127 A fierce battle

The arrow crossed the cave in the blink of an eye and landed upon arriving at its target, the hidden bandits eye.

Jay had again fired a critical shot and instantly killed his target, getting rid of one possible disturbance during the fight with the giant Ogre.

"SHUT DOOR! ME SMASH LITTLE ONE!" R.

With a thundering voice, Rhash'Korr ordered the other bandit to close the open door behind him and the man did just that.

He jumped out of his stealth and ran the few yards over to the door, pushing the heavy construction until it got shut.

Jay had gotten a little distracted watching the bandit following a humanoid monsters orders, but that proved to have been a mistake the next second.

While the bandits took care of the door, the giant Ogre dashed forward with his weapon held high.

With a force and speed he hadn't expected, the hammer crashed down and Jay was glad he barely dodged in time. At the place where he just stood appeared a big hole in the ground while Rhash'Korr slid further after his attack due to the massive weight and inertia he brought with him.

Without second thought, Jay used this moment and fired an arrow towards his big opponent. At least he had no trouble hitting it with that much surface to strike at. Accompanied by a whistling sound, the arrow beamed through the air and in no time hit the giant Ogre.

The damage it dealt was… negligible.

Still eyeing his opponents heath bar, Jay readied another arrow and shot it after the first. Rhash'Korr had caught himself by then and was again dashing after Jay.

He was only some few yards away when the shot arrow simply bounced off his muscular shoulder.

"ARGH… STOP LITTLE ONE! ME CATCH!" R.

Shouting out loud, the Ogre went after Jay who had dodged it's tried tackle and was keeping his distance.

In the following two minutes he only had to dodge the giant hammer two times and kept on running in circles through the cave.

While his opponent was absurdly strong and had a massive health pool, his movements were slow and cumbersome.

This way Jay had instantly come up with his tactic for the fight, and that was grinding him down with his bow. His only fear was if the weapon would hold out long enough at first, but after the first arrows he wasn't sure if he would even deal enough damage.

During those minutes Jay had continued to fire arrows and managed to whittle down Rhash'Korr by over a thousand HP, but had lost count of the arrows he fired. It had been so many that the small but previously full quiver he had fetched from his inventory, was running dry. Just then his senses rang alarm and Jay jumped forward out of instinct.

Lucky for him, his last arrow had struck the Ogres nose and seemingly itched the monstrosity so much he even stopped. Otherwise Jay would have jumped right into his path.

Turning around he saw what had been the cause of his surprise.

The bandit he had ignored, had hidden himself again after he closed the door and snuck up on Jay. As latter had been distracted battling the man's boss, he had tried to jump in and back-stab the intruder.

With no weapon at hand, Jay dashed back to his previous position and loaded his fist with lightning. The weak palm strike that followed surprised the bandit as he hadn't guessed the youth to come back for him barehanded and more over not that quick.

As the man was still wondering why this strong adventurer had only punched him so lightly, Jay rushed past him in a ducked pose. Until he got out of the bandits view, latter could only see him smirk when a big shadow closed in.

But to no avail could the bandit move.

As Jay heard a loud bumping sound, followed by a splattering one coming from behind, he jumped to the side.

He managed to do it just in time, as a giant shadow raced through the spot he just was in, just to abruptly stop on the cave wall Jay had been running to.

What had happened was simple:

Jay had managed to completely enrage the giant Rhash'Korr with his lucky hit to the Ogres nose. That had been the original reason he stopped as Jay guessed and just then he got attacked from behind.

Quick witted as he was, Jay saw his giant opponent dash towards him and turned on his heel.

The bandit had just presented himself as perfect meat shield, and so Jay stunned him with a lightning charged palm and passed him. To his surprise the Ogre had been moving so fast, he ducked down in precaution not to get hit by the gigantic hammer that got swung after him.

Though he barely managed to dodge, the bandit didn't.

What Jay had heard was the man getting struck by the big boulder that was the hammer head, breaking most of the poor man's bones. But as if that hadn't been enough, he got sent flying to the opposite cave wall and was there smashed to pieced from the absurd force.

