The ogre roared in pain and rage, then spun faster than something that massive should be able to move.

Its club swept in a wide horizontal arc that covered the entire area behind it.

Aria tried to duck under the swing but the follow-through caught her shoulder despite her best efforts.

The impact lifted her completely off her feet and sent her tumbling across the street like a ragdoll.

She hit the ground hard and rolled several times before coming to a stop.

Her health dropped from sixty percent to twenty-five percent from that single hit.

Her left shoulder dislocated with an audible POP that made James wince, and she screamed in pain while clutching the injured joint.

Elliot was terrified but he forced himself to act despite every instinct telling him to run.

He had no arrows left in his quiver, so he picked up rocks from the ground and threw them at the ogre’s face from fifteen feet away while trying to distract it somehow.

The rocks bounced off harmlessly without doing any damage at all.

The ogre ignored him completely as if he wasn’t even worth acknowledging.

James raised both hands and fired Necro Blast at the ogre’s head, and the death bolt slammed into its eye socket in a direct hit.

[DAMAGE: 87]

[BOSS HP: 7745/8000]

The ogre roared in rage at being hit in such a sensitive spot, and then it charged at James with murder in its glowing eyes.

James tried to dodge using his exhausted body but he was too slow after twenty-four minutes of constant combat, and his movements were sluggish from accumulated fatigue.

The ogre’s massive fist caught him square in the chest like being hit by a truck moving at full speed.

The impact launched James backward twenty feet through the air, and he slammed into the ground so hard that his ribs cracked from the force.

His health dropped from forty percent to eight percent in that single devastating hit, and he could barely breathe as blood filled his mouth and ran down his chin.

The ogre raised its club high overhead while preparing to bring it down on James’s head and finish him off completely.

Finn saw it happening from where he sat against the wall.

Despite being at twenty percent health and barely conscious from his own injuries, he forced his broken body to move through sheer willpower.

He activated Blood Frenzy in pure desperation, and the red aura surrounded him while his speed and strength doubled instantly.

But his health started draining by one percent every two seconds as the price for using the suicide skill.

He sprinted with supernatural speed that his damaged body shouldn’t have been capable of, and he tackled the ogre’s leg with his full body weight while throwing off its balance just enough.

The club slammed down three feet from James’s head instead of directly on it, and the impact created another massive crater.

Finn held onto the ogre’s leg despite the creature trying to shake him off.

He started hacking at the flesh repeatedly with his axe in a complete frenzy while Blood Frenzy burned through what little health he had left.

Each hit did thirty damage now with the skill doubling his strength, but he was dying in real-time from the drain.

The ogre tried to shake him off like a dog shaking off water, but Finn held on with desperate strength.

The ogre finally grabbed Finn with one massive hand and lifted him up off the ground, and then it threw him with tremendous force.

Finn crashed into Elliot who had been trying to approach from another angle, and both of them went down in a tangled heap of limbs.

Finn’s health had dropped to five percent from the combination of the throw and Blood Frenzy draining him.

He deactivated the skill before it killed him outright, but he could barely move anymore.

Kael ran to James despite having no healing magic left in his depleted reserves.

He grabbed James under the arms and dragged him across the ground while getting him away from the ogre’s immediate reach.

James drank his last health potion with shaking hands that could barely hold the vial, and his HP climbed from eight percent back to thirty percent as the liquid took effect.

His ribs were still broken and every breath was agony, but at least he could move without passing out from the pain.

Aria forced her dislocated shoulder back into its socket herself with a scream that echoed across the entire battlefield and made the remaining NPC soldiers flinch.

She drank a health potion from her own supply and her HP climbed to fifty percent, though her left arm still hung useless at her side.

She picked up her spear with her good arm while preparing to fight one-handed.

The ogre advanced on Finn and Elliot where they lay on the ground unable to get up fast enough to escape.

Both of them were completely vulnerable.

The ogre was going to crush them both with a single strike of its club, and then it would kill Aria next and then Kael and then James.

They couldn’t win this fight with normal tactics because the math didn’t work.

The ogre’s HP was still at seven thousand four hundred after everything they had thrown at it.

They had barely damaged it despite everyone giving everything they had.

The timer showed twenty-seven minutes and thirty seconds had elapsed.

Two and a half minutes remained to beat the record, and they were all about to die to this single monster.

James made a decision in that moment while watching the ogre raise its club to kill his teammates.

He looked at the battlefield around him and saw corpses scattered everywhere.

Four hundred fifty dead monsters littered the village in piles.

Goblins and dire wolves and spiders lay where they had fallen.

He had four contract slots available for summoning.

He had been using Summon Undead Skeleton this whole time because it was cheap at twenty mana per summon, and it created mindless skeleton warriors that fought slowly but could tank damage.

But Reanimate was different from his basic summoning spell.

