Orcs and the Lady Knight 1

Rebecca had kidnapped someone on a whim, thoroughly enjoyed herself, and then taken off. She'd come bursting out of the woods to snatch her victim, and when she left she just waved a careless hand and bounced away into the trees. The whole thing looked like something out of a ghost story.

Thanks to that, when I rejoined the others near the safe zone after watching Han Se-ah's stream, a peculiar silence was waiting for me.

"Why are you volunteering for a paid ban? And no matter how much you people scream about it, I am never showing that, so get it through your heads."

A man had been dragged off by a woman he knew and thoroughly jumped. The only ones who could even open their mouths about this absurd turn of events were Han Se-ah and her viewers. Even Charlotte, who normally never shut up, just quietly scouted the surroundings. After combing through the forest in silence for a while, even an orc hunter's trap started to feel like a welcome sight.

"There's one up ahead."

"Yeah. Behind that rock, wearing a moss-wolf pelt and watching this way."

Mary, the only one in the group still wearing a perfect poker face, spotted a pit trap. At the same moment, Grace locked onto the orc hunter the same way she had last time. Finding the trap and then the orc hunter hiding behind it — the two of them were starting to work surprisingly well together.

Grace pointed straight at the rock where the thing was hiding, making no attempt to be subtle about the threat. I strode toward the spot she'd indicated and hopped clean over the pit.

A nasty little trap designed to twist an ankle and drip plant toxin into the wound. Of course, once you knew where it was and simply didn't step in it, it was less dangerous than a swinging branch. The moment its position was blown and an armored man started walking straight at it, the orc hunter bolted.

"Well, at least it's not a quest that fails just because one of them dies. Makes sense, though — we're not tracking a specific orc hunter, just following orc hunters in general. So if you keep spamming reset, reset, reset, the chat filter is actually going to kick in."

I kept a measured pace while tracking the orc hunter and started watching the stream feed at the same time. The rest of the party followed me as if Rebecca's intrusion had never happened, with Grace taking the lead. Charlotte and Mary had clearly shed their rookie adventurer tags and were keeping up properly.

Unlike the calm party trailing behind me, the orc hunter fled in a full-blown panic, thrashing through the undergrowth. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Stealth and covering its tracks were out of the question — it ran hard enough to make noise the whole way.

At least this time Rebecca didn't come bursting out of the woods to take its head off. Thanks to an orc's naturally sturdy body, the thing just kept barreling forward, completely unfazed by branches and vines.

"No, but — orc hunters — hah — are seriously fast…?"

On the stream feed, Han Se-ah was being pushed to the edge of collapse, and even Charlotte — a fellow mage — was starting to look a little pale, when—

Kweeiiik—

Kwek! Kwek!

The orc hunter that had been running full tilt practically tumbled into the orc village. The wooden palisade looked finished and solid, as if the place had been established for quite some time. Sprawled on the ground, the orc hunter looked back our way and grinned with smug triumph.

Of course, a mere orc making a racket behind a wooden fence wasn't going to scare anyone. I waited for the rest of the party to catch up and casually checked the stream feed.

The quest window, which had already updated once with Charlotte's muttering, refreshed again the moment I found the orc village. Han Se-ah, who'd nearly tripped over a tree root and been caught by Kayden, finally noticed and came scrambling after us.

"Hmm. Just as I thought. So the orc hunters have fallen under the shamans' command as well. Does that mean the orc hunters appeared at the same time, or do the shamans send out some kind of signal to nearby monsters the moment they spawn? I'd really like to catch the exact moment of appearance and confirm it…"

One by one, the party arrived in front of the village, which had been thrown into a stir by the orc hunter's frantic entrance. Grace was the first to poke her face out through the brush, and the rest of the party followed, peering at the palisade.

Unlike the half-finished, hole-riddled fence I'd seen last time, this was a solid wooden wall. A gate hung slightly open, and through it the orc hunter glared back at us. Warriors climbed onto the palisade to get a look at us, and beyond the wall the noise of combat preparations was already rising.

