"To think I would get the spiritual skill that monster used against me..." Evan muttered with a smile as he looked at the details of the skill before him.
---) Intimidation (Rank One, Level 1 Active Skill): You can make your opponent feel extreme fear just by looking at them. The effect of the skill depends on the power of the user. The higher your existence, the more powerful the skill will be. The skill costs 20 Mana to activate and consumes 1 Mana every 5 seconds.
After looking at the details of the skill, Evan crushed the Skill Scroll without hesitation.
The scroll immediately transformed into countless fragments of light, which were then absorbed into his body.
As the light fragments merged with his body, two notifications appeared on Evan’s Status Window.
[You have learned the Rank One, Level 1 Active Skill — Intimidation.]
[You have learned an external active skill. You can learn 3 more external active skills.]
Evan looked at the notifications for a moment before recalling the information he knew about skills.
There were two ways to learn skills: external and internal.
External skills were skills that could be learned through Skill Scrolls.
Until Level 50, a person could learn a maximum of five active skills through external means.
However, there was no limit to the number of passive skills one could learn through Skill Scrolls.
In other words, external skills were skills learned directly through Skill Scrolls or other external mediums.
On the other hand, skills that someone developed or learned by themselves without relying on a Skill Scroll or another external medium were considered internal skills.
There was no limit to the number of internal skills a person could learn, whether they were active or passive.
However, learning internal skills wasn’t easy.
Unlike external skills, which could be learned simply by obtaining and using a Skill Scroll, internal skills required the user to fulfill certain special conditions before they could be learned.
After learning Intimidation, Evan opened his Status Window and looked at his current stats.
====
---) Name: Evan
---) Race: Human
---) Level: 14
---) Strength: 65
---) Agility: 55 (+5) [Bloom Earring]
---) Stamina: 60
---) Mana: 125
---) Health: 89
---) Magic: 115 (+5) [Bloom Earring]
---) Title: Slayer
---) Class: None
---) Free Stat Points: 28
---) Skills:
Active Skills:
---) Wind Monarch (Rank One, Level 5): Grants you absolute control over the power of Wind. After learning this skill, you become the monarch of the wind, ruling over its power. The strength of the skill depends on the user’s magical power, Mana, and how they utilize it.
---) Intimidation (Rank One, Level 1): You can make your opponent feel extreme fear just by looking at them. The effect of the skill depends on the power of the user. The higher your existence, the more powerful the skill will be. The skill costs 20 Mana to activate and consumes 1 Mana every 5 seconds.
Passive Skills:
---) Level Appraisal: Allows you to see the level of anyone who is not more than 10 levels above you.
---) Hardening (Unranked, Level 5): Upon learning this skill, the defense of your body will improve greatly. Health +20.
---) Night Vision: Allows the user to see clearly even in complete darkness.
====
After looking at his Status Window, Evan was quite satisfied.
His stats had increased tremendously since he had first entered the Dark Forest, and he had also obtained another powerful skill.
He closed his Status Window and climbed down from the tree.
Instead of heading deeper into the forest, however, Evan began walking toward the exit.
After walking for about an hour, he found a large tree and climbed onto one of its thick branches.
Evan still had around seven kilometers to travel before reaching the exit of the forest, but he wasn’t in a hurry.
After sitting down comfortably, he took out something to eat from his Storage Ring and began having his meal.
After killing the Giant Bull, Evan had decided to stop hunting for the time being as he didn’t want to venture any deeper into the Dark Forest.
When he encountered the Giant Bull, he had already traveled around fifteen kilometers into the forest, and going any deeper would only increase the danger.
Therefore, he decided to move closer to the forest’s exit and wait for night to arrive.
Most magical beasts became active at night and came out to hunt.
If Evan didn’t have Night Vision, he wouldn’t have considered hunting in the Dark Forest at night.
But now that he possessed a skill that allowed him to see clearly in darkness, it would be a waste not to make use of it.
While waiting for nightfall, Evan once again sensed the surrounding wind.
However, he didn’t notice anything unusual.
After gaining fifteen points of Magic from killing the Giant Bull, Evan had thought that his Mana and skill control might improve again.
