Sir Pugsworth Menethil

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That the armored pug would have the voice of Prince Arthas, of Warcraft fame, was not something John had been prepared for, leading to a half-swallowed cough of amusement as he hurried to put Hubert down by the entrance.

Despite the aggressive declaration, the Boss didn’t move to attack them just yet, instead just pointing the sword menacingly in their direction. With the way the in-barrier sun had moved while they were underground, a spot of ground by the entrance was cast in the shadow of the hill, while the rest of the clearing was in direct sunlight. In all likelihood, someone stepping into the light would kick the fight off.

That did mean that hopefully, as long as they kept a bit of distance, it was safe to leave the incapacitated NPC there. While jogging around carrying the burly huntsman was mostly a non-issue, fighting while hauling all that near-dead weight would be.

“So, strategy time. The boss has only a little bit more health than the last one, but I’m guessing that the star by the health bar indicates a second bar and a second phase. On top of that, it’s probably safe to assume that it has far better damage mitigation. How are your darts about punching through armor?”

“Not very good for the injection darts, at least not hard armor like that. Thick, leathery hide or fur is much less of an issue. I can switch to regular bolts, but dipping the tip in something makes for a much smaller dose…”

“Sounds like tossing in reactives I can combo with is the best play, if we can build distance every now and then to trigger them. Before all of that though, we should check how effective the shotgun is. I fully expect at least one phase to render it ineffective somehow, but bursting past the other one would be pretty valuable. And with the boss being melee, I don’t see us getting use out of a grenade…”

Qhila nodded and they split up, leaving the shade in separate directions while John flipped the mental switches to use a ‘boss cocktail’ of elixirs. Immediately, the mutant knight started to approach John, but he still had time to pull out the shotgun and fire.

0 Damage

‘Oh fuck.’ In addition to not even leaving a scratch on the shield, that had filled the hound’s mana bar.

Its shield started glowing with a baleful, red light that cast an unnaturally sharply defined cone of light onto the ground with John right at the center. Recognizing an attack indicator when he saw it, John immediately dove to the side, but not fast enough not to have his feet caught in some kind of painful kinetic shockwave.

The attack had cost 5 of the Boss’ 20 mana, and it followed up immediately by raising its sword into the air in a gesture that would have looked comical from the small pugman if not for more of the baleful light now gathering on the blade. Another attack indicator shone forth in a line pointing directly at John.

John immediately set to getting out of the way, only to find the beam tracking him. He couldn’t outrun it and realized too late that it was the type of timing test where the attack locked in shortly before firing.

He would have suffered a direct hit if Qhila hadn’t thought quickly and used Sosig’s charging acorn. One previous tackle from the hog had dealt scratch damage while the first attack was charging, revealing that it was just the shield that negated damage and granted a pile of mana when hit. It had, however, completely failed to budge the mutant.

The acorn empowered rush, however, rattled the pug knight enough to knock the attack off course, severing John’s feet from his legs instead of splitting him at the hip. John was still blinded by pain for the moment it took Gamer’s Body to restore his ankles. Then the adrenaline and Gamer’s Mind cleared his thoughts.

No time to waste either, as the sinistre radiance hadn’t left Sir Pugsworth’s blade entirely, merely dimmed. Swinging the sword again, the mutant sent a blade wave flying at the Gamer.

Dodging it cleanly failed, but it bit into his arm with far less catastrophic **** than the first blade wave. It was still painful, fraying the leather of his enchanted jacket and leaving him with a temporary bruise and a cracked bone.

Still, it gave him a better idea than his failing attempts at clean dodges, which was sorely needed as the hound knight launched more in quick succession. By twisting, turning, and using his arm to ward off the attacks, he managed to get all of them hitting at a shallow angle. This activated the jacket’s enchantment protecting against glancing blows, pushing damage per hit down to the low single digits, though it still did a number on the jacket itself.

Ten smaller blade waves later, the pugman was finally out of mana. And out of breath, apparently, as he bent forwards and rested his blade hand on his knee, though he still held the shield in something resembling a defensive position.

It was a clearly telegraphed window of opportunity, and one that Qhila seized upon immediately with a trio of vials striking the back of the Boss in rapid succession. John switched to the water gun and arced a squirt of alchemist’s fire over the shield.

A quick flash of flame consumed the contents of one of those vials, inflicting burst damage, while the heat caused the other two to react into a sticky corrosive that would hopefully weaken the mutant’s damage mitigation while dealing damage over time.

The canine knight snapped out of his **** state immediately after and started towards John again. While the Gamer put away the squirt gun and took a fistfighting stance, Sosig knocked into the Boss from the rear with a regular tackle. The mutant stumbled a step, revealing that it was less disruption resistant while not using special attacks, and half-turned to slash at the hog, scoring a glancing blow to his hindquarters.

It went right back to advancing on John though, so he met it in melee all the same. And was immediately put on the back foot. He had expected Pugsworth to be more dangerous than it looked, and the danger it posed with mana available had been clearly established.

Still, the canine knight’s speed, strength, and knack for putting its shield and weapon where John didn’t want them took him by surprise. Even when his footing and timing was solid for a block or deflection, the **** he clashed with when turning the blade away was bruising.

Most of the time, however, either attacks came at an angle where he couldn’t fully defend or his stance and footing wasn’t fully recovered from the last attack. And even if he had had a moment to spare to think about attacking, the shield was in his way.

