White Wolf's Warmth
"Nngh… ah…?"
As her senses returned, she sat there dazed from the blow to her head—then, with a sudden jolt, she seized her own arm.
It's still there!
The clearest memory she held was of the hobgoblins, treating the act of pinning her arm and sawing it off like some grotesque carnival show. Only after she had groped from her arms down to her legs, confirming every limb was intact, did relief finally wash through her.
Where am I?
She wasn't bound, at least—so she hadn't been taken prisoner. A campfire burned nearby, warming her body, and a bandage was wrapped around her head.
A throb of pain pulsed through her skull.
"Ugh…"
The ache that followed was sharp, but far more bearable than she would have expected.
—The arm first!—
—Keh-keh-keh-keh!—
—Cut it! Cut it!—
—Make her scream louder!—
The malice of the greenskins, who had celebrated the dismemberment of her limbs like a festival, came flooding back—and her body began to tremble of its own accord.
"Ah! Lillian!"
"Wha…?"
Kaisent, who had gone to gather firewood, saw that she was awake and came scurrying over at once, dropping down close beside her.
"Thank goodness! I was so worried when you wouldn't wake up!"
"…Kaisent?"
"Yes. It's me. You're safe now, so don't wor—"
She lunged.
Before he could finish, Lillian threw her arms around him and pulled him hard against her.
"L-Lillian?"
"Just a moment… Just let me stay like this for a moment…"
"…All right."
Even she couldn't have said why. All she knew was that having Kaisent at her side filled her with a deep relief, and the chills and shudders of terror began to ease with startling speed.
Something about him feels different.
She had been traveling with Kaisent toward Munratel all this time, and yet the Kaisent before her now felt like someone she hadn't seen in ages.
His eyes… they've changed.
The Kaisent who had violated and degraded her had worn a sly, mean-spirited look. But now the corners of his eyes drooped with a soft, gentle innocence, and those wide pupils held the startled-rabbit quality of the Kaisent she had known this past month. This was him.
Lillian drew back from his body and asked the question that had been forming.
"Kaisent. Do you… remember what happened yesterday?"
"Yesterday? Yesterday… uh… ah…"
The memory of how he had tormented her rose up, and Kaisent's face flushed scarlet as he hung his head.
"I-I'm so sorry… I knew I shouldn't… but all I could think about was wanting to feel even better…"
In truth, the darker urge to steal her from Fredrick had been stronger still—but the usual timid Kaisent could never bring himself to say so aloud.
Lillian had been about to press him further, but the sight of him hanging his head with tears welling in those wide eyes made even the anger she had forced herself to summon melt away like spring snow.
"…Fine. If you've come to your senses from now on, that's what matters."
"I'm sorry…"
Now that Kaisent was himself again, nothing like that would happen a second time.
That sturdy cock that had made her cry, that had driven into her without mercy no matter how she begged and pleaded… The memory of weeping as it filled her made her womb throb as if craving it all over again.
What is wrong with me? Why do I feel… disappointed?
A ripe woman's body that had learned the taste of a man. Had she felt revulsion, that pleasure would have become trauma—but whether it was Kaisent's constitution or something else, even after being violated she felt no disgust, no hatred, no rage at all.
"So what exactly happened back there?"
Struck in the head by a mace, Lillian had been half-conscious when she felt the aftershock of some tremendous power—and then she had blacked out entirely. All she remembered was that something had interrupted the moment her arm was about to be severed, and that a storm of overwhelming force had swept through as someone drove the greenskins off. After that, the blow to her head left everything blank.
"Well… I don't really know either."
"You don't know?"
"Yes. When I came to, the greenskins had fled, and the orc who'd been casting that strange magic was dead."
"Dead…?"
She could scarcely believe that the orc shaman—a fighter skilled enough to restrain her, a fourth-class Expert—was simply dead. And yet here they both sat, limbs intact, which was proof enough that Kaisent wasn't lying. He had no reason to lie in the first place.
Neither of them remembered that part, so pressing further was pointless. She moved on.
"My head should have been badly hurt. It doesn't ache nearly as much as I expected. Did you treat me?"
"Yes. I used some of the medicinal herbs I used to carry. Fortunately, there don't seem to be any of the old side effects."
