Obyrn Myyr, leader of the ogres that had defected from the world connected to Earth through the Ogre Gorge and staunch ally of Donnyton, narrowed his eyes and scanned the surrounding underbrush. His three-meter tall and six hundred pounds of muscle frame was standing in a clearing surrounded by low bushes and leafy trees. His gaze was sharp as he examined the terrain, as though his eyes alone could dissect the obstructions and find his quarry.

Feigning a casual attitude, Obyrn raised a spit of juicy meat to his lips. He took a deep bite, ripping a large stip of flesh with obvious relish as he waited for his quarry to reveal itself. As he chewed, grease ran down his chin and dripped on the heavy leather of his vest. “Mm. Good meat.”

A breeze rustled across the clearing, filling the area with the soft creaks and groans of branches shifting and waving. Yet among those noises, the sound of the release of a long-held breath reached Obyrn’s ears. Instantly, his face twisted into a bloodthirsty grin. Tossing the meat to the side, Obyrn began to stride forward.

“Heh, foolish human… I’ve found you now. And when I catch you… I will rend your flesh and crunch your bones…!”

Like a freight train, Obyrn accelerated simply barreled into the nearby trees without any finesse. With his huge frame, it was child’s play to rip the trees out by their roots and casually throwing them to the side. But just as quickly as Obyrn moved, his prey moved even quicker. Making use of her smaller size, the human twisted among the thick tree trunks and sprinted ahead.

The pitter-patter of bare feet on dirt only had about a ten-meter advantage on Obyrn, and with his long strides, he rapidly closed that distance. With narrowed eyes, he ignored the branches that lashed against his face as he charged forward. His hands moved rapidly to smash apart anything in his path. His breath huffed out through his nose in two huge streams.

Yet Obyrn didn’t let down his guard against his prey. He was intimately familiar with the quickness of the foe in front of him, and immediately understood that he was being led into a trap. An indulgent smile crossed Obyrn’s face. “Do you think you can do anything but delay the inevitable…? Fine then, let me crush all of your petty tricks.”

No sooner had he spoken than Obyrn felt his foot rip through a strained rope. Immediately, a sharpened log shot upward out of a spring-loaded trap. The honed point was stained with dried blood, probably from another monster that had been unlucky enough to stumble across it in the past.

Obyrn smashed the trap to pieces with the palm of his hand and then stomped his foot into the ground to give him a burst of acceleration. The thick oak trees in his way splintered to pieces and Obyrn eradicated the distance to the shadow in front of him almost immediately. His hand shot down like a falcon’s claw, but his target twisted to the side and avoided it.

With an unnatural grace, the shadowy target leapt back and bounded off a nearby tree to shoot past Obyrn’s side and land on one of the trees that he had ripped apart while rushing forward. Roaring, Obyrn planted his foot and flexed the muscles of his legs. After a strained moment, his momentum completely shifted and he shot after the shadow in pursuit.

Obyrn didn’t miss the three small darts that were sticking out of his arm as he shot forward. His body had already begun to tingle as the poison spread through his body. He ignored that for now and smashed the drifting tree trunk with his fist. But of course, the shadow scurried around the trunk with the unnatural quickness of a spider and jumped down toward the ground before Obyrn could catch her.

Yet Obyrn chuckled as the small shadow headed back toward the ground. That’s a mistake.

Activating Earthen Stomp, Obyrn brought his foot down on the ground and created up a wide stone pillar that smashed into the shadow before she expected it. Still twisting and shooting three more darts toward Obyrn’s legs, the shadow was caught by surprise and squealed in pain. Before she could recover, Obyrn pinned her to the ground with one of his large hands.

“Now it’s time…” With a bloodthirsty look in his eyes, Obyrn’s fingers tightened around the small human in his grasp. The muscles of his arms bulged as he leered down at the small girl with short brown hair. “For a little snack!”

“Uncle Obiiii, that’s so dumb! A villain wouldn’t say that!” The child shrieked gleefully as she wiggled in his grasp.

Using about half of his strength, Obyrn twisted and physically launched the young human child he had pinned to the ground directly up into the air. The human child spun in a circle, gracefully twisting midair as she righted herself, giggling all the while. Due to the strength of his throw, she probably passed thirty meters up in the air before she began to fall back downward.

