Single Player Only Chapter 25

SPO Chapter 25: Sergeant

The way the skill was unleashed was different from Yue Qiang’s expectations.

At first, he had thought that the process would be clicking a hotkey and watching a skill animation. But contrary to his expectations, a large f.u.xi Hexagram had appeared on his targeted Zhao Soldier and completely covered the little area on his body. A pointer was jumping here and there inside the diagram in every direction; blinking until Yue Qiang’s eyes were a blur.

After pondering over it for a moment, he thought he understood.

This probably meant that he should aim at the pointer with his cursor and click on it.

This new skill had an incredibly huge degree of freedom and control. In principle, the pointer meant the bearing of the his enemy’s weak point at this very moment. He would maximize the damage dealt to his enemy by attacking the bearing where the pointer was located inside the f.u.xi Hexagram.

The diagram was very small and the pointer was moving rapidly. It would be very difficult to accurately click the pointer with the cursor.

However, Yue Qiang had been gaming for many years and his hand-eye coordination was pretty good. The first time he clicked, he had only missed by a pixel.

– 35!

This damage was acceptable.

Once the cooldown was up he used it again, and this time he had locked onto the pointer’s position and clicked the cursor accurately and agilely.

– 107!

Great damage! Yue Qiang himself was surprised by the damage he dealt. He counted quietly in his mind: his Strength value was at 15 right now, and 15*8=120. No wonder! The moment the pointer’s position was clicked he would deal 8 times the damage based on his Strength value! Even after minusing defense it was still over 100 points of damage.

What a powerful skill!

The Zhao Soldier’s HP that was still at a relatively healthy state just now had instantly dropped more than half a bar in an instant. The animation of the HP dropping ma.s.sively was very similar to the animation in ‘King of Fighters’. Yue Qiang felt thrilled to the very bones watching it.

It took both effort and concentration to unleash this skill, so Yue Qiang accidentally took a ‘Vertical Strike’ skill from another enemy and lost 32 HP. But in comparison to the ma.s.sive amounts of damage he dealt back towards the enemy, this minor hit was negligible.

Suddenly he felt childish and took out the weapon ‘A Black Iron Rod’ from his backpack. Then he jabbed it at the head of the Zhao Soldier who had been beaten silly by him.

A black mark was imprinted onto the poor guy’s head as a small – 8 number popped out. Yue Qiang very easily completed the kill.

There was a reason to use the iron rod and not his skill.

The skill ‘Break Fist – Killing Style, One LVL 1’ depletes too much stamina. He had only used it two times and he was left with only 50 or more stamina points in his stamina gauge. Although stamina would regenerate over time, he could not wantonly consume it. He must preserve a certain amount of stamina for the life saving skill Run LVL 2.

The other reason to use the iron rod was that although the weapon was black and did not have any attacking power at all, it had a super satisfying body hit sound effect. And not only did it have an awesome impact feel, the feeling when you jab an enemy and leave a black mark on their body was just as great.

Besides that, Yue Qiang also had another idea. He had researched many ways to use this iron rod and he discovered that this toy’s usage was very similar to the long spears of ancient warfare. You just jab with them, right? Plus this game’s degree of freedom was so big that it was probable that weapon use also had a proficiency level. If he was proficient with using this iron rod now, then in the future, he would not need to train his proficiency again when he got a long spear or pike type weapon.

Also, he checked the weapon stats of a long spear once and found out that even the weapon stats of the most basic level of Zhao Soldier was pretty good.

After taking out an enemy, the other Zhao Soldier’s morale had decreased immediately.. It looked like the ‘Cooperative Combat LVL 2’ buff had lost its effect.

Yue Qiang suddenly had an idea. Was it possible to chat with the enemy?

He opened the dialogue system and typed, “I hid pretty well at the beginning. How did you find me?”

“We have the blessing of our lord Sergeant’s skill and can discover enemy troops who are secretly spying on us.”

So that’s how it is. It looks like that lord ‘Sergeant’ he speaks of is a mini boss type of character.

