Chapter 30: Orcs
The orcs are at average 180 cm height and having bodies of man. Their bodies are not muscular but weirdly fat. They don't have a shred of clothing on their bodies except the animal skins covering their asses and crotches. Their skin are dark yellow coloured despite being nude in the cold weather.
With our torchlights, their appearance is clearly viewable. Having said that, I cannot tell them apart. The orcs all have the same hideous pig faces. Some are slightly bigger than others, but we haven't see yet the said giant orc bigger than 2 meters.
No expression is manifested, or could be understood from their faces. The eerie sound of oinks, snorts, and squeals and grunts repeatedly echoes in the cave. Their bad smell in this closed environment really disrupt our breathing. I can already see the girls are moving their nose uncomfortably.
They make heavy step towards us. It is really like a scene from horror movies!
The closest orc jumps at them but Ivanna swings her left arm in a wide arc right at the base of the orc’s neck. It cut deeply and Ivanna kicks it away, then side kicks its forehead. As the orc falls to its knee, Ivanna thrusts sword into its neck.
Clementine jumps past Ivanna and a few rocks fired at her fired at close range. But to the orc’ surprise, not even one of them managed to hit Clementine, and before it could even act confused, it got a knee to the face and flew away. The attack is followed up by a stab to the orc's face.
Sekrit jumps to orc who is hitting with pickaxe before the attack connects, she immediately jumps to the side and as soon as the hit past her, she jumps and kicks off the wall, propelling herself towards the orc and land the attack.
Clementine doesn't even bother looking at her work as continued running, at a speed that seems impossible to catch up. She dashes towards a dumbfounded orc. But it isn't ready to back down without a fight. It swings its shovel but hit nothing. She is already bat its side, takes a wide swing at it and the hit immediately crushes its head open.
"These orcs are easy to attack because they are slow. But hard to kill because the thick fat!" Clementine yells.
They killed half of the enemies but they start breathing hard. Another eight orcs swarm over them.
I helplessly look at Kurotsuchi and Mirai, hoping they join the fight.
Mirai then chants some words, then suddenly the goblin shadows stop moving, causing its original body to stop moving.
"Now, kill them while my power still last!" Mirai shouts.
For a minute, the surrounded girls are dumbfounded but after realising the orcs doesn't move for over a minute, they know this is Mirai's ability, probably freezing enemies for a minute.
The girls stab the immovable orcs' necks. The neck is protected by fat, so it takes some time to stab them to death.
"Quick. It's already 5 minutes. I am losing my strength!" Mirai warns in high pitched voice.
"Damn. Hard to kill these pigs." Clementine is pulling out her dirk from a dead orc while other girls proceed to attack another orcs.
Kurotsuchi jumps and stabs the back of an orc's head. She made another stab after realizing that attack was shallow. Ivanna and Sekrit do the same action.
Over 10 minutes passed, 16 orcs killed and 2 orcs remaining. Suddenly, the shadow binding loosen.
The two orcs swing their clubs and the four girls retreat.
Mirai are now cowering and breathing heavily.
"Are you fine?" After I ask, Mirai hugs me with her face buried at my chest.
I turn towards the other girls. They outnumbers the two orcs an take the chance to continuously slash the orcs' leg and arm. After a minute, the orcs collapse.
After releasing me, Mirai walks to the girls, followed by me.
"Deadpan chick, is that your power?" Clementine interrogates.
As I am still trying to figure what happens, Kurotsuchi explains.
"That is her power. It's like sorcerer casting spells." Kurotsuchi explains.
"And that's not the only power she possesses." She resumes.
"Are you trying to say, you also posses that power. Why didn't you use that?" Ivanna asks.
"I do have different power than Mirai. And I attack because I am good in close combat." Kurotsuchi smiles while patting Mirai's back.
"Is everyone fine?" I asks gently.
"Only eighteen orcs, and we are in this state?" Clementine laments.
"Orcs are hard to kill. We could attack them but they don't get hurt that easily." Sekrit complains, followed by Ivanna's sigh.
"This is my first experience killing orc. I saw orc before but never fight them directly." Kurotsuchi seems excited while Mirai shakes her head, a gesture that she doesn't like fighting orcs.
We then walk into another rubber that looks like a main entrance into something important.
Suddenly, my head vibrates and the translucent dashboard appears without being called by me.
"One Passive Ability gained - Status Reading"
"One Active Ability gained - Status Editing"
"1,800 points added"
"Item Transmission - 2 additional items"
What is these? Could it be because we killed these orcs?
"Hiro, what happens?" Ivanna stops walking, trying to took at the direction I am looking at. They can't see the translucent dashboard.
Mirai touches my arm using her index finger.
"Could you wait a minute?" I gently plead to the girls.
I instinctively want to know what is the two new abilities, two description appears.
"Status Reading - You can now check the status of any person or creature."
"Status Editing - You can now change the attributes on the Status of 1 person, limited to one usage."
The description seems inadequate.
I check 'Item Transmission'. There are two new empty slots.
As we were having troubles with orcs, I imagine guns or rifles.
The dashboard prompts "Modern weapons are off- limit for now."
Hmm. I can't import weapons but the good news is weapons are only off-limit 'for now', meaning somewhere in the future, I may be able to import weapons.
As we were also troubled by traveling, I try imagining helicopter, car, ship or van but the dashboard prompts,
"Vehicles are off-limit for now."
Again, that's good news and bad news.
I then imagine houses but houses are also off-limit.
I imagine portable gas stove and it is allowable. But I decide not to import portable gas stove as raw materials for burning could be easily found in this universe. Moreover, the portable gas stove consumes space and weight of our baggage.
