“Crap, crap, crap!” I leaped yet another fallen tree and kept sprinting like a bunny through the woods.

The sounds of thunderous crashing and splintering tree trunks were hot on my heels. The giant led the ogres, plowing a path through the undergrowth like it was deep snow and knocking down all but the huge mature trees. In spite of my doubled speed and the thick forest, the monsters were gaining on me.

My only hope was that my unnatural endurance compared to my small size would wear them out. A big creature with the same endurance score as a smaller creature would inevitably run out of stamina much faster. Another half mile flashed by, and I started hearing the sounds I was hoping for. The ogres were beginning to pant between their enraged snarls. The giant was beginning to pull ahead of its minions just as I had hoped. I figured they would continue to follow the giant even if they fell out of range of the artifact.

I just needed to stay out of the giant’s jump attack range for a little longer. 280 Damage would pancake my delicate ass. I instinctively leaped into a diving roll just as a pumpkin sized stone rocketed past where I had just been. It took out a young elm tree and continued on to disappear out of sight, crashing and snapping everything it touched. My mind flashed back to an old viral video clip of a pigeon being hit by a major league fast ball and exploding into a cloud of pink mist and feathers.

“Yeah, let’s not get hit by one of those.” I breathed and continued my wild sprint, darting between huge tree trunks in a serpentine pattern.

Luckily he didn’t find many more suitable missiles as we ran, and ten minutes later a familiar clearing loomed just ahead. I burst out of the treeline just as the big bastard leaped high into the air on a course to squash me flat. The stone textured and stone hard soles of his bare feet slammed home with terrible force.

Something wasn’t right though. Instead of the satisfying squishy crunch of flesh and bone there was a dull gong sound and sharp shooting pain up both of his massive legs. A greenish translucent barrier had appeared between him and the human. Behind the insignificant little nuisance was the source of the magic. For the second time in his long life at the top of the food chain, Yugal felt an icy trickle of fear in his heart.

Dragons were a racial enemy of the mountain giants, given that they competed for the same habitats. They were all but extinct on this continent, and Yugal only knew of them from fables and legends. How could one of the notoriously powerful and arrogant creatures be here, protecting a human before such a bizarre castle? And powerful didn’t even begin to describe the sense of overwhelming danger this majestic beast exuded. Even without skills like Appraisal, many monsters could instinctively feel the presence and power of other creatures, and this thing was a terror beyond reckoning.

Yugal tried to focus his mind through the blind rage he felt for this particular man. Why was he so furious and bent on destroying this human that he would even defy the orders of the Warlord? He could remember watching with disgust as the foul ogres committed their shameless deeds at his orders, and then he heard a strange sound. Was it a bell? He felt the tide of rage come crashing back in at the memory of the sound, and he roared to blow it away. He shook his great head back and forth violently to clear it but the pull of the artifact was relentless.

“Master, it seems you stepped in something gross and it’s attracting bugs.” Jade said with a bored expression. “Why’s the big bug acting like that?”

“It... almost looks like he’s trying to resist the taunt effect I put on him.” I was intrigued as I caught my breath and stared at the struggling behemoth. “I’ve never seen this before. Restrain him if possible.” I removed the bell and canceled the effect. The giant seemed to regain his senses and focused its unusually sharp attention on me. There was a very refined sense of dignity in that stare that I found unsettling on a giant.

“Restrain him if possible.” Jade repeated mockingly. “Who do you think you’re talking to? What about the little ones?”

“Have fun but leave them barely alive. I need the XP and stats.” I answered, ignoring the mockery. I liked the sassy kid way more than the silent and menacing dragon I fought on the rooftop of a skyscraper what seemed like ages ago.

Jade conjured an unbreakable cage around Yugal just as the dozen exhausted ogres burst from the tree line. They were only two steps into the clearing when they all suddenly pitched forward as a group. Frantic, deep screams of agony and surprise echoed through the clearing. A floating horizontal barrier appeared at knee height to the ogres. It was so thin as to be invisible, and razor sharp. As the oblivious ogres charged into it, the barrier slid through muscle and bone like butter.

“Man I’ve never run into something so pathetic that their flesh is even weaker than my thinnest barrier! Must suck to suck.” Jade marveled, expecting them only to trip over the trivial barrier.

Seven of the ogres went down missing both legs, two had only lost one leg, and three suffered serious injuries but were still mostly whole.

“Boss Yugal! Dragon! We run away!” The least injured ogres managed to shriek as they tried to regain their feet amid their bleeding and groaning comrades.

