That na echoed in the ruined room.
Gandalf.
She scread for Gandalf.
Not for .
She didn’t scream for the handso stranger, the mysterious mage she had been clinging to just monts ago.
Heh.
She scread for the real warrior.
The actual tank.
The guy she figured could actually save her.
That one word wasn’t just a na.
It was a judgnt.
It was the ga telling , in big, flashing letters: You.
Are.
A.
Noob.
You’re not enough.
You’re a fake.
The ice that had frozen my muscles, the paralyzing terror from my "Glass Cannon" flaw—which is a crap flaw, by the way, who designs this?—it didn’t just lt.
It vaporized.
A wave of pure, white-hot rage washed over .
The kind of rage you feel when so idiot DPS pulls the boss before the tank is ready.
The kind of rage you feel when you explain the chanics perfectly and the whole party wipes anyway because no one was listening.
It was, without a doubt, the most epic rage-quit fuel I had ever felt.
A system notice seared itself into my vision.
→ Your core identity has been fundantally threatened.
→ All fear-based debuffs are purged.
→ A temporary, significant surge in ntal acuity and mana regeneration has been granted!
The ogre was still there, its stupid pig-face locked on .
Its club was rising again, a big, slow shadow of death ready to fall.
But I wasn’t seeing a monster anymore.
I was seeing a boss mob.
A tactical problem that needed to be solved, imdiately and violently.
My mind, supercharged by the system and my own fury, went perfectly, beautifully clear.
This wasn’t so terrifying ss.
It was an encounter space.
The overturned sofa?
That was Line-of-Sight cover.
The ogre’s slow, telegraphed swing?
Predictable attack pattern with a long cooldown.
Lyra, still whimpering behind the furniture?
A non-combatant liability.
An escort quest NPC.
And Yael... Yael, crumpled against the far wall, was my only asset.
My one and only party mber.
My at shield.
My voice, when it ca out, wasn’t my own.
It was the clipped, commanding bark of a raid leader calling out a burn phase.
"Yael!"
Her head lifted.
A trickle of blood was at her temple.
Her eyes were dazed.
"Get up!" I roared, my new baritone voice cracking like a whip.
"Hamstring! I need a five-second window!"
I wasn’t even thinking about what that ant.
The words just ca, dredged up from a thousand boss fights in another life.
Cripple its mobility.
Get its attention.
"Distract it! Get aggro, NOW!"
I saw the flicker in her eyes.
The confusion, the pain, and then, beneath it all, the deeply ingrained instinct of a long-suffering tank.
Jonny heard an order.
And for Jonny, an order from in the middle of a fight was absolute.
She pushed herself up with a groan.
Her leaf-bikini was a joke, gear-wise—zero defense, I bet—but the way she moved was not.
She was a blur of silver hair and pale skin.
"ROOOOAR!"
The ogre, which had started its swing toward , grunted as she darted toward its side.
It tried to change targets, its huge body turning with clumsy slowness.
"Hey, ugly!" Yael yelled.
"Your face looks like my ass after a bad burrito!"
Then another "ROOOOAR!"
It was a stupid, pointless taunt.
But it worked.
Classic.
The ogre roared, its tiny brain locking onto the fast-moving, insulting girl.
It swiped at her with its free hand, a aty claw that could crush stone.
Yael danced back.
She wasn’t a tank.
She couldn’t block a single hit.
But she was the perfect kiter.
Fast.
Annoying.
And she had its full, undivided attention.
She scrambled over the broken furniture, forcing it to smash through tables to get to her.
She was buying ti.
My five seconds.
I didn’t waste them.
I extended my hand, palm forward, just like in the gas.
This "Overwhelming Pride" buff was insane.
Mana, raw and untad, flooded my senses.
I pulled on it, focusing it, compressing it.
The air in front of my palm began to shimr.
I saw the ogre’s back.
A landscape of tough hide.
But my enhanced senses, my raid leader’s eye, saw a weakness.
An old, poorly healed wound.
A patch of skin that was darker than the rest.
A weak point.
A crit spot.
"Yael, break right!" I yelled.
She obeyed instantly, diving behind a wardrobe.
The ogre, losing its target, paused for a split second.
That was my window.
I poured every ounce of my rage, my humiliation, and my burning pride into the spell.
A sphere of crackling, violent blue energy ford in my palm.
It wasn’t so pathetic little spark.
It was a cannonball of pure force.
"Die, you stupid mob," I snarled.
I unleashed the Mana Bolt.
"FWOOSH!"
It shot across the room like a tiny, focused cot, with a sound like tearing reality.
It struck the Ogre Juggernaut directly in its crit spot.
HP: [-200]
There was no explosion.
Just a wet, sickening thump.
"THUMP!"
It didn’t just hit the beast.
It tore right through it.
The ogre froze, a look of stupid surprise on its face.
It made a low, gurgling sound.
Then it just... collapsed.
It fell forward like a felled tree, its body crashing to the floor with a boom that shook the entire house.
"BOOM!"
A cloud of dust and splinters filled the air.
Silence.
The only sound was my own ragged breathing.
I stood there, arm outstretched, my entire body trembling.
The buff wore off, and suddenly I felt like I’d just pulled an all-nighter.
Yael peeked out from behind the wardrobe, her eyes wide.
Lyra slowly rose from behind the sofa, her face a mask of absolute shock.
The dust began to settle.
And then, the shattered doorway was filled with new figures.
Gandalf.
He stood there, a heavy, wicked-looking axe in his hands, flanked by a half-dozen elven warriors in scuffed leather armor.
The cavalry, arriving fashionably late.
They were ready for war.
They were expecting to find our mangled corpses.
Instead, they found .
A guy in a ridiculous leaf harness, standing over the dead body of an Ogre Juggernaut that had single-handedly smashed their defenses.
They found Yael, a girl in a tattered leaf-bikini, bruised but alive.
Gandalf’s jaw was tight.
His cool, grey eyes swept over the scene.
He saw the colossal, dead ogre.
He saw the hole in its back, still sizzling with blue energy.
He saw , panting and exhausted.
His gaze was unreadable.
Pure, professional shock.
He looked at , then at the Ogre, then back at .
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