Thinking about strong monsters suddenly caused him to think about the Watermelon Wolf King, specifically the two messages that had appeared each time he had arrived. Making a quick check of his Codex once again he easily located a paragraph which explained the two messages.
Apparently monsters of the 6th rank (BOSS) or higher have Three States they can be in. First is the Normal State in which they are completely clearheaded with their stats at their normal amount.
The Second State called the Enraged State can be triggered at will and can last for about an hour. In this State they will have a 25% increase to all stats, but will become extremely tired once the hour is up. Monsters usually will enter this State once their HP has fallen to around 50% or they become incredibly angry.
The Third State is called the Berserk State. This is an all-out State in which the monster will burn their life force to acquire a 50% increase to all stats.
However such a rapid increase in might will come at a terrible cost for not only is the duration incredibly short, but once they exit the Berserk State they will be completely exhausted and defenseless. Most monsters will usually only use this in a life or death situation when their HP has fallen below 10%.
So it would appear that Salvatore's poisoning had inadvertently prevented the Watermelon Wolf King from remaining in the Berserk State long enough for him to deplete his life force.
If he had only known about these States earlier he would have simply given the Watermelon Wolf King the runaround before hiding someplace safe and waited out the duration of the Berserk State. Still, all's well that ends well.
Tossing a few more logs onto the crackling fire to last the night, he reached into his [Spatial Storage] and withdrew his black silk pajamas and the Watermelon Wolf Kings large fur.
Dawning his black pajamas he then unfolded the large piece of fur for use as a blanket. Wrapping himself with the fur comfortably, he once more relaxed against the Archway and fell asleep like he always did in the wild, a blade in his hand and his eyes wide open.
Taking a few slow deep breaths Salvatore entered a relaxed state of complete awareness and slowly drifted off using his traditional counting method.
One head removed....
Two heads removed....
Three heads removed.....
Four heads removed........
Five heads remov............