But after carefully sensing the surrounding wind, he couldn’t find any noticeable change.
Evan then raised his hand and created a Wind Bullet.
"Wind Bullet."
A compressed sphere of wind appeared before him before shooting toward a nearby tree.
BANG!
The Wind Bullet punched a hole through the tree and continued forward, striking the tree behind it.
Evan looked at the result thoughtfully.
The power of his attack had increased again because his Magic stat had increased, but the Mana consumption of Wind Bullet remained the same.
’Maybe my second guess was correct. When my Magic stat reaches 200 points, my Mana and skill control will improve again.’
After testing Wind Bullet several more times, he became even more convinced that his Magic stat had certain thresholds.
Once his Magic reached a specific number, it seemed that not only would the power of his skills increase, but his control over Mana and his skills would also improve.
The Wind Bullet he had just used was actually another application of Wind Monarch.
Before reaching the 100-point threshold in Magic, Evan hadn’t been able to use Wind Bullet.
He had tried to condense the wind into such a small and compressed form before, but because the amount of wind inside the bullet was too small, controlling it had been extremely difficult.
However, after his Magic stat reached 100 points, his control had improved enough for him to successfully condense and maintain the Wind Bullet.
Evan was quite happy about this, as compared to Wind Slash, Wind Bullet consumed less Mana, which meant he could use it more freely during battle.
After finishing his tests, Evan stopped experimenting and began resting seriously.
He knew that the magical beasts he had encountered during the day were nothing compared to the creatures that became active at night.
The magical beasts that came out after nightfall were the true rulers of the Dark Forest.
Time continued to pass, and eventually, night arrived.
Evan was still sitting comfortably on the tree branch.
Darkness had completely enveloped the forest, turning everything around him into a sea of shadows.
However, Evan wasn’t worried.
With Night Vision, the darkness didn’t affect his vision at all.
After checking his surroundings one final time, he climbed down from the tree.
The moment his feet touched the ground, he activated his Wind Detection.
He spread his senses through the surrounding wind, covering an area roughly twenty meters around himself.
Although Night Vision allowed him to see clearly in the darkness, Evan didn’t want to take unnecessary risks.
There could still be magical beasts hiding outside his field of vision, and Wind Detection gave him another layer of protection.
Since he was only covering an area of twenty meters around himself, the technique didn’t consume much Mana.
After activating Wind Detection, Evan began walking through the dark forest.
However, he deliberately didn’t go any deeper.
He wanted to hunt at night, but he wasn’t foolish enough to venture too far into the territory of the powerful magical beasts that ruled the forest after dark.
For that reason, he moved relatively slowly, carefully observing his surroundings.
For a while, the forest remained completely silent.
Under the cover of darkness, with only the faint sounds of wind moving through the trees, Evan couldn’t help but feel that the forest resembled something straight out of a horror story.
However, the silence didn’t last long, and soon, distant howls and roars began echoing through the forest.
Various magical beasts had begun their nighttime activities.
Suddenly, Evan heard the howl of a magical beast relatively close to his location.
More importantly, the sound was getting closer.
Evan immediately looked around and quickly found a suitable tree.
He climbed onto it and hid among the branches, intending to launch a surprise attack and kill the approaching magical beast in a single strike.
After waiting for some time, Evan finally heard footsteps approaching from the darkness.
However, the moment he heard them clearly, he raised an eyebrow because there was more than one set of footsteps.
As the sound of footsteps drew closer and closer, a bad feeling immediately arose in Evan’s heart.
He carefully recalled the howl he had heard earlier and listened to the approaching footsteps.
The more he listened, the more certain he became that several magical beasts were approaching his location.
As Evan carefully recalled the howl he had heard earlier, his expression slowly darkened as he figured out what was happening.
’Why the hell do I have to face a pack of wolves during my first night hunt? Can’t I get something normal?’
Just as Evan finished thinking, several dark figures emerged from between the trees, and the moment he saw them clearly, his face turned completely dark.
There were five wolves, and the worst part was that every single one of them was above Level 20.