The only thing stopping the whole thing from going downhill very fast was Sosig coming in every few seconds, causing the Boss to stumble and be briefly distracted, which let John recover his guard.

After a while of them making little to no headway, aside from Qhila sticking a vial John couldn’t trigger on their foe, Pugsworth stomped. It kicked up a cloud of leaves that obscured John’s vision for a moment. He made a random evasive movement, hoping that it’d save him from the blade to the gut that he expected for a follow up, but none came.

Instead, it took the momentary break to bang the blade of its sword against its shield thrice, gaining 3 MP each time. Then the canine knight raised its sword again, this time at an angle instead of straight up, and the red light marked a pair of concentric rings around the Boss.

Rebinding Sosig to Qhila got the hog out of the line of fire in the nick of time. It wasn’t just a single area strike, though, as the mutant started spinning around itself while moving towards John. The inner circle marked the area where the sword itself was passing through, while an aura of harmful radiance extended past the blade’s tip to the outer circle.

John got nicked by the aura twice, before he accepted that backing away wasn’t fast enough and he straight up turned to run. With that, however, he was able to keep his distance as the hound knight kept spinning and draining a point of mana every second or so.

Once it hit 0 mana, the Boss’ attack stopped and it once again took up a compromised stance while catching its breath. This time, they ran a combo of what was essentially a shard oil that was triggered by electrochemistry instead of air exposure, combined with a jet of congealed lightning. The idea, which a “takes damage when moving” debuff icon on the Boss indicated had succeeded, was to have some of the shards form inside the target’s armor.

Instead of returning to the melee he was outclassed in, John tried to keep his distance. That was much easier said than done, as the mutant was focused on John three quarters of the time. Only when Sosig made a tackle-pass was it briefly distracted. ‘I guess it’s because I’m the actual human around. The Developer really wasn’t kidding about the focus of their hate…’

Worse yet, it didn’t take long before Pugsworth stopped and started banging on his shield again, building up mana. One, two, three, four. ‘Four?? Fuck!’

Qhila clearly had much the same thought, as she used an acorn. Sosig’s empowered charge hit the boss, and put a stop to the clanging, just after the fifth strike.

As soon as the mutant knight recovered his footing, the shield began glowing. This time, John had a better stance for dodge rolls than last time and knew roughly where the danger zone would be. Rolling forward and to the side, for the shortest path out of the way, allowed him to just barely avoid the attack.

The pattern repeated with a powerful blade wave and a flurry of weak ones for the rest of its mana, both of which were more easily dealt with on the second go. Still, the damage from the latter put him on the uncomfortable side of 50 HP left, so he used one of the Boon health potions.

“Flip the pig to aggressive, I want to test something.” John dipped into melee for the seconds needed to switch stance. If he was right about what he was testing, it would be well worth the damage.

As soon as Fred and Sosig charged in, John dipped back out. In the previous stance, Sosig had been orbiting John and coming in for a tackle pass every few seconds. In aggressive stance, the pig kept closer to the Boss, coming in narrow turns to line up a new charge as soon as possible.

This kept the pig much closer to Pugsworth than before. With a bit of experimentation, John found that the mutant remained focused on Sosig as long as the Gamer stayed at least twice as far away. Additionally, the pig staying in motion combined with the short reach of the canine knight’s blade meant that it only landed shallow blows to Sosig’s hindquarters in passing, for fairly modest damage.

In other words, their NPC tank was now properly tanking. And, as the final icing on the cake, the pugman being in melee also seemed to make it wait significantly longer before banging its shield, and it kept it to three clangs before spinning. Apparently, going for more clangs and doing the cone and blade waves routine was an anti-kiting measure.

Once the Boss charged up for a spin attack, Qhila changed Sosig to defensive stance focused on her and John took over aggro duty. That way, they kept the pig from charging face first into a giant blender situation. Then, while the knight was catching his breath, Sosig’s stance was changed and they went for a damage combo. Mostly fast-burning oil and alchemist’s fire.

It took a handful passes to whittle down the first phase, as putting through damage while the melee with Sosig was ongoing proved difficult. Between the pig not minding lines of fire and the pug seeming to have a sixth sense for shield blocking damaging projectiles when not catching its breath, they decided that slow and steady was the way to go.

At least, they did after a jet of alchemist’s fire ended up hitting the shield and the DoT putting the Boss to a full 20 mana. That revealed that the last 5 mana worth of a full 20 spin accelerated substantially, a discovery that resulted in John having to pop the second Boon potion, leaving them with 2 left and John with not enough HP Regen to actually use them.

Once the last HP of phase 1 was gone, the pugman dropped to its knees, weapon and shield falling to the ground. Qhila tried to just shoot it then and there, likely hoping to get a head start on damaging the expected phase 2, but the crossbow bolt just passed straight through as if the Boss had turned insubstantial.

With labored breathing, the canine knight pulled a vial of glowing, green liquid from inside its armor somehow. “Your pain shall be legendary!”

Down the hatch it went, then the mutant let out a guttural roar that sounded like it should come from something much bigger. The roar gradually morphed into a thunderous, wicked laughter as the creature grew tremendously in rapid, asymmetrical bursts. Its armor was torn asunder and fell away, while the fur coat grew longer and darker and the muzzle extended. Everywhere turned into grotesquely bulging muscle and fingers turned into wicked, blade-like claws. Finally, the nameplate changed to a 600 HP second bar and a new name: Manbearpug.

“This is more like it.” The beast raised its arms and took the first step towards pouncing John.