Sword God (3)
I surged toward the orcs like a thunderbolt and launched my attack at once. A wet, ripping slash split the air.
"KWIIIEEK!"
I carved a long gash across one orc's belly. It shrieked, staggered back a few paces, then spilled its guts and died where it stood, hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
"Kwieek!"
Even with one of their own cut down so effortlessly, the rest kept coming. Three or four orcs closed in from every side.
I ducked a whooshing axe, then slipped into the opening like water finding a crack and answered with a cut of my own. Twin slashes rang out.
"Kwik!"
The new sword was every bit as vicious as I'd hoped. It parted a Red Orc's thick hide the way a knife parts tofu, and the blood that followed was catastrophic. A whistling thrust came next. That simple motion sent another orc out of this world.
Once the first wave was down, I planted my feet and stood there, unhurried. Then I frowned at the hulking orc chieftain and crooked a finger at him.
"Come at me. Planning to sit there and watch all day?"
"Kwieek! Fearless human!"
For all its bluster, the chieftain didn't charge. Instead it pulled a small horn from its belt and blew. A deep, rolling blast tore through the trees.
...Calling for more of its kind?
Was the horn itself some kind of item? The sound it poured out, thick with ominous energy, was far louder than I'd expected.
And then, the moment the horn's cry had filled the forest, massive drums began to pound through the entire camp. Red Orcs with murderous eyes boiled out of the trees in a black tide.
"...You've got to be kidding me."
I watched the spectacle in silence, then muttered it under my breath, equal parts disbelief and exhaustion. Orcs were not my match. A few exchanges had made that perfectly clear. But the number filling my vision right now was already well past several hundred.
Damn it. Can my stamina even hold?
I didn't have time to dwell on it. The chieftain who'd blown the horn bellowed like a thunderclap.
"Kwik! Kill that human! Whoever slays him will receive the Blessing of the Great Warrior!"
"KWIIIEEK!"
"Kwieek!"
Whatever this Blessing of the Great Warrior was, the horde wanted it badly enough to come at me in a stampede. Their massive axes and hatchets flew for my vitals without a hint of hesitation.
The fight that followed was a complete melee. Axes rained down without end, and I answered with every acrobatic trick in the book, twisting and weaving like a stuntman shooting an action film. When a blow came from a blind angle, I stepped into it instead of away. The keen black blade danced, carving a brief pocket of space, and I threw myself into that opening and kept fighting.
By the time I'd cut down more than thirty of them, I was gasping for air. I realized, then, that my stamina was running out.
The mercenaries had taken to calling me Frey, the company's youngest. And they were right — this body hadn't been tempered in the slightest, and it had begun to scream under the sudden strain.
Damn it!
Every swing, every spray of blood, shoved my breath up into my throat. I still hadn't taken a hit, but the situation looked ready to spiral, and fast.
"Kwieek! Kwik! The human is tired!"
"Shut up!"
My blade punched through flesh. They'd sensed it too, on instinct — that I was nearing my limit. The orcs' assault grew even more ferocious.
And then, as I cut down nearly ten more, my sluggish body finally let one through.
"Kh—!"
I twisted at the last instant and avoided a killing blow, but blood was already running from the wound in my shoulder. From here, things would only get worse.
Why the hell are there so many orcs?!
I gritted my teeth and kept swinging, screaming the question inside my head. I'd known Red Orcs lived in tribes. I'd never heard of this many gathering in one place. The ones I'd already killed were closing in on a hundred.
I staggered.
"Kh!"
I'd been aiming only for vitals the whole fight, trying to conserve what stamina I had. But injury piled on top of a collapsing body, and the dizziness that followed blacked out the world in front of me.
Even so, exhausted as I was, I refused to give up. Swordsmanship bordering on the divine flashed against the orcs that lunged for every opening — but the light didn't last. Even that radiance, the one that had been butchering them, began to fade.
"Kwieek! Die!"
The orc Great Warrior, watching my stance buckle, came at me in a rush. It launched itself into the air, and its massive axe came screaming down with murderous force.
...Is this it?
