Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 44 (Patreon)

Rain sprinkled over the trees beyond the troll’s swamp. The forest seemed peaceful and sleepy, but that peace was a lie. Inside it, the ogres lay huddled around their campfires.

They had no tents or homes, relying only on their thick hides to repel the weather as the rain slowly doused their campfires, one by one. The slowly roasting human and troll bodies they'd been feasting on lay on their spits, only partially cooked. Most of the ogres drifted off to sleep in the rain, with only a few remaining to keep watch.

These were no sentries like those that guarded Martin's encampment, though. They were merely a few sleepless ogres motivated by the hard rocks beneath where they lay to remain a bit more wary than the rest of their kin. One of them caught a glimpse of something strange in the distance.

First one, then three, then dozens of fireflies flickered into being in a nearby tree. A shadow lay in a tree, illuminated by a hundred buzzing lights drifting around it. The ogre sentry stood, approaching the shadow and the buzzing lights with a mixture of curiosity and irritation.

Perhaps these lights were the reason he couldn't sleep. Club in hand, he swept at the lights and the shadow.

"Get! Stupid buzzies..." the ogre grumbled.

He threw his club at the tree, but it met nothing but air. By the time it reached the shadow, the shadow was gone. But the lights remained. Like a swarm of tiny fireflies, they flew toward the ogre.

He swept his big hand at them, but they dug into his flesh and burned him. "Oww! Stinging buzzies!" the ogre hissed.

He reached for his club that had fallen to the ground after bouncing off the tree trunk, but before he could scoop it up, he felt a sharp pain in his back. Something as thick around as his finger was there, plunged all the way into his back. He reached around behind himself to tear it free, but placed as it was, his thick and muscular arm prevented him from getting ahold of it.

Suddenly, piercing pain wracked his body, and he growled as strange energy tore strength from his limbs. Again, out of the corner of his eyes, he spotted the same shadow from before. Except it was no shadow at all.

He could see that, now. A small, by ogre standards, figure stood within the darkness of a weirdly shifting cloak of shadows. His eyes had an unnatural purple glow to them, and more of those buzzing lights sprang from his hand with every passing moment.

In his free hand, he held a shaft of steel that glowed with blue energy.

"Human..." the ogre muttered.

Then he yelled the word again, louder, to alert his kin. But ogres didn't have the keenest perception at the best of times. With the rain pouring down in sheets, and the thunder cracking overhead, no one heard his final scream.

The first ogre died, and I wiped my sword off on the little scrap of raw hide his kind used as a loin cloth.

You have slain an Ogre Basher (Level 24).

Your race, Homo Acceleratus, has gained a level to Level 39!

"That wasn't all that hard," I said to myself.

The Ogre had been on the verge of D-Rank, yet I'd taken him down without much trouble. And I'd gotten a level for it, too.

I glanced at my character sheet, and then at the dozens of ogres, most of them already wounded as they lay around their soggy campfires. They were totally oblivious to the fact that I'd just killed one of their own.

Now was the time to be bold. To be deadly. To be the hunter in the shadows.

"Let's see if I can't hit level 45 before sunrise," I muttered to myself.

That would put me far enough ahead of everyone else on this shard that I could deal with whatever issues reared their heads. Including these Three Kings. And so my hunt began.

My next victims were three ogres that lay sleeping and helpless around their doused fire. Two sported heavy wounds. Their blood seeped into the ground around them without a care for bandages or infection. They had only their natural resilience to protect them from infection or disease.

The third was missing his arm, just past the shoulder. From the looks of things, it had been wounded badly enough that the ogre had simply torn the limb off—though he hadn't discarded it. Most of the ogre’s arm sat on a spit next to a dead troll's torso. It seemed the ogres planned to eat it for breakfast the following morning.

Not that they'd get the chance.

I charged my Mana Barrage from the safety of the trees, targeting the strongest of the three ogres first. I would take out the biggest and highest leveled of the three with my opening barrage while he slept. Then, when the other two awoke, I’d be able to deal with them more aggressively. Only they never woke up.

My Mana Barrage at full power, combined with a burst of Lifesteal and a rapid detonation of all my Corrupting Marks put the biggest of the three down before he could do much more than let out a short, gasping cough. Even to me, it sounded like a snore.

I shrugged, charged another batch of Mana Bolts, and then did it again. The third one-armed ogre did wake up at that point, but he didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against me—even if he'd had both of his arms. With just one, I made short work of him.

Your One Against Many proficiency increased by one to Level 8!

Your race, Homo Acceleratus, has gained a level to Level 40!

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained two levels to Level 33!

After that, I grew a little bolder with my approach. These ogres didn't know how to set up proper defenses. I took my time scouting the area. Visibility was terrible in the storm, and the rain was coming down hard. Even if I screwed up and the fighting got too loud, the ogre groups were far enough apart that the others were oblivious to our fighting.

To the ogres, I was a ghost in the shadows. A gust of wind that appeared with a hail of Mana Blasts and blazing sword and then was gone just as fast.

One after another they fell to sword and spell—especially to my spells. Between my Mana Barrage and then detonating the dozens of Marks this laid on my targets, it didn’t take me long to cull their ranks. I had their measure now.

Before, I'd been hesitant, fearing the ogres would have true elites a caliber higher than the Alpha Wolfman. But now I began to think otherwise.

Your One Against Many proficiency increased by three to Level 11!

Your race, Homo Acceleratus, has gained two levels to Level 42!

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained three levels to Level 36!

The reason the Alpha Wolfman had gotten so strong was because he was fast and ruthless. He’d led from the front and had attacked human settlements one after another, harvesting our lives to fuel his levels. He'd been far more intelligent than the ogres I now faced.

These lumbering brutes had gained levels, too, but only through accident and happenstance. They were stronger than I remembered, roughly keeping pace with the average level of growth I'd observed in the militia of Crownhill. But they weren't my match.

As the storm grew fiercer, my Mana Bolts became increasingly effective against the ogres. Wondering why, I took a break midway through my slaughter to check my combat notifications.

You have landed a critical hit x 38!

You have dealt Elemental Weakness damage!

Interesting. It was just like with the trolls and their weakness to fire. Unfortunately, lightning was a lot tougher to carry around than a lighter. When this storm ended, I would have a harder time adding lightning mana to my spells. I wondered what kind of elemental weaknesses humans had.

There was a time or two when a few ogres managed to wake and score a lucky hit or two on me. I managed to dodge almost every attack—but with their strength, even a glancing blow did a lot of damage. But I hadn't picked up Iron Will for nothing. Some damage wasn't going to be enough to put me down—not when I’d gain as much health or more with my next Mana Barrage.

With the massive health pools these Ogres had, I could afford to take risks. If I got hit, I would just heal myself by detonating my Corrupting Marks or launching another barrage of Mana Bolts as I let Lifesteal refill my health.

I sank into that same rhythm I sometimes fell into when training with Myrina and Cyra—that odd state where all else fades away, and my mind focused completely on the fight. Every now and then, I used Blood Sacrifice on a particularly resilient foe. Blood dripped from the corners of my mouth, out my ears, and from the corners of my eyes.

But a moment later I healed, and my opponent was worse off for the rest of the battle.

Your race, Homo Acceleratus, has gained two levels to Level 44!

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained three levels to 39!

You have gained 16 proficiency levels across various domains:

Caster: +4 to Level 31

Combat Tactics: +2 to Level 7

Dodge: +3 to Level 48

One Against Many: +2 to Level 13

Sword: +5 to Level 49

In one night, throughout that single storm, I fought more deadly fights than I had the rest of the integration combined. My combat instincts had needed honing , especially with my new skills and new proficiencies. I now had that, in spades. All the training I had done with Myrina and Cyra had been good for my fundamental skills—but there was something different about putting them to the test against opponents who wanted me dead.

By the time the rain began to slow, we were deep into the night and close to early morning. Two thirds of the remaining Ogres were dead. More than forty large corpses littered the area. The last few groups of ogres had finally caught on and realized something was happening.

