Chapter 171 Etching and Charging

As the lowest tier of monsters inhabiting the Aifala Continent, goblins and gray-skinned rats shared many similarities.

Both possessed weak individual strength, relying on group coordination and sheer numbers to overwhelm their opponents. Both lived in the dark, damp, and filthy underground. Both let instinct drive their bodies, recklessly venting their desires.

To some extent, it made perfect sense to call goblins "humanoid gray-skinned rats," or gray-skinned rats "rat goblins."

In actual combat, both gave Xia Nan a very similar experience.

Their fragile bodies were like tender green plants beneath the scythe of a lawnmower. Before they could even touch the hem of Xia Nan's clothes, they were reduced to scattered, severed limbs and shredded flesh amid the piercing, blade-like winds and the wolf howl of [Fang Hunt].

The iron-gray Decapitating Longsword carved a perfect arc through the air, executing an enhanced [Spinning Slash] bolstered by the momentum of his forward charge.

The massive ring of blood mist that subsequently erupted before him proved once again that these rats, just like goblins, possessed incredibly frail defenses.

As for the terrifyingly massive numbers they took pride in—the very numbers they relied on to run rampant through the underground passages—it all seemed pale and ridiculous against an opponent with ultra-high mobility, area-of-effect damage, extreme speed, and abundant stamina.

[Proficiency +1]

[[Fang Hunt] lv3: (27/100)]

...

The all-too-familiar translucent text flashed before his eyes.

Since his advancement, the combat techniques that had been leveling up increasingly slowly through daily training experienced a rapid surge in proficiency thanks to this long-awaited battle.

The roaring wolf head, wrapped in blood and shredded flesh, seemed capable of absorbing the life essence of the weak creatures dying by its fangs, converting it into cold numbers on the Attribute Panel.

His muscles stretched and bulged, blood surging through his body as his heart pumped faster.

As he moved at speeds high enough to faintly blur the air around him, he felt the satisfying drag of flesh tearing against his blade. Agonized shrieks constantly echoed in his ears. Severed limbs and minced meat were swept up by the slipstream, yet the grayish-black rat swarm still filled almost every inch of his vision. Despite it all, Xia Nan no longer felt his previous revulsion and disgust.

They were just like the goblins, which had once left a deep shadow in his mind but were now nothing more than tools to increase his combat technique proficiency.

At this moment, the gray-skinned rats before his eyes seemed to gradually shed their identities as monsters, becoming nothing more than walking "experience packs."

Arooo— A long, fierce wolf howl echoed endlessly through the pipe corridor. For a time, it actually seemed to drown out the massive, collective squeaking of the countless gray-skinned rats filling the air.

Watching the ferocious wolf head, formed from blood and minced flesh, howl and weave its way through the rat swarm ahead...

"Gulp."

Eight-Fingers swallowed hard.

His gaze turned toward Ironhead, who was panting heavily beside him. Ironhead had just managed to return to his side during the brief opening when the rat swarm's attention was drawn by the sudden arrival of this formidable enemy.

"This guy—where did you hire him from?" Eight-Fingers asked instinctively.

A Class Holder!

Without a doubt, a Class Holder!

As the boss of the Gray Shrub Gang, Eight-Fingers had also spent many years working as an adventurer in his youth. Even if his experience wasn't incredibly vast, he had seen his fair share of well-equipped, deeply imposing veterans.

He had even had relatively deep interactions with a few of them.

Therefore, he clearly knew the exaggerated degree to which the gap between people widened once they attained a Class Level.

Eight-Fingers didn't know the identity of this stern young man with short black hair who wielded an iron-gray longsword. He couldn't even distinguish the man's class type due to his rare combat style.

But one thing was certain: this man, who was single-handedly slaughtering his way through almost the entire rat swarm, was absolutely not a novice Class Holder who had recently acquired his Class Level and had yet to fully grasp his own strength.

Thinking of this, he turned his head again, shifting his gaze from the battlefield to look at Ironhead, who hadn't even caught his breath.

"Weren't you out collecting money? How did you know we ran into trouble here?" Eight-Fingers asked in surprise.

Because Ironhead and Xia Nan had appeared one after the other, Eight-Fingers assumed that the subordinate he had sent out to collect protection fees had learned of the dangerous situation in the sewers and specially hired an acquaintance to help.

If that was really the case, he would probably have to promote Ironhead's position within the gang.

At that thought, Eight-Fingers couldn't help but curse inwardly.

