After that, I gobbled down ten pounds of meat and what amounted to a bag of potatoes. Yes, I ate the burned steak. What can I say, I’m an ogre and I was hungry. At least I refrained from eating any of the raw meat. The buff from this meat was +2 Constitution, which stacked 3 times. Not as good as the bacon, even with extra mana in it, but still worthwhile.

  Interestingly, this buff followed the same pattern as my spell buff and was added after my percentage bonus to the end product. Still, I wasn’t going to turn down an extra sixty health. Not when all I had to do was eat some food for it.

  Now, I was ready to begin a day of hunting. Based on my display clock, I had slept almost eight hours. After time factored for finding the cave last night and time spent cooking, there were a little less than thirty-nine hours left before I could leave the zone.

  I found I was surprisingly worried about what would happen in Ghazban Village without my guidance, but at least I had given them some skills and set them on a path. Hopefully, they would all gain a few levels and have gathered a great deal of raw materials. Then when I got back, we could start the building projects.

  The ogres were not my end goal, but if I was going to fix the village, then I was going to do a good job of it. Besides, the system would reward me accordingly. My other fear was that after the other village elders respawned, they would botch things. At least Tulbat and Shemi would be back before I got there. Shemi didn’t worry me as much as the head warrior. He, however, might countermand my orders just because they were my orders.

  For that, if no other reason, I needed to gain as much power as I could before I returned. Reaching the next threshold of level forty seemed unlikely, but I still needed to push. Leveling was definitely easier than I remembered it being as a player. Which sorta made sense, given that monsters lost so many levels when they died, unless they were just past a threshold.

  Players only lost a fraction of that. I wondered how my grouping with players would affect my leveling. A random fear crossed my mind that if I leveled too high, I wouldn’t be able to find any parties of players to group with, but certainly there would be some who had progressed to level forty now. Legends of Selmia, just like every game I had ever played before, had its dedicated hard-core players. They were the ones who barely slept and essentially lived in their game pods.

  So push it was. The monster patterns would be back to day cycle. That meant far less likelihood of running into the undead. It also meant that the drakes might be out. What I really wanted, though, was a hill giant. I wanted to test my new buff against them. With that in mind, I cast Scale Skin, Wolf Spirit, Snake Spirit, and Inner Power. Then I rearranged my spells to make sure I had my attack and debuff spells ready as well as Regeneration.

  Once that was all in place, I triggered one of my three daily uses for Talisman of Arctic Force. The three uses seemed to have reset at sunrise, so that was convenient. What wasn’t convenient was the way this buff overwrote Spirit’s Protection. I had feared it would since that buff overwrote Inner Power, but you can’t blame an ogre for being greedy.

  Still fully buffed, I headed up to the nearest hill. I didn’t see any hill giants right away, but I did run into a group of six bears. They ranged between level twelve and level nineteen. Some of them would barely be worth any XP, but I figured with that many bears around, there had to be a bearherder as well.

  I wanted to test out my new buff, so I led with a Frostburn on the strongest of the bears and then charged in. It wasn’t true ogre rage, but it definitely felt good to cut loose. It was as though this body of mine wanted to be in the thick of things. I thrust with my spear and watched it drive into the side of one of the weaker bears. The extra strength put me well above 100 and made my physical attacks all that much more devastating.

  I was disappointed when Arctic Blast didn’t trigger off the attack, but it only had a 10% chance. What I felt instead was the sensation as my spear ripped through the bear’s heart. It was a critical blow of the most intense nature. The bear wasn’t technically dead yet. It still had HP, but it was all over except for the crying. The thing wasn’t going to move around with its heart torn in half.

  The other bears were on me then. I cast Flash of Light on the closest one. The level difference worked for me as the blinding effect triggered and the bear was thrown off balance enough to trip up another one.

  I used that extra second to cast levitate on the smallest of the bears. Its body began floating up into the air and I disregarded it, while a small thread of my mana was being constantly fed into the spell. Then I stepped in and thrust at the first of the bears that had tripped up. The back of its neck was exposed, so I aimed for another one shot kill.

  This time, my aim wasn’t nearly as accurate. The tremendous strength that I had still dealt (242) damage to it, but the beast had more than twice that many HP. The one I had cast Frostbite on was back in the fight now too, and I was soon going to be swarmed by four angry bears. Even wounded, that was going to be a lot.

  But it was time for my little surprise. I released the levitate spell that was holding the other bear in the air. Ideally, it would have risen a bit higher, but the creature was already fifty feet in the air. A five-hundred-pound bear dropped like an anvil upon the two bears sprawled in front of me. I was pretty sure that the wounded bear died and the other two had broken bones, at least.

  It gave me enough time to back up, as Frostbite had just run out on one bear and the other was completely uninjured. I thrust my spear in quick jabs at both of them as I utilized my superior speed to move around to the side of the damaged bear. Neither spear thrust did very much damage, but that hadn’t been their purpose. I followed up with another Frostburn. Since the spell had powered up into the second tier, it would be enough to finish the bear this time. That meant that my primary focus had to be the uninjured bear.

