Chapter 69 - Preparing For The Assassination

After playing with the vine ability for roughly half an hour, Merlin found a few more limitations with it. The main limitation was that it could extend for a maximum distance of about ten meters, roughly the radius affected by the light spell.

The next limitation was that a tentacle seemed to roughly output as much strength as a single arm. So if Merlin couldn't physically lift an object with his arms, it was very unlikely that the vines would be able to either.

Although there were a few cases where this wasn't the case, as the vine was longer than his arm, in some instances he could utilise leverage to apply more force against something, like whipping a goblin's body around from a distance rather than trying to throw it around with just his arms.

One thing he took note of was that he couldn't seem to reach the limit in regards to the vine's tensile strength. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't figure out a way to tear through it with force alone, if something stronger pulled on it, he'd be the one being dragged around instead.

And finally, the most interesting aspect in regards to the vine was that its ability to retract didn't care about the weight limit. If Merlin hooked his vine on a tree branch or solid surface and retracted his vine, it would drag him towards it like some form of grappling hook.

"It's gimmicky... It really is." Merlin mumbled to himself while looking up at the night sky to determine the time. "Looks like I've got a couple hours left to plan this out."

Merlin's light source had vanished a little while ago, and he was using the campfire to see, but that too was starting to die out. He began chanting, causing yet another small ball of light to appear and hover around him.

Merlin stood up and grabbed the goblin's bow and quiver, throwing them over his shoulder before making his way further into the forest. He took a look at his abilities and realised he hadn't taken a look at the thief class's skills in this life, partially because of the situation he was in at the time, but also because out of every class, he was the most familiar with this one.

Just making sure the skill hadn't changed for whatever reason, he quickly checked the skill info, pulling up an information window.

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⟪Sneak⟫

You focus on hiding your presence, improving your ability to blend into your surroundings.

• Removes all the aggro focused on you, prevents additional aggro for 1.5 seconds.

• Increases your stealth stat by 30% for 20 seconds.

• 60 second cooldown.

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It seemed to be exactly the same as he remembered, although he hadn't used this specific skill for quite some time as upgrades of the thief class typically had improved versions of the skill, like ones that allowed the user to become invisible.

Merlin chanted the skill name, and shortly after he could feel his presence become somewhat blurrier.

「Skill ⟪Sneak⟫ Activated, stealth increased by 30% for 20 seconds.」

Merlin made his way through the forest while making a slight attempt at hiding his presence alongside his sneak skill, although the ball of light was still clearly visible. Doing so, he successfully snuck up on a squirrel before the sneak skill ran out, causing it to suddenly panic and dash away the second Merlin appeared in front of it. Merlin found it interesting that the squirrel didn't seem to care about the glowing ball of light, it stared at it for a brief moment before going about its day after realising it wasn't a threat.

Merlin continued on his way, trying to find the closest wolf spawning location to the road. It was at this moment when he picked up the scent of blood nearby. Merlin hid his presence naturally as he approached the source of the blood stench.

"Seriously, how many more wolves do I have to kill." He heard an obnoxiously whiny voice in the distance, the person was loud enough that they could be properly understood from at least thirty meters away. "What the hell is this stupid game, who cares about town reputation, just give me a damn quest."

As Merlin approached, he could see that the source of this whiny voice was none other than his favourite victim, LordKyle. It seemed that his behaviour in town, alongside getting arrested, had severely depleted the town's opinion of him to the point nobody was willing to associate with him.

A solution to regaining town reputation when it was too low to get quests was to reduce threats in the area, do odd jobs around town or improve his reputation through other means. Although simply killing monsters was the slowest method, LordKyle was too prideful to apologise or clean the town.

LordKyle was surrounded by his two lackeys, the same two he had killed at the start of the bandit subjugation mission. Merlin wanted to mess with them, but it was highly unlikely that he'd be hit by another rogue arrow, even with the slight aimbot given to it by combat assistance. Not that it mattered, as it didn't seem like any of them were using a bow this time around.

Merlin didn't really want to lose karma by starting the fight, as he was already going to take a major hit once he killed Arwell Lychester, but he wanted to mess with them a little.

Instead of just attacking them, giving himself the initial advantage but losing the karma, he decided to walk out into the open and taunt them into attacking instead. He made sure to drop his bow and quiver against a tree once he left the treeline, he didn't want to risk those being damaged just yet.

Two of the users were using rusted shortswords while LordKyle had a hatchet. All of their items seemed to be from goblins, meaning they were probably grinding goblins out for quite a while trying to regain their karma after killing all those players in the beginner village.

"Hey guys, what are you up to?" Merlin yelled out to them as he approached, a confident grin was plastered on his face.

The trio turned to face Merlin after dealing with the last wolf, their faces all contorted with anger as they realised who it was. 

"Oh hey, it's you guys." Merlin spoke out with a smug tone, it was pretty obvious that he knew who they were when he approached. "No hard feelings about last time. Remember, you guys attacked first."

"Oh yeah, I saw you got thrown in jail, how did that happen?" Merlin directed a question at LordKyle, who at this point looked about ready to pounce on him.

Merlin took a few steps closer, and the ball of light hovered in front of LordKyle's face, causing the bright white light to sting his eyes as they had adapted to dim lighting for however long. This seemed to cause him to snap, because he began shouting swears at Merlin while charging at him.

"I love stupid people." Merlin mocked as his shield made contact with LordKyle's hatchet.

「You have been attacked by player 'LordKyle'. Everyone within their party has been marked as an enemy, you may attack them without receiving penalties.」

"Kill him!" LordKyle roared at his teammates before turning his attention back to Merlin.

The trio all used the combat assistance system, so their attack patterns were blatantly obvious. Fortunately most players hadn't even thought of abandoning the combat assistance system yet, so Merlin and his friends had an obvious advantage in the long run. Merlin easily parried each attack while taunting them.

"He's cheating!" One of them screeched after being parried for the fifth time. His pride wouldn't allow him to accept that he was being tormented like a helpless child.

He swung the gladius towards the player who called him a cheater, while simultaneously sending a vine to wrap around the hatchet and another vine to attack the third player.

"What the hell is this." LordKyle screamed while trying to fight against Merlin's vine.

The player received the first attack, which left a nasty cut on his upper torso, before receiving few more attacks in quick succession. His health plummeted before he could voice any more complaints.

The other player had begun swinging his blade towards Merlin's back, but was promptly stopped in place as another vine slid out from Merlin's shirt and stabbed itself into the player's shoulder.

「Passive skill ⟪Rose Blight⟫ has triggered, target's stats have been reduced.」

"You know what, I take it back. This skill is kind of fun." Merlin teased as he turned to face LordKyle, who just managed to slide his axe handle out of the vine's grasp.

"Go to hell." He screamed as he attacked Merlin once more, but he began chanting a skill name as he swung the hatchet, "Heavy Strike!"

Merlin took a step back as the hatchet swung downwards, missing him and hitting the forest ground with enough force to send loose dirt flying everywhere.

Merlin took this chance to return the favour, chanting the same skill while swinging his blade at LordKyle.

「Skill ⟪Heavy Strike⟫ Activated, your next attack will do an extra 5% damage, and has a 10% chance to trigger the stagger effect.」