Night had fallen upon Umbersoul, and Alden had returned to the V Light Inn.
He was inside his room, doing his usual workout. A black cup of tea sat on a nearby table.
It was made from the tea leaves the old man had given him during his first mission. Alden had already tested it before, and it was definitely worth drinking.
After finishing his workout, he walked toward the table. He took a sip of the tea before picking up a book.
As he flipped it over, the title written in large letters on the front page caught his eyes.
Flash Step
A cliché name.
Still, Alden didn’t complain. He never expected the Ashcroft Family to hand him one of their secret techniques.
He opened the book.
The pages were filled with drawings of different human postures and footwork, each showing various movements and mana flow.
Alden sat down on the chair and began reading.
About ten minutes later, he let out a slow breath after reaching the final page.
To summarize the book, it was a movement technique based on short but sudden bursts of speed.
It allowed the user to increase their speed at a crucial moment during battle, whether to dodge an attack, close the distance, or quickly retreat.
To activate the technique, one simply had to gather a large amount of mana into their feet.
It was a mana-consuming technique. The user exchanged mana for explosive speed, meaning the more mana a person had, the longer they could maintain it.
Alden had read the book only once, yet he could already point out several flaws.
For example, once the technique was activated, it was difficult to stop midway through the movement. Forcing it could easily damage the user’s own body.
Another flaw was its high mana consumption. It also required preparation, as gathering a large amount of mana into one part of the body couldn’t be done instantly. Doing so too quickly would disrupt the user’s mana flow.
However, with greater mastery over the technique, those drawbacks could be reduced.
An experienced user could minimize the backlash and even lower the amount of mana required to use it.
Alden had already learned how to gather mana into his fists and feet before, so what made this movement technique different?
The answer was the way it guided the user.
It explained how to adapt to different situations and prepare beforehand. Every movement, every posture, and every flow of mana had its own purpose.
In a way, it was like a school textbook. Anyone could read it all night, but whether they could actually use it properly was another matter.
So, even though Alden had finished reading the book, it didn’t mean he had mastered the technique.
Theory and practice were two completely different things.
He stood up and followed one of the postures shown in the book.
Mana quickly gathered around his feet.
The next moment—
His speed suddenly doubled.
Before he even had time to react, he was already in front of the wardrobe.
Bang!
His body crashed straight into it, causing the wardrobe to shake violently.
"..."
Alden quickly steadied himself.
Fortunately, he wasn’t injured. His body had become much stronger after breaking through to the Spark Realm.
Still...
That didn’t mean the loud noise had gone unnoticed.
"Alden! What are you doing up there?"
A familiar voice came from the first floor.
It was Mary, who had been busy working downstairs.
"Just a damn mosquito!"
Alden replied in an embarrassed voice.
"...What kind of mosquito makes that much noise?"
Mary muttered from below.
Alden pretended he hadn’t heard anything.
I’d better practice this in an open field.
He silently admitted his mistake.
After all, an inn wasn’t exactly the best place to test a movement technique.
He calmly returned to his chair, picked up the cup of tea, and finished it as though nothing had happened.
"Status."
Alden called out his status screen to check the progress he had made over the past week.
During the last seven days, he had spent most of his time completing missions and visiting the city library to read about monsters and the world around him.
Soon, a familiar screen appeared before him.
══════════════════════════════════════
STATUS
══════════════════════════════════════
NAME: ALDEN CROWE
RACE: HUMAN
TITLE: A BUG
REALM: SPARK (INITIAL)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ATTRIBUTES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Strength : 472
Agility : 506
Stamina : 485
Intelligence : 548
Vitality : 494
Mana : 592
Luck : Unpredictable (???)
Charm : 450
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PHYSIQUE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• Apex Evolution Body
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
AFFINITIES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Void : D
Ice : A-
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SKILLS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• Basic Poison Resistance
• Universal Comprehension
• Mana Sense
• Basic Swordsmanship
══════════════════════════════════════
He had reached the Spark Realm four days ago, and his attributes had been increasing at a steady pace.
Well...
Almost all of them.
His eyes stopped on one particular stat.
Charm: 450
I wonder if this world has beauty potions...
The thought suddenly crossed his mind.
Alden couldn’t help but shake his head with a helpless smile.
Putting that aside, he remembered something he had read in one of the library books.
A person’s attributes were influenced not only by their cultivation realm but also by their abilities and fighting style.
That meant two cultivators at the same realm weren’t necessarily equal.
One person might possess overwhelming strength but lack speed, while another might excel in agility at the cost of endurance.
A simple example would be a Rupture Realm assassin and a Rupture Realm tank.
Even though both shared the same cultivation realm, their strengths would be completely different because of their professions and combat styles.
It wasn’t as if people couldn’t improve their weaker attributes. Most simply chose not to, believing it was a waste of time. Instead, they focused on the areas that best suited their fighting style.
Alden, however, was different.
His attributes were increasing with only a small gap between them.
He didn’t know the exact reason, nor was he going to complain about something beneficial.
It could be because of his fighting style. He relied on speed, efficiency, and close combat. He also trained his body every day, so it wasn’t surprising that his Strength kept increasing as well.
Or maybe something else was at play—his Apex Evolution Body. That was the most likely reason. After all, Alden had already seen what this physique was capable of. Compared to an ordinary body, it was simply on another level.
After taking one last look at his status, Alden closed the screen.
He lay down on the bed and slowly closed his eyes.
Tomorrow would be a new day...
And perhaps another adventure was already waiting for him.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter