Chương 118: Chapter 116: Ogre siege

Around noon our second day, we start to see signs of civilization. The wheel ruts in the road get a bit deeper, and the road itself seems a bit better taken care of. Makes sense; there should be another town no more than two or three days away from Marketplace. We passed by an inn on our first day out, about forty miles away from Marketplace. We didn't stop there because we weren't ready to stop just yet, but I definitely noticed it.

I noticed that it was about a day's travel away from the city, the perfect place for people to stop along the way. There was another inn we passed by this morning. That's another of the signs of civilization. This is very different from the forest. In there, you could easily travel for several days in any direction without running into the smallest sign of people and civilization. Most likely, the only thing you'd find would be groups of bandits who wanted to take your stuff.

Rare to find an outpost or an inn by itself. The difference between the inn we passed yesterday and the one we passed today is that the one we passed today doesn't exist anymore. It was burned down to the shell, and still smoking when we found it. There were signs of battle around it, but it didn't look like the battle was very long or very intense. I don't think the inn had much in the way of protection, so it was probably more of an attack than a battle. More of a slaughter than a fight.

I've been keeping an eye on the tracks that lead away from the burned out inn all morning. They're big tracks, suggesting a group that of creatures that are at least eight feet tall and weigh at least four or five hundred pounds. I can't be one hundred percent certain, but I think they're ogre tracks. I've fought ogres before. They weren't all that dangerous. They were only level 18, and only rare advanced monsters, so they only had 1800 hit points. We would absolutely slaughter a group like that.

But, I remind myself, the ogres I fought were in the forest. The bandits we fought in the forest were only level eight or so, but the cadre of demons we fought were level thirty. These ogres might be much higher level. They might not even be the same kind of ogres. Maybe these are more demonic blooded ogres. Demon ogres. Like Oni. Oni are demons from Japanese mythology, if I remember correctly. Though they are ogres, they aren't like the ogres of western myth and legend.

Oni are supposed to be huge and strong, but also incredibly intelligent and clever. They use magic freely and with great effect. If these ogres are like that, then we might have a real fight on our hands. And if they're going down the road the way they're tracks suggest they are, they might be heading for another inn, or a small town, and they might cause a lot of damage. They might kill a lot of innocent people. I use Find Path to highlight their trail, and I urge everyone to pick up the pace a bit.

We're soon running too fast to be able to really chat, focused on what we might come across and what might happen when we do. It's been about an hour of us chasing the ogres, and I can tell we're catching up. The tracks become more and more fresh, and I even smell the dissipating scent of urine where one of them stopped to relieve themselves. Or didn't stop; maybe they kept walking while they were peeing. That's a gross image. I'm super glad I thought of it.

Another hour of chasing them, and we get close enough to actually spot them. What's worse, I can see the signs of a town just past them. We're maybe two hundred feet behind them, and the town is maybe another three hundred feet past that. It doesn't look like a well fortified town. I don't see any walls. If the ogres get there, they're going to kill everyone inside. It's going to be bad. So I draw my bow and I take a Sniper Shot at one of the ogres towards the back of their group.

I watch as the arrow soars through the air, arching up and then cutting downward, diving down to hit the creature for 1, 960 damage. It doesn't immediately die, which proves that they're not regular ogres. A few seconds later, I get close enough to see what they are. Oni. Very rare rare elite monster, level 28. HP: 24, 110/28, 000. There are about two dozen of them. Gigi is definitely going to level up more than once from this.

The oni turns towards us, and it barks out something that gets the attention of the other onis around it. Soon, instead of heading towards the town, they're charging at us. Which is just what we wanted, but also kind of terrifying. Imagine being a toddler, standing on a football field. You have a football in your hand, and suddenly you see a group of two dozen huge linebackers come charging at you. That's kind of what it feels like. The ground shakes under their movement, and they roar in challenge at us.

El roars back, and charges forward. Gigi and Ash move forward together, brandishing their shields and trying to keep up with El. I start shooting at the oni, not really caring which one I hit, just wanting to get Rapid Shot and Power Shot off while they're cutting the distance. Vincent, surprisingly, doesn't cast any spells yet. But he seems like he's ready for something, like he's waiting. Maybe he knows that the oni are going to have magic of their own, and he's preparing for it.

Maybe he just wants them to get closer. As the distance between us all shrinks, the oni do indeed start to cast spells. They send Fire Bolts towards El, and they cast spells one themselves that seem to make them even bigger and turn some of their skin to stone. That's going to make things difficult. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I move forward so that I can get them all in the range of Mab's Rage, and then I cast it.

I immediately notice that the spell doesn't do as much damage as it's supposed to. Apparently, the oni have magic resistance. Instead of doing 150 points of damage per second, the spell only does 58 points of damage per second. That means that they have a hundred percent magic resistance, and my spellcraft gets twenty nine percent of the damage through anyway.

Given that the spell is supposed to last two and a half a minutes, that means that it's only going to do 8, 700 damage to each of them, leaving us responsible for the other twenty thousand damage each. I look over my shoulder at Vincent. I don't know if he noticed that Mab's Rage isn't doing as much damage as it should be, or if he's figured out that they have spell resistance.

