Chapter 21: Ogricide

“Ogricide: The act of deliberately annihilating the Ogre population. Cool, isn’t it?”

“Come one, Mark! Stop joking around. We have struggled to kill one, and you are already proclaiming an extinction-level catastrophe?” Rand complains, outraged by my smile and silly joke.

“Hehehe… My bad, my bad.” He can’t appreciate a good joke, can he? “I was thinking… On the next ogre, we will try a different strategy.” At this, his pouting stops, and his eyes sharpen. Someone didn’t like getting tossed up? The others also turn to look at me.

“From what we have seen, albeit only from one individual, they are not precisely bright.” I roll my eyes at the thought. Precisely bright? They are as clever as this stone next to us. “They tend to run head-first towards their enemies, without the least care for their defenses.” Everyone nods in confirmation.

I rub my hands together. “Mike will be at the front and cast a fireball. The ogre will, hopefully, notice it and turn to you.” I raise a hand to stop his complaint. Wait until you hear me out, I think for myself. “Immediately flee behind Rand, who will be a bit behind, separated enough to make it seem all the fuss wasn’t with him. Then, I’ll just take Mike’s place and let the mindless ogre charge me.”

“Oh, so you want to act as bait?” Mike pulls his head back a bit, surprised by the turn. He is all smiles now. Of course you are, you’ll be safe behind Rand!

“Precisely! When it is a few meters from reaching me, I’ll go Specter. Perhaps I could be in that form from the start, but let’s not assume all their brain cells are dead. It will be off guard and probably unbalanced, so just make sure to Charge him right after it.” I target a meaningful look at Rand.

“Yeah, count with me on that.” He says while he gives me the thumbs up.

“Oh, and…” I make a purposely long and unnecessary pause, “Invoke Spirit!” Smoke starts rising from the ogre’s corpse and starts taking form until a ghostly copy of it appears. “We’ll have some help!”

[Ogre]
Health: 400
Mana: 0

Berseker [20]
Charge [7]
Charges straight to your enemy, tunnel-focusing on it and only it. Upon impact, knock your opponent back. If you fail the charge, induced by the frustration, enter in a Rage state and destroy your nearest opponent. If you connect the charge, enter in a Rage state. Rage!

Shockwave [15]
Stomp the ground with your weight to throw your enemies out of balance.

Club Technique [2]
Far from mastering it, you have learned a crude and savage way of using the club. Based solely on strength. No technique. Swing. Smash. Crash. Destroy. Can induce Rage.

Rage [10]
Upon entering Rage, abandon all defense and madly go out at your enemy. Your attack is increased by 300%. Either it dies, or you die.

“Fucking mother of God!” I shout at the top of my lungs. I was expecting something ridiculous, but the thing is just brain dead. “Their whole ability kit revolves around their stupidity! Read this shit; I’ve made it public for the party.” They don’t even have mana! I laugh with one hand on my face and the other waving around. Maybe they are so dense they can’t even sense it?

“If they actually thought for a bit and went after us, the mages, we’d be smashed to bits in no time.”

“Don’t jinx it, Mike! God forbids they focus on you; I can heal small wounds, not dismembered pieces and mashed wizards!” I fall to my knees as I picture the image of Mike running around with an ogre hot in his tails. Rand charging behind it. A club being thrown as a spear. The ground shaking.

I take a deep breath and look around. Everyone’s looking at me as if I had gone crazy. I fake a cough. “Ahem. Everyone’s full again, right? Let’s go!”

Now that we know it finding an ogre is easy. Or so says Dorian. He has his ear pegged to the ground and, if I’m to trust what he said, he is trying to locate their stomps. I mean, I guess it’s possible, but it just seems taken out of a cowboys movie. A bad joke.

“Follow me.” He has found one? Amazing. We follow his lead, and sure enough, after clearing some trees and small hills, we find our next prey.

“Amazing….” I say, still in disbelief. “Oh well, action time it is then. Mike, all yours!”

We execute our plan to perfection. As soon as the fireball leaves his staff, he runs to Rand’s cover, and I take his place. Let’s see if stupidity runs in their race or if it was just that one individual.

Here he comes blinded by pure rage and unable to think clearly. If he could ever even entertain the thought of thinking, that is. Indeed, they have a fucking wreckage of a brain. Almost here. One more second…

“Materialize!”