'Motherfucker, if you know a ruthless character like this, why the hell are you here working as a thug?'

'I might as well let you sit in my seat as the boss of the Gray Shrub Gang!'

Unaware of what Eight-Fingers was thinking, Ironhead, who had sprinted the whole way and barely managed to make it back, watched the crushing destruction on the battlefield, unable to stop thanking his lucky stars.

'Thank God I had some good sense and didn't offend him. Otherwise... I'd probably have maggots growing on my corpse by now.'

At the same time, he realized he needed to tell the brothers in charge of Fool's Gold Street to be careful in the future. They had to pay special attention to that tailor shop and make sure no ignorant fools went over there to cause trouble.

"N-no," Ironhead replied, panting heavily. "Those two came looking for you, Boss."

Hearing this, Eight-Fingers' heart instantly clenched.

His mind frantically tried to recall whether he had ever offended the two of them, or if any of his recent activities might have involved them.

For a moment, he even started planning an escape route, wondering if he should just slip away right now.

But a second later, when Eight-Fingers watched with his own eyes as that ferocious wolf head in the rat swarm dashed from one end of the pipe corridor to the other in the blink of an eye, he abandoned the idea.

After a moment of thought, he gritted his teeth and casually beckoned a subordinate over.

"You. Yeah, you. Come here!"

"Go bring the chest from under my bed! The small one hidden all the way in the back. Go, quickly!"

"Bzzzt—Boom!"

Ocher-red streams of light, resembling ever-shifting runes, condensed on the iron-gray blade.

Xia Nan could vaguely sense an invisible connection between himself and the red light.

His high-speed body, wrapped in the howling wolf, suddenly halted, and he seamlessly executed a forward thrust with his longsword.

Without deliberately aiming, the red-coated blade pierced into the body of an unlucky gray-skinned rat, causing it to squeal and struggle in agony.

Meanwhile, the ocher-red light—which had converged on the blade in a peculiar manner, flowing and radiating a dangerous, unstable aura—did not detonate upon the violent impact of the thrust.

Instead, it obediently waited until Xia Nan gave a mental command before suddenly blooming in an explosion.

It turned into a miniature ocher-red firework, instantly engulfing the impaled gray-skinned rat in a roaring blast, along with portions of three or four of its kin nearby.

[Proficiency +1]

[[Gravity Etching] lv1: (62/100)]

Whoosh— His attention was slightly distracted by the translucent text floating before his eyes. His body, which had briefly paused from using the combat technique, was already moving again, enveloped by the wolf head.

This was different from [Fang Hunt], which had already completed the qualitative leap from lv2 to lv3 and entered the "Proficient" tier.

[Gravity Etching], as a combat technique accompanying the [Meteor Blade Hunter] class, had only been acquired a little over a month ago.

Its newly initiated "Novice" proficiency level of lv1 allowed its proficiency to increase at a relatively fast rate.

Right now, Xia Nan had already trained it up to over sixty points.

Moreover, the training process, in his view, was clearly much simpler than that of other combat techniques.

Setting aside [Gravity Control]—which still had a pitiful 3 proficiency points even now—he could just take [Fang Hunt] as an example.

Under normal daily circumstances without actual combat, even if he spent an entire afternoon exclusively training [Fang Hunt]—a dash-type combat technique that had already reached lv3—he wasn't guaranteed to gain even a single point of proficiency. The progress was sluggish.

But [Gravity Etching] was different.

Its intrinsically low proficiency level was one factor.

On the other hand, it was also due to its consumable usage style of "3/3" (capable of three consecutive uses under normal conditions) and its cooldown timer, which charged once every six hours.

This meant that when Xia Nan trained this combat technique—under the premise of habitually keeping two uses in reserve to handle any sudden battles—if he wanted to avoid wasting a single charge and give the technique the most thorough practice possible, he had to precisely time it around its "charges once every six hours" window.

Whenever the six-hour cooldown passed and the uses recovered to "3/3", Xia Nan needed to immediately expend that one charge right then and there to maximize his rate of gaining proficiency.

Through his experimentation over the past few days, he had even flexibly integrated the skill's cooldown time with his daily routine.

He would practice it once before bed. His six hours of sleep perfectly covered the charging time, allowing him to practice it again right after waking up.

Then came washing up and his daily morning training until noon. After another six hours, it would be fully charged again, and he would burn that charge on practice.

In the afternoon, he would either train or rest depending on the situation, use it once before dinner, and then use it one last time late at night before going to sleep.

