Chapter 3

Johnathan opened his eyes only to find himself in what looked like a world glowing with cyan green light. The ground was smooth and plain, and the sky seemed to be covered in stars with a shade of bright green light.

Somehow though this light was gentle enough to not hurt his eyes.

"Where... am I?"

He tried remembering what happened, but he could only remember seeing the crystal after getting hurt.

As he thought of the crystal and the damned creature that he wanted to kill, the world shuddered, and he almost fell down because of the shaking ground.

In front of him a phantom-like figure closely resembling the Crystal Maker appeared.

"Fuck! What's happening?"

Before he could think, the creature started moving and attacked him.

Caught of guard, he was about to jump to the side but time suddenly slowed down and as he stared at the monster, countless pieces of information rushed to his brain.

Speed: 29 meters per second.

Weight: 12 Kilograms

Angle of attack:...

Piercing effect:...

Strength of its slashing attack:...

Time till the claw arrives:...

...

All this information poured into his brain out of nowhere it stunned him. As if that wasn't enough, it didn't stop there, his information also appeared in his mind, and with it a series of recommended actions also appeared.

"What is this? A tutorial on how to beat this monster?"

Staring at the creature, he hesitated for a second before choosing to believe the information he was receiving.

As he stared at the creature, he used the information to avoid four consecutive claw attacks and one attempt at biting him.

No matter how much the creature struggled, he could aways predict the way it would move or attack next. It was like being able to peer at the future. Nothing could escape his eyes.

Slowly, he forgot what had happened before and became a little excited. While he could not understand the situation, that didn't stop him from enjoying it. Having been dissatisfied with this monster, how could he simply avoid its attacks? No, that wouldn't do. Since he could see through all of its moves, it was time to teach it a lesson!

Grinning from ear to ear, he rushed forward and threw a punch.

The Crystal Maker wouldn't just stand there and do nothing, when it saw the hateful enemy that was more slippery than a fish take the initiative to attack, it immediately felt joy in its heart as it slashed with its left claw.

Much to the beast's surprise, the scene of its enemy's arm being cut off didn't happen, rather, what it saw was incomprehensible. Johnathan who was about to collide head on with its claws suddenly bent slightly to the left while adjusting the path of his fist in a wider arc. Before the beast could figure out what happened and how it missed, its head was struck heavily at the area beneath its jaws.

Because they had been running on opposite directions, the effects of this impact was magnified as a small shock wave spread for about two meters and the creature was launched flying. Lying weakly on the ground if its jaw completely shattered, it didn't take more than a few seconds for it to die.

"Hahaha! Awesome! Awesome! Not only does it gives me data on my enemy, it can even point out weak spots and flaws on my enemy's actions!" As he roared happily, the scene he just experienced replayed on his mind out of nowhere.

Watching his own movements in the scene, Johnathan who was feeling extremely happy suddenly had a frown on his face. As data on both him and the creature surged in his mind, he started to notice a lot of problems within his own movements and actions.

No matter how cool it looked, his usage of his muscles was laughable and the way he punched was completely amateurish. If not for the toughness of his body that had increased greatly for unknown reasons, he might have even broken his wrist and fingers with that horrible punch.

As more and more data surged his arrogant heart calmed down and became bitter. "Alright, I understand, my actions just now can be improved a lot..."

As if sensing his words, the replay disappeared and another Crystal Maker appeared next to the fallen one.

This time though, before he could play with the creature, he noticed that the time flow had returned to normal and his eyes became a little sore for no reason. "Shit... what's happening?"

Before he could even ponder on the matter, the extremely quick Crystal Maker had already pounced on him and was slashing crazily. Thankfully, despite losing his time cheat, the data was still surging constantly inside his mind allowing him to have a very detailed grasp of his enemy's information, power and intentions.

Still, it wasn't enough, in such a head on confrontation without the assistance of the time cheat, he quickly discovered that he couldn't react fast enough! No matter how fast the data feedback was, he didn't have enough time to interpret the information and act upon it.

