Date
Orcs.
Their trademarks were the snub nose, the absurdly protruding fangs, and their colored skin.
The orcs discovered in Earth's Gates came in five skin colors total: red, green, blue, gray, and black. There was said to be no meaningful difference based on skin color.
An orc stood anywhere from 160 to 180 centimeters tall — roughly human height. On average their physical abilities far outstripped a human's, though their intelligence lagged well behind. Trap them properly and they were fairly easy to take down, which was why D-class Keepers so often used orc Gates as Magic Stone farming grounds.
But in close combat they were terrifyingly good, and underestimating them was a fatal mistake. There was a reason the monsters carried a D-class rating.
"Two of them."
"Gray ones."
"How do you want to handle it?"
"I'll go all-out on one of them first. Senior, cover me."
"Got it. I've got your back. Start on my signal."
"Okay."
Soyeon drew her weapon — a mithril needle. By Garam's assessment it had enough force to crack an orc's skull, and testing whether that was actually true was one of the goals of this Gate expedition.
And I thought of Elena.
I pictured driving my clone into the valley of her armor-clad chest. Armor half-shed, skin half-bared. Armor play — the simultaneous feel of cold, hard plate and warm, soft flesh.
We hadn't done armor play once since the first time we'd made love. Elena's armor, Libena Ru, simply wasn't built for that kind of intimacy.
Once we got out of this Gate, I was going to commission a suit. Something you could wear and still make love in. What kind of armor would work best?
It was ridiculous to be thinking about this in the middle of a fight, but I didn't have a choice. That was how the clone recovered its strength the way it was doing now — and how I could feel lust at all.
A warm current hummed around me. I gathered the energy into my sword. That was all the preparation I needed.
"All right, Soyeon. Attack."
"Got it."
The mithril needle shot forward with a sharp whistle. It was unmistakably faster than last time. But an orc's reactions were easily twice as quick as a goblin's.
"Chiiik!"
One orc charged straight at us. The one targeted by the needle raised a massive cleaver, trying to bat the projectile aside.
"Tsk!"
Soyeon twisted the needle's path. She spun it around and pressed a second attack, but punching through an orc already set to defend with its cleaver looked anything but easy.
"Chiiik!"
My job was to hold off the second orc charging us until Soyeon finished hers — or kill it myself.
I raised my sword the way I'd been taught for today: Imperial Guard swordsmanship. Among the advanced techniques was a method for projecting the sword's energy outward in a sharpened form. When Elena had heard about my lust, she'd decided this was the technique I ought to learn, and we'd drilled it hard for two days straight.
Picture a crescent moon… then cut with everything you have.
There were smaller details too — foot placement, how to shift your center of gravity — but that was the core of it. Imagine, then add the force of your body to the image. In a way it wasn't so different from using runes, those words that had accumulated imagination for so long they'd become power in their own right.
It was still clumsy swordsmanship, but it was a technique Elena had authorized me to use. And the effect, at least, was certain.
A soft crackle. The warm energy became a half-moon of sword aura and flew forward. It was slow and not particularly sharp — but it had one advantage.
"Chik?"
The orc that had hesitated at the sight of my swing was already charging again. I could see the pink sword aura racing toward it. The orc could not. Orcs inside a Gate had no lust. Against an attack built from sexual desire, they were completely defenseless.
My sword aura sheared through the orc's shoulder.
It crumpled.
"Chieeek!"
The orc screamed and tried to clamp a hand over the spurting stump of its arm. As if that would stop anything. Blood fountained out between its thick fingers.
A little wasteful. If the aura had been just a bit faster, I could have split its head clean open. Next time I'd do better.
"Chiiik!"
The one-armed orc bellowed and charged. Charging was all it had left — though whether orcs ever had any attack besides a charge was an open question.
I settled my sword at mid-guard and focused. I couldn't count on lust's help this time. Even someone with an apparent talent for it like me couldn't maintain sexual desire in the middle of a fight. Holding an erection long enough for the sword aura to land had been my limit. From here on I had to face the orc with the swordsmanship I'd rolled around a training hall learning.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
Missing one arm — its right arm, no less — the orc's swings were huge. The intent to end me in a single blow was so obvious I slipped past them with light footwork. Every dodge opened a gap, but I held back from attacking. You did not underestimate an orc's hide and flesh. It had cut so cleanly because the blade was a lust-forged sword aura; at my current stats and skill, I couldn't carve through orc hide. Blood was still pouring freely anyway. All I had to do was wait a little.
"Tsk! Just die already! Die!"
Out of the corner of my eye, Soyeon was handling her orc just fine. She'd somehow spun the fight up to three needles, keeping the creature reeling while she steadily added wounds.
Good. Time was on our side.
Five minutes later, the one-armed orc finally met its end. Slowed dramatically from blood loss, it gave me the opening to take its head.
Three minutes after that, Soyeon finally drove a mithril needle straight through the other orc's skull. Even then the thing kept thrashing for a while longer — impressive, in a grim way — but it couldn't endure a needle churning through its brain forever.
"Hah… hah… You'll admit I took that one alone, right?"
"Hoo… hoo… You saw I was faster, didn't you?"