In the end, I can't make up my mind.
Sorry. Let's go." We continue with our progress.
All of sudden, Mirai's body is swaying but I grab her arm so that she won't fall.
"Are you fine?" Kurotsuchi asks, offering her shoulder to support Mirai, as their height are close to each other.
"Can you that shadow binding like before?" Ivanna asks worriedly.
"I can but it won't be that long, and it won't cover that many opponents." Mirai announces in her usual monotonous tone.
"Ahhh. We are going to be in trouble if we meet the same number of pigs!" Clementine grumbles.
I, ignoring the customary ruckus of their argument, take another look at the chamber, I detect silhouettes.
Before I say anything, Sekrit and Clementine move to beside Ivanna who is in front.
Although is is a tunnel, there is a big space 10 meters from us. Now only my torchlight is switched on. When Ivanna's torchlight is switched on, the tunnel become irradiant. We see two orcs, facing the other side. They are engrossed in what they're doing that they are not aware of our light from us. What are the orcs doing?
"The pigs are fucking.." Sekrit points to below.
The orcs are kneeling and holding two small legs, while moving their hips. When we get closer, we notice the orcs are raping a girl in her crotch and ass.
The quick Clementine and Sekrit stab the orcs' neck but as expected, hindered by their thick fat. The orcs pull from the girl and startled.
The girls immediately attack again but it seems the fat is thick.
The orcs start understanding what happens, pick up weapons scattered on the floor.
Both of them turned to face the girls. One of them throws rock consecutively at Clementine. She gives a cold grunt and at the same time, swung her gauntlet to deflect the rocks to the ground.
The other orc that didn’t notice this abnormality jumps towards the woman.
Aiming at her arm, it swings with a machete.
Then, I hear sound of metal hitting each other. Clementine moves slightly so that that machete just hit her shoulder that is protected by metal armour. The orc feels confused, but swing its machete again.
With a heavy sound of crashing, she pushes the orc head, hard against the cave wall. Her dirk then rams at the orc’s face. She uses the hard wall as a mean to kill the orc quicker.
The orc struggles desperately. But because it is being pushed hard against the wall with a gauntlet, in the end, the orc could no longer move as its limbs limp towards the ground. Confirming the orc is dead, only did she release the pressure she put with her gauntlet.
"How long since the last time this gauntlet becomes useful?" She jests.
Another orc that is holding the club steps back unwittingly. Even if it abandons its comrade here, it would have been understandable.
But then, the obstacle behind the goblin is no other than the suddenly appearing Sekrit who slip past it. At that moment, it becomes its first time to be confused of what to do. But before it could make a decision, it is struck by the Sekrit 's sword. Its final answer of its life splattered onto the cave wall. In an instant, the goblin’s skull is crushed, killing it on the spot with a club that Sekrit picked up.
As they end the fight capable of making people feel nauseous, we stride over the corpse of orcs.
There is a woman, no, to be precise, a girl at the same age as Mirai, lying and slightly trembling on the ground. She is of course fully naked and her crotch and butt are splotched with semen.
Her hair is blond and short, the haircut is bob like Kurotsuchi, but her bang is straight unlike Kurotsuchi's messy bang. Her breasts are smaller than Mirai. Is she even younger than Mirai's.
I squat and ask her. She can't even move her head, just glancing at me with her pupil.
"What's your name? Don't talk other than that."
"Sera. Mer....mercenary fr.....from Ba....Baal."
"Hey, look .." Sekrit points to a grave wound on her waist with a rusty dagger with foul smell pierced into it.
As soon as Ivanna applies a little pressure on the Sera's stomach with her finger, Sera immediately starts vomiting blood. The girls frown their eyebrows. Ivanna and Kurotsuchi grit their teeth.
Without a glance to the me, who is staring nervously, Ivanna quickly rechecks the wound of the female mercenary and clenches her fist. Sekrit simply says,
"Give it up. She has no hope."
Ivanna holds her breath as her hand carrying Sera tightened.
"Look."
Ivanna pulls out the dagger that is stuck in her waist. On the blade, some black, sticky and ominous substance could be seen.
"This is poison." Kurotsuchi interjects.
"They made this by mixing poisonous herbs gathered from the wild with the pigs' own urine, excrement and unsanitary saliva." Ivanna elaborates grievously.
"Once you’ve been poisoned with this, it’ll leave you with breathing problems, total paralysis, fever, loss of consciousness and, finally, death." Kurotsuchi adds.
After wiping the bent dagger on the waistcloth of the orc, Sekrit pin it into her small package and says:
"Their methods are still primitive."
"In our village, there is an antidote, but the return journey will be harsh and long. She won't make it." Mirai says in lifeless tone but her eyes manifest sorrow.
"The poison also has already spread throughout her body." Ivanna explains, I clearly feel gloominess in her shaky voice.
"Aah." At that very moment, a glimmer of consciousness appears in Sera's blank eyes.
Her whole body is paralyzed, only her pupil move slightly.
The bloody foam around her mouth pops. With trembling lips, she speaks with a very soft voice that it almost couldn’t be heard.
"…k…kill..me.."
Without a moment’s hesitation, Clementine runs Sera’s throat through with her dirk.
After making a short groan, Sera’s body twitches violently, blood foaming out of her mouth, and dies.
"Don’t make her suffer any more." Ivanna mutters as her woe is shown on her face. She cries. Kurotsuchi sobs. Even the apathetic Mirai, has tears flowing from her eyes.
Sekrit and Clementine doesn't show any expression.
Before leaving, I turn to look at the Sera's corpse.
I’ll definitely come back for you later, as well as your friend who lives outside.