"Agh!... ogres? this might give me some trouble, but they're not strong enough!" said Reynold parrying an ogre's blow with his sword and being pushed back by a few centimetres.
"Phew... yeah, they're not very fast either!" said Annie dodging an ogre and slashing it in the back, but despite her words sweat was visible on her forehead and her slightly heavy agitation indicated that she was getting tired.
"You know, maybe you should have bought a shield like I recommended..." opined Lucy deflecting an ogre's blow with her iron shield and slashing the ogre's arm with her sword.
"Tch, Silence!" replied Reynold in irritation, his arms were going numb from all the blows he had to parry with his sword alone, but he didn't care. "I never needed a shield, I won't need one now!
Using his sword, he thrust the Ogre into the dry ground and then with a strong and swift slash, Reynolds cut off the ogre's head. His breathing had become labored and the sweat was getting heavier and heavier.
"I'm one of the best C-class adventurers in Bluegate, the master himself said I had the potential to reach B-class or even A-class, these bastards are nothing to me... NOTHING!" shouted Reynolds angrily.
BAM!
Shortly after shouting Reynolds went flying due to the blow of an ogre that had managed to get behind him. Reynolds bounced on the ground several times, kicking up dust each time he landed.
"Reynolds!" shouted concerned Lucy and Annie at the same time.
"Shut up already! I'm fine!" said Reynold getting up from the ground and wiping the corner of his lip, where he noticed he had blood on it "You fucking monster, you dare to make me bleed!?"
Reynolds ran up and grabbed his sword from the ground and attacked the ogre with all his might. The ogre could do little against Reynolds' huge sword that ended up cutting the ogre's body in two pieces.
"Tch, I'll be the one to clean up this dungeon..." muttered Reynolds angrily before looking up and seeing the hundred ogres approaching them.
-
"So many ogres at once?" asked Charles using his magic and creating a great wall of earth around them.
Boom! Boom!
The ogres' blows echoed loudly as they hit the earthen walls, Salma placed her hands on the ground and closed her eyes, concentrating completely on the ground.
"Keep holding the walls with your magic until Salma is finished!" commanded John creating an earthen staircase going up to the top of the walls. John saw the ogres surrounding them and without much choice he put his palms together and began to shoot lightning out of his hands. "We must hold on!" said John throwing a large amount of lightning at the ogres, but also numbing his own hands.
"Ready!" shouted Salma and instantly the earthen walls began to change, transforming into stone. "Phew... this used up almost all my natural magic in an instant, if I use it again I'll start to overload my body" warning
"Don't worry, the ogres won't be able to get over this for a while..." assured John looking at the thick stone walls "This should be enough to rest a bit..."
"Hell, I knew that with each level we advanced they would be more and more powerful monsters, but I thought they would at least drastically reduce the amount..." said Charles dropping to the ground and wiping his sweat with his mage dressing gown.
"That's why Rodrick said to make sure we clean every area well before moving on, if something happens down there, I don't think I can go back and deal with these monsters again" said john seriously as he walked down the stone stairs.
"This mission is going to be pretty tough..." said Salma taking off her wizard dressing gown and revealing a light adventurer's outfit with leather armour.
"Once we're done here we'll have to go back and buy more healing potions, the ones we have aren't going to be enough for us," said Charles and the other two nodded.
___
With Ava and her party they were in a similar situation, the three of them running all over the area, dodging ogres and attacking weak spots whenever they could. Ava dodged an attack from an ogre, leaping towards the ogre's arm she placed herself right on its shoulder and jabbed one of her arrows right into the ogre's eye.
"Gahk!" the ogre cried out in pain and Ava used this moment to put a flaming arrow right into the ogre's mouth.
The ogre fell down writhing in pain as it screamed as loud as it could, while ava wiped her sweat and exhaled heavily. she had been fighting continuously for an hour now, running, jumping, dodging and attacking, her body was starting to feel heavy and she felt slower and slower, the ogres' movements in her eyes were already starting to seem faster.
"I'm sure I'm going to B class in this damn dungeon" said Ava as she watched in the distance as Ana also ran being followed by a group of ogres.
Ana reached into her bag as she ran, pulling out 2 small black spheres which she quickly threw to the ground and releasing a curtain of smoke that helped her hide from the ogres. When the smoke covered the sight of the ogres, they stopped immediately, starting to sniff around them, but they could only smell a strange burning odour.
