Second World

Jack was caught off guard by the puppet's speed. He barely managed to parry the puppet's attack with a heavy mace. The strike pushed Jack back several steps, and one of his feet stepped on the blue floor. The puppets in the blue area came to life again and rushed towards him. Jack gulped in fright as he hurriedly pulled his foot back to the green area, stopping the blue puppets again.

Before he could let out a relieved sigh, the puppet swung its heavy mace high up towards his head. Jack jumped sideways to avoid the strike.

Jack had been caught off guard before because he had expected the puppets in the green area to have the same attributes as the blue area ones. Now that he knew they were faster and also stronger, he adjusted his pace.

When he landed, another puppet had already started slashing towards his neck. Jack ducked below the sword then rolled forward to gain some distance. The rest of the puppets were closing in from all directions. He only needed to pass through them, so he started to weave forward, trying his best not to make any physical contact with the puppets. He waded past the puppets one by one, but somehow each time he made some progress, one of them always managed to get ahead and push him back. Their teamwork was meticulous. Jack was having difficulty proceeding as he kept moving to keep them from surrounding him. He would be in great danger if they managed to encircle him.

The rowdy men who had ugly expressions when Jack made it to the green floor area quickly wore wide grins again.

"Hehe, does he think it will be easy?" One of them said.

"Yeah, he had overestimated himself," another added.

As the rowdy warriors returned to their merry selves and made fun of Jack, Jack continued to observe the puppets' movements and actions. Their strength and speed were superior to their blue area predecessors, yet their moves were the same repetitious operations. They were only capable of normal melee attacks, no skills or ranged attacks. As Jack got more used to their repeating actions, he began to seize control.

He led them to one side and then ran to another side, causing them to move in a single line one after another. This way, he could deal with them one by one.

'Time to counter-attack,' Jack thought. He had learned to treat this world as real life, so he made his plans to deal with his opponents that way. He saw that the wooden puppets' bodies had hard skin, which reduced the damage they received. But their joints had to be more fragile to let them move fluidly. He targeted the puppets' knee joints.

When the closest puppet arrived and began its usual attack, Jack easily dodged it and slammed a Power Strike into its knee joint. It made a loud clanging sound, and the puppet fell to his knee. It rose promptly, but it was now moving with a limp.

'It worked!' Jack celebrated.

This method would not have worked in previous VR games. Back then, no matter which body part he hit, it would only cause damage or, at best, critical damage, but it would not impair the target's movements. Even if you hacked the target legs thousands of times, it would still move normally afterward. This game world, however, was completely different and much more real.

Since his method yielded results, he used it on the second puppet, then on the third, and so on. As he had set them up in a linear formation, he managed to deal with them one by one. Every puppet now had a limp.

The rowdy warriors who had been laughing in merriment a while ago once again got their smiling faces reduced little by little with each cracked knee joint. When the fifth puppet fell to its knees, their expressions were somber; not a hint of a smile could be seen.

"We have seriously underestimated him," the female warrior said.

"There is still the red area. I don't believe the outworlder can pass it!" grumbled one of the men behind her.

"Naturally," another agreed.

Gruff did not comment as he continued to observe.

With the five puppets crippled, they no longer had the speed to chase after Jack. He outdistanced the puppets with ease and entered the red floor area.

The red area only had three wooden puppets, but as he came near them, he could see that they were completely different than the ones before. Their skin was steely dark instead of the healthy brown color of the wood. And they were twice the size of the other puppets. However, despite their size, their speed was slightly faster than the green area puppets. These red area puppets did not carry any weapons. Instead, their hands were large round iron balls.

The first puppet charged at Jack like a mad bull. Jack had expected these puppets to be faster, so he had made preparations. He leaped to the side once he saw the closest puppet make a move. Jack rolled on the floor and rose as the puppet stormed past. He would have been slammed back to the green area if it had made contact.

The second puppet made its way towards him. It lifted its steel ball high and slammed it down. Jack jumped to the side to dodge and attacked its knee joint, hoping the same trick would work. But the sound when the attack hit was different; he knew immediately that his attack had failed to deliver sufficient damage to cripple the knee joint.

The puppet suddenly swung its steel ball horizontally, almost taking out Jack's head with its violent lurch. Jack bent his body backward and managed to evade the swing, but he lost his balance and fell on his back. The puppet jumped at him and was about to use both his feet to flatten Jack on the floor. Jack rolled sideways to evade. The puppet continued to stomp its feet one after another in an attempt to trample Jack.

Jack continued to roll to avoid the stomping. Upon his rolling, he halted as another puppet came from the direction he was rolling towards.

'Crap!' He cursed. He did a back somersault, narrowly avoiding the second puppet as it slammed down into the floor. Jack quickly rose and made a couple of backsteps. The two puppets came chasing after him with fervor.

'It's no use fighting with them,' he thought. Their skins were too hard; even their joints were tough. He would waste time trying to deal damage to them. All he had to do was to escape from the red area to the platform with the statue. So he maximized his speed and wove through the two puppets and swept closer to the platform.

Thankfully, his dual-class boosted speed was still a bit faster than these puppets, so he pulled away from those two. But the third puppet was ahead of him, standing in his way.

The red area was the smallest, so he had much less space to move around, and the speed and size of the puppets made it easier for them to cover the range.

With the front blocked and the other two menaces coming from behind, Jack had no choice but to run to the side. Like a goalkeeper, the puppet in front followed his movement but did not come forward, blocking Jack from sneaking past him.

'Shit! They're intelligent too!' Jack cursed.

He had no choice but to fall back. The other two puppets continued to dog him while the third one kept watch near the platform. After running around for some time, Jack saw that there was no way to outmaneuver these puppets.

Seeing no other option, his left hand took out his magic staff.