Chapter 2: The Depressed Thief

  The second round of fighting began with Wu Song taking the initiative, when he found that the demonic leopard had made a slight movement due to the strong wind. Wu Song used a lateral movement and instantly flashed to the right side of the demonic leopard, then his left hand formed an eagle claw shape and launched a reverse strike, flashing towards the demonic leopard's throat like lightning.

  Backhand Strike is a very commonly used attack skill for thieves, one of the main attack skills in the early stages of the thief. The damage bonus caused by Backhand Strike to the target is not very high, but the speed of casting is very fast. At this time, Wu Song's bare-handed use of Backhand Strike was hoping to take advantage of its fast casting speed to grab the Magic Leopard's neck.

  The neck is one of the weakest areas of the Ghost Mist Ridge Demon Leopard's defenses. If Wu Song could grab onto its neck, he would have a great chance of directly strangling it to death (he had originally planned to jump onto the leopard's back and strangle it when he first ambushed it). However, this Ghost Mist Ridge Silver-maned Demon Leopard was extremely agile, and Wu Song's plan did not come to fruition. The leopard used its sideways movement to dodge Wu Song's counterattack, then swung its front paws backwards in a powerful counter-attack!

  Get out!

  As the leopard's paw flew swiftly towards his face, Wu Song was unable to retreat in time due to inertia. He remained calm and used a sweep kick, borrowing the momentum to dodge the leopard's front paw by suddenly falling to one side. Then, with his right leg supporting him on the ground, he quickly kicked out with his left leg at one of the two hind legs that the leopard was using to support its body.

  Bang!

  This time, due to the front paws leaving the ground and being inconvenient to move, the magic leopard was caught off guard, and one of its hind legs was kicked by Wu Song's foot, directly dislocating it. The body that lost its balance instantly fell to the ground.

  Opportunity!

  Out of the corner of his eye, Wu Song saw the demonic leopard fall to the ground. His eyes lit up, but he also lost his balance and fell forward. At this moment, he knew it was impossible for him to get up and pounce on the demonic leopard again. However, he didn't let go of this rare opportunity. After falling to the ground, he supported himself with his left hand, rolled his body backward, and quickly reached out with his right hand to grab the demonic leopard's tail, which was over a meter long.

  Wu Song's adaptability was quite good, but he was fast, and the Silver-maned Demon Leopard was even faster. This guy rolled out six or seven meters away with a lazy donkey roll, and Wu Song's slap on the snowy ground was empty, only catching a handful of snow water and a few dry leaves.

  "Oh~oh~oh!" The magic leopard got up from the ground, shook off the snowflakes stuck on its fur, and shouted a few words in excitement, which clearly meant "You can't beat me in speed!"

  "Damn it! You little beast, you'd better be proud of yourself. If I could master the second-level Body Duplication Technique, I would have strangled you to death long ago!" Wu Song cursed with a sour tone, but in his heart, he knew that was impossible. If he could master the second-level Body Duplication Technique, he wouldn't need to come to this godforsaken place, Ghost Fog Ridge, and suffer.

  Pounce!

  Although the demon leopard couldn't understand what Wu Song was muttering, it was very good at observing expressions and guessing what people were saying. Seeing Wu Song's sneer, it could tell that he wasn't saying anything nice. As a mutated beast king, the demon leopard was enraged by this weak human in front of it. With a fierce pounce, it lunged at Wu Song, its two rows of sharp, hook-like fangs gleaming like countless small knives!

  Emergency Evasion!

  The demonic leopard pounced, and Wu Song flashed to the right with his fastest speed, using his lifesaving skill Emergency Evasion. Although he wanted to catch the demonic leopard, it wasn't in this form. If the demonic leopard's attack landed, Wu Song had reason to believe that before he could use Body Double, the leopard's sharp teeth would tear open his throat.

  Deep stab!

  Wu Song barely dodged the demonic leopard's attack, but he didn't give up any opportunity to counterattack. In the instant when the leopard's head brushed past him, he seized the chance and thrust his right hand, with fingers together in a conical shape, fiercely into the back of the leopard's neck.

  This skill can increase the user's damage by a factor of two and has a certain armor-piercing effect, making it the strongest attack ability that can be used in the Ability Holder stage. Unfortunately, the thief's weakness is their strength, and all skills are based on the weapon's attack to produce damage, but Wu Song currently doesn't have a weapon in his hand. As a result, this killing move, although accurately hitting the magic leopard's neck, only produced a few dozen points of damage and didn't trigger any instant kill effects. On the contrary, Wu Song's fingers were numbed by the counterforce from the magic leopard's body. What's more tragic is that during his brief pause, the magic leopard took advantage of the momentum to kick Wu Song in the waist with its hind legs. Although the force was not enough to break Wu Song's ribs due to the hasty movement, the sharp claws still scratched Wu Song's armpit bloody!

  "This damn attack power, damn it! If I were a warrior, this one hit would have been enough to take him down!" Wu Song flashed out several meters away, covering his ribs with his hand and couldn't help but curse.

  Poor attack power has always been a big trouble for thieves. The profession of thief is good at speed, dodging, ambushing, controlling, and accurately attacking the target's weak points to cause fatal damage, but not strong attack power. This means that weapons are crucial for thieves, but the problem is that due to the task's conditional restrictions, Wu Song did not dare to use his weapon to randomly slash at the Magic Leopard, so this battle was as suffocating as it could be.

  Wu Song, this guy's blood is filled with violent elements. When he played virtual games before, he always chose professions like warriors and barbarians that could deal massive damage to targets directly. However, when he came to this godforsaken world, a chance encounter led him to choose the thief profession, which wasn't really his cup of tea.

  Thieves mainly focus on agility, and Wu Song naturally didn't choose to be a thief who still focused on strength. Therefore, he chose to put all the attribute points he gained from leveling up and those obtained through Soul Power into agility. The benefit of doing so is that Wu Song's current movement speed and attack speed are faster than those of thieves at the same level, and even most superhumans. However, the cost is that his attack power is a mess!

  Wu Song is now a standard 10th-level controller. If he were a warrior with added strength, even without any weapons, he could easily deal triple-digit damage to the Ghost Mist Ridge's demonic leopard, which has defense capabilities that can be described as trash. However, under the premise of not having any weapon assistance, Wu Song, as a full agility thief, found it quite difficult to deal double-digit damage to the Ghost Mist Ridge's demonic leopard. This level of damage is almost negligible for a variant beast with tens of thousands of qi and blood.