Ana slipped through the smoke and climbed on the back of one of the ogres and began to choke him with a thin metal cable, the ogre tried to free himself from the grip, but he could not reach Ana who was on the ogre's back just holding on to the cable, and he could not grab the cable because it was too small for his big fingers.
The ogre whined for a few seconds before falling with a heavy thud to the ground. Ana wasted no time and using two fire arrows inserted them directly into the eyes of the ogre in front of her.
"I see you need a little help!" said Gellen, coming up to Ana and surprising her, "Let me take care of it now!
Gellen walked up to stand in front of an ogre and pointed out his precense, Gellen looked confidently at the ogre as if the vast difference in size and musculature between them didn't matter.
"What's the matter ugly, aren't you going to attack me?" asked Gellen provoking the ogre.
The ogre raised his arms and lowered them with great speed with the intention of getting rid of Gellen at once, but she simply deflected the ogre's attack with her prosthetic arm leaving him unprotected. Gellen did not stand still this time and using her prosthetic arm again she grabbed the ogre's testicles and yanked them out. The ogre gave a loud yelp of pain before collapsing, clutching the crotch of his leg.
"What's up big guy? did someone castrate you?" asked Gellen playing with the testicles in her hand "So, that leaves only you..." she said turning to the missing ogre throwing the testicles right in his face before moving quickly in front of him and thrusting her arm through his chest.
"I need one of those..." ana said seeing how easy it had been for gellen to take out the ogres.
"Good job girls, but we still have almost 7/8th ogres left to kill" Ava said coming to them and pointing towards a large group of ogres away from them.
"Ha, that's nothing, we'll do it in a heartbeat!" said Gellen shaking the blood from his prosthetic arm.
___
In Finn and Darwin's zone, the two stood atop a mountain of dead ogres, as they watched the other remaining ogres watch them from afar, roaring at them in great anger. Finn looked at the ogres with some amusement as he bandaged a wound, a month before he had to run for his life every time he looked at an ogre and come up with a plan to kill it, but now he could finally face it head on.
"You know, it's nice..." said Darwin eating a chocolate bar. He had a bandaged foot and a few bruises on his body.
"What's nice?" Finn asked curiously
"No longer have to run from them" Darwin replied "Look at them, they no longer look at us as prey but as someone they must eliminate... as an enemy, an equal" he finished.
"Sigh... I hear you. Before we had to kill them from afar with just spears or whatever we could get our hands on, but now we can finally hit them with a good blow and make them stagger from the pain and impact" said Finn, clenching his fist.
"Cristel's training did help after all" said Darwin before he remembered something "Funny though, amelia's blows still hurt me more than these ogres, how hard could she be?"
"No idea, but this makes me wonder how strong cristel really is, according to amelia even she can't compare at all to cristel" Finn said unable to imagine how big a gap there was between cristel and the two of them.
At that moment Darwin's armband glowed indicating that he had received a notification. Darwin lightly touched the armband and saw that it was a message from the guild, it was from Amelia. They had not yet implemented a chat where friends or colleagues could talk freely, so this was the only way they could communicate.
[Message from supervisor: Amelia
Why the fuck finn doesn't answer his messages? I've been trying to contact him for 2 days, but he doesn't answer! He even blocked me! How the hell do you block a supervisor!?]
Darwin looked confused at the message before looking at finn and remembering that he didn't have the armband with him as the dwarves had kept it.
[Message from: Darwin
Some hairy dwarves assaulted him and stole his bracelet, but don't worry, we'll get it.... eventually]
Darwin sent the message and realised he had a notification from 20 minutes ago unseen, it was a system message.
[CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE MOVED UP A CLASS!!!!!
Class: D > C]
Darwin looked at the notification in surprise, then quickly opened his stats screen to verify that it was true.
[
Name: Darwin
race: Human
Occupation: Explorer
Class: D+ > C-
Gifts: Light
Blessings: none
Strength: D > C-
Velocity: D+ > C-
Agility: D+ > C
Durability: D+ > C-
Magic: C-
U.P.: 4
Abilities: transfiguration (none), illusion (none), conjurations (low)
Neutral Magic: telekinesis (High)
Natural magic: Fire (medium), earth (none), water (none), air (none), sound (none), lightning (low)
Carrier magic: body enhancement (medium)
True Carrier Magic: None
Condition: body wounded, no illness present. Mentally he is happy and astonished.
]
"Finn, look I've moved up a class!" said Darwin excitedly, showing the screen to Finn.
