The timer showed fifteen minutes had elapsed when James checked it, and the progress counter read 273 out of 500 enemies killed.

The battle had settled into a brutal grind that wore them down with every passing second, and the constant fighting was taking its toll on everyone.

The NPC soldier count had dropped from two hundred to maybe ninety men still standing, while bodies piled everywhere at the gates until the ground was slick with blood that made footing treacherous.

The village walls were cracked and damaged from repeated impacts, and Captain Aldric was still alive but barely, his armor shattered across his chest and one arm hanging useless at his side while he continued shouting orders to his men in a voice that had gone completely hoarse.

The kill rate was slowing down as exhaustion took its toll on the entire team.

Finn was still carving through goblins with his axe but his movements had become heavier and slower than before, and each swing now took more effort than the last.

His health sat at seventy percent with multiple wounds adding up across his body from cuts that individually weren’t serious but together were draining him.

Kael’s totems were flickering like dying candles and his mana was running dangerously low despite drinking potions whenever his reserves bottomed out.

Aria had killed over seventy monsters at this point but her stamina was draining steadily, and her spear strikes had become less precise as her muscles burned from overuse.

Elliot was still firing from the ramparts but his arrow supply was running out and his aim was getting sloppy from pure exhaustion.

James maintained fifty percent mana while constantly cycling between Necro Blast and Corpse Explosion and resummoning his undead whenever they fell in combat.

The monsters kept coming in waves but the pace was more manageable now compared to the beginning.

The flow was steady rather than overwhelming, and the team could handle it if they stayed focused.

Goblins charged in groups of five or ten instead of the massive swarms from earlier.

Dire wolves attacked in pairs instead of full packs.

Spiders dropped from walls intermittently instead of the constant rain of venomous bodies.

The progress counter ticked upward slowly but steadily.

The number climbed to 362 out of 500 when Finn killed three goblins with one massive swing.

It jumped to 365 when Aria drove her spear through a wolf’s eye in a precise strike.

James detonated two corpses with Corpse Explosion and the overlapping blasts killed five goblins, bringing the counter to 381.

Elliot managed to kill a spider with his borrowed sword after a desperate struggle, and the number became 407.

The team was running on fumes at this point, with pure adrenaline keeping them moving when their bodies wanted to collapse.

The timer showed twenty minutes had elapsed, and the progress counter read 347 out of 500 enemies killed.

Everyone was battered and bleeding from wounds that had accumulated over the course of the extended battle.

Finn took a wolf bite to his shoulder when he blocked too slowly, and the fangs sank deep into muscle before he could kill the beast.

His health dropped to fifty percent from that single wound alone.

Kael’s last totem shattered when a goblin’s axe cut through its wooden base, and he didn’t have enough mana left to replace it despite drinking another potion from his dwindling supply.

Aria was limping badly from a goblin blade that had cut her thigh during a dodge that came half a second too late, and blood ran down her leg with each step.

Elliot had climbed down from the wall after running completely out of arrows, and now he was fighting with a borrowed sword that felt wrong and unbalanced in his hands.

James’s undead had been destroyed and resummoned a dozen times already during the extended battle, and the constant drain was wearing him down.

His mana hovered at thirty percent despite Call of Souls constantly feeding him energy from every kill happening around him, but maintaining four summons while also casting offensive spells was draining him faster than the passive ability could compensate for.

The NPC soldiers were down to maybe sixty men alive out of the original two hundred who had started this defense.

Captain Aldric took a spider bite to his leg and collapsed as the venom spread through his system like liquid fire burning through his veins.

An NPC soldier dragged him back from the frontline before the monsters could finish him off, but the captain was out of the fight now and possibly dying.

The defense line was barely holding together at this point, and cracks were starting to show.

One hundred fifty-three enemies remained according to the System counter that ticked in everyone’s vision.

The team kept grinding through the exhaustion and pain while telling themselves they could make it.

Every goblin killed and every wolf slain and every spider destroyed added to the counter, but the progress felt agonizingly slow compared to the beginning.

The timer kept climbing while mocking them with how much time had passed, and they still had over a hundred enemies to kill.

The timer showed twenty-four minutes and thirty seconds had elapsed when the System suddenly chimed with a notification that made everyone’s blood run cold.

[WARNING: BOSS ENTITY DETECTED]

[REMAINING ENEMIES: 1]

[PROGRESS: 450/500]

[NOTE: BOSS ENTITY COUNTS AS 50 KILLS]

Everyone froze in place when they saw the notification, and for a moment the battlefield went completely silent.

The ground started shaking beneath their feet, but these weren’t the regular tremors from monster footsteps.

Something massive was approaching from beyond the village walls, and each impact was strong enough to crack the cobblestones.

