We made it back to the campsite a few minutes later, my tent still gently moving in the slight breeze. I folded the tent back up and handed it back to Antivitz and he stowed it away in a pouch on his belt. I saw him hand an Archaeology box to Unwog and he shoved a shovel my way and I took it and walked off, whereas Vitz began to instruct Unwog on what to do. As I was walking away I heard a “I unlocked it, yes!” meaning he probably got the skill. I guess you had to have a trainer in the general proximity to actually unlock the skill. I immediately heard a ton of earth being flung all over the place. I walked out for about twenty minutes or so, out of sight of Vitz and Unwog, and began digging for myself in an area.

I began to dig eagerly. Seeing how much Vitz’s pieces were going for in his shop really amped me up to find more treasures. I dug for a long while, in random spots in the area, until my bones were aching with tension and stress. I only ended up finding one item which was an Epic sword, but mostly just a bunch of trash. Luckily, I increased my Archaeology skill to twenty, so I was okay with that. I ended up tossing the sword in my bag when I found it, but I ended up sitting to rest and regain my stamina, and I decided to look at it.

[Sword of Lost Conquerors]

Artifact

+50STR

+50CON

+10CHA

+1LCK

Not a bad find for all intents and purposes. I figured there’s a lot of treasure to be had with Archaeology, but I’d probably have to give half of these finds to Antivitz, or at least split the profits, which would be a lot better. We’d probably discuss that at a later point in time.

I took out some food and water and ate in peace. Even all the way out here I could barely hear Antivitz bellowing at Unwog about some crap. A short while later the ground shakes and I’m immediately reminded of some dinosaur movie I watched as a kid, where a glass of water shook with ripples in it as a huge dinosaur came near. But a dinosaur, this was not. The thumping became louder, faster, and closer. I was near the edge of the forest so I immediately tossed everything into my bag and rushed to the forest and dove into the brush without even looking around.

I peeked out from the brush and saw a giant beast come into view, a giant Ogre. I inspected it from where I was and found it was a Mountain Ogre, level 277. I thought, ‘Jesus, that thing has killed a ton of people to be that level, I’m sure.’ Its face was extremely scarred from many battles as well as the rest of its body, it was also covered in scales and parts of it had jagged rocks sticking out of its arms, shoulders and back from what I could see. It was skinny, in I guess humanoid beast terms, and it roared loudly and made off in the opposite direction again. I wasn’t sure if it smelled my food I had in my pack when I took it out, or what, but I wasn’t about to go back to that digsite.

I made my way around the edge of The Wastes to a different area, mildly in the direction the Ogre went, but that thing was ten times as fast as me, so it was long gone. At this point the time was about a little into the sun hitting the horizon, getting ready to set. I heard branches and sticks being moved and crunching behind me as I was about to exit the forest. I materialized my hammer into my hands and swung around me in a circle, my hammer making impact with something and sending it flying into the trees and hearing a “Whoa” and an ‘oof’ as I swung my hammer and had it impact with whoever was behind me. All I saw was a figure flying sideways back into the dense forest.

Ain’t nobody sneaks up on me, a Naz’catec Dwarf!

I waited a while for them to come back, but they never did. I feel like the rules in this game are smack first, ask questions later, so, that happened. Either they were in stealth, watching me in the trees, or I was of no interest to them anymore. Their stealth level must have been higher than my Perception level, because I tried looking in the trees for them to no avail. I exited the forest and began to move deeper into the wastes instead of staying near the treeline. It was an ominous feeling, seeing the forest disappear as I made my descent into the slowly sloping-down crater. The crater was absolutely huge, making up a large part of the actual continent. It was just an extremely gentle slope downward, but all I could see at the center of it was more gray dirt. Just a giant empty expanse of gray dirt. After a while of walking I decided to check my map. I wasn’t even close to the center of it from what I could tell but I had only uncovered a straight line down into the crater, so it wasn’t anything special. I had Archaeology tracking on as well but nothing was available on my map.

I eventually just thought maybe the tracking was bugged and started digging in random spots until dark, but uncovered nothing else, so I decided to go back to Antivitz and Unwog. I just followed my path up to the top of the crater. I looked at my map and it was just a bunch of spots where I had dug, making a path criss-crossing each other on the map from my wildly running around the bit of the crater that I was in.

I made my way back up to the site where Vitz and Unwog were supposed to be, taking out my torch for light to make my way to them, but they were nowhere to be found. But, I saw there were some footsteps in the dirt leading to farther into the wastes. It was a super long walk to get to where they were, so I wasn’t really relishing going on an adventure to frieakin’ look for an old dwarf and a stir-crazy Orc, but if they died, they wouldn’t be respawning. I knew Antivitz could handle himself, but I didn’t know about Unwog, and I didn’t want to hear about crap from his wife for recommending Unwog to be taken in by Antivitz and now he’d be dead.

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So I got moving.

I followed the trail of Dwarf and Orc steps and thought to myself that maybe, just maybe, they went off to fight the Ogre that I had seen earlier, possibly heard the roar from the Ogre? I picked up the pace, following the tracks. After ten or so minutes of following the tracks back down into the crater, I unlocked the Tracking skill.

Skill Unlocked:

Tracking

Tracking is a valuable asset in hunting prey, or tracking people.