Reanimate created stronger undead from fresh corpses while preserving some of the creature’s original strength and abilities.

The reanimated creatures retained their combat instincts and fighting capabilities instead of being slow shambling skeletons.

He had never used Reanimate in actual combat because the mana cost was sixty per summon, which was three times higher than his basic skeleton spell.

He had been conserving his resources carefully throughout the entire battle.

Not anymore.

James dismissed all four of his skeleton warriors with a mental command, and his contract slots emptied instantly as the summons dissolved.

He targeted the four largest dire wolf corpses near his position, choosing the freshest ones that had been killed less than two minutes ago so their bodies were still warm.

He activated Reanimate on all four simultaneously and felt the massive drain.

Two hundred forty mana poured out of his pool in a single second, and his mana reserves dropped from thirty percent down to two percent so fast that he gasped from the sudden depletion.

But the four dire wolf corpses twitched and convulsed where they lay, and then they rose to their feet with movements that looked almost alive.

They weren’t skeletons covered in scraps of flesh.

They were fully reanimated dire wolves with matted fur soaked in blood and eyes that glowed with necrotic green energy.

Their muscles had been enhanced by death magic and were actually stronger than they had been in life, with unnatural power flowing through dead tissue.

Each one was Level 6 based on their original strength, and they were fully functional predators that retained all their hunting instincts under James’s complete control.

[DIRE WOLF (REANIMATED) x4 SUMMONED]

[CONTRACT SLOTS: 4/4]

James pointed at the ogre with his sword while his arm shook from exhaustion and pain.

His voice came out hoarse but loud enough to carry across the battlefield. "KILL IT."

The four reanimated wolves charged forward as a coordinated pack with the same hunting tactics they had used in life.

The ogre turned to face them while looking confused about why these dead enemies were rising again to attack it.

The wolves hit the ogre from four different angles simultaneously in a planned assault.

One bit deep into its leg while tearing out chunks of muscle.

Another jumped and bit its arm with jaws that locked onto flesh.

The third and fourth wolves went for its other leg and its exposed back, and their fangs sank deep.

Each bite did real damage ranging from forty to fifty HP per attack, and the ogre’s health started dropping faster than it had during the entire fight.

[BOSS HP: 7234/8000]

[BOSS HP: 6982/8000]

[BOSS HP: 6721/8000]

The ogre roared in pain and fury while feeling actual threat for the first time.

It swung its club in a massive arc and smashed one wolf completely, and the reanimated creature was destroyed in a single hit that turned it into shadows.

The other three wolves kept attacking relentlessly without any sense of self-preservation, and each bite tore more chunks of flesh from the ogre’s body.

James ran forward despite his broken ribs screaming in agony with every step that sent sharp pains through his chest.

His sword was gripped tight in his hand.

He activated Corpse Explosion while targeting a cluster of three goblin corpses that lay near the ogre’s feet.

The triple explosion detonated simultaneously with overlapping blast radiuses, and the combined nine-meter area caught the ogre’s legs directly in the center.

Flesh burned and bones cracked from the force, and massive damage numbers appeared.

[CORPSE EXPLOSION x3]

[DAMAGE: 312]

[BOSS HP: 6409/8000]

The ogre staggered backward as its legs were burned and bleeding badly from the explosions.

Its movements slowed down noticeably from the accumulated damage to its mobility.

Finn saw the opening despite being at five percent health and barely able to stand.

He forced himself up through sheer willpower even though every muscle in his body screamed in protest.

He activated Blood Frenzy again while knowing it would kill him if he kept it active for more than thirty seconds at his current health level.

The red aura blazed around him brighter than before.

He charged forward with supernatural speed and leaped onto the ogre’s back, and his axe came down on the creature’s spine with all his enhanced strength focused into a single devastating blow.

[CRITICAL HIT]

[DAMAGE: 423]

[BOSS HP: 5986/8000]

Aria ran forward while her broken shoulder sent sharp pains through her entire left side with each movement.

Her spear was held in her right hand only since her left arm was completely useless.

She threw the weapon like a javelin with everything she had left, and her dancer’s precision guided the throw perfectly.

The spear flew straight through the air and pierced the ogre’s throat in a direct hit.

It wasn’t a killing blow but it severed something important, and the ogre’s roar became a wet gurgle as blood poured from the wound in torrents.

[DAMAGE: 178]

[BOSS HP: 5808/8000]

Kael had no mana and no magic available to cast, but he ran at the ogre anyway because his team needed him.

He swung his staff with both hands and slammed it into the back of the ogre’s knee with all his weight behind the strike.

The damaged joint buckled and gave out completely, and the ogre dropped to one knee while losing its balance.

Elliot picked up a fallen NPC soldier’s spear from the ground near where he had landed.

He ran forward and drove the weapon into the ogre’s eye from the side while using both hands to force it deep.

The spear penetrated into the skull with a sickening crunch.