Chapter 107: Japan (15)
Chapter 107: Japan (15)
Having thrown his spear, Han Shin stood empty-handed, drawing the focused gaze of the Orcs. To them, he appeared completely defenseless.
The Orcs lunged at him, sensing an opening.
However, Han Shin immediately drew another spear from his subspace. As if pulling a weapon from a rack behind him, he gripped the shaft and swung it in a wide horizontal arc, catching the charging Warboars square in the face.
The sharp blade sliced through snouts, tusks, and noses, spraying black blood across the battlefield.
Kueeeeh!
The Warboars shrieked in agony. Driven by spite, they tried to ram and devour him, but Han Shin had already skewered the Orc rider atop one of the beasts and hoisted him into the air.
"Gah! Kuaaaaakh!"
The sight of a two-meter-tall muscular monster being hoisted into the air by a human knight in silver armor was alien to the Orcs. As a race that worshipped power, they felt a primal surge of terror at this display of sheer, monstrous strength.
It was a simple realization: he was physically stronger than them.
The Orcs placed the highest value on raw physical power, so seeing Han Shin effortlessly lift one of their warriors with a spear left them stunned.
Leaping onto the back of a Warboar, Han Shin swung his spear to the side, hurlng the skewered Orc at the others. The warrior, disemboweled and spilling black blood and viscera, flew through the air and collided with his comrades, knocking them off their mounts.
The Warboar Han Shin had mounted realized an enemy was on its back and bucked violently to throw him off.
Grrrr!
Coarse black fur flew from its mane as it trampled the earth, sending clods of dirt flying in every direction.
Thuck!
The struggle didn't last long. Han Shin remained balanced despite the beast's thrashing and drove his spear straight down, piercing the creature's skull.
A sense of crisis gripped the Orcs; they realized they had to kill this man at any cost. Those nearby swarmed toward him. Han Shin was already deep in the thick of their ranks; being surrounded and attacked from all sides could be dangerous.
It was only natural, as Han Shin still needed to grow stronger and lacked significant combat experience.
But he wasn't alone.
Wherever the arc of a silver sword traced through the air, anything in its path was severed.
Grace was closing in on Han Shin's position. Any Orc or Warboar that dared block her path was slaughtered by the platinum-haired female knight. Fearing Han Shin might be injured, she charged in a straight line toward him, leaving behind nothing but headless Orc corpses and Warboars with split skulls.
Grace’s blade glowed with an intense light, enveloped in sword energy infused with Tiamat’s divine power. Its sharpness was beyond description. Thanks to her intervention, Han Shin avoided being completely encircled.
Seeing Grace approaching, Han Shin cut and thrust his way through the Orcs to meet her, and the two joined forces.
Bam!
Leading with his shield, Han Shin performed a short charge into an Orc trying to flank him. The creature, who had been aiming an axe at Han Shin, was sent flying with ruptured internal organs and shattered ribs, crashing into other Orcs.
A moment later, Laysia joined Han Shin and Grace. In her hand, she carried the spear Han Shin had thrown earlier.
Having just skewered three Orcs at once with his current weapon, Han Shin took the first spear back from Laysia and immediately used it to slit the throats of the Orcs closing in from his right.
"Thanks, Laysia."
Laysia smiled at Han Shin’s praise.
While Grace had rushed straight to Han Shin’s side, Laysia had intentionally rampaged alone to draw aggro. As an agile martial artist, she was at her most destructive when facing humanoid monsters like these.
Laysia could have easily killed the Orcs by striking their heads or chests, but she chose to inflict debilitating injuries instead. Orcs possessed a strong sense of kinship and tended to prioritize helping their fallen comrades.
Thus, Laysia shattered their knees with kicks and snapped their arms at grotesque angles. By leaving them alive but unable to fight, she forced the other Orcs to divide their attention to tend to their wounded kin.
Naturally, the aggro that had been concentrated on Han Shin shifted toward Laysia. She led the Orcs on a chase, eventually making her way to where Han Shin’s first spear had landed.
