Mal-Chin floated in an absolute black void except for the respawn message. It felt like no other sensation he had ever had. It was almost like floating in the water yet there was no weight of buoyancy against his skin, no temperature variation, no sensation at all in fact. He called up his combat log.

System

Combat

He could only laugh at the message. The result from the strike Mag-Feesa delivered was a disorientating sensation, doing cartwheels with his head. Despite that, the gruesomeness of the attack, it had happened so quickly Mal-Chin hadn't felt a thing. For that he was grateful.

After a minute with the non-sensation he figured that was enough time spent on the experience, he mentally selected the [Release Now] option.

Gradually sensation began to reemerge for him. It was a gradual thing rather than instantaneous. Light and gravity gradually exerted themselves upon his body. This resulted in the uncomfortable feeling of lying on rounded cobblestones as his body gradually depressed into them. His head rocked to one side following the stones curvature. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his body rather than the nothingness that was the void of in between. He raised his arm up to block the light that he could feel bearing down on his eyelids before trying to open them. Even so, the brightness of the day made him blink until his vision adjusted, slowly he propped himself up on his elbow. His vision was impaired, he assumed they were the other beta testers, though it was as if he was looking through diffused glass. Looking down the ground appeared fine, looking up the sky appeared fine, looking out the landscape was also in focus, everything was silent.

A pink diamond shape, otherwise known as Dan the beta test liaison, floated over too him. “Welcome back Bae Mal-Chin, I have three questionnaires for you to fill in. This first one is focused on the void experience and your thoughts on it and the transition back to the living after death. The second is for you to put down thoughts on your observations for large-scale combat. Thirdly, your unique interactive experience with the ogres. Please, complete them immediately while everything is fresh. Your vision and hearing are currently impaired to avoid perspective contamination from the rest of the testers. Each questionnaire should only take between three and four minutes to complete. Thank you for your participation.”

* * *

Mag-Feesa called for all the other ogres to gather. “My people, today we have faced three groups of humans and come out victorious. There are four more groups with as many humans as the last three. Time to go hunting, more loot for the tribe!” He yelled at the 65 ogres in the hunting party, they roared back in anticipation.

After a moment of noise, they began moving at a considerable clip of speed in the direction they ogres had first been attacked from. Mag-Feesa assumed that the roar of noise from his hunters would be tracked by any nearby humans. He didn't like the idea of standing around and waiting for an attack from the others. Nor did he like the idea of charging off in a direction where he might run into the human groups. Instead, he moved in the direction he was first attacked traveling at an impressive clip of speed. His best six trackers lead at the front had no trouble following a path that was taken by more than 300 humans. It was broad and well trampled the whole way.

After ten minutes the hunting party slowed under Mag-Feesa's instruction, he had weighed his option to veer left or right during the dash and chosen left for no specific reason. His trackers moved off after receiving the new direction picking up the pace once more not concerned about missing a trail if the last was an indication of the rest of the humans. Not even five minutes later they came across another wide swath of heavily trampled forest. This was probably made by the second group that attacked him. They had come from this way and reached the fight in short order after the first attackers had been engaged and defeated.

Moving across this trail they continued in the same direction. Mag-Feesa assumed he would cross another trail soon and was proved correct after a similar time frame to the last trail. This one would lead to a new group he figured and continued on again. After taking almost twice as long his forward trackers came across another trail. Should they follow this one or continue on, he was unsure, so he stopped for a minute and thought about the situation. If he was the humans and three groups had been wiped out he would want to join all the groups into one and use weight of numbers against the enemy. It was what his hunters were doing against the Plateasaur.

A leader must make a decision to continue in the same direction and maybe come across another human trail or follow this one. If there is a next trail it might take twenty minutes to come across it or there may be no trail. Why risk so much time for the humans to get together? Decision made he spoke to his people.

“My hunters, we will follow this trail to the humans...” He gave them a brief assessment of what he would do if he was them and what he thought best to do against them. A direction given, and plans relayed the ogres followed the human trail, more loot awaited.

* * *

Group 5, after not being able to reach the fight and halted their mad dash through the forest when they were all lost. The message of cooperation made through Bae Mal-Chin was quickly rejected. Their comrades for the past two years had been slaughtered, there was no fucking way they were going to do anything except kill the ogres. They reversed direction heading to meet up with group 6 and 7. Informing group 1 to stay safe in the opposite direction while the rest gathered.