Level 1 75%/100%

‘Neat’, I thought to myself. As soon as I acquired the skill the footprints lit up with bright motes of light, similar to what I saw underneath the abbey, only much tinier and lasting only a few seconds, coming up from the footprints. I also verified my notification settings, but I guess some new skills popped up where others didn’t. I wasn’t going to look too far into it. I followed the footprints for quite a while, sometimes getting lost as they collided with each other in circles, trying to use my map to navigate and not get lost. They managed to get a decent ways away, but I heard the sounds of the Ogre I encountered earlier roaring, hearing the sounds of battle from a ways away. I was walking around for what seemed like forever before I heard anything. I leveled up my Tracking to five on the way to them, the footprints now having stronger floating motes around them as well as lingering for longer.

I didn’t realize how far down in the crater we were, but I pulled up my map as I made my way toward the fighting noises and we were at least three times as far into the crater as I had originally made it down to, scrolling over to where I was for a comparison. I was so entranced by following the motes and footsteps, and being concerned for the two of them I didn’t even notice. Eventually they came into my sight.

The Ogre was winded, bruised (or what could be considered bruised as ‘a bunch of cracked rocks on its arms and back’) and panting heavily. Unwog had a huge gash on his chest and was bleeding profusely but still standing, and Antivitz was in no better condition. It seems he had equipped heavy Dwarven battle armor but it was heavily dented and seemed ready to fall apart, despite it still gleaming in the torchlight. I shot them both a party invite because I didn’t want to lose track of them again and I might have been able to make it to them sooner if I had known where they were. They were surprised and looked around immediately, but the Ogre took this as a sign they weren’t paying attention and charged Unwog, who immediately dived to the side. The Ogre’s claws scraped the side of Unwog’s leg, but not so much as he couldn’t stand up afterward. I was pretty sure their adrenaline highs were winding down, so I needed to do something, fast.

‘I’m not sure if this will work, but I need to end this now, before someone dies. Other than that Ogre, I guess,’ I thought to myself. I threw my torch towards the Ogre for light near the Ogre and in front of me, and took off at a jog, then gradually turning it into a full speed run. My hammer was about 1.5 times my height, and I planned to vault myself through the air and hopefully smash the Ogre on the head, if I do this right. Unfortunately my kind of short, stubby Dwarf legs, just a bit longer than Antivitz’s, were not helping me in this case.

At what I hoped was the right distance, I vaulted using my hammer as a basically rigid pole vault pole, and it sent me sailing through the air. I had increased distance since I was coming down the slope of the crater but this wasn’t like using a broom handle at age six to carry myself between two couches or something. Different terrain, different clothing, different slope of the ground, different muscle mass and how heavy I am… needless to say I careened through the air with my hammer and fell flat on my face five feet from the Ogre.

I made a mental note that Dwarf-kind is not very aerodynamic, in any sense of the word.

The Ogre roared in defiance at my flat-footed attempt to even tick him, much less smash him on the head, and attempted to step on me, but as soon as I heard the roar I rolled out of the way, bringing my hammer close to me to roll. I stood up as soon as I could and inspected the Ogre again. My notifications started blinking again meaning I’d leveled up something but I couldn’t care less. Quickly, while the Ogre was still getting its bearings, I brought up my notifications just to and was bombarded with many windows.

I am not a smart person.

I quickly started attempting to close them out one by one but knew that wasn’t going to work, so I just yelled out, “Close all notifications!” and they closed. That was pretty handy. Fortunately now I did see what I leveled up, and I guess it was the Inspect skill, which let me see more details about who I was inspecting. I was able to see the Ogre had a little less than 10% HP left, and with the party mainframe now that Unwog and Antivitz were in the party I could see they were getting there as well. Unwog had a bleeding debuff that slowly drained his HP as well, presumably from the large gash on his chest. Those Ogre claws are something to be feared.

I charged in once again, aiming to maybe snap the Ogre’s shin in two. The Ogre swiped at me but I easily dodged it and swung my hammer into its leg. I heard a slight cracking noise but for the most part the hammer bounced off the sinewy, tendoney leg and I took the force from it being bounced off, turned, and hit the other leg on the side as well, while the Ogre attempted another swing at me.

My hammer bounced off the other leg, and I threw my hammer in-between its legs and dove underneath, ending up behind it, the grey dirt getting into my boots and on my shirt even more-so after rolling around in it. I heard Antivitz run up to the Ogre and I heard a crack as bone splintered somewhere on the Ogre and heard it cry out in a pained roar, stumbling backwards and almost stepping on me. I got up quickly and swung my hammer around, up over my head and kind of down and to the side into the back of its knee to make its knee buckle, and it fell to the ground down to one knee.

I ran up to it, behind it still, and climbed its back to get to its head, climbing up the now broken and disfigured rocks on its back, having put away my hammer again. I got to its head just as it was beginning to stand up, stood on its shoulders and pulled my hammer out again, and raised it above my head, ready to smash it into in the Ogre’s head, and said, “It’s hammer time, bitch.” and swung with all my might, yelling. My hammer sunk into its frontal area on its head and forehead area (Edit: Wrong head area, will change later), removing the rest of the Ogre’s HP and making it topple to the ground, with me jumping off of the Ogre’s shoulders before it hit the ground, and the Ogre making a muffled whimper and groan as it hit the ground dead, splayed out on the ground.

We all fell to the ground on our backs, exhausted from the fight.