Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
The first round looked like a draw.
But Alvin knew that he was no match for the lynx in terms of speed, strength, and endurance.
Even though it was only a young lynx, it was one that had already gone berserk. It was very difficult to make up the difference in level using his sword techniques.
Their rapid clashes made Graham, who was keeping his arrow nocked on his bow, dizzy. Although he was sweating anxiously, he did not dare to release his arrow rashly, as he did not want to accidentally injure Alvin.
Alvin was now opposite of Graham, and he used his gaze to signal Graham to stay calm. He decided to use a more offensive fighting style when he reached his physical peak. If not, he was not confident in defeating the lynx if the battle dragged on.
“Hrrgh—!”
Alvin attacked actively and used the Set Sail Technique this time.
He grabbed his sword with both hands. The tip of his sword pointed upwards, then he tensed all the muscles on his body as though he was a ship preparing to set sail. This was the best starting move for offence of the White Sail Sword Technique.
Alvin’s centre of gravity shifted forward and he changed the way he breathed slightly. Suddenly, the dried leaves and sand beneath him all flew up as he accelerated and charged forward from a stationary position in an instant.
“Pierce!”
The attack’s aura was extremely shocking, and it seemed as though it could even pierce through a solid wall.
Seeing that Alvin was charging over like a brash boar, a human-like tinge of disdain appeared in the lynx’s eyes. It was hard to change directions when charging at high speeds. Such an attacking style was effective against opponents with big bodies but low agility. However, Alvin’s predetermined attacking path could not even reach its tail.
Indeed.
The moment the blade neared its body, the lynx leaped up high into the sky and avoided Alvin’s sword nimbly. It bared its sharp, white fangs as it pounced towards the back of Alvin’s neck.
In reality, if even a wild beast could tell that Alvin’s tactics were wrong based on its instincts, how could Alvin, who had gone through orthodox knight training since young, possibly not know?
The moment the lynx leaped onto the air, Alvin lowered his body and kicked strongly with his feet to fly towards the side instantly, causing his body to be almost parallel to the ground. At the same time, he shouted, “Fire!”
An arrow pierced through the air.
Alvin knew that a normal arrow generated almost no threat to the berserk lynx. But all he wanted was an opportunity like this.
While the lynx twisted in mid-air to avoid the arrow, Alvin made use of inertia to turn his body and wave his sword. His longsword turned like a triangular sail on a ship and created a bright arc of sword glint as it cut the lynx’s hind legs.
Blood spurted out.
Alvin, whose back had slammed heavily onto the ground, grabbed the last opportunity to battle the lynx and kicked heavily onto its soft belly.
“Roar—-!!”
When he was learning the White Sail Sword Technique, Leo taught him that the essence of the White Sail Sword Technique was always about balance! Balance! Balance!
His long-term training had completely turned into his body’s instinctive sense of balance. This allowed Alvin to pull off an almost impossible attack when he lost his centre of gravity. It also increased the chances of him and Graham surviving by 30%.
Yes, only 30%!
Although that previous attack was successful, Alvin was very sure that the agility of feline animals would make it such that the lynx’s injury was not very serious. As for whether they could escape from the lynx alive, it could still go both ways.
But just as Alvin leaped up from the ground and prepared to increase his spoils from battles, a staggering silhouette flashed past and disappeared within the dense canopy.
Alvin was slightly stunned. He could not understand why the lynx, which had not suffered heavy injuries, would suddenly run away.
With his understanding of berserk wild beasts, an injury of that level would close by itself after one night at most and could only be considered a light injury.
Because he feared the lynx’s extraordinary body constitution, Alvin had not dared to use brute force against it. Although the lynx’s body size was not really extraordinary, a tiny apprentice knight like Alvin was still no match for it in terms of strength.
Graham seemed to have anticipated such a situation long beforehand. He carried his longbow as he walked beside Alvin and explained, “Wild hunters would never fight to the death with enemies who are of equal strength to them. A close fight means an increased probability of injury, and being injured means a decrease in hunting ability. The lack of food would then bring with it a series of negative consequences and weaken even the strongest predator or maybe even cause them to die.
“The lynx probably thinks that it’s not worth getting injured over around 200 pounds of meat like us. It has no lack of food in his forest, so it just decided to retreat.”
Hearing that, Alvin nodded slightly and accepted that explanation.
“Let’s go, if an adult berserk lynx comes to take revenge later, we’ll really be unable to leave.”
Alvin looked at Graham, who previously wanted to avenge his buddy. Now his gaze wavered and he was very frightened.
Alvin did not remind him that normal predators had territorial awareness and that this was even more so for berserk beasts. It was extremely unlikely for there to be other lynxes in this forest.
