Orcs (1)
A sharp gasp cut through the air behind them. “Hah, haaah?!”
Jungwoo turned to see a soldier being carried on the senior scout’s back suddenly regain consciousness. The man’s eyes were wide with terror.
“Damn it. Keep quiet,” the senior scout growled, his face twisting in annoyance as the soldier thrashed on his shoulder. The man’s voice was so loud it was a miracle they hadn’t drawn every monster in the area.
The senior scout lowered the soldier to the ground with a grunt.
“Ugh… ugh…”
“Please don’t move yet,” Seo Hayun said gently, examining the man’s condition. “I’ve only stopped the bleeding. The pain will still be there. Be careful not to reopen the wound.”
The soldier stared at the unfamiliar priestess with a stunned expression. “Y-you are…?”
Since he had already been out on the subjugation mission, this was likely the first he’d heard of Hayun’s arrival and sudden transfer. But there was no time to answer his questions. Something far more urgent demanded their attention.
“Do you recognize my face?” Garan asked immediately.
The soldier’s dazed mind seemed to clear slightly as he took in his surroundings. His face hardened with recognition. “Y-yes! Squad Leader Garan, sir!”
“You were with the 2nd Subjugation Unit, correct?”
“Y-yes, sir…”
The soldier’s complexion darkened. He seemed to have guessed what Garan wanted to ask. His expression said he knew they must already be aware he was a deserter who had abandoned his comrades and fled. It was a natural assumption.
Garan deliberately avoided touching on that subject. “Can you tell us what happened?”
“…Yes.”
Despite the stinging pain, the soldier carefully began to speak.
The air in the forest felt oppressively heavy.
“Huk! Huk! Haaah!”
Lee Sunho’s breathing was ragged and harsh. Sweat poured down his forehead, blurring his vision. He wiped it away roughly and kept pushing forward.
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t say that, sir. This isn’t your fault,” Sunho replied, trying to comfort Serdin, whom he was supporting with one arm over his shoulder.
The situation was dire. Serdin’s leg was fractured, severely limiting his movement. And he wasn’t the only one. As they pushed through the underbrush, Sunho glanced around. Other squad members were doing the same, helping their wounded comrades forward. Not a single one of them was unscathed. Sunho himself had sustained light injuries. The whole situation was so twisted he wanted to grind his teeth in frustration.
If only that bastard hadn’t…
Sunho glared at the man walking ahead of them. Baren Polgram. Captain of the 2nd Subjugation Unit. His reckless orders had gotten more than half the squad killed.
Of course it had. Charging head-on against orcs that had appeared out of nowhere? The moment those green monsters came into view, Baren’s eyes had gone wild as he ordered them to engage.
After the operation on the Beltar Plain two years ago, the sudden reappearance of mid-tier monsters that had vanished without a trace seemed like an opportunity to Baren. All he saw was a chance to earn merits for promotion. Baren Polgram was an ambitious man whose desire for success far exceeded his actual ability.
Discovering orcs again and earning credit for subjugating them would surely earn him recognition from Central Command and a promotion. That greed had been the decisive factor behind his reckless command.
As those thoughts crossed his mind, Baren glanced back. He scanned the marching soldiers as if checking their condition, then clicked his tongue and frowned.
“Tsk. Useless bastards.”
“…Excuse me?” Sunho’s face went blank. For a moment, he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. The other soldiers reacted similarly.
“It’s because you lot were so incompetent that this mission failed. Some of you ran away because you were scared of battle, and the rest couldn’t even land a proper attack before getting slaughtered. What am I supposed to do with trash like you…?”
Baren’s face was filled with irritation and contempt. There was no grief for the dead soldiers, no sense of deep responsibility for his own judgment. If anything, it was the humiliated expression of someone who had suffered a crushing defeat.
“If you had understood and followed my orders better, we wouldn’t have been defeated so pathetically.”
“……”
He was saying the cause of their defeat lay with them. It was absurd. Did this man even understand what orcs were? Sunho felt his blood boil. He wanted to punch that contemptuous face right then and there, but he barely managed to hold his trembling fist back. No matter how angry he was, striking a superior was insubordination.
He clenched his jaw, fought to keep his reason, and spoke. “That’s… unacceptable.”
He thought he had held it in, but the emotions he had suppressed leaked into his trembling voice.
“…What did you say?” Baren’s eyebrows twitched as he looked at Sunho. He clearly hadn’t expected a mere soldier to challenge him.
Sunho met his gaze head-on. “Orcs are mid-tier monsters. Their size and strength are on a completely different level from regular soldiers. And orcs don’t operate alone. They move in packs. That’s why it takes a subjugation force of fifty to a hundred soldiers to take down an orc horde. That’s not just some random number.”
In other words, your orders were a fatal mistake that drove your men straight into a slaughter.
