray blur shot forward, knocking even a three-hundred-pound boar stumbling.

With Bark Armor protecting him now, he did not lose out in the collision either.

One second of stun.

One slash.

-20

Two slashes.

-19

Three slashes... Fanged Charge!

Pfft!

-38!

That one-second advantage Ambush bought him was enough for Gan Ming to land three slashes.

Fanged Charge triggered on the third slash, carving a huge chunk of flesh straight from the boar monster.

The boar monster woke up and launched a counterattack,

but when it bit down, it nearly cracked its own teeth.

Woodland Affinity combined with Bark Armor kept the damage firmly suppressed.

After several cycles, the boar fell.

The whole fight took less than thirty seconds!

"That was awesome! Keep going!"

When he spotted a Tree Spirit, he rammed into it with Ambush.

Though Tree Spirits were not particularly mobile,

Ambush could interrupt their rhythm when casting Rotten Root Entanglement, creating a clean window to deal damage.

Three slashes and one charged strike, hacking inward beneath Bark Armor's protection.

Tree Spirits had high defense, but they could not withstand the piercing efficiency of charged strikes.

In the end, felling a Tree Spirit took even less time than killing a boar.

Because trees did not run.

After every kill, he used Soul Snatch.

If he could draw a new skill, he drew it.

If he drew a duplicate, it was directly converted into talent proficiency.

He drew duplicates of both the Tree Spirit's Bark Armor and Rotten Root Entanglement once.

They were all converted into experience.

He had long since collected all four skills from the Iron Bristle Wild Boar, so every later draw was a duplicate.

All of them became proficiency.

The more he killed, the faster Soul Snatch leveled up.

The higher Soul Snatch's level, the higher its success rate.

The higher the success rate, the more duplicates he could draw.

A perfect cycle.

Over the rest of the journey, Gan Ming barely needed to stop and rest.

Woodland Affinity restored 1% health per second, and its effect was maximized outside combat.

After killing one, he only needed to stand there and catch his breath twice for his health to fill back up.

His mana recovered naturally, and the time spent walking between two battles was enough to restore most of it.

Whenever he occasionally encountered two boars gathered together,

Gan Ming, who kept Bark Armor active the entire time, simply charged in with his blade and started hacking.

He could take it anyway.

Less than an hour later,

the numbers on the panel had refreshed several times.

[Level Up! Current Level: 7]

Gan Ming stopped.

His short blade was covered in boar blood and the green juice of Tree Spirits, mixed into an indescribable color.

He opened the Soul Snatch panel.

Soul Snatch, Level 4.

Six activation slots.

He had a total of seven Soul Snatch skills.

Fanged Charge, Bark Armor, Woodland Affinity, Ambush, Gluttonous Recovery, Potential Stimulation, Rotten Root Entanglement.

Perfect.

He pulled Rotten Root Entanglement and Potential Stimulation out of the available pool and activated them all.

[Currently Active (6/6): Fanged Charge (Passive), Bark Armor, Woodland Affinity (Passive), Ambush, Rotten Root Entanglement, Potential Stimulation (Passive)]

[Available Pool: Gluttonous Recovery (Passive)]

Six skills were now online.

Add Healing, which he had learned separately.

He carried eight skills on his own body.

Three hours ago, he had been a blank slate who only knew how to swing a knife.

Now, he had mobility, burst damage, defense, control, three layers of healing, and active recovery.

Gan Ming raised his head and looked deeper into the woodland.

The canopy grew denser.

The light grew dimmer.

The stench in the air grew thicker.

Gan Ming tightened his grip on the hilt and plunged straight in.

He had no idea how long had passed.

Gan Ming had already lost count of how many boars he had killed.

He only knew that the iron short blade had chipped in two places.

Every slash felt a little duller than the last.

But with this slash, the boar dropped in response.

A familiar prompt appeared before him.

[Iron Bristle Wild Boar (Level 3) killed. Obtained 120 experience.]

[Level Up! Current Level: 8]

[Obtained unassigned attribute points: 5]

That fast? He was already level 8!

Gan Ming straightened up and flexed the fingers that had grown stiff from gripping the knife.

He looked up at the sky.

The sun had already shifted from overhead toward the west.

It looked to be around two or three in the afternoon.

The instance closed at four. Less than two hours remained.

He had spent nearly four hours going from level 1 to level 8.

The farther he progressed, the more experience he needed, and the little experience boars gave was becoming less and less useful.

At this rate, there was little chance he would reach level 10 before it closed at four.

"I'll come back tomorrow."

Gan Ming did not dwell on it. He lowered his head and looked at the Iron Bristle Wild Boar that had just died by his feet.

As usual, Soul Snatch first.

But just as he crouched down, before his right hand could touch the boar's bristles—

Whoosh!

An incredibly faint whistle of something cutting through the air came from behind his right side.

That was not the wind.

The wind did not sound like that.

Gan Ming had remained in a combat state for so long that his body reacted before his mind.

He instinctively leaned to the left.

But he was still too late.

Squelch!

An arrow shot from the woods, passed precisely through a gap less than half a meter wide between two trees, and buried itself in his right waist.

The fletching was still trembling.

-70!

Gan Ming's vision instantly turned red.

His health plummeted from full to 10 points.

At the same time, a string of prompts appeared on the panel.

[You have been attacked by "Piercing Arrow."]

[Passive skill "Potential Stimulation" has triggered: Recover 10 health every 5 seconds for 15 seconds.]

Someone had ambushed him!

The arrowhead was lodged in the muscle of his right waist, tugging with every breath he took.

The pain was sharp, carrying the foreign sensation of metal embedded in flesh.

But Gan Ming did not cry out.

People who had been beaten in the Lower District had a much higher tolerance for pain than normal.

His hand did not reach for the arrow.

Instead, he completed three actions within a second.

First, he rolled sideways behind the nearest tree to his left.

Second, he raised his left hand, green light glowing in his palm.

Healing!

+51!

Third, he pulled a Lesser Life Recovery Potion from his ring with his right hand, twisted off the cap, and gulped it down.