Hero
Hero
After narrowly avoiding getting squashed flat like a burst damn steamed bun under that fucking orc, I didn't even have a moment to relax. I hauled myself up amid the unfamiliar scent of grass, shoved my sword—which still wouldn't pull free easily—even deeper into the bastard's shoulder to pin him to the ground, and reached out to snatch the axe he'd been holding.
"Sque... eek!"
Of course there was resistance, but in the face of a concussion, everyone was equal, even an orc. It strained, trying to put strength into its grip, but no fucking chance. No matter how stupidly strong it was, it had a blade buried deep in its shoulder and was half out of its mind—there was no way I was losing, right?
"Piss off. This axe is mine now."
I stomped on its hand with one foot and kicked its head with the other as I tore the axe away. Honestly, it was a bit shocking that its skull was still intact after I'd hit it with all my strength and Magic Power, but I decided to let it slide—this one was probably just a special case.
"It's heavy... but the balance is a work of art."
A blade as large as the battle axe Mr. Gin used, a handle just a hair shorter than Yekaterina's war hammer, and weight that felt right. This, I could swing more or less as I pleased.
The plan had gone pretty far off the rails, but this was decent plunder. Before the orcs staring at me with horrified expressions could close in, I intended to slice off the chieftain's head and swung the axe with all my strength. I'd acted with extreme speed to avoid that cliché where you waste time and end up losing everything, but even while sprawled on the ground, the bastard reacted quickly.
He actually twisted my sword, which was buried in his own shoulder, to block the axe! Since I hadn't had time to pull the blade out, his shoulder was practically destroyed, but his head stayed on his shoulders. That wasn't the kind of thing you could just pull off because you felt like it—this guy was seriously fucking dogged.
"Squeeeak!"
Even if he'd barely dodged getting his head lopped off, the method of blocking was so disgustingly brutish that a scream of pure agony burst from his mouth. Pain that would've knocked out even an orc, no problem. Instead, the remaining eye burned with fighting spirit as he cast a spell, and I had to retreat to avoid the nasty wriggling thing trying to grab my foot.
"Holy shit, you're a genuine orc with the right to shout Lok'tar ogar, you real bastard."
Is that what it took to lord it over the other chieftains? Yeah, I definitely needed to not only close the gate but also kill this bastard no matter what to be safe.
To that end, this time I avoided my sword and tried to take his head off from below like a golf swing, but unfortunately, the orcs who'd snapped to their senses after hearing his scream were a bit faster.
"Squeee-ee-eeak!!"
The pig-slaughtering noise was followed by some kind of shout, but it was in Orcish, not the Common Tongue, so I couldn't understand a damn thing. Probably something about saving the chieftain. The distance wasn't even that great, and action was faster than a shout, so I had to deal with them first before rushing Kakula again.
"Fucking hell."
For a second I thought maybe that's why he'd cast a binding spell instead of an attack spell, but thankfully, his reaction told me he hadn't thought that far ahead. That didn't make the charging orc cavalry disappear, so I adjusted my grip on the unfamiliar axe and sent the needles flying.
I could manage one needle to some extent during the back-and-forth of a fight, but shooting a volley was a whole different story. I needed to break the orcs' charge as fast as possible and take Kakula's head.
I wasn't aiming for the orcs—I was aiming for the demonic beasts they were riding. I loosed an all-out salvo: some couldn't even react, some barely could. The scene unfolded exactly as I'd predicted.
As I already knew, the demonic beasts prioritized their own bodies over their riders. They threw the orcs to dodge the needles, collided with each other, got pinned under corpses—a complete shitshow. As a result, even though the needles had only made two passes, the orc charge was completely broken.
Now I actually turned to take Kakula's head, and there the true orc bastard stood, gripping my sword while blood gushed from his shoulder. I couldn't read an orc's expressions, but he looked disgustingly wrecked, yet his posture was ramrod straight—truly majestic.
"Heh heh, tonight I'll feast in the Great Grasslands of the sky."
This motherfucker, after putting me through hell, all he could think about was his own happy thoughts and stuffing his face.
"Before you go stuff yourself there, can’t you call off those pig bastards on the other side of that gate?"
"Ha!"
The bastard replaced "fuck you" with a short laugh and rushed me. If my sword had been an ordinary longsword, he wouldn't even have been able to grip it properly, but since it was a bit large, it didn't look half bad in his hands. His style was something you'd give to a dog rather than call swordsmanship, but his movements still showed he knew exactly how to use his strength. Maybe, with one shoulder wrecked, him holding my sword right now was actually a better situation for him than his axe.
