Enter, Pursued by a Memory
Enter, Pursued by a Memory
Orcs.
In my past life, they were the ones depicted as pig-headed bipedal monsters, or as a race walking the path of a true man through one-on-one duels, or as bastards screaming WAAAGH!! and going absolutely nuts for war.
Unfortunately, the orcs in this world were closest to the last of those three. Not in terms of technology, but in their crazed obsession with war and combat.
A warrior race with the infuriating trait of being extremely belligerent and seeking out battle the moment they had food, clothing, and shelter sorted. If you only considered that far, you would notice something strange. Because it made no sense that creatures who loved fighting would be so afraid of death that they wouldn't come anywhere near the capital and only roamed around their own territory. And of course, there was a reason for that.
It was because these bastards had a rather petty duplicity—when their numbers hadn't grown large enough to overwhelm them 'by their own standards,' they acted like the most cowardly little shits in the world and scraped by with bit-by-bit plunder.
According to studies by professional ecologists, once a tribe gathered around thirty or so, they began seeking combat as if they'd come down with some sort of rage-control disorder, and the moment their combat-ready forces hit around twenty, they first tracked down other orc tribes and attempted aggressive hostile takeovers. If no orcs were around? Then they obviously invaded humans.
Looking at just that, their behavior was on a level that would put goblins to shame, but the problem was that, unlike such petty actions, their natural physiques had the specs to match the title of monster, making them a vastly superior upgrade over goblins.
They were bipedal wild boars, literally. Both in appearance and in strength.
Goblins were assessed to have the cognitive abilities of about ten-year-old children, but these bastards were simply similar to people. It was extremely rare for their forces to grow large because they were too busy beating the shit out of each other, and they were born inherently specialized in destruction rather than creation—if they had overcome either one of those flaws, they would have become incredibly threatening monsters. Well, with that belligerent attitude, territorial disputes with other monsters broke out frequently, so their forces didn't grow easily...
If the conditions fell into place in the unluckiest way, an orc horde could literally devour a country.
"I clearly remembered reading this in a cheap book at the village hall when I was little, something even the local villagers knew, so why weren't the so-called adventurers on guard?"
In fact, it had happened once a few hundred years ago. It was said that the time it took for a great orc host to devour one of the famous western kingdoms was only a single week.
Starting with that incident, the major powers known as the Eight Western Kingdoms had to become five, and it was also the opportunity that announced to all under heaven that orcs were not a problem for a single kingdom but a matter that could determine the survival of humanity.
If they could have eradicated them, they would have done it long ago. The fact that they haven't is why we're in this mess.
"Things from a few hundred years ago become legends because that's how humans are. If anything, I'd say Eldi is closer to properly recognizing the importance of records left from the past, for a human."
Asilie's opinion, offered as she strolled through the snow-flurried forest as lightly as if she were on a spring picnic, was quite credible. Even living in a world rampant with magic, demons, all sorts of other races, and unique abilities, I had seen more than a few lunatics who believed the contents of legends were utter nonsense.
If people from another dimension saw this, they'd think those guys were reincarnated modern people suffering from safety insensitivity, and I was a fantasy world native trying to learn from history.
"Found it."
While I lamented that frustrating reality, Asilie, having spotted a trace, gestured me over. Wondering how the hell she could find anything in this snowfall, I approached in wonder, and what she pointed at was not the ground but a tree.
A tree with a mark left as if something like a blade had been half-slammed into it as it passed.
"I told you about this kind of mark before, didn't I, Eldi?"
"Yeah. You told me that orcs whose eyes start rolling back can't contain their damned tempers and often take it out on the surroundings like this."
"Mmm, I didn't put it in those words, but the gist is correct."
It wasn't to mark territory, nor to threaten, but simply a venting mark left after they got pissed off from wanting to fight and not being able to.
"That's not good."
Of course, it was a shitty act they didn't pull when in coward mode. I had heard they occasionally raided, so I'd assumed they were just rampaging for food while in a fully shrunk-down state. This was a situation I hadn't expected at all.
"It's true the food is scarce, but..."
"The chances are high that it's scarce because they have too many mouths."
To be precise, it wasn't food they were short on, but 'supplies for an army.'
It was a gods-damned relief that orcs were rockheaded. If those bastards weren't rockheads and possessed the intelligence to use strategy and tactics, the village would have been reduced to ash again before I even arrived.
"They must have thought the numbers they'd been sending so far were enough to assault a village of that scale. They likely assumed the advance party failed because they were stupid and weak, so they sent the same numbers again."
The only strategy and tactics in the orc dictionary were 'shut up and charge.'
