The Ogre

Back in my Farming World days, every last one of my stats had sat at SS+ rank. That old feeling is gone now, but this was just enough to drag the memory up. Right. This is about how it used to feel.

"So this was what SS felt like."

SS- is one thing, SS another, and SS+ something else entirely. Next to the years I lived at SS+, SS- is honestly a letdown—but set against an Agility that used to be a plain S, the lightness in my body is a different beast altogether. Above all, the change in Leap Slash is dazzling.

One extra slash worked into a single cast shifts the damage by nearly ten percent, if not more. The hit count itself had jumped from eight to twelve, a fifty percent increase, so even a sloppy estimate puts the skill's damage up by more than half. The math is never quite that clean, of course. But Leap Slash lets me cram every one of those strikes into a single second mid-cast, and once you factor that in, a damage spike that sounds impossible on paper stops being impossible.

Which is why I can go ogre-hunting with a grin, even though the stat gain landed in Agility. If it had been Strength, my attack power mid-Leap would have climbed, and that would have been fine in its own way. My damage is already being hauled up as far as it will go by Master of Melee Weapons, though, so squeezing in even one more hit with that amplified power might actually be the better trade. Higher Agility ought to let me slip a little more freely out from under the ogre's swings, too.

I stepped into the Corrupted Forest and Leaped straight into the sky. My body blinked through the air above the towering trees, and a cool wind raked me from head to toe. Is this what flying feels like? It isn't real flight—gravity hauls me right back down—but I didn't care. I turned a full circle, searching for a Corrupted Tree that rose higher than the rest.

Far off, I found one. A single tree, thick as the world all on its own and tall as a pillar holding up the sky, standing there like a World Tree. Purple mist choked everything around it, and closer in the haze lay so thick that the space looked like a dungeon nested inside a dungeon.

"There."

Still falling, I planted a foot on the empty air and triggered Leap Slash. The world went dark in an instant, and the mist closed over my eyes.

Boom. Boom.

The fog in here was viciously thick. The trees of the Corrupted Forest no longer blocked my sight the way they had outside, but the mist made direction harder to keep than the trees ever had. Through it came the sound of the earth rumbling—an indirect notice that this really was ogre ground.

Run. Even now.

That overwhelming presence reached me even though it wasn't close. An S- rank's majesty, it seemed, could pass for invincible inside the Level 0 Biome. And honestly, I was curious. What were they thinking, planting a thing like this in the Level 0 Biome?

This isn't a game, so a powerful monster sitting in the Level 0 Biome isn't strange on its face. Even in games, there's no law that a Level 0 zone may only hold F-rank, D-rank, or at best C-rank. The devs simply leave those walls out on purpose, so players can enjoy climbing one step at a time without ever slamming into one.

Here, once you think about how much the Rift Dimension holds and how rare it all is, an A-rank dungeon at the edge of the Level 0 Biome—and an S- rank Corrupted Ogre waiting as its boss—stops looking strange at all.

I drew the Sewer Sword, stilled my breath, and listened.

Boom. Boom.

One ogre. Was that the S- rank, or just one among the countless ogres wandering this territory? If it was the former, that was good news for me. From a distance, the stretch buried under this mist—what I was guessing was the Energy of Chaos—had looked wide, and finding the Corrupted Ogre inside it would not have been easy.

If the Corrupted Ogre was the boss standing guard over the Corrupted Tree, then maybe all I had to do was make for the tree. Inside this fog, even that wasn't simple. The moment I entered the mist I Leaped skyward again, and all I got back was fog. I'd expected at least a faint afterimage. Since none came, I'd have to search the hard way.

"Kill one first. Then we'll see."