"The potency is certainly something."
"But the head wound was quite severe, and you also had injuries all over from something that had constricted you hard—so I had to use every last herb I had."
That explained it. She had thought it strange that she was unharmed after being wrapped in vines that should have crushed bone and organ alike. Kaisent had healed that too.
"I'll keep watch on the surroundings, so please keep resting, Lillian."
"It's far too wide an area for you to watch alone. Don't push yourself too hard."
"It's all right. I'm not watching alone."
As he said it, Kaisent raised his arm—and a crow flew down to perch upon it.
"What's that?"
"I remembered the traces of mana left in a bird I'd killed before, and when I tried applying them to an animal, it started obeying my commands. This little one shares its vision with me, so if it flies around up there, scouting becomes easy."
"You… tamed an animal?"
"Taming? I suppose that's what they call it in your world, big sister. Either way, with this one's help there's nothing to worry about—so please rest."
"…"
Watching Kaisent casually deploy a taming spell from nothing more than the remembered mana pattern of a bird he had killed, Lillian felt something close to fear.
Mages were closed-off creatures, in this world and any other. Researching a single improved, more efficient spell could take a decade or more. Creating a spell of entirely new concept might happen once or twice in a lifetime. There were the unique mana-circuit routes required simply to cast. Some mages merely followed the paths others had laid down—but even they, in the end, sought to forge a path of their own.
And yet if someone could learn magic simply by reading the residual traces of another's casting… then from a mage's perspective, a lifetime of effort had just been stripped bare and stolen. Seeing Kaisent glance once at their work and reproduce it perfectly, mages would react in one of two ways: kill him in a rage, or abduct him for human experimentation.
That woman Dang Seol-yeong taught him well.
Once again, Lillian understood how sound Seol-yeong's advice had been—that Kaisent must hide his talent. Had Lillian herself not been driven by the choice of vengeance against the Necromantic Kingdom, she too would have felt fear or jealousy toward that gift.
Did that woman… do it with him too…?
Having learned firsthand the overflowing vigor of Kaisent's body, she found herself questioning the nature of those two's relationship. No matter how she looked at it, Kaisent and Dang Seol-yeong had not been ordinary acquaintances. That a boy whose nature was so far from combat would desperately strive to grow stronger just to find a woman he had met by chance—that was not a matter of willpower alone. And Seol-yeong, for her part, had fretted over Kaisent's future and given him counsel despite their chance meeting.
But asking him directly would take more courage than she could presently muster.
Rest first.
"All right. I'll trust you and rest. My body is fine, but my head still throbs."
"Please do. Shall I build the fire up a little more?"
"No. This is enough."
Declining Kaisent's excessive kindness, Lillian carefully assessed her own condition. Thanks to his treatment, aside from the lingering ache in her head, there was nothing seriously wrong.
The warlord gathering the greenskins must be one of the otherworlders.
The shamanism of that otherworld orc had been powerful enough to overpower a fourth-class Expert. But that orc would not have been the warlord uniting the greenskins. In this world, greenskins elevated the strongest warrior as their warlord.
If they truly lead a great army, this fight will be harder than I thought.
And if the warlord possessed the same intelligence as the orc shaman who had subdued her, a conventional battle would end in their annihilation. The human side still had no idea that the greenskins' new warlord was an otherworlder.
"Nngh…"
Even as she rested in the relief of having survived, the terror of nearly having her limbs severed by the hobgoblins rose again, and Lillian's body shook. The savagery of the greenskins who had celebrated the dismemberment of her helpless form like a festival tore mercilessly into her weakened heart and left fresh scars.
Drawing her knees to her chest, trying to still her trembling, Lillian thought of one person—and ached for him.
Fredrick…!
Fredrick, who had always stood at her side and protected her. Who threw himself into danger first, who hurled himself desperately into the jaws of death so that the malice aimed at her would turn upon him instead. Just as she was realizing how vast those kindnesses she had always taken for granted truly were—
"Lillian."
"What is—huh?"
Answering Kaisent's call, Lillian found herself wearing a strange expression without meaning to. Kaisent's body had suddenly shrunk, transforming into a wolf with pure white fur.
"Y-you…?"
"I don't remember when I learned it, but a spell for transforming into a wolf just came to mind. Could you make a little space for me?"
