Chapter 898 - Unseen Improvement

Chapter 898 - Unseen Improvement
-1,327.
The instant this damage emerged, a blurry figure also appeared, the dark-green HP bar above the figure's head shortening slightly.
A moment after the HP bar showed up, however, the figure disappeared once more. Even when Shi Feng tried launching another attack at the same position, the only thing his sword hit was air.
There's only a 1.3-second period for a counterattack. That really is short. No wonder so many people have failed to clear this floor. Shi Feng was slightly surprised. He had never expected these monsters to have such a characteristic as well.
Originally, it was already very difficult to grasp the attack trajectories of these monsters. Moreover, there wasn't just one monster attacking him. Based on Shi Feng's perception, at least five monsters were attacking him. Yet, not only did he have to dodge the attacks of these monsters, but he also needed to launch a counterattack within such a short timeframe. This greatly increased the difficulty of clearing the floor.
Having no better choice, Shi Feng could only continue silently blocking the attacks while searching for opportunities to counterattack.
He often had to block over a dozen attacks before he got the opportunity to launch a counterattack. If he failed to grab this opportunity, he would have to block another dozen, or even two or three dozen, attacks.
If an ordinary person were standing in Shi Feng's place right now, they would surely feel bored at the moment. Shi Feng, however, was actually joyous.
He could not help but admit that the guidance provided by the Battle Tower was indeed excellent.
All unawares, Shi Feng had focused his full concentration on detecting the spatial fluctuations. As a result, the sensitivity of his five senses heightened while his grasp of his surroundings constantly deepened.
It was normally impossible for one to encounter situations where subtle spatial fluctuations appeared around oneself.
Hence, being able to hone his perception to such a fine degree right now was like a dream for Shi Feng.
Time passed quickly. Even when Shi Feng had an opportunity to counterattack and deal damage to the Void Assassins, he did not take action. After all, this here was the best place for him to train right now.
As his perception improved, Shi Feng became increasingly sensitive to the subtle fluctuations caused by the Void Assassins.
Initially, these weak fluctuations felt no different from tiny raindrops hitting his skin. Although he could feel them, his perception of them was not that clear. As a result, even when his body felt these fluctuations, his brain dismissed them as negligible. However, after sensing the fluctuations for thousands of times, his awareness of them intensified. Now, these fluctuations felt more like little pebbles hitting his body, instead, the pain more than sufficient to grab his attention. Even without his brain making any conscious decisions, he would instinctively react and turn towards the direction the fluctuations came from.
It's no wonder super-first-rate Guilds and Super Guilds can nurture so many apex experts and even monsters that grasp a Domain. Sure enough, they are not existences that even well-funded first-rate Guilds can threaten, Shi Feng inwardly sighed emotionally.
He had profited massively from the trade with the Secret Pavilion this time.
If not for this trade, he most likely would have remained unaware of just how frightening the major powers of God's Domain were.
Although he currently had a Secret Technique tablet and even an Epic Guild Quest that could send him to the Ancient Battlefield, the Holy Land for Experts, neither of those things could even compare with the Battle Tower.
The value of the Secret Technique tablet lay in the fact that it allowed players to learn advanced combat techniques, which would, in turn, greatly increase their combat powers. The improvement in combat standards was only a bonus. Whether players could actually gain inspiration from learning the combat technique was a different matter altogether.
As for the Holy Land, although Shi Feng had never been there before, based on what he had heard about the place, the improvements one could gain there should be roughly equal to, or even inferior to, those from the Battle Tower. However, as the number of people the training system could accommodate was limited, the Holy Land seemed very valuable. Otherwise, the major powers of God's Domain might not even bother to compete over entry to the Holy Land.
---
"What a pity. I thought he would clear the fourth floor as well. Now, it seems that it isn't possible. At the rate at which he is counterattacking, his Stamina and Concentration will run out before the battle is over."
