The deirgu surrounding them stared as if they were in a daze. Their beady, black eyes the size of large marbles seemed almost devoid of life. The weapons in their hands swayed back and forth, almost in tandem, as another line of rodents emerged and paired off with their companions.

“What's going on?” Kirie muttered. She slid her grip down the handle of her axe. Blood dripped from the rounded pauldrons of her armor and red streaks covered her chestplate.

“Not sure,” Alphonse answered between gasps. He gave Ash a questioning look, which she returned with only a simple shake of her head. The slight movement prompted a streak of blood to meander down one cheek from a shallow cut.

He kept a wary eye on the deirgu towards his side while also observing the status of his party.

Emily rested a hand on her brother's arm where a deirgu had managed to deal a deep laceration. It would've nearly rendered the limb useless if it had dug just a quarter-inch deeper. Liam winced a bit as the magic took hold, and he gave his sister an appreciative nod.

Asa applied her own healing to the rest of the party in the form of a small dome that flickered with dull light. Everyone had suffered some amount of damage. It was inevitable in such a harsh, desperate battle against a force that greatly outnumbered them.

“There's too many,” Kirie growled. “What is this bullshit? Do any of those Guild Union bastards know how to fucking count?”

Alphonse was about to answer when Ash interrupted him. It was one straightforward utterance, “Look.”

Alphonse scanned the deirgu that surrounded them. His eyes widened as he understood what she meant.

The deirgu were perfectly spaced apart in a wide circle. None of them made any indication of moving forward. Instead, they performed a tactic that should've been beyond the comprehension of their feeble brains. They all lifted matching crossbows and trained them on Alphonse and his party. These new deirgu were clearly not from the initial group they saw earlier.

They were silent. No chattering of their harsh language and no nervous shifting of their feet. They all took a sliding step forward in unison and angled their bodies so they pointed towards their target, just like an expert marksman. Their crossbows weren't like the rough, poorly kept weapons they were accustomed to. They were finely crafted with straight, long bolts.

Alphonse heard Liam breathe heavily behind him. “W-what the fuck?”

Alphonse turned to his voice, but his eyes met Emily, who stared at him with her staff clutched to her chest with confusion and plain fear on her face.

Her lips quivered as she struggled to form words, “M-mister McCarthy, what should we do?”

The answer caught in Alphonse's throat. What was there to say? That everything was alright? Have patience? That he had a plan?

The whole situation was so outlandish and unforeseeable that he doubted any other adventurer might have ever experienced it. There was no written history or verbal account he recalled that suggested any possibility of organizing such a disciplined force of deirgu.

Alphonse let out the breath he'd been holding and nodded some encouragement to her. He assumed an air of calm and analyzed the situation before him.

“Just stay behind Liam,” he said. “If we move as a group, nothing will get through. Asa knows how to form domes of protection.”

He looked to Asa, who nodded an affirmation to him as she read the situation. She was already in the process of preparing another delayed spell. She'd also drank a potion to slowly replenish her stores of mana to full.

His reasoning and the catgirl's response seemed to have some of the desired effect. Emily's fingers trembled a little as she opened a mana potion as well, and she managed to drink the contents without spilling any. She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her healers robe and nodded to him.

The standoff dragged for another minute. It felt like an eternity.

A low rumble soon met their ears. Alphonse and Ash were the first to notice it. They shared an uneasy glance as the quaking beneath their feet intensified. The deirgu surrounding them attempted to maintain their poise, but even they in their discipline found it difficult to stay in proper firing position as the rumbling drew closer. Some of them began to visibly shake between the brief moments of silence.

The trees bent and parted as a massive figure emerged.

Its gargantuan, gray body lurched forward with each heavy step. It appeared clumsy with its hulking form and absurd muscles that didn't complement the shape of its body. A bulbous belly somehow managed to ripple with muscle beneath the fat. Each stride forward felt weightier than the next as its thighs flexed and bare feet pressed into the ground, forming deep imprints in the dirt. A trail of spittle crawled down its jutting chin, and two long tusks protruded from its lower jaw and overlapped the thick upper lip.

An ogre.

Alphonse felt a shiver crawl over his skin. He'd expected the troll, a stray hobgoblin or even the ogres he'd seen in the dungeon near Mesatend Forest. But this was no ordinary ogre.

It stood at an incredible twelve feet with a thick neck that throbbed with pulsing veins. The black, spiked markings curling from its back to chest area were foreign to Alphonse. Some of them seemed to move and crawl over its abdomen as if they had minds of their own. They snaked along the legs and gyrated around the arms.

Trolls were one thing, but this towering beast easily held the strength of more than a half-dozen of the monsters combined.

Not a single quest on the board at the Guild Union mentioned anything about ogres – and this was the largest ogre Alphonse had ever seen.

Any sighting of an ogre was dealt with immediately since they were so dangerous. If adventurers didn't take on an ogre quest within a day's time, then the capital deemed the threat great enough to send in soldiers to deal with them.

How did this bastard make it so close? Alphonse tightened the grip on his bow. He hadn't even realized he drew it until then.

He attempted to take in all of his surroundings. There were a few dozen deirgu and an ogre. The dread settled into his bones and ate at his stomach.

It really was a trap...

The appearance of the troll as the larger enemy was a diversion to keep them occupied. The deirgu numbers were also enough to hide their true numbers beyond the perimeter that he and Ash scouted. The real threat had been standing by far off, waiting for some sort of signal. He had no clue where they could've possibly come from to reach them so quickly.

I never... Alphonse's thoughts trailed off. He felt the cold sweat beading down his back. His eyes shifted to the ground briefly as he struggled to calm himself.

