The Good Orc
The Good Orc
Every time Eldmia swung his sword, orcs were swept away like autumn leaves!
There was nothing good about the situation. Unlike when I'd stirred up Envelde's mansion, the Magic Power I could pour into my blade was lacking, and because orcs competed through their fucking muscle mass and bulk, pushing or throwing them took an absurd amount of strength. And it wasn't like they were gonna die from that anyway.
On top of that, there were too many of them. At times like this, the only things I could rely on were skill and knowledge.
"Squeeeak!! Why!! Not hit!!"
Orcs were originally at a level that even non-aura adventurers could handle. So there was no reason to pour Magic Power-based reinforcement into my body without limit. All I needed were sharp senses and enough endurance to keep fighting multiple opponents. The rest, I entrusted to the techniques I'd etched into my body over years of training.
And that effort never betrayed me. It wasn't flashy or cool, but every orc that charged at me met its death from a single, certain blow.
I didn't even need to block or parry the axe swung so honestly to split my skull. Just dodging by a step at most—or even just shifting my upper body at the least—and landing a simple counterattack to the neck made five orcs become 'good' in an instant, and the orcs' confusion deepened.
"Squeak! This humie strange! Not get hit!"
"Squeeeak! Shaman! Humie using sorcery!"
An axe swung with nothing but brute force was embarrassingly low to compare to academy cadets. Expecting more skill than that from orcs who had lived their whole lives on the razor's edge of slaughtering civilians or being slaughtered was unreasonable. Unless they had some standing and status within their tribe, they were nothing more than slightly strong idiots.
In a way, they were easier to deal with than beasts. Because they all shared the trait of swinging their axes without fail, no matter what. Maybe fighting two wolves at once was harder than dealing with orcs who, without testing the waters, without hesitating, charged in stupidly and swung their axes first.
After a dozen or so 'good' orcs were born in an instant just by dodging and targeting vital spots, the soon-to-be-good orcs, who were steadily starting to panic, began to scream.
"Squeeeak! Strong! Strong warrior appears!!"
At that shout, some orcs who had still been focused only on the ranks glared at me with bulging eyes and concentrated on me.
My body had just finished warming up and felt like it could fly. Unlike the orcs tensed up to hell and back, I had no trouble at all moving, so I smiled confidently and wiped the blood off my sword.
"Hey, you shit-for-brains bastards."
"Squeak?"
"Shout that Eldmia Ega has appeared."
I was planning to slaughter every last one anyway, but it wouldn't be so bad to remain as a terror to any orc lucky enough to survive.
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"I'm Bakuns Barak!"
Yekaterina couldn't hold back her laughter as she watched an orc swing an axe while valiantly shouting. It wasn't because the orcs were weak. It wasn't because, exactly as Eldmia had predicted, most of the orcs were so engrossed in fighting her that they hadn't even noticed knives buried in the backs of their skulls.
It was just because the sight of those orcs shouting their own names kept reminding her of Eldmia, which was a completely mismatched association, and that made her laugh.
The ones charging head-on invariably shouted their names, and even though she'd realized it was some kind of orc custom, they kept seeming like they were imitating Eldmia, which was goddamn hilarious. The more comical the orc looked, the more it became a deadly mental attack that sapped their strength, but even when she swung in that state, her great weapon was threatening.
The sight of an orc's head being driven straight down into its torso by a single hammer blow—without any finesse, just like splitting firewood—instilled terror in the orcs and drew admiration from adventurers and mercenaries. But no matter how much of an ally she was, there was no choice but to feel overwhelmed by her transcendent strength.
"Squeeeak! Me-Squeegh!"
Yekaterina's war hammer drove one orc's head precisely into its torso and then bounced back like a ricochet, blowing out the temple of another. There was no exception. Every time she swung her war hammer, an orc's head flew off, was driven into its body, or something else was pulverized.
The sight of her swinging a giant lump of metal like a sword made even those who had awakened their aura feel disbelief toward gravity and a sense of dissonance.
"Th-The stories about the Dragon of Ravil were real."
A deeply grating compliment reached her ears, but Yekaterina tried her best to ignore it. In the western kingdoms, she'd worried about rumors like that spreading, but it didn't matter at all this far out in Itisel. Even if word reached her homeland, they wouldn't send people after her all the way here.
"That hammer! I'm gonna take it!"
An orc whose head seemed a size larger than the others shoved his comrades aside and charged greedily. Yekaterina, who had just slung her war hammer over her shoulder with a single spin, looked at the intense greed flickering in the little orc's round eyes and grinned.
What an entertaining guy.