As he fought with the Crystal Maker, wounds accumulated on his body and blood started drenching his clothes, until he finally received a lethal injure on his throat.

At that time, it was as if something was stirred in the world, the creature disappeared in a cloud of smoke, and he suddenly found himself sitting on the ground with everything back to normal.

"This... I didn't die?"

When Johnathan stood up, the same situation happened again, and the scene of him fighting replayed on his mind. As it did so, many changes were slowly happening to himself that even he wasn't aware of.

By the time the recording ended, his understanding of himself and his enemy grew to a whole new level, it was like he had been blind and was allowed to see for the first time in his life. It was a strange feeling, one that was difficult to put into words and that made him slightly frown in confusion.

As if by instinct, he raised his head and looked at the spot in front of him when spoke loudly. "I want to continue."

As those words left his mouth, the surrounding shook once more and the Crystal Maker reappeared.

Looking at its ugly reptilian face, Johnathan smirked and took the initiative. The fight that broke out this time had many noticeable changes. His movements were less wasteful and had a lot more precision. His reaction speed had been greatly improved as he finally managed to react to the claws, and his judgment became a lot more accurate.

Of course, hesitation would momentarily flash in his eyes every once in a while, causing him to be heavily injured and almost lose his fighting capability.

Because of this, it was no surprise when another hesitation once again cost his life in the form of being beheaded by the monster's powerful claws.

As he appeared sitting on the ground once more, Johnathan tightly knitted his brows as sweat poured down his face and he started breathing heavily. As if to increase his awareness, he realized that he hadn't been feeling pain before but this changed with this fight and he could 100% feel the extent of his injuries with every cell in his body.

This made him even more self aware compared to his previous fights as even though he knew he wouldn't die, the pain was incomparably heavy, and truly to the extent of making him want to die.

Fortunately or not, the pain disappeared a minute later.

Clenching his fist, he analyzed his last battle against the Crystal Maker and realized how fatal his hesitation was. Only by being ruthless and decisive could he have won that fight. Not to mention that with each injure he received, the greater the flaws he exposed when fighting. Throughout the analyzes, he also discovered a few more issues with the way he was attacking and moving and thought of ways to improve those issues.

...

After an unknown amount of time passed, Johnathan's finally succeed in killing the Crystal Maker by making using of his now powerful analytical ability and terrifying reaction speed.

To make matters even better, the simulation now also took into consideration different terrains with different obstacles, it could be said that fighting inside this world now could provide real and accurate data on what a fight in real life would look like. After all, it took everything into consideration, his stamina consumption, the soreness of his muscles in prolonged fights, his awareness of the surrounding terrain...

Not a single detail differed from fighting in real life.

Taking deep breaths to slow down his pumping heart. He thought for a moment and a new piece of information surged in his mind.

Crystal Maker battle simulations conducted: 250

Current chance of defeating a Crystal Maker in a one-on-one battle: 100%

Chances of defeating the enemy when fighting two of them: 90%

Three: 80%

Four: 50%

...

Your fighting ability has been increased by: 300%

As he looked at those numbers, he thought that he should feel happy, but in reality, he felt incomparably gloomy. After fighting for so long against the Crystal Maker, he realized that it was incapable of turning anyone into crystal and that even though strange things had been happening for a week only, this weak and small monster was already strong enough to paint the roads red with the blood of countless people.

Without this strange situation that Johnathan went through, how many people would be able to become strong enough to fight it?

As the question appeared in his mind, he was stunned to discover that this world actually answered him!

Based on your knowledge and understanding of the world: 90% of the world's population would die if they faced a Crystal Maker alone or without a weapon such as guns.

The shock he felt at this moment made his heart shudder. Although the next piece of information claimed that the estimation isn't too accurate because of many factors, the margin of error was actually just 20% meaning that at least, 70% of the overall population would die facing this monster.

To make things worse, there was already an unknown version of it capable of turning people into crystal statues. Based on this alone... this might really be the era of extinction for the human race.