"Uh—sure."
Lillian parted the knees she had been hugging to her chest, and the wolf-form Kaisent hopped up and settled into her lap. He was smaller than a full-grown wolf, so the weight was not particularly burdensome.
He's warm.
The pure white, clean fur of a fresh polymorph, and the warmth beneath it—warmer than a human's—seeped into her lap and her belly. She said nothing, but she understood Kaisent's intent, and she wrapped her arms around that large-dog-sized body.
And strangely, the fears she had been feeling melted away, replaced by the deep relief of being protected.
"Thank you, Kaisent."
"I'm the one who should thank you, Lillian."
Without her help, he would not be the person he was now.
She stroked the soft fur that carried the scent of sunlight, soothing her wounded heart. In doing so, the longing for Fredrick that had filled her only moments before quietly faded—though Lillian herself did not notice. Like a master seeking comfort from a pet to forget her terror, she simply stroked Kaisent here and there.
I only transformed because Lillian looked so down… but when did I even learn this?
Who had killed the orc shaman while he was unconscious? Who had driven off the remaining greenskins? Why had he known that Lillian was suffering emotionally? He had never seen anyone transform before—so through whom had he acquired this magic?
Questions piled upon questions until Kaisent's head spun, but for Lillian's sake he forced himself to act as if nothing were amiss.
"Wait—my belly's too ticklish! Lillian? Ahahahaha!"
"Hah. You little rascal. Your turn!"
"Aaah! I'm sorry! Lilliaaan~~! Eeeheehee! Ahahahaha!"
Thanks to Kaisent's thoughtfulness, Lillian's heart settled enough that she could tickle his belly and play. And fortunately, the greenskins who had fled were so terrified by the dragon's fear Kaisent had unleashed that they never even considered returning. The two of them laughed and talked, taking a leisurely rest free of any interruption.
Whoosh—clang! Clang!
A greenskin fortress where every tree for miles had been felled, stripping the nearby mountain bare. Within its walls, acrid smoke rose without cease, and the ring of hammer-strikes echoed endlessly.
And in a vast building at the fortress's heart, orcs of a distinctly alien presence had gathered.
Alien—because unlike the orcs of this world, they combined ferocity with cold calculation.
"Teska's contact has gone silent."
"!!"
When the young orc seated upon a throne assembled from the bones of countless monsters spoke, the air froze solid. His entire body was packed dense with muscle in a way uncharacteristic of the usual hulking orc build—smaller in frame than the others, yet radiating a pressure that suggested he would never lose.
"It seems some unforeseen problem has arisen."
"If it's Teska, he'll send word within two days at the latest."
"I cannot imagine Grand Shaman Teska falling so easily to anyone."
Several orcs tried to curb the excessive worry, suggesting Teska had simply grown busy and forgotten to report. That the Grand Shaman could have been bested by someone was difficult to conceive.
"Perhaps. But this place is far too alien. The earth is different. The air is different. And the kin we have met here are savage beyond measure."
He did not yet know that this world was entirely separate from the one they had come from—but the orc upon the bone throne had come closest to the truth.
"There may be variables we do not understand. Tantabrum."
"Yes, Chieftain."
"I give you ten riders. Investigate Teska's assigned territory."
"Understood."
"And if—if Teska is dead—gather the surrounding kin and take revenge."
"It will be done."
The orc called Tantabrum rose after receiving even the contingency orders, and headed outside.
"In just a little longer, the war machines will be complete. The day we seize human territory and forge a kingdom of our own is nearly upon us."
At the young orc's declaration, the others nodded with faces full of resolve. For the young orc who had become chieftain of the Red Fang tribe had swept aside the old elders and filled their seats with the ambitious.
"That our entire tribe was transported to this strange land means the War God Goral watches over us! Let us offer the blood of our enemies to Goral!"
"The blood of our enemies—to Goral!"
The remaining orcs steeled their fighting spirit, ready to strike the moment the war machines were finished.
Humans who believed the greenskins had been gathered by an ordinary orc warlord of this world. Orcs who prepared for war without knowing they had crossed into another realm. How their battle would unfold, no one could predict.
No one—except the two people who knew the Red Fang tribe were otherworlders.