CHAPTER 172: KNIGHT SKILL: TAUNT

Looking at the Crimson Flame Tiger before him, Lin Mo's eyes lit up.

Compared to the other Silver-level rooms, the magical creature in this room was clearly a tier stronger. Since the creature inside was stronger, then correspondingly, the rewards should likely be better as well.

If not for having the means to scout with a clone, he might not have been able to choose this path, and would have missed out on this big prize.

This Crimson Flame Tiger with a threat level around level 3 happened to be perfect for testing the strength of Lin Mo's clone.

The Crimson Flame Tiger in the chamber immediately became alert upon seeing the intruder opening the door. However, compared to the magical creatures encountered before, this Crimson Flame Tiger was clearly slightly more intelligent. It didn't rush to attack immediately, but instead paced around observing for a while, emitting warning low growls.

Lin Mo's clone smiled slightly and hooked a finger at it.

This clearly provocative action instantly angered the Crimson Flame Tiger. It no longer hesitated, roared loudly, and pounced toward Lin Mo.

An expert knows if there's substance from the first move. Indeed, this Crimson Flame Tiger was much stronger than the previous magical creatures.

From Lin Mo's current perspective, a magical creature of this level naturally posed no threat. However, his clone's strength was considerably weaker than his main body, and it couldn't use skills, so he couldn't afford to be careless.

He controlled the clone to quickly retreat, barely dodging this attack, then immediately swung his sword to thrust forward, aiming directly for the Crimson Flame Tiger's face.

The Crimson Flame Tiger was certainly no fool. Although attacking, it hadn't used its full strength just now, but rather a probing feint, still retaining plenty of energy for defense and retreat.

Therefore, the moment Lin Mo thrust his sword, it hurriedly jumped back, also dodging Lin Mo's counterattack.

This one has some skill...

Lin Mo hadn't experienced this kind of evenly matched battle for a long time. Actually, he had encountered opponents of similar strength before, but back then, to pursue safety, he mostly had Sherfilia help out to quickly end the fights.

This was actually the correct choice. Lin Mo wouldn't put himself in danger for momentary pleasure. Being able to obtain rewards without any risks was surely better than various life-and-death crises and hanging by a thread?

But the current situation was different. The current Lin Mo was just a clone after all. Whether injured or killed, any mistakes didn't matter. At most, it would just consume some Qi and Blood, perfect for enjoying the fun of battle while also honing his skills.

Although he had practiced many times with Sherfilia before, fighting humans and fighting magical creatures were different concepts after all. Humans possessed combat techniques, and their attack methods differed greatly from magical creatures.

Come on, continue!

This time Lin Mo took the initiative to attack, swinging his sword toward the Crimson Flame Tiger's face. His proactive assault, carrying a fearless momentum, actually made the Crimson Flame Tiger hesitant and timid.

So the Crimson Flame Tiger opened its mouth and spat out a ball of destructive flame, flying toward Lin Mo.

Lin Mo had fought Crimson Flame Tigers before, so he naturally knew it had such methods. Therefore, he had been mentally prepared, dodging to the side the moment the flame began brewing. There was no danger at all;

he was completely at ease.

Sharp attacks, perfectly timed dodges, and movements that seemed to predict all its moves - these factors combined made the Crimson Flame Tiger feel tremendous pressure.

Lin Mo attacked again, each assault more ferocious than the last, swinging the Black Sword as he thrust toward the Crimson Flame Tiger's eyes.

The Crimson Flame Tiger hurriedly raised its paw to block. The sword tip and tiger paw collided, emitting a crisp sound.

This was their first direct confrontation. A considerable force surged forth, making the Black Sword vibrate in his hand, his palm slightly numb.

