Chapter 65
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 65
Chapter Title: Floor 8 - Lv. 159 Stormhowl Brigade HQ (10)
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The moment I finished the contract and returned to reality, I already knew exactly what I had to do.
A flicker of anxiety hit me—had I wasted even 0.1 seconds in startled surprise as the troll charged into view?
Our vision was already shared.
The Grove Fairy priests had densely floated wind spirits in the air like artificial satellites.
And they'd added a vision-sharing rune to the contract magic circle.
The rampaging club swung in slow motion.
Even the fairy who'd once been there, now flying away, looked incredibly slow.
The spirit realm is a profoundly mental place.
Having just shoved my soul deep into its core and pulled back, I might have been closer to a spirit than a flesh-and-blood being right now.
It was like the awakening effect of emerging from deep meditation.
But I had to make use of even this.
The battlefield overview I'd seen before starting the contract showed trolls brutally forcing their way through the halted forest expansion.
They hadn't even broken through halfway before fierce fairy resistance pinned them down, forcing endless regeneration.
Trolls are dumb, but that doesn't mean their combat intelligence is low.
They know the limits of their regeneration, and they know how to wield their brute strength and massive builds—true master warriors.
First, lock onto the enemies right in front of me.
Four had just entered the clearing where the contract ceremony took place.
Nine more were following close behind.
Five were thinking of eating the captured fairy first.
Three idiots had lost their way and were moving in weird directions.
Two were down, waiting to regenerate.
One was dazed, still reeling from the dark element's corruption.
Three were irritably pounding their uncooperative mounts.
A total of twenty-seven trolls still alive.
Thirteen more than I'd remembered processing.
For firepower from just bows and magic alone, it was overwhelmingly impressive—but the fairies wouldn't be celebrating.
Even if it was a forest they'd just created, the Grove Fairies saw those trees as kin.
They'd unleashed enough barrage under the gods' permission to kill thirteen trolls among their tree-named comrades. It must have felt utterly horrific.
And these were well-trained elite troll soldiers, no less.
Looking down at the forest now, it was horrifically ravaged.
By both the fairies' magic and the trolls' reckless charges.
But that's exactly why spotting friend from foe was easy from the overhead view.
Using the eyes of the wind spirits floating in the air, the first spots I checked were where injured fairies might be.
Exclude from bombardment if still alive.
Pure bombardment if a corpse.
Trolls get top priority.
Lock on targets with speed.
In late-labyrinth fights, even fractions of a second matter.
My decades-honed biological clock ticked off the time precisely.
Still a bit shy of one second.
The thought acceleration from exiting the spirit realm was gradually fading.
The density of time flowing through my mind was normalizing.
Hurry.
The Stormhowl Brigade's headquarters—I'd intuitively pinned its location before the contract, just as expected.
A massive distance away, but nothing noteworthy around it.
Just frozen tundra at the edge: patchy snow plains.
No single tree, no blade of grass.
Nothing to dodge—perfect for total devastation.
No need for precise lock-on. I set it to project power over a vast dragged area.
No need to see the target point or achieve total annihilation. Just inflict massive damage.
About ninety percent of my available mana allocated to the brigade HQ.
And the wyverns still flapping above the walls.
Now 1.5 seconds had passed.
Leave 0.5 seconds buffer.
If reverse-summoned right at attack initiation, that'd be pure idiocy.
I just marked everything visible to the spirit's eyes—wyvern or turret ornament, no distinction.
No humans flying, so no friendly fire risk.
The defenders weren't prepared anyway. Unlike the god-handpicked elite fairies, these human "finest" troops fell short.
The knights were fighting valiantly, but their numbers were fewer than the ogres.
If I had the leeway to whip up a massive vortex over the castle, none of this would be necessary.
But right now, with time tight, I needed to wring every last drop of lethality from my mana—not flashy spectacles.
Surprisingly, no need to throttle output much.
Weak for a spirit king.
Full throttle posed no issue.
Mana draining fast.
The allocation for maintenance was nearly gone. Eating into attack mana would turn priorities upside-down.
Exactly 0.5 seconds before reverse summon, I gave the attack order.
The little dragon vanished from my side in an instant.
The key to efficiently commanding spirits boils down to figuring out the boundaries of what they can handle autonomously with their own thinking.
For a newborn spirit king fresh off a contract, it's no exaggeration to say it has zero capacity for independent judgment.
A spell? A method of wielding power?
At spirit king level, the scale gets too immense.
I had to spell out every single movement for my little dragon.
If I'd had more time to refine it meticulously, that would've been ideal.
I could feel the spirit king's attack through our contract link.
It registered to me via relay from the countless wind spirits sharing my vision.
0.1 seconds.
Vast mana gathers, befitting a king's dignity.
Just the buildup of mana and air for the attack refracts the view.
The dragon's form warps like a convex lens—hard to even identify properly.
0.2 seconds.
Toward the distant Stormhowl Brigade HQ garrison, countless wind shells launched.
0.3 seconds.
The trolls up front finally noticed the massive elemental incarnation before them. Lines began tracing across the chests of those shifting their gaze.
Pop. Pop. Bullets piercing hearts dead-on.
