The Orc Scout notices the charging skeleton before the rest of his party does. And while he generally wouldn’t care about the pathetic creature not even half his size, he sees the telltale signs of human magic humming inside the creature’s chest and makes an executive decision.

From his sling, the Orc fires a rock straight through the skelly’s chest cavity, exploding the minion into pieces and sending the poison gas into the surrounding woods.

Skeleton Warrior has received Excessive Blunt Force Trauma.

“Stupid skelly,” the Scout grunts, while keeping an eye on the surrounding wood line. Skellies usually have puny magic boys hiding somewhere, but the sting of the poison infused air masks the smell of the necromancer hiding in the bushes.

Which is a good thing, as Matt is on his back, his hands pressed tight against his mouth as he suppresses a scream that would have been heard for miles. To his credit, the stone misses Matt's face by a few inches, imbedding itself into a tree directly beyond him with a resounding “thunk” that helps muffle the sound of a new death experience.

Matt doesn’t want to move. he doesn’t want to breathe, or think, or do anything to draw the higher-level Orc warriors to the bush where he is hiding. Only the pee break he took a few minutes before keep him from soiling himself. But the top of his head feels warm where the rock grazed him, and only the System not chiming a damage-taken announcement keeps him sane.

That, and the consolation that the Orcs are actually leaving the dungeon.

“Please keep going”, Matt prays as he musters up the courage to roll on his belly really slowly so he can watch what is going on. The Orc Scout who blew Greg apart is trying to convince his brothers to head back into the tribe, but the biggest Orc in the party is having none of it.

“Let’s find the human!” the party leader shouts, as his fellow Orcs agree. They grumble about being hungry and needing real meat as the Scout shakes his head.

“Boss please, you ate those strange eggs” pleads the Scout, trying to convince his boss and the other orcs to head back to the village. Only managing to trick them to come outside by insisting he smelled a human.

Orcs aren’t stupid, they merely lead simpler lives then the more civilized races. A good boss listens to his Scout, and his warband follows his advice. But since leading them to this newbie dungeon, the Orc Scout has either been outvoted or ignored. It started when the Boss allowed one of the young Orcs to chase after the fleeing humans, and then later when they discovered a cache of green eggs after some light exploration in the dungeons (the orcs were rather hungry after missing out on 4 medium sized humans).

In both cases the Scout tried to warn them, and in both cases, the Scout was ignored. Now one Orc is missing, not that the Boss cares, and everyone but the Scout is having stomach problems. Orcs eat just about anything, but in the rare case of ingesting something they're not supposed to, it's best to head back to the village and meet a healer…which is what the Scout has been trying to do for the last several hours. But instead, the Boss wants to wait for more humans as “Nuthing better for the tum like roasted calf meat!”

Matt is praying that they listen to the scout. But as the Orc party argues, hope sinks faster and faster. The Boss simply isn’t budging. So, the beginning of a concealment spell itches to the front of Matt’s mind; with Magic Grade he can pump it all the way to level 4 if necessary, but he knows that after that, he won’t get another chance at an easy dungeon core for a while.

"Fuck."

But as the orcs prepare to comb the surrounding area for humans to tear apart, they miss one thing—

A regenerating skeleton warrior.