As expected of a Crimson Flame Tiger. If it were an ordinary level 3 magical creature, Lin Mo believed his clone wouldn't be at a disadvantage even without advantages, since his current strength wasn't much different from an ordinary level 3 Warrior. 𝘳𝓪𝐍Ổ𝐁ЁŠ

But the Crimson Flame Tiger before him clearly had strength significantly exceeding ordinary level 3 Warriors. This was similar to human profession bonuses - magical creatures actually had similar things. Their attribute bonuses were often related to bloodline. The more powerful the bloodline, the higher the attributes. For magical creatures with powerful bloodlines like Crimson Flame Tigers, even at level 3, their strength could reach 40 points or even higher.

And this collision's advantage made the previously flustered Crimson Flame Tiger regain its confidence. Its eyes showed very human-like mockery, growling twice as if saying: So that's all you've got.

Indeed, high-level magical creatures possessed relatively high intelligence, especially magical creatures with powerful bloodlines like Crimson Flame Tigers. Their thinking ability wasn't much different from some humans.

Feeling confident again, the Crimson Flame Tiger actively launched an attack, swinging its thick paw toward Lin Mo.

Lin Mo's eyes narrowed slightly, carefully observing every subtle movement of the Crimson Flame Tiger. Swinging the Black Sword, he seemed about to confront the Crimson Flame Tiger head-on again.

However, just as the Black Sword was about to collide with the Crimson Flame Tiger's paw, Lin Mo suddenly twisted the sword tip. Simultaneously, he lowered his posture, adopting a forward charging stance, almost brushing past the tiger paw while dodging it. The Black Sword in his hand entered the Crimson Flame Tiger's wide-open mouth from a very tricky angle.

With a "shhh" sound, blood flew out. Lin Mo's sword nearly cut off the Crimson Flame Tiger's tongue, the sword tip pressing against the palate, deeply embedded within.

The Crimson Flame Tiger cried out in pain. Meanwhile, its just-executed attack made it lose balance, its large body falling backward.

Lin Mo didn't have time to withdraw the sword, so he simply released the hilt, pulled out a dagger from his waist, and using the forward momentum from before, performed a sliding tackle, passing beneath the Crimson Flame Tiger. The dagger in his hand pierced the Crimson Flame Tiger's abdomen, using their respective forward momentum to leave a wound almost covering the entire stomach.

Clearly, although the Crimson Flame Tiger even had some advantage in strength, Lin Mo obviously had advantages in other attributes including speed and constitution. Especially speed - in combat, speed could often play a more important role than strength. For example, when Lin Mo first crossed over, his strength was very weak. When facing slightly weaker magical creatures, he often used speed to kite them, slowly wearing them down to death.

Coupled with combat skills far superior to the Crimson Flame Tiger's, the resulting process, while not completely one-sided, basically had no great pressure.

However, just when the Crimson Flame Tiger was severely injured and Lin Mo only needed to finish it off, the battle seemed about to end like this...

In the Crimson Flame Tiger's fearful eyes, the human before it suddenly exploded.

Literally exploded, directly disappearing with a violent explosion.

And the Crimson Flame Tiger happened to be outside the explosion range, unaffected.

The human before it also vanished. At first, the Crimson Flame Tiger thought it was some attack method, remaining alert for quite some time. But after waiting half the day, that human never reappeared.

As if it had just had a nightmare.

Yet the wounds in its mouth and abdomen told it that was clearly reality.

"Uh..."

Meanwhile, on the other side, Lin Mo showed a somewhat awkward expression. The Shadow Split skill's duration had ended.

Indeed, after crossing the long narrow passage, the remaining time for battle wasn't much.

He still hadn't used this skill enough times, failing to notice the time. After one exchange, he subconsciously created distance. If he had been slightly closer to that Crimson Flame Tiger, just the Self-Destruct at the end could have blown it to death.

But it didn't matter anyway. That Crimson Flame Tiger was in the chamber and couldn't escape. He could just go collect it now.

Speaking of which, he could just try using both clone and main body to kill a magical creature simultaneously, to see if they could share proficiency.

