(Leo's POV)
After advancing [Vanish] to the [Advanced] grade, Leo's focus shifted to mastering his next skill [The Kill Strike].
[The Kill Strike] was renowned as one of the deadliest techniques in Terra Nova Online, being the fabled assassination technique unique to Ben Faulkner, yet despite having learnt the move, Leo had rarely found the chance to wield it in battle.
The reason for this was simple [The Kill Strike] was designed specifically for PvP scenarios, meant to annihilate formidable opponents with a single, devastating blow of critical damage.
However, with Ben constantly by his side, Leo either never faced such challenging enemies, or when he did, Ben would swiftly eliminate them, leaving Leo with few opportunities to fully unleash the skill's potential.
This lack of real-world experience hindered his ability to improve the skill's proficiency when the time came, providing him with a challenging environment to raise its proficiency when compared to [Vanish].
However, much like [Vanish], the first hurdle of pushing the skill's mastery from [Basic] to [Intermediate] was to improve on its activation speed.
In theory, [The Kill Strike] was a move which required him to channel his mana through his body and into his weapon, so there were two layers of activation that he needed to improve on.
Firstly, he needed to improve the amount of time it took him to gather his mana from his body to his palms, and secondly the amount of time it took him to push that mana from his palm into his blade.
Hence, the first step that Leo took in training the move was to focus on gathering his body's mana swiftly to his palm, reducing the time required for this step to the minimum.
This was a relatively smooth process for him, as thanks to his improved mana control from practicing the mind meditation scroll, he was able to reduce the activation time for the first phase significantly, which only left him with the second unfamiliar part to master.
For the second part, he used a wooden training dummy as his stand-in for live combat.
Each time, he would focus on feeling the flow of mana coursing through his arm and into the blade, visualizing it coiling like a spring ready to release upon impact.
At first, his control was sloppy. The mana took too long to build, and when he struck, the impact felt weak. The system didn't recognize any significant improvement in the skill's mastery, however, with each failed attempt, his proficiency improved.
"It's not enough just to gather the mana," he muttered to himself, "I need to release it the second the blade pierces." He realized, as after many failed attempts, Leo understood that there was more to improving the mastery of [Kill Strike] than just the activation speed.
The mana needed to flow seamlessly from his body to the blade and explode outward into the target all in one fluid motion, and he was still lacking severely in binding all these steps together.
He trained for hours, relentlessly practicing on the wooden dummy until the system finally acknowledge his progress, as after a couple days of solid practice, the system notification finally chimed:-
[System Notification: Congratulations to player 'TheBoss', You have improved the mastery of your skill [Kill Strike] from Basic to Intermediate.]
With his new [Intermediate] mastery, Leo could feel the difference in his skills power almost immediately.
The mana flowed quicker through his body into the dagger, and the strike that he produced now carried a much more potent burst of energy.
His attacks felt sharper, and the impact on the dummy was far more significant than before.
However, while he had reached the [Intermediate] grade of mastery with relative ease, Leo knew that the real challenge was to push to the [Advanced] grade.
********
The next part of his training was focused on increasing the raw power of [The Kill Strike].
While the intermediate stage allowed him to channel mana more efficiently, the [Advanced] mastery required him to unlock the true potential of the skill.
In its final form, [The Kill Strike] wouldn't just target the enemy's heart—it would create a shockwave that could rupture multiple vital organs simultaneously, spreading out the destructive force through the target's entire body, leading to multiple organ failure.
It was a devastating attack precisely because of its shockwave type delivery that could damage multiple organs, however, mastering this step wasn't easy.
Leo remembered a demonstration from his master, Ben, when Ben first taught him the skill, as back then, Ben's mana surged so strongly through his blade that the target didn't just receive devastating damage— but the entire surrounding area was torn apart by the explosive force, leaving a deep crater where the target once stood.
To reach this level, Leo realized he needed to focus not only on controlling the speed of his mana release but also on regulating its volume. Determined to improve, he pushed himself harder in his training, honing his ability to both withhold and unleash larger bursts of mana with precision.
This was much harder than anything he had done before as during practice his mana would often spiral out of control, dissipating too early, or worse, failing to release at all.
For days, Leo trained relentlessly, making only minor improvements, and the frustration had started to mount, but Leo understood that this was part of the process as mastering an assassination skill like [The Kill Strike] took time, precision, and patience.
Finally, after nearly two weeks of trial and error, Leo reached a breakthrough.
After significantly improving the burst of mana he could produce, he struck the wooden dummy with such precision and control that when his dagger pierced the target, the mana erupted from the blade like a contained explosion, obliterating the training dummy in one strike.
*BOOM*
The shockwave traveled outward, cracking the stone floor beneath him, as Leo achieved a result that was nearly as good as Ben's.
Leo stood still for a moment, panting heavily from the effort, as he saw the much awaited system notification finally come through:
[System Notification: Congratulations to player 'The Boss' for improving your skill [Kill Strike] to Advanced mastery
You have received:
+15,000 Gold
+7 Levels
+2000 MP]
As Leo stood over the destroyed remnants of his training dummy, he realized just how much he had grown in such a short time.
The power he had displayed currently was greater than 20 times what the initial Kill Strike was capable of, which when combined with the added damage of a critical hit, was now incomparably more lethal than before.
Mastering two of his core skills within weeks was an achievement that would have taken others months, if not years. Yet here he was, standing at the pinnacle of his abilities, ready for the next challenge.
—--------
/// A/N - This is chapter 500 for the book! LET'S GOO!
I can't believe we have already hit the 500 chapter mark so quickly in this book, and with the plot not even 20% completed, there is surely a lot, lot more to come in the days ahead!
Thank-you so much for supporting this book. This journey would most definitely not be possible without you guys. ///