However, there is really no other way for me to proceed, so I return to where the lookout is and work my way around behind him. It is fairly easy since it is still just staring at the road and arguing with itself. Taking a firm grip on my greatsword I charge at the ettin and jump up to swing the greatsword down at the spot between the heads.

While I hit my target, I am surprised when the greatsword only cuts into the ettin by a few inches. As black blood starts seeping out of the wound the ettin's two heads start roaring in pain and anger. After freeing the greatsword, I drop down to the ground behind the ettin, before it can move I spin and bring the greatsword around to hit its knee.

Even with the spin and my full weight behind it the greatsword doesn't cut deep enough. Although, the impact does take the leg out from under the ettin causing it to fall over. The fact is its fur and hide are too thick, I can't get through it to do real damage.

From the roaring in the distance I don't have much time before his friends get here. Deciding to take a gamble I let the greatsword fade away and recast mage knight blade. This time I create a pair of rapiers instead, I will have to get closer but penetration is my friend right now.

As the ettin struggles to its feet I start dancing around it, stabbing at its softest points. My main targets are the inner thighs, the armpits, the elbows, the necks, and the eyes. All places where a stabbing attack has the best chance of going deep and where it can do the most internal damage.

Trying to be fast and extremely accurate at the same time takes all my concentration. I can't even worry about the other ettins, all my focus is on the enemy in front of me. Soon the ettin's fur is covered in its own black blood, I have stabbed it with my rapiers hundreds of times already.

*DING*

Congratulations! You have acquired the combat skill Target Weakness!

Target Weakness

Level: 1

SP Cost: 5 Duration: 10 seconds

Intelligence +5

Melee Damage +10%

As much as I want to check out the skill notification that popped up, I can't take my attention off the ettin. It is almost dead, and I have no idea how close the other ettins are, I can't break my focus right now. A few seconds pass and I stab the ettin a dozen more times, it finally starts to collapse.

As the ettin finally dies I quickly look around, the five ettins from the camp are charging at me. They are moving on all fours, and as I thought they are really fast, they remind me of a scene from Congo. After how much trouble just killing one was I have no intention of facing five at once so I turn away from them and take off running.

While they may be fast, I am much faster, by the time they reach the hilltop where the lookout's corpse is, I am already gone. Meanwhile, I have already reached the next hill over and circled around it, I don't stop until I find a spot I can watch them from. If they stick together I will just move elsewhere to hunt, but if they split up I may find an opportunity.

They do end up splitting up, but not in the way I was hoping, two stay on the hilltop, while the other three take the corpse and walk away. From the direction they are going it looks like they are returning to their camp. As I watch them leave with the corpse, I can't help but wonder if they are going to eat it.

However, I am not curious enough to follow them and see, I might see something that I really don't want to see. The thing that really surprises me is they are not hunting for me, I was expecting them to at least try and find me. This does give me a chance to sit and catch my breath, and finally take a look at the skill that popped up during the fight.

'This skill is awesome! The only bad part is it only lasts ten seconds, I am going to have to spam it during a fight. At least it is cheap!'

After a few minutes I leave my hiding spot and sneak past the two lookouts. While I could probably take the two of them, I couldn't finish them before the other three showed up. So I ignore them and make my way deeper into the hills, there should be more ettins elsewhere.

In fact it turns out that this entire range of hills is crawling with ettins, there are a couple of hundred living here. Just the ettins that are here could flatten the castle, it makes me wonder what the kingdom's scouts are doing. The army should have been used to wipe out the ettins long before they grew to this point.

If this many ettins were to join the monster invasion then there would be no chance whatsoever of stopping them. Even with this being inside a test it seems just a little too unrealistic for this many ettins to be living inside the kingdom's borders. Another thing that concerns me, with this many ettins gathered in a relatively small area, what are they eating?

There is no way a normal ecosystem can support this many ettins, the amount of food they each need is ridiculous. As I roam all through the hills, while I see plenty of solitary ettins, I don't see a single other creature. No animals or beasts, no sign of the ettins raising livestock, I can't find any food source at all.

Hundreds of ettins should need several tons of food each day, yet there is nothing here. Even if they are eating their dead, that still wouldn't be enough to support this much population. If they were eating humans, the entire population of the kingdom would only feed them for a few days.

Throughout the hills there are a ton of caves, the ettins are using a lot of them as homes. It is only once night falls that I finally get a clue to the mystery of the food source. About ninety percent of the ettins head into a single cave once it is dark, way too many for it to just be a cave.

My best guess is that it connects to an underground world, that is the only thing that makes sense. A large enough underground world would provide enough food for this many ettins. While I would love to go investigate, while most of the ettins are down there is the perfect time to kill the ones who stayed above ground.