  She was now charging at me. Only level sixteen, but I still didn’t want her biting on me. I thrust my spear again, timing it for when the bear raised up to swipe at me with its front paw. Still no spell trigger, but the combination of its charge and my strength impaled it on my spear.

  My next battle tactic only makes sense if you fight like an ogre. Instead of trying to leverage my spear to keep the beast away from me, I pushed in with the weapon. I felt the wood of the spear bending under the load, but fortunately it was a magical weapon gifted to me when I first gained the piercing skill. The bear had to weigh well over five hundred pounds, being one of the smaller grizzlies here, but to my buffed Strength it was nothing.

  I lifted the bear’s entire body up into the air while it took damage from my damage shield and the spear that was tearing up its insides. Sure, I got hit by a couple of weak paw smashes but my damage resistance was enough to absorb most of that. Its head couldn’t reach me and finally I flung it on top of the two injured bears.

  Then I spun on the biggest of the bears. The beast was almost dead from my spells, but a quick Frost Rift finished it off. With nothing but dead or dying bears left, I wrenched out my spear from the bear that I had just ogre handled so easily. Yanking it out must have ruptured something inside as it coughed up blood.

  Not wanting to be cruel, I used precise strikes with my spear to put the remaining three bears out of their misery. Ironically, on my second strike against the two bears with the broken limbs, Arctic Blast triggered and its area was enough to kill both of them. The XP for this battle was nothing impressive.

  Well, maybe I should take that back. I was getting biased. The fight had been easy. I had taken so little damage it wasn’t even necessary for me to cast regeneration. My new buff had shown its value in multiple ways and I still ended up with 194 XP. All in all, I had a big, toothy ogre grin on my face.

  That is until I heard a bellow. At the top of the hill I saw my target, the hill giant bearherder. But he had a friend with him. I wasn’t sure I was ready for two hill giants at once. They were both bearherders and level twenty-nine and twenty-eight, respectively. Both had over 1100 HP, but I had more than the two of them put together, so maybe I could do this.

  I cast Root to begin the battle on the higher-level giant. Both were running down the hill, but now one of them was much slower. There was just enough time to get off Walking Sleep at the second hill giant. I was counting on the slowing effect, combined with my enhanced speed to be enough for me to avoid most of his attacks.

  He swung a tree truck sized staff at me and even moving as fast as I could; I was still clipped by it. A glancing blow hit me for (110) so I knew I still wasn’t ready to stand toe to toe with these guys. Luckily, I didn’t have to. I backed up, while being careful to pay attention to my surroundings.

  As I backed up, I powered up a triple power Frostburn. When it went off, the initial damage was (510) and each second it was draining away another 22 HP every second. The price was hefty as it cost me about a quarter of my full mana, but this brute had to go down fast. The other giant was already tearing through roots to close with me.

  I used another feature of my spell, which I all too often forgot to utilize. I channeled extra mana into it to increase the damage. It required 80 mana per second, but I increased the cold damage from 22 to 66 per second. Not able to afford that mana drain for very long, I also rushed in. I would have to use my spear.

  I managed to dodge the first strike of its staff. It probably didn’t hurt that the creature was in great pain from my spell. But it left itself over-extended. I slid to the side and thrust under its armpit. No Arctic Blast, but oh well. The damage was still (168) even against the higher-level opponent.

  A second thrust to its stomach dropped it below 10% health while a wild back swing of its staff connected and sent me tumbling. I quickly ended the extra mana into Frostburn while I absorbed the over three hundred damage.

  The blow wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that it hit me into range of the other hill giant. His attacks weren’t slowed just his feet, so he hit me solidly, thumping me down into the ground. A notification went off, showing me that my racial immunity to being stunned had just saved my life. The (519) damage from the blow still sucked, but I managed to survive it with my abundance of HP.

  My mana was sitting at 40% and my HP at 70%. I felt confident that I could finish off this last giant, but I didn’t want to go too low on either. A couple of quickly cast Regenerations drained my mana a bit more but would give me some breathing room on my HP. Then I knew I had to recast Root followed by a Walking Sleep because I wanted him slowed down in every way possible.

  A variety of strategies went through my head, including levitating myself up out of reach while I regained more mana, but that just seemed too risky. The last thing that I wanted to do was attract a drake while I was still fighting this guy. So, I decided to just keep my buffs on and try to dance my way around him, counting on my spear to deal enough damage.

  The first three stabbing thrusts I got off just fine. I was able to avoid each of his wide swings, but also had to compromise by not putting all my strength into the attacks. Each thrust landed for something in the neighborhood of eighty damage. It was going to slowly add up. Sadly, none of them had caused bleeding debuffs or triggered my spell yet. The fight would be over pretty quickly if I could stack some of that up. The level difference just made him far more resilient than I was.