Finishing the quest quickly would be nice, sure. But as the man running Farming Company, the truth is that the more ogres there are, the better. This would be the Rift Dimension's first S- rank monster. I don't know whether the others are S- rank as well, but even if they're only A-rank, an ogre works a simple kind of magic. Kill it, and the whole corpse turns into money.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

They're the same out in the real world. A Recovery Herb ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠potion is excellent at healing—a fine, ordinary, everyday potion. A potion brewed from ogre blood, though, becomes the base of what's called an elixir, a complete-recovery potion. Ogre blood, with that outstanding regenerative power, is known to show up only rarely, and only in A-rank dungeons and higher. Even hunters of S-rank and above burn themselves out putting down a single one, thanks to regeneration that vicious.

And it isn't just the blood. The regeneration runs through the hide, the tendons, the bones—all of it—so once you butcher one, it's common to auction every cut, the way you'd break down a cow. If the ogre in question has also been steeped in the Energy of Chaos... I'm looking forward to it already.

I suppose I'm something of a clout chaser myself. Watching the world's attention swing my way over this auction, hearing people ask who the seller could possibly be, I can already feel the itch to stock the next one with even better, rarer goods.

Boom.

I still couldn't see it. Following the sound by feel, I made out something enormous standing ahead. A giant tree.

No. It wasn't a tree.

"Shit. That thing is fucking huge."

The ogre was, quite literally, a building. A good sixteen feet tall, and just as broad through the body. Can I actually kill this? The sheer pressure of the thing bore down on me from the outside.

"Were they always this big?"

The ogres I knew weren't anywhere near this size. Ogre or not, there's a limit. They're usually described at around ten feet—about two people stacked on top of each other.

"...Is it the Energy of Chaos?"

Well. This dimension is thick with life force to begin with, and then there's this unknowable Energy of Chaos piled on top of it. Crops and monsters alike pick up a free rank or two as a matter of course, so an ogre living in a mist that might as well be radioactive being a little bigger than usual isn't strange at all. The Level 0 Biome really does have an unusual number of humanoid monsters.

The ogre looked my way. I had to crane my neck all the way back just to be sure it was looking at me, and for a moment the world seemed to dim. There are no shadows in this mist. Nothing to cast one. So how?

The instant I thought it, my vision went black. Instinct alone told me it was the ogre's fist.

Fwip! Boom!

Leap Slash carried me clear, and a fist slammed into the space I'd just left.

"Whoa. Hell of a greeting."

The ogre threw a punch the moment it spotted me. A speed that had no business belonging to a body that size—Agility of at least A, by the look of it. That's cheating. The world has its own rough rule that size and speed scale together, and stats like these smash it. Worse, Agility isn't even this thing's main stat.

Strength and Endurance.

Boom!

It hauled the fist back up and, whether it could see me or not, swung again at once, hunting. That massive bulk came after me, pounding down with the speed and snap of a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠game of whack-a-mole.

"Hm."

A few dodges, and the conclusion settled.

"Fast. I'll give it that. But."

Curiosity got the better of me, so I called up its information. Just as Lee Jihyun's Farming Window had opened, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the ogre's data unfolded in front of my eyes.

In the original Farming World, information only appeared for monsters you'd already finished hunting. This place, apparently, didn't work that way. The same as when Lee Jihyun's Farming Window had come up, calling an info window on the ogre brought the monster's data up whole. So I could hunt with an edge in information. I could work with that.

As expected, the ogre in front of me was not the Corrupted Ogre. It was an ordinary—very much in quotes—A- rank ogre. A young one. The stats were high for an A-, but not as high as I'd pictured.

I'd taken its measure. As it came in again, I leaped straight for the head. The neck was as thick as a tree out of the Corrupted Forest, and it looked tough. I drove the sword through in a blur and cut the way you'd fell timber.

Once. Twice. Twelve times.

Even that endlessly tough hide sheared away in heavy slabs, like slicing tofu.

"GWOOOOOH—!"

The roar shook the forest. The neck was half severed and about to drop, and the ogre snatched at it in a hurry. Blood fountained out—and yet, like a robot halfway through assembly, it jammed the rattling neck back where it belonged. Astonishingly, the wound filled itself in. The neck sealed shut.

I watched that grotesque thing happen right in front of my face.