Chapter 79 - The Wolves Den - VI

The Wolf's expression crumpled into intense anger as it stared Merlin down. Its hatred for Merlin seemingly being more powerful than the targeting system.

The reason for the wolf's sudden hatred for Merlin, even when it had a perfect next target in the form of Snowbunny, was because Merlin was currently implementing an advanced tanking technique.

This technique essentially worked in the opposite way to the technique used to hide ones presence. Instead of trying to minimise the influence a person had on the world around them to improve their ability to slip past unnoticed. Merlin was doing the opposite, trying to maximise every aspect he could to make sure he was being noticed, and he weaved in traces of bloodlust to further catch the wolf's attention and make sure he was designated as the highest threat target by the wolf's AI.

The aggro system in the game worked in a few ways, there was the typical RPG system where you'd increase your aggro the more damage you dealt, and there were abilities that purposefully increased and decreased your aggro. Outside of the basic system expected of the game's genre there were a few more elements that could be influenced by players with the freedoms that New Genesis afforded to them.

One such example of this was being able to verbally taunt and mock an intelligent enemy that you could speak the language of, which added to your aggro score in a similar fashion to what a taunt skill would do, albeit not as effective.

Another element that could be influenced, and this was the aspect that Merlin was currently abusing, was causing the creature's AI to register him as the biggest threat by maximising his presence, giving a significant boost to his aggro score and causing it to overpower Snowbunny's score..

Merlin rushed toward while thinking of what happened last time, that the wolf's swipe attack was almost too fast for him to react to. Due to his agility score being incredibly low compared to what he was used to and his shield being destroyed, there wasn't much he could do if the attack triggered before he could prepare for it.

The only way he would be able to successfully dodge the attack was if he anticipated the strike and dodged it well before it started, the only downside to this was that if he dodged too early, it'd give the boss enough time to redirect its strike.

He switched both of his weapons around into a reverse grip and prepared himself. The second he entered the wolf's attack radius, it would most likely start the swipe, as it was already showing the telltale signs of the attack that he saw moments before.

As he stepped into what he could only assume was the creature's combat radius, while at a full sprint he suddenly leaned back and allowed his body to drop to the ground. The momentum of his sprint continued with his body as he hit the stone floor and continued sliding.

The wolf's claw sliced out in a wide horizontal sweep, just missing Merlin. The attack was so fast that the gust of wind it produced could be felt by everyone around it.

As Merlin slid under the creature he thrust his blades into the wolf's underbelly, the cuts trailed along as he travelled, ending near the rear where he began slowing down. Merlin's long white hair had once again soaked up a significant amount of blood from the floor as it dragged along, an occurrence that was so common at this point that he was starting to consider investing in hair ties or a hat.

The boss screamed out in pain as it started bleeding our severely, and it began bucking its hind legs while trying to at least harm Merlin who was now positioned behind it.

"Lets finish it off." Merlin roared as he thrust both blades into the wolf's hind-quarters.

He wrapped his vines around the creature's back legs, which at this point had finally stopped smouldering, in an attempt to tie them together. It held the beast in place for only a few seconds before the wolf had actually managed to snap the vines by pulling its legs apart.

This left Merlin kind of impressed, as the vines could even hold up his own weight and the weight of a moderately large rock without showing any issues, but this wolf seemed to have snapped it with little issue.

A large scythe came down on the wolf's back, it dug into the wolf's charred flesh, as as the wolf moved, the blade tore into it further. Snowbunny on the opposite side had just finished a set of ten consecutive hits when the wolf began baring its teeth at her.

"Dodge i--" Before Merlin could finish yelling out his warning, the wolf's claw swung out at Snowbunny.

She jumped backwards in an attempt to dodge it while trying to also block it with her rapier, but due to the rapier's poor blocking ability and her being in the air at the point of impact, she was sent flying down a hallway and into the darkness.

"Wow, look at her fly." Typhoeus said out loud while chuckling to himself. He tore out another chunk of the wolf's hide, and the wolf seemed to have chosen him as his next target.

"If you get hit by the next one you wont hear the end of it." Merlin warned him, driving yet another strike into the wolf's legs.

The wolf began snarling once more, and Merlin didn't even bother reacting this time. It seemed Typhoeus tried to make an effort to avoid the attack, and he had actually backed out of combat distance before the boss showed its teeth. Unfortunately for him though, the boss closed the distance in a single hop and slashed at him, sending him flying backwards.

Typhoeus tried digging his scythe into the ground to slow himself down, but all it did was create sparks and an obnoxious scraping noise as the scythe failed to penetrate the stone floor. Unable to stabilise himself, he began tumbling backwards while the boss' attention returned back to Merlin.

As the wolf turned around and began approaching him, Merlin heard a pitter-patter sound echoing within the cave, his attention left the wolf for a moment as he saw the glint of a rapier leave the darkness, followed shortly after by a very angry looking Snowbunny.

"How dare you send me flying you stupid mutt." She screamed as sprinted towards the boss, plunging her blade completely into the wolf's side as she entered its combat radius.

The boss had started baring its teeth at Merlin, but the lights in its eyes had suddenly vanished, and then it simply toppled over, falling to the ground like a rag doll.

"It's actually dead?" Snowbunny said in surprise as she pulled her blood soaked sword out of the wolf's corpse. "That was a nightmare... Oh, I got something called the resourceful fighter title."

While Merlin was congratulating her on the new title, Typhoeus had begun limping back into view with an embarrassed expression on his face. Snowbunny was staring him down with daggers, it seems she had heard his remark earlier. The group received a notification telling them they had defeated the boss and cleared the mini dungeon.

After a round of banter, the group started searching around for loot drops, and they made sure to inspect the room the wolves were originally in. Amongst the large group of corpses, there was a handful of wolf fangs, a few meters of fur, and in the original room, they had found a dagger that looked to be made out of bone.

Merlin was given the dagger as it seemed he was the only one who used them in the group, and the other two split the rest of the animal parts. Merlin checked his new dagger's stats.

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[The Wolf's Fang. (Uncommon)]

• Damage: +9

• Dexterity: +1

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It was a pretty good dagger, in fact it was the strongest weapon he currently had in his arsenal as of the moment. Merlin considered using it as his primary weapon, with his goblin dagger as his offhand, since his sword and shield combination had been ruined.

The group eventually made their way out of the dungeon, Merlin began checking his karma score, seeing if killing the boss had done anything to chip away at it. Overall it seemed to have dropped a fair bit, but that was mostly due to the sheer amount of wolves they had killed. The final boss would have only been worth around three points, as the kill reward scaling for karma went up by one point every three levels.

Unfortunately, even though he had improved his karma by a fair bit, it was still too low for him to enter settlements. He would have to spend a couple more hours to get his karma back to good standing.

He began twirling his new dagger around, and took a peak at his stats. Removing the origin status on his fighter soul had reduced his dexterity by two points, but this dagger mitigated the reduction by one, which wasn't so bad. Overall he seemed pretty pleased with his haul for the day.