The thing about Giant Trolls was that they were a big deal. All other things equal, they were massive, and could pick up massive things to swing around. If you stumbled on one and it wasn't asleep, you were probably dead, and also anyone near you. I myself had kind of started looking down in trolls in fiction, since they were so oafish and slow, but the Giant Troll I faced before fit neither description.
It stood to reason, then, that Rose's eyes instantly hardened as she shifted her focus to taking it down. Whatever beef she had with me could wait until a threat to the lives of 1000-some mostly-recruits was not bearing down on us. The battle was different from last time, with the human troops focusing on finishing off the orcs instead of fleeing from meteors, but ultimately it still came down to just Rose, me, and the few soldiers wiling to get stomped on in the name of bravery.
The troll's roar marked the start of the battle. Rose dashed towards it, drawing her sword, and I followed. My HP and MP had healed to full, largely confirming my earlier suspicion that my natural regen was pretty godly. As long as I could get out of a scrap, I would be back to full health in short order. Though I had to guess that insta-kills and psychological attacks were the most dangerous.
In any case, we reached the troll at the same time. I slashed away at its left leg while Rose went to town on the right. I might have made a joking comment about us being so spiritually connected we could silently communicate, but the reality was Rose just went for the right leg and I picked the left since it was the other one.
The troll stomped and swung its mace just like last time. I was thankful for my level 12 Dodging because without it, I probably wouldn't have been fast enough to duck my head under the swings and such. My moves were nowhere close to Rose's fluid weaving and fucking backflips (seriously what the fuck), but it was enough to keep me alive while I slashed away.
The funny thing about this predicament, as you could guess, was that I couldn't do much damage. The gashes my sword left healed over quickly, and I wasn't making any noticeable problem. However, damage wasn't everything—the troll still felt pain from my slashing, and that pain led to it sometimes swinging at me instead of Rose, which in turn let her do permanent (?) damage with her ice blade. Last time, Rose had been on her own, struggling to land hits amid all the dodging, but now she was on the offensive.
A major boon was that when I saw it swinging for me far enough ahead of time, I could Reverse the mace and stall it. Before, my magic had only been strong enough for a split-second pause, but now I had full MP and a higher Mysticism level. The mace would reverse direction for a solid half-second, which was more than enough of an opening for Rose to get some hits in. I tried to use Blind, but the magic armor apparently negated the effects (eye holes or no). It was hard to tell, but either way, it was a blessing the mace didn't have anti-magic properties itself.
The idea hit me when the troll's right leg was so fucked up and icy it looked like it would shatter if hit hard. "Distract him!" I shouted, without even needing to look to know she had given a brisk nod. The troll roared and lifted its mace in a what would be a very hard, very involved swing—the perfect opportunity. I waited until it was too late for the troll to shift its momentum, then dug my sword in deep down its bare left leg and created an opening. I held my free hand into the air and poured all my MP into a Darkness Ball, which grew so dense that it practically sucked the light out of the air. Actually, maybe it did; it was a bit hard to tell, but the area did feel more dim than before. Either way, I jammed the darkness ball into the hole I cut open with my sword and let it explode.
Meat chunks from the exploding leg shot everywhere, raining gore down upon the field. The troll wobbled on one leg while fighting to stay upright, standing straight up from where it had been bent over for the swing. Rose took my lead and utilized the distracted troll to pull her sword far to the left, then do a powerful horizontal slice with all her strength. The troll's right leg shattered in an explosion of ice, and it fell backwards.
Rose and I acted fast. We ran on either side of it until we were on both sides of the head. The eye sockets were there, but a diagonal stab from the side wouldn't be enough. We had to get above it, which meant leaning forward and losing our balance. Our solution? We jumped onto the head, and grabbed each other for support among the sliding skin; our hands clasped together as we used our spare hands to lift our swords and stab downwards. In that moment, with us pressed against each other, hand in hand, swords in the air, I thought I saw a small smile flash across her face.
And then there was blood, spraying into the air as we stabbed into the brain of a troll over and over. Ah, romance.
We stabbed for a decent chunk of minutes, not because I was reluctant to release the plate armor digging into my side, but because you really wanted to be thorough with the destruction of troll brains. Or so I was told a second ago by Rose who said, "We need to be thorough with destroying the brain." I believed her.
Giant Troll Defeated!
Skill Up! One-Handed Blades Level 19!
Skill Up! Curse Magic Level 20!
Bonus: +5 Base INT + WIS!
Level Up! All Attributes Increased!
That was a pretty big boost in Curse Magic.
I signaled it was dead, for sure, and we climbed off its face. Both of us were covered in even more blood and gore than before, but at least Rose had on plate armor that blocked most of it. The splatter of blood surrounding her eyes was a good look, though. Icy blue surrounded by red. Hot and cold. Is this symbolism?
Pondering that could come later. There were, obviously, more pressing circumstances. First, was that the end of the loop? I used my accumulated skills and newfound trust in Rose to finally topple the troll together after learning a lesson in... not trying to fight alone, because fuck me if I could have won without Rose? That was good enough for me, not that I had expected to win this loop. Funny. Now that I think about it, if I had just let myself die back there...
My thinking was interrupted by Rose breaking the silence. "So. A Cursed Mage as well, are we?"
"Huh? Er, yeah. It's not so bad, you know. I mean, there's a lot of prejudice against it, possibly for good reason, but in my opinion you should hate the player, not the game. With the player in this case being those exploiting Curse Magic and the game being Curse Magic," I said, fairly quickly. Was Hilda rubbing off on me? Oh god, the gender chessboard had flipped and now I was on the other side.
She rose an eyebrow. "I have nothing against Curse Magic. It did just potentially save my life, after all."
"Nice. So, what's next? Finish off the orcs then retreat to the relative safety of the fort? Or just..." I gestured. "Go to the fort now? That's my recommendation, for you."
Rose looked into the sky. "I don't believe the fort is very safe right now."
"Why?"
"The Sword of Noon," she muttered, thoughts clearly shifted from this conversation to solving the next problem. I followed her eyes and saw why.
If I had to guess from context clues, the Sword of Noon was the ball of pure light forming above the fort. It was small-ish now, but clearly growing in size. It felt like one of those Level 100 mastery spells that changed the face of warfare forever, because you could just smash down castles and shit with it, until castles were then modified with anti-magic shields, blah blah blah.
Rose had already broken out into a sprint for the fort. I followed after. "What's the plan?" I said in between breaths. Even sprinting, the fort was a decent distance away.
"Evacuate. There are no anti-light shields in this fort, we haven't had time to build them yet and it's old. From there, we retreat to the nearest sister fort and fight off our pursuers."
"It can't be stopped? You can't reverse its momentum?"
"It could be stopped, if we had defenses prepared, but we don't, so likely not. You can't reverse the momentum of pure magic, the Reverse spell works only on physical matter, not pure mana constructs. I may be missing something."
"Hmm," I replied, gears turning in my own head. Meteors did have huge rock chunks in the middle of them, now that I thought about it. "Where do you think it's coming from?"
"If I had to guess, orc mages, forming a union to empower themselves. I had guessed they might be lurking at the back of the legions, but it seems they were hiding out around the fort instead. "
Ah. I hope the ones I killed weren't just re-summoned in a more tactically advantageous situation.
"Okay, I might have a plan," I said, observing the mix of soldiers and mages streaming fearfully out of the fort. "You guide the evacuation effort outside the fort, I'll see what I can do inside the fort."
Rose shot me a look. "Consider this your final test."
"Test? For what?"
"You'll see. Try not to fail."
"Okay...?"