Chapter 30

“I don’t know! OH man! I was told they were indestructible!” Akira said. He coughed at the end, but seemed to have his breath back. But I could tell he was really nervous about further engagement of the ogre. He even hopped back a few times in fear prematurely of what he thought was going to be an incoming blow, but really wasn’t.

I can’t blame him for that.

“Eh?” I wondered, still fighting orcs. Did he know or hear something else that he hadn’t told me about them?

We kept the other orcs clear of engaging Yumi and her magic shield, but she could only absorb damage and not actually get into a position of countering the ogre, or doing anything offense. Despite all her tremendous power, it was entirely defensive in nature. This was partly due to the fact that the ogre had really long and lanky arms and more reach than she did including its weapon’s length as well; there really was just no way for her to even get close to it. But even if it wasn’t an ogre I doubted she’d do much against the orcs besides holding them back.

“Are you guys going to help me now?! Help please! Who’s going to help me? Now’s a good time to jump in,” Yumi pleaded, her voice full of panic.

But I had my hands full. All I could do was try to swing my arms faster, and grit my teeth.

The ogre was seeing the half panic lilt in her voice and ragged mental state easily too. Somehow it was drooling a lot in anticipation of things to come, and it seemed that he thought he would have a free meal from his hard work paying off soon. Ogre tongues are also really long and ugly and have lots of pustules that cling to them like barnacles, I then found out.

Disgusting…

It didn’t help that Yumi was good looking either. She’d be the perfect bait for pillaging orcs and ogres looking for the ‘other’ white meat.

“When Akira and Akimoto met up to talk about how to counter Yuta and his campaign, we were told then about some of the jobs they’d discovered,” Yuriko said.

“And?” Sensei asked.

“You really think now is the time to chat?” I said angrily.

“We were told by Akimoto the defender’s special magic shield skill would hold up under any type of damage available, but that doesn’t appear to be holding up,” she said under stress.

“Oh. But could he have lied to you?” I suggested.

“No, he was being straight with us. He did tell us he wouldn’t tell us a few of his secrets, but that he would be up front with his hidden things beforehand and be open with however long our temporary alliance against Yuta lasts. That’s why I don’t think he lied to us, because he had full disclosure on what he did tell us,” Yuriko said.

Somehow I didn’t think that made it any better.

“Unless...the ogre has some kind of secret skill that gives it an exception,” I added.

“But does he also have a secret alliance with Yuta against you guys?” was my next question.

“I hadn’t thought of that. It’s a possibility,” Akira said. “I mean it could happen but he probably sees Yuta as a bigger threat for now, if he already has an alliance with us…would he? Is …that betrayal if he also had an agreement with him doing the same thing?” He huffed while the fighting continued.

“Hmm, that’s interesting. Does that then mean the orcs have jobs and magic too? The ogre might have an anti-shield skill maybe?” Rina asked.

Did she realize what she was asking though? I doubt she did. She’d probably said it by accident. Rina wasn’t stupid though, but just innocent in many ways. But this idea seemed possible. In fact, that gave me a really heavy awful kind of feeling in my heart. If that’s true then…

“Wait a minute, you might be right about that,” Sensei said.

“Orcs having magic and real skills sounds really dangerous,” Yumi growled, trying to keep up her ragged defense.

“Eh?” Rina was surprised.

“Well if there’s a job called defender, and there are other jobs too it’s natural to think maybe there’s a job that counters defender too?” Asakura said.

Some of us paled when we heard her say that. After all our survival was based on defender being the best for survival.

“I don’t want to play this game anymore,” I heard Yumi gasp out, under a shower of blue energy sparks.

“Oh shit!” Akira said in surprise.

“That means defender is weak to whatever job that ogre is right?” Yuriko finished saying what he was thinking and what we feared. The ogre was struggling somewhat against the shield and it wasn’t easy but if what they said was true, would he punch through it somehow?

“Not exactly. It’s still better than no defender,” I managed.

Akira and I kept two more orcs from joining the fight, which we teamed up to kill fast. After they were dead I checked around us again to make sure nothing else was coming. Now there weren’t anymore orcs near us, but I expected that to change any second with no predictability. Rina and Sensei were throwing rocks at the ogre, but for little effect, except making it madder. Yuriko joined them in throwing stuff, but the ogre seemed too tough and the girls didn’t have a lot of strength in their throwing arms.

