Chapter 405: Tantrum

Roth was already running. The dagger user had finally abandoned the idea that they could fight the creature on ordinary terms, although Darin still seemed reluctant to accept it.

"Do something!"

"I am."

"What?"

"Resting."

Darin’s answer carried clearly across the arena.

The ogre reached them before he could elaborate. Roth dodged one way while Darin fled the other, leaving the two heads arguing over which man to pursue.

The creature actually slowed. One head turned toward Roth, the other toward Darin, and both began roaring.

Kael watched with growing interest.

"Try not to die, they don’t have insurance here in the tower."

Eventually, the ogre chose Darin. Whether that represented agreement or one head simply winning the argument was difficult to tell.

Darin ran faster than Kael had expected. He covered the open ground well, kept his footing when the creature closed in, and rolled clear as the club came down.

Then he turned back.

Kael’s eyes narrowed.

"Good luck with trying to fight that..."

Aura covered Darin’s sword as he slashed across the back of the ogre’s knee. The blade penetrated farther than Kael expected, opening muscle before cutting through a tendon.

The creature stumbled.

Darin tore his sword free and sprinted away as the ogre dropped to one knee, both heads screaming.

For a moment, Kael reconsidered his judgment of the attack. It had been clean and precise. Used properly, the injury could buy Darin enough time to put a respectable distance between himself and the creature.

The audience roared its approval.

Darin looked back.

That was the mistake.

He saw the ogre kneeling and slowed, apparently believing he had accomplished considerably more than he actually had.

The wound was already closing. Muscle drew together beneath the torn Stone Skin, and the flow of blood diminished.

Monstrous Vitality. Ogre regeneration. Whatever was responsible, the injury would not keep it down for long.

"I’d keep moving if I were you!" Kael shouted.

Darin glanced toward him, seemingly surprised by the warning.

Then the ogre stood.

The club struck where Darin had been half a second earlier. He escaped the direct blow, but the impact hurled dirt and stone into his back and sent him rolling across the ground.

He scrambled upright while the creature advanced.

Its injured knee was already supporting its full weight.

Kael shook his head. There was another reason to leave the thing alone. Hurting it meant very little unless the damage was severe enough that regeneration stopped mattering.

A cut tendon bought seconds. Broken bones or deep wounds might buy a few more. Actually killing it required something decisive.

Kael would have aimed for the brain, except there were two of those. The heart was another possibility, but reaching it through Stone Skin, muscle, and a giant rib cage would require a serious strike.

That would reveal considerably more about him than he wanted the Red Sun members to learn.

Darin finally seemed to reach a similar conclusion about fighting the creature. He ran without attempting another attack.

Roth had already been doing so for several minutes, but he made the mistake of retreating toward the outer wall.

Kael saw the problem developing before the man did.

The wall blocked his escape behind him. A collapsed barricade lay to his right, and another raised obstruction closed off the route to his left. With the ogre approaching from the front, Roth had nowhere to run without first climbing over something.

He stopped, looked around, and went pale.

"Darin!"

Darin was much too far away.

"Darin!"

The ogre slowed as it approached. Both heads grinned.

It understood the situation perfectly.

Roth raised his daggers.

Kael sighed.

He did not particularly like the man, and he liked the clan emblem on his chest even less. That did not mean he wanted to watch him get crushed when preventing it required almost no effort.

Kael reached down and picked up a piece of broken stone roughly the size of his fist. He weighed it once, drew his arm back, and threw.

He used no Rune or Internal Energy technique. His physical strength was enough.

The stone crossed the arena like a projectile from a siege weapon and struck the side of the ogre’s left head.

It shattered on impact.

Blood sprayed as the creature stumbled, and both heads turned toward the pit.

Kael remained seated.

He raised one hand.

"Yo."

The wounded head screamed. Its companion snarled, and the ogre took two heavy steps toward him.

"Come on," Kael said.

The creature stopped.

It looked at him, then at the pit, then back toward the corner where it had trapped Roth.

Kael watched something very close to decision-making pass across those ugly faces. The right head growled while the left touched the blood running down its cheek.

Both eyes returned to him.

Kael picked up another stone.

The ogre turned back toward Roth.

"Smart."

Unfortunately for the creature, Roth had used the distraction. He had scrambled over the collapsed barricade and was already sprinting across the arena.

The ogre stared at the empty corner.

Then it slowly turned toward Kael.

Its prey was gone, and it appeared to understand exactly who was responsible.

One head roared while the ogre raised its club and hammered the ground. Dirt and broken stone flew with each impact.

Kael stayed where he was.

"You’re taking this badly."

The crowd responded with another deafening wave of noise. Whether most of them were laughing or screaming had become impossible to tell.

Eventually, the ogre stopped beating the arena floor and looked for its remaining targets.

Darin was running along the far side. Roth had reached a pillar and ducked behind it, apparently forgetting everything Vesk’s death should have taught him.

"Don’t hide behind the fucking walls," Kael called.

Roth either failed to hear him or decided the advice did not apply.

[28:16]

Kael leaned back against the broken pillar.

He could help them more. Drawing the ogre away and keeping it occupied would make the remaining time easier for both men. He had already demonstrated that he could manage the chase.

But they had shown no intention of treating him as a teammate until they needed one. Whatever purpose they had assigned him in the holding chamber, it had not involved asking for his opinion or including him in their preparations.

Now they wanted him to serve as bait for the rest of the hour.

He had warned them from the beginning. Keep moving. Preserve distance. Stop trying to kill something they could not handle. The barriers could interrupt a pursuit, but anyone who stopped behind one was simply waiting for the club to arrive.

They had ignored him until their approach stopped working.

Kael had no intention of spending the remainder of the match compensating for that decision.

Darin and Roth continued running while the Twin-Headed Ogre pursued them. Kael watched from beside the pit, shifting his position whenever its attention returned to him and keeping the opening available if it decided to resume their earlier chase.

He did not need to kill it, prove anything to the crowd, or carry the other Climbers through the challenge.

The timer simply had to reach zero.

Judging by the panic spreading across Darin and Roth’s faces, Kael was beginning to suspect he was the only person in the arena who actually understood that.