“You wretches think you can escape a dragon?” Yugal finally broke his stony silence. “No. Meet your death with what meager courage you have.” The giant’s stare never wavered, fully intrigued by the human that a dragon would call ‘Master’.

The ogres’ cowardice won over Yugal’s command skill and they turned to flee into the woods.

A swarm of diamond shaped green barrier shards engulfed the fleeing trio. Tens of thousands of cuts lacerated them in mere seconds. They collapsed blinded, fingerless, and bloodied on the spot. They were alive but their breath was shallow and labored. They couldn’t even cry out anymore. They simply whimpered and wheezed.

“Better get after it Master, I don’t think they have much time left unless I heal them.” Jade yawned and stretched her short limbs as though she were ready for a nap.

I didn’t reply, but began dispatching the ogres with clean thrusts to the temple. Each thrust sent a huge surge of power into me with an ecstasy so intense that it bordered on agony.

As I stabbed the final ogre and felt the surge of power, a strange flickering message appeared followed by an uncountable number of other messages piling over the first.

Requirements Met: Absorb more than (300) total stats from living creatures... Evolving Mosquito Queen to Blood Lord/World Boss...

%Error%Missing%Root%File%Corruption%!Location 110011010!%

Restoring%Root%File=... Successful...

Acquiring%BASESKILL%=...Successful...

Acquiring%Implicit%Title%...

%Error%Level%Insufficient%Calculating%Requirements...

%Correcting%Level%...Successful...

Evolving Mosquito Queen to Blood Lord... Successful.

My mind raced as the final bewildering message flickered away.

“What in the fu...” My desperate question trailed off as I pitched forward once more into blackness.

I was driving my 2008 forest green Jeep Wrangler through a blizzard. The snow flakes whipping past reminded me of the view from the bridge in Star Trek. My older brother Dale was passed out drunk in the passenger seat with the smell of whiskey and the ‘only when I drink’ cigarettes wafting out of his open mouth. I’d been awake for three days since getting the call that the old man and our step mom had been in a plane crash. The admiral had finally gotten his pilot’s license and taken his wife on a quick flight in the antique prop plane which he had spent the better part of a decade restoring. A fuel system failure led to an attempted emergency landing which ended in a terrible crash into a frozen Ohio lake. They survived the crash but succumbed to exposure soon after. The funeral had been as inspiring as it was tragic. My parents had lived a praiseworthy life right up to the end, at least in public. The reality was that Dale and I had been life long prisoners to the expectations of our dad.

The old bastard had accomplished so much, but his one frustrated dream of Olympic Gold had eluded him. That bronze medal ruined our childhood. His drinking and temper drove our mom out while I was a toddler. Dale said she was pretty but I never even got to see a picture of her.

As far back as I can remember we were expected to muster at 4:00 AM with beds made, ready for PT (Physical Training). Physical Training is a cute term for torturing your kids. We did pushups, pullups, flutter kicks, wind sprints, carried a log around the neighborhood, and wrestled each other endlessly. The practices that made other kids puke and cry were paradise to us. As expected we both stood out from the beginning. Normal kids could never keep up. It was a brutal life hidden beneath happy backyard barbecues, Sunday school, and sporting events. The old man accomplished his mission. We grew up hard, and so calloused that neither Dale or me shed a single tear at the funeral.

Now I drove through the snow, on the way to the old family home. I should have been the drunk one, having turned twenty one just a month before. Instead Dale snatched a full fifth of cheap whiskey from the open bar and drained half of it in one pull. After that I resigned myself to D.D. We were almost there, and I could feel my eyelids drooping. Had I ever been so tired? I honestly couldn’t remember. I suddenly snapped my eyes open, I had nodded off for a second and what the hell was that!?

There was a figure appearing out of the blinding snow right in the middle of the road! It was a naked man, pale and obese with blood dripping from his chin. I slammed on the brakes and the jeep began to slide sideways. We impacted the snow drift on the side of the road and rolled, there was a steep drop off into the snow covered woods and I shut my eyes and braced for the expected impact.

My eyes flared open and I sat up gasping in huge lungfuls of air as though I had been holding my breath for a long time.

“Gray!” Niiya’s voice was full of relief and emotion as she flung herself at me.

“Are you alright? More importantly are you still... yourself?” Tabula’s voice was tinted with concern, and a hint of fear.

“I’m fine, how long was I out?” I raised a hand to rub my head as I looked around. A burning pain in my scalp made me jerk my hand back and look at it. Five black claws dripping with dark blood protruded from my fingers, which were now as pale as a corpse. My forearm was also pale, rippling with corded muscle and webbed with nearly black veins. Uhh...