"The enemy has come right up to the palisade, and a hunter just fled inside — yet the warriors are keeping their composure. That is clearly abnormal."

"Yeah. Looks like they've got a real chain of command. Or maybe something more than a commander, given that they're worked up but still not charging."

Kayden, who was familiar with orcs, was the first to spot the oddity and point it out to the others. Every orc we'd met so far had been a single-celled organism that charged the person standing in front — me — the second our eyes met.

But the orcs on the palisade were watching us with cold, level stares, more like soldiers than savages, without so much as a flicker of excitement.

How to put it — in game terms, it felt like a three-tier system. If ordinary orcs were the baseline, the weakened ones were the wandering orcs, and the enhanced ones were these things in front of us… still unnamed.

"There's more of them than I expected, so I'll go in first and clear them out."

"Will you be all right on your own?"

"As long as they don't scatter in every direction and run."

They were drilled like soldiers, so they probably wouldn't bolt in terror. With that thought, I left the party in the woods and strode toward the palisade. This time I had no intention of going berserk, smashing the wall, and flattening everything inside.

Charlotte had paid real money ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to join the party looking for research material — if I just wrecked everything, she'd have nothing left to study. And I had something I wanted to test myself.

The skill Han Se-ah had… not so much carefully considered as just shoved into my hands: Shield Master. A tank-exclusive skill that reflected every attack blocked with a shield. I'd never actually used it. There hadn't been many monsters that attacked at range, so that was only natural.

Kwek, kwek!

Kweeiiik—!

The orcs' panic was obvious the moment I walked straight at them. A wooden gate dropped between the palisade posts, hastily sealing the entrance, and hunters draped in moss-wolf pelts climbed onto the wall and drew their bows.

If they were going to shoot arrows at me, that worked out just fine.

I raised my shield and murmured under my breath, lips barely moving. Han Se-ah always chanted her spells out loud — Magic Missile, Spark, whatever — so apparently I had to do the same to use a skill. Did other NPCs shout their technique names too? Or was it just Han Se-ah and me, forced to speak because of the system?

"Oh, the shield's glowing. That must be the Roland skill I picked before. He's never used it until now. Makes sense — orc hunters are the first ones who've actually attacked at range. Honestly, a 6★ reflecting goblin rock-throwing with a skill would be pretty ridiculous."

I raised my shield and kept walking forward, floating Han Se-ah's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stream window off to the side of my blocked vision. The moment I started properly channeling mana and activated the skill, my armor and shield lit up white — bright enough that there was no hiding it. The camera drone locking on to film was the natural next step.

Shield raised and glowing. Arrows flying in. Han Se-ah and the viewers trading a few lines. All of it in that brief span of time.

The arrows cutting through the wind were about to hammer into the shield when they turned into light and vanished with a whoosh — and the orc hunters on the palisade tumbled to the ground and dissolved into mana stones. It happened so fast that the viewers watching through the stream camera couldn't even properly process it.

So it really does return the attack as mana.

The skill Han Se-ah had chosen was a counter against all attacks.

It didn't seem to simply bounce projectiles back the way they'd come. Han Se-ah and the viewers hadn't noticed, but my mana-enhanced eyes had seen it clearly — the arrows shattering against the mana barrier layered over the shield, and mana bullets racing back along the arrows' original trajectories in reverse.

I wasn't sure how to explain that, so maybe I'd just gloss over it. When Grace had gained a passive skill, her body had gone briefly hypersensitive before she adapted. She never realized she'd acquired a skill — it just felt like her own ability had improved.

I'd already explained that passive skills were about striking back with mana, so if I claimed this one was simply a form of shield technique, Han Se-ah — player and mage that she was — wouldn't have any grounds to argue.

Somehow it feels like all I do is accumulate more lies…

With that faintly self-deprecating thought, and with no follow-up attacks coming from the orc village, I slammed my body into the gate, smashed it open, and walked inside.