If it had been an ordinary sword, that is.
"But that's also my sword, asshole."
As I retrieved all the needles I'd fired and simultaneously connected my Magic Power to the sword, a distinctly different sensation came. I'd never had a hobby of fishing in either of my lives, but I think this must be what getting a bite feels like.
"Squeak?"
He must've sensed the sword trying to move on its own in his grip, because even as he charged at me, his gaze unconsciously snapped to the blade. And I didn't miss that opening—I lunged and swung the axe.
"For an orc, you fought disgustingly well."
That was his end. Just like with the needles, I rotated the sword and launched it wildly—it tore through his grip and went flying somewhere. At the same moment, my axe cut a straight line down above the bridge of Kakula's nose.
By the time Kakula, who had been following the spray of blood from his own hand, registered me and the axe, there was only about a fist's worth of distance left.
I didn't think I had the capacity to read an orc's facial expressions, but in that instant, Kakula looked like he gave a short smile.
-CRACK!
The downward chop, delivered with all my strength, split the bastard's skull in two and drove the axe into the ground.
Only after seeing him in a state that made it absolutely certain he'd never rise again, even if I uttered the resurrection spell 'Did we get him?', did the nerves I'd had pulled taut start to loosen a little.
"He wasn't smiling because he had some secret ace up his sleeve—he was like Delt."
Had he been able to smile because of the orc Valhalla he believed in? Or was it just a laugh that meant 'I got got'?
For an orc, he'd been chesty as hell, but honestly, he was better than a good number of human bastards.
"Squeee-ee-eeak!!!"
A beat late, the orcs reacted to Kakula's death. This wasn't the kind of situation where I could respond to every single one of them, so I left them behind and headed for the gate beyond Kakula's corpse.
If I'd secured Kakula's body, I might've gotten extra compensation later once the orc subjugation was wrapped up, but I had no way to carry that massive corpse and no time to spare, so I gave up on it cleanly. Now all that was left was to go back through the gate... go back...
...Go back, but why the fuck was the shutter coming down?
"Oh fucking hell, no!"
The moment Kakula died, the gate's light was dying out, scattering a strange energy. That shaman warrior bastard had been maintaining this thing? While fighting me at the same time?
"This guy was just a complete lunatic!!"
Did he not know the gate's business would end the moment he died?
No, there was no way. No matter how powerful the shamanism, if the effect showed up the instant he died, even he himself would've known while Kakula was still alive.
There was no way he didn't know that the instant he died, this gate—the core of the entire mass invasion—would close and the remaining orcs would be isolated.
In the end, an orc was just an orc. Battle-crazed motherfucker.
I stepped even one step further in the time I could've spent complaining, but it was pointless. The light vanished so fast that if I'd looked away for a second, I wouldn't have even been able to understand why the gate had stopped working.
In the end, I ended up barrelling past the completely empty gate as if it were a finish line, carried by all the momentum of my sprint with a whoosh.
"...Ha."
I was so deflated I couldn't even get a word out.
...Actually, come to think of it, this was a good thing. I still hadn't retrieved my sword. I nearly abandoned that precious blade. Hahaha.
As I focused my Magic Power again, the orcs' gazes followed the sword that flew back to me in an instant. Whether or not they did, I roughly wiped down the grip and sheathed the blade. Positive mindset, positive mindset...
"Fuck, what exactly is there to be positive about in this situation?"
The single-use train home was gone, and getting home would theoretically take months on horseback; even using gates and wyverns along the way, I had absolutely no idea how long it would take. I didn't even know the way home for sure.
All around me, a vast grassland so mild it was hard to believe it was winter, and surrounding me were countless orcs who'd been dazed by their chieftain's death but were now glaring, eyes burning with murderous hostility.
"Fuck. Fine, there are two positive things."
As I slung my new weapon over my shoulder and turned my head, the orcs, on the verge of seeing red, raised their weapons and began to surround me. Still, maybe because they were wary of the one who killed their chieftain, their movements weren't fast.
To quiet the fury boiling up inside me at this absurd situation, I repeated the two positive aspects I'd found to myself as I spoke to them.
"Mood's fucking rotten anyway, so bring it, pig bastards."
Two positive things: a situation where I could break in a new weapon, and the simultaneous existence of someone to take my anger out on.
Amid the pig-slaughtering din erupting from all directions, I sent my needles flying once more and swung the axe at the first orc charging from the very front.