Time seemed to slow. Like a drowning man's last reel of memory, everything from the moment I'd opened my eyes in that dank prison to now tangled through my mind. And then a shrill ringing flooded my ears. Was this the life-flash you saw on death's doorstep? For a brief, dazed moment, I simply watched the orc chieftain charging in.
A heartbeat slammed through me. Then another. A strange sensation seized me in that sliver of an instant — a heart pounding like a war drum, breath sharp and electric, pupils blown wide. Time still crawled. And yet, somehow, it felt as if bright sunlight were pouring back into a body that had been running on empty.
I tightened my grip on the sword. Boundless power seemed to course through every inch of me, stealing my thoughts. At some point, a brilliant, radiant light had begun to gather along the blade — a blade already soaked in red blood.
A handful of knights from the Empire's northern expedition — members of the Golden Lion Knights — had been climbing the mountain since before dawn. Their assignment was reconnaissance and monster subjugation. According to the scouts, a Red Orc encampment sat on the mountainside, and the order had moved out to wipe it from the map.
"If I may, sir — doesn't it seem a little strange that so many knights have been deployed for this?"
"Strange how?"
"With the captain alone, clearing an orc tribe would be simple enough, wouldn't it? And yet look at us now..."
The knight clicked his tongue and jerked his chin at their surroundings. Five knights, the captain at their head, were climbing the mountain with faces worn thin by fatigue.
"You only know half of it, my friend."
"...Sir? Was I mistaken?"
"You were. Completely. Take Red Orcs lightly and you'll pay for it. Andrew — can you kill several hundred orcs by yourself?"
"Ah — no, sir."
"Then don't second-guess the mission."
The knight called Andrew made no effort to hide his shock.
"You can't mean... there are hundreds of orcs in a single tribe?"
"That's right. Unique to the orcs in this region. The commander didn't send the captain and the rest of us along for no reason."
Andrew and the senior knight kept chatting as they climbed. Ordinarily their captain, infamous for iron discipline, would have snapped at them — but the war was over now, and perhaps that leftover ease was why he let the conversation run.
They'd been climbing for some time when the whole party halted — the captain at the front had raised a hand.
"Halt. I smell blood."
"...Blood, sir?"
"Yes. Thick, and damp. Has a suppression party already been dispatched?"
The captain of the knights frowned and cocked his head. If he was wrong about a suppression party, the situation would only get messier. Individual knights of their caliber hadn't gone missing, but any number of mercenary companies hired by the expedition had vanished on reconnaissance. Mercenaries promised pay didn't desert at the tail end of a war, which meant most of them had likely died to monsters. The owner of this blood-scent, in other words, might well be a distant comrade — a fellow soldier.
"Full speed up the mountain. Mana use is authorized."
The captain gave the order with an expressionless face, then began climbing at a staggering pace.
"W-we'd better hurry after him!"
"Ah! Yes, sir!"
Caught off guard by their captain's sudden burst, the other knights kicked off the ground and followed.
A short while later, the knights reached the mountainside — and froze before a scene of utter horror.
"W-what is this?!"
Blood here. Blood there. So much of it that it had pooled around their ankles. And soaking in that blood, hundreds of orc corpses lay cooling, each one slain through a vital point.
"Th-there are human bodies as well! Judging by their gear and arms, they look like a mercenary company!"
"Hmm."
The captain surveyed the battlefield with a grave expression. Not a single orc was left alive. The slaughter was so one-sided he almost wondered if another knightly order had overlapped their hunting grounds by mistake.
The fighting took place at the entrance to the orc camp.
He moved slowly through the site, his sharp gaze sweeping the surroundings.
The armed mercenaries... all of them died in a single blow.
Then who had killed all these orcs? This was a level of combat only a knight of the captain's caliber — one of the Empire's rising stars — could have produced. And the odds of a mercenary company having someone like that were vanishingly small.
"A s-survivor! Survivor found! Survivor found!"
A survivor?
The captain's eyes narrowed at Andrew's voice calling from farther off. That would be him. The one who'd lived through this massacre was almost certainly the one who'd created this orc-made hell.
The captain's stride toward that voice gained weight.