Jun Wu lay sprawling on the ground, his chest heaving up and down, his body covered in blood.
He had a deep gash on his thigh, his bones visible. On his lower stomach was a dagger lodged deep.
He winced in pain, blood dripping from his lips. Every fibre in his body was pain.
His vacant eyes stared at the forest sky and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
'Father… Mother, Little Sister, I promise to those that killed you…'
'Y-You can see… This is just the beginning.'
'I promise… I'll avenge you all.'
Laying on the ground, he rested for a couple of minutes before he struggled to get on his feet.
He groaned, gritting his teeth. His body trembled, and his leg was unstable from the pain.
Still, he grit his teeth and pushed his body forward toward his leather bag.
Struggling, he got to his leather bag. He opened it and took out the copper powder.
He applied the powder to his injury and sharp pain shot through his nerves.
He groaned, veins appeared on his forehead, but he endured the pain.
He tore a portion from his robe and wrapped it around his thigh.
He looked at the dagger, lodged deep into his lower stomach and gasped heavily.
Slowly, he withdrew the dagger. His body tensed up, sweat dripped from his body.
Blood gushed out from the injury like a broken dam, but he did not hesitate to apply the copper powder before he wrapped it with a thick cloth.
After applying copper powder to all his injuries, he was relieved. He could feel the copper working.
The pain had subsided a bit.
His gaze wandered around, and it was then he noticed the chaos around him.
The mutilated corpses. Many had lost a portion of their body.
Hardly did the Fierce Tiger Gang members have a complete corpse.
The devastating attack from his hammer shattered their bones, turning their muscles into a puddle of blood.
A thick stench of blood permeated the air. The stink of blood could be smelled from over 50 meters away.
Jun Wu watched the gory scene without any change in his expression.
Although this was the first time he had killed a fellow human, he did not feel anything.
He had read many would feel uncomfortable during their first killing, but he felt none.
And he did not care.
To him, what was a little feeling compared to his revenge?
After recovering a bit of strength, he began to search the bodies of the Fierce Tiger Gang members.
From what he could pick from their conversation, he knew they were returning from their wicked actions.
He opened the heavy sack and found many miscellaneous things.
To many, this might be appealing, but to him, it was nothing but a burden.
When he reached their captain, he found a small pouch tied to his waist.
When he opened the pouch, he found 50 copper coins and 5 silver coins.
Looking at the gleaming silver coins, a faint smile crept up his face.
"With this, I can buy a much better powder for my injury," he mused.
He kept the money and continued his search. Just as he was about to give up, he found a thick beast hide, hiding beneath his clothes.
"What's this?" he mused.
When he opened the beast hide, he found tiny words written on it.
It was a martial art training manual — Mountain Stance Method.
A few stances that could refine the skin and make it impervious to normal weapons.
Also, it gave people strength beyond ordinary humans.
"So, if I follow this training manual, it would allow me to break through to the Skin Tempering Realm…" he mused and contemplated for a moment.
"But I'm already stronger than ordinary people. Besides, didn't I just defeat a Skin Tempering warrior?" He tilted his head in confusion.
He felt he was stronger than the famous martial artist.
None of the gangsters could take three of his hammer strikes without turning into a muddle of blood.
"Forget it… I'll find out when it is time."
Without thinking too much about it, he kept the training manual and continued his search.
He hoped to find more manuals but found none. But he was not disappointed.
The money and manual were just additional gains. His goal was to avenge his family, and everything else was just additional.
When he was done with the search, he finally turned his attention to the series of notifications on his retina.
Throughout the battle, he had been receiving one notification after another but did not dare check them.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ +100 EXP | Level 2: 470/1000
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ +200 EXP | Level 2: 670/1000
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ +100 EXP | Level 2: 770/1000
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ +200 EXP | Level 2: 970/1000
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
[...]
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Endurance +5 Stamina +5 Strength +7 Attack +6
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Heavy Swing +4 (Max) One-Handed Wield +6 (Max) Ironbreaker Smash +5 (Max)
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Uncommon Skill Unlocked.
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Mountain Crash:
┃ A powerful overhead smash that channels raw strength into a single, earth-shaking blow.
┃ Deals massive blunt force damage and momentarily stuns the enemy on impact.
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Iron Tempest:
┃ A rapid spinning strike with the hammer held low, using momentum to strike all enemies in close range.
┃ Effective for crowd control and breaking enemy formations.
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
For a moment, Jun Wu was overwhelmed by the rows of notifications.
He noticed he had broken through to Level 3. Also, his strength had broken the 20 mark.
Apart from that, all his skills had reached max. They couldn't be improved any longer.
Just then, he felt a new stream of information appear in his mind.
Suddenly, he felt he could wield the hammer a lot better than before.
Although he was strong, he was not yet proficient with the hammer, but now…
As long as he wielded the hammer, the force would be ten times greater than before.
"Is this the effect of breaking to the next level?" he mused, and a light smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
He was confident that if he met the Fierce Tiger Gang team once again, he wouldn't struggle against them.
It would only take him a couple of hammer strikes to send them to the afterlife.
A deep grin appeared on his face as he looked at the new skill he unlocked.
"So skills also have grades," he mused, his grin deepened.
"With this, I don't have to fear the Fierce Tiger Gang like before." He took his hammer and swung it.
Ahhh!
He groaned, and blood seeped from the corner of his lips.
"Ah, how could I forget my injury?" he shook his head and dragged his body, leaving the forest.
Now, his stats gave him confidence for what's to come.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ 🛠️ Innate Weapon: Hammer.
┃ Level: 3 (500 / 2000 EXP)
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━ Stats ━━━━━━━┓
┃ 🧱 Endurance : 18
┃ ⚡ Stamina : 17
┃ 💪 Strength : 25
┃ ⚔️ Attack : 16
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━ Skills ━━━━━━━━┓
┃ 🔨 Heavy Swing : Lv 10 (Max)
┃ ✋ One-Handed Wield : Lv 10 (Max)
┃ 🔨 Ironbreaker Smash : Lv 10 (Max)
┃ ━━━━━ Uncommon ━━━━━
┃ Mountain Crash : Lv 0
┃ Iron Tempest : Lv 0
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