The remaining NPC soldiers backed away from the shattered gates in terror while their eyes went wide with fear.

The team could see it emerging from the field beyond the walls, and what they saw made their hearts sink.

An ogre stood fifteen feet tall with muscles like tree trunks and skin that was gray and scarred from countless battles.

It carried a massive club made from an entire tree trunk that had been stripped of branches, and the weapon looked heavy enough to crush a building.

Its eyes glowed red with killing intent that was visible even from a distance, and each step it took cracked the cobblestones beneath its massive feet.

A new notification appeared above the creature’s head in blood-red text.

[FLOOR BOSS: BATTLE OGRE — LEVEL 12]

[HP: 8000/8000]

Elliot’s voice cracked when he spoke, and the words came out higher than normal. "Level twelve. We’re all Level nine."

Kael gripped his staff with hands that were shaking visibly despite his attempts to stay calm. "Eight thousand HP. That’s impossible to kill."

Aria’s spear wavered in her grip as exhaustion and fear combined to make her arms unsteady. She said quietly in a voice that barely carried, "We’re not going to survive this."

Even Finn, the berserker who had charged into five hundred monsters without hesitation, went pale when he looked at the ogre.

His hands tightened on his axe handle until his knuckles went white, but there was genuine fear visible in his eyes that James had never seen before.

The ogre stepped through the destroyed gates with movements that were slow and deliberate, as if it had all the time in the world.

Each footstep shook the ground like a minor earthquake was happening beneath them.

It looked at the team with those glowing red eyes, then at the scattered NPC soldiers, then at the bodies littering the streets in piles.

Its gaze lingered on the carnage for a moment before it opened its mouth and roared.

The sound was deafening and primal and terrifying in a way that cut straight through to their hindbrain survival instincts.

Windows shattered from the sheer volume of the roar, and the sound wave physically hurt their ears.

Two NPC soldiers dropped their weapons and ran screaming in the opposite direction without looking back.

Three others stood frozen in place, paralyzed with fear and unable to move even though they wanted to.

Captain Aldric, dying from spider venom on the ground behind them, tried to shout orders but his voice was too weak and no one was listening anymore.

James felt it too, that primal terror that made his hands shake on his sword grip.

This wasn’t like fighting the horde where individual enemies were manageable.

The horde had been overwhelming because of numbers, but each goblin was weak at Level 5 and each wolf was only Level 6.

This was different in a fundamental way.

This was a boss that sat three full levels higher than them with HP equivalent to fighting one hundred sixty goblins in sequence.

It was a single entity that could tank everything they had thrown at the regular monsters and barely notice.

His mind raced through options while trying to find a strategy that might work, but none of them looked good no matter how he calculated it.

The ogre raised its massive club over its head with both hands, and then it charged directly at the team with surprising speed for something so large.

The ground shook with each thunderous step that came faster than should be possible.

Finn shouted for everyone to scatter, and the team split in different directions to avoid being caught together.

The ogre’s club slammed into the ground where they had been standing just a second earlier, and the impact created a crater three meters wide as cobblestones exploded outward in a devastating shockwave.

Chunks of stone flew through the air like deadly shrapnel moving at lethal speeds.

One piece caught an NPC soldier in the head and dropped him instantly, and he was dead before his body hit the ground.

Finn was the first to attack because that was simply who he was as a person.

He charged the ogre from the left side while swinging his B-rank axe at the massive leg with everything he had left.

The blade connected solidly and made a ringing sound on impact, but it bounced off the thick hide while barely leaving a scratch on the surface. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

[DAMAGE: 12]

[BOSS HP: 7988/8000]

Finn’s eyes went wide in disbelief when he saw the damage number appear.

His axe normally did eighty to a hundred damage per hit against regular enemies, but the ogre’s defense was so massive that it reduced his attack to almost nothing.

The hide was like iron plates covering the entire body.

The ogre didn’t even seem to notice the hit had happened.

It backhanded Finn with its free hand in a casual swipe that looked almost lazy.

The impact sent Finn flying backward fifteen feet through the air before he crashed into a building wall with a sickening CRUNCH that everyone heard clearly.

The wall cracked from the impact and pieces of masonry fell around him.

His health dropped from fifty percent to twenty percent in that single hit, and he coughed blood while sliding down the wall to sit on the ground barely conscious.

Kael watched in horror but he had no mana left for healing after maintaining his totems for twenty minutes straight.

His reserves were completely empty despite all the potions he had consumed.

Aria saw Finn go down and charged the ogre from behind while trying to help her teammate.

She drove her spear into its calf with all her remaining strength and used her dancer’s precision to find a gap in the thick hide.

The spear actually pierced through this time and sank several inches deep into muscle.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[DAMAGE: 156]

[BOSS HP: 7832/8000]