The link abruptly severed and he knew his time was up. This time he was ready, kind of. His eyes were open when the grace period ended, and he saw the club coming. He realized that the respawns seemed to start at the exact moment that he had been knocked out of his reverie and made eye-contact with the Ogre. This meant that each time, he’d respawn with the club inches away from impact with his face. How fun, Sam grimly thought. Luckily though, knowing what was going to happen before it happened, made things a bit easier. Maybe this power wasn’t so bad. He could keep trying until he succeeded, each time accumulating more and more knowledge on his opponent’s movements and weaknesses. He’d already felt the blow once, even if he failed this run and had to try again, it would just get easier and easier.

Thoughts like these went through Sam’s thoughts, making him feel better and better about his situation, until the moment where he realized that he had spent too long reveling in his own awesomeness, and promptly died yet again. This was also the point where Sam realized that he was wrong. It hurt, a lot. Somehow the pain was even worse this time, something he didn’t even think was possible mere seconds ago. Oh the pain, Sam stopped being able to process thoughts as the agonizing pain spread everywhere, somehow getting worse and worse as each agonizingly slow second passed. The only thing Sam noticed over the pain was a slight change in the environment, though he couldn’t quite place what he noticed. Though the pain was making it impossible to think, Sam was absolutely sure that something very subtle had – how was it possible for pain to keep getting worse and worse. This was agonizing, the last death had felt like nothing compared to this. And then, suddenly, the pain ceased. Like it was never even there to begin with. And that same, mocking link reopened for just a single instant.

Death detected.

...Respawn initializing...

Restarting generated Encounter.

...Calculating debuffs…

Debuffs calculated.

Respawn 3 initialized.

Respawned.

Second respawn debuffs:

-3% XP for encounter

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-3 to all attributes

While he did grumble about the debuffs increasing yet again he did manage to keep his focus this time. Mostly that is. Sam did experience a creeping and anxious thought regarding what these debuffs could mean if he kept failing, and what would happen once he hit 0 on an attribute. But mostly, he successfully stayed focused.

Sam saw the club coming, was prepared, and successfully dodged. Sparing only a second to praise himself, he bolted away. He had a lopsided grin on his face as he ran through the woods, reveling in finally gaining freedom. That encounter was crazy, but he’d done it! A lot had happened though, and he knew for sure he’d have to sit down and think about everything later.

Unfortunately, his thoughts were once again interrupted, this time by increasingly loud thumps, the sounds of trees snapping, and an inhuman roar that sent all of the birds in the area flying away.

The Ogre had caught up, and he was angry.

He should have expected this. The one thing the system agreed to tell him was that Ogre’s were known for their strength and their endurance.

So he couldn’t escape, what were his options? It seemed like his only hopes were somehow reasoning with the Ogre, which seemed incredibly unlikely, or killing the Ogre, which somehow seemed even more unlikely. He decided to try attacking, to see how much damage his attacks would do; he could plan around that. Maybe this supposedly overpowered class would finally have a surprise that actually benefited him.

Without giving it another thought, or allowing himself any time to second guess his plan, he stopped short, and immediately turned to face the Ogre. He planted his feet and waited for the Ogre to get within range. Luckily, the Ogre was just as shocked by him going with this plan as he was, and therefore didn’t have time to stop himself. This created the perfect opportunity for Sam to prepare and follow through with a punch directly to the Ogre’s face. He put as much force as possible into the punch, and aimed for the eyes; even if the Ogre was tough, he was sure that a punch to the eyes would at least momentarily stun it and give him a chance to try something else. Unfortunately, in his thorough and elaborate planning, Sam forgot two things. He forgot that he was currently experiencing debuffs due to his class, which given the fact that he was in his third iteration of this fight, meant that he lost 3 points in all of his attributes. This means that his strength of 6 was currently functioning as a strength of 3. And second, he forgot that he had never thrown a punch in his life. The result of this, was that his punch went as well as could be expected.

Miraculously, he didn’t manage to injure himself in the attack, other than a painful tingling in his knuckle. His attack was also successful in eliciting a hitherto unseen reaction from the Ogre. The Ogre responded to this punch by looking Sam square in the eyes, and uproariously laughing.

Shocked, unsure of what to do now, and seeing a potential way out of this situation, Sam decided to join in that laughter. Unfortunately for him, Sam had forgotten something vital. With the debuffs currently active, his effective charisma was 0, and his laughter elicited an immediate bashing from the Ogre, which he seemed to continue to feel even after he was sure he should be dead. It felt like his dead body continued to get bashed over and over by the Ogre, even after he was sure he had been dead many times over by now. While Sam doubted that any amount of charisma could have saved him, having 0 charisma certainly hadn’t done him any favors. Being bashed over and over, knowing about the Ogre's abysmal intelligence, and the extensive time he'd been spending dead did give him an interesting idea though. Sam just wondered if he could pull it off.