Multi-Species Alliance 2
Far from trying to hide their presence, the orc cavalry thundered across the land like they were advertising their location to the entire neighborhood. A long, drawn-out howl of wolves rolled out ahead of them, and a cloud of dust drifted toward the barren wasteland. They swaggered along with the air of creatures daring anyone to come at them.
A dozen or so wolves and orcs were nothing I couldn't pulp with a single swing of my mace — but if we wanted to find their base, we had to follow them quietly.
Fortunately, they were so worked up they never once looked back as they charged into the wasteland. Just as we had spotted them, there was nowhere for us to hide either — yet even when we simply trudged up and over the hills in plain sight, the orcs just kept racing forward.
"We're past the hills now. It's open wasteland. Won't they notice us?"
"Looking at how they're acting, I don't think they care."
"Are orcs really this careless?"
They were used to fighting orcs, but not so much to orc behavior, so the party tossed out comments one after another. Grace muttered that even wild animals would sense them and bolt if someone followed this blatantly, and the others nodded along in agreement.
Fair enough — we were trailing them at a rough two hundred meters across wide-open wasteland and still hadn't been spotted. Hard not to be surprised.
Thanks to that, we could see everything in raw detail: several villagers lashed tight with rope and hauled like cargo on the wolves' backs, and the orcs slamming fists into anyone who woke and started thrashing until they went limp again. Given an orc's usual temper, a struggling captive would have had their neck snapped on the spot. It really was strange.
"Hey, cut the conspiracy theories. Though… okay, that one's kind of plausible. Corrupt nobles cutting deals with smart monsters — that shows up in fantasy novels all the time, right?"
Thanks to that, Han Se-ah's stream had already spun itself into claims that the knight order had betrayed humanity and joined forces with the monsters. Realistically, orcs had no way of turning a knight order into traitors — but as a game quest setup, it was weirdly believable.
We'd cleared the orcs, climbed to the thirtieth floor, finished the quest, and come out — only to find more orcs outside the Tower. Goblin threats were one thing; orc threats looked a little more terrifying, so from a balance standpoint this probably checked out.
While I was off on that tangent, the dust cloud stopped.
"There's a whole cluster of tents. So they really did join up with the wasteland orcs."
"Why are they taking people alive, though? …Don't tell me they want to eat them fresh?"
"Ugh, I doubt it's that. They've got that female knight trussed up like a prisoner too, so maybe they're planning some kind of hostage play."
Far across the wasteland, dirt-stained tents came into view. No fence, no thought of keeping outsiders out — just a huddled little tent village that seemed to be the orcs' nest. A crude wooden pen looked like the place they kept the wolves.
…So then where were they putting the people?
"Looks like they've finally spotted us."
"Yeah. They're climbing back onto the wolves."
The party watched the orcs through mana-reinforced bodies, while Han Se-ah — stuck relying on her skill window — stuck a camera on an orc warrior and panned around. Out on open wasteland, of course they'd noticed us walking in at a leisurely pace.
The ones who'd gone into the tents came pouring back out, swung onto their wolves, and charged from the tent village. The direction the dust-kicking wolves were racing was, naturally, straight at us.
"Talking's not going to work anyway. Want to just kill them all and check the tents?"
"Sounds good to me."
As if answering the call, Lily planted her long spear and took a long stride forward. Hunting wandering goblins must have warmed her up properly — she looked ready to charge without a second's hesitation. I wasn't particularly worried, so I just nodded.
Kayden, with almost no adventuring experience, sat around a 4-star level 20. Lily Depp, who'd reached Upper-grade adventurer long before stars even existed, was basically a maxed-out 4-star.
"Alright — I'm going first!"
Mana flooded into her sleek thighs, swelling them taut, and then she was gone — vanishing past the edge of sight in a spray of dust like the wolf pack itself. Unlike me, who shattered the ground with every step, she ran with the soft, weightless grace of an astronaut on the moon, as if she were skipping across the dust itself.
Of course, just because her running was smooth and elegant didn't mean what she held in her hands was soft. Bluish mana gathered and shimmered along the long spear blade — her stress over her missing companions must have been building up.
"Shouldn't we help her?"