Lin Mo had tried before - for combined skills, like status skills such as Vanish plus offensive skills, killing magical creatures could grant proficiency for both simultaneously. But if using two offensive skills, only one skill would gain proficiency, specifically the one that dealt the fatal damage to the magical creature.

He wondered what the situation would be like with the Shadow Split skill?

Having confirmed the correct path, Lin Mo directly walked toward the rightmost intersection.

Sherfilia didn't ask much and directly followed. The two walked through the long narrow passage, arriving before the opened silver door.

Inside, that Crimson Flame Tiger was enduring severe pain, rolling over to lick its wounds with its pierced tongue. Although indeed severely injured, a magical creature's vitality was clearly incomparable to ordinary animals. Given enough time, it could recover, and this process wouldn't take too long - not 10 days or half a month, just two or three days would be enough.

However, as the Crimson Flame Tiger licked its wounds, it suddenly noticed something wrong. Raising its head, it just met Lin Mo's eyes.

Instantly, this level 3 magical creature's face showed a terrified expression. That human was back!

It struggled to get up, wanting to escape. Clearly, it no longer had the courage to face Lin Mo. But the current Lin Mo wasn't the clone from before - he was much stronger in terms of strength. Therefore, in just an instant, he caught up with it, knocked it to the ground, while simultaneously releasing the Shadow Split skill. A clone appeared beside Lin Mo.

The next moment, Lin Mo drew the Black Sword, performing Consecutive Thrusts toward the Crimson Flame Tiger. Simultaneously, the clone beside him also attacked, thrusting its sword toward the Crimson Flame Tiger's heart.

The main body's Consecutive Thrusts and the clone's sword almost simultaneously hit the Crimson Flame Tiger's body. The next moment, two prompts appeared before Lin Mo's eyes.

[Shadow Split] Proficiency +10

[Consecutive Thrusts] Proficiency +20

Lin Mo's eyes immediately lit up. Could they be added simultaneously? No, that's not right...

The proficiency gained for Consecutive Thrusts was the normal 20 points, but the proficiency gained for Shadow Split was clearly unreasonable. Even though this was an Epic Level skill, and the proficiency gained had some attenuation as the skill level increased, for a level 3 magical creature, this attenuation shouldn't be too exaggerated. Even if not 20 points like Consecutive Thrusts, it should have 15 or 16 points, not the current 10 points.

Perhaps, just like status skills' effects on clones, when both clone and main body kill a magical creature simultaneously, the proficiency gained also experiences some attenuation because of this?

This was most likely the correct explanation.

But regardless, he still gained proficiency for two skills simultaneously - definitely a profit.

Previously, the magical creatures weren't valuable enough, so Lin Mo hadn't brought their materials. But the current Crimson Flame Tiger was different - Crimson Flame Tiger fur and teeth were very valuable. So he spent some time collecting both the fur and teeth. During this process, Sherfilia proactively came to help. Her technique was extremely exquisite, almost perfectly removing the tiger skin.

Lin Mo placed these materials into his backpack. Fortunately, his backpack capacity was also quite large. If there weren't too many magical creatures ahead, it should barely fit.

If it really couldn't fit, he'd deal with that when the time comes...

After collecting the magical creature materials, the next most important thing was naturally searching for this chamber's treasure chest. Lin Mo had already noted its location during his earlier battle with the Crimson Flame Tiger, so he directly walked over and picked up a silver chest.

"By the way, is this treasure chest itself valuable?"

Lin Mo looked toward Sherfilia beside him.

Hearing this, Sherfilia crouched down to carefully examine it, then shook her head: "It should just be a silver-plated chest, not very valuable."

Alright, that makes sense... Otherwise, if there were golden chests later, and they were all made of pure gold, just the chests' values would be exaggerated.

The focus was still on what was inside this chest.

Lin Mo had already opened one silver chest before, containing only some Gold Coins and one Excellent-grade equipment. But this chamber's difficulty was somewhat higher than that one's - he wondered if the rewards would be better too?

