The Sleeping Ogre
Chris kicked off the ground and shot into the air. A colossal worm, built like an earthworm, burst from beneath the soil and lunged to swallow him. It was enormous, as if three elephants had been lashed end to end.
He flung himself backward on the flight magic he had learned from the demon Tenbo. In that same instant another giant worm tore up through the earth behind him, jaws yawning, and shrieked.
Kuaaaa!
The cry was no mere roar. It was closer to a sonic attack. Chris's skull rattled, and his mind went hazy. He staggered in midair; the flight spell unraveled, and he fell.
He bit the inside of his cheek, hard. Pain snapped him back to himself, and he recast the broken spell and lifted his body once more.
That was when the first worm belched flame. Chris never got clear. The thought that it might breathe fire had not even occurred to him, and he took the blast with nothing he could do about it.
He yanked water-attribute mana into motion and doused himself. The fire went out, but not before his clothes had burned to ruin, leaving him a wreck. A mage who had reached Ring Binding was being run ragged by a mere worm.
He wanted to climb beyond the things' reach, but the lightning the ruins called down frightened him too much to try.
"My turn."
He stirred earth and grass to bind the two giant worms, then hurled wind blades and fireballs. The spells crashed over them in a stutter of impacts and a dull boom. Hide split and charred, and that was all. He had not achieved what he wanted. The bodies were not severed, nor did they catch and burn. Given the worms' absurd size, it was difficult to call it damage at all. They seemed to possess magic resistance.
As if to announce that it was their turn now, the pair struck back. One unleashed a sonic attack. The other spat flame.
Chris dodged and climbed higher, then felt something ominous and dropped his altitude. Any higher, and the lightning would fall.
A bang split the air. Two were already more than he could handle, and a third burst out.
"Damn it."
The curse came on its own. He moved the earth to bind all three, meaning to pin them and run, but the worms simply thrashed and shook the bindings off. The third, to his astonishment, vomited lightning.
On flight magic he slipped part of the bolt and blocked the rest with a shield of power woven from wood and earth mana. Lightning branched, and sparks flew.
Surely another worm won't come.
The surely was what got him. This time two erupted at once and opened their mouths. One sprayed poison. The other sprayed a liquid.
Chris wove through the air, trying to dodge both, but he could not fine-tune his body the way he could on the ground, and he did not get entirely clear. A splash of the liquid struck him, and his skin seared. It was no ordinary fluid. It was a fiercely acidic solution, nastier than hydrochloric acid.
He washed it off with water and dropped to the ground. The lightning kept him from climbing any higher, so running would be the better way to dodge.
He sprinted, and as he ran he lodged a protest.
"Sending worms this dangerous as punishment for damaging a magic circle is a clear case of excessive sentencing. Even a punishment ought to be kept within reason. This is far too much."
He ran for his life, dodging sound waves, gouts of fire, lightning, poison, and acid.
Between a Grand Master's body and the aid of magic such as wind spells, he had just managed to shake the worms when the ground shook.
Again? Another worm, here? No. Surely not.
This time, too, surely betrayed him.
With a heavy thud and a grinding roar, the ground split, and five giant worms reared up.
"Damn iiiit!"
The whole area caved in, and Chris tumbled underground. He tried to fly out of the pit, but three worms came down on him from above. Something was about to pour from those gaping mouths.
Unable to get clear, he looked around. Several holes the worms had dug caught his eye, and he dove into the smallest of them.
Liquid roared down behind him in a rush. If it was not acid, it was venom. He sprinted at full speed ahead of the flood, and to light the dark he formed two fireballs, sending one ahead and floating the other over his head.
Forks appeared along the way. He took the right-hand path every time. That would make the way easier to find when he came back out.
After running a long while, he came upon the corpse of a giant worm, an enormous thing dried stiff as a mummy.
All the while he had been running through the underground cavity, he had felt vibrations—proof the worms were chasing him. At this point the vibration cut off cleanly. For some reason, they had abandoned the pursuit.
Chris let out a sigh of relief and stopped. Then he circled the worm, studying it, touching it, trying it with a wind blade.
Why did it die?
The body was intact, so it had not been hunted.
Did its lifespan simply run out?
That seemed to be it.
He sat leaning against the corpse and healed himself with healing magic. The injuries were all minor, and the treatment did not take long.
He discarded the clothes that had burned to rags. He rose with only his belt and the spatial pouch hanging from it, started off, then turned back and skinned the worm. He could not go around naked.
The hide was tough, and it had magic resistance besides, so peeling it was a struggle. Without a Grand Master's strength he would have sweated at it all day.
With neither needle nor thread, he could not make a proper garment. He layered the hide roughly into something like a skirt, wrapped it around himself, and cinched it with the belt. The spatial pouch he carried in his hand.
He meant to retrace his steps and leave, then turned aside, figuring he would run into the worms that way. He could wait days until they dispersed, but he had no food, and lingering here would be a problem.
He did not want to eat a giant worm. It had been dead a long time, so there was little worth eating, and it stank. The flesh seemed poisonous.
Find another exit.
If there was none, he could use earth magic and bore up through the ground. He took the path behind the worm, then spotted signs of artificial work and stopped short.