The ogre briefly wanted to charge Rina and had singled her out as an easy target with a lot of gain, but was cut off again by Yumi plunging in wildly to cut him off again.

The bees want to go to the honey after all.

The battle line changed again and I realized the ogre was smart. He did try to lure Yumi over into a slippery gore covered part of the ground after that to trip her up and make her fall, but we shouted a warning to her in time. Then he tried the same thing again in the other direction by faking going after Yuriko. Yumi again blocked, but now she knew to watch for him trying to lead her into traps or to try to trip her over stuff. Sometimes we’d see blue sparks shower out into the air from when his blows hit her mana energy shield.

“Shun, we need you to get a plan going,” she said.

“She’s right. Only you have the head for this,” Asakura said quickly in mid-swing of her weapon.

“I’m working on it,” I reply while trying to survive myself.

By then we were getting tired and I could only imagine how much more tired Yumi was beginning to feel. The spear people in the back of our defense line set their spears against the flow of incoming orcs and cut off another orc that came from the woods, and then we got two more after that by cutting them up as a group before it could join the ogre. We were fortunate they were trying to join the ogre only in small groups, now that the bigger group had already been put down. But every time we wanted to do something we were slowed down significantly by more orcs would coming out to cut us off. Not only that but it made it impossible to look for an opening to exploit against the ogre with our attention between switched back and forth. Every minute the battle was prolonged also had a chance of another larger group of orcs stumbling on us at any time.

“Hang in there Yumi. We’ll rescue you,” Rina called out numbly.

“I’m…trying,” she huffed.

“Akira, we have to time our attacks right to him together right after he bounces off her shield, but before he can put his guard up again. Not before then, and be ready to jump back quickly if moves to counter us. Follow my signal,” I said, finally concluding after watching it move for a few minutes.

The ogre swung at Yumi’s shield again, but this time instead of an overhand swing he’d gone with a horizontal swing, hoping to clip the narrow thin part of her shield. Yumi briefly yelped and nearly fell in the grass, after a big shower of blue sparks were thrown about from the strike. I hadn’t realized before, that it was harder to stay on balance with the horizontal power swings because of it being against the narrowest part of the shield, I think. Plus she wasn’t used to having to use her legs to brace horizontally, rather than vertically. This was what the ogre was pushing for without even trying to hide his intentions. He kept going after the shield in this manner after seeing it pushed Yumi more, repeating the process.

He hadn’t survived many battles for no reason, it seemed.

“Now!” I urged, after his weapon swung out again.

Akira swung his log out and damaged the ogre’s club, but we didn’t actually get anywhere. It only messed up his club a bit; showering us with dry wood chips and wood dust. It also didn’t do enough for any gained ground yet, since his mental fortitude was accustomed to long battles like this. Not only that the ogre stopped our advance against it easily blocking us. The ogre then suddenly turned to us and made as if to charge us, so Yumi intervened again, barely cutting him off in time.

“I think this is a boss fight. He qualifies as a boss right?” Yuriko suddenly said.

“Yeah, no kidding. That’s old news,” the new girl said. She pelted it with a big rock, but it just swatted it such raw violence that it pelted away hitting a tree far from us at such speed that I wasn’t able to follow. He even managed to grin at her with his crooked teeth showing.

“OK! Let’s try that again. But now he’s going to be watching us and expecting us to counter so he may swing quicker at us,” I said again.

Sure enough he tried to take a chunk at Yumi’s shield again. We swung in at, even while the blow was still moving against her halfway through his swing; right after Yumi bounced of its club with her shield again we seemed to reach it. The ogre was trying to pull his arm back in time, and we had less than half a second to react.

“I feel dizzy Shun! Help!” Yumi said.

But then the ogre expected us to duplicate that move it seems, and was quicker than we thought and quite possibly a trap even. He swung at Akira with killing intent and with almost not enough time to maneuver I realized I’d have to save him. So to counter his trap and trying to hit Akira I swung at his club instead instead of his body, with my axe blade chopping his club in two, as it was coming at us. The steel axe had a natural destructive capacity when combined with the inertia and the air around us was briefly filled with wood chips and wood destruction; so it was more the ogre’s strength that had split the club rather than my own ability.

The ogre stared at its broken club in surprise. We were all just as surprised too. Then he swore something at me, now that his fun had vanished. His beady black eyes were full of hate now, where before he’d been enjoying himself and just toying with us. I was terrified, but managed to stay moving somehow.

“Sweet! We shortened his reach!” Akira cheered.

