The next three days were spent in preparation for the raid of sorts on the dungeon and planning who would go in what group. The concept of a “dungeon” is difficult to categorize, for dungeons are created through completely unrelated phenomena and the different species of them are unrelated in any way other than that there are things to kill and stuff to loot. Some dungeons are partially sentient and have cores that, if destroyed, destroy the dungeon as well. Others endlessly spawn monsters, and if said monsters are not culled, they spill out into the wilderness. Some are underground in caves, whereas others are out in the open on the surface. Some were the results of experiments from ages past and were known for teleporting around the world seemingly at random.

This particular dungeon, named “Test Ogre Village Please Ignore”, as my scouts assured me several times that there was no mistake to its name, was outdoors. This dungeon was among the “Instanced” family of dungeons, such that five people could enter together as long as they considered themselves as a group. Passing some invisible field around the dungeon, they would fade away into nothingness as witnessed by an outside observer, with those entering the dungeon beholding much the same effect concerning those who lingered near the edge of the outside.

Ergo, those five who enter are on their own to either brave the dangers of the dungeon or leave. Some such dungeons had been known as hiding places for nefarious groups in the past, but each time one enters, one has to handle the threats within that have magically respawned. The scouts did nothing more than peek inside, for we did not want to tip our hand. Some dungeons, or the denizens therein, are capable of learning and remembering things about intruders, even between instances of it. Best practice was to use the weakest Abilities one had to clear a dungeon, for as the dungeon learns, the difficulty increases.

I only entered the dungeon a few times in quick succession beforehand to see how it would handle Skull being in my shadow when I otherwise had a full party. Apparently, the dungeon considers her to count as a pet, familiar, or some similar concept, and so she is a freebie. However, I could only take one pet with me, so Hopper and Ribbette would have to go in a different group. Skull, if anything, seemed to relish her status as a pet with unashamed depravity, even making hints that she deserved a choker to make it official. Far be it from me to judge people for their kinks, for I have collected my own over the ages, so I filed that away on my to-do list.

Myself, Jericho, Alterez, and Bellwright make four if Skull counts as a pet. That left a slot that was inescapably unfilled to those who can count to even modest sums. I suspected that the mysterious individual who presumably lived in the dungeon had some plan to join our party, but for what purpose and to what effect, I could only guess. No other messages had been sent to me, save for one:

“Twenty groups enter the Group Instance and, with coordinated effort, smother the chieftain's fire at the same time.”

That phrasing had been peculiar, and after more scouting, scouts discovered a version of the dungeon that allowed up to 25 people to enter at once, and preliminary investigations showed that the inhabitant ogres appeared to be vastly stronger there. Some experts said that such was called the “Raid” version, with there also being rumored versions for 100, 1000, and 10,000 people, the last of which was named “Legion”. I could only imagine the nightmare of coordinating 10,000 people that were capable of conquering such a dungeon, or what horrors would lurk within and would require such an army to be defeated.

With the need for 20 groups, we were just shy in needing 100 people to fill those groups. Out of curiosity, I discovered that The Boys counted as five people, and so they volunteered to be a group. I spent much of the preparation time nagging them to stay safe, to withdraw if overwhelmed, to take their time, and to only smother the fire at the designated time, which was agreed to be when the last of the sun crossed over the horizon. That provided everyone, even the easily distracted Boys, with ample time to kill everything else.

Blythnin had been sent in solo two days before to scout the place in detail and assess the strength of the enemies. I gave her strict orders not to kill anyone, which left her annoyed but also challenged. Her Ability to summon seemingly endless armies of clones allowed her to easily scout the place without risking her real body with any danger. True to the dungeon’s name, it contained a lot of ogres, but she assessed that a group of competent Golds would be sufficient to handle the threats lurking within. To be safe, I organized each group with one Platinum and four Gold to ensure each group was balanced and possessed extra muscle in the event that hidden dangers yet awaited us.

With everything planned and prepared, the appointed day arrived and the various groups entered the dungeon in their set order at dawn. Getting Adventurers to cooperate and wait in line was challenging but doable with Chooka standing by to keep them in line. One could harken getting organized discipline from Adventurers to that of herding cats, but ultimately, the threat of overwhelming violence and gratuitous amounts of paperwork enabled Chooka to pressgang the rabble into a coherent army of hers. With everyone and everything accounted for at roll call, each group entered the dungeon in their designated order, until Chooka and the rest of the support staff were all the remained outside.

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With each of my mighty strides, the earth shook and the weak trembled. Only the incredibly brave or the incredibly foolish dared oppose me, and by my estimates, it was those with gratuitous burdens of stupidity that made up the bulk of my foes. My jaws brought death, my flames, screams of terror. The hour had come to rip and tear, and rip and tear I did.

