Novice Reincarnator

The gentle breeze swayed the tall grass on the wide plains. The world was full of life as long as I opened my senses to feel it. The grass rustled and a fast life force pounced on me. I spun on my heel and launched a kick.

A strong force traveled from my foot and into the horned rabbit, damaging its insides. At the same time, the force of my kick sent the horned rabbit flying away from me. A clapping sound came from my side, causing me to open my eyes.

“Great job, Fang. You have made incredible progress in these last 2 weeks.”

“I couldn’t have done it without your help, Carl.”

The tall, tailless Beastman and my mentor fidgeted from my praise with a happy smile. He was clearly unused to being complimented. I hid the guilty feeling deep in my heart from dropping the [Breathing] and [Meditation] skill for the [Ki Sense] and [Ki Kick] skills. I had needed to hit max level and start over after reincarnating, but it was well worth it to reset my skills.

“Now that you have manipulated the ki explosively in your legs like a horned rabbit, you can move onto stronger beasts to expand your repertoire.”

“When will I be ready to take on the intermediate explorer exam?”

Carl scratched the back of his bushy head and pondered.

“You will want to be max level and be able to travel freely through the second layer of Beast Den.”

There was an intermediate explorer exam every month and this month’s exam was a week ago. It should be possible for me to hit those goals in time for the next exam if I really worked myself to the bone. I would be cutting it close on both the practical and theoretical side of the exams.

After Carl left, I continued practicing in Beast Den. I used [Ki Kick] to explosively increase the speed that I ran at. Most explorers with no [Breathing] skill would be unable to maintain such ki expenditures for very long, but my shameful skill gave me a strong natural recovery rate.

[Instinct] kicked in and I jumped backwards. Sharp claws burst from the ground in the location I just disappeared from. My [Ki Sense] couldn’t penetrate the earth. It was only at the very last moment that I realized I was being attacked.

A big White Striped Weasel growled at me with curved claws and glistening fangs. Unlike horned rabbits, this monster’s ki manipulation was centered around making its claws as sharp as possible.

“Perfect. I needed a better way to attack.”

My hand formed a claw and I focused on mirroring the ki pattern of the White Striped Weasel as it roared at me menacingly. The strength in my hand sharpened. When the White Striped Weasel clawed me, I intercepted it with my own swipe.

Fresh blood danced in the air as deep cuts lacerated my hand. The White Striped Weasel’s claw was far stronger than my hastily created technique. Additionally, it had me beat in levels. This monster was stronger and tougher than me.

Another claw swipe came to me and I didn’t hesitate to attack back with my bleeding hand. Sharp pain wracked my hand as another set of wounds appeared on it. Even so, I didn’t stop. Compared to the intense terror I experienced when I encountered a Crystalline Colossus as a new explorer, this level of pain hardly fazed me.

Each time my hastily constructed claw technique was destroyed by the White Striped Weasel, I learned what mistakes in my technique needed to be patched. By experiencing a bit of pain, I tricked my [Instinct] skill into bringing me into a hyper focused state in the middle of battle.

Wounds stacked up on both of my hands. When I couldn’t properly manipulate the claw technique anymore in either of them, I brought the battle to an end. The genius of the horned rabbit technique showed its might as I stomped the ground and disappeared from the White Striped Weasel’s vision.

A ki laced kick exploded into its back. My ki penetrated its body and tore into the monster’s core inside of it, ending its life in an instant. A wave of heat filled me as I leveled up.

“[Ki] is too convenient of a skill. There are hundreds of variations to it as long as one is willing to put in the time and effort.”

I spoke my thoughts out loud, but the few viewers that were watching my broadcast seemed to disagree. The advantage of a skill was that once you had it, you instantly became able to use it.

Unfortunately, getting the [Ki] skill didn’t instantly teach one how to manipulate ki like a horned rabbit or attack like a White Striped Weasel. The user had to put in their own effort into learning those techniques and it was a very time intensive process.

Unless one had the ability to quickly pick up new techniques to the basic level like an Adept did, [Ki] and the other energy manipulation skills like it were the type of skills that had to be mastered slowly over the course of a lifetime.

I chatted with my live audience for a bit while I waited for my hands to get better. Another one of the advantages of mastering [Ki] was that it strengthened the body. Normally, a White Striped Weasel’s claws could easily take off a hand or at least cut deeply enough to expose bones, but my hands were much tougher than usual after I reinforced them with ki.

Unfortunately, ki wasn’t very useful in protecting against magic based attacks. I wouldn’t encounter any monsters with magic at these low levels, but I would suffer if I got cocky in my defenses.

I flexed my fingers and was satisfied with their responses. My level ups and skills had quickened my natural recovery. If I wanted to get much stronger in a short period of time, I couldn’t spend weeks mastering a single ki technique.

I was cheating by taking advantage of my class and using up a precious skill slot to rapidly gain strength. That one battle with the White Striped Weasel was enough to fill up my last skill slot with [Ki Claw], granting me an excellent attacking ability.

If I wanted to punch above my weight class, then I needed a strong ability that strengthened my movement like [Ki Kick] and a strong attacking skill like [Ki Claw] to avoid damage and kill my foes.

I didn’t want to wait an extra month to take the adept explorers exam. That meant I had to clash head on and rapidly strengthen my two skills as much as possible. What followed was a lot of pain, blood, and effort.