Zeke lay on the ground, peeking over the cliff to see an enormous cavern spread out below him. It was at least a few hundred yards across, and twice as deep. He glanced up; even from where he lay, which was around forty feet up from the cavern floor, he could scarcely see the ceiling. However, the cavern’s staggering dimensions weren’t what truly caught his eye. No – that distinction was held by the village that took up the centermost portion of the space.

Comprised of lean-tos, huts, and a single, central building that was the only truly sturdy piece of construction he could see, the village was home to more than a hundred trolls. Some were adolescents. Others were juveniles. Still others were simply labeled Adult Troll. However, it was the addition of a half-dozen Troll Warriors that gave him pause. All of them were armed with spears, axes, or clubs, and they’d even donned some rudimentary armor. More, they were half-again as tall as any of the others and packed with dense muscle. They were powerful creatures, and Zeke couldn’t help but wonder how he’d fare in a fight. However, his intuition told him that even though he’d mostly recovered over the course of the past week that he’d spent exploring the cave system, he wouldn’t survive a straight-up fight with the troll village. There were simply too many of the monsters.

But that didn’t mean Zeke couldn’t do anything. Slowly, he lowered himself from the cliff to lightly fall to the ground below. He barely made any noise, and he was far enough from the encampment that he went completely unnoticed. And besides, most of the trolls had retreated into their respective huts, presumably to sleep. Night and day were undiscernible in the caves, but the trolls clearly had some sense of it. Since he’d begun observing them a few days before, Zeke had mapped out their pattern, so he was certain that he had some time until the majority of the trolls arose – which was perfect for what he had planned.

Zeke crept toward the camp, using the surrounding forest of stalagmites for cover until he reached his destination. Around the camp was a crude palisade of sharpened stakes that only opened in two spots on opposite sides of the rudimentary village. On the far side, there were a trio of troll warriors, each coming in at level nine. However, for some reason Zeke couldn’t discern, there was only a single warrior guarding the village entrance closest to him. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Zeke gradually inched towards that solitary warrior, intently watching him the entire way.

His target was level ten, which made it the most powerful enemy he’d seen inside the caves, and even without [Inspection], Zeke would’ve immediately marked him as the most dangerous creature in the village. Not only did the monster carry itself with an air of confidence that none of its brethren possessed, but it also seemed the best equipped. In addition to the iron-tipped spears that were so common amongst the trolls, it also had a long, iron dagger strapped to its bulging thigh. But even if it’d been unarmed, its power would have been undeniable, because it was almost half-a-foot taller than any other troll Zeke had seen, and its scaly musculature was peerless among its brethren.

But that didn’t mean Zeke was scared. Certainly, his blood was up, and adrenaline had already begun to course through his veins. But he was confident in his abilities. Besides, he would have the jump on the powerful troll – because, for all its clear power, day after uneventful day of guarding the same spot had taken its toll, and the monster had lapsed into inattentive laziness. Even as Zeke crept within a few yards, he went completely unnoticed; in fact, the thing stared ahead with half-lidded eyes that suggested that it was only barely able to maintain wakefulness.

And that suited Zeke just fine.

Once he’d gotten close enough, Zeke sprang into motion, using every bit of his impressive strength to launch himself at the unsuspecting troll. He covered the distance in an instant, his club arcing through the air with unmatched menace. The troll never had a chance, and the moment Zeke’s weapon collided with the monster’s head, the fight was over, even before it had really started.

The club hit the side of the hideous creature’s face with an audible crunch, ripping into it with the force of a fallen meteor. The head didn’t precisely explode like a watermelon, but that description wasn’t really that far off from accuracy. The troll remained upright for a brief instant before its body recognized that without a head, it couldn’t keep going. Once it did, the nine-foot-tall monster crumpled into a heap of lifeless scales and muscle.

Zeke landed hard, but he rolled to dissipate his momentum, falling just short of the palisade before leaping back to his feet, ready for anything. However, the first part of his plan had gone off without a hitch; the village remained just as silent as before he’d begun his attack. Zeke let out a small sigh of relief. He didn’t relish fighting a hundred trolls at once, and he wasn’t at all confident in his ability to escape, should it come to that. Before, he’d been saved by falling into the river, and he knew he couldn’t count on such fortune again. If he did, he’d wind up dead sooner rather than later.

He approached the still-twitching troll corpse, ignoring the tendrils of ruined flesh vainly trying to stitch themselves together. The things had insane vitality, so they could recover from almost any wound, most of the time healing at visible speed. However, without a brain, it was all for naught. Kneeling, he first recovered the thing’s dagger. It was almost as long as Zeke’s forearm, and it was closer to a machete than a knife. It was also jagged and crudely made, but it was a sight better than the stone-bladed knife in his pouch. So, he quickly unstrapped the harness that had held it in place on the troll’s thigh and adopted it as his own. The spear, he left where it was; while it was a useful weapon that he could use in a pinch, he felt little affinity for it, and he much preferred his club. Besides, a sturdy, thick-headed club was better suited to take advantage of his monstrous strength.

In any case, he didn’t have time to stand around and think about his weapon choices. Instead, he quickly darted through the gap in the palisade and into a deep shadow beside one of the huts. Just as he suspected, Zeke heard loud snores coming from inside. No less than three, no more than five. If it was the former, he shouldn’t have any issues. The latter, and he’d have to rethink his strategy, at least for now.

Using the crude, wooden hut as cover, Zeke crouched low and crept toward the makeshift building’s entrance. It was just an opening with the skin of some unrecognizable animal acting as a curtain; the skin itself was mostly hairless, and the curtain was comprised of multiple pieces that had been stitched together with a thick, sinewy thread. Though it had been cured, Zeke still found it disgusting, but he shoved his revulsion to the back of his mind as he stepped through the opening to see four huddled forms inside the hut.

Every movement – even the rustling of the leathery curtain – sounded loud in his ears, but as he slowly inched forward, the trolls sleeping inside failed to react. The hut itself was fairly large, so even the hulking forms of the unconscious trolls had plenty of room to stretch out. More importantly, there was enough space between them that Zeke could go forward with his plan. If they’d been piled atop one another, he would’ve had to adjust on the fly, and that kind of improvisation, especially when he was skating along a razor’s edge in the first place, would’ve likely proven disastrous.

Zeke knelt beside his first target, and for a moment, doubt bloomed in his mind. The trolls were monsters. They had proven that from the moment he’d first been attacked by the larva. However, the fact that they had villages and worked together told him that they were at intelligent, thinking beings. And he was about to kill them, not because he’d been attacked, but rather in cold blood. Certainly, if any of them had seen him, he had no doubt that he would’ve been attacked with extreme prejudice, but did that give him the right to butcher them like animals?

Probably not, but for the fact was that he didn’t really have much of a choice. After all, he had no intention of living in the caves forever. He probably could survive, given the prevalence of the blue-spotted mushrooms and the abundance of water, but what kind of life would that be? He wanted to get stronger. He needed to push forward. And the trolls were standing in his way.

With that in mind, Zeke unstrapped his new dagger from his thigh, lofted it above his head in a two-handed grip, then plunged it deep into the sleeping troll’s brain. The thing gave a soft grunt, but it died without any other sound. Zeke felt the familiar energy flow into him and make its way to his core, accompanied by a feeling of revulsion. Killing a creature in battle was one thing, but what he’d just done would be better categorized as murder. Necessary, sure, but that didn’t mean he had to feel good about it, even if the creature he’d just killed was a hulking monster that would’ve attacked him on sight.

Zeke took a deep, silent breath. He was in the middle of a troll hut, and the smallest mistake would have him surrounded by almost a hundred monsters who wanted to kill him. This was no time to think about the morality of a preemptive strike. Even so, he couldn’t wholly eliminate the thoughts as he snuck to the next closest troll and repeated his actions. Less than five minutes later, all four trolls had been killed, and he still hadn’t been discovered. On the surface, it had gone as well as Zeke could’ve ever hoped. But still, a sense of unease had draped itself over his shoulders like a blanket. He didn’t like fighting like this, and if he was honest with himself, it probably didn’t have anything to do with morality.

If nothing else, Zeke had always been a straightforward kind of guy. He almost unfailingly said what he meant, and he’d moved through his life without much in the way of guile. His rebirth hadn’t changed that, either. He could fight and kill all day long and feel little remorse, but sneaking around and murdering creatures that had no chance of fighting back? That just felt wrong to him on a fundamental level. But right or wrong, it was necessary because he couldn’t very well fight a hundred trolls at once. He needed to thin the herd, and to do that, he had to adopt underhanded and distasteful tactics.

After the fourth troll had died just like the other three, Zeke went back to the opening and dragged the disgusting leather curtain an inch or two to the side, giving him a view of the rest of the village. His infiltration had so far gone completely unnoticed, so he quickly snuck out and, sticking to the shadows, crept to the next hut. He repeated his actions without issue, then went on to the next. Then the next. All in all, over the next few of hours, Zeke murdered almost eighty trolls, and with each kill, he felt his sense of unease grow.

Perhaps that was why he made his first mistake. Or maybe it was always going to happen sooner or later; after all, killing a hundred trolls without alerting the rest of the village was always a longshot of a plan. In fact, when he’d begun Zeke had fully expected that he’d be forced into retreat, and he’d already planned a route and everything. But still, as he’d killed one troll after another, he’d begun to hope he could get by without a pitched battle.

The dagger strike was only a little off target, but it was enough that it didn’t immediately kill the troll beneath him. Zeke immediately struck again, but it was no use. The damage had been done. Having been mortally wounded, it let out a wordless shriek, waking up the other troll in the hut. The monster sprang to its feet surprisingly quickly, and it only took it an instant to recognize the threat Zeke posed. It rushed him, swinging its wicked claws with lethal intent.