The red beast-shaped mark on the chest slowly faded. Lin Mo waited for the mark to completely disappear, then directly opened the chest.

What appeared before him was a scroll.

Indeed!

Lin Mo's eyes immediately lit up, his face showing joy. Good stuff, here it comes.

Lin Mo eagerly opened this scroll, discovering it was a Knight profession skill called - Taunt.

This was quite a classic skill for the Knight defensive profession, able to play significant roles in many scenarios, especially during team battles. With taunt-type skills, you could better protect the backline. Otherwise, if enemies completely ignored you, with the Knight's clumsy agility, you simply couldn't catch up with enemies, let alone stop them from attacking your own damage dealers.

But for Lin Mo, this skill's usefulness was temporarily not very great.

After all, although Lin Mo was technically a Knight profession, it was just a side profession. When fighting, he didn't resemble a Knight at all. His combat style, to put it positively, was quite free;

to put it bluntly, most times he charged forward alone, fighting solo.

This Taunt skill, aside from being able to protect teammates at critical moments, had almost no other use.

If only the clones created by the Shadow Split skill could use skills...

If clones could use skills, he could directly have clones use this "Taunt" to attract magical creatures' attention for him, conveniently serving a gathering function, letting the clones' Self-Destruct explode to their heart's content.

Regardless, it's somewhat of a functional skill - better learn it first.

"Learned skill [Taunt], gained attribute points Constitution +2!"

[Taunt] Lv1 (0/10): Taunt enemies, attracting their attention with a chance to forcibly make you their primary target. Success rate and duration depend on level difference and enemy's spirit attribute.

This was an Excellent-grade skill. Learning it gave Lin Mo two Constitution attribute points. But compared to that, what Lin Mo cared more about was this skill's specific description.

Success rate and duration are also related to spirit attribute?

After all, the Taunt skill essentially worked through interfering with the enemy's spirit to achieve control.

If the opponent's spirit attribute was high enough, they would naturally possess some resistance to such spirit interference skills.

With these 2 Constitution points added, Lin Mo's Constitution attribute had reached 37 points, still 3 points away from the condition needed to reach level 4 Knight.

But these 3 Constitution points temporarily probably wouldn't be that easy to obtain.

The Taunt skill was clearly quite difficult for Lin Mo to grind proficiency for. The Knight profession's other two skills, Fortitude and Earth-Rending Slam, had both reached level 5, having received intermediate improvements. The next time he wanted to improve attributes would be at max level. And these two skills were both blue Excellent-grade skills, with max level being 7. Especially the 300 proficiency needed from level 6 to 7 wouldn't be easy to grind.

The Knight profession really had too few skills...

Besides this scroll, the treasure chest also contained 8 crystal coins, equivalent to 800 Gold Coins.

Clearly, this chest's value far exceeded the silver treasure chest Lin Mo opened earlier.

That previous silver treasure chest's value might not even compare to the two Bronze treasure chests Lin Mo opened before. This showed that even for chambers of the same level and treasure chests of the same level, the rewards inside could vary greatly.

Speaking of which, his luck last time was indeed quite good. Ordinary Bronze treasure chest contents probably didn't have such high value.

But relying solely on luck definitely wouldn't take you far, since you couldn't be lucky every time. Fortunately, after obtaining the clone skill this time, Lin Mo had means to scout paths, completely able to choose the best rewards every time.

"Let's go, continue to the next chamber."

Sherfilia watched him put away the scroll in his hand, suddenly having a rather absurd thought.

Just now, Lin Mo had paused for a while holding the scroll, seeming to be seriously pondering. That didn't really look like he was reading the skill scroll's contents, but more like he was attempting to learn and operate it.

She had indeed sensed Lin Mo's Qi and Blood being noticeably mobilized just now - was he trying to practice?

This guy, could he have already learned it...

No, no... That should be impossible.

Sherfilia shook her head and caught up with Lin Mo's steps.

