Jack watched Joanna's figure recede fast down the dirt path and shook his head, a resigned sigh slipping out. He knew exactly what was going on. His aunt must have laid down the law on that phone call last night—ordered Joanna to at least stick around long enough to help him grind to Level 5 before bailing. Level 5 was the first real watershed for new awakened pros. Hit that benchmark, and your HP pool got a solid jump, survivability spiked hard enough that you could at least scrape by on your own out in the wilds.
But Joanna clearly hadn't taken the old lady's demands to heart. She'd put on a half-hearted show of force, popped one flashy high-tier skill, and dipped. Jack couldn't have cared less. If anything, he preferred it this way. He had the SSS-rank talent Infinite Plunder—an ability that flat-out broke the system's core rules. If Joanna had hung around, he'd have spent every second scrambling to hide how absurdly his damage output spiked. Flying solo? He could test the full extent of his talent freely, no prying eyes to worry about.
He dragged his gaze back and spotted a small cluster of other newly awakened pros not far off, huddled under a big oak, geeking out over their stat panels.
"Check out my panel—my physical attack's already at 11 points!" A short-haired guy with twin daggers slung over his back was practically vibrating with excitement, twirling a plain white-tier dagger he'd just picked up at the market.
In this data-run world, attack power set the base damage a pro dealt to mobs. White-tier gear was the lowest grade the system recognized, usually only giving a negligible stat bump. But for a fresh grad out of the preparatory academy, even one white-tier weapon counted as a luxury.
"Eleven attack? Dude, that's top tier for our whole batch," the shield-bearing warrior next to him said, envy thick in his voice.
The short-haired guy spun his dagger a couple more times, smug as hell. "Damn right. I awakened Rogue class—we already get natural attack speed buffs. Pair that with 11 attack, and I'm cranking out 15 to 16 DPS in a fight. Long as I don't run into some freak with god-tier defense, I'm gonna steamroll these early levels."
Jack stood quietly off to the side, listening. From their chatter, he quickly mapped out the baseline power standard for the novice phase. Most physical classes right now sat between 5 and 15 base attack. Anyone over 15 either had a high-grade talent that dumped a massive damage bonus on them, or came from a rich family that dropped serious coin to kit them out with full starter gear to inflate their stats artificially.
He pulled up his own attribute panel and glanced at it. As an F-rank blank slate Archer with zero starting skills or talent bonuses, his base attack sat at a sad 2-3 points. Stats that garbage would get him labeled dead weight in any random novice party.
He lifted his head and locked onto a Longhorn Hare that had just spawned in the grass ahead. It was the most common Level 1 zone mob—about the size of a small dog, two huge buck teeth sticking out of its snout. His interface popped up its HP: 20 points.
If he'd only had his base 2-3 attack to work with, he'd need to land eight clean shots in a row to take it down. For an Archer with zero defensive skills, that was a stupidly dangerous, energy-sucking grind.
The crudely made novice arrows at the bottom of his quiver each gave a +1 bonus to ranged physical damage. They were all factory rejects, every last one, but stacked with his base stats, those measly bonuses pushed his total attack up to a barely passable 3-4 points.
Jack nocked the first wooden arrow to his bowstring. He started stepping back, methodically widening the gap between himself and the target.
The single biggest advantage Archers had in the early game was attack range that blew every other class out of the water. He stopped at the extreme edge of his range—roughly 40 meters out. He drew a slow, steady breath, lined up his shot on the hare munching clover, and let the string slip.
Thwip.
The arrow sliced through the air and buried itself square in the hare's back. A crisp red damage number floated up over its head: -4.
The injured hare shrieked in fury, its eyes flashing blood-red instantly. It locked onto Jack immediately, flailed its stubby front claws, and charged straight at him at full tilt.
Jack stayed cool. He backpedaled, one measured step at a time, while his hand moved in a blur, yanking fresh arrows from his hip quiver. Nock, draw, loose—the whole sequence flowed smooth as water.
-3.
-4.
