Chapter 11

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Nie Fan calculated the movement speed of the Redwood Nymph; of the distance it would approximately move in five seconds and the position where he would cast the vines.

It was difficult to precisely evaluate the reaction time of the Redwood Nymph, its displacement and distance from the ground too. Nie Fan imagined that not many from Blade of Tyranny could that either, and with himself being not a prodigy at math, he could only depend on instincts.

As the saying goes: practice makes perfect, and it was no less a measure too.

Instinct was a mysterious thing in itself, and once developed it is a greater strength than most calculations. The latter needs time while instincts were the opposite, instantly accomplished just like classical conditioning.

Nie Fan approached the Redwood Nymph again and began chanting his vine spell.

The ripples of Nature Force naturally caught the creature’s attention, and it immediately bared teeth and fang as it lunged towards Nie Fan.

Focusing intensely, Nie Fan cast his spell.

One long vine shot out from the nearby ground, but it merely brushed past the Redwood Nymph.

The release of the Bloodthirsty Vine was mistimed: when it had finally breached the ground, the Redwood Nymph was already too far for it to hit.

Nie Fan finally realized how difficult it was to use that skill then—if the player misfires even by the slightest fraction, it was one spell wasted and the fight affected adversely.

Even so, Nie Fan was still not discouraged by his second failure. He ran off to the fringes and waited for his skill to cooldown, experimenting with Bloodthirsty Vines repetitively until he finally got it: on his fifth try, the vine grew out rapidly and coiled around the Redwood Nymph.

The beast was bound fixedly and unable to free itself, with two [-18] damage values popped up over its head. Nonetheless, the Redwood Nymph kept flailing its feeble arms to strike the vine—with a crack, the vine was slapped into several different chunks.

[System: Bloodthirsty Vines cast successful, skill proficiency +2]

Nie Fan could not hold back his excitement when he saw his success with Bloodthirsty Vine. It was not easy at all, but he finally succeeded.

The offensive capacity the Bloodthirsty Vines was not bad either—Redwood Nymphs possessed high physical defense, and it was already good enough for Nie Fan’s fireball to deal up to [-8] damage on them since they were six levels above him. On the other hand, the Bloodthirsty Vine restrained it for five seconds while also dealing [-36] damage, which was quite significant. If he used the Black Oil and Mini Fireball combo to attack the creature while it was bound, it wouldn’t take much time for him to slay a Redwood Nymph!

Since the Redwood Nymphs were six levels above Nie Fan, he would gain additional skill proficiency when casting Bloodthirsty Vines on them.

Still, Nie Fan did not really slay a Redwood Nymph, and simply kept casting vines again and again to develop his skill proficiency. However, he did not quickly level up given that he would have a slower rate of developing proficiency at a higher level, although Nie Fan was becoming more familiar with the technique the more vines he released, with his hit rate clearly rising up to 30%. He was very serious on each occasion he cast vines as well, continuously reflecting when he consciously failed, trying everything he could to improve his accuracy.

Moreover, every time his MP was drained, he would look for a safe place to sit and drink Intermediate Mana Spring Water, rapidly recovering his mana points.

However, Nie Fan’s lack of concentrated damage meant that the Redwood Nymph would slowly recover its HP each time he finished releasing vines. Nonetheless, he also managed to get a feel of the Redwood Nymph’s habits and its movement speed as time passed. The accuracy of the Bloodthirsty Vines gradually climbed up to 50% too, and while his EXP bar hardly moved, his proficiency of the skill kept rising.

After almost an hour, his proficiency of Bloodthirsty Vine had reached 226, and would improve by one level. That was only thanks to Nie Fan’s fighting a creature of a much higher level while also using his Intermediate Mana Spring Water and Novice Mana Potion, and it would have taken one or two days for most players to level up the vine skill to two.

Nonetheless, Nie Fan’s level advantage also decreased considerably as most players reached level 10. He was not worried, however, because he would widen the gap once more when he leveled up his vine skill.

That was when his voice chat rang. Xue Yu was calling.

“Nie Fan, I’m at Tajit Village with Suyue now. Where are you?” He asked.

“I’m leveling up my skill outside. What classes did you two pick, by the away?” Nie Fan asked in return.

“I picked Holy Knight; Suyue picked Cleric. Both of us are only Level 3.” Xue Yu sounded listless—their levels were trailing behind after wasting so much time on the road. They could have simply deleted their current player accounts and created new ones if they knew this would be happening, just as they did not know what Nie Fan was planning, telling them to travel all the way here.

Be that as it may, Nie Fan’s eyes sparkled when he heard about their classes: Holy Knight and Cleric was a fine combination!

“Hear me out,” he said into the voice channel, “You could quickly catch in terms of levels. Buy some pouches of Novice Mana Spring Water, and then head to these coordinates east of Tajit Village: 210, 328, 212. Train up to level six over there and then message me again.”

“Alright.” Xue Yu was curious about what was at those coordinates. Would it be worth all their wasted time? Still, it was not too bad since they were fortunate to have gained a few Insight points after their long journey.

In reality, the coordinates Nie Fan provided were spawn points for Evil Goblins. Both Xue Yu and Lin Suyue could deal bonus damage on those creatures and would therefore level up 50% quicker at other locations of the same level. They would therefore quickly improve to level six, after which they could move on to a different spot.