  The fourth strike, I either mistimed it or tried to land it too hard. The extra few points of damage sure weren’t worth the slamming I took from his staff. The (429) damage was bad enough, but I felt ribs break and a lung collapse.

  An added debuff popped up.

  You have the Breathless Debuff (1) 50% chance to fail casting a spell. Movement and combat speed reduced by 35%.

  I wanted to curse but didn’t really have the breath for it. My saving grace was that the Roots were still slowing it down. Even though it hurt to move or even breathe, I could still stay at a distance. I was gonna have to burn through my mana now. I did not want to lose this battle, not when I had been doing so well.

  My frustration grew as it took me three attempts to cast Regeneration. Three attempts which all cost me mana. I stacked a second layer of the spell and it only took me two tries, but that was 250 more mana burned through. At least the 50% odds held out and my sixth spell was a recasting of Root.

  I gave up on the Walking Sleep debuff, I would just need to stay out of range. Two attempts later, I landed a Frostburn on the creature and I was down to just over 300 mana and gaining almost seven per second. If things went really bad because of the zone lock, I couldn’t count on Home to get me out of here. So, I cast three more times and hit it with a second Frostburn.

  Now, with barely 100 mana, I watched the hill giant cry out in pain. The first Frostburn was spreading over his face, but failed to take out his eyes. The second one I had aimed for lower hanging fruit with the goal of causing the most pain possible. I couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of having that part of me slowly frozen solid. At least it hit for critical damage, which dropped the giant below half-life.

  I was watching as 44 damage per second dropped away from him. His natural health regen seemed to counteract about a quarter of that. The math kept going through my head. By the time the DoT effect of the spell was over, I’d only have 250 mana, but unless something went really wrong, the damage should be enough to finish him.

  That meant all I needed to do was stay out of his reach till he was dead. It struck me as cowardly, but a win was a win. Knowing that respawn was like losing a little piece of myself to the system meant I could no longer be cavalier about it. I was going to have to treat each life as though it were my one and only life.

  As the last of the light faded from the giant’s eyes, I breathed a sigh of relief. The XP flooded into me and was very welcome. 402 XP earned put me up to level 22 if I accepted. This time I did. Yes, it would be great to hunt higher leveled mobs and gain these great XP bonuses, but I also didn’t want to die.

  It had become apparent in these fights that level differences really did matter for how hard melee and magical attacks landed. I decided it was worth the reduction in XP if a few more levels would make farming hill giants a little less risky.

  The breathless debuff was still in effect. Two regeneration spells hadn’t been enough to end it, although I was starting to feel stronger. It took another five castings to get two more regenerations into effect. That was most of the mana I had regenerated up to this point, but it should take me back up to full health. Hopefully that was all that was required to end the debuff.

  I didn’t even what to think about what it would be like if I had to find a special magical cure to end this debuff. Breathing was pretty essential, apparently even to my digital body, and I didn’t want to think about trying to move around, let alone hunt like this.

  I never should have let that thought enter my head, because no sooner had I thought that than I heard a furious squawking overhead, like an entire flock of angry geese. A twenty-foot-long drake was diving from above. Its yellow scales were very reptilian, even though the sounds it made were far more avian.

  Fear paralyzed me for a second. I was in no condition for this fight. Only when I saw it land on the carcass of the first hill giant I had slain, did I realize what was happening. Anger surged through me, overwhelming the fear I had felt a moment before. It wasn’t after me; it was just gonna steal my loot.

  I mean, I knew it wasn’t likely thinking of it in those terms. This was just a buffet laid out for it. It raised its head and continued to call out. In the distance, I heard calls answering back. Cursing my luck, I realized it had just called its family to dinner. A dinner provided courtesy of me.

  Still, there was no way I could take one of these drakes, let alone a group of them. I did take the time to Assess the one that started to tear away chunks of bear flesh and swallow great chucks whole.

  Feather Drake Level: 31

  HP: 910

  Its HP was lower than the giants, even though its level was higher. I knew that was misleading, though. If the giants were a tank type of monster, then the drake was likely a dps type. Closer observation showed how it got its name. Around its neck, just beneath the jawline, it possessed a beard of yellow feathers. At least, that is how it looked. I wasn’t going to get close enough to check it out.

  Reluctantly, I chose the wiser part of valor and snuck off further into the hills. I was there long enough to see three more of the drakes land for their feast. A vow to kill them all was the best I could do for now. As it was, I needed to find another cave to rest and regain my mana. What I wouldn’t give for a mana potion or three.

  Interlude 4- No Way Out

  “What do you mean, there’s no way out?” Elgar asked. His face twitched with the frustration he felt. Nothing about this mission was going as planned. It was an interesting quest, but all his curiosity turned into fear the moment they realized none of them could log out.