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The Horde
Chapter 5: Grunt Work

Chapter 5: Grunt Work

Oliver stared up at Gabrok, mouth hanging open in an almost comical expression of disbelief.

“What?”

“You heard me, now get the hell up.” Gabrok snarled, kicking Oliver hard in the ribs.

“Why the FUCK, would I follow you! You just killed three people!” Oliver shouted at Gabrok as he slowly picked himself up, ignoring the constant throbbing of his bruised face. But almost fell back down immediately when Gabrok shot forward and pressed the blade of his sword against Oliver’s neck.

“You will follow me, Ogre. I am a war captain for a reason, so unless you want me to hunt you down and feed you to the goblins, you, will, LISTEN!” Gabrok was almost screaming by the end, the cold brutality on his face causing Oliver to shrink back from the shorter hobgoblin.

Oliver weighed his options, he could run away from the hobgoblin when he wasn’t watching, but Oliver didn’t doubt that he would hunt him down with his hunting party, and while Oliver didn’t know the exact limits of their tracking ability, he’d been able to find him in the small time space before he and Jake set their trap. Which couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes. He quickly ruled out this option in his head.

His second option was to follow Gabrok and heed his command, which Oliver immediately ruled out.

The third and final option was to serve Gabrok, gain strength then kill the bastard. Oliver liked this option, though it would be a tough road. Gabrok had that, ‘Power Overwhelming’ skill, which put Oliver far too fast for his liking. Oliver was quickly pulled from his thoughts when Gabrok started applying pressure to the blade at his throat.

“Okay, I’ll serve you!” Oliver stammered out, flinching away from the blade.

Quest failed

“Good, Ogre’s are usually good fighters, and I’ll need every hand I can get when the Horde arrives…” Gabrok replied, growing quieter by the end you the sentence.

“Okay oaf, I hereby name you Oaf. This will be your name until you earn a worthy one.”

“What, I already have a na-“

“Shut up oaf! You serve me now! Obey!” Oliver knew what Gabrok was doing here, he was asserting his command, testing Oliver for any sign of disobedience. He would have to play along.

“Yes, captain.” Oliver muttered, curious to see if Gabrok would react to him using his title.

“Good, now judging by your pathetic fighting, I’m judging your only about level 2?” Oliver nodded.

“Okay, bring me 20 left goblin ears, preferably stray goblins, I don’t want to start a turf war.”  Gabrok must have noticed Oliver’s confusing as he continued that the goblins who looked untrained and were poorly equipped.

“Do I get a weapon?” Oliver probed.

“What? Are you an Ogre or a dirt worm? They’re goblins for Azerith’s sake! If you breath on them too hard they’ll die, now get out of my face or I’ll gut you. And if I don’t have 20 LEFT goblin ears before sundown, I’ll hunt you down myself!” Gabrok was once again screaming spittle everywhere, and it was more than enough to get Oliver moving, after almost flying down the stairs he reached the front door, gently pushing it open he poked his head outside, the street was littered with a few ‘stray’ goblins. Oliver stepped out from the door and was quickly spotted by a goblin, using stealth would have been too difficult with his large frame. Speaking of his large frame, Oliver would need to get used to it. His mind was still used to manoeuvring a six foot body, not a hulking mass of green that towered at over seven and a half feet tall.

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“GRAAH!” Oliver watched as the goblin charged him, his war cry drawing other goblins towards their location. The goblins charge was quickly stopped by Oliver grabbing the creature around the throat. His long arms displaying their superiority in an unarmed fight. Oliver hefted the creature to eye height using both his arms with little difficulty. He stared at the creatures eyes, the wild animalistic look to them grew mazy as its flow of oxygen was cut off. He thought about why Gabrok was so smart, yet goblins were so, primal, actually no. Gabrok’s pet goblin, Asgore, seemed to display some semblance of intelligence. Oliver’s brow furrowed, just the thought of that fucking goblin made Oliver’s blood boil. Because of that fucking thing Sonya was killed, kind Sonya who healed his wounds with a gentle smile.

*CRACK*

Oliver had snapped the goblins neck, its bulbous head hung limply to the side, eyes staring listlessly at the void. Oliver dropped it in disgust, then dropped to one knee, only just now realising that he didn’t have a tool to cut the goblin’s ears off.

“fuck you Gabrok.”

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Oliver pressed his knee against the goblins back, holding him down whilst he gradually twisted the things head around, when he met significant resistance, he suddenly wrenched it’s head hard to side and towards him. Which was met with a satisfying pop. This was the killing method Oliver had been using for the past eight goblins, it was a far cleaner killing method than what he’d been using before, plus it put his considerable weight to his advantage. Oliver sighed and wiped his brow with a bloody hand, now it was time for the messy work.

He grabbed the Goblins left ear, braced his other hand against its head and pulled. With a wet tearing sound the ear was ripped off the goblins head. Oliver didn’t even blink at the gruesome sight, it got a lot easier after the thirteenth time. After the gruesome deed was finished Oliver gathered up the other nineteen ears he placed on the ground and began his return to Gabrok. His little hunting trip had brought him pretty far down the street, though he could still see the apartment complex that Gabrok was using as his barracks. When Oliver saw the sun getting close to reaching the ground. While he walked Oliver opened his status.

Status

Name: Oliver Murchison Greenwood

Age: 17

Race: Ogre; Variant (Green)

Level: 3

Unallocated Points: 2

Strength: 10

Agility: 4

Endurance: 8

Intelligence: 2

Wisdom: 2

Skills: None

His strength and Endurance had increased, but his agility hadn’t changed, this made Oliver uncomfortable as he remembered how easily Gabrok had been able to chase him down. For now, he would hold onto his unallocated points, He didn’t want to make any irreversible mistakes.

Soon enough he reached the complex and has met with a surprise, two goblins stood guard outside the main entrance, both had bows slung across their backs and daggers at their waists. He guessed that Gabrok formed his hunting party. As he reached the complex the two goblin guards eyed him with uncertainty, before seeing the bloody bundle of ears in his arms and sneering at him. Oliver did his best to ignore them and entered the building. Gabrok was talking to, that goblin.

“Asgore, scout out the Orc encampment, Somethings been hunting wargs and I want to know what.” Gabrok then turned to Oliver, taking a second to register his arrival.

“Oh good, you’ve returned oaf.” Oliver handed him the goblin ears, Gabrok scanned over them for a fraction of a second before tossing them over his shoulder, hitting a disgruntled Asgore in the eye.

“Good, I take it you’ve reached level three?” Oliver’s tormentor enquired, Oliver nodded in response, letting out a grunt.

“I want you to focus on strength and endurance, your race should automatically give you this with each level up, but I want you to be my melee fighter. Your race is also known for raising stats through training so we’ll utelise that for raising agility.” Oliver watched as Gabrok planned his very future. Oliver couldn’t disagree with him though, with his size and weight he was a natural built tank. He just didn’t like Gabrok doing the planning.

Gabrok finally dismissed Oliver, who immediately when straight into one of the dorms, locked the door with 3 different locks, placed a chair, the couch and a minifridge against the wall, before jumping on a bed and drifting off to sleep in an instant. Thus ending Oliver’s third day of the apocalypse.

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The second the sun rose though, Oliver was woken up by the sound of heated voices through the walls. One voice was particularly hard to make out, it sounded extremely guttural and almost animalistic.

“Captain Gabrok, the orc’s march for our location. They intend for war.”