Memories of what had caused me to pass out suddenly filtered back in. I carefully stood up and looked down. My new setting-appropriate clothes were on the verge of ripping at the seams. Goodbye Seinfeld body. I was built like no human I had ever seen. I noticed that Niiya looked a little smaller than before, or maybe I was taller?

I looked around, Jade was still floating nearby and Yugal sat calmly inside his green cage, still staring at me expectantly.

“I’m not totally sure what happened, but I’ll figure that out later.” I looked squarely at the giant. “I know you can understand me, so would you prefer to talk or be tortured to death?”

His eyes widened even as everyone else looked at me in confusion.

“You speak our language?”The giant seemed impressed. “I do wish to speak. You must be very powerful to command the loyalty of a dragon and what must be a demigod.” Yugal gestured at Jade and then Tabula as he spoke. “I have a story to tell that you may believe or not at your discretion, great one.”

“I am able to detect deception with near perfect accuracy.” Tabula remarked. “If you lie, it will be known.” Tabula had apparently unlocked the language as soon as it was spoken, or maybe gained it from me somehow. She was the pinnacle of technology in a cyber punk world after all.

I sat cross legged in front of the tremendous cage. It felt awkward and I nearly tripped over myself. I wasn’t used to my body’s new levels of responsiveness. It was like playing a first person shooter with look sensitivity set to eleven. Niiya crawled into my lap without hesitation, and I couldn’t hold back a little smile. I was definitely getting attached to the little bugger. The smell of her shampoo and conditioner was amplified, actually everything was amplified. I could count individual leaves in a pile over a hundred feet away in the shadowy woods, could hear mice quarreling over stashed food in underground nests, and could taste the coppery blood in the air from the dead ogres.

I had the strange feeling that I wasn’t a hundred percent human anymore. I fought the urge to check my stats and waited patiently for Yugal to speak.

“The Warlord is my master. I hate him more than anyone.” Yugal spat the name with more venom than I had ever heard. “He killed my father, the king and burned our clan to ashes. He holds my young sister prisoner in the hells and forces me to carry out his orders here. I have no love for the tiny races but neither do I see any honor in destroying them. The Warlord will attack the city on the lake in two days, and claim this valley as the seat of his power. He seeks to enslave all of the women and kill everything else.”

“How strong is he?” I asked.

“We are equals in physical strength, but The Warlord’s real power is in the hellish magic he wields.” The giant replied with grudging respect.

“So he is a demon. Do you know what type?” I pressed while rubbing my chin, careful not to cut myself this time.

Yugal shook his head. “He has the head of a white elk, and the body of a man. Sharp spines grow from his back. That is all I know.”

“Gorgothan.” I knew the type quite well. A demon worshiping cult on the four hundredth layer of a fantasy themed Abyss had summoned one, and it was a pain in the ass to fight. “Mind control magic, high level elemental magic, crazy high attack power, and can launch spines like crossbow bolts.” I listed off what I remembered.

“You have faced such a monster and lived!?” Yugal was shocked.

“I have and it seems like I will again.” I replied. “Can’t have my starter town getting messed up.”

“I have a request for after you kill me.” Yugal said. His landslide voice cracked a bit, betraying his emotion. “If it is in your power, please force The Warlord to release my sister. She is innocent, and undeserving of her fate.”

I looked up at the seated giant, contemplating. “I refuse.”

Yugal began to raise his voice even as he lowered his head, ready to grovel and beg. I stopped him with a raised hand.

“I refuse to kill you.” I completed the thought. “A dead giant does me little good. Your death will not heal the damage you were forced to do, but your life just might. If you swear to rescue your sister and defend the innocent no matter their race I will not only spare you; I’ll help you get her back.”

Yugal rose to one knee and put his palms flat on the earth before him. He spoke his vow in the Common language out of respect. “I swear upon the bones of the world and my pride as Prince of a shattered clan that I will defend the innocent and rescue my sister from her torment.”

“Now you have to put out your finger.” Niiya admonished the giant with her hands on her hips in a tone that made a fit of laughter bubble up from my toes. Thankfully I stifled it before it reached my mouth.

“It’s a custom of ours.” I explained to Yugal’s questioning stare. I held out my pinky as Jade dismissed the magical prison. “We seal our promises by crossing the small fingers of our hands.” Yugal’s pinky finger was as thick as my forearm but the gesture was complete and Niiya was satisfied.