He seems to be casting smaller area of effect spells, causing lightning to strike down into the crowd of the oni, hitting those who aren't already engaged with El, Gigi, and Ash. If only about thirty percent of my magic is getting through their resistance, I don't want to rely on magic. So I keep shooting with my bow, knowing that the damage dealt by my arrows will at least get through their defenses and do a lot of damage. The oni move to surround the girls, but the girls don't seem to mind.

El is doing her whirling dervish thing, swinging her axes around her as she dances between them, pounding her axes into their flesh and tearing away chunks of them as they try to hit her with their clubs. Those aren't normal clubs. They look like baseball bats with rivets running all the way up and down the length of the bats, making them heavier and much more damaging. El doesn't seem to mind them, dodging most of them and grunting when one makes an impact with her.

But the oni don't have the kind of strength to really make her move. They may be stronger than most humans, but they're not stronger than El. Ash and Gigi stand back to back, using their shields to great effect as they slash and smash their way through the oni that get close enough to them. They take the impacts of the mighty clubs, and they don't move much either. I can tell the difference between this battle and the last one I saw her fighting in; Gigi is much stronger than she was.

She must not have just rebought all the points she lost; she effectively redistributed her stats with the death and releving. Good for her. I still try to keep as my target the oni that are closest to Gigi. She is strong, but she's the weakest of the three of them. Gigi has only died the one time in the tutorial and the one time fighting the giants. She hasn't gone through the death cycle enough. Ash can handle herself, El can handle herself, but Gigi needs help.

So I take aim at the oni closest to her and use Sniper Shot to keep them bleeding, to knock them back when they are attacking her. I can't use my bow abilities very often, but I can shoot fast. And a regular shot from me is still doing 1, 120 damage now that I'm taking advantage of the fact that the ogres are in combat with my allies, giving me the sneak attack doubling of damage with every shot. I know the oni are bleeding from the arrows too, so that means every shot is effectively worth 2, 200 or so damage.

Ten shots to one oni, and I know it's not going to survive Mab's Rage. In the time it takes me to wipe out the oni that Gigi is currently slashing at, both El and Ash take out an oni on their own. I can't tell how much damage Vincent is doing, but from the waves of spells that he is casting, I'm sure he's doing a lot of damage. Some of the oni break away from the girls and come charging at me. And, presumably, at Vincent. They shoot their Fire Bolts at me as they go.

The fire splashes against me, bringing my Shell down by only 17 points. I have 130% magic resistance, so I'm not particularly worried about their spells. When the clubs and swords get into range, I'll be a bit more worried, but the spells don't exactly bother me. I do have to keep them from getting past me, though. I have to put my bow away and draw my sword and dagger, to engage with the oni that broke away from the girls so that they can't get past me and go kill Vincent.

I don't know why I assume that if they get past me they'll definitely kill him. He has more than twenty three hundred hit points, and he has Shell. He should be able to handle himself for at least a little while against one or two of them. And there are only six that are charging towards me, so if one or two of them slip past, he should be fine. But maybe he won't be. I don't want to have to wait another week for him to get back to us.

I don't think he reset his spawn location to Marketplace, so it really would take him a week. I step forward and try to engage with all six oni at once, slashing at them and stabbing at them at random rather than focusing my attacks on one of them. I want to make sure that they decide to surround me and wipe me out before heading out to attack Vincent. As they move to surround me, I notice a red cloud form above my head. I'm apparently at the center of it as a fire storm starts to rain down all around me.

The fire rains down and hits me for 96 damage. But it hits the oni for significantly more. I hope. They certainly seem to be reacting to it as if it's doing more damage. If Vincent cast this, I hope he knows what he's doing. The fire storm damage hits every second. I don't think it will last more than thirty seconds. That still takes almost three thousand points of my Shell away. And during that time, I get hit by about a dozen club strikes.

The clubs do 103 damage each time they hit me, making that thirty seconds worth another twelve hundred damage. I haven't killed any of the oni during that time, but I've taken about four thousand damage. That's not something I can keep up. I use Killing Blow, and it actually works, stabbing through the oni's chest and piercing its heart. That reduces the number of opponents to five, which is a bit more doable.

I keep moving as much as I can, trying to rely on my dodge to help avoid some of the hits, while I stab at anything that presents itself, either with my sword or with my dagger. The dagger still does about three hundred damage, the sword about five hundred, but between them I can attack pretty frequently, even focusing on defense. My stamina already isn't regenerating. Or rather, it's draining at the same rate that it's regenerating.

I have plenty to spare, so I keep using Vital Slash to up my damage wherever possible, and I still use Bleeding Strike when it comes off cooldown. Slowly but surely, I can feel the tide of battle start to shift. At first, it was like they were going to crash down upon us like a tidal wave, washing us away and sweeping aside our defenses. But the wave crashed, and we're still here. We're still standing, and we're starting to push them back. Of the twenty four oni who started the battle, already six of them are dead.

Mab's Fury is cutting into them, even if it isn't doing as much damage as it usually does.