Part 1

My muscles, my nerves, the mana flowing inside me, everything was telling me to turn back and run. Turn back and search for another way out. Turn back and pretend to have seen nothing. Yet my eyes kept steady on the creature's broad back. Mesmerized in a trance of fear and confusion, overwhelming my reason and my sense of danger.

"What...in the name of the Holy Church...is that thing?" Asked in a whisper Dino as he struggled to keep his teeth from chattering.

Lucas let out a submissive laugh, almost scared, in a whisper. His face was pale as his eyes were fixed like glue on the freakish creature digging holes in the naked stone with his bare fists. I heard him gulp painfully before finding either the strength or the will to pronounce his verdict.

"Black...Black ogre Demigod" He replied with a nervous tremble in his voice.

I saw their fear turn into utter terror and their faces lose all the blood, turning into a grimace that seemed more appropriate to a corpse rather than a living person. All in a heartbeat. I could see the fantasies of their deaths being played in their eyes as Dino and Dominik sunk into the depths that name carried. Yet I knew. I knew they had just scraped the surface of the fear the Black ogre Demigod should've inflicted upon the people. I knew because I was feeling it firsthand as I understood why there was never someone claiming to have survived him. The only reports of that abomination were from adventurers too scared to come close to it and villagers seeing him towering in the distance.

The first time I saw him, when I was a kid, I was neither capable nor in the right mind to actually try to assert his actual capabilities. Or rather that of his mana circuits. Now I was, though I had no confidence in actually figuring out his full capability... A mistake.

When I tapped into my connection whit natural mana to enhance my vision and sensibility of it, my mind went blank with horror. I felt gravity crushing down on me with unrelenting rage as my crouched form slumped to the ground almost lifeless. My eyes were still fixed on the ogre's black back, incapable of actually comprehending the horror I was experiencing.

A cone of dark light, almost as black as the ogre's skin, burning like the fire of an industrial forge and wide enough to cover the entire mine. A mass of black, corrupted mana burned vividly in and outside the ogre, shining its light of blight upon the little kindles of mana that were mine and my companion's in comparison. The cone appeared to me as a skyscraper, touching both floor and ceiling, but I had the feeling that if there was no ceiling, the cone would have reached even higher. I had to run.

A sharp pain on my side stroke me awake. My mind finally caught up with reality, as if my brain had slowed down. I turned around, facing away from the ogre and towards the source of the loud bang ringing in my ears. A rock of my size and more was now stuck on the wall, dust and debris still dropping from the newly formed crater. I looked at my side and saw the mask of dread on my companions' faces as they tended to my brother's leg. A cut as wide as two fingers painted a line of red across his thigh. I understood instantly that he had just saved my life by kicking me in my side. I hurried by him and began closing the wound as fast as I possibly could. My mind still focusing on the looming threat below us.

"What the hell happened?-" Asked Dino, not needing to whisper since our cover was now up in smoke "-You...You were like...dead? You didn't answer, you stopped breathing and then you collapsed on the ground!"

"Not the time of questions!" Dominik reprimanded in my stead while still shooting me a look of both concern and mild anger.

"...Take your time...-" Said a coarse and deep voice, loud enough to shake the very stones surrounding us "- You've come this far down...it might be worthwhile to play with you...little toys!"

I felt a tingle of cold fear running through my spine and something akin to tears puffing my eyes, but I suppressed them both by viciously biting on my lower lip, hard enough to plentifully taste my own blood. The ogre had given me time to heal my brother's wound, and I felt relieved at that but it was nothing more than a mere illusion to keep myself sane as I focused on the closing cut. I knew that once I would stand up from my brother's wound I would have had to fight that ogre... and die to that ogre. I needed to find a way out of it.

"I'll try and get us as much time as we can-" I whispered to the closest person to me, Dominik, relieved that, even though he had shed his stoic mask, he was still keeping some semblance of sanity in his eyes "- as I do that, look for a way out. It can be anything. Literally. Just find us a way to get out of here...inconspicuously"

"You can't! You'll die! You are strong but that thing...it's...it's... it's not something a human can even fight against!" Replied Dominik shocked.

