Ragnar the Terrible sat and watched the approaching army. The five meter tall troll wasn't here for them. Hades had sent him to kill Francis when he emerged from the portal. Spawn killing was the easiest way to take care of another God's champions before they became a problem.

But it was taking much longer than expected for Francis to arrive. The army was forming battle lines and still no champion had emerged. If Ragnar got distracted by the fighting there was a chance the champion could escape in the chaos. Hades wouldn't like that.

He stood up and hefted his war club. Maybe a quick scrap would be fine. Ragnar could destroy the army and go back to waiting for the champion. Ragnar was sure he could track the human down before they got too far.

Francis would only be level one anyway. Even if the champion had some carryover stats Ragnar could squash him flat as a bug with his massive fifteen Physical and five Melee Attack.

The troll lumbered off to meet the approaching army. This would all be over quickly. He was immune to Physical Damage and they hadn't thought to bring any Mages or Paladins. Too bad for them. (But very good for Ragnar.)

***

System dumped Francis out a portal thirty kilometers above ground. He was high up enough to see the curvature of the world below. If he wasn't careful, System’s treachery would neatly combine Francis’ execution, cremation, and burial. But a far worse crime made the Marine swear vengeance.

System had forced him to read! And not something fun like a training manual with all those pretty pictures. System would pay for that. But first, Francis had something else to take care of.

He grabbed the green can of dip stashed in the elastic of his shorts and packed a lip full. It was difficult with the wind whipping by. But Francis was a Marine, and Marines made do. With the proper mindset achieved, and a lip full of dip, he prepared to tackle the problem at hand.

Bad things occasionally happened to planes in a warzone, and this wasn't the first time Francis ended up plummeting through the sky without a parachute. Usually when that happened he found someone to punch on the way down and took theirs.

Francis scanned the sky below for any unfortunate paratroopers or a nice soft cargo plane to land on. He came up empty. There were lakes in the distance, a great big dark forest, and a gray stone castle. But nothing useful.

As he continued to fall, Francis began to notice things. The fields surrounding the castle were green with crops. This was good. At least System hadn't sent Francis to the desert. Francis hated the desert. (He always ended up with funny tan lines.)

When they inevitably sent him back to the desert, Francis always made a point of finding and destroying the enemy as quickly as possible. He figured if they were all dead, (or worshiping him as a god and therefore no longer a threat) then the brass would have to send him home. It worked about half of the time.

The officers usually gave him some shiny new stickers when he came back. It was nice of them to try and make up for sending him to the desert. But Francis was still mad they wouldn't let him trade stickers with the other Marines.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

That didn't seem fair to Francis. They were his stickers. He should be able to do what he wanted with them. Why couldn't he share them with his friends? They deserved stickers as much as he did.

He recognized the familiar sight of a battle below. There were men waving banners and knights riding horses. Francis liked horses. Heraldry was super cool too. Sometimes when Francis was bored he would draw up a coat of arms for the house of Francis. (His latest masterpiece had used up all of the red crayons.)

The knights on horseback below continued plunging their lances into the giant green troll attacking them, but it didn't seem to do much. Ragnar smashed them one by one with its club. His laughter rang out over the battlefield as the knights and horses screamed.

Francis decided he didn't like how Ragnar was treating the horses. He made a flight correction and angled himself toward the troll. It was time to teach that big green bastard a lesson.

He continued to descend, making no attempt to slow down or stop. Not that he could have stopped. Francis had reached terminal velocity three minutes ago.

The Marine tapped his elbow twice and let out a battle cry. The troll looked up just in time to see a pink streak rocketing towards him.

“BEND OVER, HERE IT COMES!” Francis shouted as he hit the troll in the face with a flying elbow at two hundred kilometers per hour.

***

System needed to resolve something. If a Marine weighing one hundred and fifty kilos, traveling at two hundred kilometers per hour, hit a troll many times his size, how much of a mess did he leave?

The troll had a Deflect of six. That meant in order to make sure he hit, Francis would need an Attack equal or higher. If he couldn't, then math and probability would get involved. If he exceeded the troll’s Deflect by five, the attack would become a critical hit and multiply the damage by his Tier.

A half dozen of the surviving knights were using their abilities to lower the troll’s Deflect by one point each. An attack against an enemy with a Deflect of zero or less was an automatic success.

So when Francis hit Ragnar the Terrible with the fastest flying elbow the world had ever known, some math needed to happen.

An Unarmed Attack did: Tier (1 + Physical). So Francis’ elbow hit the troll for 217 points of Physical Damage.

But there was an additional source of damage. It was possible to share fall damage by successfully attacking an opponent. The maximum fall damage the system could inflict was one hundred and twenty points. That added another 60 points of physical damage.

Then came the crit. It multiplied the total of both sources of damage by Francis’ Tier, which was seven.

The troll was immune to Physical Damage from non-magical weapons or attacks. But Francis had chosen the class Combat Warlock. His attacks could be infused with the magic of his patron.

Murder Cube converted the Physical Damage to Magical Damage. It would not see its champion denied such a sweet victory. Besides, Murder Cube loved watching professional wrestling. (There was something captivating about a sport where anything could become a weapon.)

System reached a conclusion and the situation was resolved. For a brief moment of madness it had considered using actual physics for once, just to fuck over Francis.

But that would have been disastrous. Dragons would explode and flying cities would fall if System started introducing realism this late in the game. Existence itself would crumble under the weight of justification.

It didn't like the outcome, but rules were rules and math was math. To deny either would be to destroy the fundamental principles System was built on. So in the end it let things play out as they were supposed to.

Ragnar the Terrible took 1,939 points of Magical Damage directly to the face, decapitating him and ending his threat to the kingdom forever.

Francis continued forward and hit the ground like a meteorite. He took 60 points of Physical Damage and lost one of his flip flops.