Opening Skirmish 2
I tore straight through the orc settlement, wooden palisade and all. Palisade, huts, scattered junk, orc warriors, orc shamans — everything in a straight line went flying as I drove my shield into it. Dust choked the air. Toppled timber rolled in every direction. Any orc I hit became a green smear of blood, or something closer to raw meat dough, and went tumbling through the sky before dissolving into a mana stone.
And of course, one charge wasn't enough.
I punched out the far side of the village, plunged into the forest, then put power into my legs and shattered the dirt underfoot as I eased into a turn. Slowing just enough, I aimed for a spot a little to the side of the wreckage I'd already made of the palisade. Listening to the mournful howls of the orcs, I smashed through the wall a second time.
My target was the hut that had stood at the center of the village… or rather, the orc shaman who'd been reduced to byproducts right beside it.
I ran back into the settlement a little slower than the first charge and scanned the ground through the dust. One fairly large mana stone, and a necklace decorated with feathers and the like. An orc hunter's byproduct was a beast fang; an orc warrior's was a small animal bone. An orc shaman's, apparently, was feathers.
I scooped up the byproduct — it reeked of ritual significance even at a glance — and smashed through the palisade one more time on my way out. Behind me, the pitiful squeals of homeless pigs rose into the air, but nothing followed.
One lunatic screaming through their village had shattered the walls, flattened the houses, and sent their chieftain packing in a hit-and-run. They had every right to be in chaos. I had no intention of leveling the entire forest, so I gradually bled off speed and pulled a lantern from inside my armor.
"Looks like the orc warriors are roaming under an orc shaman's command. They die when you hit them, so their durability's about the same as a warrior or a hunter…? Wait, wouldn't even a Floor 30 boss die if it got hit by that charge? He's so strong I can't even get a feel for the scale."
As the dust cleared and my vision sharpened, I could see the party walking the forest path. They must have retrieved the camera after I'd secured the shaman's byproduct. Han Se-ah muttered under her breath, and for once the viewers actually took her side, agreeing she had a point.
Fair enough — watching an orc get launched into the sky by a shield wasn't something you saw every day. It was a lot like the time I'd hurled goblins like shot puts out on the plains.
The faces of the party in Han Se-ah's camera feed didn't look bad. They'd clearly heard every crash and boom of me demolishing the orc village. Somewhere in their hearts sat the solid conviction that this Roland wasn't about to go down to a bunch of orcs.
"Roland, what were you doing out there? The forest got really loud."
"Went and took a look at the hut in the middle of the village."
I jogged over at an easy pace and rejoined the party near the passage. Grace, first to sense my approach, was the one who asked. To satisfy her curiosity, I held out the orc shaman's byproduct still in my hand.
When I offered the gaudy necklace strung with multicolored feathers, Han Se-ah took it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Before stowing it in her inventory, the party members poked and prodded at it, curiosity written all over their faces.
"Never seen a byproduct like this. What was in the hut?"
"An orc shaman. Looks like the shaman was the one commanding the warriors."
Han Se-ah asked me with a perfectly straight face, even though she'd seen the whole thing through the camera. I explained about the shaman anyway — it was information the party needed to hear. Things like the interior of the hut as I'd seen it before I reduced it to splinters.
When I'd shoved the orc shaman aside with my shield and smashed through the hut's entrance, there had been a big cauldron and animal bones and the like. All of it was dust settling into the dirt by now, of course.
"An orc shaman… A rare specimen has appeared. Do you think it's only here?"
"Could be they've started popping up all over Floor 20."
"Roland, what kind of creatures are orc shamans?"
Kayden's tone suggested she already knew something about shamans — not surprising, given how long she'd spent wandering as a mercenary — while Grace's question made it clear she knew nothing at all. Grace, Irene, and Han Se-ah all seemed equally unfamiliar with orc shamans, so I started explaining.
"First of all, orc shamans are extremely rare, just like Kayden said."
"Why?"
"Because they have to be smart."
A hunter needed specialized skill. A shaman needed that skill plus high intelligence and the ability to handle mana. Out of a species of pig-headed brutes that traded brains for brawn, only the top 0.1% smart enough to manage it could take the job.