None could stand before me, for all perished within seconds. Big, dumb, and most importantly, fat ogres attempted to strike me down, but I rampaged over them without concern. Truly, the most challenging part of this whole assault was the walk over here under the oppressively hot sun. Destroying these ogres was as simple as turning my hand.

We don’t have any hands, stupid. Aristotle exaggerates his role in the proceedings, but he was not wrong to say that the ogres fared as well as a butterfly before a hurricane. Primitive beings, they lived in simple huts of mud and sticks, barely sufficient to be considered dwellings. Being at our full size, I could not even stick my head inside the openings to them, and so I tore the roofs off to see what delectable prizes waited within. The craven were gobbled up just the same as the rest, with each hut being like one of those chocolate eggs with mystery prizes inside that Papa sometimes gives us.

He could stand to give us more of those snacks. My brothers nodded in agreement, for Socrates was on point about those eggs and how they related to these ogre huts. Apparently, we had only taken on the rabble, for a shaman and his goons soon rallied against us, with the shaman providing powerful buffs to his goons while he tried to debilitate us. I, Plato, sent a blast of pressurized water at the shaman, which crushed him. It also crushed the hut behind him, and the boulder behind that, leaving nothing but a deep furrow in the land where all of it had been.

But then the big dumb chieftain attacked, and I, Dio, soloed him. Bigger and meaner than the rest, with some paltry armor and a big club, he charged right at me, but a blast of my [Solar Nexus] obliterated him and everything behind him. It was much more impressive than Soc’s [Squirt Gun].

It’s not a [Squirt Gun], it’s a [Water Blast], and my Ability does not have the charge up time that yours has.

No fair, you can’t interrupt, it's my turn to tell the story and you are wasting it.

Anyway, as I was saying, I then-

Time’s up, my turn. Then I, Chrysippus, announced the best one-liner ever.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Looks like they ogre-estimated their chances of defeating us.”

And then you laughed so hard and for so long at your own joke that you died. We had to cut off your useless head that was weighing us down.

With our body emancipated from the dead weight, we made our way to the chieftain’s hut.

Dio, I think you mean ‘liberated’, not ‘emancipated’. And we did make our way to the chieftain’s hut, where I, Plato, as leader of the group, ensured my brothers did nothing until the last rays of sunlight vanished over the horizon. Well, we snacked on more ogres, but we didn’t touch the fire, for Papa was very insistent that we wait. I was not going to lose snack privileges again because my brothers made a mistake.

Then, as darkness gathered, we-

“Papa says it is Hopper’s and Ribbette’s turn to tell the story.

Okay, fine. Hopper and Ribbette, take it away.

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My Liege Lord commanded, and I, his humble servant, obeyed. My ever lovely and beautiful Ribbette remained by my side, and together, I knew we would brave any danger and overcome any obstacle as one, for our love would drive us ever forward. The others I did not recognize were assigned to our retinue, and though they were not vassals of my Liege Lord, their actions did bring honor to His name.

With confident strides becoming one in service of my Liege Lord, we strode across the broken lands unblessed by swamp or marsh and soon discovered the village of the oh-grrs that were our noble mission to cull. The few curs that sat idle near the perimeter as pathetic excuses for guards soon rushed us without even sounding the alarm, but my blade deftly cut through them like a scythe through wheat.

As we strode up the hill to the village proper, my lovely Ribbette unleashed her fog upon the village, masking our approach and inflicting toxic reprisals against those who dared breathe in the same mists that she conjured. We stayed as one unit, systematically eradicating the vermin that infested my Liege Lord’s new territories. Their shaman never even had a chance to unleash his foul sorcery upon us, for Ribbette had slipped up behind him and placed a poisoned needle into his neck, which swiftly brought about his demise as blood oozed out of every orifice on his disgusting body.

Only the chieftain and his guards remained soon after, and with the other three handling them while Ribbette supported them, I defeated the chieftain in single combat. He was slow, but stalwart, my blade finding little purchase in the deceptively dense fat of his body. His large club, easily big enough to clobber me in a single blow, floundered uselessly as I danced around its reach and continued to cut him down. In less than a minute, I had severed the tendons in his legs, which brought him to his knees, and without hesitation or mercy, I severed his head from his body in one swift stroke.

And as my Liege Lord commanded, we waited until sundown for the next phase of His glorious plan could commence.

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Master assured us this would be a simple task and a chance to cut loose. He was not wrong, but fuck, it was hot out. Dawn was pleasant enough, but after two hours of walking to the ogre village, the heat of the day had turned the badlands into an oven.