True to their nature as bastards who rise up when their confidence becomes uncontrollable, if they lost a battle where they charged with numbers they deemed sufficient, they considered it the fault of the participating bastards being weak—not that their numbers were insufficient or their combat methods had issues. A mentality that always sought the cause of problems externally, as if they were specialized for AOS games, was one of the biggest reasons they could never take humanity's place.
But it wasn't a situation where I could be completely at ease. If the last attack had been the orc chieftain's final straw, it was a situation where the chieftain, eyes rolled back and enraged at his incompetent minions, might personally lead the forces and move.
"Big Sis, you go back and inform Miss Siel of this."
That was why I made the best possible choice for the moment. But because my physical condition wasn't at full, Asilie showed a rare refusal.
"Wouldn't it be better for Eldi to go back and for big sis to continue the search?"
"The speed of going back is different. As you know, this might be urgent, so someone needs to head back at full speed."
Even after moving while taking into account that I couldn't fully use Magic Power, the distance we covered was on a level beyond comparison with other adventurers. It wasn't for nothing that she was a forest race.
"If you arrive earlier than expected, look for traces of other bastards so we can return early. I'll look around a bit more with Laika and then head back."
I briefly thought it would have been nice to have something like an emergency signal flare, but since it might needlessly provoke the orcs, it might actually have been better that we had no such thing.
Whether because even she thought my decision was the best, no rebuttal followed, but her reluctant attitude was unavoidable.
"Come on, you think I'd be taken down by orcs, no matter what? If I sense it's really bad, I'll abandon everything and return, so don't worry too much."
They were creatures who couldn't control their temper, got off on crushing skulls with full force, and didn't even throw rocks, let alone use bows. Unless I suddenly lost it and charged headlong, the situation Asilie feared would never happen.
"...Fine. But if you're not back even after I've finished pulling the adventurers out, I'll come looking for you."
Knowing that was the maximum compromise Asilie could offer, I nodded without much fuss. Having made her decision, Asilie quickly moved away without looking back, and I stared at the mark the orc had left on the tree for a moment before throwing a punch at it with Magic Power infused.
Once at what felt like the minimal level of body strengthening with Magic Power, and twice more with a bit more output. After leaving three scars on an innocent tree, I brushed off the wood chips stuck to the gauntlet and compared them—the orc's mark was similar to the second punch.
"Even when not at full strength, it's enough force to chew up a half-assed aura user. The world's seriously unfair."
It was a level similar to the bastard who once threatened me in an alley, wrapping himself in a flimsy aura and striking a wall. Since he likely hadn't been venting at full force on the tree, it meant just casually swinging had produced that effect.
At this level, even if a whole two-and-a-half-ton truckload of them came charging in, I could sweep them away without difficulty—but the problem was the other adventurer bastards and the village.
"First, the colony."
There was no time to analyze causes based on the five Ws and one H over an incident that had already happened.
The key now was to confirm how many of the bastards there were and where they were gathered. Once I knew that, I could behead every orc I met without issue, but until then, I had to avoid fighting as much as possible and keep them from realizing I was tracking them.
They had a beast-like intuition for combat, and since they were bastards who would turn back into cowards the moment their numbers shrank, they were uncannily good at sensing that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, there were no traces nearby I could rely on Laika's sense of smell for, so I had to personally attempt to track them by following the marks left on the trees. Since the only clothes the orcs wore were leather rags with strong shamanistic properties, there was no finding things like torn scraps of cloth.
The continuously falling snow could easily have made tracking difficult, but ironically, the very belligerence of the bastards that had made the situation serious helped greatly with tracking.
Because the deeper into the forest I moved, the more signs they had left, indicating they came and went more often and in greater numbers than expected. Some trees had even collapsed completely, probably from too many bastards taking swings at them.
Anyway, they were bastards who had absolutely fuck-all to do with stealth or concealment.
After about twenty minutes of moving into the forest while focusing my hearing and sight to the utmost, orc patrols moving in groups of two or three started entering my field of view. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I knew their location before I even saw them, because they were so noisily loud it made me doubt they were really a patrol.
Thanks to that, I could make wide detours around them and move while specifically pinpointing the direction they had come from. At the same time, I kept my nerves on edge in case other adventurers might be around, but there was no sign of anyone.
It was strange. At this scale, it couldn't be a small force, so how could it have been so quiet?
After moving with such ease it was embarrassing to call it infiltration or stealth, and by the time I had passed a third patrol, I spotted part of a crudely built wooden palisade near a mountain valley connected to the forest.
It wasn't a good omen after all. It was proof their scale was beyond what I had expected.