Week 9 Midterms (15)
"KRAAAAAGH—!"
The instant the Disciplinary Committee members came through the portal, the Alpha Ogre charged straight at them. The lightning Song Cheon-hye had hurled must have caught its full attention, because the beast came shaking the very earth, closing the distance at a terrifying speed.
Even faced with the thing, the Disciplinary Committee's response was calm and swift. The close-range classes quickly formed a front line to receive it, and as the Alpha's log came swinging down, Jo Byeok thrust a fist out to meet it—
- KWAANG!
With a detonating boom, the log shattered into splinters that whirled through the air. Jo Byeok was knocked back by the impact as well, but he righted his stance as if nothing had happened and carried on with the fight.
- KRRRUMBLE!
Song Cheon-hye kept raining down lightning while taking command of the Disciplinary Committee members.
"We'll whittle it down slowly. Nobody overextends."
"It's a boss-grade ogre with a Blood Explosion Pill in it on top of that. Be even more careful."
And with that, I quietly handed command over to Song Cheon-hye—my reputation still wasn't the greatest. From their perspective, I was some unheard-of 600-point nobody. So for now, rather than step forward and needlessly stir up resentment, it made far more sense to leave things to Song Cheon-hye, one of the strongest fighters the Disciplinary Committee had.
Of course, I had already briefed everyone beforehand on exactly what to do against the Alpha. In other words, I was playing the hidden mastermind.
"KRAAAAGH!"
With its log destroyed, the Alpha Ogre flailed its massive limbs, trying to batter and kick away the humans surrounding it. The melee fighters slipped past each swing and neutralized them, and in the next breath swordsmen like Han So-mi, Go Hyeon-woo, and Geum Johan leapt in, blades flashing.
- SHRAK-SHRAK-SHRAK!
Shallow sword wounds piled up across its upper body one after another. The ranged classes attacked from the rear while covering the front line at the same time—Park Nari poured out wide-area healing magic in steady waves, while Gwak Ji-cheol and Jeong Su-ji endlessly bound the beast with vines and mud.
With twenty fighters clinging to it, the Alpha Ogre that had been rampaging like a maddened bison was finally pinned in place. The Hyneum Jade Demon Finger I had driven into it earlier was surely doing its share of the work too—and with the frost gradually spreading through its entire body, the longer the fight dragged on, the more the odds tilted our way.
But it was too early for optimism. Phase 2 was still to come.
In a boss raid, difficulty shifts dramatically once you cross a certain threshold, and crossing one is described as entering the next "phase." For the Alpha Ogre, the moment its health dropped below a certain point it would let out a tremendous roar—and everything after that roar was Phase 2. That phase was brutally difficult, which was exactly why we had gathered as much support as we possibly could. And once it began, we would need to finish things as fast as possible.
Because the moment it roared, the advantage would flip straight back to the enemy.
So how did we put the beast down quickly? Simple: pile on as much damage as we could before it crossed into the next phase—before it could roar.
I pulled out a Paralysis Scroll.
Song Cheon-hye caught my eye, and after a lightning-fast exchange of looks, she gave the order.
"We're using the Paralysis Scroll! Everyone, get ready."
Then she asked me, a little sidelong,
"...That holds it for how many seconds?"
The Paralysis Scroll froze its target in place for a set duration, and how long that lasted depended on the target's individual stats. A Beheader Goblin, for instance, stayed locked down for fifteen to twenty seconds. An ogre, around five. Which meant a berserked Alpha Ogre would be...
"A little under two seconds."
"Understood."
An eternity if you called it long, an eyeblink if you called it short. Either way, we would have to squeeze every last drop out of those two seconds.
"KRAAAGH!"
Jo Byeok drove a fist out to meet the Alpha's swinging punch. With an explosive crack he was shoved backward, feet skidding across the ground—but before the beast could follow up, I stepped forward and tore the Paralysis Scroll open in one clean pull.
Paralysis Scroll
- FLAAARE—!
Brilliant light erupted outward and settled over the beast. Shimmering with radiance, the Alpha froze solid exactly as it stood. In the next breath, the twenty fighters surrounding it unleashed the strongest skills each of them possessed.
Beomi, a single streak of light raking its claws; Go Hyeon-woo's Clear Stream, converging with silken precision; Han So-mi's cold, vicious sword aura; Hong Yeon-hwa's fire arrows swooping in like a phoenix; Song Cheon-hye's massive bolt of lightning—
- KWAKWAKWAKWAKWA—!
When the storm of skills had swept through, the Alpha Ogre's body was a mangled wreck, not a single patch left whole. Even its one remaining eye had taken Seo Ye-in's sniper round and gone blind. And at that very moment, the Paralysis Scroll's effect ran out.
Freed from its bindings, the beast swayed for the barest instant—then sucked in an enormous breath and split its maw wide, roaring with every ounce of force it had left.
"KROOOOOAR—!!"
The eardrum-rending cry echoed again and again, and for a moment everyone faltered, cowed by its sheer ferocity. Of course, cowing its enemies was not what the beast intended.
- THUD, THUD, THUD,
- THUD, THUD, THUD,
Heavy footsteps, closing in fast. It wasn't hard to guess what was making that sound—ogres. Worse still, there wasn't just one set of footsteps. From the left, from the right, and from behind. Three confirmed already, with no guarantee that was the end of them.
Phase 2 had begun. The Alpha's roar carried an effect that summoned every one of its kin in the region, meaning that from here on we would be facing the Alpha and a whole pack of ogres at once. Taking them all on together offered no chance of victory whatsoever—
which left only one option: pick them off one by one.
So, exactly as I had instructed beforehand, Song Cheon-hye swiftly divided our forces.
"We're splitting into two teams of four and two teams of six."
