Just before he reached the beast, Bjorn pivoted and switched targets.
The same combo Bjorn used to one-shot the mage player in his previous battle impacted the girl-attacking wolf's head unimpeded, shocking the unprepared beast. Despite unloading his entire max-damage combo into the beast, its health only fell just below half.
Bjorn backed a few steps away after swiping at it with his dagger one last time, and the small wolf also backed away from the prone girl's injured body.
"T- thank you! I was being eaten alive!"
She wasn't really out of the woods yet, but the trio of wolves were now fully focused on Bjorn and completely ignored her existence. Seeing that there was still danger, the girl went silent and opted to play dead on the ground instead of jumping up and making a break for it.
For the time being, Bjorn ignored the girl and focused on the approaching beasts. His mana pool had completely regenerated in the time that he was gone, and while saving his spells to finish off the fight might sound smart, Bjorn opted to do the opposite.
He swiftly dodged past the lunging maws of the two larger wolves, focusing his attacks on the smaller, injured one.
Bjorn chained together his skills once again, and before the two elder wolves had a chance to respond, the smaller one collapsed into a pool of light motes.
'Easy money.'
Bjorn scooped the wolf's quest item drop up the moment it hit the ground, then turned to face the remaining foes.
Now that there were only two sets of jaws biting at Bjorn, his job of dodging got considerably easier.
Just like in every other fight he'd been in, Bjorn was able to flawlessly avoid every strike.
'Hah. The Chauvinsky Problem really is an issue at lower levels.'
The so-called problem referred to a situation in which a character was so skilled that their enemy could not strike them, even with a massive stat or speed advantage.
The story didn't actually start with a player.
A few people noticed an NPC that didn't seem to take damage from anything- first, they tried using random things to cause a small amount of damage.
After testing a number of things and seeing no results, the people who first discovered what they thought was a bugged character tried attacking it.
Even with players much higher level than the NPC, though, they failed to deal damage with anything other than just massive AOE skill hits.
In the end, they were all massacred.
A few others stepped up to the challenge but never found any success.
Throughout all of it, the NPC's name was never revealed.
Eventually, the NPC was finally hit, and oddly enough, it was a heavy swordsman who did it.
A Russian player under the ID of Chauvinsky found a certain angle of attack that made it impossible for the NPC to dodge.
His discovery was largely forgotten for years until a few top professionals started touching on that same realm of dodging expertise.
No matter what came their way, they always dodged it.
That was, until Chaucinsky, who was at the time a third-rate pro on a second-rate team, somehow destroyed one of these top professionals in a duel.
Both his attacking technique and the legend of its development spread through the community, and his name mistakenly ended up being associated with anything dodging-related.
Now, that small period of untargetable professionals ended up being known as the 'Chauvinsky Problem', and Bjorn was bringing its advent forward a good number of years with his skills.
That said, unless he was playing at the absolute top of his game, he couldn't actually dodge everything.
It's just that these wolves and everything else he'd encountered recently didn't require all that much effort.
Bjorn's dagger glinted with blood as the third and final wolf disappeared into light motes, and the young man paused to heave a breath.
-
Ding!~
You reached Lvl 6!
You have 3 free stat points.
-
The girl who'd been raked with fear while listening to the fight, finally rolled over to check on the situation.
"I'm… I'm alive! Thank you so much!"
The girl was about to sit up, but Bjorn quickly motioned for her to rest.
"Don't move, you're injured too badly."
The girl coughed lightly into her hand. Was this fellow forgetting that he was playing a game? Sure, her health bar was low… ah!
'He must be trying to do some kind of roleplay with me… I'm down. He's definitely cute enough, and to have beaten all of those wolves? This dude might be a catch!'
The girl lay back down, a pained expression on her face.
"Oh, please help. I fear that those wolves' bites might've infected me with something… I feel cold…"
The girl gave a little shiver, peeking open her eyes to see Bjorn crouching in front of her.
'Heh, it's worki-?!?!'
The girl's eyes shot open as she felt a sharp pain in her chest.
"Rest now, soldier. I'm afraid there's nothing else I can do for you."
Reaching up to the girl's face, Bjorn forcefully pressed her eyes closed.
He frowned a bit as he felt her struggling, and he murmured softly again.
"Oh, you must be suffering. I'll end your pain quickly."
Bjorn twisted the dagger he'd stabbed into her chest, causing the girl to groan as her health bar bottomed out.
The 'sorrowful' expression of someone who'd just lost a friend disappeared the moment the girl's item fell onto the floor.
'Nice! I don't plan on using a rapier like this one, but it looks pretty fancy! I bet I can sell this thing for a fortune!'
Pocketing the loot, Bjorn jumped back up onto his feet and started walking deeper into the forest.
A few hours later when he moved to log off, the young man had reached level 8 and now had a darker red, almost bordering on crimson name.
Bjorn happily sauntered out of his VR pod after logging off for the night. To add to the joy of leveling up and hunting more players, the final group Bjorn had encountered ended up dropping a second dagger of similar quality to Green Tooth, and now he finally had a second weapon other than the useless rusty dagger.
'Today was great, I'll shoot for level 11 tomorrow! The XP requirements are starting to scale up, but I think I can hit level 15 easily by the end of the week!'