Yue Qiang did not type anything else and with his blackish iron rod fought against this remaining enemy. He was now a lot more practiced with the usage of every skill. His iron rod attack was always able to strike at the enemy’s wounds and deal true damage that ignored defense and he only needed to use his ‘Run’ skill to avoid the enemy’s ‘Vertical Strike’. As for the normal attacks; those that dealt – 8 or – 9 was negligible even if he really couldn’t avoid them.

The most important thing now was to wait for his stamina to regenerate.

Yue Qiang had not forgotten that this quest’s difficulty was Dark Red!

He had escaped death by the skin of his teeth when he completed the quest the last time. Although he had returned with enhanced Strength and Vitality, plus an incomplete version of the skill ‘Killing Style, One’, the system still recognized the quest difficulty as Dark Red. That must mean that there were some powerful enemies that hadn’t appeared yet.

It might very well be this Sergeant spoken of by the Zhao Soldier.

He slowly played a war of attrition against this Zhao Soldier, and as he watched his stamina slowly regaining to near full he finally threw out a ‘Break Fist – Killing Style, One LVL 1’. This time he had made full preparations, and when the f.u.xi Hexagram had appeared his eyes were almost glued onto the screen.

As the cursor swiftly and accurately hit the pointer, yet another – 120 that popped out.

He had successfully killed the Zhao Soldier.

The Zhao Soldier’s body collapsed heavily, and while he died a dialog box appeared, “d.a.m.n it, to think that the general had sent us here. If we were to attack the Muo Family’s Great Camp…”

Before he could finish the name of his avatar had turned from Zhao Soldier to Zhao Soldier’s Corpse.

Yue Qiang didn’t pay too much attention to his words and straight up looted the body.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t anything good. Other than a few sc.r.a.ppy knife money, both their weapons were Zhao Army’s Standard Halberds. It wasn’t a bad weapon, but Yue Qiang couldn’t equip it anyway so he was too lazy to look. What he was concerned for now was the amount of combat experience he could get.

The last time he had taken down an injured soldier, and this time it was two healthy ones. He should get quite the amount of combat experience.

After he was finished looting the bodies, both their skills had returned to level one as expected.

System Message: You have acquired combat experience! Verifying difficulty level… the difficulty of the battle you performed is Average; acquire 0% additional combat experience. Verifying risk level… there is no danger whatsoever in the battle you have performed; acquire 0% additional combat experience. Your combat experience gain rate is 100%. Total combat experience is…

60 points!

Yue Qiang was stunned. He knew that there was such a thing called ‘combat experience gain rate’ (T/N: some of you may notice that the above message is not consistent with chapter 15; but that is the author’s mistake and not mine lol) in this game’s combat experience. The more powerful an enemy was, the greater the danger his character faced, the more additional combat experience points he would get.

It was true that he didn’t face any sort of danger in this battle, but even then it shouldn’t give only 60 combat experience points.

Plus, these two Zhao Soldiers also had an additional ‘Cooperative Combat’ skill.

Yue Qiang read through the system message log thoroughly once more, and finally he found a small line of bracketed text.

(System Message: Subsequent combat experience from killing the same type of enemy will be one tenth of the standard value)

So that’s how it is. This puts an end to the loophole of leveling up skills infinitely, Yue Qiang thought. It looked like he might need a different way to swiftly increase his own skill levels.

He closed the quest status window and lifted his head to observe. Not too far away, a man walked slowly towards him.

A name was listed above his avatar: Zhao Sergeant!

This fellow’s stoutness was comparable to the village’s blacksmith Tan Xiong, and it wasn’t a completely defenseless coa.r.s.e clothing that he put on, but a leather armor.

The speed in which he was rushing over wasn’t quick. There was even a line inside the dialog box beneath his avatar saying, “So you’re the one who killed my two subordinates?”

Judging from his spirit, this enemy’s stats probably far exceeded the two Zhao Soldiers.

This was probably why ‘Defend Yue Village’ was cla.s.sified as Dark Red difficulty.

Yue Qiang hurriedly moved his cursor over to his avatar and right clicked in attempt to check his stats.

However, after he clicked, surprise appeared on his face.