The Origin's Charge
"They're waiting for the main force."
The orc chieftain, a bird-controlling shaman's hand resting atop his head, shared the bird's vision and read the enemy's movements through its eyes.
"Looking at their arms, their discipline, everything about them — they're mercenaries, no question."
"Why not strike first? There's no need to let the enemy gather in one place."
Defeat in detail was basic strategy. One orc commander's textbook suggestion drew an immediate counter from another shaman.
"We can't. Our main force has already closed to within a few hours of them."
"If reinforcements arrive mid-battle, the chaos will only get worse. Our kin will ignore orders even more and run wild."
"Hmm…"
If the soldiers were the sort who tried their hardest to follow commands, it might have been worth attempting. But when you had to lead berserkers who fought on pure emotion, meeting enemy reinforcements mid-combat put your own side in danger.
"What about their main force?"
"We can't get a proper look. They're shooting down every bird that flies their way."
"Sharp response. So the 'real ones' have shown up."
A timid bird, startled by the noise of a moving army, would try to keep its distance. Meaning every bird that deliberately approached a noisy advancing force was no ordinary bird.
"When the enemy main force arrives, we use the war machines to shatter their formation and charge. More of them will keep coming to wipe us out, so value your lives."
"Yes, sir!"
"When the humans finally abandon their campaign against us — I, Zarakum, will raise an orc empire in my name!"
"Zarakum! Zarakum!"
He would walk a different path from the other tribes, who had stopped fighting humans only to squabble among themselves for power. At last free to flaunt his ambition, Zarakum waited for the human main force to arrive.
But one shaman, uneasy, brought him information he had uncovered.
"Chieftain. The kin on this side are saying strange things."
"What kind of things?"
"That the humans shoot fire from the sky, or make thunder-like noises that kill them."
"Huh? They shoot firebolts? Kill with sound?"
"I thought it was odd too, so I pressed them further, but they just keep repeating the same thing. Just in case, you might want to be careful…"
"Must be some bizarre magic. Our kin on this side are so stupid it makes me sigh."
Zarakum asked the local orcs where they were, what they knew about the humans here. But they only knew the surrounding geography — nothing about what land this was, or which human nation ruled it. When they turned the question back on him — why would they need to know that? — Zarakum gave up talking to them altogether.
"Still, just in case, we should stay on guard…"
"Enough. No need to listen to the ramblings of people who don't even know shamanism or magic."
Zarakum ignored the shaman's warning and waited for the human main force.
Meanwhile, the mercenaries waiting for that same main force were astonished that the greenskins still refused to charge.
"What the hell are those things doing?"
"Greenskins holding formation?"
"No — some of them are trying to break out, but the armed orcs are beating them back into line."
"So there really were otherworld orcs."
They had heard otherworld orcs were in command, but this was almost identical to a human army. If greenskins could keep military discipline like that, they might have been treated not as monsters but as another race like elves or dwarves, and hired as mercenaries.
Aside from goblins, greenskins were stronger than humans, and they stood in ranks like a proper army — yet the mercenaries showed no particular tension.
"Greenskins are still greenskins."
"Margrave Akina herself is taking the field, and they're still bunched up like that. This war's going to be free money."
Already treating victory as a done deal, the mercenaries chatted without a shred of nerves. Even the Wolf Mercenary Corps — the most disciplined outfit among them — was no different.
Just how incredible is whatever's coming…
As the tedious standoff between mercenaries and greenskins dragged on, Kaisent felt a faint vibration and looked behind him. Far in the distance, through a cloud of dust, Margrave Akina's army was advancing along the cleared road.
"Huh? What's that?"
But the shape of that army was strange.
"They're here."
"Everyone, spread out!"
"You bastards! You trying to get us crushed? Move your asses!"
The other mercenaries had seen it too. They parted left and right to open a path for the main force.
Rrrrrrrrrrrr—— clank- clank- clank-
"Wh- wha. Whaaaaaat!?"
Kaisent let out a scream of pure shock as a tank rolled through the gap the Wolf Mercenary Corps had opened. Not a horse-drawn chariot — a machine armored head to toe in metal plating, rolling on countless wheels, with a gun battery that fired shells.
Boom! Boom!
The tank that had passed the mercenaries fired, its body rocking with each shot. The shells burst inside the greenskin lines, but that was only the opening signal.