Fifteen minutes later 5 and 6 met up, 7 was still on the way but close.

With roughly 650 people, the two merged groups where chatting away talking up how they were going to lay some hurt on those big bastards. They had scout's out of course but being far away from the other battle they were eagerly awaiting the call to charge that way.

Group 1 Ogres Missing (Posted by Max Torvich)

I am the closest scout to where the battle took place. The area is full of our guy's bodies. It is a small clearing, well, sparser area for trees. No ogres though. Tash, Riku circle around both sides, look for a trail. I'll take a closer look around the battle.

The first comment from the combined group after someone called out about a new forum message from group 1 summed the situation up. “Well, that's reassuring.” There were few subdued comments while waiting for more information.

* * *

A yell of warning came a few moments later, in the form of a halting charge as a scout was run over by the four-meter tall ogre hoard. Halting 50 meters away from the mass of merged group, standing shoulder to shoulder in a line the ogres access their one damage spell. The ones in the center of the line began casting immediately while others were still getting in range to begin their own. There wasn't much difference, within the space of five seconds all the ogres were casting [Fireball].

The Feesa tribes spell was not particularly strong, 3 second cast time, explosive area effect, burn effect, the non-casters had on average raised the damage to approximately 200 on the impact target before resists. It was so weak compared to the damage they could do with weapons.

Most of the human melee weapon fighters had decent hit points, around 1,400 while the casters and healers had lower health and armor and none had high heat resistance. Through the entire beta, the only other humanoids they came across were weak goblins in their starting area which was nothing like the ogres they were now facing more than 12,000 km from said start area.

The humans had some rather large problems and they were not just the ogres imposing size although that was part of it. With so many, packed into a small clearing, having exploding [Fireball] spells fired by tall ogres a situational convergence occurred. The ogres after a few casts realised something very important. Their height advantage allowed them to fire into the middle of the human swarm. They kind of wondered why they had not tried it with the other groups and made comments to the fact. They rained explodie balls of burning, setting hundreds alight. Deep breaths were inhaled and comments were made about how good they humans smelled when they cooked. A few humans charged which amounted to little in the chaos, too few of them, too much confusion, a couple of blasts to the face or a clubbing into the ground ended that quicker than it started. Healers and casters happened to be the majority of the people in the middle and lit up they mostly died before getting a heal on themselves. They had not developed any mental focus skills that could ignore damage and pain, allowing them to cast under such circumstance. With most of them eliminated the rest of the human group was easily disposed of. At most 200 ran away in all directions. Group 7 came upon the chaos too late and were put through the griller while a few more runners were too slow and so given a fatal tenderising.

* * *

Mal-Chin went through the three questionnaires completing them as thoroughly as he could. Once submitted, his vision and hearing returned. Hyun Ki was standing nearby chatting while waiting for Mal-Chin to finish up. His friend was taking a long time, but no matter, they had all day to relax now. With three groups wiping in quick succession, there wasn't much point going out there again. So instead, everyone was taking a well earned chillax.

Not too much later there was one hell of a respawn party, so many appeared in such quick succession, even the three earlier wiped groups were impressed with the ogre's efficiency. Dan was kept quite busy pushing his questionnaires to everyone.

The new respawnees recovered from the experience fairly quickly although they did complain about the sensation of being burnt alive even with pain reduced by 70 percent. It still fucking hurt like a son of a bitch!

The runners from groups 5, 6, and 7 were mostly hunted down, their speed no match for the ogres. An hour later, group 1 members began to turn up also. Four groups wiped with no ogres dieing left the beta testers feeling dejected at how weak they were shown to be in this harsh digital world they had lived in for two years yet accumulated little capability in.

The beta cohort had an end of beta party, held at Cheon Chilbaeg, making use of the portal to instantly travel the 1,700 kilometers. Good food and drink were imbibed though drinking in dejection rather than celebration after the stark revelation that after two years of effort they were pathetically weak.

* * *

The developers floated high overhead looking down as the ogres cleaned the forest of beta testers.

“That turned out quite interesting,” Black Disk said. “So...” he drawled out. “Divergent ogres, someone took a peek, don't worry, good job. What's the history of these guys?”

