By the time I finished, Ainsley was standing up. “Did it have any loot?”

  Trust her to start like that. She didn’t even mention that I had nearly blown her apart. “Not on its body, but we can look to see if we got anything. I haven’t checked notifications yet. I’m just happy you aren’t hurt. Sorry about that, by the way.”

  “Why be sorry? You did what you had to do. You are my Master, and I did my job by keeping the mountain troll busy while you prepared a spell to destroy it. I will be honest. I’m not sure if I could have defeated it on my own. I could have escaped it easily, but I’m not sure if my vampiric drain would have been enough to counteract its healing.”

  “We do make a good team. Even better with Violet, and better still if the others arrive.”

  “I think I understand why you want to be with the players rather than ogres. But remember: You can’t trust them. They aren’t like you and me. The fact that the system doesn’t care that we are talking about this tells me that we are meant to be together. Remember, I’m the only one who knows what you are going through, and I won’t ever betray you, Master.”

  Something about the way she spoke made me mindful of boiling rabbits, but maybe it was just her lack of recent socialization. So, I nodded and then said we should check our notifications. As it turns out, the creature did have loot. Specifically, it had a weapon and a spell tome. The latter excited me a great deal, although the club would be good for passing on to the village.

  Spiked Club of Smashing Quality: Enchanted

  Weight: 49 lbs. Damage: 20-40+ strength bonus. 25% damage is piercing and 75% blunt.

  Armor Penetration: +10

  Spell Tome of the Troll Shaman: Thrug

  Spells available to party: 1 general spell, 3 shaman specific spells related to Hex Magic, 1 necromancy-based spell.

  Okay, so it wasn’t that many spells. I wondered if that was all the spells that it had, or if the rules only allowed us to recover a portion of its spells. It also made me wonder why the mountain troll shaman hadn’t cast any spells. Then the answer became evident to me. It had gone into a rage. That had to be it. I laughed to think how much easier that had made the fight. Then I looked at the spells.

  Electro Aura- Proficient 1: Creates an aura around target weapon(s). Range: 40’ + 2’/level. Weapons add electrical damage to all their attacks. +12 electrical damage or +36 on a critical strike. Duration: 3 minutes. Cast time: 5 seconds. Mana Cost: 40+2 per level. Add an additional weapon at Proficient 5 and every 5 levels after that to a maximum of +4 weapons.

  I smiled. I wasn’t sure how often I would use that, but I couldn’t help but think of how Elgar would enjoy that. It also explained why the troll hadn’t cast it, with that long of a cast time. He hadn’t had a team to keep us occupied. Oh well, his loss. It wasn’t like he was a real person, just a digital construct of a troll which was run by one of the system AI’s.

  The other spells were just as interesting.

  Shrink- Proficient 10: Allows the caster or a target creature to be significantly reduced in size. Reduction is up to a maximum of 50%+1%/level (Max 70%). Range: Touch. Duration: 1 hour + 10 minutes per level. Mana Cost: 50 mana on a willing target, 200 million on a hostile creature. Note this spell may be resisted by Will.

  Degeneration- Proficient 15: Causes target to lose HP every second as its body is broken down from the inside. If resistance has failed, then any natural healing is stopped for the duration. Range: 2’/level. Degeneration: 4 HP/sec + 1/level. Duration: 6 seconds + 1/level. Cast Time: 2 sec. Mana cost: 30+2/level. Cool Down: 1 minute.

  Swamp Fever- Proficient 18: Causes up to four targets to become ill with a highly contagious fever. Duration begins at time of infection for each target. One target per six seconds can be infected by touch. Those targets may infect others. Duration: 1 hour, Cast Time: 5 seconds. Mana Cost: 30+2. Effect: target’s movement rate is slowed by 25%. Target gains the sickened debuff. Every ten minutes they must resist it or another stack is added. Melee damage is reduced by 25%, and there is a 25% chance that they will miscast any spell they attempt.

  Exploding Corpse (Must have necromancy affinity)- Proficient 10: Causes an undead under your control to explode in a 10’ radius, causing damage to all within the area. Damage is halved if the undead has flesh. May only be used on a corporeal undead. If used on a zombie or other similar creature, then there is a chance of spreading a random non-magical disease. Damage: 30-70 + 3/level.

  Cast Time: 1 second. Mana Cost: 30.

  All in all, it was a great haul. We might have only gotten 29 XP, but judging by the expression on Ainsley’s face, she was more than ready to stay up all night hunting with me. I wasn’t sure if the gleam in her eyes should scare me.

  Chapter 17- Increased Loot Drops?

  We hunted till the middle of the night and then went to sleep. I shared my free stat point hack with Ainsley. I couldn’t tell for sure if she understood what I was talking about, except that at one point she lamented all she had lost with the number of times she had died. It seemed to be a painful subject with her.

