Inside the forest, a boy wielding a heavy hammer faced a towering Stone Hide Boar over three meters tall.
Its hide was as tough as stone, making it a formidable beast to encounter.
The battle raged fiercely, both locked in a deadly struggle.
Jun Wu rolled aside, narrowly avoiding the Stone Hide Boar's lethal claw. He quickly sprang to his feet, gripping his heavy hammer tightly.
He swung it down with all his strength, aiming to break through the beast's formidable stone-like hide.
Bang!
The heavy hammer struck the Stone Hide Boar's back, and a powerful tremor went through its body. For a moment, the Stone Hide Boar froze, its eyes full of feral intent.
This was the effect of the Ironbreaker Smash Skill, and Jun Wu would not miss such an obvious opening.
He swung the hammer with all his might, using both One-Handed Wield and Ironbreaker Smash Skill.
Feeling the imminent danger, the Stone Hide Boar let out a guttural growl and recovered from the stun.
Unfortunately, it was too late.
The hammer struck true, bypassing its stone hide, pulverizing the beast's trembling organs.
It staggered forward, crying out in misery.
Falling to the ground, it never rose again.
Blood erupted wildly from its mouth, nose, and ears, marking the end of the fierce and brutal confrontation.
It died from the inside out.
Watching the dead beast, Jun Wu let out a sigh of relief, his chest rising and falling.
Since he entered the forest, this was the third beast he had taken down.
With each battle, he was getting better and could react faster.
Just then, he heard a chime in his mind.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Attack +2 Strength +1 Ironbreaker Smash +1
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ +50 EXP | Level 2 (370/1000)
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Looking at the notifications, a smile tugged at the corner of his lips before he looked at his stats:
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ 🛠️ Innate Weapon: Hammer.
┃ Level: 2 ( 370 / 1000 EXP )
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━ Stats ━━━━━━━┓
┃ 🧱 Endurance : 13
┃ ⚡ Stamina : 14
┃ 💪 Strength : 18
┃ ⚔️ Attack : 10
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━ Skills ━━━━━━━━┓
┃ 🔨 Heavy Swing : Lv 6
┃ ✋ One-Handed Wield : Lv 9
┃ 🔨 Ironbreaker Smash : Lv 5
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
"I'm almost halfway to level up to level 3," he muttered. He looked at his attack and nodded.
With the increase in attack, he noticed it was easier to deliver a killing blow than when he only depended on strength.
"I should look for one more beast to hunt before I return," he mused before he went deeper into the forest.
After walking for ten minutes, he encountered a Moss Horn Deer.
With two heavy strikes, his hammer shattered the skull of the deer. With satisfaction, he carried the deer and returned to the village.
At the entrance of the village, children were playing, chasing each other when they noticed Jun Wu's arrival.
Watching the big Moss Horn Deer on his shoulder, they were stunned for a moment before they rushed into the village to tell everyone.
Quickly, men and women came out of their homes to see him. However, his vacant eyes stopped anyone from moving close to him.
But that did not stop them from whispering.
"Where did he get such a big deer?"
"Did he perhaps steal it?"
"Why would you say that? Can't you see his body is covered in bruises and blood?"
"That deer would fetch close to 10 copper coins."
Unbothered by their gossip, Jun Wu returned to where he lived. Uncle Kai was not home, but he did not care.
He took a cold bath and changed his clothes.
"Kid, I heard you brought a big deer?" Uncle Kai's loud voice echoed inside the room as he entered.
"Yes, I've placed it in the kitchen," Jun Wu responded, his face cold and devoid of any emotion.
"Come, let me teach you how to process it. Next time, you'll be able to do it yourself." He did not ask where he found the beast.
Both of them had reached a tacit understanding.
Jun Wu did not respond but followed him to the kitchen.
After that day, Jun Wu would depart early in the morning and return to the village with a dead beast.
What all the beasts had in common were their skulls brutally shattered.
At first, no one noticed this pattern, but when they did, the villagers looked at Jun Wu differently.
They could still remember the helpless boy that watched his family murdered in cold blood.
But now, that boy had long vanished and was replaced with something none of them knew.
His frail body was replaced with firm, toned muscle. Previously, he was calm and approachable, but now, no one dared to get close to him.
His cold and expressionless face deterred everyone.
When he entered the sitting room, he found Uncle Kai seated.
"Kid, don't bring the beast home any longer. You can sell it directly in the store," Uncle Kai said helplessly.
At first, he was happy at Jun Wu's development, thinking it was a one-time thing. But he was wrong—every day, he would return with a beast.
How could this be?
Even the village hunter teams were not this lucky.
Even a fool would know this was no luck.
What he couldn't understand was how Jun Wu could grow that strong in just over two months.
His growth was unlike anything he had ever seen.
"Alright," Jun Wu responded and went to his room.
Just like that, Jun Wu continued his hunt, growing stronger each passing day while selling the beasts to the village store.
Like every other day, Jun Wu headed into the forest with his hammer. Today, he planned to venture deeper into the forest.
The beasts at the periphery were not giving him any pressure any longer. He had stopped growing stronger.
He walked over a hundred meters deep into the forest. Frequently, he encountered weaker beasts but chose to ignore them.
Suddenly, distant human voices reached his ears. He froze, his expression turning grave.
His hand trembled uncontrollably, and his eyes grew bloodshot.
He recognized one of the voices—someone he had been dying to meet.
Without hesitation, he changed his direction and hurried toward them.
*******