Chapter 27 - 26 : Titan Ogres

Chapter 27: Chapter 26 : Titan Ogres

Chapter 26 : Titan Ogres

The ogres’ roars and the candidates’ shouts mixed with the sound of rifles as the massive body struck the ground.

The ogre falling before Noah’s feet gave the defenders only a brief moment to catch their breath.

Silva reloaded his rifle quickly before moving toward another gap that had opened in the defensive line. As for Charles, he moved between the members of his alliance, directing them whenever the pressure grew on one side, while Noah stayed near one of the carriages, watching the ogres’ movements more than concerning himself with killing them.

He had learnt much from the clashes with these beasts. Their skin and muscles were much thicker than expected, so casting spells at the wrong place would be futile, apart from where he would have to use considerable force. Other parts were better targets.

instant a shot rang out from beside Noah and the bullet went in through the beast’s open mouth.

Another ogre closed in on the defensive line, so Noah fired three ice needles in succession. Shattered against its shoulder, passed by its head, while the third entered near its knee. The hit was not enough to bring it down, but it made its leg stumble for a moment, and in the next

The ogre staggered several steps before it fell.

The escort who had fired glanced at Noah for a moment, then went back to reloading his rifle without saying anything.

Noah developed a headache from how often he had been intervening. Only weeks ago he had been a noble enjoying his pampered life, continuing to study magic and develop his own strength, but now he had ended up as a babysitter moving back and forth to provide chances of survival for people he had no connection to whatsoever.

Almost everything was going the way he wanted.

The ice barrier he had made earlier, then limited uses of frost. All of these could be explained by good talent and precise control over magic, without suggesting that he had already reached the peak of the low grade.

Had Noah not intervened continuously, many of the escorts would have been wounded and many of the nobles would have died needlessly, which might have increased the pressure on him and forced him to display some power.

But as the battle went on, something else began to bother him.

For the first time, he felt that hiding his strength could become a restriction instead of a trump card.

Noah looked towards the rear carriages, where the noble mages who were supervising the caravan stood.

Not one of them had moved.

Despite many candidates and escorts having fallen, no concern was evident. One stood with arms folded, the other sat near his carriage, seemingly observing a training exercise.

Noah focused his mana perception for a moment, but he stopped before it stretched too far in their direction.

After reaching his current level, he had become able to sense the degree of danger that strong sources of mana posed better than the other candidates. He did not know the exact grade of these mages, but he was certain of one thing: if they wanted to end this battle, ordinary ogres would pose no real problem for them.

"Then there’s no need for me to be the fool."

If the very people tasked with protecting the caravan were still able to stand and watch what was happening without intervening, there was no reason for him to expose his power in order to save others.

Noah was determined to preserve his position and image until the supervisors decided to end it.

He continued to use magic at roughly the same rate. When he needed to appear fatigued, he made his breathing heavier and lowered his shoulders, as if the mana in his blood was running out.

The minutes passed, and the sun began to disappear little by little behind the peaks of the Mountains of Death.

The shadows stretched between the slopes and the rocks, and visibility grew worse as the light dropped. Fighting in this area was not like fighting on open ground; the mountain passes hid the ogres’ movements, and the sound of their footsteps echoed among the rocks until it was sometimes hard to tell the real direction they were coming from.

The candidates were clearly beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Some withdrew into the carriages after expending most of their mana, while the wounded sat in the inner part of the circle, trying to staunch their bleeding with whatever cloth they could find.

Even the escorts were finding it harder to fight with the same ease.

The rifles were powerful, but they were not an ideal weapon against the ogres’ bodies.

As for Charles, he kept moving among his group despite the signs of fatigue that had appeared on him.

"Don’t waste mana on their chests!" he shouted, pointing at one of the ogres. "Aim for their legs and joints! We don’t need to kill them ourselves, just give the escorts a chance to shoot!"

Noah looked at him for a few seconds.

At first, he had considered Charles merely the son of a Golden House who knew how to gather a few nobles around himself thanks to money and status. But since entering the Mountains of Death, a different side of him had begun to show.

Charles was not the strongest in the group, and he was no expert at fighting, but he was able to watch what was happening and adjust his decisions quickly.

"...Not bad."

After another stretch of fighting, the numbers of advancing ogres began to drop.

Their corpses piled up around the circle of carriages, and some of them started to hesitate to approach after seeing the members of their pack fall one after another.

One of the candidates breathed a sigh of relief and said:

"I think they’re starting to retreat..."

He did not finish his words.

A deep roar rose from among the mountains.

It was not like the sounds the ogres had let out throughout the battle. It was heavier and lower, so much that its echo struck the slopes surrounding the caravan and came back to them from more than one direction.

Noah raised his head.

Some of the ogres stopped attacking.

Moments later, the roar came again.

Noah noticed that two of the ogres who had been pressing on the eastern side of the circle changed their direction at the same time, while three others moved toward a specific part of the defensive line.

The sound came for the third time.

The beasts’ movements changed once more.

Noah’s eyes narrowed.

"They’re receiving orders..."

He could not see the source of the sound behind the rocks, but he did not need to see it to notice the pattern. Each time the roar came, the way the ogres advanced changed.

And that perhaps explained how these beasts had managed to spread around the caravan and try to encircle it before the attack began.

But what happened next made even this discovery seem less important.

The ordinary ogres near one of the mountain passes began to fall back to the sides.

They were not fleeing.

They were clearing the way.

A massive shadow appeared behind the rocks.

At first, Noah saw only a thick arm covered in scars, then the rest of the body appeared gradually. The beast was far larger than the ogres they had fought so far, and its shoulders rose above the heads of some of them with ease. In its hands it held an entire tree trunk, stripped of its branches and turned into a heavy club.

Another appeared behind it.

Then a third.

And a fourth.

Silence fell among some of the candidates for a moment, before Noah heard one of the escorts mutter:

"Titan Ogres..."

The air around the circle of carriages changed at once.

An ordinary ogre already required several candidates or the help of one of the escorts to be dealt with. As for the beasts that had now emerged from among the rocks, one look was all it took for everyone to realize that the difference was not in size alone.