Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 18: Still Not So Smart After All

As the purple blood sank into moss, the cave ogre still reached for Walter.

Its fingers were huge, and bits of fur clung to them from whatever it had grabbed last.

Walter’s eyes shrank to pins. His feet almost failed him as he stumbled back, breath coming in quick wet bursts.

"Walter, watch where you’re going. Don’t get your feet caught and trip!" Joji yelled.

The cave ogre drooled at the thought of it, how close it had come to grabbing the fat man.

Joji hit the gap between them like a thrown stone.

He drove Protectorate Barrier Wind Arts in a single hard direction, a wind shield slamming into the ogre’s hand and shoving it aside.

The cave ogre snarled, irritated that a bald man dared stand between it and its meal.

It ripped up a small tree and swung it like a club.

Joji and Alaric could see well enough in the dark, and something on the cave ogre’s face caught their eyes at the same time.

Both men went serious at once, attention sharpening like a blade.

Flesh wriggled around the arrow in the ogre’s ruined eye, knitting itself, trying to close. For a heartbeat they only stared.

"Fuck. That thing heals," Joji roared. "It would have to eat a hundred trolls to pull that off."

"Joji, be careful," Alaric warned softly. "I think it’s playing the fool, hoping you’ll loosen your guard."

Joji understood the warning. In Primeria, monsters learned the way men did, with wits. Or they learned the cheap way, by devouring enough of one kind of thing until the body stole the trick.

The cave ogre clearly picked the latter.

Walter ran until his lungs threatened to burst. The ogre threw the uprooted tree after him anyway.

Alaric moved first. He drew his dagger and cut the trunk mid air.

Wood spun away in splinters that slapped leaves and peppered the ground.

"It keeps hunting the weakest link," Alaric said.

His eyes flicked to the dog kobolds in the branches.

"Do not throw mud anymore, kobolds. Retreat. All of you," Joji roared.

The cave ogre grinned and tilted its head up, as if it had gotten the idea from the two men.

It scooped a handful of soil and hurled it into the trees.

Dirt pelted bark and bandaged bodies. Kobolds yelped. Small bodies started dropping out of the branches, tumbling blind.

Alaric would not let them die for Joji’s plan.

He lunged beneath the canopy and caught four falling kobolds one after another.

He lowered them fast, set them on their feet, and their mouths spilled gratitude in a frantic rush.

"Enough," Alaric snapped. "Make haste. You cannot stay here."

Joji stopped pretending they could conserve.

He invoked Lightness of the Wind Art and jumped.

Mid air he charged his right fist with Emerald Blade Wind Art, green edge humming tight against his fist.

He came down hard for the ogre’s face.

The cave ogre shifted at the last moment and gave him its forehead.

Joji’s fist cracked into thick skull and pain shot up his arm.

He landed on the ogre’s brow and sprang back before those hands could grab him.

"No effect?" Joji spat. "And that was a straight-up headshot, dead on."

The skin had nicked open, and pale bone showed beneath, but the ogre barely blinked. It had the kind of skull that laughed at fists.

"We cannot conserve aura right now," Alaric said, loosing arrows into the two hill ogres to keep them from closing.

"Go all in."

Joji jumped again, but he changed the gamble.

He charged his fist, then bled the aura away halfway through the swing, letting the motion look committed while the real edge disappeared.

The cave ogre raised its arms to meet the strike, reading it like a simple brute would.

"You fucker. Alaric. This ogre is faking it. It is acting like headshots do nothing," Joji yelled.

Joji leapt again and aimed for the head. The ogre blocked with its hands again, quick for something that big.

The creature was clearly dizzy, but it refused to show it. By then it understood the head mattered, even if it kept pretending otherwise.

"I will leave it to you then," Alaric said. He pointed past the cave ogre toward the two hulks behind it. "I handle those."

Joji nodded. For now he let the head go. He forced himself to think like a small man fighting a large one.

His eyes darted. He thought. He glanced at his own fist, then slapped his forehead in sudden disgust.

"Why am I only realizing that now?"

He shouted to Alaric without looking back.

"Keep the fat bastard busy. Rocks, sometimes arrows. Let us see how smart it really is."

Alaric gave a short nod. Joji shifted his stance and treated it like boxing.

Feint left. The ogre swung right. Its arm extended.

Joji punched the knee. He blurred right. The ogre dragged left to track him.

Joji punched the other knee.

He kept the output small, sharp, and cruel. Lightness made his body split into after images.

Emerald Blade kissed only when it mattered. He did not need a heroic cut. He needed the joints to fail.

Alaric stared for half a second, dumbfounded. Joji was not chasing the head. He was dismantling the legs.

The knees began to swell. The ogre’s stance widened, then wobbled. It tried to adjust, tried to plant its feet harder, and that only gave Joji clearer targets.

Joji increased the Emerald Blade output by a hair.

Pop. He crossed and struck again.

Pop. Both knees slid wrong, bone slipping out of its seat.

The cave ogre screamed, a sound full of surprise, like it had never known pain could be that specific.

It sucked air and pawed at its legs, hands shaking as it tried to push the joints back into place.

"Alaric. Blade. Now," Joji said.

The blade flew into his hand. Joji caught it by the hilt and jumped high over the ogre’s head.

With steel, the Emerald Blade condensed tighter, hotter, the aura packed into a single point until it felt like it wanted to burn through his bones too.

He drove the blade into the ogre’s temple.

Green light surged down the edge and wrecked havoc inside the skull. The ogre’s hands slowed, then stopped, still resting on its ruined knees.

The huge body sagged like a tower giving up on standing.

It slumped into the moss with a final shudder, and the forest went quiet.