"These Ogres were monoliths of bone and muscle. Their 'short swords' were raw sheets of iron, roughly hammered and easily three meters long. They themselves varied in height from five to a staggering sixteen meters. How in the hell was a 1.44-meter-tall human boy, already half-starved and broken, supposed to fight a mountain?"
The tactical situation was a joke. I stood there, looking up at the sheer scale of the enemy, and I felt a familiar, jagged spike of resentment. Why was everyone in this pit so damn big?
My internal grumbling was cut short by the smallest of the Ogres—a mere five-meter 'runt'—who spotted us first. He didn't attack. He pointed his massive, grime-crusted finger at us and let out a guttural rumble. "Hya, hya! Look, brothers, hya! Finally, we have something to chew on that isn't Oger meat! Little bipeds, fresh and raw!"
The bastard. I don't care about the sixteen-meter giants; I want to kill this specific piece of shit with my own bare hands for calling me 'biped.'
While I was busy feeding my rage, Jessica stepped closer. Her voice was a low whisper, barely audible over the roaring of the Oger camp. "Has your mana regenerated, you cur?"
I checked my internal reserves. My mana channels were still screaming from the internal inferno of her white flames, but the three-day coma and the Naga flesh had done their work. "Yeah," I whispered back, a dark grin beginning to form on my face. "I'm fully regenerated."
She looked me in the eye, her expression unreadable beneath the grime of the abyss. "Good. Then prepare the Sawing Sun of the Four Colors."
She said it so easily. As if it were a minor incantation and not a volatile, forbidden art that nearly killed me last time I used it. I opened my mouth to argue, but the world didn't give me the time.
The 'runt' Oger was apparently not content with just shouting. He began to beat a massive club against a stone, making so much noise that ten other Ogres joined him. These were the heavy-hitters, each standing comfortably over eleven meters tall, their eyes glowing with an ancient, primitive hunger.
We were standing on an open platform. There was no escape. And Jessica wanted me to use the solar nuke.
But I had a better idea. A much better idea than risking a solar explosion that might bring this entire staircase down on our heads. I looked at the eleven Ogres, all of them roaring 'Aja-jay!' like a horde of particularly vicious wild boars. They had their eyes open, wide with the thrill of the hunt.
"Let's test the new prize," I whispered, reaching deep into the newly absorbed Naga mana structure.
I triggered the Illusion Magic.
It was a strange sensation. Unlike my shadows, which I shaped externally, this felt like I was weaving a tapestry inside my own head and projecting it outward. I didn't have the finesse of the Naga; I couldn't trap them in deep, personalized loops of psychological torment. Ogres are simple creatures, driven by base instincts. Manipulation was useless against them.
Instead, I took a page from Folia's book. I showed them variables. I didn't show them their own deaths; I showed them the deaths of their own clan-mates. I projected images of other Ogres being torn apart, their bones snapped like twigs, their massive hearts ripped out by invisible forces.
"How do you like that, you green bastards?" I spat, bracing myself for the psychic feedback.
But the plan backfired spectacularly.
The Ogres didn't panic. They didn't scream. They saw the 'Illusion' Ogres dying and... they tried to eat them. They lunged at the projections, their massive jaws snapping at the air, thinking their clan-mates had become freshly available meat. They were too stupid to be afraid. They just saw it as an opportunity for seconds.
Jessica was livid. Her plan of me nuking the camp had failed, and now she was staring at eleven confused, starving Ogres who were beginning to look at her again. With a cry of frustration, she drew the Sword of Qelo—or what was left of it—and charged.
I will give her credit: she fought like a goddess of war. Despite her recent injuries, she was a blur of silver and fire. Her broken sword whistled through the air, and bursts of White Flame ignited around the Ogres, blinding them and charring their flesh. She took down two of the giants before she even reached the small one.
"Finally!" I cheered as she prepared to finish the 'runt.'
But the small Oger was smarter than he looked. He saw the fire coming and, instead of fighting, he just... opened his mouth and screamed.
It wasn't a roar. It was a high-pitched, piercing shriek that resonated through the entire cavern. The sound was so loud it felt like it was liquidizing my internal organs. If the other fifty Ogres in the main camp hadn't noticed the commotion before, they certainly did now. The entire stairway was alit with torches as the main force began to march.
Okay. That's it. I thought. My patience has official run out.
How can these complete idiots, these low-tier monsters, handle themselves better than that Naga? The Naga was an artist of mental torture; these things just eat and scream. I reached into my soul, powered by raw, unadulterated annoyance.
I channeled my Shadow Shaping. It was time to introduce these Ogres to the concept of immobility. I wove tight, black cords around their legs and torsos, pinning their massive, thirteen-meter bodies to the stone platform. While they thrashed and grunted, I summoned my Shadow Blades and lunged. The bones of these bastards were incredibly dense; my blades were barely making a dent, and for a second, I actually felt a spike of jealousy for how robust they were.
Jessica, meanwhile, was holding her own against the rest, using her fire and blade to thin the herd.
I was focused on trying to sever the carotid artery of a twelve-meter giant when I felt a sudden weight on my back. The small Oger arsehole had managed to slip his bindings and had pounced on me.
We were tangled together, the giant and the boy, wrestling on the edge of the platform. The momentum carried us too far, and we both almost slipped over the edge. In our struggle, we dislodged a massive piece of obsidian, which plummeted into the bottomless void below.
CLANG!
The sound of the stone hitting the distant ground echoed through the abyss.
And then, everything went silent.
The roaring, the grunting, the screams of the 'Cannibalism Clan'... they all stopped. Even the Ogres that Jessica was fighting went still, their massive bodies actually shaking. It wasn't confusion I saw in their eyes. It was terror.
I didn't understand why. I was too busy trying to choke the life out of the runt Oger. But then, it came.
It was the single most monstrous thing I had ever seen.
Emerging from the darkness of the lower staircase, drawn by the sound of the falling stone, was a creature that defied description. It had six legs, each one a jagged, chitinous blade that scraped against the rock with a sound that made my skin crawl. Above the legs was a humanoid torso, powerful and muscular, wrapped in what looked like biological plate armor.
Its right arm was a single, massive, curved blade of dark metal, while its left was a bio-mechanical shield of fused bone and scale. Its head was encased in a natural, skeletal structure that perfectly resembled a knight's great helmet. It was silence made flesh. It didn't roar. It didn't scream. It just arrived.
The small Oger, apparently forgetting about me, scrambled up, trying to flee toward the main camp.
The creature didn't move its main body. It simply flicked one of its front blade-legs in a blur of motion.
A fraction of a second later, the small Oger's head was rolling across the platform.
The sight broke the remaining Ogres' paralyzing fear, replacing it with a panicked frenzy. One of the giants near us screamed, his voice cracked with terror. "It is the Abyss Warden! RETREAT! The Warden has awoken!"
They fled. The sixty Ogres, the 'Cannibalism Clan', the terrifying monoliths I'd been ready to nuke... they turned and ran like scared children, screaming in a panic that matched my own.
I stood there, looking at the headless corpse of the small Oger, then up at the silent, armored horror of the Warden. Jessica was standing nearby, her sword lowered, her face as white as her hair.
"We... we really are in deep shit this time," I whispered to the shadows.
Until next time.