Human Scent
The next morning.
The air inside the Bresen Guild was a little heavier than usual.
The board in front of the commission postings was as loud as ever. But behind the reception desk, something felt different.
Luce kept glancing toward the back even as she flipped through the ledger, fussing with the corners of the paper and aligning them twice for no reason.
It was unlike her.
Cedric, who normally only drifted out when there was work to be done, had come out ahead of them and was waiting.
"Oh. You made it."
A few worn commission slips were already laid out on the desk.
The edges of the paper were curled as if they had been pressed under something for a long time, and fingerprints smudged the surfaces here and there. These were not new commissions. They were the kind that had been stuck somewhere on the board for ages, untouched by anyone.
The old leftovers that stayed behind when the small jobs ran dry.
What sat in front of us now was exactly that.
"Orc scout party near the eastern logging road. Confirm and eliminate."
Cedric pushed one of the old slips toward them.
"Additionally, investigate traces consistent with a large-class monster. This is confirmation, not a full extermination. Don't go deep and get yourselves killed for nothing."
Roy looked down at the commission without a word.
"How many orcs?"
"Seven or eight confirmed. The traces are old, though, so the real number is probably much higher."
"Ogre tracks?"
"Not confirmed… but yeah. That possibility's the highest."
He said it lightly enough, but Cedric's expression was anything but.
Then Luce quietly approached and set a record binder down on the desk.
"These are the prior incident reports."
Only the tips of her fingers trembled, just barely, as she set it down.
"The first report came from two lumberjacks. They said they saw orc tracks on the eastern logging road. Three days later a hunter reported large footprints in the same direction. After that, the zone was designated a temporary restricted-access area."
Luce paused there for a moment.
It was a short silence.
But in that short silence I saw it — Luce starting to look at me, then deliberately shifting her gaze toward the commission slip instead.
"This job is… far more dangerous than the usual commissions."
Her voice was low and even. It was everything a receptionist was allowed to say.
Only the very end of it trembled, just a little.
I almost laughed it off the way I usually did, then stopped.
Because the skin under Luce's eyes was darker than usual.
The face of someone who had not slept well.
The face of someone who could not hide her worry.
"Heh. Got it. I'll come back in one piece! If it looks bad, we just run."
Cedric snorted a short laugh in reply.
"Haha. Yeah. That's the right call. If it looks like you're going to die, run. Worst case, I'll step in myself."
"Ooh, as expected of the chief! So cool!"
"You little brat."
The mood eased a little, but Luce was different. Her lips were pressed thin, and her hands never left the top of the binder.
"Everyone… please come back safely."
Luce said it quietly.
"Without fail."
Those words lingered strangely long.
Without fail.
The word settled quietly against my back amid the noise of the guild.
We nodded without speaking.
We headed straight for the eastern logging road outside Bresen.
Once we left the village, the wide road narrowed almost at once. Low grass and cut tree stumps lined both sides of the dirt path.
Only a few days ago lumberjacks would have been walking this road. Now there were more beast and monster tracks than human footprints.
I matched Roy's stride and asked,
"Hey, are orcs monsters too?"
Before Roy could answer, Mari spoke first.
"No. Orcs are usually classified as magical beasts."
"Uh… what's the difference between a magical beast and a monster?"
"Magical beasts are often ordinary animals that got corrupted by mana or demonic energy and changed. Things like black wolves or iron-tusk boars. Dangerous, sure, but at their core they're still animals."
Mari glanced at a footprint pressed into the dirt beside the path.
"Magical creatures are different. They either start life with that kind of power, or they belong to ecosystems closer to dungeons and the Demon King's forces. If they have intelligence, use weapons, or move in organized groups, we usually call them magical creatures."
I tilted my head a little.
"Then technically goblins are magical creatures too, right? They carry weapons and they talk."
"Goblins are a little ambiguous."
Mari's answer was short.
"Low-level packs get treated as magical beasts. If they have strong demonic-energy reactions and a command structure — shamans, warrior types — they fall under magical creatures. In the field people just lump them together as low-grade magical creatures sometimes."
"Hmm… messy."
"They're messy ones, yeah."
Roy added quietly,
"In the field we keep it simple. If it charges like an animal, magical beast. If it carries weapons, talks, and targets people, magical creature."
"So orcs are magical creatures, then."
"Yeah."
Roy lowered his voice.
"Orcs don't charge like animals. They hunt. They kill, they divide the spoils, they drag things away."
At that, Kaya stiffened slightly. Without a word she adjusted the strap of her bag — the small one that held her healing tools and holy catalysts. Her grip was a little tighter than usual.
A brief silence settled over us.
Then Mari's gaze turned toward me. More precisely, it was the look of someone still stuck on a problem that had not resolved since yesterday.