After the conversation with Xue Yu and Lin Suyue was done, Nie Fan continued with his vine training, and soon, his skill bar shone in a white light.

His heart skipped a beat then—Bloodthirsty Vines, Level 2!

Nonetheless, Nie Fan did not pause despite the improvement, and dashed deeper within the Redwood Forest.

Sunlight streamed through between the gaps of the tree crowns and threw speckles upon the ground, adding an air of mystery to the forest. And at the moment, Nie Fan was leaving the small path inside Redwood Forest, evading the Redwood Nymphs and dashing towards a single coordinate.

Making his way past a tall slope full of tree leaves, Nie Fan’s eyes focused on the exposed ground nearby the thick, powerful roots of a Grando Redwood Tree: a tuft of inch-long grass was glinting animatedly, the sunlight shining upon it from above by sheer chance.

The herb itself only had three leaves and was blood-red but crystalline, its luster swirling and leaving the eyes dizzy.

It’s a rare novice-grade herb—a Red Corolla!

Red Corollas were herbs used for creating potions for dizziness and was very rare. In the future, those potions would be needed for entering the Goblin Temple, which was why he has to prepare some since it would be unavailable in the market.

The drop location of those herbs was recorded in his father’s data too—harvesting them right now before the map was explored meant that he would be getting one herb with every coordinate provided. On the other hand, that might not be the case if someone had been there before.

Nie Fan dropped to a crouch and carefully dug out the herbs. The potion quality would drop drastically if he hurt the roots of the plant, and it would also have a lower success rate in being brewed as a potion.

He continued onwards after harvesting the herb, aware that he was near his target after glancing at his coordinates. Looking ahead, he found an enormous Redwood Nymph—its whole body was dark red, and while it did not look too different from ordinary Redwood Nymphs, it stood a dozen feet taller, its lush branch and leaves stretching into the air like a massive canopy while its body burned in white-hot flames. It was simply wandering at the moment, with the redwood trees around it swaying in a lively manner every step it took.

[Burning Redwood Nymph: Level 20 Miniboss, 3500 HP]

It was one of the toughest monsters beneath level 30!

A group of at least thirty players was needed to stand a chance against it, and Nie Fan simply would never survive at his current level. But naturally, he was here to train his skill and not to farm monsters.

Nie Fan slowly made his way around to reach its rear, staying around ten yards away from the Burning Redwood Nymph under the cover of the trees.

The Miniboss had three blind spots, exploitable when coupled with its slow movement speed. Moreover, the mainframe had a certain setting for the creature: under most situations and as long as it did not spot the player, it would not target the player even when attacked. It meant that you could attack it however you want… until its HP became lower than 80% when it would go berserk, unleashing AoE attacks like Fiery Sea to attack every creature alive around itself.

That being said, there would be no problem as long as one was not spotted and did not hurt it lower than 80% of its HP!

Nie Fan hence chanted his spell.

Bloodthirsty Vine!

Having reached Level 2, the cast time for the spell had been reduced from 5 seconds to 4.6 seconds as well.

The Burning Redwood Nymph seemed to felt something then, but when it was about to turn a vine had broken through the ground, coiling around it tightly as a [-2] damage value popped up over its head.

Its level was simply so high that even Bloodthirsty Vines could only cause two points of mandatory damage.

And even before the Bloodthirsty Vines could attack again, the Miniboss had raised its massive wooden arm and slapped it in two.

The creature then paused for 2 seconds, but that was long enough for Nie Fan to rapidly circle around and get to its rear again. Death would be inevitable if he trained his skill here when it was level 1, but at level 2, the restraining effect of Bloodthirsty Vines ensured that Nie Fan had enough time to evade.

Meanwhile, the Burning Redwood Nymph looked around, and returned to its roaming state when it noticed nothing.

Nie Fan did not linger after unleashing his Bloodthirsty Vines, instead adjusted his position relative to the Miniboss’s movements and ensure that he was always in its blind spot. At Level 1, factors such as the long casting time and being unable to slow the creature’s movements would get him spotted by the Burning Redwood Nymph, and Nie Fan would never escape its fire spells even if he could run quickly.

[System: Bloodthirsty Vines cast successful, skill proficiency +5]

Since the Burning Redwood Nymph was twice of Nie Fan’s level, the skill proficiency points he obtained with a successful cast of Bloodthirsty Vine was simply stunning. Moreover, the creature moved so slowly that his accuracy was at 100%!

It takes 800 points of skill proficiency to improve Bloodthirsty Vines from Level 2 to 3, which would usually take five days for most players. On the other hand, it took just an hour of such special, outlandish skill training for Nie Fan’s skill bar to glow white again.

Bloodthirsty Vines was now Level 3.

Moreover, Nie Fan would also seize the chance during the cooldown period for Bloodthirsty Vines to level up Black Oil and Mini Fireball as well, and both soon reached Level 3 too. Furthermore, since the damage for Mini Fireball had increased for almost 30% compared to Level 2, and with the ensuing strengthening of Black Oil, the damage of Nie Fan’s combo with both skills doubled!