Pushing open the door at the room's end, what appeared before them this time were still 4 different branching paths.

Meaning these paths all led to Silver-level chambers?

Without needing to say more, Lin Mo directly used the Shadow Split skill, creating a clone that walked toward the 1st path.

Soon reaching the path's end, what appeared before him was indeed a silver door.

Pushing the door open, what appeared before Lin Mo was a scorpion about one meter tall. This scorpion was entirely crimson red, looking as if boiled, its two large pincers making Lin Mo think of lobsters - he wondered how it would taste.

"Flame Scorpion."

Lin Mo had previously specifically studied up on basic magical creature knowledge, so he recognized this magical creature. Bloodline-wise, the Flame Scorpion's bloodline was definitely far inferior to the Crimson Flame Tiger he just fought. But this Flame Scorpion's level was somewhat higher than that Crimson Flame Tiger's, around level 3.5.

This level was slightly problematic for Lin Mo's clone.

The difficulty increased... Or did he hit the jackpot with the first one?

Regardless, fight first then decide.

The battle process was roughly similar to the earlier fight with the Crimson Flame Tiger. However, comparatively, the Flame Scorpion was weaker in strength but had higher defense than the Crimson Flame Tiger.

The clone's time was about to end, but the battle still had no clear outcome. Although he had left some wounds on the opponent, they clearly weren't fatal.

But this time Lin Mo specifically paid attention to the clone's remaining time. When the skill was about to end, he suddenly controlled the clone to directly crash into the opponent's face.

The Flame Scorpion naturally unhesitatingly used its pair of fiery red large pincers to clamp onto "Lin Mo"'s body, preparing to deliver a heavy blow.

However, just as the pincers began exerting force, the clone's time ended. The "Lin Mo" before it suddenly directly exploded.

At such close distance, the explosion's power perfectly poured onto the Flame Scorpion's body.

Lin Mo regained his focus, and the prompt he wanted to see appeared before his eyes.

[Shadow Split] Proficiency +20

It actually blew to death!

Lin Mo was somewhat pleasantly surprised. It seemed the clone's Self-Destruct power was greater than he expected.

The [Shadow Split] skill was currently level 3. For a level 3.5 Flame Scorpion, the proficiency attenuation wasn't much - a full 20 points.

Just 9 more proficiency points, and this skill would reach level 4.

The battle ended, and the 1st path's situation was already explored. But Lin Mo of course wasn't in a hurry to decide, instead creating a 2nd clone that walked toward the 2nd branching path.

Although the Flame Scorpion's strength was high, probably similar to the earlier Crimson Flame Tiger, presumably the treasure chest would also have good rewards. But he should at least check the situations of all four paths - what if there was a better one?

"Lin Mo" soon reached the path's end, directly pushing open the door.

What appeared before him was actually a Bronze Goblin, level around 3, clearly much weaker than the 1st path's Flame Scorpion.

This time, he didn't even need Self-Destruct. Before the clone's time ended, "Lin Mo" directly achieved a solo kill.

[Shadow Split] Proficiency +15

"Skill [Shadow Split] Lv3 (80/80) leveled up!"

"Current skill [Shadow Split] Lv4 (6/200)"

Just reached level 4. Lin Mo glanced at the skill's effects.

[Shadow Split] Lv4 (6/200): Transforms shadow into a clone to fight alongside! The shadow inherits 65% of the main body's attributes but cannot use skills. The clone continuously consumes Qi and Blood while existing, with maximum existence time of 600 seconds.

Indeed, same as before. After leveling up, the clone's inherited main body attributes increased by 5% again. But regarding duration, there didn't seem to be a pattern, directly increasing from the original 420 seconds to 600 seconds - a full 10 minutes. This was much more generous than before, giving Lin Mo plenty of time for exploration.

Continue, continue. Lin Mo then sent out the 3rd clone, entering the 3rd branching path in order.

"Huh?"

After a short while, Lin Mo suddenly made a sound of surprise.