"I know. That's why I need you to be fucking fast! You have a couple of minutes at best after I start the fight. After that, I might start losing limbs, so you better have your ass on fire 'cause I reeaaally like my arms and I'm not quite ready to part ways with them. Got it?" I replied scornfully, pissed off by the man trying to shake my already quivering resolve.

Dominik bit his lower lip, imagining the fate that would await me if he failed, then nodded reluctantly. He was fast to turn his head and explain the situation to the other two. I expected Lucas to be against it but he instead looked at me with eyes full of pity and regret. He somehow knew he wouldn't be of much help, even though he could not see the ogre as I saw him.

I took a deep breath as I rose from my brother's healed leg and set my sight right on the now smirking black ogre in a corner of the lowest floor. I shooed away the other three and, after they were far enough, I summoned a strong enough wind to support me on my jumps as I descended to the same floor as my soon-to-be opponent. As I was now closer to the ogre, I noticed with disgust how twisted the mana felt around him, both his, the surrounding, and the natural. The very air reeked of taint.

"You...alone?...Do you have guts...or dumb?" Said the ogre as his smirk widened showing a set of shark-like teeth of a golden color.

"I'm the only mage-" I replied, struggling to keep my voice as steady and authoritarian as possible "- Would metal toothpicks really do anything against you? That coating of mana of yours seems quite hard to pierce"

"HAHAHA... compliments from a human... you are not dumb...entertain me....you will be interesting...after I kill you...the three will be...easy-" The ogre replied, his smirk getting wider with each word "-but... what makes you think...you can win?"

"Oh I know I can't win-" I answered matter-of-factly as I, as sneakily as possible, gathered natural mana toward the ground under my feet "-You are the Black ogre Demigod, I'd be a fool if I thought I'd win. But survive? Maybe"

"...Survive?" He asked.

"Maybe I'll lose a limb or two but at least I'll keep my life, no?" I replied as I forced a fake smirk to appear on my strained face.

The ogre laughed. Loudly and with such gusto that the entire mine shook, making dust and tiny stones fall from the ceiling and walls creating something akin to a brownish mist reaching up to my knees. I felt the hair on my head and around my entire body stand to attention as his deep red eyes focused on me while their owner still laughed.

"You human... is cocky... funny but...-" The ogre said as he stopped laughing and shifted his weight into a somewhat relaxed fighting posture "-...no more words"

That phrase felt like a death sentence. I had gained whatever time I could with my words, it was now time to put my own life at risk. I hated every second of it. And yet, my heart was beating obscenely fast, almost as if it wanted to jump out of my ribcage and face that ogre itself. To add to that strange feeling of adrenalin euphory, a place deep inside my side began burning with a raging fire that rapidly spread around my torso, making my skin more susceptible to the changes in the air.

I filled my lungs with air right before sprinting with my strength alone, avoiding the use of boosts for the time beings, and wasted no time to cast the first spell. Following my call, three pillars of scorching fire rose from the ground, reaching up the mass of black muscles on his right arm, torso, and left leg. For a moment he stood in place, seemingly stunned by the sudden burst of flames. But I wasn't optimistic enough for that to be reality, and I was right.

The next moment, the ogre brought his hands to his chest in an "X" shape before launching them with incredible strength to his sides. That simple movement was carried with enough force to generate wind currents strong enough to swat away the flames as the ogre smugly said "Warm".

I chuckled at that, without stopping my stride. My death seemed to me closer than ever now. Yet my opponent did not attack, instead, he smugly flexed his index finger, taunting me to try again. I smirked, my sanity twisted by the adrenaline and madness fueled by the impending sense of death, as I accepted the challenge.

"Schyte torrent!" I shouted with a growl as I let natural mana and mine mix within the spell before sending off the dozens of greatsword-sized schytes of wind toward my target.

