Fortunately, it hadn’t.

Unfortunately though, the noise had caught the attention of the other ogre guard.

Max ducked behind a tree and waited for the second ogre guard to stumble across his companion and Max triggered the shadow blink and sleep attack combo once more.

Oomph!

He was now standing over two sleeping ogres.

Max wasted no time and materialized his knife. He slid the knife across both of the monsters’ throats.

The two ogres bled out, waking up briefly to cough up blood, before going cold and lifeless. Soon after that they glowed out before disintegrating to a shiny silver monster core each.

Max picked up both cores with satisfaction and then deposited them in his pouch for later.

He then tiptoed to the nest of sleeping ogres and made quick work of them with his trusty knife, gaining another four silver monster cores.

Max explored the island a bit more and ended up finding only one more nest of ogres. He used a similar strategy as he did before and deposited six more monster cores.

The sun was setting and so Max returned to his base camp to call it a day.

* * *

The following morning, Max returned to the original ogre nest and saw that a new batch of six ogres had respawned.

Perfect.

What wasn’t so perfect was the fact that they were all awake this time?

He could lure some of them away and then use his sleep ability but he wouldn’t be able to take out the whole group of them that way.

He looked up to the sky.

They were napping late in the afternoon when Max had first stumbled upon them.

He grinned to himself. He’d come back at naptime.

He sneaked away from the ogre encampment and returned to his base.

He still had a good seven hours to kill before he could go hunt the ogres easily, so he had to reverse how he envisioned his original training regimen.

For the next few hours, Max diligently did three hundred push-ups and sit-ups each, then ran up and down the coastline. He improved his mana affinity by balancing rocks on his fingertips imbued with mana.

Then when he was done with all of that, he crafted a pointy wooden spear and went swimming in the shallow parts of the ocean world to hunt down fish for lunch and dinner.

Then, as his last task of the day, he’d sneak up on the sleeping ogres, take them out, and collect their silver monster cores.

Before Max went to bed at night, he’d drain the cores and check his profile and watch as all his stats slowly moved upward.

* * *

Casey finished her day of training with an ice cream sundae.

“I deserve a treat,” she said to herself. “Isn’t that right, Toto? Would you like some whipped cream?”