Chapter 18 Disappointed With The Outcome

We both engaged in fierce staring contest, with both sides waiting for the other to make its move.

If I attack first and it succeeds in evading my move, I will be in trouble, the same goes for my opponent if it attacks first.

The both of us, bidding our time and waiting for an opening.

This monster is much more intelligent than I thought.

I made a feint move as I stretched my leg forward in pretense of me running towards it, but the monster still stood its ground without changing its stance.

Seeing that the monster did not take the bait, I stopped in my tracks and retreated back to my position.

I never knew rats could be this intelligent?,

Maybe their rate of intelligence has to do with their body structure?,

The bigger the rat, the more intelligent it will be.

If that is how their intelligence is operated,

I should not be surprised if this rat in front of me is as smart as a human or even smarter, considering its size is times two the size of an adult human male.

Thanks to having the additional four hundred stats each,

I can now compete with it in Agility to some extent, and with the effect of meta strength being activated, I caught up to it in physical prowess.

Currently we are both playing on even grounds with neither of us having the lead.

I broke the silence as I mustered up my strength and dashed at it with full speed,

I got to a range where with just a few more steps, and my hand could touch it.

Before I made my way towards the rat, I had already activated my Thorn Manipulation Skill.

Thorn Manipulation is a skill that allows me to produce thorns from my body and change the shape to what I want it to be.

It is a useful skill in battle that gives me an advantage of making my own weapons with thorns,

The one disadvantage in it is the slow activation time,

To produce just one thorn from my body, requires me to wait at least close to a minute to succeed.

To do that, I have to buy some time during that one minute or I constantly keep producing thorns from my body and risk exhausting my Mp.

That obviously wasn't going to be enough to up my chances at survival,

I had to think of an alternative to which I did.

The moment I encounter an enemy, I activate the Thorn Manipulation Skill.

Although the pain will be even more severe, but I had to train myself to keep moving about instead of staying in one spot while producing the thorn from my body.

That was the plan I came up with and is also what I am going to use against this giant rat.

Upon coming into contact with the giant rat, I activated the thorn Manipulation Skill.

To buy some time for myself, I engaged the giant rat in a staring contest while hiding the hand that the thorn will come out from.

When I noticed that the thorn is halfway done, I ran over to the giant rat to attack it.

After getting within its range, I stretch out my hand specifically the palm, that has finished producing the thorn and aimed it at its eyes.

It would think that I still have a few more steps to make before I got to it,

but with the length of the thorn, I can cover that distance without having to move.

A perfect sneak attack i made up.

With its fast reflexes, the rat managed to evade it and only got lightly scratched in the sides with the thorn.

Seeing that my attack did no major damage, I shifted back and created some distance between us.

The giant rat did not relent as it followed my movements and swung its paw at me.

I raised my guard up and tanked its paw with my body,

The recoil of me tanking it's attack sent my body flying backwards and hitting the wall with a big bang.

The giant rat did not give me anytime to tend to my body after I fell against the wall,

It jumped at me, with the intent of crushing my body with its weight.

I got up on my knee and rolled away from where the giant rat was going to jump to.

I rolled my body back to where the giant rat was standing and attempted to stab it with the thorn I had produced when my body hit the wall.

I got a hit in its underbelly but it was not deep enough to cause any fatal damage.

With the thorn stuck in its underbelly, I shifted further away from the giant rat.

Its body vibrated for a little while as it let's out gas from its anus.

That is one hell of a fart.

It's fart is in a purple gaseous form, and it stinks so badly.

But stinking is not the only thing it does,

It seems it has some kind of poisonous effect in it,

proof of that is my Hp dropping without me having any physical wounds.

I have to end this early before I die of a fart attack.

Skill activation, Dust Manipulation.

At first, I thought being able to alter the shape of dust is one cheat move, but after using it once, I realized how useless it is in offense.

I once manipulated the dust in my surroundings and changed its form to a dagger, but I was disappointed with the outcome.

I wanted to test out the effects of the dust dagger and stabbed it on a rock I picked up,

Rather than stab the rock, It ended up returning to a gaseous state after making contact with the rock.

I then came to a conclusion that the dust manipulation is a completely useless skill with no formal usefulness in combat.

That was my conclusion, until I came up with a more effective way to use it.

Sure, the dust Manipulation is useless but that is if it is used alone.

To make the dust Manipulation Skill more useful, I needed to use it as a supporting type skill to the other skills,

Dust Manipulation, Detection, Metal strength and Thorn Manipulation.

Only by using it this way, can the dust Manipulation's skill true value shine in combat.

I activate the dust Manipulation and gathered the dust around my enemy, rendering it blind to its surroundings outside of the dust,

Next is the activation of Detection.

My enemy is not the only one that is going to go blind in the dust,

I also will if I enter it, but with the detection I won't be needing my physical sight.

Metal strength for enhancing my physical ability to carry out the next several consecutive moves I am about to do,

Thorn Manipulation for producing Thorns in both of my hands that will allow me to deal open wounds to the enemy.

With the thorns in my hand produced and my body enhanced,

I dashed into the dust filled area and started dealing blows upon blows to my enemy from all sides without stopping for a second.

Relenting on my attack is the same as giving out my location,

I need to continue my attacks until I am sure it is dead.