The buff is permanent, and you start the game with a fountain of water.

Improvement Direction 1: Reduce consumption, slightly increase power, and keep the cooldown time unchanged.

Improvement Direction 2: Increase resource consumption, significantly increase skill power, and extend cooldown time.

Improvement Direction 3: Increase resource consumption, slightly reduce skill power, slightly increase attack range, and extend cooldown time.

Looking at the three growth paths suggested by the system, Huan Cheng first ruled out the first one.

Thanks to [Endless Regeneration], his mana is inexhaustible, so reducing its consumption is meaningless.

The official information released by the God Realm has never mentioned anything about upgrading initial skills, so this should be a hidden setting.

If it can be upgraded once, then it can be upgraded a second, a third time...

It's not impossible to upgrade a skill from F-rank to A-rank or even S-rank.

Clearly, different path choices will directly affect the direction of subsequent improvements.

Huan Cheng's gaze lingered between the second and third routes, a sense of hesitation creeping into his heart.

The former can increase attack power, which is exactly what Huan Cheng needs right now. Further improvement could make it a core output skill for physical classes.

The latter can expand the attack range, and if properly cultivated, it may develop into the most scarce area-of-effect attack skill in the physical class.

After a moment's hesitation, Huan Cheng chose the second route.

A reckless person doesn't need to think that far ahead.

Slightly increasing the attack range has little effect at present, while directly increasing the attack power can allow Huan Cheng to further expand his advantage.

If you're fast at one step, you'll be fast at every step. In the early stages, it's more important to upgrade as quickly as possible!

After selection, a system notification sounded: "Ding, your F-rank skill [Heavy Strike] has been upgraded to E-rank [Heavy Strike]. Please check the specific effects yourself."

"Ding! Congratulations, Chengfeng! You have become the second player in the entire server to complete the basic skill upgrade. You are hereby rewarded with 500 reputation points."

"Hmm? The second one?"

Upon hearing the system notification, Huan Cheng was stunned.

He then pulled up the system notification and examined it carefully, his brows furrowing slightly.

As can be seen from the system prompts, whether or not basic skills are upgraded is directly related to the frequency of use.

F-rank critical strike has no cooldown; the only limitation on its usage frequency is mana.

Since inscribing the [Endless Revival] skill, Huan Cheng has been using heavy attacks to slay monsters almost non-stop.

This is only the second player to upgrade!

"The world of gods is full of hidden talents; no one should be underestimated!"

After a moment, Huan Cheng sighed and thought to himself.

He was able to awaken such an extraordinary talent as [Eternal Engraving], and other players may have had similar opportunities.

The Divine Realm covers all countries in the world, and the number of players is incalculable. Even if the probability of an extraordinary talent appearing is only one in a billion, there are still dozens of such talents in the world.

After giving himself a mental pep talk, Huan Cheng checked the upgraded critical strike attribute.

【Heavy Strike】: E-rank skill, consumes 5 mana, after a short charge-up, deals 105% base attack + 30 physical damage to a single target, cooldown is 5 seconds.

"Percentage increase?"

Upon seeing this, Huan Cheng was somewhat surprised, and his emphasis on the heavy blow rose to an even higher level.

Huan Cheng at level 4 has an attack power of 59. With the added critical strike damage boost, his attack cap exceeds 90 points!

After reaching level 4, the experience gained from killing small green snakes will drop to 14 points.

The experience required to upgrade from level 4 to level 5 has skyrocketed to 1440 points, requiring the killing of over a hundred small green snakes.

"Keep it up, get your first level 10 promotion title!"

Setting himself a small goal, Huan Cheng charged toward the little green snake once more.

…………

"Holy crap, Brother Long, look! Someone's soloing Little Green Snake over there!"

While Huan Cheng was frantically slaughtering the little green snakes, he didn't notice a group of people staring at him in disbelief not far away.

The man called Brother Long sized up Huan Cheng, especially noticing the Snake Fang Sword and the Green Snake Scale Armor, a greedy look appearing in his eyes.

"Brother Long, shall we take him down?"

Knowing Brother Long's temperament well, the younger brother lowered his voice and took the initiative to make the suggestion.

