He looked towards the sources of the noises and felt a feeling of dread as he saw pair after pair of dark scarlet eyes shone from among the masses of grasses.

The sight of more than ten phantom creepers scurrying towards him reflected in his eyes. At that very moment, he looked somewhat surprised. His eyes then shone in a thoughtful and calculating glitter as he understood what might have attracted multiple hordes towards this place.

'I wasn't careful enough. The blood of the Red Tusk elephant definitely permeated into the surroundings and spread out, reaching far and wide. The scent of blood leaking from the corpse of the Red Tusk Elephant must have attracted multiple hordes of these mutated squirrels,' Vincent thought as he quickly made a run for it, before the pack of phantom creepers reached near him.

He can kill a few of them, and although it might be troublesome to take down more than five of them, it wasn't completely impossible. But it was suicidal to stand in a single place and fight more than a dozen of phantom creepers!

It was one against a whole lot of them. He knew he will have no chance against them.

'The adverse effects of overusing magic and combat techniques will be disastrous enough. But I know for a fact that my magic power and battle energy will be depleted during the battle. That will signify the end of me. Fighting them all at the same time is the same as throwing away one's life, and I will never put myself in such an unfavorable position,' Vincent thought with a frown.

Running away wasn't a solution to the problem at hand, as the nearest fortress was a few hours away from here. Moreover, no matter how fast he runs, he'll never be able to reach the fortress before becoming the first one to end up exhausted of his stamina. Once exhausted, he won't be able to even properly put up a fight and will end up dead.

Along the way, by using the appraisal spell matrix he found out that the phantom creepers chasing after him were just as strong if not slightly weaker than the phantom creeper he just killed.

'I need a change in my tactics, but what should I do?' Vincent thought, 'That's right! I can use the island's terrain to my advantage and split them into small groups. Rather than fighting all of them, I can take them out one group at a time!'

Although it still seemed like he was making a run for it, his speed decreased considerably. He just sped up enough for the fastest among the creepers to catch up to him. He was no longer planning to run. He was planning to kill them off one at a time. No matter how risky, his only chance to survive laid with fighting back, after all.

_______

"Uncle, say, what do you think I should do if for say I am being chased by a beast and I can't outrun it?"

"If there's no hope of running away from the enemy then your only choice is to fight. If you don't attack with the determination to kill it, then you will certainly lose your life,"

"I will. But what if I happen to fight a lot of them? You know, a lot of beasts roam and hunt in groups,"

"If you can't outrun or defeat them then there's honestly no way to winning. To defeat such a horde of beasts, you need to overwhelmingly powerful."

"Is there really no way to survive?"

"There is always a way to win against multiple opponents, even if there isn't any, and the key to that is knowledge. Remember, every being with intelligence, be it humans or beasts, can be intimidated by false bravado. Use bluff and momentum to your advantage! It's similar to how a mantis unclasps its tiny front legs to intimidate other predators or how a lion roars to intimidate others from entering its territory."

"So I need to find a way to intimidate them."

"Correct! Intimidation is a way to fight and win against multiple opponents."

__________

In Vincent's head, a conversation he once had with Old Miller suddenly popped up.

'Since there's no way to escape, I choose to fight! I don't believe I would not be able to intimidate them to back off after killing a few of them,' Vincent thought with a murderous smile plastered on his face as he tightened his grip on the dagger while rushing forward to hide behind the trunk of an overgrown tree.

Vincent's eyes gleamed sharply as his unbridled will to kill was fully unleashed.

It's time to farm some XP!

Just a few moments after he hid behind the massive tree that hid him from the visions of over ten phantom creepers, the fastest ones among them caught up to him. There were three of them, two right in front and one growling behind him.

Vincent saw two out of the three creepers with wide-opened jaws revealing knife-like teeth, and drool dripping out the sides of their mouths immediately leaping at him.

They snapped mercilessly at him as Vincent dodged by bending backward, such that his back was parallel to the ground, and at the same time, the inky, black dagger in his right hand was thrust into the stomach of the creeper who was leaping over him. A long gash was opened up, stretching from one end of the stomach and reaching the other end, while the jeweled dagger was thrust into the neck of the creeper on his left before the dagger was quickly pulled out.

The first creeper met a bad ending as blood along with internal organs dropped out of its split open gut. The second one peacefully left the world in mere seconds as the light of life left its scarlet eyes.

‹ You've slain two low-level beasts, Phantom Creeper ×2 ›

‹ 60 exp points gained ›

‹ Lv 2: 90/200 ›

After striking two of the three creepers to death, he immediately took a step back, leaving his defenseless back exposed to the third creeper. The third creeper didn't let go of this God-sent opportunity and jumped at him immediately, but Vincent smirked devilishly and spun around to land a spinning back kick right on its face.

The spinning back kick was one of the deadliest moves in taekwondo. But it became even deadlier as Vincent's leg was empowered by more than five units of battle energy.

Krunch*!

The creeper skull cracked into multiple bone shards the moment his legs landed on its face.