Interlude 4: The Orc Invasion and the Witch City
The central continent of Filgrea.
Even after Leon had left for the Yeom Kingdom, incident after incident continued to erupt across these lands. Of those many upheavals, a handful stand out as the most representative.
The first of them was the Orc Invasion of the Central Continent.
Orcs were monsters native to Filgrea’s western continent. Unlike ordinary beasts, however, they possessed a measure of intelligence—varying from individual to individual—which made them exceptionally dangerous to face. Another peculiarity set them apart: orcs were broadly divided into three lineages.
High Orcs, Red Orcs, and Giant Orcs.
An orc’s body was already one and a half to twice the bulk of an adult human male, and its strength exceeded even that. High Orcs, though crude, could forge their own weapons and, once armed, displayed formidable combat prowess. Red Orcs also wielded weapons, yet theirs were more primitive than the specialized arms of the High Orcs. In exchange, Red Orcs commanded a unique power called brand-sorcery, through which they could vastly amplify their physical might or unleash attacks akin to human magic. Giant Orcs, meanwhile, were colossi roughly ten times the size of a common orc. Their power matched their bulk; though far fewer in number than High or Red Orcs, each one possessed the fighting strength of a hundred men. It was said that more than a hundred ordinary soldiers were required to bring down a single Giant Orc—so terrifying were their raw force and vitality.
“We are strong!! Chwik!!”
“Strong! Chwiiik!!”
Dangerous though they were, almost no one in the central continent regarded orcs as a true threat. They lived and moved in tribal units and almost never crossed into the central regions. Even when a few did, their numbers rarely exceeded twenty or thirty—easily handled by human armies. Giant Orcs, capable of wreaking havoc even in small numbers, almost never ventured eastward either. Thus the complacent view of orcs never changed.
“Seize the fertile lands! Chwik!!”
“Follow our Great Chieftain Kshalka! Chwik!!”
Into that complacency was born an orc named Kshalka among the High Orc tribes. Already intelligent by High Orc standards, and gifted with wisdom rare even among them, Kshalka asked himself a simple question.
Why do we live like this?
The western lands the orcs occupied were poor in food. Dangerous monsters abounded. It was a harsh, barren place to survive. Kshalka’s gaze turned to the rich plains of the central continent that bordered their own grasslands.
“Humans are weaker than us. Yet they live on good land.”
Why? How could the weaker race claim and hold such fertile ground?
The answer was one.
“Humans cooperate to drive out outside enemies.”
Cooperation—the word least suited to orcs. Yet Kshalka decided that only through cooperation could his people live free of want upon good land. So he honed his own strength. Among orcs, power was truth; the only way to impose one’s will upon one’s kin was to grow stronger. Kshalka persuaded his fellow High Orcs, then the Red Orcs as well. When both tribes joined him, the High Orc–Red Orc alliance was born. High Orcs gained the brand-sorcery of the Red Orcs; Red Orcs gained the superior gear of the High Orcs. Their combined combat power soared exponentially.
“My kin! We are strong!!”
“Strong! Chwik!”
More than six thousand orcs roared as one. Hearing them, Kshalka raised his voice in solemn command.
“And still we scrape by in this wasteland!!”
“We lack!”
“We hunger!”
“There is nothing to eat! Chwik!”
His kin answered one after another.
“Yes! But look beyond! Why do the weaker humans live in plenty?!”
No orc could answer. None of them knew. So Kshalka shouted:
“Because humans cooperate! The weak gather and drive out their enemies! Then how much stronger will we become—we who are already far stronger than humans—when we gather together?!”
“So much stronger!”
“Stronger!”
“Follow me, my kin!! We march upon the lands of men!!!”
Roughly thirty-two hundred High Orcs. Roughly thirty-seven hundred Red Orcs. Roughly one hundred sixty Giant Orcs. A host of more than seven thousand orcs turned as one toward the central continent. The destructive force of their advance exceeded every expectation.
Stout walls crumbled beneath the fists of Giant Orcs. No human army that met the six-thousand-strong main force head-on could stand against it. The first kingdom lying nearest the western border fell only a week after the orcs crossed into the central continent.
“These damned orcs… crawling in here of all places.”
“We must deal with them at once.”
The central continent responded by dispatching its heroes. Hero Abel and Hero Ragna, each with their parties, were sent to halt the orc advance—yet…
“Gyaaah!!”
“Guhhk!!”
“Humans… weak.”
They could not withstand a single blow from Kshalka and were swept aside. Several nations fell before the orc tide could be stopped. They were small nations, and the orcs sought only land and food; ordinary civilians were not massacred. Human armies, however, were thoroughly trampled.
That was the still-unresolved Orc Invasion of the Central Continent.
The second major incident was the Witch City affair. It erupted at nearly the same time as the orc invasion.
It began in Valpurea, a small city-state in the northern reaches of Filgrea’s central continent. Magicians of the organization known as the Black Dawn Society seized the city-state. Through cunning arts they intoxicated the king with a witch’s allure, then forced him to sign a contract surrendering his body, soul, land, and nation entirely to the Black Dawn Society. In the process, the great mass of Valpurea’s civilians were transformed into zombies.
The human allied armies and the Holy City’s holy knights were dispatched to resolve the crisis. All of them became sacrifices to the overwhelming tide of zombies and the black magicians’ assaults, and the truth of the matter spread across the world. The invaders named the city they had claimed a sanctuary offered up to the Demon King.
“What are we to do about this?”
“Orcs rampage in the west, Demon King forces in the north…”
“We thought the orc invasion would be simple compared to the Demon King’s army, yet two heroes failed to stop it. What in the world is going on?”
“A nation that produces a hero must devote everything to that hero’s growth! What have you people been doing that your heroes lose to mere orcs?!”
Problems that seemed almost deliberately timed. Neither could be ignored, yet no solution presented itself. The leaders of every nation gathered to find a way forward, but nothing of substance emerged. Instead they busied themselves shifting blame onto one another.
“Where in the blazes is the third hero, anyway?!”
“Adomos of Prynn! Do you truly know nothing?!”
“Mmm…”
The spark even reached Adomos, king of Prynn Kingdom—homeland of Hero Leon—yet he had no answer to give. Had he been able to locate the hero who had vanished without a word, he would long since have found him and begged him to solve the present crises.
“He, too, is surely working hard somewhere…”
“Orcs are invading and the Demon King’s forces are expanding their reach—how can you speak so leisurely?!”
“Ahem…”
“In any case, it seems we have no choice but to endure for now—at least until the two heroes recover from the wounds the orcs dealt them.”
Having produced no solution whatsoever, the leaders of the nations dispersed.
Orcs and the Black Dawn Society. By a chain of coincidences the two forces struck the central continent at the same time, and the air of a great war began to gather over the land.