Before Brother Long could speak, another henchman hesitated: "The little green snake's attacks can stack poison. If he can take down the little green snake alone, he's probably a tough opponent."

"What are you afraid of?!"

"The Little Green Snake has the weakest base stats among level 4 monsters. This person must have awakened a poison resistance-related talent to be able to solo the Little Green Snake."

"Ah Qiang is right!"

Brother Long had some reservations, but after listening to his younger brother's analysis, he suddenly felt confident.

"Besides, there are six of us, six against one, how could we possibly lose?"

Brother Long glanced around and saw several of his underlings eager to try. He immediately waved his hand, signaling everyone to gather around.

"Hey bro, grinding monsters?"

Brother Long greeted him with a forced smile on his face.

Huan Cheng frowned, becoming more vigilant.

"What's up?"

"It's nothing, I just saw that you were alone and wanted to invite you to team up!"

"Not interested."

"No need for that, we're from the Fierce Tigers Society. Let's get acquainted; having more brothers means having more options!"

"No, goodbye!"

Huan Cheng frowned slightly and turned to leave.

"Sigh!" Brother Long sighed, shook his head, and said, "Since that's the case, then we'll see...we'll fight later!"

Before he could finish speaking, Brother Long struck first, thrusting his sword at Huan Cheng.

-9

"Ding! You have been maliciously attacked by the player team [Fierce Tiger and Dragon]. You have ten minutes to launch a counterattack!"

"Brother Long, use your skills!"

Seeing that the sword only reduced Huan Cheng's health by 9 points, the henchman next to him couldn't help but shout a reminder.

"Damn it, I've already used it!"

Brother Long cursed angrily and, refusing to believe it, swung his sword at Huan Cheng again.

"snort!"

Huan Cheng scoffed dismissively and launched a preemptive counterattack, his Serpent Fang Sword flashing past.

-68, -3

Two damage numbers floated above the head of the Fierce Tiger War Dragon. The former was the skill damage caused by the heavy attack, and the latter was the poison damage from the Serpent Fang Sword.

With a third of his health bar gone in an instant, Brother Long was horrified and instinctively jumped back to escape the battlefield.

Brother Long pulled out a miniature recovery potion and reluctantly poured it into his mouth.

Miniature Life Potion, sold for 10 copper coins per bottle at the beginner village general store.

Level 1 pheasants don't drop a single feather; only level 2 and above monsters have a very small chance of dropping copper coins.

After struggling for so long, Brother Long had only saved up about thirty copper coins, which he used to buy three bottles of life recovery potions, intending to use them in a critical moment.

"This idea is tricky, let's all work together!"

After regaining his composure, Brother Long called on his underlings to join the attack.

Actually, without Brother Long's prompting, several of his underlings had already tacitly surrounded Huan Cheng.

"Kid, you've offended the Fierce Tiger Gang, you're dead!"

Feeling confident of victory, the fierce tiger and the dragon began to make some boastful remarks.

"idiot!"

Huan Cheng uttered two words calmly, then advanced instead of retreating, thrusting his Serpent Fang Sword toward the nearest player.

"Go! Smash him!"

The next moment, the seven of them were locked in a fierce fight.

Everyone was a newbie, with no skills or equipment, just like elementary school kids fighting each other. The scene looked rather... ridiculous.

Several people surrounded Huan Cheng and started hacking at him, swinging wooden swords and staffs around and smashing him.

They made a grand show of force, but had little effect, and the damage they inflicted on Huan Cheng mostly remained in the single digits.

Huan Cheng knew the principle that it was better to cut off one finger than to injure all ten, so he deliberately targeted the person closest to him.

After a few sword strikes, the man's health was depleted.

"Don't back down! We've already taken down almost 300 of his health points. Keep attacking! Don't give him a chance to heal!"

Brother Long was decisive, shouting out the order.

Upon hearing this, Huan Cheng's lips curled into a barely perceptible smile.

"Recovery through medication? You're dreaming!"

Huan Cheng was secretly delighted. Seeing that the heavy attack cooldown was over, he roared and unleashed an E-level heavy attack, sending the unlucky player back to the newbie village resurrection point.