Then three dickless idiots ran down the hill at us, which Hopper, with his well-sculpted muscles, cut down effortlessly. I know those ogres were dickless because I checked. Not a one of them has anything under their loincloths. No bacon, no beans, just smooth skin and fat, but the other end still has the normal hole. Never hurts to check, but the smoothies did limit my options at administering painful deaths. I had a few new techniques with needles I was dying to try after my experiments with my ‘collection’ from the last big battle we had.

Then the uppity shaman started to make a fuss, but a needle to the neck took care of him. Dumb Fuck didn’t even notice me sneak behind him. Just a little prick for the prickless, and he was flopping on the ground with blood leaking from everywhere. Shortly after, we took on the chieftain’s guards.

I imagine our three fucktards thought I was cheering them on, but they cannot understand the sophistication behind my croaking. I was actually cussing them out non-stop, for they were just plain terrible. Fuck Nuts tripped into the path of an ogre’s club, and I had to smack him out of the way of said club before he ended up as paste on the ground. Then the other one, Fuck Nugget, got cocky after stabbing the ogre all over and dropping him. Fuck Nugget must have thought the ogre died, but those bastards are as tough as they are stupid. It got right up and tried to take a bite out of Fuck Nugget, but I magnanimously intervened. The last one, let’s just call him Fucking Slow, took forever to kill just one of them, and by that time, the rest were dead. In short, good help is hard to find, for none of them were worthy of being my footstool, much less standing beside me like my stud, Hopper.

Then we fucking waited for fucking ever until sundown. The end.

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Sweat dripped down my brow as I killed the first ogre that morning. Though I thought myself hidden outside the village, they had managed to find me as if they knew right where to look. Clearly, the shaman had sicced his hounds upon me, for he feared my strength as a contender for his position. Before the next one even swung at me with more strength than finesse, I sidestepped the blow, and in the same motion, struck him in the head with my own club in just the right spot to shatter his skull. And so, two ogres now lay dead at my feet while three more advanced.

Their motions were predictable, their minds uncalculating, their futures certain. Though I could lift the veil and gaze into the infinite of the future, my body could only act upon that knowledge until fatigue rendered me incapable of influencing the Scene. Yet still fresh, I rendered them unto the earth like the first two, and noticeably less fresh afterwards, I traveled away from the village to find refuge from the sun and my kin.

A full day yet remained between me and salvation, and to die this close to such safety and deliverance from this wretched prison was a maddening prospect. I bridled my emotions lest they run rampant and lead to folly as I continued on towards locations well suited for an ambush. More would be sent to find and kill me, and I would not be caught at a disadvantage while I still drew breath.

And more did come before long. All through the day and night, I eluded my pursuers when I was able and killed them when the opportunity presented itself. A full twenty had perished by my hand by the time the first rays of the new dawn tickled the horizon. Would that I could command the sun to hasten in its duties, that my savior would arrive sooner before I collapsed from exhaustion or heat stroke.

Dogged in their pursuit and unerring in their general understanding of my location, I continued to where my visions said He would be. Discipline and fatigue slowed my approach while stubborn determination pushed me forward. If I arrived too soon, my pursuers would corner me against the accursed edge and bring about my demise. If I approached too slowly, they would catch me.

Haggard and parched, I hid behind a boulder near the very spot where my saviors should appear. I could hear heavy footsteps, careless in their placement and heedless of their indiscretion. Too exhausted to fight, I hunkered down and remained still. Closer they approached, six of them in total, with one being a brute bigger and meaner than the rest.

Cornered, tired beyond belief from both exertion and glancing into the future, I evaded the first blow that came towards my hiding spot, only to stumble and fall to the earth. Desperately, I tried to stand once more, only for a heavy club to descend down upon my left leg and break my knee. I tried not to cry out, but dignity yielded to pain as my voice betrayed the desires of my pride.

“Shaman say you bad. Shaman say you die. Shaman say we make you die. You die now.”

Not exceptionally elegant for a brute, and his eyes betrayed no hidden intelligence that suggested he behaved as I did. Unfortunately, the brute did not need to be so overburdened with cognitive acumen to direct the others to administer their beatdown. With weapons no more than rocks attached to petrified sticks via crude rope, the six of them engaged in demonstrating the universal truth: the strong live, the weak die.

So close, and yet so far, I curled into a ball to protect my body as blow after blow crashed into me. My fat, though thicker and more durable than most creatures, softened the blows as best as it could, but it provided little comfort in the face of such overwhelming strength. Even when one club broke, fists and feet still found my body as a target of their ire.

The brute lifted the boulder above his head and lumbered over towards my broken form. As I struggled to cling to consciousness, I witnessed my last sight before darkness enveloped me. The boulder came down, and an ogre died that day, one who thought he would live to see the morrow. Do ogres even have an afterlife? I suppose it is time to find out.