The ultra-high-pressure compressed air rounds had trajectories visible to the naked eye, thanks to differing refraction.
0.4 seconds.
Dozens of lines not only plunged from the forest skies but slashed toward the castle airspace.
The lines multiplied.
Dozens to hundreds, then thousands.
The entire sky blanketed in compressed wind tracks, as if space itself had been sliced.
If anyone looked up right now, the heavens would seem etched with countless fissures.
Like peering at the sky through a window shattered into myriad tiny shards.
And the spirit king returned to the spirit realm.
The Girl thought her body was being sucked into the sky.
Breathing suddenly grew labored.
An enormous volume of atmosphere rushed toward a single point.
Distant air masses stormed in as a gale to fill the momentary vacuum.
To keep from being swept away, the Girl jammed her sword into the wall.
She felt a flash of anger at the thought of dulling the blade, but there was no choice.
The Hunter clung to the shield he'd planted in the ground alongside the youngest, holding firm.
What had Uncle done?
「Beautiful.」
‘Goddess, what the hell is this?’
「It's the first time I've seen the Wind Spirit King wielded so beautifully. Look up at the sky.」
The sky overhead was bizarre.
Like a shattered prism, strange lines divided it into countless fragments.
A sight that made her doubt the heavens wouldn't crumble.
"Whoa..."
As she let out a gasp of awe, the brief sky anomaly faded.
A massive boom echoed from the center of the sucked-in air, and all the sky tracks vanished.
In their place came a barrage of pops, as flying ogres and wyverns began raining down.
Unable to overcome their momentum, they crashed, toppling weak houses in the process.
Every ogre and wyvern that caught the Girl's eye looked horrific—like something inside their bodies had exploded in a dozen places.
The Girl scowled and covered her eyes with both hands.
「Why don't you wipe that blood off your hands first.」
She rubbed the blood roughly on her clothes and covered her eyes again.
The Disciple Orc sighed as he walked.
Quite some time had passed since his master was taken captive.
Trdongt was a Great Shaman with many political enemies.
Only his long tenure in the Stormhowl Brigade and personal prowess had let him hold his position amid endless intrigue.
Three months ago, he'd located the sealed ancient Orc hero.
Two months ago, the small unit he led had entered the fairies' forest to break that seal.
That was when Kakrish died too.
One single Exile human had tangled everything beyond saving.
Even Trdongt, the Brigade's senior-most Great Shaman, couldn't escape blame for botching the Empire's great cause from the outset.
Greenskins had no death penalty system.
Just confinement, stripped of all rank, and waiting.
For an Orc, being denied the chance to choose one's final battlefield was punishment enough!
Her master would soon head to the front lines not as a shaman or commander, but as a mere warrior.
And meet his end there.
When she'd been abandoned by humans after becoming an Orc, wandering lost, it was Trdongt who took her in.
He was always gruff, but she knew his heart was in the right place.
Now it was just a tangle of complicated feelings.
The old Orc within her was starting to show.
"Today's meal that again?"
"Yes, Master."
"You've gotten strangely polite lately. Should've been this way ages ago."
"......"
Trdongt took the dead bird through the bars.
The Disciple felt a spark of anger watching him crunch it whole and guffaw.
"Can't you just escape?"
"If I do, what about you?"
"I'll go with you. Orc loyalty and all..."
"And live as a wanderer Orc how? I've got plans— just wait."
"Until when? That's all you ever say."
Trdongt set down the half-eaten meat for a moment and spoke, an odd smile on his face.
"By the way, did you check on that vampire caught during the Exile hunt? Should be about time."
"Check? She's right next door."
"Huh?"
Trdongt glanced sideways, but saw only the wall.
He had no power left to cast spells. The best way to seal a shaman's power was with another shaman's magic.
The Disciple eyed the smaller, cruder cage next to Trdongt's.
He lifted the dirty cloth haphazardly draped to block the sun.
A tiny girl, maybe ten years old, lay curled up without a twitch.
He almost checked if she was dead, then stopped. Vampires were undead. Undead didn't breathe.
"Master, ever since that day, I just can't figure you out."
"You're not far off—an Orc shaman who hates Orcs."
"I..."
The Disciple started to say 'I'm human,' then gave up.
Trdongt spoke.
"Come to think of it, have the troll riders been deployed?"
At that, the Disciple recalled the monsters that had set out that morning.
Every time he saw them, pity welled up for the humans who'd have to face such things.
He gritted his teeth and suppressed it. Revenge might be her duty instead.
Trdongt nodded back at his disciple's nod.
"Then stay here."
"You usually tell me to leave quick."
Because it drew unwanted eyes from the other shamans.
Trdongt's capable disciple was of interest to the old shamans.
With her master fallen, they saw her as unclaimed.
Stay clear of the prior master, and new opportunities would open.
Trdongt flashed an enigmatic smile.
"Stay today. Without you, me and the bloodsucker next door would croak."
The Disciple plopped down sullenly before the cage.
Ever since that day, her master had truly become an unknowable Orc.
Revealing nothing, serene as if he knew the future.
Trdongt peered at the sky through the cage bars.
Far off, in the direction of the human castle.