“Goddammit, I thought I was gonna die.” Roy sat down on a tree while taking shallow breaths. Even though he felt dizzy and nauseous from overusing his mana, he still did his part in extinguishing the fire.
Robb sat down next to him and waited for his friend to catch his breath. “We need to find a way to stop your fire from spreading, or we won’t be able to use it against the red bear at all.”
Roy nodded at Robb’s words before turning around and looking at the sky with a smile. “If only someone had a water ball spell to counter it. That would make life so much easier.”
“Waterball is not gonna do shit to your fire,” Robb chuckled. “We need a water tsunami or something.”
Roy blankly looked at the road in front of him. After a few seconds of thinking, the young man's eyes widened before he exclaimed, “I got an idea, the lake! If we bait the red bear next to it, even if a fire starts we can still kill it before it spreads too much.”
Robb scratched his chin and looked down for a second. “Well, it’s a good idea, but even then we can’t go too crazy. We just have small buckets, we can’t stop a big fire with those.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Roy nodded. “If possible, we should push it into the water before I throw my fireballs.”
The two then stayed in silence for a couple of minutes as Roy recuperated. At that time, thoughts kept creeping up the young man’s mind. His most powerful and most effective weapon was his magical spell, and now it had been severely restricted. Throughout the past few days, all his plans were set up with the thought that he still had Fireball to rely on if the worst had come to be. However, that layer of safety in his mind had just been shredded making him feel almost naked. He needed now to properly make contingencies for situations where he couldn’t use his skill.
As the dizziness and fatigue had stopped, Roy stood up along with his two friends. The group of three made their way back through the forest before reaching the trail of the monsters.
“So, what’s the plan? Do we just fight around here or do we sneak up to where they’re coming from?” Robb looked at Roy and asked.
“Let’s go sneak on them!” Jaimie interjected. “I wanna see where those ogres come from. You think they have like a town or something? An ogre town!”
Roy scratched his chin in thought. “Hmm, let’s not rush it too much. We can hunt at a good pace and follow their trail at the same time. If we go in too deep too fast and we find stronger monsters, we’ll waste a lot of time just running around.”
Jaimie furrowed his eyebrows in displeasure at first, but he soon softened his expression and nodded. He understood that while he could use his skills to go in undetected, Roy and Robb didn’t have such leisure.
“Yeah, good call,” Robb responded. “Our objective was to kill more monsters in the first place. No use running around from one place to the next if we don’t hunt anything.”
As such, the group spent the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon hunting monsters in the forest. As their prey was numerous, Roy and Robb did not need to hold back for Jaimie to kill as many goblins as he could. By the end of six hours, both Roy and Robb killed more than two dozen normal ogres, and two blue variants each. As for Jaimie, he managed to secure seven ogre kills and countless goblins of all varieties.
Stolen novel; please report.
Even though they were focusing on hunting and increasing their kill counts, they kept walking toward the place where most monsters seemed to come from. After so long, they had walked twelve kilometers away from their village. By then, the forest had cleared into grassy plains and hills, and they were filled to the brim with monsters.
Looking at the sight in front of him, Roy and his two friends immediately ducked down and hid in the bushes. He then scanned the field in front of him in search for a way in or out.
“Let’s go from there.” Roy pointed at a tall cliff side on their right. The start of the hill was deeper into the forest, so they had to go back and take the long way around. Nevertheless, it was still a much safer option as there were no goblins or ogres atop the cliff.
Robb nodded and Jaimie used his stealth skill. The young boy practically melted with the rest of the forest, and even Roy who was next to him had some trouble focusing on him.
The trio then traced their way back for almost a kilometer before turning right and going up the hill. On their little journey, they found that the rate of monsters they came across decreased the more they went up. By the time the forest cleared once again, there were only a few goblins here and there. They quickly dispatched them before they could shriek or scream; the last thing they wanted was the focus and interest of the horde below them.
“Come, look at this! This is insane!” Jaimie, who excitedly hopped to the edge of the cliff, called out for them with amazement in his eyes.
Robb looked at Jaimie with a raised eyebrow. “What is it, more monsters? I’m kinda getting tired of them now.”
“No, quickly come!” The young boy shook his head. “It’s a village! A monster village!”
Robb and Roy’s interest was immediately piqued, and they rushed to join Jaimie. As they stood atop the edge of the cliff, they couldn’t help but exclaim in awe. The goblins and ogres were coming in and out of a large wooden wall made out of trunks of giant trees. The buildings inside the village were not made of wood or brick like those of humans, but they were humongous tents, large enough to fit a manor inside of them. These tents spanned the entirety of the village, which in itself was so big that none of the young men could see the end of it.
“Look down there, there are so many blue ogres!” Jaimie pointed at a tent that's outside of the walls of the village. It was small compared to those that were inside, but by human standards it was gigantic. In front of this tent was a group of creatures that could overwhelm any force in the world that Roy knew about.
Thirty blue ogres, each of them bigger and stronger than any of the ones the trio had defeated, sat in a semi-circle. All of them wore multiple skull necklaces, with some having three and others going up to five. Their white hair was silky with a silvery hint, and it went down to their waist.
All of these giant monsters sat in front of a more majestic presence. In the middle of the semi-circle sat a titanic purple ogre. Even while sitting down, it eclipsed all the other ogres and was double their size. Its golden mane reached the ground, and its necklace had the skulls of all kinds of monsters; deer, boar, wolves, foxes, tigers, bears, and finally a black lion skull at the bottom.
Behind the colossal monster was an equally giant black and gold axe. Just the length of the handle of the weapon was three times as tall as Roy and its width four times as much. If the apocalyptic beast swung its axe at them, it would cleave all three of the young men in one hit.
“Hmm, somehow I’m no longer that scared of the red bear anymore.” Robb joked around, but his expression was nothing close to nonchalant. His hands were shivering and his feet pointed towards the forest at their back. If he saw so much as a movement in their general direction, his body would bolt out even before his mind could process it.
Neither Jaimie nor Roy were in a much better condition. They both looked with widened eyes at the amalgamation of immense power that was in front of them. However, what shocked Roy even more was not the size or the aura of the monsters, but their moving lips. They were talking.