Orcs and the Female Knight 3
Whether it was because we'd toppled a fairly large orc settlement, or because we were dragging the orc shaman along like a piece of luggage, we didn't run into any orcs on the way back to the safe zone. We only crossed paths with a handful of adventurers who stared curiously at us hauling an unconscious beauty and an unconscious orc.
Thanks to that, we nearly looked like a pack of perverts about to do something unsavory with a knocked-out woman and an orc—but with most of the party trailing behind being women, and Irene in her nun's habit among them, mercifully no one picked a fight.
"I'll leave the trail markers. I picked up a few tricks from the mercenary company."
"I'm counting on you, Kayden."
I slung the orc over my shoulder while Mary the maid carried the woman we took for a female knight on her back. Leaving marks on tree trunks as we went, we arrived at the safe zone. The moment we dragged in a rather unusually colored orc shaman and started treating the unconscious woman, the guards stared at us with thoroughly bewildered eyes.
Yeah—looking at it with no context, this scene was pretty weird.
Irene was a full 5-star Candidate Saint, but as she'd said herself, she was weak when it came to healing holy arts. Supreme barriers, above-average purification, below-average healing, and enhancement that was flat-out impossible. So treating the unconscious woman was inevitably going to take some time.
"Her clothes are filthy. We'll need to clean her up a little."
"We'll wait outside, Kayden."
"…Ah, right."
At times like this, there was nothing a pair of empty-handed warriors like Kayden and me could do, so we sat in chairs and rested while the rest of the party bustled about. Or rather, it wasn't so much that we were warriors as that we were men, and there was nothing we could do.
Unlike Charlotte, who had dragged the shaman off to her laboratory, Mary the maid stayed behind to help. She seemed intent on stripping off the dirt-caked clothes and at least wiping the woman down with a damp cloth, and she shot a subtle glance at me and at Kayden—who was still cross-dressing as a man.
"I'll go boil up some thin soup. Hanna, can you help?"
"Oh, right. She'll need something to eat when she wakes up, won't she?"
Grace and Han Se-ah rummaged through their inventories for a pot, bowls, flour, and the like, then headed for the kitchen. At the same time, chat messages poured down harder than a midsummer rainstorm.
Since this was an adult-rated virtual reality game, the stream was half-forced into a mature rating—but of course she had no intention of showing a woman's naked body on camera. Most of the viewers knew that too, so their scolding was half in jest.
…Most of the viewers, that is.
"Whoa, bans are flying around by the hundreds like summer mosquitoes. Just so nobody's confused—the chat window isn't managed by a single moderator, okay? You don't actually think a virtual reality game would show up without a chat management algorithm, do you? The chat bots have been massively upgraded, so keep that in mind when you type."
Han Se-ah's muttering was no empty threat—chats were getting blocked at an impossible speed. Everyone was startled by a rate no human mouse-clicking could match. Viewership had multiplied several times over, and people had been typing crude comments, only to discover that every single one was being censored.
Be that as it may, time passed, and eventually the unconscious woman came to. Even if Irene's healing efficiency wasn't high, the woman had no special injuries beyond starvation, so she woke up sooner than expected.
"Khmm… uh… uhhn…… where… is this?"
"This is the safe zone on the 20th floor. You were captured by orcs and rescued by an adventurer party. Who are you, and why were you being held by orcs?"
"Miss Charlotte, she needs to get her strength back before you start grilling her. Here, Sister. I've let it cool a little—drink it slowly."
Irene gently smiled as she held out a bowl of soup to the woman who had barely managed to come to her senses on the bed. She'd boiled it thin for a patient who'd gone days without food, so it looked almost like she was feeding baby formula to a child. That maternal kindness briefly quieted the chaotic chat window—for a moment, a moment… as if it would ever actually stop.
Faced with a chat window overflowing with thoroughly misplaced lust directed at Mamang, a flustered Han Se-ah took a step back and started verbally dismantling her viewers.
"Hah… thank you…. And the others…?"
"You're the only survivor from the orc settlement."
"Hah… so it really… turned out that way."
After drinking the cooled soup and recovering some of her strength, a little life returned to the woman's eyes. Strangely enough, when she heard that every last adventurer had died, she seemed to feel less grief than a sense of inevitability.
I wasn't the only one who noticed that composed attitude—everyone watched her face as if waiting for an explanation. Apparently deciding there was nothing worth hiding, she set down the empty soup bowl, cleared her throat, and began her introduction.
"I am Josephine of the Kingdom's Second Knight Order. I had hired adventurers to investigate the orcs' abnormal behavior as part of my mission."