"Help her with what?"
"…Huh?"
Lily and the orcs closed on each other without slowing. Kayden drew her sword and started to run — then froze mid-step at what happened next.
FWOOM—!
The moment the distance closed enough, Lily dropped low, spear leveled, and drove off the ground even harder, like a full lance charge. Dust billowed up and blanked out the view — and through the cloud, a brief blue flash.
A bright flare of mana light, like lightning inside a storm cloud, and then the boom rolled after it. Exactly the way thunder always lags behind the flash.
"I don't know about Lily's companions, but she's an Upper-grade adventurer. There's nothing to help with when she's cleaning up a few orcs."
Where the cloud settled, only Mana Stones remained — of what had been orcs, and of what had been wolves.
The world is not equal. Like most things, the talent handed to each person is not equal either. In that sense, Lily Depp's party had been held together by a miracle of friendship and loyalty.
A handful of like-minded kids from the same neighborhood had banded together to become adventurers, and Lily Depp — talent backed by effort — had been the first among them to reach Upper-grade.
The same way I, as an Upper-grade adventurer, had led Han Se-ah and the others around the Tower, Lily's party had moved under the protection of their own Upper-grade member. If I'd done it out of a desire to get out into the world beyond the game, Lily had kept the party going purely in the name of friendship and loyalty — even when it cost her.
"What the hell are these bastards?"
With a bond that tight, it was only natural she'd grown impatient and rough.
"Y-you — who are you people?!"
"That's my line, you sons of bitches."
I'd stopped to collect the Mana Stones before following Lily as she charged toward the tents without them — and by the time I caught up, chaos had already broken out. Two burly men were already sprawled on the ground, beaten into bloody pulp by the shaft of her spear.
People in an orc nest — I'd figured they might be hostages brought in as captives, but—
"What's going on?"
"These bastards were dragging the people who'd been tied up with rope and locking them in a wooden cage."
"…These humans?"
"That's what I'm saying!"
Well, damn. Human collaborators in an orc camp.
It was the same brand of nonsense as getting dragged off by a lion on the savanna only to find a human secretary calling the male lion "boss." These were creatures that would charge in a line and get their skulls caved in the second they spotted a human, whether their own allies lived or died — and they were cooperating with humans?
But right in front of me were living proof that flatly contradicted that idea.
Living in the wasteland, they looked scruffy enough, no argument there — but they clearly weren't starving. Good color in their faces, solid flesh on their bones. Dirty as they were, their clothes weren't torn or worn through, and each of them wore a cleanly honed weapon at his belt.
Filthy faces, razor-edged weapons, mismatched clothes, and leather armor slapped on however it fit. Through the eyes of a fantasy world, they were textbook bandit scum.
"Well, that's convenient."
"What is?!"
"We've got ones who can talk. …You three, go check the other tents and get what you can from the kidnapped villagers."
And in a medieval fantasy world with no concept of human rights, a bandit was basically a monster that could speak. Fine to kill — and if you hauled the corpse in, it paid.
At that, Kayden — who at least had some mercenary experience — grabbed Grace and Irene by the arms and hustled them away. A hunter girl from a slash-and-burn village and a candidate saint raised in the Temple didn't need to see what was coming next.
Grace and Irene, shoved along by Kayden without even grasping the situation, vanished toward the other tents. After a furious moment of deliberation, Han Se-ah killed the camera entirely and followed Kayden. Same way you couldn't just broadcast sex even with an 18+ tag, excessive violence against humanoid NPCs — as opposed to monsters — was bound to kick up controversy.
Which left two people sprawled on the ground, three orc collaborators staring at me in terror, and Lily Depp.
"…I've got a dagger. Want to borrow it?"
"Nah. Bare hands work better for me."
And for a smooth conversation, five needed to become four.
A method I'd picked up over the shoulder of that 5-star guy from the information guild — Uncle John of the Silent Whisper. I couldn't torture with the precision those people used, but carving fear into untrained men didn't require precision.
Show a person folding like a sheet of paper, and fear tends to follow on its own.
If not paper, fruit in a juicer worked as a metaphor. Or a slab of meat being separated into flesh and bone for jerky. Either way.