That was why shamans were even rarer among orcs than mages were among humans. Of course, these were Tower-spawned monsters tied to a quest, so for all I knew they were running a one-village-one-shaman quota system.
"Ah…"
"Yeah, asking those orcs for brains is a tall order."
The party, having personally experienced just how loud and brainless the patrolling orc warriors were, let out small sounds of understanding. Five of them charging me in a neat little line and flopping onto the ground side by side had been genuinely ridiculous.
Every single one they met just kept rushing the guy in front — me — over and over. The intelligence level was so low that Kayden in the backline could have lowered her weapon and just watched without any real danger.
It was the kind of level design tuned for average players rather than someone who'd gacha-cheated their way through like Han Se-ah. Put another way, even Floor 20's quest monsters felt fragile to our party.
"And being shamans, they naturally use all kinds of hexes. They'll whip orc warriors into a frenzy with dyes and drugs, or fling curses from a corrupted totem — that sort of thing. Irene's holy barriers can block those."
"The Goddess's grace will not yield to a monster's filthy tricks."
"Aside from that, they're surprisingly sturdy. It's not that a weakling among the warriors became a shaman — it's that a smart one among the warriors became a shaman."
Whether in the modern world or a fantasy one, the word "shaman" or "mage" conjured the image of a scrawny bookworm shut up in a study. In practice, if novice adventurers often got wrecked by goblins, intermediate-grade adventurers short on experience often got their skulls cracked by an orc shaman's staff.
They'd cut through the warriors, close on the shaman, start tasting victory and get cocky — and then eat a heavy staff to the head.
A baseball bat could kill a person. A musclebound giant swinging a meter-long wooden club was more than enough of a weapon. It wouldn't cave a skull in with one hit, but a concussion was well within reach. And if you got a concussion in the middle of an orc village… well. That ending wrote itself.
"So to sum up: the orc warriors nearby can suddenly get stronger. Curses will come flying, but Irene unnie can block them with her barriers. And if it comes to close combat, the shaman has warrior-level strength, so don't let your guard down just because it's a caster. That about cover it?"
"Pretty much."
Having heard me out, Han Se-ah laid it out point by point for the party and the viewers both. Even if the hexes were annoying, the enemy was still an orc. With a single priest in the party, they were just pigs who got hard-countered and couldn't do a thing.
What worried me a little was the sheer, stupid volume of them. One shaman had been leading a village of dozens of orcs — and the shaman itself wasn't even the boss monster.
Han Se-ah had said the quest was called the Orc Kingdom. What if an orc king or orc lord boss came barreling out with a whole horde of orcs behind it? Would I have to charge in and smash them the way I had the full-moon wolves? I wasn't sure how entertaining that would even be to watch.
"We've got the proof we need for the report, so let's head out. There's been an anomaly in the Tower, so I'm not planning to camp — we'll force-march. It'll be rough, but I'd appreciate it if you bear with me."
"Yes. Given the circumstances."
"Understood."
We'd broken through from Floor 10 to Floor 20 and scouted the area while hunting orcs. Outside the Tower the sun would have set, and Han Se-ah's stream end-time was drawing close. But this didn't feel like a situation for leisurely pitching tents and camping.
Two kinds of monsters that had no business existing in the Tower had appeared — and they weren't even wandering. They were building palisades and expanding their territory. Any adventurer worth the name would report that first. Irene gave a firm nod, and Han Se-ah nodded with her.
"Alright, that's it for today's stream. I'll pick it right back up tomorrow. I don't feel like wrecking my condition with an all-nighter just to run through the forest. And honestly, I don't think anything fun is going to happen on the way down the Tower."
Before her eyes could even finish rolling, the world went ash-gray again. That brief gray stretch didn't last a full second before it lifted — but Han Se-ah had spent a full day outside. As if to prove that a day had passed out there, she suddenly turned to me and spoke.
"Roland, what about finding the expedition's base camp on Floor 20 instead? You said there's a safe zone for sending supply wagons up to the front lines."
She must have read one of Jjanhae-jwa's posts while she was resting.