Multi-Species Alliance 1
The northern wasteland border was empty, and on the western road a few wandering goblins had been dealt with by Lily. To the south, another village sat nearby, and according to the locals, no peddlers ever came from that direction. That left the east — which, from what we'd seen on stream, seemed to have turned something up.
Grace, the last to return, dropped into a chair at the inn table with both cheeks flushed red. Seeing her like that, the innkeeper quietly poured her a glass of water.
"Haaah— oh, thank you."
Having run quite a distance hunting for tracks, Grace drank, steadied her breathing, then let out a long sigh and began to speak.
"Well, I think I found the trail. It's wolf pack tracks rather than orc tracks, but the ones who attacked us before rode wolves too, so it's probably them."
"Yeah. Neither this village nor the other ones nearby have heard any talk of wolves in the area."
True to form for orcs, the trail had been left plain as day. Even if they'd fled west in secret to escape the knight order's pursuit, only the boss monster was smart — the orcs themselves still seemed as dumb as ever. Just looking at how they'd charged in single file on their wolves and died one after another told you that much.
Even goblins would panic and scatter, screeching in terror if their comrades died like that. Orcs, though? If one of their buddies died hitting me, they'd just get mad and come hit me the exact same way.
With roughly twenty of those things roaming around in packs, of course the trail would be left intact. Wolf pawprints stamped into the dry wasteland earth, brush and shrubs hacked and smashed aside by blades, wolf fur snagged on tall grass, and droppings left on the ground.
"They seem to have moved northeast from this village. The trail was pretty old and broke off in places, but some of the signs were still really clear."
"Northeast… so toward the wasteland after all?"
"They might have allied with the orcs already living in the wasteland. If there's even one smart individual among them, they might try to unite the scattered orc tribes."
Everyone nodded at Katie's suggestion. It was a plausible theory even without the ones that had come out of the Tower. How should I put it — the orc race itself seemed designed around the concept of nomadic raiders whose IQ had been dialed down to rock bottom.
A race that couldn't farm, so they tamed beasts to ride and lived by plundering humans. Whoever came up with that framework, it had a familiar flavor that reeked of historical fear of the Mongols.
On top of that, the cliché of barbarians living scattered across a harsh, barren environment who unite under a special leader when one appears. Orc Lords and Orc Generals — hadn't we all seen those to death in novels and games alike?
"Katie's got a point. These are the ones who fled the comfortable, fertile Avergne Forest to escape the knight order's eyes. They must be after something — that's why they kidnapped the female knight and left rich land for the barren wasteland."
"Then shall we head northeast and start searching right away?"
"The sun's about to set. You sure about that? We could rest here for the night and search in the morning."
Since this was a chain quest, I figured the orcs must be after something and brought it up — only for Katie to immediately push for pursuit. She seemed a bit worked up from her sense of duty as a noble and as an adventurer, so I checked with the rest of the party.
One by one, as my gaze slowly swept over them, each of my companions gave a small nod. With victims already involved, their eyes were full of determination.
"A few hours of searching on terrain this easy compared to the Tower isn't enough to tire me out. I'm fine, Roland."
"We only heard the villagers' complaints. There are people suffering out there, so we should hurry."
"Uh, I was being carried around by Roland the whole time anyway… so I'm good."
The Saintess's compassion, a noble's sense of duty, friendship that wanted to find a missing comrade, solidarity with villagers threatened by monsters, and the need to keep the stream's goodwill from freefalling into the abyss — every reason piled into one place and set them in motion.
"Once the sun goes down, we'll have to fight relying on Hanna's light magic. Luckily the weather's clear, so hopefully the moonlight will be bright."
"…Yeah. Leave it to me!"
"You're out of here. Seriously, that came out of nowhere."
The road we'd taken from Erteta to this tiny village was a narrow path barely wide enough for a single wagon. An unpaved track with low hills crowding both sides — from a tactical, strategic standpoint, it looked far too perfect for an ambush.
To the left, a low ridge blanketed in shrubs; to the right, a stretch of dense brush. Even the dumbest orc could lie flat and hide in terrain like that. But ground ideal for hiding was also ground ideal for being tracked.
The green undergrowth still bore the obvious marks of something that had forced its way through, and the low shrubs were snapped at the waist or scored with sharp claw marks. On the barren hillsides where nothing grew, wolf pawprints remained perfectly intact.
"They came over this ridge on a scouting run, then turned back."
"So they climb the highest hill, look around, and attack if they spot people?"
"They ride wolves, so they might be tracking by scent too."
The trail was so blatantly clear that we even figured out their route of travel, and we followed their pawprints up and over the hills.
According to Grace's analysis, this group was a bit smaller than the pack I'd smashed last time — around ten of them. Twenty near a mid-sized town, ten near a small village. Had the orc leader calculated even that when sending them out?
"…Roland? There's blood."
"Villagers?"
"Judging by the wreckage of a wagon, it might have been a small peddler group. But something's off."
After cresting a few more hills, a sharp, metallic reek of blood hit us. Looking down from the ridge, we saw a small cargo wagon collapsed in a heap at a fork leading toward another village, along with the carcass of a horse.
The horse's belly hide had been shredded as if wolves had torn into it, and its head was rolling in the brush some distance away in a grotesque state. The wagon looked less like a wagon and more like a pile of firewood — as if someone had taken an axe to it with kindling in mind.
Grace, apparently unbothered by the sight, hopped over the horse carcass and poked through the smashed wagon wreckage with the tip of her boot.
"What's off about it?"
"…There are no human bodies. Look — the cargo that should be inside the wagon is gone too."
"So the orcs didn't just loot the goods. They took the people as well."
"Just like that female knight back then?"
Katie brought up the female knight we'd rescued last time. Lily looked over with eyes full of questions, and Katie scratched her cheek before launching into an explanation of the orcs' strange behavior.
How the orcs that had appeared on the twentieth floor of the Tower had, for some reason, kidnapped a female knight and systematically targeted nobles — and how those same orcs had slipped past the knights' eyes in the Avergne Forest and fled west.
"Honestly, it does sound completely absurd."
"Right? I could barely believe it at first either. I never expected a female knight to be locked in a tunnel under an orc shaman's hut."
"Well, you all help me out — it's not like you'd lie about something like that… but what do these things even want?"
"We'll find out once we catch them."
This time the orcs had taken villagers instead of a female knight. Having dragged people off, eaten the horses, and smashed the wagon to pieces, they'd left an even more violent trail behind them.
"Bloodstained wolf pawprints lead this way. They came from over there and left in this direction."
"There's blood-matted wolf fur sitting right out in the brush, so following them should be easy."
There were no real traces of the people themselves — probably loaded onto the wolves — but the wolves that had gorged on two horses had pushed through the brush without cleaning themselves first.
Blood-caked wolf fur clung to the broken, trampled undergrowth like paint-stained cat pawprints, marking the path so clearly there was no mistaking which way to go. The direction, of course, was the northern wasteland border.
"The horse blood hasn't even clotted yet. This was less than half a day ago."
"Hmm. Even if we catch up and find them, we'll have to hold back until their base shows itself."
"Right. Clearing out the evil in front of us matters less than striking at the root — that's how the village's brothers and sisters will actually be safe."
Following the wolf trail over one more hill, we spotted a small cloud of dust in the distance. Apparently the orcs had taken a nice long rest while their wolves ate.
Half a day, nothing. They'd been right under our noses the whole time.