A promising future

Lumen's proficiency in nearly all of his skills had seen a huge increase ever since the fight with the three archers, and now after killing these few boar beasts, his efforts were beginning to pay off.

[Basic Spear mastery (Lv.2 3%) (Common): You have basic proficiency in the use of a spear in combat, you are improving but there is still much to learn. When using a spear, a miniscule synergistic effect is formed between the wielder's strength, agility and the spear. +2% damage to all attacks dealt with a spear.]

His spear mastery had now reached level 2, with some changes coming to it's skill description too. The most obvious one being the percentage increase for damage when using the spear changing from 1% to 2%. It may not have looked like much at the moment, or even had a noticeable impact in battle.

He assumed that the percentage would only keep increasing with every skill level up in the future and so the skill would only get more and more useful as he levels it up.

His other skills had also seen increases too, with his footwork skill also reaching level 2.

[Basic Footwork (Lv2. 6%) (Common): You have basic proficiency in the art of movement in combat, but there is still much to be learned. Your movements are less sloppy. +2% movement speed when in combat.]

His other magic skills had also seen increases in their proficiency due to him revealing them in combat to his comrades.

They hadn't managed to reach level 2 yet, but his mana bolt was hovering around 73% proficiency, his mana reinforcement hovering around 51% proficiency and his heal skill only at 22% as he had used that the least.

His basic identify skill had also seen a great increase in proficiency as he kept up his usage of the skill while not in combat and used it to identify many plants in his surroundings when resting.

A result of this constant use over the last few days led to it finally reaching level 2.

[Basic Identify (Lv.2 12%) (Common)]

The description still remained the same and he hadn't noticed any changes from it so far, perhaps some more experimentation would be needed before he knew what changes it had brought.

Other than that, Lumen had also inquired about the other's progress in their skills and stats as he was quite curious about how the others were getting on.

From this, he found that everyone only had one level 2 skill at this point. Each person had reached level 2 in their main mastery skill of their class, apart from Will who had levelled his Basic Heal skill up to level 2.

The others were very happy about this as it doubled the HP he could heal at level 1, giving the group a hint that by the time his skill reaches level 10, it would heal around the same amount as the basic health potions that they were so stingy with using!

Knowing such information, everyone was very happy with this fact and was looking forward to the future where they wouldn't have to worry as much about conserving potions. They had also decided to prioritise helping will level up both his skills and his own level.

Other than skills, Lumen had found that everyone was sitting at about 60 points in their highest stat, and ~40 in their other stats. This greatly surprised Lumen as it was over half of what he had while only being a level higher than them.

But he hadn't chosen to be complacent with his superiority in stats as he knew that stats weren't everything in this world. Talents had a big part of it too, such as Jake's strength increasing talent and his own 'Perfect Mana Conduit' talent which increases the power output of all of his magic skills.

From what Lumen knew so far, stats were only the bare minimum of the power you could exert and talent is what really decides whether you would win a fight or end up in the ground with all of the other weaklings of the tutorial.

Now that everyone was done inspecting their skills and stats, they set off in search for more beasts to hunt and experience to gain.

While searching they noticed that the levels of beasts increased as they moved further and further in the direction they were headed, confirming to them that they were heading into the deeper parts of the forest where beasts would be higher levelled but also more dangerous.

This forest was huge and Lumen looked forward to what he may find at the centre of the forest, as there must be an end to the constant increases in the level of beasts at some point.

It wouldn't quite be adhering to the standards of a 'tutorial' if one could encounter beasts with levels in the hundreds deep into the forest.

Not that that mattered to Lumen, as what really mattered was levels and if he kept hunting then he would eventually reach a point where he could fight such beasts, at least he thought so.

However the further they walked, they noticed that the number of beasts seemed to have decreased which quickly became a problem for the group as their levels and experience was left to stagnate with nothing to hunt.

This annoyed the group a little bit as clearly this area held higher level beasts, yet they hadn't even caught sight of them since the first beast they had caught in this area.

It was as if the whole forest was avoiding them, which obviously wasn't the case as every beast seemed to enter an enraged mode upon sighting humans and charged to attack without thoughts.

After another half an hour of nothing but empty forests, the group finally spotted some movement in the treeline and Qu Quan immediately alerted everyone to get down lest they get caught off guard.

Ahead of them stood a deer beast unlike any they had seen before. It stood there at a full 3 metres in height when it lifted it's majestic head. It's antlers sparkled in the faint sunlight as they looked like they were made of a jade like glistening white crystal.

It's huge crown like antlers seemed to be glowing at the seems with power as this would most definitely be the most difficult but most rewarding fight the group would have taken on so far.

It was one of the most beautiful beasts they had ever seen, but it was also by far the most powerful.

[??? - level 13]

This deer was 5 whole levels higher than the previously highest level beast they had fought.

Even when Lumen used his level 2 basic Identify, he only obtained the beast's level but not it's name.

If this beast were surrounded by even 1 more beast, they wouldn't attempt such a risky fight with the level difference between them.

But after they had experienced many battles against both human and beast over the past few days, they felt confident in defeating this majestic creature.

Lumen looked at the others and confirmed that all of them were up to it. If he even saw a sign of hesitation in any of their eyes he would call off the fight and give up to find something a little lower levelled to hunt.

None of them showed anything but determination and a little excitement as they readied their stances to attack the beast at any time.