Perhaps she wasn't particularly saddened because they hadn't been her comrades. And so the female knight Josephine's story began.
According to her explanation, a band of orcs had suddenly appeared near the royal palace. Much like the Full Moon Wolf incident, it seemed orcs from inside the Tower had used spatial transfer to break out into the outside world. But even if the incidents were similar, the fallout was entirely different.
Monsters appearing in a free city with no lord, harming ordinary citizens.
Monsters appearing near the royal palace, threatening nobles and royalty.
With the royal knight orders and noble escorts on hand, the latter naturally suffered far less damage. But in a world with a class system, the harm done to commoners and the harm done to royalty could not even be placed on the same scale.
"Because of that, we hired adventurers to investigate, and confirmed that several orc shamans were gathering stray orcs and trying to establish a base in the Avergne Forest. And then… this is going to sound a little absurd. I've never set foot in the Tower, yet you're telling me you rescued me from inside it."
Even as the female knight gave an awkward little smile, everyone's faces went rigid. Everyone except Han Se-ah, who still didn't know much about how this world worked. Being kidnapped outside the Tower and brought inside it was a more unsettling story than it first appeared.
Everything else was fine—but the words Avergne Forest hit my ears like a hammer.
"So like the Full Moon Wolves, the orcs inside the Tower can come and go outside as they please? If they know how and are using it, that means orcs are smarter than Full Moon Wolves and Horned Wolves… Why is everyone making that face?"
"Miss Josephine—did you say the Avergne Forest?"
"Yes. It's precisely because it was the Avergne Forest that the royal knight order launched an investigation immediately, is it not?"
Han Se-ah, short on common knowledge about this world. Grace, thoroughly smitten with her, pressed close to her side and began murmuring an explanation. Even Grace, a hunter from a slash-and-burn village, had at least heard the name of the Avergne Forest.
The Avergne Forest was a private royal hunting ground, blessed by the Goddess herself.
If it had just been something like Horned Wolves bursting out, it wouldn't have mattered. The problem was that the orcs clearly possessed intelligence, and that the shamans were drawing up strategies. Orcs settling in a forest owned by the royal family, slaughtering adventurers and kidnapping knights, meant—
"…Orcs of all things, aiming to assassinate royalty?"
"…Good heavens."
It meant they could clearly classify human social ranks.
Orcs who could distinguish commoners from nobles had pushed as far as the palace outskirts and slipped into a forest belonging to the royal family. Only then, at Kayden's stunned mutter, did Han Se-ah finally grasp the situation.
Once she'd recovered her strength, the female knight returned to the orc settlement with the safe zone guards, retrieved her equipment, and headed out of the Tower. Part of me wanted to hold her back and grill her for every detail, but the walls of social rank weren't something you could casually ignore.
Could a mere adventurer detain a female knight carrying out a royal mission just because he was curious? After the knight left—promising she would report in and make sure we were rewarded—I turned to Han Se-ah half in jest.
"Hey, party leader. This is a real problem."
"What is?"
"Besides a thoroughly furious Rebecca, it looks like we'll also be competing against a royal knight order with blood in its eyes."
The main quest was unfolding so strangely I almost wondered whether other people got time-attack quests like this too. Rebecca could be chalked up to coincidence, but the royal knight order's involvement felt like something everyone would run into in much the same way.
If the female knight Josephine returned to her order and made her report, the knights would issue a subjugation order without a moment's hesitation. Orcs of all things daring to defile a forest blessed by the royal family—what reason would they have not to draw their swords?
So the quest rewards split two ways? Something like a normal clear versus bonus rewards.
It had been the same with the Full Moon Wolves, and it was the same with this orc incident. If a player succeeded at the time attack under their own power, extra rewards got tacked on—free gate access, equipment in exchange for byproducts, skill points, that sort of thing.
Conversely, if a player failed the time attack, outside forces stepped in. Adventurers and mages hunting the Full Moon Wolves; the royal knight order purging the orcs.
The convenience facilities for users—the gates every ten floors—were always open, but free passage fees, equipment, and extra skill points seemed to be opportunities you only got by succeeding at the time attack. From the order to conquer the top of the Tower on down, these people were deadly serious about time attacks.
"Well, what can you do? All we can do is hope Miss Charlotte digs something up."
At the mere two syllables of "royalty," the viewers were already getting ahead of themselves, daydreaming about a lovely princess. As far as I knew, the kingdom only had princes. There were noble young ladies, sure—but no princesses.
I couldn't say it to the camera, and that was a genuine shame.