The Orc that had been impaled earlier lay slumped in death, the spear still lodged in its body. Sliding across the ground to dodge the attacks of the pursuing Orcs, she grabbed the shaft.
Shuck!
She ripped the spear out and swung it in a wide circle to keep the surrounding enemies at bay.
Aaaakh!
Orcs shrieked as their arms and hands were slashed. Laysia was proficient enough in basic spearmanship that the weapon felt natural in her hands. Finding a brief opening, she checked on Han Shin and Grace before moving again.
Unlike Han Shin, Laysia’s style with the spear was unique. While she did swing and slash, it felt less like she was using a spear and more like she was using the weapon to enhance her martial arts.
Leaping into the air, she drove the spear down into one Orc, then used the planted weapon as a pivot to deliver rapid-fire kicks to the faces and chests of the Orcs rushing her.
Those with collapsed nasal bones were the lucky ones; others had their eyeballs burst or their ribcages crushed, leaving them gasping for air.
Laysia felt her strength waning slightly, having used a significant amount of Tiamat’s divine power earlier to reshape the terrain. However, she was enjoying the situation.
Since reaching a certain level of mastery, Orcs like these were little more than "trash mobs" to her, but the battle reminded her of her intensive training days.
I wonder if Lord Han Shin feels the same way?
For Laysia, this was a meaningful moment of rediscovery. Though she indulged in a brief sentimental thought, her expression remained cold as she swung the spear and used her body arts to strike down and kill the Orc warriors ruthlessly.
While she was fundamentally a person of gentle character, she possessed a dual nature—the bellicose temperament of a true martial artist.
Eventually, Laysia reached the spot where Han Shin and Grace were fighting back-to-back and handed the spear over.
The Orc Chieftain’s blood boiled as he watched his subordinates being slaughtered or maimed by these humans, who were far stronger than he had anticipated.
But he was no fool. He knew that if he stepped forward now, he would only meet the same fate. Instead, he barked orders at his subordinates.
In the harsh Orc tongue, he commanded the mages to rain spells down upon the trio.
"Use magic to melt them all at once!"
"But... our kin are there..."
"Sacrifice is inevitable! Otherwise, we all die!"
Caring for one's kin was natural for an Orc, and the Chieftain was no exception. It felt as though his very entrails were being torn out, but he made the decision to save himself and the rest of the tribe.
Normally, the Orc mages would have used single-target spells to avoid friendly fire. However, that required a clear line of sight and a path unobstructed by other Orcs—a difficult feat on this flat terrain.
Furthermore, Orc mages primarily used fire and dark magic. While powerful, these elements were notoriously difficult to control and nearly impossible to use without causing collateral damage to allies.
They had hesitated to cast for that very reason, but at the Chieftain’s command, they finally began to channel their mana. The mages understood the desperation behind the order.
They could feel instinctively that the strength displayed by Han Shin, Grace, and Laysia was something they could not overcome. They couldn't simply sit back and wait for death, so this was their final, desperate struggle.
Soon, the Orc mages conjured black clouds in the sky of the dungeon.
These were no ordinary storm clouds. Born of dark magic within the confines of a dungeon, they rumbled with the sound of pitch-black lightning—darker than the void—flickering between the roiling vapors.
Han Shin, Grace, and Laysia immediately noticed the anomaly. Sensing the flow of mana, they realized the Orc mages were up to something and that the clouds were the result.
"Lord Han Shin! This way!"
"Right!"
With the situation turning critical, Grace shouted a brief instruction and dashed toward the area she pointed to with her sword, cutting down Orcs as she went.
It was the area where Laysia had previously warped the terrain into a fan shape. The ground there was a mess of upheaved rocks and the corpses of fallen Orcs.
The moment Han Shin’s party shook off the clinging Orcs and cleared the area—
Rumble... BOOM!
Black lightning—Dark Lightning—struck the spot where they had just been standing.
The bolts of pitch-black electricity, forged from dark mana, tore through the air, incinerating the unfortunate Orcs left in the blast zone.