Fighting active—as opposed to reactive—enemies was a step up in the difficulty. Shen started with thrusting against a minotaur's head, and it defended with the shield as usual. However, it didn't cover its eyes with the shield, and counter-attacked faster.
Shen was forced to step back and thrust his spear against the minotaur's belly, but it could see the attack and lowered his shield in time. It suffered a minor injury as the spearhead pierced the wood and damaged its hand, but it wasn't enough for it to get distracted or drop the shield.
After dodging the counter-attacks, Shen thrust his spear against another minotaur's belly. It lowered the shield, but Shen's attack was a faint. His spear quickly rose and went straight for the enemy's head, but it was faster than him and redirected his shield in time.
He was forced to step back or get surrounded, frustration seeping into him.
He felt he should do much better than that, but clearly his victory against Uk'Gaar had made him too full of himself. He was stronger than any individual minotaur, and could certainly kill them with some easy in 1v1s, but he couldn't actually train against them like he had done with the final boss. Their shield and group attacks gave them too much of an advantage.
Then again, cultivators were strong because of their qi usage. He had thought he should win without qi because the mortals would do that too, but the second stage was different, wasn't it? Even mortals could become as strong as cultivators now if they had enough AP. Not using qi to train in certain situations might be fine, but using it when he needed wasn't a shame anymore. Just like killing his enemies rather than using them as training dummies wouldn't make him any lesser.
So he Backstepped to the rightmost minotaur's back and made quick work of it.
Their shields gave them a measure of advantage against his qi-less spear techniques, but his footwork was the perfect answer against somewhat inflexible enemies. They were trained to fight foes head-on and to depend on their shields for that, and couldn't react as well to the Backstep as a mobile fighter.
Not too long later, only a crossbowman remained.
Shen recovered his health and stamina, then killed it too.
> Minotaur Militiaman (F) | 4,371 -> 4,381 AP
He was wondering what would come next, but no new enemy came. The fortress double doors were closed shut. He approached it, wondering if he could cut through the walls made of part wooden plates, part metal plates, makeshift-looking like the rest of the fortress. Was his spear strong enough to open him an entrance?
When he was within shot range, nothing less than a hundred crossbowmen over the walls.
They shot at once, and Shen ran forward.
The Gale Footwork didn't contain any moves for jumping. It went from moving quick on the ground to flying fast on the air—once a cultivator was strong enough to ride the winds, of course. So he did the only thing he could; he pushed qi into his legs and jumped.
It was a high jump, his feet easily reaching three times his height. The wall was almost double that though. Fortunately, it was made of both wood and metal, and he focused on the wooden part, thrusting with his spear, the spearhead on the horizontal.
The metal entered the wood, and he waited for a moment to see if any minotaur would shoot down. Unfortunately, they did, so he pushed against the wall with his feet and unstuck the spear. He fell feet-first while swinging his spear to deflect the ten bolts coming his way. He had to use qi for that, too.
He had one last thing to test, the very first he had considered. He ran a little, parallel to the wall. Before new minotaurs appeared on top of the wall to shoot him, he had a few seconds of safety, and he took advantage of it to infuse his arms with qi and thrust his spear against a wooden part of the wall with all his might.
The spear penetrated up to where he was holding the spear shaft. He pulled it and saw it was about as thick as his legs. When he was preparing to thrust again, the minotaurs above appeared, forcing him to run away.
He returned after a few moments, thrust again, and run away. Soon enough, by repeating the same actions, he had made a lot of holes close to each other in a rectangle about his height. Then he ran away from the fortress before rushing at it and slamming his body against the rectangle.
The rectangle was pushed successfully and fell to the ground.
Shen found himself in a vast courtyard completely devoid of anything but exactly one hundred militiamen with spear and shield in front of the fortress's main building, plus the hundred crossbowmen manning the walls. They all roared furiously, and the ones on the ground rushed at him as soon as he appeared.
He looked around and quickly found stairs leading to the top of the walls, and he ran at them. Fighting the close-range militiamen while getting shot by dozens of crossbowmen would be suicide. Fortunately, the crossbowmen here, though extra proactive in shooting him, had no defense once he got close to them.
He was like a hurricane, killing them with ease, leaving nothing but shining motes of light in his path.
After he was done, only the minotaurs on the ground remained, and now that he was willing to use his qi, they were annihilated with relative ease.
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He had less than ten stamina remaining when he finally killed the last one.
> Minotaur Militiaman (F) | 6,371 -> 6,381 AP
Shen sat on the ground, breathing haggardly. It had been a while since he had felt so drained. Killing the minotaurs hadn't been exactly hard, but it had required him to focus on his techniques for a long time. As much as he was already considered a cultivator, he wasn't really stronger than a mortal unless he used his qi.
He briefly considered buying a stat upgrade to speed his cultivation up. The cultivators of the past had suggested he check his enemies first, and he had done just that. He definitely could do with extra strength or agility. The points didn't look so hard to get either; he had gotten two thousand points right after invading the fortress.
Speaking of which, hadn't he killed his quota yet? Just as he thought of it, a message appeared in front of him.