"Maybe catch your breath before you start talking?"
"Maybe unclench your brow before you start talking."
Soyeon's brow was still furrowed, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Her head had to be pounding from all the psychokinesis, yet she looked genuinely happy about taking down an orc. Soloing a D-class orc was the kind of feat that let you hand out a Keeper's business card anywhere you went. It also meant she was firmly past the beginner stage.
My face was probably doing something similar. I was happy. Not just with magic — with a sword, I'd finally pulled my own weight.
Someone might wonder why two people were this thrilled over one orc while gasping for air. But a fight where life crashed into life and one of them ended was supposed to leave you gasping. Cutting down three or four enemies with a single swing was the stuff of novels. You'd need someone on Elena's level to mow through orcs like autumn leaves.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Garam appeared, applauding.
"You both did great. Soyeon, you're really something. Looking at what you can do with stats that still aren't much… you're a real windfall."
"Hehe. Thanks, Garam oppa."
Soyeon shot me a triumphant look. I answered with a carefully casual smile. Training together, fighting the same monsters — she clearly wanted to beat me at something. It was nothing but cute. She probably didn't even realize Garam was saying all that on purpose to build her up.
I had people who praised me whether I asked for it or not, so I didn't need it from him—
"Your sword aura is too slow. Didn't I tell you to practice your slashes more?"
"I saw you slacking off on practice the other day because you got absorbed in some dream woman, Elena."
…Or not.
Somewhere in Cheorwon.
On a mountainside inside the civilian exclusion line, there was a cave. It sat at a clever distance from the paths the soldiers used, and the surrounding ground was a mine-risk zone, so no one ever came looking.
It was a natural cave, not a good space for much of anything — cramped, with an uneven floor. But there was one patch of flat ground just large enough for a single table. Across that ground, someone had packed dense, tiny script and sigils that would have been complicated even written large.
A magic circle.
A family of raccoon dogs was sleeping on top of it. They seemed to have come looking for a place to rest, away from the soldiers' harassment. However deep that sleep had been, they didn't wake even as the ground around them began to glow.
A flare of light.
No — they couldn't wake. They were already dead.
A low hum. Blood flowed from the raccoon dogs' bodies. Their flesh turned to pulp and drained down through the holes. Their fur lost its hold and drifted faintly apart. Even the hide that remained tore into pieces and melted, scrap by scrap, into the magic circle.
A sharp crack. When the circle's light went out, not a trace of the raccoon dog family remained.
That was how the magic circle had consumed them — ten raccoon dog families. Twenty wild boars the size of a Retona out of the DMZ. Ten barracks cats that had wandered too far and paid with their lives.
In the two months since the succubus Kim Rina had installed it and left, the circle had fed and fed until it finally held enough life energy to activate.
A burst of radiance. The characters of the magic circle blazed and rose into the air. This light was incomparably stronger than before, spilling all the way out of the cave. If it hadn't been daytime, the nearby military units would have sent out a search party.
A long, low drone. After a little time, the color of the light changed. What had begun as a white light like the sun turned yellow, then blue, then black.
Before long, night had fallen around the cave.
The night stole the life force of everything that entered its domain. Trees withered. The earth cracked. The ground where night had settled became dead land in moments.
Its work done, the night drew back into the cave. A little later and some soldier would have spotted it — though the dead land itself would raise questions soon enough either way.
Inside the cave, the night took the shape of a bat. Then that darkness, denser than the cave's own shadows, shifted into a human form. And from within it, a man appeared.
Pale skin that looked almost bloodless, set against deep black hair. A black suit over a shirt as white as his skin — a striking combination.
The man opened his eyes. Crimson irises studied the cave and everything beyond it.
"…Hmm. So a demon called me?"
His voice was dry as drought-cracked earth.
"A pathetic magic circle. No wonder I'm this thirsty."
He considered draining the life from everything nearby on the spot — then found a thought still lingering in one corner of the circle.
Do not act rashly. This dimension's technology is exceptional.
"…Exceptional for a two-dimensional world, I'm sure."
But even a two-dimensional world was something he needed to treat carefully. Run wild on impulse and the 'life' he'd stacked up over long ages would crumble like a sandcastle.
"Fine. First things first — insurance."
He looked down at the ground and flicked his hand. The shape of the magic circle drawn there changed, becoming three times more complex than before.
"There. And…"
He pushed his open palm downward. Following the motion, the magic circle began to sink into the earth. Before long there was no circle left to find in the cave — only a slightly awkward patch of flat ground.
"For now I need information. And I'll take that demon girl as a subordinate while I'm at it."
The man closed both eyes and waited a moment. When he opened them again, his gaze was fixed not on the cave but somewhere else entirely — an ordinary home, with a computer and a desk.
"This looks like a good place to start."
A soft snap. He flicked his fingers, and his form vanished from the cave.
And only afterward did the communications soldiers, out tidying their lines, discover the dead land.
"Sergeant! Something's wrong over here!"
"Wrong how? Stop looking for an excuse to slack off and keep walking!"
"No, you need to see this. I'm serious!"
"…What is this…?"
The wire-section sergeant took one look at the dead land and pulled out his phone.