The sound of air being cut in two fills the space, but I don’t even feel a slight breeze. Neither my head is smashed into bits, nor pieces fly everywhere. The club, missing me completely, crashes hard to the ground. The ogre, still sprinting, fails to notice its club has missed its target. Unable to stop, most likely not even able to conclude it needs to stop, the force behind it becomes half a somersault. With a loud crash, the beast lands on its back right behind me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rand already mid charge. Nicely timed! “Come on, my spirit, Charge and mindlessly swing at him! You should be good at it!” What should have been the deep and dark battle scream, an acknowledgment of my orders, is but a high-pitched scream that makes you want to tear your ears apart. “Fuck! Keep quiet!” I shout, horrified. What else do they keep in store?

“Its weak point is in the head!” Rand announces. But… how can such an empty-headed creature have a weak point there!

The battle is flowing much more in our favor than the previous. Even after getting up, it’s locked into a dog fight with Rand. Lillia no longer needs to step in to take some pressure off him, as the spirit does that task perfectly. Actually… It’s almost comical seeing the real one and the ghost one go at each other non-stop. Mmh… Can I heal it?

“Heal!”

[Your spirit has regained 25 HP]

Huh? 25? I quickly do a mental review of what could have caused the increase and soon reach a conclusion. It’s a combination of my Specter form and its sensibility toward magic. The battle just goes on with us freely denting at its health and the dumb ogre striking Rand and my spirit interchangeably.

[Your party has slain an Ogre]
[You have leveled up]
[You have leveled up]

[You have learned Immolate]
Sacrifice the health of a willing allied target to deal magic damage equivalent to 125% of the amount in a cone in front of it. The proportional amount of health lost by the target is also taken from the master. For example, immolating 50% of the target’s health will drain 50% of the master’s health. It has a cooldown of 5s.

Oh, this one is interesting. Let’s try with 40 HP. “Immolate!” A fiery red liquid pours out of my spirit’s body and covers a wide arc of 45 degrees in front of it. I quickly check as my health has been reduced by 10. As expected, using 10% of the ogre’s health has also reduced mine by 10%.

“You got a new spell too?” Dorian raises an eyebrow while pointing at the traces of blood left behind.

“Yes! I guess it’s a common thing to learn spells at about level 15.” I shrug my shoulders. “Just a quick heads up, I can use your health to damage an enemy close to you. I’ll try to use it wisely!”

“Try to? I better not end dead because you miscalculated!”

I heartedly laugh at Mike’s remark. “I’ll be careful, I’ll be careful! Don’t worry! So uuuh-” I attempt to switch the topic, “-has anyone else gotten something?”

“Yes!” Lillia’s the first to speak. “I’ve got Focus. It allows me to concentrate and raise my critical strike chance for the next few seconds.”

“Here too! Ground Down, my feet stick to the ground and immobilizes me for 1 second.” That’s… that’s precisely what he was trying to do with the first ogre. Do our actions alter what we learn? “It’s not much, but at least I won’t get thrown as easily!”

“Wouldn’t the resulting force be stronger? You wouldn’t dissipate the impact and instead, take it all on your body. We’ll need to test this…” Dorian is on point here. I don’t know if it is a good idea to receive a full blow without dispersing some of the froce. “What about you, Mike?”

“Yet another fire skill, defensive it would seem. Embers. I can set some of my body aflame, damaging anything that touches me.” Ideally, he won’t be using this one much.

“This is so good.” It really feels exhilarating battling strong enemies. “I am still at a rate of 2 levels per kill. I doubt these Ogres are anything lower than 30, to be honest. My spirit is 20, but that might simply be because there was too much of a difference when invoking it. So… Ogricide?”

“Not again… I beg you, Mark… it is not even remotely funny.”

“Ah… such a repressed mind.” I click my tongue while shaking my head. “Well then, Dorian, hear the way! You know, hear, because you-”

“Yeah! Yeah! Shut up and let me work!” None of them appreciate my humor, so sad…

We spend what remains of the day, a good 5 hours, hunting more ogres. And taking their husks. It’s a pity we can’t carry all the clubs. Considering the whole process, resting after each battle and then looking for the next and killing it, 19 of them should be viewed as a huge success.

Our growth rate, regretfully, didn’t last forever. Actually, that second battle was the last time we saw increases of two levels. The following 7 gave one each, and from then on, we only got 5 more levels.

It’s not bad, actually quite the contrary. As I speculated, they must be at least level 30. Otherwise, our gains can’t be reasonably explained.

We take the route back to the city and enter without many questions being asked. Word of us must have already circulated through the army.

“Same hour as today. See you tomorrow!” Nobody had the mood to talk for longer. Even after today, we know we don’t stand a chance.