Behind it, primitive missiles sat fixed on wooden boards tilted at an angle.
Fwoooooosh!
Soldiers lit the fuses. The missiles launched from their wooden frames, slammed into the greenskin ranks, and set off a chain of explosions. "A chain," because without any proper guidance system, the impact points were completely scattered. Even so, it was more than enough to devastate a densely packed army. The ferocious greenskins reeled in every direction, giving a firsthand demonstration of what a total morale collapse looked like.
Thududududu—
Once the first bombardment ended, lightly armored cavalry carrying cylindrical guns, flying ships — airships — and the griffins escorting them charged from ground and sky. The undersides of the airships opened. Griffin riders shoved free the loads they had been carrying, and iron masses of various sizes dropped in sequence, stitching long trails of explosions across the field.
The thoroughly pulverized greenskins were then ridden down by cavalry who fired those cylindrical guns. With a sharp crack unlike any ordinary firearm, each shot punched clean holes straight through greenskin bodies. The uncanny part was that the cavalry who had just fired simply wheeled briefly and opened fire again — without reloading.
"What — what is this!? What the hell is this!?"
Zarakum could not collect himself in the face of weapons he had never seen or heard of. Every war he had known until now was the ordinary kind — weapons clashing on the ground. His tribe had war machines of its own, yes, but those were siege engines. This was something else entirely, a different dimension of warfare.
"Fire the war machines!"
"What? If we fire them now, our own side will—!"
"At this rate everything collapses! Smash those iron hulks first and turn this around! Shamans, take the sky!"
An ordinary commander would have lost his mind. Zarakum kept issuing orders somehow, hunting for a chance to reverse the battle.
Krrrrrrrrrrrr!
The spherical iron masses that had once brought Munratel to its knees spun and hurtled toward the tanks. In that instant, a dozen or so of the light cavalry who had been firing and dodging kicked free of their horses and moved as if to cover the tanks.
Clatter! Clack! Clang!
Amazingly, the iron plates that had barely protected their upper bodies reshaped themselves, completing a seamless full suit of armor from head to toe. Moving several times faster than a horse, they charged the war machines racing toward the tanks and smashed them with enormous hammers that had formed along with the armor.
The war machines the otherworld orcs had fielded took hit after hit from those hammers, lost their momentum, and toppled lifelessly to the ground. With the war machines gone, the greenskin side could only be one-sidedly overrun.
"KRAAAAAAAAH!!"
But Zarakum, unable to accept defeat, loosed a mana-charged roar and summoned the warriors of his tribe.
"All warriors, follow me! From this moment, we strike the enemy commander!"
At this rate — no, defeat was already certain. Even so, he played his final card to overturn everything.
Clutching a massive axe in one hand, Zarakum poured mana into the blade and began his charge.
"KROOOOH!"
KRA-CRACK!
He first slammed his axe into a tank blocking his path, showing his warriors the machine tear apart and crash under his blow, and raised their morale.
"Look! They aren't invincible either! They just use strange weapons we don't know!"
"Zarakum! Zarakum! Zarakum!"
"We kill their commander and seize every weapon they have!"
The otherworld orcs gathered behind Zarakum, broke free of the battlefield, and charged toward the Margrave's main force — a suicide squad united as one, each of them skilled enough to wield mana.
But Margrave Akina's army ignored even that formidable strike force and kept focusing solely on exterminating the greenskins.
"Hey! Orcs coming this way!"
"Damn it! Still no signal— ah, it's Count Akina!"
At that moment, a single knight emerged from the main force.
That armor…!
Kaisent, still reeling from the tanks, gun cavalry, bombers, and long-range missiles, was struck with even greater shock when the mercenaries called out to the armored knight. The knight they named Count Akina was the same one he had met in the forest.
"Watch carefully, Kaisent. This is what an Origin can do."
A nearby mercenary advised him to focus less on the spectacular fireworks and more on the walking strategic weapon that, if it ever became an enemy, you would turn and run from without looking back. Even without the advice, Kaisent was already watching Count Akina — and he swallowed hard.
Mana like a violent storm…! Just her presence is making the surrounding mana thrash!
Among everyone he had met so far, this was the strongest power he had ever felt. A towering frame of a hundred ninety-eight centimeters in full armor. A horse of monstrous size bearing that weight. And between those two already oversized figures, a lance so massive it made ordinary swords look like daggers by optical illusion.