"…Baek Siyun."
"Yeah?"
"Yesterday… that lightning magic."
My feet almost stopped.
"You're still thinking about that?"
"How am I supposed not to think about it?"
Mari swept her bangs back in irritation.
"Yesterday was too chaotic so I let it go, but the more I think about it the weirder it gets. You've never learned lightning-type magic. Ice, wind, anything else — same thing."
"…That's true."
"So how exactly did you use it?"
…This is awkward.
I used lightning.
Easy to say. The reality was a little different.
What I did was not call lightning down from the sky, and it was not reciting a set formula either.
I slowed my steps for a moment while I ordered my thoughts.
Mari did not push. She simply matched my pace beside me.
"Hmm…"
I pulled yesterday's scene back up in my head.
Lightning and thunder I had seen through screens.
Gods who wielded lightning.
Countless works of fiction.
Skills I had seen in games.
I could not explain all of that one by one.
"……I just saw a lot of different things growing up. I did think about wanting to create lightning, but what I actually did was closer to making a path for it to flow through."
"A path… for lightning to flow?"
"Yeah. Lightning didn't feel fixed the way ice is. It felt more like a force that kept splitting and trying to jump free. So instead of grabbing it by force, I made the path it would take first."
Mari narrowed her eyes.
"So what you're saying is, you set the conditions for lightning to flow first."
"Probably?"
Mari slowed her steps for just a moment.
"Then strictly speaking, you didn't create the lightning."
"Uh… isn't that right?"
"It's closer to magically recreating the conditions under which lightning forms, rather than the lightning itself."
I tilted my head briefly.
"Is that how it is…? You're the one who said magic has to look at both process and result."
"Ha… that is what I said, but…"
Mari looked at me like she could not believe it. Her eyes, though, were different. Not so much annoyance as the look of someone whose calculations had come out wrong.
I watched that face of hers for a moment, then finally said,
"Then… I'll explain properly later tonight."
"Tonight?"
"Yeah. We're on a commission right now."
"…Weird guy."
Hey, I'm offering to explain and instead of a thank-you I get "weird guy"… a little harsh, don't you think!
—I was about to say that when Roy raised a hand.
At that single motion, we all stopped at once.
The forest was different.
The bird calls had cut off completely. Wind still moved through the trees, but mixed into the rustle of leaves were low voices.
At first it sounded like animal cries scraping raw throats.
Recording language patterns…
Adjusting orc dialect interpretation…
Initiating partial translation of tactical speech…
The next instant, the animal-like sounds took on meaning and drove themselves into my head.
"…Human scent."
My breath stopped on its own.
Mari, Kaya, and Roy did not react right away.
No — more precisely, they must have heard the orc sounds themselves.
But the only one who understood what those sounds meant was me.
Having speech interpreted inside my head was not surprising anymore. The shaman goblin had been the same, and even warrior-type goblins had exchanged short phrases.
The problem was the content.
"Been a while since we had human meat."
"That big one up front. Plenty of flesh. Want to chew him bones and all…"
"Want to eat him while I listen to the screaming."
Snickering laughter followed.
"The two little ones in the back — start with the arms and legs. Tastes better if you watch them thrash."
"The guts are mine. They go bad when they cool."
"Forest's been empty lately. No wolves, no boars, no spiders."
"The humans cleaned out the lower ground…"
"Then we just go down to the human village. There are human cubs there too."
"The little ones are soft and delicious."
"Human hunt."
"Good!"
It felt like my blood was turning cold.
What the fuck are these bastards saying……
Between the low grass, their bulk became visible.
Orcs.
They were on a completely different level from goblins. Even the smallest of them looked well over two meters thirty, and the one with the shield was nearly three meters tall.
Dull greenish-brown skin was mapped with black scars and old, dried clots of blood. Their necks were short and thick, and yellowed fangs jutted upward from their lower jaws.
Their arms were abnormally long. Their hands were far too large.
A human head would crush in that grip without effort.
One with a massive shield.
Two with axes.
Two with spears.
In the back, one that was unusually small, and one with a horn pipe at its waist.
Seven in total.
Roy spoke low.
"Mari. The spear ones."
"Got it."
"Kaya. Watch our rear."
"Understood."
Lastly Roy's gaze turned to me.
"Siyun."
"Yes."
"Don't use big power. They already know we're here, but if the noise gets worse, more of them may come."
I eased the strength from the hand holding my sword once.
"…Yes."
The next moment, Roy moved.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The ground shook.
The shield orc roared and charged. Meeting that weight head-on would have crushed a human body flat.
Roy did not take it from the front.
His feet shifted half a step to the side. It was not a dodge. He was letting the force flow past while holding his center.