Obyrn took several strides forward to be under the girl when she landed and gently caught Delilah before she smashed into the ground. Due to the distance she traveled, it was actually pretty important that he diffuse her momentum slowly so she didn’t damage her growing body. But with Obyrn’s strength, it was a relatively straightforward process.

When she landed, the young human girl produced a poisoned dagger with a loud “Eat this, knave!” and stabbed toward Obyrn’s face. With an evil-sounding laugh, Obyrn bit the dagger and crushed it with his teeth. Hiding a wince as he cut his gums, Obyrn spat the metal chunks to the side and mercilessly tickled Delilah as she twisted helplessly in his hands.

After thoroughly tickling the laughing girl, Obyrn sat Delilah on the ground and patted her head. “This is your loss child; I caught you. Time to return to the city.”

Delilah, whose time in low-Level Dungeons probably put her at about five years old, pouted up toward Obyrn. She was perhaps one-seventh of his height. “You cheated. Just you wait, Uncle Obi. When I can get a Class, I’ll be the one tickling you.”

Despite how ridiculous the claim was, Obyrn could only nod seriously. The daughter of Annie and Dozer was already displaying some extremely abnormal characteristics, despite not even reaching her fifth birthday and having no Class to her name. It didn’t seem that unreasonable that this girl would seize the strength to reverse their current situation someday.

Even the ogres who were around her age were rather timid around Delilah when she wanted to play a game. After spending most of her childhood playing hide and seek or tag with Annie and Dozer, anyone would have a skewed perception of a normal amount of physical capability. Obyrn wasn’t sure what sort of Skills Delilah had, but they definitely were starting to creep up toward Skill Level fifty.

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But for now, she was just a precocious child. So Obyrn ignored her muttered complaints and lifted to set her on his shoulder. Yet very quickly, Delilah began to squirm.

“If you want to play hero and villains with me in the future, you need to get better at saying evil things,” Delilah said seriously. “A villain wouldn’t say something like, ‘now it’s time for a little snack’... they would throw out a fireball and then yell. ‘I’m going to pillage and rape you!’”

“Pillage and-” Obyrn froze for a split second, then he continued to walk evenly forward through the destroyed forest due to their game of heroes and villains. A strange sense of unease emerged in his chest. As a creature raised in the brutal and bloody ogre world, he had lived and breathed abhorrent acts. Yet to hear this bright child casually say rape made him slightly uncomfortable. “Delilah, among humans those are very bad words. You cannot say such things.”

“I know they are bad.” Delilah poked Obyrn in the shoulder. “That’s why a villain would say them!”

Would the me of several years ago recognize who I have become after coming to Earth…? That me might use a large stone to smash open my skull and see what has gone wrong with my logic… Shaking his head, Obyrn instead asked. “Where did you hear those words?”

“Old Man Madder,” Delilah said seriously. Then she smiled brightly. “Oh! He told me that he would tell me even worse Ogre swear words for my birthday.”

Old Man Madder probably meant Madarnol, the grizzled old man that ran the one inn the ogre settlement possessed. The reason he had gotten that job was simply because he was one of the more social of the ogres that had snuck across to join the growing country. Of course, he enjoyed nothing more than telling stories about his vicious past as a bandit. Obyrn had no doubt that Maddarnol quite enjoyed Delilah’s innocent attention and would have very willingly explained the gory details of the exploits of his younger years.

Of course, Delilah’s avid attention was exactly why she was so extremely popular in the ogre settlement. She was the one human that would walk up to the ogres and start a conversation out of the blue that didn’t involve buying or selling; she was just curious about their lives. In a world that was not theirs, her direct brightness did a lot to help the transplanted ogres feel at home.

Feeling extremely resigned, Obyrn did his best to lecture the young human child that began to scuttle across his torso like a bug as he explained why she shouldn’t say certain words. Even though she nodded dutifully when Obyrn prompted her, he knew that Delilah had basically concluded that Obyrn would never really punish her and was therefore rather ambivalent about the lecture.

The worst part of it was she was right. The young human had wormed her way into Obyrn’s heart and it made the fearsome ogre somewhat helpless.

By the end of his rambling lecture, all Obyrn really managed to accomplish was to depress himself. Because the real tragedy will be if she says rape in front of Annie. That woman won’t hesitate to level half of the ogre settlement to emphasize how seriously we should take her daughter’s education…

Very quickly, the duo approached the outdoor market that was sprawled around the main road into the ogre settlement. Lively banners fluttered in the wind as ogres, humans, and the monster people mixed freely in commerce. Delilah waved spiritedly to many people that she recognized, but Obyrn sharply denied her requests to stop and stayed on the main road. Very soon, they spotted the high stone walls and wide-open gates of their destination.

