Chapter 11 - Chapter 11 (1/2)

As soon as he muttered that out, a gentle blue aura enveloped him.

'Uh... isn't this sensation.... that?'

Right away, he recalled Yi Ju-Hui's face. When he was getting healed by her, he felt the sensation similar to what he was feeling right now.

If he were to put this feeling into words, then it'd be like a refreshing blast of air entering his lungs before leaving again – something like that?

Shu....

He felt the blue aura slowly dissipating. For some reason, he kinda felt a bit rueful.

Jin-Woo got up from the floor and lightly jumped up and down on the spot and stretched his body this way and that.

"How can this be?!"

His heart that felt like it might explode was beating calmly now, and his rough breathing had stabilised as well. He didn't even feel a speck of fatigue. His body that was on the brink of collapsing, felt refreshed as if he just got up from a night of good rest.

The effect, in other words, was top-notch.

'Isn't this really amazing?'

Jin-Woo's eyes now resembled circles. He wasn't sure whether this was some kind of magic or not, but this phenomenon could change him in the most astonishing way, without a doubt.

In that case, would those 'Stat points' be the same?

When Jin-Woo shifted his gaze around, he spotted a small box resting on top of the bed as well as his own Stat Window floating in the air.

'I guess that thing over there is the random box....'

The important thing was his Stat Window, though. This window displayed simple information about himself.

Name: Seong Jin-Woo

Level: 1

Class: None

Title: None

HP: 100

MP: 10

Tiredness: 0

[Stat]

Strength: 10

Stamina: 10

Agility: 10

Intelligence: 10

Perception: 10

(Available points to distribute: 3)

[Skills]

Passive skills:

- (Unknown) Lv. Max

- Tenacity Lv. 1

Active skills:

- Dash Lv. 1

The stat he saw was quite similar to a starting character from an online game he used to play many moons ago.

'Is this my current Stat value?'

His current level was 1. All of his stats were also at the bottom of the heap, too.

If he thought about the current reality of what he was like, the one where he was ranked as the weakest even among the rank E Hunters, then there was nothing to be surprised about there.

What he paid attention to was the 'Skills' column.

A passive skill called 'Tenacity' and an active one called 'Dash'.

For some reason, he felt rather familiar with them.

"Ah. I remember now. Yesterday...."

Yesterday, or to be more precise, back in the early dawn of this morning, he remembered hearing those words while being chased around by the centipedes in the penalty zone.

It happened probably after three hours of him constantly running for his dear life. He was suddenly greeted by a couple of new messages.

['Skill: Dash Lv. 1' has been learned.]

['Skill: Tenacity Lv. 1' has been learned.]

Back then, he was far too busy running to think about what they could mean, but it was a different story now. Jin-Woo confirmed the explanations available for the skills.

[Skill: Dash Lv. 1]

Active skill.

Mana required to activate: 5

The constant running fortified your legs. When this skill is activated, your movement speed will increase by 30%. During its activation, 1 Mana will be spent every minute.

[Skill: Tenacity Lv. 1]

Passive skill.

Mana required to activate: None.

You possess untiring tenacity. When your stamina drops below 30%, this skill will automatically activate and reduce all damage received by 50%.

'Did I learn 'Dash' and 'Tenacity' because I stubbornly ran around like there's no tomorrow?'

That seemed to be about right.

In other words, if he kept on repeating a certain action over and over again, and happen to meet the requirement conditions, he would be able to learn new skills.

"Holy cow!"

Wasn't this an incredible advantage?

The thing was, the skills individual Hunters used were acquired when they went through the Awakening process, or learnt through the items called 'Rune' Stones that dropped very rarely from monsters ranked A and above.

Understandably, the prices of these Rune Stones would start from the lowest of several hundred thousand Won to dozens of billion Wons at the top end.

At the last auction, the most expensive Rune Stone was sold for around ₩70,000,000,000. (TL: over $62 million)

Apparently, this Rune Stone contained a skill that could revert many injured people back to their original conditions in one go, and it was snapped up by an anonymous overseas rank S Healer who had reputedly emptied out his entire life savings.

Jin-Woo's heart began beating faster.

A skill that increased his movement speed, as well as another that decreased the amount of damage received.

Sure, they weren't as good as those skills that sold for billions of Won, but they were still amazing to him regardless. And he got to learn those for free, too!

His overall magic energy value was too low, so it'd be hard to use them properly, but still, it was better than not knowing them, wasn't it?

'Besides, the Tenacity skill doesn't even need Mana to activate, too.....'

It seemed that this Mana thing was his magic energy. If that was the case, then even though he didn't have a lot of magic energy, he'd be able to freely use the Tenacity skill. That alone was a huge gain.

"By the way... what could this 'unknown' thing be?"

[Skills]

Passive skills:

- (Unknown) Lv. Max

The 'Unknown' that occupied one whole slot of the passive skills column.

Since it was located in the passive column, that meant it activated automatically, but there was not one explanation or any information on it.

'Not even a single clue, huh.'

The amount of information he could learn was just too limited. Even if he burst his brain trying to figure it out, he knew there wouldn't be any answers. So, Jin-Woo shifted his gaze to elsewhere.

'Stat points, is it....?'

Three additional Stat points he got as a reward remained there, still to be distributed.

[Stat]

Strength: 10

Stamina: 10

Agility: 10

Intelligence: 10

Perception: 10

(Available points to distribute: 3)

'I'm sure this means I can increase any one of my Stats by three points, right?'

There were five categories in the list of Stats. Maybe because he was a mere level 1, the values of each stat were 'simple', to say the least. However, if he considered how reality operated, he couldn't take these stats lightly at all.

If his abilities changed for real with a moment's decision, then who in this world would be able to casually make such choices?

Jin-Woo's expression became serious.

'Strength is no doubt talking about my physical power....'

He could more or less figure out what 'Strength', 'Stamina' and 'Agility' could mean. After all, those were the kind of 'Stats' one would often encounter in video games.