On the spot, she assigned two four-man teams and two six-man teams. The four-man squads were drawn mostly from the Disciplinary Committee, while one of the six-man teams took the comparatively weaker fighters—Baek Jun-seok, Gwak Ji-cheol, Shin Byung-cheol, and the like.
With three teams dispatched in three directions, the number of people left to deal with the Alpha came to a mere six: me, Go Hyeon-woo, Jo Byeok, Song Cheon-hye, Hong Yeon-hwa, and Seo Ye-in. A lineup with my fingerprints all over it. For landing the finishing blow, it was the best combination there was.
"Krrrrrgh..."
Even as it staggered, the Alpha Ogre turned its body to face us squarely. Both its eyes were blind—it couldn't see a thing—yet it seemed to track us through sheer monster instinct and smell alone.
Jo Byeok and Go Hyeon-woo stepped forward, trading a few words between them.
"So this is how I come to witness your skill. Had it been possible, I would have preferred we meet as rivals in a proper bout."
"Haha, my sentiments exactly. For now, let us simply survive. So long as we draw breath, there will be chances aplenty to cross blades, will there not?"
"...That is true."
The corner of Jo Byeok's expressionless mouth curled upward, just a fraction. The two of them fixed their gazes on the Alpha once more, then kicked off the ground without either one bothering to go first.
"KRAAAAGH!"
As the pair closed in at speed, the Alpha reflexively took a huge stride and swung both arms. Go Hyeon-woo bent the first arm's trajectory aside with Following Stream; Jo Byeok hurled a punch that batted the second away. The kicking leg, Go Hyeon-woo deflected smoothly off to the side.
Meanwhile, I spoke to the three in the rear, Song Cheon-hye among them.
"Let's wrap this up. I'll keep it pinned so it can't move."
"Understood."
"Got it."
Song Cheon-hye flung one hand high into the air as if pointing at the heavens. Currents of electricity sparked from her fingertips and shot up into the sky one after another.
- KRUMBLE,
The ink-black clouds overhead drank in ever-stronger currents, thunder rolling through them.
"..."
Hong Yeon-hwa, for her part, began tracing a Fire Pillar magic circle beneath the Alpha's feet—a great ring filling itself in with geometric figures and script, glowing crimson.
- BANG! BANG!
Seo Ye-in had settled into position a short distance away, continuing her sniping with single-minded focus on one target and one target only: the Alpha's heart.
I couldn't very well stand idle either, so I joined the front line, adding my own pressure to keep the Alpha Ogre from leaving its spot. I wove the thunderclouds in to soften the impacts Go Hyeon-woo and Jo Byeok were absorbing, and every time the beast tried to take a step forward, I shoved it right back with Wind Force.
- WHUMP! WHUMP!
"KRAAAAGH!"
After a few rounds of this, the beast seemed to figure out who was getting on its nerves most. The punches and kicks that had been spread evenly among the three of us now came aimed at me and me alone.
Frankly, that was a favor. Dodging was the one thing I had complete confidence in. Stepping lightly with Thief's Step, I circled the beast round and round with the greatest of ease—and by the time I had kept the Alpha spinning in place like that for a while, the black clouds above had crackled past mere current and become clouds made of lightning itself, while the crimson circle on the ground stood complete.
Behind me, Song Cheon-hye shouted.
"Get clear!"
The three of us unleashed one last barrage and put distance between ourselves and the beast. The next instant, a pillar of lightning hammered down from the sky while a pillar of fire erupted from the earth, the two meeting in the middle.
Heavenly Punishment Summon × Fire Pillar
- KRAKAKAKAKA—!!
- KWAAAAAAAH—!!
The column of mingled lightning and flame swallowed the Alpha whole. We held our distance, eyes locked on the inferno, next skills primed and ready to resume the fight at a moment's notice.
But thankfully, that proved unnecessary. Song Cheon-hye's and Hong Yeon-hwa's magic died down, and in the middle of the scorched devastation—looking for all the world as if a bomb had just dropped—the Alpha Ogre stood motionless.
"Krrrgh..."
Its body twitched faintly, as if barely clinging to its last thread of life—
- BANG—!
—and then Seo Ye-in's final shot drove home into its heart. With that, the Alpha's bulk slowly tipped backward and settled onto the ground with a heavy thud.
"..."
"..."
Everyone stared at the fallen beast in silence. None of them quite seemed able to believe they had actually brought it down. But as reality gradually sank in, sighs of relief spilled out one after another.
Hong Yeon-hwa and Song Cheon-hye each managed a few words.
"We... we got it...!"
"We did it...!"
- KUKUKUNG,
Just then, a rumble rolled in from the distance, snapping everyone back to their senses. We had felled the mightiest of them, the Alpha—but the ogres it had summoned still remained. If we wanted to secure our safety, we had to bring them down as well.
Song Cheon-hye made a suggestion.
"Let's split into pairs again."
"Sounds good to me."
We broke into three pairs and charged off. Or rather, only the other two pairs sprinted away—Seo Ye-in and I never managed to get moving.
I asked.
"What's wrong?"
"Zero percent..."
The sloth's battery had apparently drained completely after the string of battles. Left without a choice, I turned my back to Seo Ye-in.
"Let's take down one more ogre—no, make it two—then rest. Hop on for now."
"Mm..."
Seo Ye-in climbed onto my back and looped her arms around my neck. And in that state, I kicked off the ground.
"Grrrrgh..."
An ogre crumpled to the ground, unable to withstand the onslaught. No more roars, no more heavy footsteps—only the steady drum of rain kept pouring down.
- SHHHHHH—
The one we had just felled was the last. As if to drive the point home, a notification message surfaced at the edge of my vision.
[Main Quest 1] — COMPLETE
[Commencing settlement.]
[192] The Support Ate it All