"An Ogre, you say?!" he growled fiercely, peering past the canvas into the pitch-black darkness.
"Damn thing must have wandered down from the high Southern mountains!"
The remaining passengers began to murmur frantically amongst themselves, a volatile mixture of intense fear and helpless panic etched onto their pale faces.
One of them, a middle-aged woman with a heavily weathered face, clutched her basket of trade goods tightly to her chest, her eyes wide with sheer terror.
"We're all going to die out here!" she wailed hysterically, her voice shrill and piercing.
The elderly wagon driver, however, forced himself to remain as calm as possible, his decades of hazardous experience on the road evident in his steady gaze.
"Everyone, get the hell out of this wagon right now!" he commanded with absolute authority that briefly quelled the rising tide of hysteria. "Scatter into the brush and try to find a place to hide! I'll use the horses to distract its attention!"
Lilia, huddled tightly against my chest, could feel her heart pounding frantically like a trapped animal. She looked up at me, her wide blue eyes completely reflecting the cold, brilliant moonlight.
"Master," she whispered desperately, her voice barely audible over the frightened screams of the fleeing passengers. "What... what should we do?"
"Stay inside here and don't make any noise. I'll handle the rest," I commanded smoothly, my voice acting like a stabilizing anchor for the panicked princess.
Without waiting for her to answer, I unclasped her trembling fingers from my tunic, stepped out from the covered opening of the wagon, and began to slowly approach the towering monster blocking the road.
The elderly wagon driver, seeing me calmly walk toward a literal engine of destruction, completely lost his mind and started shouting frantically.
"Hey! Are you out of your mind?!"
He snapped the reins uselessly, his weathered face pale under the moonlight.
"That's a freaking B-Rank monster! You can't possibly face that thing alone unless you're an A-Rank Adventurer! Go run for your life while you still can!" "I can distract its attention with the horses to buy you all some time!"
I heard his desperate pleas perfectly, but I chose to ignore them entirely.
My current Level was still low.
And I was stuck with a trash-stat Swordsman that the game developers had designed as a joke.
But they didn't account for a speedrunner who knew how to break the game's math.
I took a deep breath, focusing on the dormant mana deep within my soul.
"Status Up (10x)."
As the words left my lips, a blue, semi-transparent screen flickered directly in front of my eyes.
The cold, mechanical interface of the game system flashed, detailing the immediate, explosive alteration of my stats.
======= [ STATUS ] =======
Name: Landra Aurelius
Level: 8
Class: None
Active Spell: Status Up (10x)
Strength: 11 -> 110 (Raw Physical Power)
Agility: 14 -> 140 (Speed)
Vitality: 12 -> 120 (Life Points)
Intelligence: 45 -> 450 (Mana Capacity)
Dexterity: 8 -> 80 (Accuracy)
Luck: 7 -> 70
Physical Attack: 22 -> 220
Physical Defense: 11 -> 110
Magical Attack: 45 -> 450
Magical Defense: 11 -> 110
Speed: 14 -> 140
HP: 40 -> 400
Mana: 450/450 -> 500/4500
==========================
The mechanical math of this world broke instantly. My base Mana was 450—a monstrous pool for a Level 8 character due to the developers' weird scaling.
The activation of Status Up (10x) cost a massive 400 Mana, which left my natural reserve at exactly 50. But when multiplied by my glitch skill, it rose back up to 500/4500, just like on the status window.
Because I forced the activation as my very first combat command, the system glitched, miscalculating my remaining 50 Mana and multiplying it by 10.
My Mana pool skyrocketed to 500/4500 inside that fraction of a second.
[Master, please wait.]
[After analyzing that Ogre...]
[It seems that Ogre is not a normal one.]
[It is a mutated variant, Master...]
[An Ogre General.]
'What!? An Ogre General!?'
'That's an A-Rank monster!!'
[Analyzing winning probability...]
[Analysis complete.]
[Master has only a 1% chance of winning.]