In his old life, Zeke would’ve fallen all over himself as he tried to get away. After all, he’d never been much of a fighter. However, months of living in the dangerous cave system and fighting one life-or-death battle after another had honed his battle instincts to a razor’s edge. So, he didn’t hesitate for even an instant before he acted, ducking under the troll’s claws and lashing out with the machete-like blade. Driven by Zeke’s superhuman strength, it bit deep into the troll’s belly, slicing it open in a wound reminiscent of the one Zeke had gotten during his most recent battle. He knew it wouldn’t be a mortal wound; after all, if Zeke’s vitality was enough to see him through such an injury, then the troll would shrug it off in a matter of hours. However, Zeke knew just how much it would hurt, and no matter how quickly the trolls healed, they could still feel pain, and Zeke was banking on just that to distract the monster.

The troll’s claws missed by barely an inch, and its momentum sent it lumbering into the hut’s flimsy wall. With a crash, it burst through the upright logs, snapping them like twigs and gaining more than a few more wounds in the process. Zeke skidded to a stop, then pivoted and sprang back toward the monster, his blade at the ready. The troll was tangled in the broken and scattered remnants of the wall, so it only took Zeke a second to deftly end its life by way of decapitation. Even as its head rolled free, though, Zeke knew that the damage had been done.

He glanced around, and he saw the remaining two-dozen trolls emerging from their huts, and unlike the one he’d just dispatched, most were armed and ready for a fight. Not that long ago, Zeke had run from half as many monsters, but that was after he was wounded and exhausted. This time, though, he was well-rested and mostly healed. What’s more, less than half of the remaining monsters were warriors. So, he felt at least moderately confident that he could emerge victorious.

And besides, after assassinating so many of the village’s residents, he was itching for a straight-up fight, even if it was a little lopsided. On top of that, he could sense that he was on the verge of gaining a level, and he was banking on the accompanying surge of vitality to give him a mid-battle reprieve.

Without any further hesitation, Zeke picked up his club from where he’d left it when entering the hut, then launched himself at the nearest trio of trolls. He swung his club with reckless abandon, perfectly willing to sacrifice his own safety if it meant quickly thinning out his attackers. His strategy was rewarded when his first grouping of attacks struck true, exploding one of the troll’s heads while sending its hut-mates staggering to the ground, where Zeke quickly dispatched the stunned creatures with practiced ease. He also gained a few long, jagged lacerations on his arms and chest, but they were shallow and easily ignored – especially when the alternative was a distraction that would undoubtedly get him killed.

Immediately after crushing the third troll’s head, Zeke darted past them, using the ruined hut as cover. If he let himself be surrounded, he wouldn’t survive his raid. So, he kept moving, weaving between the huts so he could spring from the shadows and ambush the remainder of the enraged trolls. And one after another, they fell to his club. It was so much easier than he’d expected, primarily because they couldn’t seem to pin him down. It didn’t hurt that he could fell each of them with a single blow; they were creatures that relied on their insane vitality and impressive strength to win fights, but Zeke was dexterous enough that he could easily hit his intended targets without sacrificing any strength. So, unless they managed to block – which they really weren’t conditioned to do, given their style of simply taking whatever their opponents could dish out and relying on their regeneration to see them through – Zeke made quick work of them, nullifying their advantage in regards to vitality. On top of that, he was agile enough that their strength was mostly irrelevant, as he simply dodged most of their blows.

Still, there were a lot of them, so it took Zeke quite some time to whittle them down to only a pair of remaining warriors. These were a little stronger, a little quicker, and far smarter than any of the rest of them, save for the one he’d first killed – though that hulking warrior had never had a chance to react. Even so, it quickly became clear that they were outmatched – Zeke had indeed gotten a level, and his quick allocation of points into agility and dexterity had only further stretched the gap between him and his opponents. Still, he picked up more wounds in that final leg of the battle than he’d gotten in the entirety of fights before, and by the time he finally managed to crush the skull of the last troll, who’d fallen after Zeke had destroyed both of its kneecaps with a well-timed sweep of his club, he looked like he’d been thrown into a meat grinder.

Zeke’s entire body was a bloody mess of lacerations, stab wounds, and bruises, but it only took a brief mental inventory of his body to figure out that he wasn’t seriously injured. Just a couple of broken bones, a few internal injuries, and countless cuts – nothing his vitality couldn’t make fairly quick work of.

All in all, the fight had gone far better than he had any right to expect. He’d killed close to a hundred trolls, and he’d gotten a level as well. In addition, he’d finally found something he’d wanted since the first night he’d spent in that cold, damp cave system – firewood. Truly, it had been a profitable battle, and the last bit had even washed some of the bad taste his previous tactics had left in his mouth.

But he knew he wasn’t done, and he suspected that he’d have far more blood on his hands before he escaped the caves that had been his home for the past couple of months. So, he mechanically went about taking stock of his gains, and when he did, he couldn’t help but smile at how much progress he’d made in only a couple of short months.