The more he spoke, the more emotion crept into his voice until he was practically shouting.
Baren snorted and looked at Sunho with pure disdain. “Hmph. The pathetic excuses of the weak. It’s because you think like that that you’re in this sorry state now.”
“……”
Sunho bit down hard on his lip. If he didn’t, his fist would fly on its own.
“Enough. We don’t have time to stand here arguing,” Serdin, whom Sunho was supporting, cut in. He had always acted as the mediator between Baren and the soldiers. Though he held the second-highest command authority in the unit after the captain, Baren only ever treated him as a convenient tool, never giving him any real respect.
Despite suffering the most severe injuries among the survivors, Serdin stepped in to calm the situation between Sunho and Baren.
“We don’t know when the orcs might catch up again. We need to keep moving.”
He had apologized earlier, even told Sunho to leave him behind since he was nothing but dead weight. Yet now he was urging them forward only to stop Sunho from clashing with Baren.
“…Understood.”
The surviving soldiers were in terrible shape. Carrying the wounded slowed their pace dramatically.
This is bad…
Sunho felt a growing sense of unease. It had been two days since their defeat and retreat from the orc engagement. Had the orcs given up the chase? Or were they still following?
“What do you think, sir?”
“The chances are low… If they wanted to chase us, they could have caught up easily by now…”
The 2nd Subjugation Unit’s march was painfully slow with all the injured being carried. Orcs, with their superior physical abilities, should have overtaken them long ago. If they still hadn’t shown themselves after nearly two days, perhaps they really had given up.
Or maybe that was just a hopeful observation born from desperate wishful thinking.
Even if it wasn’t orcs, any encounter with other monsters would be disastrous. With so many soldiers too injured to fight, they would be more of a burden than help. Expecting anything from Captain Baren was out of the question.
Then what the hell were they supposed to do?
How are we going to get out of this…?
Just as that thought crossed his mind—
Boom!
Something exploded in the sky. Everyone’s shoulders jolted as their eyes shot upward.
“What is that…?”
“Grrrr!”
The senior scout swung his shield, smashing the jaw of a hound that was lunging at him with bared fangs.
“Aaaargh! Kid! Are you sure this is really going to work?!”
He must have grown sick of repeating the same action countless times. His question to Jungwoo was also one he had asked several times already.
“Yes. That’s the fifth time you’ve asked.”
Jungwoo answered diligently. After all, he was the one who had proposed this plan.
“This is insane! I knew that guy was crazy from the start!” Another scout shouted in near despair as he finished off a hound.
This was already their fourth battle.
After the fight ended and they were checking their condition, Garan approached Jungwoo.
“I’m realizing it all over again, but you really do think differently from most people.”
“…Do I?”
Jungwoo didn’t quite understand what he meant. He gave a vague response, but Garan smiled bitterly at his puzzled expression and continued.
“Using explosive magic in the sky to create noise as a signal isn’t exactly a common tactic.”
The plan Jungwoo had suggested was simple: fire their guns upward. Let the sound spread in every direction. So that someone might hear it. So that while they searched for the 2nd Subjugation Unit, the survivors could also find them.
Naturally, while the plan had a major advantage, it also carried a significant risk. The noise wouldn’t only reach friendly soldiers. The thunderous gunshots echoing through the entire forest would undoubtedly attract monsters roaming nearby.
Because of that, they had already fought four battles in just half a day.
It was an enormous gamble. Under normal circumstances, it would have been an absurdly dangerous plan, but Garan had accepted Jungwoo’s proposal.
“Without you and that priestess lady, we wouldn’t have even attempted it.”
Jungwoo possessed the strongest combat power in the search party, and Seo Hayun could heal the soldiers. With the two of them, the plan had been worth trying.
“…Thank you.”
Jungwoo bowed his head in gratitude. Garan let out a dry laugh and waved his hand.
“What for? You’re the one taking the most risk at the front.”
It was true. The number of monsters Jungwoo had slain at the vanguard was overwhelmingly higher than anyone else’s. He frequently used Heavenly Fate to recover his physical fatigue and injuries. In fact, hunting the monsters had allowed him to absorb even more Heavenly Fate, which was only beneficial for him.
If this keeps up, I should be able to make my Hoshin-ganggi even stronger.
He had no intention of being satisfied with his current state. To face monsters on the level of a minotaur, he needed to become much stronger. That meant gathering even more Heavenly Fate.
“Jungwoo. Are you really okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Hmm… Alright then.”
Hayun looked at him strangely since he showed no signs of fatigue despite all the fighting, but since he had no visible injuries, she let it go.
“Squad Leader! More are coming!”
The brief moment of relaxation after the battle vanished as tension returned. Garan immediately shouted toward the direction of the voice.
“Everyone, form up! Marksmen, keep searching for any traces of the subjugation unit or people!”