The ogre grinned, seemingly satisfied with the level of my spell before taking a deep breath and roaring against the incoming schytes. Then, he began to throw fists at them, crushing my spells with his bare fists. What he didn't know was that I put much more focus on a selected number of schytes. While that caused the mana required for the spell to be greater, it also gave me the ability to control, though partially, the trajectory of said schytes. Three schytes were able to escape his onslaught and I redirected them all toward the same place, the ogre's neck. While that seemed to catch him slightly off-guard, the ogre was fast enough to cover his neck, facing his palm toward me. The three spells cut one after the other in the exact same spot. The first damaging the thick layer of the ogre's mana, the second breaking through the layer, and the third finally making contact with his thick hide. I smirked triumphantly as I saw a line of dark green blood form on the ogre's palm.

"...Blood?-" He asked surprised, checking his palm almost incredulously "-...This human toy...made me bleed?... Exciting!" His last words were delivered with a newfound light in his dark red eyes, almost devilish.

The next second he had already closed half the distance between the two of us. I knew instantly that I wouldn't be able to either dodge or tank the hit with a shield. The wisest choice was to minimize the damage, thus I boosted my defense as much as possible, even going as far as numbing my entire body as I let natural mana flow through with the boost. The next moment the ogre was upon me, his leg ready for the swing.

Like a wreaking ball, his foot crashed on my crossed arms, sending strikes of red-hot pain through my bones before sending me flying through the room until a crater was formed on the far wall, with me at its center. The bones in my arms were broken, not in one but more than five places, as were three of my ribs. I felt my breath leave me and my brain shifting in and out of coincidence before I fell to the ground, knees first.

"...Dead?..." The ogre asked mockingly still in the same place from where he kicked me.

I tried to reply but my words were choked in my throat. In their stead, a copious quantity of blood erupted from my opened lips and formed a puddle on the ground from where I could clearly see the twisted grimace full of pain that was my face.

"...Not...quite...yet, sorry" I replied, smirking as the pain in my arms and chest subdued to the newest intake of adrenaline gently sent from my brain.

Without wasting a second I forced the arm in the worst condition to be raised toward my enemy and began shooting a multitude of spells, more to distract the ogre rather than doing some real damage. My focus was to intermittently heal the better-looking arm, since it would've taken less time and mana.

"...Sturdy...-" Said the ogre through the stream of my spells "-...good...Next one...I take the legs"

As I saw the ogre shifting his weight into a sprinting position I stopped every other action and focused everything I had on boosting my legs. I forbid myself from taking another hit. The ogre seemed to take my running as some kind of tackle challenge and began chasing me through the entire floor as he swept the floor with his kicks.

The wind currents generated from those kicks were enough to push me in directions I didn't wish to take. Sometimes even pushing me into the walls or towards another kick. It took my entire dedication to "staying alive" in order to dodge every single one of the ogre's kicks. Which at some point seemed to piss him off as he upped the speed of his relentless onslaught.

I dodged and dodged, growing tired with every little movement and ominously closing the gap between me and my opponent's kicks when finally a voice called for my name. My eyes shone brightly with newfound energy as I finally achieved what I was waiting for.

I summoned another wave of mana, this time creating a wind current strong enough to push me away from the ogre several tens of meters, virtually practically hurling me to the other side of the floor. The ogre seemed interested as he noticed for the first time my three companions who had now joined us on the lowest floor.

"Here!-" Dino shouted, pointing at a specific part of the wall roughly covered with stones, clearly done to hide something behind it in a bad way yet still too tight for any of them to clear "- There's a tunnel of some sort, water is flowing in it but it's a way out!"

I smiled. Widely and with a madness I didn't know I had in me.

"Took you long enough!"

"Are you now...fighting together?-" Asked the ogre still cocking that knowing smirk on his ugly face "- I don't...mind...You will die...anyway"

"Tsz tsz tsz-" I replied, motioning a 'no' with my head while also unsheathing my dagger "- I...told I was going to...survive"

The ogre looked at me curiously before I could raise the dagger in front of me, blade pointed towards my stomach. His eyes widened in amusement more than shock as he probably thought I had gone crazy.

"You know...-" I continued "- I found out that blood... greatly empowered the strength...of a spell...ESPECIALLY IF IT'S THE CASTER'S BLOOD!" I shouted before plunging the full length of the blade through my stomach.