Big Stink, Becoming a Mobile Skill Library

When the lizard woke from its stun,

six bone-deep gashes had already appeared on its body.

Two rounds of crowd control had finished.

The total damage had taken nearly a third of the lizard's health.

The giant lizard was thoroughly enraged.

It opened its mouth and let out an even louder hiss than before, then violently slammed its tail against the rubble on the ground.

Stone Shard Launch!

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Three or four fist-sized chunks of broken brick were sent flying by its tail, shooting toward Gan Ming's face at high speed.

Gan Ming twisted aside to dodge two of them, while the third brushed past his shoulder.

-8.

Stone Shard Launch had an 80% physical attack scaling. Against his 77 points of defense, this was all the damage it could deal.

To him, this ranged skill was no different from throwing cotton balls.

Gan Ming charged straight through the flying stones.

Stone Shard Launch had a ten-second cooldown, while Tail Sweep had a sixteen-second cooldown.

Before its tail came off cooldown, the giant lizard could throw at most one more round of stones.

That sixteen-second cooldown window was his slaughter time.

One sword strike. Two sword strikes. Three sword strikes, then a charged attack!

-136!

The giant lizard tried to turn around and swing its tail, but it still had several seconds left on its cooldown.

Gan Ming closed in while it turned and landed three more slashes.

The charged attack triggered again.

-148!

This strike hit the base of its hind leg. The giant lizard's right rear leg buckled, and it dropped to one knee on the rubble-strewn ground.

Tail Sweep finally came off cooldown.

The giant lizard hissed and swung out a second sweeping strike.

Gan Ming was prepared this time.

A second before the tail's shadow swept over him, he jumped one step backward.

Whoosh!

The tip of the tail brushed past the front flap of his leather armor without hitting him.

Without knockback, there was no displacement.

He stepped back in at once.

He aimed the tip of his sword at the gap in the scales along its neck, the spot he had already struck three or four times, and viciously thrust it in.

Squelch!

-257!

The Grayrock Giant Lizard's body convulsed violently.

Then its entire body collapsed onto the rubble, its tail twitching weakly twice.

[Grayrock Giant Lizard (Level 15) killed. Obtained 420 experience points.]

Compared with Hounds and Scorpions, the level fifteen lizard gave significantly more experience.

The downside was that it was tougher and harder on his sword.

He crouched down and pressed his right hand against the lizard's corpse.

Soul Snatch.

Three seconds.

[Soul Snatch successful!]

[Skill obtained: Rockskin (Passive). Increases your defense by 15%.]

One.

Only one out of its four skills.

Gan Ming frowned slightly. It was exactly what he had expected.

The four-level gap penalty was right there. The number of skills he could obtain in a single attempt had been heavily reduced.

Still, Rockskin was a decent passive.

A 15% defense increase was a pure stat boost.

Once an activation slot opened up, he could slot it in directly and add another layer of defense.

He would have to kill more lizards to make up for the remaining three skills.

So what if there was a four-level gap?

Weren't lizards everywhere?

He just had to kill a few more.

Gan Ming stored the lizard's corpse in his ring, stood up, and sniffed toward the northeast.

More than sixty meters away, he caught another dry, chalky scent.

Move.

Over the next hour or so,

Gan Ming happily slaughtered monsters deep within the Ruins Zone.

He rotated between Hounds, Scorpions, and giant lizards.

Before every fight, he first made sure there was no human scent within seventy meters.

Then he lured his target into a blind corner screened off by broken walls before making his move.

When he encountered a lone monster, he opened with Ambush.

When two monsters were close together, as long as they were not Scorpions or giant lizards, he charged in head-on.

After obtaining Stone Shard Launch, he put it into his seventh activation slot.

Pulling monsters from range was much safer than luring them in at close quarters.

He would fling a stone from fifteen meters away, enrage the monster into charging at him, then hit it with an Ambush on the way over.

The rhythm was astonishingly steady.

Kill, then Soul Snatch.

New skills went into the library, while duplicate skills turned into talent experience.

The third Grayrock Giant Lizard filled in Mimicry.

The fourth gave him Tail Sweep.

All four lizard-type skills were collected from four lizards.

He had long since collected all the Hound and Scorpion skills. Continuing to kill them was purely to feed his talent.

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

A positive cycle.

Nearly two hours later,

Gan Ming stabbed the Grayrock Giant Lizard beneath his feet to death, and a string of notifications flashed across his panel.

[Grayrock Giant Lizard (Level 15) killed. Obtained 450 experience points.]

[Level up! Current level: 13]

[Obtained unassigned attribute points: 5]

[Innate talent "Soul Snatch" leveled up! Level 5 → Level 6]

[Maximum simultaneous activations: 7 → 8]

Gan Ming stood beside the lizard's corpse and looked at the final notification.

Eight activation slots.

The suffixes of all his obtained skills had jumped from +5 to +6.

He opened the Soul Snatch skill library and took a look.

Fanged Charge +6: After every three basic attacks, perform a charged attack that deals 240% physical damage.

Bark Armor +6: Increases your defense by 140% for 14 minutes.

Ambush +6: Charge, knock back, and stun for 2.5 seconds. Cooldown: 13 seconds.

Beast Scent +6: Perception range of approximately 85 meters.

Rotten Root Entanglement +6: Entangles the target for 3.5 seconds. Cooldown: 19 seconds.

Potential Stimulation +6: After taking damage, restore 14 health every 5 seconds for 18 seconds.

Everything had increased across the board.

240% Fanged Charge.

Paired with his current 97 physical attack,

by the simplest calculation, a single charged attack dealt 232 base damage.

After subtracting the opponent's defense, a net output of one hundred seventy to one hundred eighty damage was guaranteed.

Of course, the first two basic attacks were not wasted either.

Add in the occasional charging damage from Ambush, and most monsters of the same level or up to two levels lower could not withstand five rotations.

Gan Ming stored the lizard's corpse.

This afternoon had been extraordinarily fruitful.

The total number of Soul Snatch skills in his possession had reached seventeen.

Including the Healing he had learned during awakening,

that made eighteen.

When he walked into the Awakening Center at nine thirty this morning, he had been a blank slate who only knew how to swing a blade.

Now, it was just after four in the afternoon, and he had eighteen skills on him.

More than six hours, eighteen skills.

It sounded absurd just thinking about it.

However, the price was obvious too.

Gan Ming took a deep sniff.

Blech!

The smell on his body could fumigate a cow to death.

Hound blood, Scorpion fluids, chalky dust from lizard scales, along with several hours' worth of his own sweat and grime...

All of that mixed together, fermented by the afternoon heat of over thirty degrees, created a truly heavenly combination.

The key was that Beast Scent was helping him "enjoy" it twice as much.

Gan Ming glanced at the sky.

The sun had already shifted toward the southwest.

It was about time to head back and rest.

There were three reasons for that decision.

First, he had completed his skill acquisition targets.

He had gathered all the skills from the three monster types in the Ruins Zone. Killing more would only increase his talent experience.

It would be less efficient than switching to a new area tomorrow and fighting new species.

Second, his sense of smell was about to fail.

It was not just that he smelled bad.

After killing monsters all afternoon, all sorts of blood and bodily fluids had gotten onto him.

They had already compressed Beast Scent's effective range to a little over fifty meters.

Third, his ring was nearly full.

Its pitiful fifty cubic meters of storage space had been stuffed with more than a dozen monster corpses of various sizes, taking up over forty cubic meters.

With the remaining space, he could fit at most one or two more Scorpions before reaching the limit.

If he kept fighting, he would not be able to take away the extra kills.

He could not exactly carry them on his back, could he?