YES!

The really angry ogre then tried to charge me again, but just ended up hanging on Yumi’s shield as a result, when she’d lunged in front of us to protect us. He tried to throw her to the ground, but her shield’s defense had already activated some kind of internal defense against that, but that didn’t mean she had an easy time of it.

Since his club was now reduced to a very short club he wanted to take our weapons now and she’d anticipated it. She was now hanging on for dear life while it was trying to rip her shield off her arm, because she’d prevented it from chasing me to take my axe.

The ogre was even more guarded now, and I realized his teeth could hurt us almost as much as his fists and claws.

Yumi was flailing around like a rag doll now for almost a full minute after that while we searched for an opening, and I could tell she wouldn’t last this way. We could also end up hurting her too if we went in blindly. The shield abilities while being protective of this sort of thing by design just didn’t seem to be enough to absorb the shock from what we could see of her body was just being knocked around way too much to be healthy. Several times both of her legs were flailing about in the air in such a way that I thought she might lose from landing on her back.

Wow!

That’s scary to even watch!

“Help!” she said again.

“If you let go of your shield we will all die,” Akira said to Yumi in open awe of her air gymnastic fails. We gulped…and we were feeling as tense as I’d ever felt before.

“Careful Shun, he was clearly going for your axe,” Sensei called out. The girls threw more rocks again, and this time they were connecting better because with shorter reach he couldn’t deflect as easy. We saw a bruise or two appear on his massive chest, but overall he was just too much and too big. One of the rocks narrowly missed clipping Yumi in the head from behind though. He even seemed to be taunting us with his ability to absorb rock throws.

“How the hell are we going to get him off the shield,” I wailed in agony.

“Got it!” Akira responded.

We both moved with renewed energy from wanting to save Yumi, now that we had a reachable objective. I narrowly missed getting Yumi’s back thrown into me, but dodged left avoiding disaster.

Yumi wears really tight pink panties I found out when her skirt flipped up in the air. Was under her top also pink?

No, mustn’t get distracted…

Then Akira managed to be quick enough in his strike to swing his log down hard against the ogre’s left hand. It yelped in pain as the blow connected, forcing it to release from Yumi and her shield. It seems he’d seen the blow coming but was late in blocking, plus had the disadvantage of shortened reach hurting his ability to stop us. But the ogre’s left hand wasn’t crushed like we’d thought it to be. It was hurt, and even bloody while he briefly nursed it. But he was able to keep fighting, even using that same hand after only a few seconds of holding back.

It seems ogre bones are much stronger than human bones.

I was cut off but had no other choice to cast a cure spell on Yumi. She was in such bad shape I was afraid she’d collapse right then and there. She didn’t have a lot of heavy injuries but it seemed there was mostly mental conflict or exhaustion and wanting to feel like we could pull her out of this, I think.

“Ah that feels much better!” she said as the muscle pain and anguish seemed to have faded after I pushed the spell into her back. Her mental state looked calmer too, but I wasn’t sure if that was because of the spell directly or her inner placebo thinking since there was a healer and so everything would be fine in the end. I didn’t want to tell her that latter idea was probably not good to think as invincibility.

But I frowned also knowing I couldn’t risk trying to do another heal for awhile and hoped she wouldn’t be too reckless and told her so.

The weak feeling from using all my stamina in the heal skill had also made me feel sort of sluggish somehow. Thankfully I was able to keep moving. I forced myself to try to overcome the fatigue, though it felt similar to the pure hell feeling of trying to run around and be active on four hours of sleep.

Near us, Akira swung again and again, trying to buy us time, but the ogre was watching for it. We didn’t see it until the last second, and I wasn’t able to shout a warning in time. Suddenly the ogre turned from what looked like it had an exposed flank, but was really a trap. He snatched and grabbed Akira’s log in one blow with his hand, while his teeth and jaw twisted into a sneer to laugh at us. We held our breath seeing it grab it with one hand while the other hand still batted Yumi away. Akira dug into the ground with his hoof heels trying to backpedal away from the monster, and found gouts of earth clay in the thick grass being spit up into the air as he was dragged forward against his will.

Akira was hanging onto the log for dear life now too, and somehow right after that, the ogre was swinging him around trying to rip the log out of his hands. That log was terribly heavy and better than the ogre’s original club…and was being swung around like a toy in their tug of war.

“That’s bad,” Rina gasped. We were all seeing it too.