Taking this as signal, Jay had jumped to the right and let Rhash'Korr pass him only a couple of yards in front of the cave wall.

Dumb as the Ogre was he hadn't paid attention to that and due to his massive weight and the inertia from his dash, crashed into the wall for nearly 300 damage points.

At least this much got reduced from the health bar as Jay had seen.

Looking over to the other wall, Jay saw the outcome of the Ogres hammer strike. The meat paste that was once a bandit kept dripping down the rough stony surface and if Jay hadn't know it, he wouldn't have known for sure if had been a human.

After firing his two last arrows onto the still stuck in the cave wall opponent, Jay dropped the bow and switched his tactics. With the quiver empty and the Ogre still over half of his health, Jay had to speed up a bit.

He has had enough time to study his opponents fighting style and so walked over to him while cracking his knuckles.

It was time for Hit'n'Run tactics.

Rushing in after he boosted his legs with mana, Jay dodged under the backwards swung hammer as the Ogre freed himself. Though he initially was going for a kidney shot, Jay had to punch the similar fat coated flank and did so right under the ribs.

Ripple after ripple appeared on the yellowish skin, until the lightning unloaded and charred the area where Jay's fist made contact.

While all this only took a split second, Jay was able to perceive it all thanks to his absurd martial-arts skill.

The result surprised though.

While the initial punch didn't deal that much damage, the infused magic proved quite effective. But the most damage came from the rebound as the ogre crashed onto the hard wall behind him and even bounced off for a bit.

Jay was long gone by then and already going for a kick to Rhash'Korr's leg.

While that one again hit perfectly, it dealt even less direct damage than the punch. While a grin appeared on his face, Jay took some steps back and waited for his opponent to come.

But as the Ogre took the first step, Jay saw surprise on his face and his grin turned even wider, through more evil as well.

Going in with full speed, he ignored the smashing down hammer and went in close. Then he put strength into his legs and placed a brutal uppercut under his opponents massive belly.

The whole thing began to glow from the freshly applied lightning, and the shifted mass had the giant humanoid stumble backwards. Two steps back he again hit the cave wall, though this time with the back of his ugly head.

This time, the damage from his attack was greater than the one from the rebound, but it was still not enough.

As Rhash'Korr was still rubbing the back of his head, Jay had run around him, Jumped towards the wall and bounced himself off. With the inertia from his parcours move, he closed in on the Ogres back and this time, really went for the kidney.

It had been a little hard to locate on the fat and, while normally human toned, now completely bruised and bloody back. Jay still managed and after a hard right punch, sending all lightning left inside, he followed up with a fire loaded left to the same spot.

Coughing up blood, the Ogre stumbled forward and looked like he had lost his orientation.

While others would have gotten stunned by this and surely stopped moving, Rhash'Korr hurled his giant hammer wildly around instead.

From then on, Jay only needed to dive in four more times and punch vital spots while dodging the gigantic weapon, but it proved no problem. With temporary lost orientation, hamstring applied to his tendons and a fast opponent like Jay, the Ogre had no chances of hitting.

Only as he had barely 200 HP left, did the movement impairing effect run off and Rhash'Korr went for a last attack.

And that was something Jay had anticipated. He could have sped up his attack more but he still had a lot to learn about his skills, so he used his opponent for testing. After his first punch to the Ogre, Jay had lost most of his interest in the fight and just tested out some tactics.

Just then he kept waiting for Rhash'Korr to regain some more orientation and was even waving him over.

With some more clarity in the big and dumb eyes, the humanoid monstrosity looked over to the door Jay was standing in front of. Positioning himself and holding up his Hammer he made ready for another dash.

"YOU WAIT! ME SMASH LITTLE O…" R.

"Shut the fuck up and come!" J.

Jay had flung over a small pebble he picked up and hit the Ogres eye with it, interrupting the dumb and lame lines coming from him. Had he been green and really strong, may be even wearing purple pants, Jay had thought it quite funny, but this was plain stupid.

Just like the next action the Ogre took.

Turning slightly red, the Ogre bent forward and then dashed for Jay faster than ever before. Latter would have a hard time dodging as the distance between them wasn't that great and two diagonal stanchions to the left and right of the door hindered him. But he simply vanished.