They rallied their allies to their feet and gathered together in a large group.

"Evil spirit! Begone!" One troll shouted, clutching his club in terror.

Gathered close together and awake once more, they were much harder to pick off. But that didn't mean they were impossible to attack. Behind the wind and the rain, and hidden within the thunder, I struck with every spell I had. Each Mana Bolt was laced with lightning, and each Eldritch Blast was empowered with all the might I could give it.

The third layer of Mania, Blood Frenzy, had me lusting for battle to the point that I had to fight from diving right in amongst the Ogres. I was a higher level than any of them and could probably survive long enough to make it back out.

But my appearance among them would lift the veil from the unknown evil spirit they feared and teach these ogres that I could be hurt. I wanted these ogres huddling in terror in the rain as I picked one or two out and layered them with so many Corrupting Marks that their flesh began to peel and fall to the ground.

One by one ogres popped like over ripened fruit as I detonated my marks, blowing them up from the inside out.

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained 5 levels to Level 44!

You have gained 10 proficiency levels across various domains:

Caster: +4 to Level 35

Combat Tactics: +2 to Level 9

Dodge: +3 to Level 51

One Against Many: +1 to Level 14

Alas, no good thing lasts forever. The sun would rise soon; its rays were already burning away the clouds that had brought the rain and the thunderstorm that had hidden me so well. Even worse, not even my prodigious mana reserves could keep up with the number of spells I was using—not for this long.

Even stopping every few minutes to meditate and utilize the enhanced mana regeneration it provided, I was running on fumes.

I forced blood frenzy to quit, not realizing how close I'd been cutting things until I calmed myself back to a semblance of normalcy.

"Evil spirit! No more!" one of the ogres shouted.

The rest of them took up the chant. “No more! No more!”

The normally brutish voices of the ogres sounded beaten and drained. Apparently the system sensed the resignation in their tones.

You have defeated the Ogres!

While some of their number remain, their spirits are broken, and they no longer possess the manpower to feasibly defeat the remaining major human factions on their own!

The survivors will remain, but have lost the ability to claim this shard on their own.

I was surprised not to see the familiar exploit, enslave, or exterminate menu, but I supposed that was because I had defeated the ogres in spirit, but didn't have their remaining members at my mercy.

Truth be told, given the opportunity, I probably would have selected exterminate. These creatures had the bodies of humans roasting over their campfires on spits. But the ogres seemed not to care what they ate, so long as it was meaty and easily roasted. They were apparently willing to eat each other, given the opportunity.

I ignored their pleas and continued my hunt. I was only one level away from the goal I had set myself. After finishing off two more ogres clustered in the large group, I got the notification I’d been waiting for.

Your race, Homo Acceleratus, has gained a level to Level 45!

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained a level to 45!

I didn't have the energy to finish the rest of them off, but I was glad the problem was dealt with… for now. I was running on fumes—so much so that I wasn't able to Warp Step home. I had to get out of here before the rain stopped and the sun fully rose. If the ogres spotted me in this state, I would be in real trouble.

The run back to my farmhouse was brutal, made worse by a few quick stops along the way. I spotted a giant pigeon, three fire squirrels, and a fluffle of carnivorous rabbits. They looked somewhat agile, especially the rabbits, so I tested out my idea to distract the local monsters.

"A little curse for you... and you, you, and you... and finally, all of you."

Repeatedly, I cast Share Curse on each of the wild beasts. Hopefully they would take the heat off me long enough for me to get a good night's sleep. I didn’t want to wake up being overrun by monsters.

I didn't even make it to the bedroom—not that I wanted to, as bloody and dirty as I was. As soon as I made my way into my farmhouse, I flopped down into my recliner. The last thing I saw before I let sleep swallow me whole, was my System screen.

Carter Smith:

Race: Homo Acceleratus

Racial Level: 45

Class: Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge

Class Level: Level 45

Average total level: 45

Mission accomplished.