Akina spurred her horse and charged the otherworld orcs who were trying to strike the main force. The instant she built speed for the lance charge, her mana flowed into the horse — and the two beings shared senses and sight as one.
"Come! KROOOOOOH!"
Zarakum swung his axe in a great X to meet Akina's lance charge head-on. A massive shockwave tore up from the axe, ripping the ground as it flew to collide with her — and in that instant, she vanished.
"Ghk—aaagh!"
Not vanished. The horse had sidestepped at a speed beyond the eye's ability to track and shifted toward the orc warriors instead. Every light swing and thrust of that enormous lance carved the earth open and turned orcs into shredded meat. Warriors tried to surround her and attack through the damage, but the horse leapt into the air, kicked off empty space in a second jump, and slipped cleanly outside the encirclement.
"You bastard!"
Zarakum charged again at Akina, who kept dodging him to cut down his warriors. But whenever he struck, only afterimages remained. Akina and her horse moved as if using clone techniques, carving through the other orc warriors at blinding speed.
Watching, Kaisent opened his mouth in a voice full of awe.
"It's as if…"
"As if she's one body with the horse? Exactly. Right now Count Akina might as well be one body with that steed."
"Pardon?"
The nearby mercenary answered as if he had already predicted Kaisent's next line.
"Up through Master, you just get stronger like anyone else. But once you reach Origin, a special ability unique to you blooms — shaped by the life you've lived, the way you think, your personality. We call that a Gift."
"A Gift…"
"And Count Akina's Gift is Rider-Steed Unity. It's not just a metaphor for the bond between horse and rider. That horse is sharing Count Akina's power and senses. Even among Origins, you can't copy someone else's Gift."
It seemed to be fairly well-known; the mercenary explained Count Akina's Gift without any particular caution.
By the time Kaisent finished listening, Akina had already finished off every orc warrior in moments and stood face to face with Zarakum.
"You despicable human!"
"Oh. So you truly do have intelligence. Grieving for your comrades' deaths."
"Do not brand us as beasts, you coward!"
"Coward? You seem to be under some misunderstanding."
KWOOOOOOO——
"Ugh!!"
"I simply found it tiresome to mop up the remnants who would scatter the moment you died — so I dealt with them first."
Overwhelmed by the mana Akina was pouring out, Zarakum bit down so hard blood split his lip. Instinct told him the being before him was stronger than he was. She had been holding back on purpose so he could not escape.
"I've wasted enough time, human! A warrior of the Red Fang tribe is no such coward!"
Zarakum wrung out every last scrap of strength and launched himself forward, cratering the ground like something out of a comic. He swung his axe to shatter Akina's lance and cleave her torso —
KRA-CRACK!
— but the axe failed to pierce the mana sheathing the lance, bounced away, and the lance drove straight through his unprotected chest.
"Guh…! Did I… take humans… too lightly…? Even so… I… this life…"
A hole large enough for a human head to pass through had opened in him. Zarakum collapsed, bleeding out.
"A pity. Young for an orc, yet already at Master-level skill — he must have had remarkable talent."
If Zarakum had been given another ten years to grow, the fight would have been far harder. But even outstanding talent is a different matter from whether it ever fully blooms. Countless gifts wither like this one, never given the chance to open.
I will not let that child meet an end like this.
Akina thought of Kaisent next, and a desire rose in her — to properly cultivate that talent. Under her systematic training, he could become a far greater warrior than this orc chieftain.
"The warlord is dead! All forces, charge!"
In a voice laden with mana, Akina announced the enemy commander's death and charged the enemy lines alone. Wherever the Origin bearing the Gift of Rider-Steed Unity drove her charge, greenskins were crushed, shattered, and blown apart in every direction.
"Let's go!"
"Sweep up as many as you can!"
With their commander gone, the greenskins scattered like cockroaches. The mercenaries rushed in for every scrap of loot and bounty they could claim. Behind them, the cavalry held in reserve by the main force moved to cut the greenskins' escape routes first — so the mercenaries could finish the remnants while they held the line.
The strong of this world…
Moving with the Wolf Mercenary Corps, Kaisent watched Akina still wielding her Rider-Steed Unity. The sight of her — delivering a lance charge of pure, pulverizing violence without ever losing her dignity — was something he felt he would never forget for the rest of his life.