The moment Jay reappeared where Rhash'Korr had been a split second before, he saw his giant back close in on the wall and just in time managed to hols his ears shut.

-DOOOOONNNNNGGGGGG-

The metallic sound ringing out, similar to a gong, ended the fight. His defeated opponent fell backwards with his arms spread wide and as Jay tried to analyze him, he learned the Ogre was dead. All that was left to do for Jay, was to search for things to use and clean up his mess.

Cleaning up was exactly right as a certain bandit on the wall was kind of eye catching. Looking there first, Jay saw his left hand, one of the few parts still intact, was holding onto the key even to this point.

As the other hand was lying on the ground some feet to the side, Jay fetched the gloves as well.

It was a simple looking but seemingly very resilient pair of black and finger-less gloves. Analyzing them taught Jay they were even enchanted and granted the wearer a little physical bonus, so he switched them with his own.

__________

Scouting Gloves (rare)

Leather – Hands

Armor 51 Weight 1

[Stamina +4]

[Agility +3]

__________

Though they were a bit tight and Jay had a bit trouble to put them on, they really fit like a glove after he moved his hands around for a bit. With the key secured as well, he simply set the debris aflame and walked over to the other bandit.

Thanks to the only damage being to the man's head, Jay checked on the armor. That was something he had come to do whenever he defeated human opponents.

While most of the items were either the wrong size or simply worse than his own gear, there had been quite some items he found in the last days.

Only the way it worked was a bit irritating for Jay. Whenever he touched the corresponding item he was asked if he wanted to analyze, store or leave it. Once he chose to store it, the item would simply vanish and appear in his inventory.

In the rare case it was a soul-bound item he only had that method to get an item he wanted to take. That sounded nice to Jay at first but he soon learned that underwear was not that common in this world and after he erased some of the pants from his inventory, stopped looting them if not necessary.

The armor he now eyed was a lot better than his current and so Jay took it off. Glad the pants again were worse, he made ready and, while putting on the new dark brown leather armor, snacked on some dried meat again.

He really had gotten hungry.

With nothing else left on the dead bandit, Jay incinerated him as well and left for the big mountain of meat lying in front of the door. On his short way over there, Jay came across the gigantic weapon lying next to the corpse.

The Hammer was simply massive and even upon analyzing it, nothing more than a boulder on a tree trunk.

Only the damage output his system calculated was immense, though the weight was as well.

Jay was guessing the numbers listed there to be pounds, and if he was right, the hammer weighted nearly a whopping 1000 pounds!

Leaving the weapon there, Jay went over to the dead Ogre and circled around the corpse. The moment he looked at it again he cursed at himself.

He should have thought at what the giant had worn, that was only a red loincloth like sash. Like this he had to look at another thick handle peeking out of it, and though Jay instantly looked away, he couldn't forget the picture.

At least there was no need to search the corpse with this, so he only had to think about what to do with the giant and at least 500 pounds heavy pile of meat.

Thanks to the masses of fat, incinerating would have been a dumb idea, so Jay went with the easiest approach and stored the whole corpse into his inventory.

All that was left from the battle by then was the giant hammer that Rhash'Korr had dropped.

Trying to grab the massive handle, Jay noticed his hands couldn't even grab around it as thick as it was. He still gave it a try and to his own surprise, managed to lift it.

The weight was still heavy and Jay instantly knew he couldn't keep this up very long.

Pulling it over to the door, Jay used the key and the moment he turned it, he heard noises of metallic gears running, followed by clicking sounds that signaled the door got unlocked. Next he pulled on the big handle, opened the really heavy door and took a peek behind it.

Like he had anticipated he had already been awaited as another overseer came running for him the moment he opened the door.

A bit irritated by the stupidity of the man, he was of lower level than the bandits in front of the door, and if Jay could defeat those there was no chance for him to manage, Jay received him.

The hammer was still in the door, so Jay simply went with magic and after two fireballs there was no trace of the defier ever having been there.

With this minor distraction taken care of, Jay stepped onto the concrete ground behind the wall and looked around.