"You moved up already?" asked Finn incredulously looking at Darwin's status "You increased all those stats in two weeks?"
"No, I think some of them are over a month old, but since I haven't checked my stats for a long time they hadn't shown up until now" assured darwin "I guess this means you're class C too, it would be weird if you didn't moved up and I did when we're practically the same level"
"I guess... I should have taken back my coti" said finn and darwin looked at him with a disgusted look on his face.
"Don't call the bracer that, it sounds weird..." said Darwin.
"What are you talking about? That's the official name" replied Finn.
"Sigh, whatever, we have to finish these ogres off, there are still more than half of them alive" said Darwin standing up and throwing away the wrapper of the chocolate bar he had eaten.
The ogres seeing finn and darwin stand up, roared even louder, starting to beat their chests as if they were challenging them, darwin smiled at this provocation from the ogres and then raised his hand creating a small sphere of yellow light. The ogres watched the sphere intently, the sphere slowly rose into the sky, taking the attention of all the ogres who were waiting for the sphere to attack them in some way.
"Have you ever seen a method of distraction?" asked Darwin in front of one of the ogres.
BAM!
The ogre tried to react, but only ended up doubling over in pain from Darwin's punch. The ogre fell to his knees and Darwin did not hesitate to stomp on his head, smashing him to the ground.
"Well, let the second round begin!" exclaimed Darwin, drawing his sword and setting it on fire with his magic.
The ogres roared again, seeing darwin in front of them, but when they wanted to attack him as a group finn's slime appeared in front of them turning into a great wall of slime that began to push all the nearby ogres with great force.
Slowly Finn approached with his hand outstretched.
"Double wall, one with the slime and one with my telekinesis, I thought of it when we faced the basilisk, but I hadn't had a chance to try it," said Finn as he came up to Darwin.
"I see you made a lot of progress with your telekinesis, is it still basic telekinesis?" asked Darwin.
"I don't know, but I do feel that it is much stronger than the time we faced the witch goblin in the monster city" confessed finn "although for some reason my control has not improved, I just increased the strength of my telekinesis".
"Maybe it's still developing, you have to give it some time sometimes" said Darwin dodging an ogre's blow and cutting off his arm.
"I hope so" said Finn, parrying an ogre's blow with his hand and then sending it flying with his telekinesis.
The battle gradually began to intensify, the ogres were getting angrier and angrier and were throwing themselves more and more savagely at Finn and Darwin until the two of them were surrounded in a circle that prevented them from leaving. The more than 100 ogres were pushing and shoving each other, wanting to be the next to attack.
Darwin was handling the ogres pretty well, every now and then they would hit him or throw him, but it was nothing he couldn't handle, with his sword and his fire magic he was quickly making his way through the ogres. Finn, on the other hand, at first was handling the ogres just as well as Darwin, but as the minutes passed he began to feel the stinging grow and the pain began to spread more and more through his body, beginning to numb Finn's body.
After about 15 minutes of fighting, Darwin was slightly shaken, but could continue without any problems. However, finn was sweating profusely and his breathing was very labored and heavy, his condition was rapidly worsening.
'Huff... Huff... what's wrong? Huff... the pain is increasing a lot... my body is heavy, my arms are not responding... Huff... And I'm short of breath...' thought Finn tired and gasping for breath.
BAM!
Finn was unable to dodge the blow of an ogre and was sent crashing to the ground. With difficulty, Finn raised his hand and used his telekinesis to send all the ogres around him flying, but that only caused another stronger pain to hit him and he felt as if something was burning in his chest and slowly spreading through his body.
Finn opened his shirt slightly to see the marks on his chest that were blue slowly turning dark red until they stopped halfway down.
"What the fuck is this? Finn muttered looking at the markings "what happens when the red consumes the blue!?"
"Hey, Finn, are you okay?" shouted Darwin away from him, still not stopping his fight against the ogres.
Finn quickly covered his chest. He didn't want Darwin to know about this. Finn is thankful that Darwin couldn't see what happened because of the long distance between them.
"Uh... yeah, all right. I just slipped on some ogre blood" Finn replied.
Finn stood up slowly, watching the ogres approaching again, finn wanted to use his telekinesis again to stop the ogres' advance, but the marks on his chest again made him feel like he was being burned.
"Agh!" complained Finn holding his chest and realising that his magic would no longer be an option to fight 'Why now?' thought Finn holding his sword and waiting for the ogres.