If Akira were to lose the heavy log…the ogre would have more reach than it had at the beginning of the fight. That extensive reach was part of its fighting style and why it’d been crushing our courage so easily.

Yumi tried to block again, but got knocked back falling down onto the grass this time and her legs were shaking. “I’m OK, just lost balance,” she said determinedly, rolling out of the way to stop any follow up hits. She got up as quick as she could while Akira was being traumatized and being swung about.

I gained a lot of respect for Yumi just now. It was amazing that she would take on something that was about twice her height. Plus, she’d gotten back up so fast and got right back in trying to stop it.

The ogre didn’t stop and with herculean strength sneered and laughed as it tried to gain control of the log. Then he again screamed that weird war cry that fills the sky and embeds fear in the pit of your stomach.

Somehow we didn’t run.

But we wanted to.

“Shun, go from behind against his knees! Everything but his knees moves too much,” Akira called out. He tried to hold it still while I rushed from behind.

I swung as hard as I could with the axe, but then had to duck as the ogre saw me coming and kicked backward without even having to look to know I was there. It ended up throwing off my swing, but I managed to avoid being kicked to death in one hit by dropping the trajectory of my weapon in mid swing. His foot went right over my head barely missing me and giving me shivers from how close I’d come to having my face and spine crushed. But then he was distracted from doing follow up blows against me, when Yumi charged at it bashing her shield against him. Together she and Akira were both trying to hold him still and now working together. He had one hand latched onto her shield’s top edge and the other on Akira’s log now and somehow he had them at a standstill with their faces turning red from the strain.

“Hurry! Now!” Yumi cried out desperately.

Turning the ogre’s face looked at me just in time to see the axe head chop down on his wrist from my best overhand swing. His eyes went wide with horror.

“YEOOOOOOWWWW!”

He screamed in terror and pain suddenly. His right hand was mangled terribly with the wrist bones exposed, and now we could see the bones chipped with white bone bit flakes sticking out with chunks of meat. He finally stopped moving while trying to contain his control over pain. Yumi and Akira kept doing follow up bashes but even without trying to defend himself very little damage showed while he shielded his face and vital spots trying to recover from the pain.

This was the first time he even looked mildly afraid or concerned of us. His eyes stared in shock at his mangled wrist.

He just wailed in pain. But it was a failure if you take into account I’d wanted to get a body blow to his vitals instead, but had missed because of feeling faint. The sum of the damage we’d piled up onto him wasn’t enough to do much either. He still looked very alive, and had too much energy. We managed to get a few minor injuries that leaked blood but none of it was enough to be mortal or incapacitate him.

Now his war cry is a cry rending the air with pain!

“No way…this guy just won’t die,” Yumi gasped, sweating like crazy.

Then he ran away from us suddenly. He had a big loping gait, similar to skipping as he disappeared into the low lands below and he even seemed to fear us. I hadn’t expected he could move that fast either or that he might run away even. But it also confirmed to me that our decision to run from him earlier was wrong too, since his running speed was much better than a normal human’s as we saw him moving. Sometimes he’d look back at us to see if we were following while holding his injured arm to his stomach.

The others were panting and out of breath, “Shun we can’t let him get away!” Akira panted in despair.

“Are you kidding? We’re lucky to be alive! We won’t survive another conflict like that!” Yumi said crying. Now that I could see better her shield’s crack was bigger than before. It reminded me of how car windshields look when they crack, except made of energy instead.

I was briefly embarrassed as she had to pull her school uniform blouse back down over her stomach. In the fight, she’d had so much air time that it had been pushed up, revealing her waist and lower abdomen.

“But he’ll come back!” he protested. “If we wait for him to heal up, or to round up more reinforcements isn’t that the same thing? He could come back when we’re asleep or not ready.”

“Sometimes surviving is good enough of a win,” Yuriko rasped.

“Shun, Akira has a point, but we can’t fight that guy right now we’re not strong enough. I had no idea something besides a human could be that strong. How are we going to live in a world like this?” Sensei said seriously.

“Asakura Sensei is right. We have to fall back now. He’ll be rounding up reinforcements and his hand only temporarily made him run. He’ll be back after he has the orc witch doctors take away his pain,” I said.

“Eh? There are orc witch doctors? How did you find that out? Did you see one of them?” Yumi looked at me suspiciously. She knew I knew something now. But it might take her awhile to figure out how to confront me about it.

The others seemed surprised, but there wasn’t time to explain it.

