Xia Mo climbed up the tree, chose the thickest tree branch and walked towards it. She balanced herself and moved towards it. As she approached the near end of the branch, she carefully felt the tip of the branch and attempted to break it.

She used all her strength to bend the branch to break it.

"Crack.." the branch broke and Xia Mo also lost her balance and fell.

Although the landing was soft grass, it was still painful but she did not make any sound. She rested for a few seconds and then picked up the branch.

In DUST, there were many things to learn. One of it was to endure the pain.

She felt the branch in her hand. The weight was optimal for her. Length is perfect and easy to grip. There was a familiar mechanized sound next in her ears: "You have self-taught yourself to pick a tree branch, Savviness increases by 2 points."

2 points? Xia Mo was shocked. In her previous life, everytime she learned a new skill, she only gained 1 point in Savviness and sometimes there were no rewards. Is it because she was the first player to perform that action?

She was unsure now, but she would try it later.

She entered the edge of the forest with the branch in her hand. There is a monster known as porcupine. Its speed is not fast but its attack is strong, if you are near to it, although it will not kill you, it will cause you a lot of pain.

Fortunately, this is a starter village, similar to real life, the porcupine is usually scared. If a player was full of killing intent, he could easily scare away these monsters.

Xia Mo selected a porcupine which was alone. She casually walked towards it and when she was in the attack range, she attacked the eye of the porcupine.

That porcupine was just relaxing and eating the wild fruit that it had, and was caught off guard. It usually has a lot of spikes on its body, and its only weakness is usually the soft belly and its eyes. As its stomach is usually close to the ground, the player could only attack its face.

It had a small face and to attack it precisely is not an easy task. For a new player, this would have taken a long time to explore and learn the tactic. But for Xia Mo, it is effortless for her. This is her benefit for having her second life again.

Her skill experience is something that stands out from most players.

There is a thin life bar appearing on top of its head. And with that one thrust from the branch, half of its life was gone instantly. One of its eyes was bloody and it started to scream. Upon hearing the sound, the other porcupines started to escape. Luckily, the porcupine was not too smart, and naturally escaped from danger. If the porcupines would have ganged up, this would have been a trouble for someone who started the game like Xia Mo.

Seeing the opening when the porcupine was screaming, Xia Mo attacked the same spot again, and then the porcupine screamed again before it died. Its stomach can now be seen with all its leg pointing to the sky. In DUST, the monsters would not give you any experience, but they would assist you to improve your experience in certain skills. When the skill reaches a certain level, depending on the player's Savviness, the player would be able to learn new skills based on the difficulty level.

To improve your experience in skill level, as the name suggested, you have to keep doing the same action to improve the experience. The higher the practice level, it would be easier to master the skill and use the skill to deal the most amount of damage.

Xia Mo checked the amount of experience to the skill that the porcupine gave her. It actually gave her 4 points! The skill she used was known as Thrust, a skill that was so commonly used in the later stages of the game. This skill is very useful for weapons such as the spear, long sword, short sword, dagger,etc

The damage is considerably higher compared to slashing. And this skill is quite popular among players. In the early stages of the game, if one can use this skill, it would be very beneficial. However, Xia Mo only has the stance of the thrust, and the system did not recognize her damage as thrust damage (which would deal extra damage). Therefore, she needed to keep using the same action to gain the experience in the skill and hope that the system would quickly identify that she had used the Thrust skill.

The porcupine was a weak monster and they did not have a habit to attack in a group. Although its attack was higher than some other animals in the forest, it would definitely not give a good drop. Xia Mo walked to the side of the corpse and realized that it did not even gave her anything. This was normal. The good thing about the porcupine is that Xia Mo can pull out the longest spike from its body.

She recalled that when she encountered this in her first life, she would have so much discomfort and unwillingness to kill the monster. How much had she changed such that she is numb and cold to such killings? Xia Mo had never thought of this problem before, and she would never think of it now or even in the future.

It did not matter what she would become as long as she can stay alive to the end.