Orcs Are My Prey
Chapter 5. Orcs Are My Prey.
The next day. While I was once again handling the blacksmith work that was slowly becoming familiar, a voice called out.
"Hey, Elsid! Uncle Tom! Got a minute?"
Beth, the village chief and my friend, had come to the forge.
"What brings you here? You don't exactly have much to do... being chief in name only and all."
"You little— We just met and you're already cursing me? Want to go?"
"You've lost a hundred times out of a hundred since we were kids. Where's all this confidence coming from?"
"Don't think I'm the same as back then."
Without any buildup, Elsid and Beth suddenly looked ready to start fighting.
"Take your fight outside later. So, Beth, why'd you come?"
Fortunately, Tom stepped in to mediate. Arms crossed, he turned to Beth and demanded the point.
"Hoo... I'd like to request repairs on the gate."
After taking a breath and regaining his composure, Beth stated his reason for visiting.
"Repair the gate?"
Elsid tilted his head at that.
"Why this early in the morning? Wouldn't it be better to do it in the evening after dealing with the orcs?"
"I know that without you telling me. The northern gate, where orcs and other monsters attack, is still fine."
Beth looked down at him as if he were pathetic. Elsid barely held back from throwing a punch and listened instead.
"The gate that needs fixing is the southern one you arrived through as a visitor. Hardly anyone comes that way, so we left it alone and now it's deteriorated."
Beth shrugged.
"Before you showed up, the only visitors were the occasional peddler or one or two monsters a year. That was about it."
That explained why they hadn't repaired the gate often, especially with no guards stationed there.
"Ah, but just in case, I'll come along too. Don't worry."
Beth pointed at the bow on his back with a confident grin.
"Well then, all your questions should be answered now."
Meanwhile, Uncle Tom had already gathered all the tools needed for the gate repair.
"You carry this and follow us."
Tom handed Elsid the box of tools and took the lead. Elsid accepted it with a deeply furrowed brow.
"Let's go."
Beth smacked Elsid's shoulder with a laugh and followed Tom. Elsid nearly hurled the toolbox before remembering it belonged to Tom and barely restrained himself.
***
South Gate.
After walking, they arrived at the gate. Elsid set down the toolbox he carried with both hands. As expected, Uncle Tom was already inspecting the gate.
"I heard it was deteriorated, but this is bad. The hinges are cracked wide open and about to break, and the wooden gate will split and collapse with just a little more accumulated impact."
Tom began moving to start the repairs. He propped the gate with prepared lumber as support, checked its stability, then began removing the hinges. The moment the detached hinge touched Tom's hand, it crumbled into dust.
"You did well until now."
After murmuring that while looking at the broken hinge, Uncle Tom pulled a new hinge from the toolbox. At this rate, the gate repair would be finished soon.
Ah, what was Beth doing?
"All clear ahead."
He claimed to be keeping watch from atop the wall. No matter how you looked at it, it just seemed like he was slacking off...
"Haaah~"
Well, Elsid wasn't exactly working either, through no fault of his own. Lacking specialized knowledge, he worried about causing unnecessary trouble if he moved carelessly, so he waited quietly for instructions.
While watching Uncle Tom climb the ladder to attach the new hinge and drive in nails...
Thud thud thud!
"Kwoooar!"
The next moment, at someone's roar, Tom, Elsid, and Beth all turned toward the source simultaneously. There stood an orc, 1.5 times larger than a normal one, charging toward them with a massive halberd.
"Orc sighted ahead!"
"I can see that myself!"
"Damn it, why now of all times..."
Their response was swift. Beth nocked an arrow and fired, Elsid grabbed a small hammer from the toolbox, and Tom immediately descended the ladder and took a defensive stance.
Clang clang!
But Beth's arrow bounced harmlessly off the orc's halberd. It happened because he'd fired too straightforwardly without aiming for a gap.
"Kwaaaar!"
The orc, now within striking distance, glared at them and swung its halberd. Fortunately, it was targeting Elsid, not Tom.
Boom!!
When Elsid blocked the orc's halberd with the hammer in his hand, the sound of metal clashing rang out.
"Man, that stings like hell."
Thud!
He'd blocked it, but the impact transferred fully. His arm tingled as if electrocuted, and the hammer shattered completely, leaving only the handle.