Two more arrows hit home in quick succession. The hare's HP bar plummeted, but the mob was closing fast. The frenzied little monster was barely two meters away now, hind legs coiled to launch into a biting lunge, when Jack's sixth arrow punched clean through its skull.
The last sliver of its HP winked out. The Longhorn Hare seized up mid-leap, then crashed hard into the grass, dissolving into a shimmer of fading light. All that was left on the ground was one copper coin, glowing with a dull luster. No extra drops.
Low-level novice zone mobs had an abysmal drop rate for gear or materials. You could slaughter three dozen of them and still not walk away with a single useful item. Jack walked over, scooped up the copper, and bounced it in his palm, doing quick mental math.
This fight was a net loss, economically speaking. The crude arrows on his back were the cheapest consumable on the market, but even a 100-pack cost 2 silver at any town weapon shop. Do the division, and every arrow he fired cost him 2 copper. He'd just killed one Longhorn Hare, used four arrows, burned through 8 copper in ammo, and walked away with 1 copper from the corpse.
In this world, a bottom-tier Archer who couldn't keep up high accuracy and fast kill speeds would go flat broke from ammo costs in no time. That was the core reason so many commoner Archers ended up ditching the class entirely.
But Jack couldn't have cared less about the copper loss right now. His full attention was glued to the system notifications popping up across his vision.
[Successfully slain Longhorn Hare (Level 1).]
[Gained 12 Experience Points.]
[SSS-rank Talent Infinite Plunder triggered: Permanently increase Attack Power by 1 point for every monster of equal level slain.]
Jack yanked open his attribute panel immediately. A jolt of excitement shot through him—his base attack had already climbed from the original 2-3 to 3-4.
For an ordinary pro, gaining 1 point of attack might take half a month of brutal training, or a fat stack of gold to buy a better weapon. Jack had just earned that exact same permanent base stat bump by killing one sad little Level 1 mob. That meant one thing, plain and simple: as long as he kept killing, his damage would stack forever, no ceiling, no limit.
Archers were built for mobile combat. Jack started scanning the open plain for his next target, testing out different footwork patterns and firing angles as he went, sharpening his kiting technique with every step.
Kiting. That was the core combat art for ranged classes: use constant movement to keep a safe buffer zone while pumping out sustained damage against a mob. Just like flying a kite—enemy advances, you retreat. You keep the monster permanently tethered right at the edge of your attack range. For Archers and Mages without a solid frontline to hide behind, it was the make-or-break survival skill you had to master or die trying.
The first few kills were still slow. His footwork was clumsy, his shot rhythm stiff and awkward. Every time he drew his bow, he had to scramble to widen the gap again, dodging the hare's ferocious lunges by the skin of his teeth. A couple of times, the mobs got right up to his ankles and almost raked gashes across his calves.
But as EXP piled up and his kill count ticked steadily higher, quantity started shifting into quality, inevitable as gravity. Every kill gave him one more attack point, and every single point silently shaved seconds off his clear time.
After he'd methodically taken down nearly twenty Longhorn Hares, Jack reached back and drew another wooden arrow from his quiver.
Forty meters away, a fresh hare had just spawned out of thin air. Jack didn't even stop moving to line up the shot. Running purely on muscle memory now, he drew the bowstring to full extension while still retreating and let his fingers slip.
The crude wooden arrow carved a lethal arc through the air and punched into the hare's body in a heartbeat.
-22!
An enormous red damage number exploded off the impact. That hare—20 HP, full health bar, completely untouched—never even had time to squeal. Its HP bar just vanished, wiped out between one frame and the next. The creature toppled stiffly onto the grass and dissolved into motes of light.
One shot. Instant kill.
Jack stopped in his tracks. He gripped the worn old training bow in his hands, feeling the strength now thrumming steadily through his body, an ever-growing current of raw power with no end in sight.
His base attack had already swelled by nearly 20 points from his talent bonuses. The same mobs that once took four or five grueling arrows to bring down now died to a single regular attack.
With nothing but his SSS-rank talent, in less than half an hour, Jack had shattered that most brutal damage ceiling—the wall that stopped every other novice pro dead in their tracks.