How could anyone...expect this?

The mucous membrane over the ogre's eyes shifted sporadically as it attempted to focus its vision on the party standing before it. It narrowed its eyes as it plainly focused on one individual.

“The black-garbed one,” the behemoth rumbled.

Alphonse felt many gazes on him as he stood rigid. He didn't say anything. He could only focus on controlling his trembling arms as the ogre took another heavy step forward. The leaves on the trees bristled with anticipation.

“What are you called?” the ogre asked. Its speech with the common tongue was far more fluent than the troll's.

Alphonse swallowed hard and barely managed to find his voice. He stopped himself before uttering the first word. The presence of Emily and Liam held him back.

Control. Calm. Breathe.

He took another deep breath from beneath his scarf and took a slight step forward. It felt as if the ogre's gaze was pressing down on his shoulders, pushing him beneath deep waters. It felt as if the scarf was suffocating him as he stole another desperate breath. The very presence of the ogre threatened to drown him.

He curled his fingers over the scarf and lowered it from his mouth to claim a fresh breath of air. He settled it back over his mouth and stared up at the ogre. “Evan McCarthy,” he answered.

The ogre remained silent, as if savoring the name to interpret its meaning. It spoke after a few seconds of tense silence, “I see. I am known as Bejhkara.”

The ogre glowered at Alphonse and lowered the spiked club from its wide shoulders. It reached to its side and removed a one-handed flail strapped to its waist. The spiked ball of steel hanging from the chain let out a dull thud as it dug into the dirt.

“Losing the Xerscian blacksmith brought much grief to my name,” the ogre continued. “Such a nuisance.”

It took but a moment for Alphonse to comprehend what the ogre referred to. Mesatend forest. The western border. Sebastian and his family. The ogre had somehow traveled so far across the country in secret.

The ogre's mouth curled up on one side in a terrible smirk as it observed Alphonse.

“So you understand. Good,” the ogre said. A trace of wicked satisfaction mixed gleefully in its thick speech.

Alphonse slung the bow over his shoulder in favor of his shortsword and assumed a defensive stance. The rest of his party mirrored him.

Ash moved closer with her scimitars crossed in front of her. Kirie hefted her double-edged axe and grit her teeth. Liam and Emily raised their weapons with trembling arms as the ogre loomed over them. Asa planted her staff on the ground and readied her protection spell.

Alphonse breathed in slow. He exhaled through his nose and repeated. He lowered his gaze and whispered to Asa, “Protection dome. Be ready.”

Asa nodded an affirmation.

He turned to Kirie, Liam and Emily. “Group up. Kirie, take the lead.”

“Will do,” Kirie growled. The siblings stared at him blankly for a moment, plainly taken aback by his sudden calm demeanor. He exuded an air of composure that seemed to encompass the group. Liam shifted in front of his sister, and the glaive in his hands pointed steadily at the deirgu facing their side.

“Ash...”

The fox woman looked to him expectantly. 

Alphonse returned the look. “You and I have the ogre. Plan C.”

There was still an indisputable fact that lingered at the back of his mind: this wasn't necessarily her fight. If she wanted to, she could flee any time. She could simply ghost into the forest and avoid the remaining monsters. Hell, she could carve right through them if she so desired and be down the road in minutes. And if she did, the rest of the party would surely perish.

Ash sighed and shook her head. “This is the problem with attachment,” she whispered. “You are a curiosity. Unfortunately, I am the type of person who is never satisfied until that curiosity is sated.”

Alphonse stared at the ogre and tightened the grip on his sword. “Thank you.”

“Just don't disappoint me,” Ash answered.

The deirgu settled the stocks of the crossbows firmly into their shoulders as they prepared to fire. The ogre adjusted its grip on the spiked club and lifted the flail until the chain swung freely.

Asa shouted, "Protection!"

The dome of melded hexagons emerged. A volley of bolts from the deirgu bounced off the surface and formed barely discernible cracks. The ogre's attack was far more effective as it brought down the spiked club and nearly shattered a portion of the dome in one blow.

Alphonse and Ash dove through the protection and each dealt a strike to both of the ogre's legs. The monster lurched forward and swung at Alphonse with its flail. It wasn't a wild strike from a creature acting on pure instinct; it was calculated, and the scout barely managed to avoid the second swing as the ogre twisted its wrist and dragged the spiked-ball of steel along the ground. Chunks of dirt and grass formed a short wave that briefly obscured Alphonse's vision.

The ogre took a step forward to press the attack, but it was forced to one knee as Ash slipped in from behind and sliced along the monster's achilles tendon.

Time to go, Alphonse thought.

He looked to Ash, who nodded her assent.

They continued to distract the ogre as the rest of their party dealt with the deirgu around them. Kirie solely drove through the small rodent monsters in the direction where Ash and Alphonse slowly retreated. The remaining ranged attackers on the opposite side had no clear shot on them thanks to the ogre's massive form.

It didn't take long for them to break through the short length of forest. The ogre followed them as expected and decimated any obstacles that were in the way of its spiked club. Alphonse leaped out of the foliage and slid to a stop on the dirt road that led to the pass where their spike pit trap was planted.

He'd only made it a few steps before the once-clear blue sky fully seized his attention. It was for but a moment. A billowing cloud of black smoke consumed a small portion of an expanding blanket of gray he could see over the rocky pass. Just on the other side, a few miles down a winding path, past some rolling hills and farmland was the village of Lamfell.

Alphonse immediately understood how the ogre was able to move in with its forces so quickly.

The monsters had invaded Lamfell.