Orange Theta, yellow triangle, red half circle all mentally called up a data screens. Orange Theta linked in the Ogre War Leader's ID and tracing through tribal relationships and generational history quickly working through anomalous actions until eventually finding a young ogre male regularly bullied by other ogres around his age and beaten by his father for being a stupid runt.

“Found it,” Orange Theta proclaimed. “Eight generations ago, a small young ogre is bullied by ogre kids, beaten by his father, regularly called a stupid runt. She quickly described the child's history and the tribe's origin while watching his life unfold via a highly accelerated time review.

“Angry at the kids but mostly his father, the five-year-old child started sneaking out of the tribe's village to hunt rabbits on his own. Killing a prodigious number in fact while other ogre children were still safe in the village playing. The hunters of the tribe never bothered killing rabbits, being too small to feed the tribe. So he gained a substantial boost in experience using the DP to raise his aptitude, wisdom, and memory in defiance of his father. Hunting so much he gained several skills that helped him on this journey and he expanded the variety of beasts he could successfully hunt relatively safely. After two years of this, he had surpassed all members of the tribe for those three stats. The insights he gained made him then start to invest heavily in agility, reaction, and speed. Allowing his strength and constitution to develop naturally like the other ogre children. Accept he was getting far more food eating some his kills, on top of the staple diet provided to the tribe by its hunters. This resulted in his natural ogre development surpassing the other children of the tribe by quite a margin in just three years. At ten the children begin to be taught how to fight, club stuff with a club till its dead. To hunt, club stuff on the head with a club, so the body stays together and the guts don't squirt out.

The child became an adult and exceeded all the other hunters after a few short years smarter, faster, stronger, tougher his skills far outpaced ogres that were much older than him. He still had a mean and nasty father that also became jealous of his son's skills. Eventually, his father and two other older hunters ganged up on him attacking him while out on a hunt. But the son with his high wisdom had always hidden his true speed and agility. It was close but he escaped the three without being too badly hurt, outpacing them with his speed after the initial attack.

His father was good friends with the War Leader of the tribe. He used that friendship to plant ideas in the War Leader's mind that his son was looking to depose him. With such skill for the hunt the young man did loom large in the tribe and so the War Leader made him a leader of a small hunting group of a twenty were always sent out to bring down the most dangerous beasts or monsters near the tribe's village. Most unfair when the village could field 150 hunters at any time. The small group was successful several times despite the difficulty, eventually, luck ran out and three of the twenty died before the could get away. The war leader used the failure as a reason to cast the ogre out of the tribe.

It worked the ogre left though not alone more than sixty others joined him angry that his small hunting group was used by the old war leader. So the young ogre named Sev-Feesa became war leader of the new tribe and moved hundreds of kilometers away from the old village to avoid attacks. He proved to be a good leader, far smarter than the old. He demanded all in his tribe to improve their aptitude, wisdom, and memory to at least 100 points. Agility, speed, and reaction higher again, far above ogre of other tribes. It took years, yet the success his tribe had hunting far exceeded expectation through improving these other stats. The tribe realised something fundamental truths, why be tough and take a hit when you can be agile and avoid a hit altogether. Why be strong and stupid and get in each other's way when you can be fairly strong and cooperate creating opportunities to make the kill. There you have it, the origin of the divergent Feesa tribe.”

“So the tribe has maintained its origin ideal, now the current war leader has conversed with an extent. How far along is the war leader to activating into AE status?” Asked black disc to the other devs.

Blue T was first with an answer. “Not much with such limited interaction, the ogre has reached fifty-four percent into the activation process.”

What was the chance before the interaction?

“Forty-one percent,” yellow triangle jumped in.

Quite the increase for just twenty minutes of interaction,” black disc said contemplatively.

“I am so glad that all the divergent NPC's like these ogres will move across with the live version of the world. It is going to so much richer for the variations, I really can't wait to experience it myself.” It felt like purple infinity gave a fist pump with the little wiggle forward and back the symbol made.

“There should be an interesting mix, with the rebuilt world and the historical development creating 10,000 years of history. Plus the divergent from here being added in 10 years prior to extant arrivals...” green L added.

“It should be interesting and when these beta guys hit the new start zone, they are going to have their minds blown,” red tilde said.

“These guys will be fine, it's everyone else that is going to have their minds blown when they eventually make it through race creation,” grey square said.

“On that note, time to go, everyone, we have a rollout to initiate,” black disk stated.

The symbols winked out of existence above the forest.