Perhaps it was precisely because of this limit on the combat technique's uses that its training efficiency was so high, improving almost every single day.

Furthermore, it didn't require the dull, sustained, and lengthy grinding that other combat techniques demanded.

He simply had to wait for it to finish charging and practice with that one charge.

In just a few dozen days, its proficiency progress bar was already more than half full.

It could totally be described as effortless.

But on the flip side, its fixed charging time also locked the upper limit of its training speed.

With a charge arriving only once every six hours, he couldn't put in extra effort even if he wanted to.

It was fine for now while the level was low and the proficiency climbed rapidly.

But once it reached the later lv3 and lv4, the training speed for [Gravity Etching] would likely plummet.

Xia Nan only hoped that as the combat technique's level increased in the future, the number of uses for [Gravity Etching] or its charging duration would also receive corresponding upgrades.

The battle didn't last very long.

As if exhibiting a common trait of swarm-fighting creatures, when the gray-skinned rats were reduced to shredded meat amid the wolf howls, and their numbers—which had originally carpeted the ground—rapidly diminished at a visible rate while their enemy showed not a hint of fatigue, these sewer-dwelling rats were finally overcome by their survival instincts. The primal urge to live suppressed the frenzied, bloodthirsty mental state brought on by the approaching Feast of the Moon.

Starting with two or three at first, and then shifting into massive waves, they dragged their long tails and fled in a panic toward the exit crevices hidden in the darkness around the pipe corridor.

The dark, complex terrain, combined with the scattered formation of the fleeing rats, dispelled Xia Nan's thought of giving chase.

He merely gripped his longsword and executed [Fang Hunt] to sweep through the denser clusters of the swarm twice more.

After that, not a single gray-skinned rat on the battlefield dared to attack him again.

A figure flashed in the corner of his eye.

Accompanied by approaching footsteps, Wood, dressed in black leather armor, appeared before Xia Nan.

The blades of his dual daggers were stained with a bit of blood. There were no obvious tears on his clothing, though a few drops of sweat beaded on his forehead.

He had, of course, also participated in the battle against the rat swarm.

However, his [Rogue] class and the combat techniques he had mastered all seemed oriented toward one-on-one, single-target combat.

He hadn't possessed a good method for dealing with these hundreds and thousands of rats.

And because he had headed out in a hurry, he hadn't brought any throwing items like "Fire Oil Bombs" with him.

Thus, he could only roam the edges of the battlefield, catching any stragglers slipping past Xia Nan, or focusing on taking down a few of the slightly larger gray-skinned rats.

Since his combat style was inherently like that, and he was still willing to take the time to help complete the quest, Xia Nan naturally wouldn't hold it against him.

Seeing the man walk over, Xia Nan nodded in greeting.

In contrast, the look Wood gave Xia Nan grew strange once more, much like when they had just met in the tavern and he realized Xia Nan had already attained a Class Level.

Evidently, Xia Nan's performance in combat had already exceeded his understanding of a typical newly advanced Class Holder.

If he hadn't known that Forgan had already left Rivervale Town and likely wouldn't be planning to take on an apprentice anytime soon, he would have suspected that Forgan had passed down his tribe's most closely guarded secret techniques to this young man in front of him.

Frowning, Xia Nan plucked a few rat hairs stuck to the surface of his Decapitating Longsword.

Sheathing his sword, Xia Nan stood in place, sweeping his gaze over the scattered rat corpses around him, a faint look of regret slipping into his expression.

It was different from those high-level monsters, whose organs and materials alone could fetch high prices at relevant shops.

Bottom-tier monsters with massive populations like goblins and gray-skinned rats possessed bodies that held absolutely no value for recovery.

The former were somewhat acceptable; one might occasionally loot some broken equipment or mineral crystals from a Goblin Lair.

But the latter wouldn't even leave a single bone behind.

Their only potential value might be to haul away some of the relatively intact corpses and see if any restaurants in the city were willing to buy them.

'I wonder how much they could sell for. It'd be great if they were worth a gold coin.'

'But with so many of them, can I really haul them all out by myself?'

The habits formed over his few months as an adventurer meant that after a battle ended, Xia Nan always thought about looting some spoils.

However, these filthy, long-haired rats in front of him really didn't seem to hold anything valuable.

He pondered this in his heart.

On the other side, the rescued members of the Gray Shrub Gang were already walking toward Xia Nan, led by their gang boss, Eight-Fingers.