Free Web NovelChapter 50: Death of One Great Orc, Rise of another
The calamity orc looked right at Ren after its arm was cut. Its eyes told a story that it had not. It told a story of want, desire, the need to not give up. Something so deep it refused to allow him to stop.
Ren could see it. He did not need to be a magician to tell that something deeper was happening with the calamity orc.
"Sadly, life does not wait for you to tell your story, neither does your story wipe away the actions that you have done.
I know you might have a reason why you became what you became. Heck, the world might have turned you into this monster. But you became a monster that pushed others into pain and becoming monsters themselves.
So, for the sake of Ragna and all the other orcs that live under your thumb and suffer because of your own broken past, I am sorry, but I have to kill you."
As he finished those words, he intensified the blast of the flames so much that the calamity orc was pressed hard against the walls until its bones began popping. Its entire chest was burning, and its life was leaving right before its eyes.
"Nooooooo! Stop it!" the orc thundered. It tried to use its other hand to swing its blade, but the attack did not make it far.
"Please, do not kill me! I have come so far!" its deep voice croaked, filled with pain as it spoke. It was heavy. Tears fell from the eyes of the calamity orc but were burned off faster than they formed.
"Please, don’t do it, don’t take it away from me!"
"I’m sorry. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. The law of the world," Ren said, making the decision to finally end this.
Suddenly, the glow in the orc’s eyes faded into black, and so did the markings on its body. It started releasing a dark aura. It pressed one foot forward and then leaped, pressing against the flames with one leg and moving forward.
’What is happening? It still has strength in it? Tch, I’ve had enough.’
The calamity orc was about to pull off its last move for survival, the one that would get it out of this situation if anything could. Ren was not allowing it. While the flames burned, he used Gravity Manipulation, pinpointing it right on the orc. It came down as hard as it could and slammed into the orc, shattering its bones and damn near its whole body while it lay on the ground.
"Goodbye," Ren said, and then intensified the flames. They blasted right through the heart and left a wound the size of a head.
The body of the orc fell forward and slammed into the ground with a loud thud.
[Quest Completed]
[You have killed a Forest Lord, 1000 EXP]
[Congratulations on completing a hidden quest: Hero for All]
Notifications came rolling in, but Ren barely paid attention. He looked at the body of the calamity orc, his enemy that he had just defeated, and then he approached. No matter the sentiment he held, he would not leave it like that. He would consume it.
Just when he was about to do it, he sensed a figure standing a distance away. So he raised his head and looked. At the top of the mountain stood a figure cloaked in black, looking right at Ren.
"Who is that?" Ren asked. He could feel the presence of this fellow, yet that was all. He could not even tell the slightest thing about the person.
The figure watched for a few more seconds and then vanished with the wind.
[....]
Back at the settlement, it was not going well.
The orcs that had broken from the main battle had hit the settlement with numbers and aggression that Remu, Silas, and the rest of them were working hard to absorb. They fought well, the Dominion Aura thin at this distance but still present enough to matter, wolves and lizardmen holding a perimeter that was bending under sustained pressure, ground being given in inches rather than feet, but being given nonetheless.
Remu took a hit to his side that he answered with two of his own and kept moving. Silas was everywhere at once, the wind technique stretched to its limit, pulling pressure away from the younger fighters and toward himself with the deliberate generosity of someone who had decided the cost of that trade was acceptable.
The young lizardman from the meeting fought with the same reckless instinct he’d shown in the first battle, only sharper now, the inexperience burning off him with every exchange. The female beside him kept directing, kept organizing, kept making the chaos around her incrementally less chaotic.
Then the cave went quiet.
The orcs nearest the entrance felt it first, the particular silence that preceded something significant, and when they turned to look, what they saw standing at the cave mouth stopped the fighting in their immediate vicinity through the simple mechanism of making everything else seem less important.
Ragna stood eight feet tall.
His skin had darkened, and the pattern covering it had deepened into something deliberate, geometric lines that ran from his neck to his wrists in formations that caught light and held it differently than plain skin would. His eyes carried a charge in them that hadn’t been there before, and in his hand was a blade that crackled at the edges with black lightning that moved of its own accord, climbing the metal in slow arcs that shed brief shadows every time they fired.
He looked at the battlefield.
He looked at what the orcs who served the dead master had done to the settlement Ren had built, to the people Ren had chosen, and something settled into his expression that was colder and more decided than rage.
He stepped forward and swung.
The black lightning came off the blade in the arc, expanding outward, and the orcs it touched went down in the same instant. No recovery, no staggering, simply down. He was already moving before they hit the ground, fast in a way that his size hadn’t suggested was possible, the blade finding the next target before the last one had finished falling.
The orcs tried to regroup.
They died in the process of trying.
Ragna moved through them with the particular efficiency of someone fighting for something real rather than something commanded, every strike deliberate, every step forward reclaiming ground that should never have been taken, black lightning trailing behind each swing in fading arcs that lit the settlement in brief, violent flashes.
It was over faster than it had started.
The orcs that still had the option to run took it, and those that didn’t found out why they should have.
Remu stood breathing hard in the middle of the settlement, looking at Ragna across the bodies of the fallen attackers, something moving through his expression that he didn’t put into words.
A shadow fell across the settlement from above.
Then Ren came down from the sky, shifting from dragon to Sovereign Shell mid-descent, landing cleanly between his people and what remained of the orc force.