  Strangely, the thing that seemed to put her most off her game was when she read the description for the Shrink spell. She asked if I was able to learn the spell. I sat down and studied it. It was a perfect match for my affinities, so I memorized it in minutes. When I announced that she started mumbling, “Should have known. Should have known. Now what. He didn’t know. He isn’t system. He is like you. Don’t give in, Ainsley. Don’t give in. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

  I watched her closely, but most of what she said didn’t make any sense. Then all of a sudden, she stopped mumbling and looked at me with a big smile. It would have almost been sweet but for the pointy teeth. Then again, who was I to judge anyone. I freaking went around scratching my backside all day.

  Throughout the night we fought mountain trolls four more times. There were no other shamans, and the loot ended up being non-magical weapons, which might be useful for some of the ogres but were oversized for anyone else. Even for my ogre kin, the troll weapons would be two-handed weapons.

  When we only had to fight a single troll at a time, it was easy enough. I could literally levitate it to where it couldn’t do anything and then burn it to ash. It just took time. Since it only took two and a half minutes for me to fully regen my mana, I didn’t have to hold back. It might have been a problem if we had an add, but Ainsley had steadily accumulated more of her “pretties” from the lesser monsters they slew.

  She repeatedly lamented her inability to make a minion out of a mountain troll. At those moments, when the crazy really shone in her eyes, I was personally grateful that troll bodies had to be completely destroyed. A zombie with the durability and raw physical power of a troll might be rather terrifying.

  The last two groups of trolls were multiples. Two at once didn’t end up being a problem. Degeneration was the only one of the new spells that I kept on my active list, mostly because of the trolls. When two of them came at us, Ainsley used her pets to split them up. I attacked one and got close enough to levitate it before stepping back to cast Degeneration and Corrupted Roots and Walking Sleep on the second troll.

  Then Ainsley went to work while I channeled mana into Flame Burst and seared the floating troll. It felt like it was the game on easy mode, but once again I reminded myself that this wasn’t a game. This was my life, and I would take every advantage. It might be more exciting and give me more stories to tell if I were constantly in danger, but the stress would also end up giving me a heart attack. If I could win some easy battles and collect decent XP, I wasn’t gonna knock it.

  Ainsley’s troll died a horrible death, as it was torn to ribbons by a couple dozen zombies. Anytime that one of her pets got too close to breaking down, she would call the others back and use her new spell to explode the injured one. It was a gruesome way to use her pets, but very effective. I still had to burn both the trolls in the end, but it was much easier to burn a dead troll than one which was chasing you.

  The final group of trolls was even easier. We had come across the corpse of a roc. It was a giant bird with a fifty-foot wingspan. I dreaded to think what might have been able to chase it from its home in the mountains. More and more it was becoming clear that was exactly what had happened. We killed a small band of dark dwarves, a few giant mountain rams, and quite a large number of wargs, a type of giant and feral wolves.

  We also saw more than one type of flying creature. I was pretty sure that I saw a draco-griff similar to the one I had met with Gregor. A part of me couldn’t help but wonder if it was the same one. I had felt something of a connection with that one when I set it free, and I had even seen it fly in the direction of Ghazban village. I laughed at myself, though, because that was unlikely. There were probably any number of the creatures spawned by the system.

  There were also a number of other smaller flyers that I took to be regular griffons, pegasi, harpies, and even a couple of chimera. Monsters which lived underground, above ground, and in the air, all were fleeing from whatever was driving them south. It felt like a set-up from the AI. Perhaps it had found a way to move events more quickly than I wanted to. Either way, I wasn’t happy.

  The lowest level monsters we fought were the dark dwarves, and they were all between levels 28 and 30. They made up for the lower levels with far better gear, organization, and tactics, even if they didn’t have any casters. Most of the rest of the monsters ranged between levels 34 and 40, but the trolls were still the worst, owing to their regeneration.

  The level forty we encountered was a mountain ram. It was protective but not aggressive. Even then it turned out to be fairly formidable. I hoped it was because it had crossed another threshold. The idea that its extra durability and power were something which I could make my own was definitely exciting to me.

  It turned out that Ainsley wasn’t able to make a zombie out of its corpse. She seemed to think it was the threshold thing. From what I observed, she could make up to three zombies at a time, but I wasn’t able to discern if their levels mattered. Clearly the stronger the creature was in life, the stronger it was as one of her pretties. None seemed to possess any magical abilities as zombies, but they did have all the physical abilities of the dead creatures.

  As best I could tell, she was able to control up to thirty of the creatures at a time. It was hard to say, since she was regularly exploding them when she found better ones. She was very emotionally taken with them, but at the same time, she liked having unique ones. When we ran across a giant horned bunny, I thought she was going to lose it. She went to pieces petting it and rubbing her face up against the newly animated bunny zombie.

  She even got a pretty sweet piece of loot from the bunny. It was a horn-shaped wand. As soon as she picked it up, it was apparent that she wanted it, so I didn’t even ask to look at it. When I saw her use it later, it shot out shards of force, which was useful because it provided her with another ranged damage attack, whereas I already had plenty of those.

