Chapter 6: First Battle

Once he was done with his preparations, Venn stealthily approached one of the wolf den with his dagger in hand. After spotting a pack of 5 brown-fur wolves patrolling the woods together, he picked up a rock on the ground and hurled it towards the wolf that was trailing behind the pack.

Without looking at the outcome of his action, Venn fled instantly the rock left his hand. Considering the speed of the wolves, getting a head start was the least he could do if he wanted to survive the encounter with the pack.

"Mud Wolf, 280 HP, common modes of attack are its powerful bite and swipes from its front claws. Medium speed, likes to travel in packs, aggro radius of 30 metres. Once successfully aggroed, it will stay with their target for 10 minutes or until the target has fled away from the scene for at least 50 metres."

After he recited the knowledge that he had learnt in the past in his mind while in the middle of his escape, Venn threw a sideway glance to see if any of the wolves followed.

Fortunately, his plan had worked.

Luring the lone wolf that had separated from his pack to a small clearing, Venn took out his dagger and stood in a defensive stance facing the wolf.

The wolf had a ferocious look with its sharp teeth bared at Venn and its saliva drooping down onto the ground. If one was not trained in battle, they could well be pissing their pants right now.

Even though many players tried to convince themselves that the monsters and NPC aren't exactly real, many failed to overcome the psychological aspect of it.

When being stared down by a hyper realistic monster at close range, how many could remain calm?

Hence, the player base skewed heavily towards the recreational side of the game that focuses more on trade-orientated skills while only a portion of the others fighting the monsters in the game.

If Venn wants to achieve greatness, he has to overcome this hurdle that many had given up when faced with it.

There was no other way around it!

Gripping hard on the dagger in his right hand with the wolf circling around him, Venn stepped forward to seize the momentum of the battle!

In the exact moment Venn stepped forward, the Mud Wolf lunged at him as well with its mouth opened wide.

-33

During the initial clash, Venn clashed his dagger with the wolf, but he was the only one that suffered damage.

At the last split second, he admittedly got scared by the menacing aura that the wolf emitted and tried to dodge instead of following through with his attack. And that resulted in the wolf grazing at his shoulder while he had hit nothing.

Feeling angry at himself, Venn increased the pain receptors in the game setting to the maximum at 100%.

This meant that any attack that Venn suffered would realistically be as painful as if he had suffered the damage in real life except that it would last only for a split second.

Venn was not masochist who derives sexual gratification from their own pain, of course.

Pain was the only way a human can learn fast.

By doing so, Venn was forcing himself back to a corner. He had no other way to escape, and he had no plans of doing so. If a player's HP dropped below 10%, then he could only bleed to death if not attended to. The battle would result in his loss if he suffered just 2 more blows from the wolf.

If he is not cruel to himself now, then others will be cruel to him later. This was the hard truth that he had learnt in life.

Keeping a cool head this time, he began to analyse the wolf's movement instead of blindly charging forward. After all, there's always a difference between the knowledge in the books and a real fight.

The wolf restarted its attack by lunging at Venn once again. However, Venn was mentally prepared this time. Tumbling to the sideway at the last possible second, he narrowly avoided the wolf's gaping mouth.

[Ding]

[Narrow escape: Agility increased by 1 point. (+1 AGI)]

A game notification sounded while in the midst of the battle. It seemed that by pushing himself to the limit, Venn gained an additional stats point again in battle.

Now that he had figured out the wolf's attacking pattern, Venn repeated the dodging action once more and rolled to the side before flanking the wolf at the back and plunged the dagger deep into the wolf's back.

It was a clean hit!

-15

[Backstab Learned. (Level 1 Mastery) Deal 30% additional damage to enemies when striking from behind.]

[Dagger Mastery Learned. (Level 1 Mastery) Equipping a dagger increases damage by 12%.]

Gaining skill and combat experience had always been his goal ever since he entered the game. He needed to improve his battle sense and arsenal of skills fast.

The skills that Venn was trying to gain and level up were simple skills that were shared in the forum.

Aside from monster skills, players could create their own skills as well if the AI judges the players' action to be worthy of being called a skill. Though these were skills that had limited power, it was still better than nothing.