"Kwaaaar!"
The orc swung its halberd again without missing the opening. The weapon came down aiming for Elsid's head.
"Elsid!"
Seeing that, Tom shouted Elsid's name and, anticipating the worst, squeezed his eyes shut.
"Pathetic."
But a voice dripping with contempt rang out once...
Smack!
"Kraak!!"
The scream that followed wasn't from the human Elsid—it came from the orc. At the sound, Tom cautiously opened his eyes and saw it.
Elsid had tilted his head to dodge the halberd by a hair's breadth, closed the distance into the orc's guard, and driven the hammer handle straight into the creature's face...
"With just a hammer handle... No, more than that..."
Tom muttered with a mix of doubt and shock as he watched Elsid land that brilliant counter.
"Should I turn you into a pork cutlet? Or make you into stir-fried pork?"
Meanwhile, Elsid was sneering at the orc, whose nose had caved in and turned red.
"Elsid, you! You can use aura?"
"Yes, it's been about two years since I learned it."
Seeing the blue haze swirling around Elsid's hand, Tom raised his voice in question. After casually mentioning how long he'd trained in aura...
"Hey, Beth! Toss me an arrow!"
"An arrow?"
"Stop tilting your head and decide—are you giving it or not?"
"Fine. Here, take it."
Leaving the startled Tom behind, Elsid called up to Beth on the wall.
"Catch."
"Thanks. And don't interfere."
Elsid snatched the arrow Beth threw, then broke off the arrowhead. Snap. Crunch. After shattering the tip and leaving only the shaft, he coated the broken arrow with blue aura. Wrapped in aura, it wouldn't break, but it was still far from a proper weapon capable of meaningful damage. Well, that was the point from the start.
"Kwoooar!"
The moment preparations were complete, the orc—perhaps its nose pain had finally faded—charged again with a furious expression, swinging its halberd.
'That angry face makes it even uglier.'
Muttering that impression inwardly while facing the enraged orc, Elsid quickly closed in from the left. Considering Tom behind him, he should move carefully, but...
'Probably no need for that...'
Thanks to the orc focusing solely on him after the nose strike, there was no need to worry about others.
Thwack!
Rushing in fast, Elsid struck the orc's side hard with the aura-coated broken arrow like a whip. A solid impact sounded, likely hitting the pelvic bone, but the orc only trembled briefly before immediately swinging its halberd vertically to kill him.
'Gonna need about a hundred hits to do real damage, huh.'
Elsid dodged the attack by bending his knees and lowering his body, then drove his elbow hard into the top of the orc's foot at the perfect angle. With so many blood vessels concentrated there, this should land a more effective blow than the whip strike earlier.
"Kaaak!"
The orc reacted even more violently than expected.
'Better than I hoped.'
The orc's face twisted in agony as if its pinky toe had been slammed in a drawer, letting out a pained roar. Even so, it didn't stop swinging the halberd, though the speed had slowed by a beat—perhaps due to the pain.
Elsid closed the distance into the orc's guard faster than that slowed speed. A halberd was a weapon with an axe or dagger attached to a long shaft, so once you got within punching range, its power halved and its options decreased. Well, if it were a human wielding it, anyway.
An orc's base strength was several times that of an average adult male. That's why the orc before him could wield a halberd one-handed, leaving its other hand free to...
Whoosh!
...throw a direct punch.
Elsid saw the fist coming and backed away before it could connect. Their physical durability was simply different, so dodging was unavoidable. If the orc had mastered Tugap, the technique of coating the body in aura to strengthen it, that would be another story—but Elsid hadn't reached that level yet. All he could do was enhance his physical abilities or strengthen the weapon in his hand.
Even one hit from the orc's fist would be fatal. But he couldn't maintain this stalemate forever. He could only keep dodging because his stamina was still fresh. If time dragged on, the advantage would shift to the orc.
Well, by the time he tired out, the orc would have expended some stamina too, so Beth waiting in the rear could finish it with arrows. But that...
'Doesn't sit right with me.'
It wasn't his style.
"Guess there's only one way..."
If so, there was only one option. Elsid briefly glanced at the gate fixed in place by supports and muttered so no one could hear.
"Might as well put up a new gate instead of repairing this one."
That murmur went unheard by everyone except Elsid himself.