However, they truly should not stay there for long. The duo packed up their belongings and left quickly with the hunting hound, Jim.
They were quite lucky and no accidents occurred as they returned.
The duo walked out of the forest with a little difficulty as moonlight spread across the land. Even though they were very familiar with the forest, walking in the forest at night was still not a good experience.
They returned home safely.
In the next few days, other than practising his sword techniques regardless of rain or shine, Alvin also took some time to make potions with the herbs he had collected and passed them to Sanji.
As he was very efficient in herb gathering this time, the White Stone Apothecary had sufficient stock and Alvin had about a month’s worth of free time to let him further understand this world and plan his future development.
In this period, Graham specially came to look for Alvin once to tell him that the city guard had not managed to find the lynx after entering the forest and searching for a few days. He guessed that the berserk lynx had already left the area and wanted to let Alvin know that he did not need to worry and that he could continue to enter the mountains in the future.
After gifting Grahams a few bottles of medicine as thanks for his notification, Alvin’s life became peaceful once again.
And now, Alvin was…
Sitting behind the counter of the apothecary, feeling bored to death. He stared at the continuous stream of people outside the window lifelessly.
“Sigh… where are the leisurely days I was promised?!”
With his chin on the counter, he looked like he could not feel any more bored.
Alvin knew he could not blame Sanji.
These few days, a type of precious red-bellied sturgeon was migrating, and Sanji’s father had called Sanji to go on his fishing boat to help him. If one were lucky, the number of fish they could catch during this migration period alone could be worth up to several months of earnings. Very few fishermen were able to resist this temptation.
Alas, he had to work here when Sanji was not around. The good news was that the sales of Fish Boosters greatly increased during this peak period of fishing, so the apothecary also earned a lot.
After he finished serving his last customer in the evening, Alvin sat behind the counter and tabulated the day’s accounts. He decided to go to the nearby Daddy York’s Pub after tabulating the accounts and order a portion of their signature cheese steak to reward himself.
“Beep, body constitution checking system has been activated!”
The sudden digital notification that sounded near his ear perked Alvin up. He had come into contact with all kinds of people continuously for the past few days, and the Data Vision had already gathered all the body statistics of the humans in this world!
“Display!”
Name: Alvin Garriott
Attributes: Constitution 0.6 (1)
Strength: 0.58 (1)
Agility 0.62 (1)
Intelligence 0.8 (1)
Abilities: White Sail Sword Technique (Entry level, contains breathing techniques, sword techniques, and potions), Archery (Entry level), Writing (Proficient), Seafaring knowledge (Entry level), Alchemy (Entry level)
Alvin noticed that these statistics were different from his gauging of his body constitution in his previous life. He guessed that they had gone through some modifications and looked a little like game statistics.
Among them, Constitution included the strength of his body, stamina, and recovery. Power used his body constitution as a foundation and represented his explosive power and offensive strength. Agility also used his body constitution as a foundation and included his movement and reaction speed. Intelligence included memory, observation, imagination, thinking, judgement, logic, and many statistics in other areas, similar to how it was calculated in his previous life.
His overall statistics came from his senses and knowledge. For example, he could not get someone’s detailed stats just by looking at them—he had to interact with them first.
Techniques outside of his area of knowledge and understanding could not be shown either. For example, the name of a sword technique he had never come across would not even show, let alone the proficiency level.
To put it simply, this function could bring some convenience to Alvin, but it was not an omnipotent sensor that was linked to a databank.
Moreover, the Data Vision also gave an additional explanation: The statistics shown were not laterally compared—they could not be compared on the same footing.
Normal humans in this world could reach a maximum of 1 through their talent and hard work, in theory. So this did not mean that the number 1 was normal for adult humans. For many normal male adults, if their statistics could reach around 0.4, they could already be considered very healthy.
Although his body constitution was still at the stage of rapid growth due to his age, Alvin was very satisfied with his statistics that were higher than those of adults across the board.
His intelligence stat being 0.8 especially made Alvin feel superior in terms of intellect.
“Right, I fought with that lynx before. Its statistics should be collected. Show the statistics of the berserk lynx!”
Name: Berserk Lynx
Attributes: Constitution 1.3 (1)
Strength 1.1 (1)
Agility 1.4 (1)
Abilities: Hunting skills (Proficient)
Looking at the berserk lynx’s stats, cold sweat broke out on Alvin’s back and he was secretly relieved that he was lucky.
The lynx indeed already had extraordinary stats. Even though its original body was just that of a normal lynx, it still could have such incredible stats after going berserk. One could say that it had exceeded the limits of ordinary people in all areas except intelligence.
There was no way ordinary people could escape from it alive!