"Didn't I say so already? That place is the Silent Hell. If even so many of our Guild's top experts can't clear it, how could a newcomer like him possibly clear it?"
"But the fact that he has lasted for so long is already plenty amazing. This is my first time seeing someone survive this long against those monsters."
"Indeed. The attacks of those monsters are simply impossible to predict. If it were up to me, I'd probably be dead in less than five seconds. Moreover, among our batch of trainees, not a single person has managed to last as long as Shi Feng on the fourth floor. With this, he can be considered the number one player among us."
Without anyone noticing, Shi Feng had risen to become the first ranking player in everyone's hearts. At this moment, the members of the Secret Pavilion no longer looked at him arrogantly, all of them feeling only admiration for the Swordsman.
---
Just as everyone had thought that Shi Feng's limit was the fourth floor…
Two streaks of green blood suddenly appeared before Shi Feng, the Void Assassin that had its body exposed losing close to a total of 2,700 HP.
That should be enough practice. There's no point in continuing this training. Let's go to the fifth floor to take a look, then. After deciding so, Shi Feng adjusted his breathing and finally launched his counterattack.
After a long period of tempering himself with the Void Assassins, Shi Feng could already react to the fluctuations they caused without paying deliberate attention to them. He could now place more of his concentration on dodging and attacking, instead. Although he could still improve slightly if he continued tempering himself, his remaining Stamina did not permit him to do so.
Moreover, compared to tempering his perception of the surrounding space, he was currently more interested in finding out what sort of trial awaited him on the fifth floor.
---
"What's going on? Shouldn't his Stamina and Concentration have declined significantly? Theoretically, his counterattack rate should gradually drop. So, why is it now increasing?" The spectators were all shocked to see Shi Feng behaving as if he had just taken a dose of stimulants.
However, what no one knew was that, after undergoing that period of tempering, Shi Feng's combat standards had received significant improvements.
If before he had to focus three-fourths of his concentration on sensing the spatial fluctuations, he now needed to use only one-third of it to do so. This change allowed Shi Feng's attack rate to increase over threefold.
---
In less than ten minutes, Shi Feng had defeated all eight Void Assassins, leaving only the Chieftain ranked Null Assassin, which had not moved at all since the start of the battle.
The instant the eighth Void Assassin died, the Null Assassin finally took action.
The instant the Null Assassin struck, Shi Feng nearly lost his life.
The Null Assassin's attack was exceedingly fast, and its Strength was extremely powerful. It was simply impossible for Shi Feng to evade the Chieftain's strike even though he had managed to sense it coming. Reacting quickly, Shi Feng launched an attack of his own at the Null Assassin's dagger, using the force of the impact to deflect the dagger's attack trajectory slightly so that it struck air, instead.
So strong. Shi Feng inwardly felt fortunate as he looked at his still-trembling arm.
If not for him requiring less concentration now to detect the spatial fluctuations and being able to invest more attention into attacking and evading, he would've most likely fallen to the Null Assassin already.
---
He dodged it? Yuan Tiexin was astounded as he looked at the unmarked Shi Feng.
He had expected Shi Feng to suffer miserably when the Null Assassin took action.
The reason for this assumption of his was because he understood just how powerful the Null Assassin was. Although he, too, was a Void Realm expert, he had suffered hundreds of defeats at the hands of the Null Assassin. Only after a long period of arduous training did he manage to defeat the Null Assassin. Moreover, even until now, his win-rate against the Null Assassin was still not 100%. Hence, he never imagined that Shi Feng would actually manage to deflect the Null Assassin's attack on his first try.
The scariest part about the Null Assassin was its first attack. If one could avoid its first attack, the subsequent battle would become much simpler.
Sure enough, after a short adjustment period, Shi Feng launched his counterattack on the Null Assassin, continuously dealing damage to the Chieftain. In the end, after a dozen minutes or so of strenuous battle, he depleted the Null Assassin's 200,000 HP.