This isn't a tunnel a worm bored with its body.
The walls had been cut smooth. Something with hands had dressed them.
Could there be treasure ahead?
Heat flushed through him in an instant.
What if the giant worms were guardians protecting a treasure?
Judging by how powerful those guardians were, the odds of an incredible treasure hidden here were high.
Oh, great ruins—after all that suffering, are you finally offering me a gift?
Hopeful, he walked on. After about two hundred paces he saw a half-destroyed door. He climbed over the wreckage, and a wide cavity opened before him. Deeper inside sat a crude chair of stone, and on that chair sat something he had not expected.
A bulk at least twice a grown man's. A scalp as smooth as a boiled egg, because no hair grew there. Green skin. A solid tail.
An ogre!
He shouted it inwardly. A creature he had only ever read about in fairy tales was sitting in the underground of the ruins. Among legendary beings, dragons were the most famous, and he had learned they were real after entering a magic tower—but he had never thought ogres would be real as well.
Ogres actually exist.
He found himself thinking that other imaginary beings—unicorns, for instance—might truly exist too.
He kept his weight back so he could flee at any moment, and studied the ogre.
Is it alive?
The ogre did not so much as twitch.
The hips he had drawn back crept gradually forward.
How strong is an ogre?
In the old tales, ogres were creatures knights rode out to slay. They were nothing like dragons. If a knight can take one, so can I. Once bitten, twice shy—the giant worms had rattled him so badly that he had started frightening himself ahead of time. I'm a mage. A mage who has grasped Ring Binding. There's no way I lose to some ogre.
Chris approached it.
"It really is huge."
He poked its knee with a finger. The flesh felt dry and crumbly. Dead, it seemed.
Almost like a stuffed specimen.
He flared his nostrils and circled the ogre. Unlike the dead worm, it gave off no smell of rot.
As time passed, his interest dropped quickly.
Better look for the treasure.
He swept the floor first, looking, tapping, even running mana through it. Just an ordinary floor. Next he turned his eyes to the walls, found an unexpected pattern, and threw his head back.
That!
In one corner of the wall was carved a pattern much like the one on the pillar of the gazebo in the cave the demon Tenbo had guided him to.
Chris swallowed and ran to it. As he had with the gazebo's pillar, he poured mana into the pattern, and the lower part of the wall opened like a drawer. He had expected treasure inside. There was none.
"Does it activate a teleportation circle, like the gazebo's pillar?"
He took a mana stone from the spatial pouch and set one into the opening. The wall did not close. He put in another. Still it did not close. Only when he had fed in a third of the mana stones he carried did the wall finally shut.
Something hummed to life. The wall shed light, and that light flowed along the ground toward the chair—the chair the ogre sat in.
In that instant Chris realized things had gone wrong. He dashed over to shove the ogre aside and sit there himself, but the ogre's eyes snapped open, and a hand shot out and seized him by the throat.
Chris saw the hand move clearly and tried to dodge it, but the ogre's hand moved in some uncanny way, and he could not evade it.
"Let go!"
He hammered the ogre's forearm. Chris took pride in his body. In raw strength, he had been confident no one could match him. Yet the ogre took his punches bare-bodied and endured.
"Did you put in the mana stones?"
It even spoke.
"A monster that talks!"
"Monster? Are you talking about me?"
"Yeah."
"Ha ha ha ha."
Astonishingly, the ogre laughed like a person.
"The things one hears from an uncivilized human."
"Eat this!"
Chris unleashed Death's Finger. Fierce mana stabbed for the ogre's eye, but the ogre simply tilted its head aside and dodged with ease.
Then it released Mental Force and swept it over Chris's body.
"You are a mage, though... A mage pulling an amusing trick."
Chris was startled enough to jump out of his skin.
"Mental Force! A monster using magic!"
And its realm was Ring Binding.
"Why do you keep calling me a monster?"
"Because you are one. You're a monster, aren't you?"
"A rude human. I could tear you apart and eat you alive, but..."
In that moment Chris attacked with a spell he had triggered in secret. Wind blades tried to shred the ogre. Flames tried to burn it.
The ogre raised a barrier, turned every attack to nothing, and tightened the hand on Chris's throat.
"Ghk."
Choked, Chris made a strangled sound.
"In light of the service of waking me, I won't kill you."
Then it eased the pressure in its hand a little.
Magic would not work. Strength would not work. Chris's spirit sank, and he watched the ogre's mood.
"You mean it?"
"I am a person who takes responsibility for my words."
"You're not a person. You're a monster."
"Do you have more mana stones?"
"Mana stones?"
"You woke me with mana stones, didn't you? Don't treat me like a fool. Keep being unpleasant, and I may change my mind."
"Would you let go of my neck?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because if I let go, I think you'll run."
Struck where it hurt, Chris raised his voice for no good reason.
"You said you wouldn't hurt me. Am I not allowed to run?"
"There is something I want to know. What year is it?"
"..."
"Rude human. Why don't you answer? Do you dislike speaking with a monster?"
"Monster or whatever else, you've got me by the throat. There's no way I wouldn't want to answer. It's only that every country uses a different era name, so I thought you might not understand, and I took a moment to think. By the era name of the Grant Kingdom, it is the year 728."