  Other than the bunny, the roc was her favorite, and in the second battle against two trolls, it definitely proved its worth. When we found it, the roc had been on the losing end of a savage battle. At first, I thought it had been burnt. There were numerous spots where its feathers were missing, and one of its wings was mangled pretty badly, presumably from crashing into the ground. When I looked closer, it became apparent that it was more likely acid than fire which brought it down, judging from the puckered wounds.

  Which again made me wonder: What could force all of these creatures from their normal habitat? I shook my head at that thought. I was torn between believing that Selmia was a real world with which the game somehow connected, and believing it was a mere digital construct made by the AI. These sort of monsters’ behavior patterns made me believe it was more than just a digital world. There were still too many pieces I didn’t have.

  Either way, the reanimated roc had been easily able to lift the troll up and carry it high enough that when it later dropped the creature, the impact had been forceful enough to literally make brains and backside meet. Given enough time, the troll would recover, but her pretties kept it busy while I roasted the other troll, and then we finished this one off.

  All in all, by the time we went to sleep, we had gained a respectable amount of XP. Killing over one hundred monsters will do that for you, even if they were mostly easy. What matters was that they were mostly pretty close to my level or even slightly above it. On second thought, that wasn’t what mattered the most. I had found a great pace with Ainsley. She was a bit off-putting, but it was still fun to hunt with her. Maybe not as much fun as with Violet, but each pairing had its pros and cons.

  I found myself hoping that Elgar and the others would return. I hadn’t spent as much time with Gregor, the dwarven cleric, but I really hoped he would find his way to Ghazban village, as well. But as I laid down, concepts of what was real and what was just a game, thoughts of friends, or even a pair of new friends who were both crazy in their own way, all left my mind.

  The time had come. Part of me wanted to wait until I woke up so I could tackle it with a fresh mind, but what gamer in their right mind would be able to go to sleep knowing they had reached a big goal. Not only did I have enough XP to reach level 40 and cross the next threshold, but I actually could go up to level 41. I immediately decided to only accept enough XP to reach level 40, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I saw what I got for this jump.

  The four levels automatically gave me four Strength, four Constitution, and eight Wisdom, as well as eight free stat points, which pushed me up to twenty banked stat points. I intended to use all of those points now. There was really no reason to hold back when I was at a new threshold. It was such a relief to realize that I wouldn’t lose any levels even if I was sent to respawn.

  What I was most interested in, though, were the notifications regarding the new threshold.

  Congratulations! You have gained sufficient XP to reach level 40. You are the first ogre on this continent of Selmia to reach Champion Status. As such you will gain a bonus reward of an additional Journeyman Tier spell beyond the 2 you would normally get for reaching level 40.

  Standard rewards for reaching champion status apply. Your two highest stats will each receive a further bonus of 10%. This bonus will only be applied after all free stat points have been used. Then you will gain an additional bonus of 15% to both HP and MP. Finally, you will gain +20 to two resistances of your choice.

  A champion is meant to be the embodiment of the monster race they represent. You must strive to be the most ogrely ogre there is. This another step on the path towards becoming the ogre terror of Selmia, a monster which players the world over will want to kill.

  Your loot drops have also been increased to a minimum of enchanted gear along with a chance for gear up to epic gear. A system-wide announcement will be made to announce the existence of a new champion-level mob with enhanced loot, but no specific information will be provided.

  New spells provided will be one for each affinity and one for a randomly determined spell based on one of the other three affinities.

  Incapacitate- (J-1): This spell will weaken an enemy or enemies. One target plus up to one more for every four levels beyond Journeyman 1. If target makes a successful Will resist, then the effects and duration are cut in half. Str: -40+2/level. Agility: -40+2/level. Max stat reduction is 80%. Reduced physical resistances by 10 + .5/level. Duration: 2 minutes + 5 seconds/level. Mana cost: 100 + 30 per extra target. Cool Down: 90 seconds. Cast Time: 3 seconds.

  Spirit Lance- (J-1): This spell attacks the Mind and Will of a target and through them the body. The spell drains 100-400 + 25/level mana from target. Once its mana is drained, the damage will be converted to HP damage. There is a 10%+1%/level chance that the target will receive a random mental status debuff. Cast Time: 3 seconds. Mana Cost: 100+5/level. Cool Down: 30 seconds. Range: 200’+10’/level.

  Random spell chosen for Bone Mender Affinity.

  Status Reversal- (J-1): This spell reverses negative status effects. It will remove one status effect + 1/level spread out across any number of party members. Caster may target specific status effects. Slowing effects become haste effects, confusion effects become clarity effects, as examples. Duration: same as the original debuff or 10 minutes, whichever is shorter. Mana: 100+50/additional status effect reversed. Cast Time: 1 second. Cool Down: 1 minute. Range: party members within sight.

  I smiled as I saw the new spells. None of them were bad. Which was a relief because I was honestly worried about wasting a slot with another healing spell, but this status reversal had a definite potential to be amazing. While the mana costs were huge increases from some of my lesser spells, that was to be expected; and as proven with the trolls, I had mana to burn and was about to have more once the Champion bonuses took effect.