With their prey ‘retreating’, the nearby hostile fauna made the bold and rather foolish move to go all-in. However, Franken and its pilot were not, in fact, legitimately about to run away. Axton had faced creatures like these more than a few times before, and that did not just refer to the hyena-coyote animals that he was facing now.

The AI in this game was capable of both great strategy and incomprehensible stupidity, and it seemed to shift between those two extremes at random and unpredictable moments. However, Axton had found a decent exploit that, at least for now, allowed him to, in a way, force the AI to become utterly moronic.

While this generally affected only animal-type mobs, Axton had learned that feigning a retreat tended to trip some kind of weird issue with the animal mobs, driving beings that normally would operate in a pack or use animalistic tactics towards more… simple styles of combat and movement. All he needed to do was get their attention, clear a path of ‘escape’ and then move towards it, and presto-change-o the formerly cunning animals would go from being, well, cunning to being a bit more like early 21st Century Enemy AI.

He wasn’t sure why this issue made it through to this current build, but he was going to exploit the hell out of it. After all, it made things so much easier to deal with. Though he would have to eventually wean himself off of that exploit or risk a future patch making his strategy a death sentence.

“C’mon, you idiots.” Axton muttered as he backed Franken up a little bit more. “Come to papa.”

The animal mobs obliged him, even if they didn’t know it. One of them got a bit too far ahead, though, and was the first to realize after leaping that maybe, just maybe, a frontal charge towards a killer death robot with one free hand and a knife whose blade was roughly the length of a person’s forearm was not the brightest of ideas.

Franken’s left hand reached out and locked its grip around the thing’s neck before swinging it to the side and tossing it away. Nearby, a large rock was waiting for the critter to reach it, which it did, and, in turn, ended up painting said rock with a bright shade of blue.

Axton’s glace towards the impact site left him a bit concerned. They had not bled blue before. Maybe something was up.

As Franken’s left arm moved to its next needed position, the right hand had already been sent forth to jab the mech-use combat knife into the gut of another foolish beastie who thought that it could do what numerous others had failed to. Once again, the critter bled a bright blue that looked a bit like it was an alien from one of those old games with the guy called… what was it? Master Chef?

This only ended up piquing Axton’s interest a bit more. He wasn’t sure if something in the animal mobs had changed, or if there was a dangerous hidden reason as to why the blood and guts were now a very different color than they had been merely a few moments prior, but he definitely wanted to know sooner rather than later.

For now, though, there were animals to kill. God, that line alone would make him a hated enemy of that organization that was apparently named after a type of bread…

Still, though, it was a natural thing to do to fight for survival, and having a tech advantage was also entirely natural. Humanity would not be where it was today if it didn’t exploit the gifts nature and/ or God gave it, now would it?

With that thought in his head, Axton swung Franken’s right limb a few more times, cutting a hacking his way through another four of the hyena-coyote things before the mobs’ Enemy AI finally got its head out of its ass and chose to make a hasty retreat. Axton and Franken stood and watched the glowing red silhouettes fade into the distance, eventually getting out of basic detection range and losing their aggro.

Through the safety of Franken’s cameras and other sensors, Axton surveyed the scene around him. It wasn’t the most that he had killed today, but it was the most enjoyable time thus far. Plus, he had noticed that the mobs had retreated a bit faster than the previous group had.

Unlike the last time, where his giant powered armor suit had effortlessly cut down more than fifteen of the buggers before the other five or so chose to run, this time he had killed, what, around 6 or 7 before they ran? The buggers were learning to fight better, or at least they were learning when it was in their best interest to just say “fuck it” and run away.

Out of a pack of around 20, his total kills had been less than half of that before they chose to bail, and that was something that both amused Axton and caused him some concern. What was next?

Would they learn to avoid bum-rushing him when he feigned a retreat? Would they learn that it wasn’t a good idea to try and take tooth and claw to a giant killer death robot with a pilot inside who had a taste for violence?

Maybe they would learn to try and use diplomacy to get him to come out and be eaten of his own accord. Actually, given how weird things sometimes got in MMOs, especially during that time of the year, he wouldn’t put it past the devs and GMs to try that…

Well, that would have to wait until later. He had to figure out what was making the animals bleed blue all of a sudden. He would have written it off if it happened after a patch, but this was mid-game, and unless the people who made this game wanted to run the risk of seriously fucking with the brains of people, they wouldn’t have, or perhaps shouldn’t have patched the game while it was still being played with.

And what would be the point of making the blood blue, anyway? Did little Timmy’s mom throw a hissy fit because she bought her son a game that was clearly marked for adults only and it had a bit of gore in it?

Actually, he wouldn’t put it past people to do stupid shit like that…

Well, it was time to check the message boards while in-game to see if this was a local thing or if it was game-wide. He honestly wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to be the former or the latter, though….