“Can’t explain right now, but they have them and they specialize in some kind of drug usage mixed with small amounts of magic it seems, like getting them high when they are in pain…and other things…,” I said.

“Like our herbalist?” the other girl said, her eyes narrowing.

“Maybe, but our herbalist didn’t seem that reliable,” Yuriko said.

We were about to move when a runner came up to us; a runner from our side, one of the survivors. It was one of the other rangers, but I wasn’t happy to see them right now after our experience with Ranger Kid abandoning us and running away. This kid had really big eyes like he’d just seen a ghost. Did he know that we’d fought the ogre then or was the look of surprise from something else?

I was still also nervous because there was the possibility there was more than one ogre. It seems the overall orc invasion wasn’t stopped. Just our area was a bit cleaner. So if there were still orcs in other areas, it’s then possible the ogre we’d encountered wasn’t the overall leader of all of them.

“Hey! I’m so glad I found you guys! We’re all regrouping and gathering at the northeast hill! Come quick! We have a fortified position. And we’re holding them off for now, but we need reinforcements if we’re going to hold out. Please,” he huffed, gesturing and pleading with us desperately.

“What?” Rina said suddenly.

“What? We already did our best. Don’t we get a rest spot?” Yuriko whimpered.

“Shun, do we go with them or…?” Yumi wondered.

“Where did you come from?” Akira wondered pointedly and glaring at him.

We were thinking the same thing. Do we stay with them or go off on our own now. Also was it a coincidence he arrived right after the ogre had left? After looking him over I still couldn’t firmly be sure either way, but I hoped to find out. It would determine if we could really trust this fellow.

“How many are at your position?” I asked, facing the ranger.

The ranger nodded to me, “we have like almost half the survivor group from the school gathered there including Akimoto’s faction. We won’t be able to hold them off unless everyone stays together. They have both numbers and strength better than us right now. To make it worse; the Yuta faction split off from everyone and crossed the river instead abandoning us. They basically used the rest of us as bait to buy time to escape with a smaller group of what they thought are their elite people. Please come quick. If you don’t a lot of people will die.”

I heard some of the others swearing in disgust and anger.

“Greedy pig Yuta, just became Cowardly Greedy Pig Yuta,” Rina said.

“So that’s like a special title upgrade?” the other girl joked.

“I can’t believe he abandoned them. He seemed so determined before to be their king. I thought he really meant to protect them,” Akira exclaimed in surprise. I was thinking similar to him actually on this.

“When it’s not convenient anymore you would be surprised how many people let you down,” Sensei countered.

The new ranger gestured to follow and we knew the orcs would be coming back so we kept following with a jogging pace as he ran through the deer trails. He pointed to a hill we could see, but it had a bunch of what looked like small ants trying to come up the south side, while we approached from the west.

“How is it that seeing Akira hasn’t scared the crap out of you?” Yuriko wondered, speaking to the ranger suddenly.

The new Ranger kid didn’t stop as he answered, “there’s a few others with similar problems that started showing up with the sickness that’s spread around today. Although they haven’t finished the transformation like you have. Many of them are sick with fever still, we’re hoping to help them but can’t until the orcs are gone,” he said.

“There are others like me? Did Yuta take most the rangers and defenders though?” Akira asked.

“I’d like to find out more about the other mutations,” Sensei whispered to me low enough that the others couldn’t hear.

The ranger seemed reluctant to respond but finally did so. “Unfortunately he did take most of the others. We were lucky that he didn’t get everyone with a special job though. Some can still help with combat even. There are a couple of people that have mutated like you already, but most of them are only like halfway through it. Funny he didn’t take any of those people, does that mean Yuta is also racist?”

We were slow to respond. People were afraid of making Akira feel bad after all.

“Good question,” I said carefully.

The ranger continued, “Not all of them are turning into something like you Akira. Mostly they are kind of half changed and not able to fight much. But it seems like there’s more than one beast transformation going on. Or is it a monster transformation? I’m not sure yet. Anyway, we’re not really sure what they are becoming, but it’s obvious some parts aren’t human.”

“Well the big problem is if the hill is already engaged by orcs coming up it and it they are…how are you going to be able to get us in the defense line without us getting mobbed?” I said, unhappy about doing what was a rescue operation for them, rather than for us as he’d portrayed it.

“Good question. I’m glad you will help figure that part out,” Asakura patted me on the back, while we jogged.

Ah man...somehow they are looking at me to solve things again.