A Legendary Thief

Xiao Yu picked up the coins dropped by the sand salamander. It had left behind 51 bronze coins and an item.

Tattered cloak: defense 7-9, cotton armor.

Putting it on could help reinforce his defense. His experience bar for level 3 was at 67%. His initial leveling up speed was quite fast, especially after Xiao Yu had killed the sand salamander, a level-5 monster that was much higher than his own level. With the additional bonus, he had gained many experience points, which was equivalent to the total value that came with killing more than 10 sand beetles.

Xiao Yu suddenly discovered that the proficiency of his stealth travel and reversed backstabbing skills had stopped improving. It turned out that he had already perfected these skills. It was time to improve other skills.

Xiao Yu returned to the small town Tabarka and once again came across Thief Teacher Ode. He was sitting in a chair, asleep.

"Honorable teacher, I'm here to improve my skills," Xiao Yu said reverentially to the man in the chair. He didn't believe a thief teacher would sleep unprotected. Even if he had been asleep, he should have already woken up the moment Xiao Yu came in.

"Improve your skills, huh?" Thief Teacher Ode opened his eyes and looked at Xiao Yu from head to toe with his sharp eyes. If memory served him, this young man had just come here to learn skills this morning.

"Yes," answered Xiao Yu honestly. He felt like he was being scanned by this thief teacher. What he didn't know was that this was a thief skill called "skill surveillance." It was a skill learned when thieves reached a certain level.

"Which skills do you wish to improve?" asked Ode while gazing at him. His unfocused and bleary eyes suddenly beamed.

"Stealth travel and reversed backstabbing," replied Xiao Yu. Seeing the expression on his face, Xiao Yu wondered if he had said something wrong.

"The reversed backstabbing skill?" The thief teacher's eyes brightened for a brief moment and then narrowed as he examined Xiao Yu. "Upgrading stealth travel requires 30 silver coins; upgrading reversed backstabbing requires five gold coins," he said.

"Tsk," Xiao Yu inhaled a quick breath. Forget about upgrading stealth travel for 30 silver coins… It took five gold coins to upgrade reversed backstabbing. This was no different from robbery! After the initial shock, Xiao Yu calmed down and thought it was reasonable to charge 30 silver coins for a useful skill like stealth travel. Thinking on it a bit more, it occurred to him that the reversed backstabbing skill did indeed have an effectively lethal power, so the skill was indeed worth the price of five gold coins. But where would Xiao Yu find that much money?

"I don't have that kind of money right now. I'd like to learn the stealth travel skill first," Xiao Yu said regretfully. All he had in his pocket was 63 silver coins, which was not enough for upgrading reversed backstabbing. What he could do was upgrade stealth travel and deal with upgrading reversed backstabbing later. This seemed like the most practical plan at the time.

"Young man, that will affect your improvement later on down the line," said Thief Teacher Ode earnestly.

Even a hero would starve without any money; what could he do then? He couldn't simply rob somebody, no matter how tempting a possibility like that might seem.

Ode seemed to figure out the embarrassing situation Xiao Yu was in and said with a faint smile, "I can teach you the reversed backstabbing skill for free now, but you have to do two tasks for me before I even think about doing so."

"What tasks would these be?" asked Xiao Yu, feeling excited. This condition was too appealing to him now that he could learn the reversed backstabbing skill for free.

"The first task is to collect the adder's tongue for me; the second is to search for a dropped item. You need to learn the primary skill of collecting medicinal plants for the first task. You should be able to complete the task with a level-10 collecting skill or lower, but you need level-3 stealth travel to do it. I'll inform you when you can carry out the second task. In addition to five gold coins, I'll give you some more task awards. Of course, you can choose to give up the tasks. However, if you decide to give up midway, you will have to pay me 500 gold coins for violating the agreement. Do you agree to this?" Ode looked at him with a smile.

After some thought, Xiao Yu decided while gritting his teeth that he would give it a try and learn the skills first. It was tantamount to the saying, "The barefoot person is not afraid of those who wear shoes." The worst that could happen to him was that he would pay the penalty if he could in no way complete the tasks. That was a chance he was willing to take, which was much better than not learning the skills at all.

"I agree," answered Xiao Yu.

System: You have now upgraded to level-2 stealth travel.

System: You have now upgraded to level-2 reversed backstabbing.

After checking his stealth travel skill, Xiao Yu found that his stealth travel time had increased from 20 seconds to 30 seconds and that the cool-down time for the skill had reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds. The concealing effect of the skill had also improved, not to mention the traveling speed which had increased by 5%. As for the reversed backstabbing skill, its cool-down time had reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds, and the basic damage caused by this skill had increased from 25 to 50 points. That was a big improvement.

After calculating the damage power of the reversed backstabbing skill, Xiao Yu realized that he would gain about 300 points of damage point if he could perform it perfectly. He could kill a level-5 sand salamander in an instant! However, he was aware that he couldn't perform the reversed backstabbing skill perfectly each time; as such, he still needed to practice it until he could use it more proficiently. As long as he could complete more than 90% of the skill successfully, then the damage points would still be high.

"Go get stronger," Ode said while waving his hand. He laid down in the chair and lazily closed his eyes once again.

"Thank you, Teacher." Xiao Yu always appeared respectful in front of Ode. It was because these non-player characters were intelligent and just as wise as humans. He knew it was necessary to show his respect toward Ode.

Xiao Yu then left.

Ode opened his eyes and looked at Xiao Yu's back with narrowed eyes, his light blue eyes showing a slight glow. "It's really rare to upgrade the reversed backstabbing skill by two levels in such a short time," he murmured to himself.

Improvement in skill proficiency was calculated by the skill success rate. A skill like stealth travel would gain one skill proficiency point each time the player successfully got behind the monster. When the skill proficiency reached a certain point, it would be upgraded. However, reversed backstabbing, regular backstabbing, and evisceration were somewhat different. Each time a player successfully caused some damage to a monster by using the reversed backstabbing skill, they would gain one proficiency point. They would then gain two skill proficiency points when successfully completing 90% of the skill and five points when completing 100%.

The higher the percentage a skill was completed at, the faster the skill would be upgraded. In fact, few players could perfectly use the skills at first. They needed to figure out the skills little by little. And even after learning the skills, they could only use them successfully with the help of someone guiding them. Likewise, Xiao Yu still couldn't use the skills of backstabbing and evisceration so far; the success rate of these skills was still zero for him.

Xiao Yu could kill the monsters much more easily since his stealth travel and reversed backstabbing skills had been upgraded to level 2. It was time for Xiao Yu, who was short on money at the moment, to earn some money. Otherwise, he would run into the same problem when he would have to pay for upgrading the skills.