The cave ogre roared with sudden, murderous fury. With one ruined eye bleeding purple down its face, it turned toward the kobolds in the trees and stomped their way, one hand already reaching for the trunks as though it meant to shake them down like fruit.
Then it showed what kind of creature it truly was.
The move toward the trees had only been a feint.
Its other arm snapped back toward Walter with terrifying speed, faster than it had moved during the chase.
The hand came low, fingers spread wide enough to seize a man whole.
Walter saw Joji ahead of him, only a dozen strides away now, and let his pace falter for a heartbeat, his face already loosening with the foolish thought that he was safe.
Joji's eyes widened. He drew on Lightness of the Wind and Emerald Blade Wind at once. Air gathered around him in a violent rush. Then he burst forward.
He cut between Walter and the grasping hand an instant before it closed.
Joji drove Protectorate Barrier Wind Arts in a single brutal line. The shield of air slammed into the ogre's hand.
The cave ogre snarled, outraged that a bald little man had the gall to stand between it and its meal.
Joji and Alaric saw well enough in the dark. Something in the ogre's face caught both their eyes at once, and whatever ease had been left in them vanished.
Flesh writhed around the arrow buried in its ruined eye, twitching as it tried to knit the wound shut.
For one hard heartbeat, neither man spoke. Both knew what that meant. A beast would need to gorge on fifty trolls at the very least to steal such an ability, and perhaps a hundred if fortune had not favored it.
"Fuck, that thing heals," Joji barked.
"This creature is already an adult. I think it is feigning stupidity," Alaric said.
The ogre refused to let Walter go. It hurled its crude club after him as he ran.
Alaric moved at once, his light body gliding through the trees like a lark in flight. His dagger flashed. The club split apart in midair. Wood burst into a storm of splinters.
Joji's flicked upward to the dog kobolds clinging to the branches. He needed to finish this fast, or they'll be theo ne treated as a meal next.
The Cave Ogre grinned, thinking the mud had near done the trick. One huge hand scooped up a mass of loose earth and flung it into the trees. Soil and stones hammered bark and bodies alike.
Kobolds shrieked. Blinded and panicked, the little creatures began dropping from the branches in a rain of scrambling limbs.
Alaric knew Joji meant to keep them alive for whatever came next, so he did not let them perish. He lunged beneath the canopy and caught four of them in quick succession, one after another.
He set them down almost as fast as they fell, steadying each just long enough for its feet to find the ground. Their mouths spilled frantic thanks.
"Hurry yourselves away. Go," Alaric commanded.
Joji caught the slackness in the ogre's movement and did not let it pass.
He shot into the air and rose to twice the creature's height, his hand blooming emerald as he poured all the charge of Emerald Blade Wind he could muster into his strike.
The cave ogre shifted at the last moment and offered him its forehead instead.
Joji's face soured the instant his fist landed. He felt a finger dislocate as his blow cracked against the thick skull, and pain shot all the way up his arm.
The skin split open. Pale bone showed beneath. The ogre barely blinked. Then its mouth split wider, and it broke into a mocking laugh that rumbled through the trees.
Alaric left the greater foe to Joji. His bowstring sang, and two arrows flew in quick succession toward the second rank hill ogres. Both struck true in the eyes.
The pair howled at once, clutching ruined faces as they stumbled and thrashed.
Joji narrowed his eyes. The cave ogre should have felt that more.
He pulled his fingers straight with a hard click, setting them back into place, then made a show of readying the same attack again where the beast could see it clearly.
This time the cave ogre reacted at once. It threw both arms over its forehead. Too quick.
Its forearms hid more than caution. They wiped at the blood running from its nose, and its one good eye had begun to droop.
"Old-school fake out, huh," Joji murmured. His lips almost curled.
He let his next blow land against the ogre's guarding forearm instead of forcing through.
Even that made the brute stagger a step back. After that he changed his rhythm.
He mixed kicks into his punches and turned his assault lower, battering the legs. Knees. Calves. The ogre looked caught off guard by the sudden change.
The cave ogre paced with him, swinging kicks and punches as it bought time, hoping to recover enough sight for another sudden trick.
Joji had already read the game. So he played one of his own.
He moved fast, but not too cleanly. Every kick and punch was laced with just enough drag to suggest strain.
Enough to make it seem he was burning through great chunks of stamina to keep up.
As a doctor, he knew how the body gave way. He knew what repeated blows did to joints, and how relentless force wore down tendons and muscle alike.
So he kept working the knees and calves, shaving the strength from the beast a little at a time while it planted itself and endured.
Beyond them, Alaric began drawing the two blinded hill ogres farther off, baiting them away before they could lend aid.
Joji and the cave ogre remained locked together, each waiting for the other to make one wrong choice.
The blows grew lighter with each exchange. The cave ogre felt it. It thought the human was fading at last.
However hard this little bald thing fought, it still had limits, and the beast trusted the thick reserves of its own flesh. Its fat body had weathered worse than this.
When Joji's strikes started to feel more like taps than blows, the cave ogre made its choice.
It called on its aura. A violent red flared around its bulk, the savage kind only beasts could wield.
"Die," the cave ogre growled in the human tongue.
It had killed enough men to learn their tricks, and it thought the fight was already won. It drew back for a straight punch and shifted its stance.
But pain suddenly knifed through its legs.
Its balance gave way at once. Its eyes flew wide. Both legs stopped obeying.
Joji had not been striking at random. With a doctor's knowledge and the old discipline of eastern medicine, he had hammered the beast's vital points until the muscles hardened against themselves and the knees slipped slowly out of place.
The ogre dropped to the ground with a snarl.
This time Joji did not let it breathe. Emerald Blade Wind blazed around his fists as he drove punch after punch into the cave ogre's temples, left and right, right and left.
The beast snarled at first. Then the sound thinned into a pitiful wail.
It tried one last trick, one last twitch of deceit, but Joji did not relent.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
His feet danced as he shifted from one temple to the other, beating the strength out of it until the cave ogre's eyes went dull.
Still, Joji did not stop. He punched again and again.
He only stopped when blood started pouring from its nose, ears, and mouth, and each strike answered with a wet sloshing from inside its skull.
This was a fantasy world. A beast's second wind could still drag him to his grave.