"Go ahead."
It was already a string of amusement, and since an even funnier guy showed up, she just tossed the war hammer to him for the hell of it. She didn't even hurl it—she literally handed over her only weapon as lightly as passing an object—and at that sight, not only the adventurers but even the orcs suffered a mass cognitive disconnect, tilting their heads in confusion.
Only the orc blinded by the war hammer grinned gleefully and charged, even throwing aside his own axe to receive it.
"Squeeeak! Stupid humie-yaaaaaan?!"
And the moment he received the war hammer, he stopped dead.
To be precise, he stopped his charge to withstand the war hammer's weight, leaning his waist far back and gritting his teeth.
That was the best he could do. Hanging on with his waist bent like a bow, the orc's face spread with horror.
"Squeak! Squeeeak?!"
While everyone—humans and monsters alike—was stunned, Yekaterina walked toward the halted orc as if she'd foreseen this exact situation.
Her steps were light, almost like a stroll, but the other orcs felt terror from the sight. The orc holding the hammer also realized things had gone wrong and struggled desperately to somehow swing the hammer he was clutching.
But it was hopeless. Rather, he could barely hold on, and he felt the war hammer gradually crushing down on him.
"A bit heavy, huh?"
"Squeeeak!"
At that shrieking answer, Yekaterina laughed loudly and raised her hand, but the orc didn't even have the option to drop the war hammer. His waist was bent too far back for that. If he let go, he would clearly be crushed.
Because the shaft of the war hammer was heavy too, as if it had been weight-matched with the head.
Yekaterina grabbed the face of that orc with one hand and, as if snapping a twig, shoved him down and threw him to the ground.
Just like that, the orc who had been holding on with all his might went down head-first, the back of his skull cracking against the floor as if he'd offered zero resistance. The force was so savage that his upper body slammed down and his legs flew up past Yekaterina's waist.
Some people even rubbed their eyes, unable to believe she'd produced that sight using only the strength of her arms and upper body, but the woman herself calmly walked to the downed orc's head and raised her leg.
"That's why you should use a weapon suited to your level. For you guys, those flimsy axes are just right, aren't they?"
"Squeeeeeak!!"
-Crunch!
At the sight of an orc's skull—one that could even block a half-assed sword swing—being crushed to pieces under a steel-plated combat boot, some orcs trembled and even dropped their axes. But Yekaterina, as if feeling no particular impression, pulled out her buried leg, kicked up the shaft of the war hammer with her foot, and righted the fallen great weapon. The moment her hand gripped the shaft and moved, the war hammer shifted as lightly as a clothes pole and settled back onto her shoulder.
"What're you doing, cowards? Not gonna fight?"
In that moment, the orcs truly became cowards.
No one dared approach Yekaterina indiscriminately. In fact, some of them started throwing themselves at other adventurers to continue the fight, as if they just needed to get away from her. At that unexpected reaction, Yekaterina, who had been calm until now, was considerably flustered.
Huh? Did I scare them too much? That's not good.
"S-Squeak. R-Run..."
Just as some orcs, finally unable to endure it, were about to choose flight, an incomprehensible cry rang out from behind them.
"E-Eldmia Ega has appeared! Eldumikuieeek!"
"Squeak? Eldu?"
The orcs tilted their heads at the desperate shouts of their kin that something they'd never heard of had appeared, and the humans tilted their heads wondering why the hell those pigs were yelling Eldmia's name—when from behind, an orc who had literally 'fled forward' as if his soul had left his body screamed out.
"Something's wrong! It's the War God! We've clearly incurred the War God's wrath! Eldmia Ega is the War God!"
The shout was in Orcish, so none of the humans understood it. But the orcs who had been facing off against Yekaterina understood, and they couldn't help but give a dumbfounded reply without meaning to.
"K-Squeak? B-But there's a human War God right here?"
"Squeak?"
The spaced-out orc who had fled forward saw Yekaterina standing against his kin, and he saw the corpses of his kin scattered in front of her.
And after exercising the once-in-a-lifetime situational awareness born from survival instinct, he arrived at a desperate conclusion and shrieked.
"The War Goddess and the War God are enraged!! We've dared to tread on this cursed land of white soil, and they're clearly raging in human form!!"
It was a leap of logic that would have had humans rolling on the floor laughing if they'd understood, but from the orcs' perspective, it was such a genius and valid conclusion that they almost suspected the terrified orc was actually a shaman.
In the end, the orcs in the area, forming an instant consensus around that conclusion, all began to screech their pig-slaughter squeals with one heart and one mind in a spreading despair.