Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 17: Engaging the Ogres with Guerrilla Tactics

Joji watched the kobolds stare at Walter, and the way their throats worked when their gazes roamed the merchant’s body.

Hunger gave him an idea. If they were already thinking of Walter as food, he might as well use Walter to attract the ogres.

He found a stick and dropped to a knee beside the fire’s thin glow. The stick scratched wet dirt as he started to draw.

"First," Joji said, tapping the ground, "Walter shows himself."

Walter heard it and felt a cold shiver climb his spine. Bait. He was going to be bait.

"Walter, don’t overthink it. If we wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be running all these schemes. Just listen to what I’m saying for now."

"If you say so, sire," Walter said.

As a merchant, Walter was smart enough. Joji found himself taking cues from the way the kobolds watched him.

Joji sketched a fat man with short legs and a round belly. Walter. Then he drew Alaric as a flower with a single sharp line pointing at the head.

"You take the head," Joji told him. "Aim for the eye. If the beast does not go down, aim for the ear."

Joji drew himself as a stickman in front of the ogre.

"I cut the tendons and tangle if we need to," he said. "Kobolds stay in the trees. You throw. You do not get close."

The elder kobold watched the lines appear, ears twitching. Alaric watched without comment.

Joji scooped boiling water from the pot with a cracked ladle and poured it onto loose soil. Steam rose.

He pressed it together until it became a heavy mud ball, then rolled it between his palms until it held. He passed it to the elder kobold like a gift.

"Equip the rest," Joji said. "Ten each. Then we move."

The elder took it, surprised by the weight, and barked orders in a sharp little language.

Kobolds hurried to form more, hands working fast, mud and steam moving together like an assembly line.

Alaric’s eyes never left the dark.

"Let me scout ahead," he said.

Joji nodded and waved him off.

"Go."

While the kobolds shaped mud, Joji watched them with an ache he did not invite.

Brown fur, black fur, silver, apricot. He had owned dogs before. Pugs.

He had written it into his will that they would go to his niece if he died.

That memory came back like a warm hand and made his throat tighten.

It was not only his old life speaking. The Joji who belonged to this world had wanted an army of monsters for a reason he understood too well.

These creatures had simple hearts. They did not plot like men. When they had a problem, they said it to your face.

That was rarer than gold. The elder kobold noticed his gaze. There was longing in it, a past Joji might never return to.

"Have you known dog kobold before, hooman?" the elder asked.

Joji blinked, caught off guard. He nodded anyway.

"Yes."

"What happened to dog kobold, hooman?"

"I left them with my niece," Joji said, and his voice softened before he could stop it.

"They were my companion for a long time."

"Why you leave them, hooman? You not like dog kobolt, hooman?"

Joji shook his head once.

"No. I had an accident. I cannot go back to that place."

A thin young kobold trotted up and called the elder over, holding out a finished mud ball with both hands like it was precious.

The elder checked it, then looked to Joji.

Joji took one in his palm, weighed it, nodded.

"That will do."

A dozen minutes later Alaric crouched by Joji’s stick drawing and began adding to it with quick lines.

Joji glanced up. Alaric’s face went serious again. He drew three hulks, then marked them.

"Two hill ogres. One cave ogre."

Even Joji frowned at that. Hill and cave were not the same trouble.

Cave ogres had sturdier bodies. They saw in the dark. They made tools and traps.

"No need to panic. We just need to move faster," Joji said, still wearing that confidence like armor.

They moved. Alaric vanished up into the branches and began leaping tree to tree, light and silent.

The dog kobolds flowed over the forest floor, quick bodies slipping between roots and ferns.

Joji took Walter onto his back again and pushed on, the merchant’s breath hot against his neck, his weight a constant reminder of what they were risking.

Within a few hundred meters the ogres’ firelight bled through the trees, a strong flame that made the shadows look deeper.

The kobolds peeled off first and started climbing, small hands finding bark cracks, bandages flashing pale in the dark.

Joji stopped behind a thick trunk and set Walter down with care that did not feel like kindness.

He gripped Walter’s shoulder.

"Run by the thick trees. We cover you. Do not run by the young trees. You understand."

Walter’s mouth opened. No sound came out. He nodded anyway.

Ahead, the two hill ogres loomed at four meters, slabs of muscle with clubs like fallen logs.

Beside them the cave ogre stood taller still, five meters, broader in the chest, head cocked.

Walter started walking. Slow. Deliberate. Baiting.

Joji watched him go and felt his own stomach tighten.

Walter reached the edge of the firelight. The hill ogres turned first, mouths hanging open, dumb with surprise at the fat man strolling into their camp like a visitor.

The cave ogre’s expression shifted. Shock, then calculation.

A brief lull stretched between the merchant and the three ogres.

Then Walter waved a handkerchief.

His face went cheeky, almost mocking, as if his fear had curdled into stupidity.

Joji wanted to shout at him to stop. Walter had already committed.

The ogres roared and rushed.

Walter’s skin went pale. He spun and ran, legs pumping like they had been stolen from another man.

"Help. Help. Help," he screamed, voice cracking on the third word.

The three ogres crashed out of the dark trees after him. The two hill ogres swung at trunks as they ran, clubs smashing bark and splintering wood, blind rage clearing their path.

The cave ogre could see. The hill ogres clung to him as if his sight could be shared by touch, crowding him, jostling him, begging without words for direction.

Joji raised his hand.

"Now."

Mud balls rained from above. Kobolds in the branches hurled them down in tight arcs, all of them aimed at the cave ogre’s face.

Joji threw too, hard enough to make his wrist complain.

The cave ogre roared and lifted both hands to cover its eyes, leaving only a narrow slit between thick fingers to see through.

The mud struck and burst. Brown paste smeared across knuckles and lashes.

The cave ogre blinked and squinted through the gap, stubborn, trying to keep vision.

That was the mistake.

An arrow whistled out of the dark from Alaric’s perch. It slid cleanly between those thick fingers and buried itself in the cave ogre’s eye.

Purple blood spurted. The ogre staggered, one eye ruined, its roar turning ragged and furious.