But when Obyrn arrived in front of the three-story gate to get into the main city of the Ogre settlement, Faldurs, he found his two-headed warlock friend Duual leaning against the outer wall in wait for him. Immediately, Obyrn gaze turned heavy and violent in a way that it hadn’t during the earlier play with Delilah. But Duual slightly shook his head and flashed Obyrn a hand signal.

Talk later.

“Hello phlegm,” Duual said fondly as he both of his heads grinned at Delilah.

She rolled across Obyrn’s broad shoulder and waved lazily at Duual. “Dewy, you old skin flute-”

But before Delilah could continue, her ears twitched and her eyes suddenly widened as though she had seen a ghost. A chill so heavy that everyone in the surrounding area felt it smashed downward. With the same remarkable quickness she showed running from Obyrn through the forest, Delilah twisted and launched herself sideways off from the road on a beeline into the forest. But before she had scampered into the trees, a long sigh echoed out across the abruptly silent gate.

Dozer stepped out from the gate and stood next to Duual. He folded his arms and looked at Delilah with something like pity. “Running will only make it worse…”

“Heh, don’t act so aggrieved. I’ve always played nice with you, hubby…” With all the grace of a cat, Annie hopped down off of the high walls and landed without a sound. Her hand curled protecting over the extremely prominent bulge of her second pregnancy as she sauntered toward Delilah. “Honey, why are you running? I just want to talk about some of the words you’ve been learning when we let you wander around Faldurs alone.”

As Annie walked past Obyrn, she shot him a venomous glance that informed him that his involvement had not been forgotten; but she had bigger fish to fry. Or rather smaller and more precious. Annie’s vicious brown eyes cut back to Delilah.

The girl shivered. “Mommy, I-”

“I guess you’ve thought I’ve been too busy getting ready for your new little brother… but I’ve been wondering lately…” Still, with one hand curled protectively around her stomach, Annie produced a thin bone from her interspatial ring. “Why don’t the two of us play heroes and villains? We should take some quality time to talk about your behavior recently.”

Delilah seemed to hesitate, her young mind missing the dread-inducing smile on her mother’s face. “I… okay mommy. You’ll be hero, so go hide and I-”

“Oh no,” Annie smiled sweetly down at her daughter as she cracked the bone whip. “Today I’ll be playing the villain.”

Seeming to finally realize that the situation had turned for the worse, Delilah spun and rushed away into the woods. Chuckling lightly, Annie turned back to Obyrn. Immediately, most of the maliciousness on her face fell away. In a gentle tone that surprised Obyrn, she said, “Whatever happens, Donnyton has your back.”

Then she turned away and disappeared into the underbrush almost immediately without making the slightest sound. The White Hunter prowled through the forest around Faldurs, stalking her daughter with a detached precision that Obyrn couldn’t help but be impressed by.

But with Annie gone, Obyrn quickly turned to Duual and Dozer who flanked the gates. “So I assume something must have happened.”

Dozer looked to Duual. One of Duual’s faces was worriedly glancing side to side, while the other was creased in a deep frown. “It seems like the peace we’ve enjoyed for the last few months should be over. Other than that… well, it’s best that you see it for yourself.”

So Obyrn followed the two through the crowded streets of Faldurs. Since it wasn’t a day where a train came up to Faldurs, it was mostly just ogres filling the interior streets. They sold large haunches of meat and argued over the price of bits of armor and leather. Through the entire journey to the Protectorate's Residence, all three of the individuals were silent.

When they finally walked inside, Obyrn looked around in confusion; his office was completely clean. He had braced himself for a strange corpse or a wounded subordinate, but all he found was the usually heavy wood and tall windows of the seat of the Protectorate. Yet after a heavy glance from Duual, Obyrn’s eyes finally settled on a scroll sitting in the middle of his desk.

“It’s this?” Obyrn asked as he picked up the scroll.

Duual nodded. “It’s a letter. From Nordawn, the ancestral home of the ogres. They wish to inform us that they will be coming to visit Faldurs. It’s finally time for the real monsters to crawl out of the darkness.”