=
> Tutorial - 2nd Stage
>
> Congratulations!
>
> You've killed at least 100 F-rank enemies!
>
> You can be teleported to fight the final boss at any time by saying, "Teleport to final boss."
>
> Your health and stamina will be fully recovered.
=
What a lackluster message. He ignored it and thought about his points.
Keeping the power of a mortal for now would assist in his trainings, even if the minotaurs with shields hadn't been the best sparring partners. Real struggle made one improve much faster. He would've been completely demolished by the minotaurs when he had first entered the tutorial, but he could kill them easily now, thanks to that training regimen.
But maybe he had been looking at it wrongly. His primary goal was to pass the tutorial, not training. His clan's qualified instructors could train him once he returned to the clan, probably much better than he could train himself by killing enemies with only the knowledge of books to draw from. All he needed on each stage was the power to move to the next one, and that was it.
Many a martial artist got addicted to the pleasure of improving and forgot the actual goal of cultivation: immortality. Strength was but a tool they used and a step they took to achieve that, and to protect oneself on the way. Training for the sake of training was a fool's errand.
His actions had made sense in the first tutorial, when he wasn't losing anything by taking extra time in each wave. Now, though, he was potentially losing a lot of AP by taking his time.
He definitely wanted the Learning Ability Upgrade and maybe an F spear before going to the next stage. Who knows if it would be as easy to get AP in there as it was in here? And the fastest way to get points was by growing as strong as possible and crushing all foes on his way.
Instead of training his techniques, Shen would train in killing his enemies as fast and effectively as possible.
"Buy F- strength, agility, and resistance," he said.
> Purchased: Strength Up (F-) | -1,000 AP
> Purchased: Agility Up (F-) | -1,000 AP
> Purchased: Resistance Up (F-) | -1,000 AP
> Remaining AP: 3,381
Light enveloped him and made his body float slightly. An irresistible power extended his limbs, and he felt a heat similar to the rank up fill his body. Unlike the rank up though, this time he felt very physical changes happening.
He could feel his muscles grow stronger, thicker, bigger, and then compressing. He felt they should lack flexibility, yet could almost feel their elasticity also increase because of the extra agility. His bones also improved to withstand the new muscles, and the very circulatory system he had been working on was refitted so blood could reach his whole body more effectively. Blood vessels changed places and were created anew.
It was a wonder to feel those changes and realize what they meant. The system was treating him like a defective object and perfecting it. It was like cultivation except much, much faster.
Some cultivation techniques also improved the skin's resistance, but only the very best and expensive ones didn't affect mobility much. The worst made the skin as hard as steel but also made it harder to flex the arm, for instance. What happened to his skin right now, though, was something else.
All the hair in his body fell at the same time as his skin trembled in waves. Wave after wave, it got thicker, then compressed. Repeatedly, it improved.
Until it was done.
> Strength: G → F-
> Agility: G -> F-
> Resistance: G → F-
The entire process took about five minutes, a mere instant compared to the couple of weeks—at least—cultivating would've taken.
For the very first time, Shen seriously considered giving up on cultivation.
Later, maybe. For now, it still let him save AP, and if AP could do this for him, it was important to save. That argument wasn't very good, since he could gain so much AP so easily, but he was still hesitant.
Power was just a step toward immortality; he had just reminded himself of it.
Could the system provide immortality?
He would remain a cultivator for now. Or rather, for the entire tutorial. He would need to at least consult with his father before making such an important and, as far as he knew, irreversible decision.
When the stat improvement was over, the light dropped him softly on the ground, on his feet. Shen immediately flexed his hand, and it felt powerful. Energy and strength filled his whole body. He thrust his spear forward, and was impressed at how fast it moved.
He was also surprised by finding himself moving both more than he intended because of the extra momentum of his thrust, and less than he should because of the extra weight of his body. Right after deciding training wasn't as important as improving his body, he found out he needed to train to get used to his stronger body. Ironic.
But before training, he had to check how his cultivation had been affected. The stat up had also healed the pain in his circulatory system and filled his health and stamina, so it would be no issue to cultivate now.
He sat on top of the fortress' walls, in a somewhat hidden corner. He couldn't wait to check his cultivation, but he wasn't in a hurry to die from a sneak attack, either. The only reason he would even attempt cultivating now was because no one had left the fortress during the commotion his fight had caused, nor in the following five minutes of body improvement.
Closing his eyes, he focused on himself. He pulled qi from the environment and it ran smoothly through his meridians. None of them had been affected. He pushed qi through them into his lungs, heart, veins, and arteries. The latter two were a bit harder to find now that they had changed places, but qi let him feel his body to the smallest details, and he found them after focusing a little longer.
He kept at it, and noticed he was taking a very, very long while to hurt enough to be forced to stop. His body had improved and could deal with qi better. Shen didn't stop until he was in pain though. He wanted to know his new limits.
Eventually, he reached it.
He opened his eyes to see the sun—which had been high on the sky when he had started cultivating—was now gone, replaced by three beautiful moons on the sky.
Two notifications popped up.
> Health Regen | 2.1→ 3.1/h
> Stamina Regen | 0.7 → 1.7/min