The orc's shield scraped across the face of Roy's blade. In that instant the dirt under Roy's feet pressed deep.
Roy bled off that weight and drove his sword into the opening that appeared.
The tendon behind the orc's knee split open.
The massive body lurched, shield and all.
Roy did not stop. He stepped in further and rammed his blade into the inside of the orc's bent neck.
Puhak!
The huge body collapsed with its shield.
The moment the shield orc went down, the two spear orcs moved at once.
One set itself to throw a javelin; the other lowered a long spear and aimed for Roy's side.
A beat before that, Mari's magic settled into place.
Dirt rose low and blocked the path of the spear tip, and wind rolled dust upward.
The orc about to throw the javelin flinched and squinted.
Even so, the javelin flew.
Shuuuk!
A faint light flared at Kaya's fingertips.
The javelin coming for my shoulder touched an invisible barrier. Its path skewed by the smallest degree.
That was enough.
The javelin skimmed past my shoulder and buried itself deep in a tree behind me.
"Thanks!"
"Front!"
Kaya's warning came immediately.
I dropped my body on reflex.
One of the axe orcs charged straight at me.
Just before the axe came down.
I did not raise my sword high.
Heavy Sword.
Ice magic.
Crack—!
Where the tip of the blade passed, a thin sheet of ice spread. The dirt the orc was about to step on froze in an instant.
Its foot slipped. The massive upper body pitched forward.
I drove into the gap that opened.
Seogeok!
The blade bit into the orc's side. Not deep. But for an orc whose balance had already broken, it was enough.
I pulled the sword free at once, twisted my body, and cut the inside of its knee again.
It went down.
Last, I drove the blade down into the deepest point between its neck and shoulder.
In that same stretch of time Roy was locked with a spear orc.
The spear thrust in long and deep.
Roy did not bat the tip away with force. He only nudged it with the flat of his blade and changed the angle.
The spear tip slid past, and his foot stepped forward in the same motion.
The distance died.
A spear is strong when it has range. The moment that range vanished, the spear orc was nothing but bulk without a shield.
Roy's blade severed the tendon at the orc's elbow, then cut through its neck.
The remaining spear orc fell back and raised a javelin.
Mari clenched her teeth short and hard.
"Not a chance."
The wind broke for a brief instant.
No grand chant. No great light.
Dust simply burst from underfoot. Dirt and grit sprayed into the orc's face.
It shut its eyes on reflex.
In that exact moment Mari's fingertips dropped.
A short shard of stone rose from the ground and struck the orc's shin.
Its stance collapsed.
I slipped into the opening and swung.
Seogeok!
Four down.
The last axe orc barreled toward Kaya.
Kaya immediately backed away and raised her hand. Her fingertips did not shake.
A thin barrier of Holy Power spread in front of her.
Kwang!
The axe smashed down onto the Holy Power barrier. The barrier shuddered hard, and Kaya's feet scraped backward through the dirt.
"Ugh…!"
"Kaya!"
The instant I tried to rush in, Roy arrived first.
His blade struck the axe haft at an angle.
Kang—!
The haft split. The axe head twisted aside.
Kaya did not miss that instant either. Light at her fingertips flashed white right in front of the orc's eyes.
A short flare that stole its vision for a heartbeat.
It staggered.
Roy's sword passed through in a short arc.
Five.
Then the horn-pipe orc reached for its waist.
"Siyun!"
Before Mari's shout even finished, my body was already moving.
I flicked my fingers and sent a short burst of mana.
Jjeojeok!
Ice wrapped the horn-pipe orc's wrist. It screamed and dropped the horn pipe.
But it did not give up. It stretched out its other hand and tried to throw itself toward the fallen pipe.
I clenched my teeth briefly.
I used ice magic again.
This time not the wrist — the ankle.
Its foot locked to the frozen dirt.
Roy closed the distance in a flash.
His blade flashed short.
Six.
The last remaining messenger orc fled toward the forest behind them.
On pure reflex I moved to chase it down.
"Don't kill it."
Roy's voice drove in short and sharp.
I twisted the angle of the blade that had been aiming for its neck.
Not the neck — the outer shoulder.
Seogeok.
Blood sprayed. Not deep. A wound it could still run on.
It staggered and fled deeper into the trees.
"Hoo… Roy hyung. You let it live on purpose, right?"
Roy flicked the blood from his sword with a light motion.
"Yeah."
Roy swept a quick look over the fallen orcs, then turned his gaze toward the direction the messenger orc had vanished.
No time to collect mana stones. No time to search the bodies.
"We follow right now."
Roy said it low.
"That one has somewhere to go back to."
I adjusted my grip on the sword without a word.
From deeper in the forest, the smell of things that were not finished yet was drifting toward us.