Chapter 135-150 The Prince Beneath the Illusion (Patreon)

Chapter 135

The Prince Beneath the Illusion

Held in Karath’s arms, Anna felt her heart race for a man for the first time in her life.

She knew they were in grave danger, but emotions were not something reason could easily suppress.

The lord’s son had always stared at her with a gaze that made her skin crawl.

Then this man had appeared, delivered justice in her place, and rescued both her and her family.

From Anna’s perspective, Karath was the very image of the prince on a white horse from the stories she had heard as a child.

When her family became serfs and her mother died, Anna had decided that fairy tales had no place in reality.

Yet one of those tales now seemed to be unfolding before her eyes.

“Endure a little longer.”

“Hup!”

Slice!

Karath had neither the time nor the interest to notice her feelings.

They had entered a forest inhabited by monsters.

Only small creatures lived this close to the edge, so none of them posed a serious threat to Karath. Even now, he killed one with a single swing of his axe.

The problem was that he was not alone.

He had to advance while protecting three nearly defenceless humans.

Karath guided the family with the same level of tension he might have felt against the greatest enemy of his life.

The healing spell and strips torn from his clothing had stopped the bleeding from his wounds, but he had already lost a fair amount of blood during the battles against the knights.

Maintaining constant vigilance also wore down his concentration with alarming speed.

He naturally felt tempted to stop and rest.

Now Karath understood why masters in martial arts stories were always dying inside vast pursuit formations.

The trees and undergrowth blocked his view after they entered the forest, so he could no longer determine the pursuers’ exact position.

They were undoubtedly still following somewhere behind them.

There was no time to rest.

Karath and the family continued forward, fighting against their steadily declining strength.

They had reached the forest during the afternoon, and the sky gradually darkened above them.

“We only need to reach the summit. Once we arrive, we can rest.”

Karath urged Jean’s family onward while thinking of the subordinates waiting at the top of the Crimson Mountains.

Perhaps the words were directed as much toward himself as toward them.

He drove both himself and the exhausted serfs through the forest as darkness settled around them.

They continued for hours.

By the time the black sky slowly began brightening again, rough breaths had started escaping Karath as well.

“Haa.”

Even a body hardened by years of survival in the wilderness was beginning to tire.

If Karath had reached that point, Jean’s family had suffered far worse.

Anna and her father had already passed beyond their physical limits.

They had lived for years as malnourished serfs, then spent an entire day and night alternating between running and walking without sleep.

Anna’s brain had stopped properly registering pain.

Like a marathon runner driven beyond exhaustion, her body flooded itself with endorphins to bury the agony.

She followed Karath’s back blindly, continuing to walk and run.

Pain from a body pushed to its limit.

The unnatural elation created by endorphins.

The fear of being pursued.

Her trust in Karath.

All those emotions and sensations mixed together until Anna moved like someone half-mad, seeing nothing except the broad back ahead of her.

Eventually, Karath stopped after carving through another monster at the front of the group.

He drew a deep breath.

“We have arrived.”

Anna had completely lost track of time.

Noon had passed long ago, and the afternoon was already well advanced.

They had finally reached the summit of the Crimson Mountains.

At Karath’s announcement, the tension holding Anna together vanished.

Her mind finally began listening to every scream her body had suppressed.

“Grand Chief?”

“What are those humans doing here?”

Green monsters suddenly emerged around them.

Orcs and goblins surrounded the exhausted family.

Anna’s mind went blank.

They had reached the summit only to be encircled by monsters.

Her eyes instinctively searched for the prince who had protected and guided them.

Instead, she saw an orc standing in the same clothing and carrying the same weapon.

Karath no longer needed to maintain a human appearance.

More importantly, he lacked the mana to keep the transformation active.

He had released the illusion.

Anna could not possibly understand any of that.

Foam bubbled from her lips.

Then she fainted.

The reaction came the instant Karath dispelled the illusion.

Anna collapsed with foam at her mouth.

Jean somehow found enough energy within his dying body to stare at Karath with bulging eyes.

“Rest for a while.”

Tap.

There was still a chance the pursuers were climbing the mountain behind them.

Karath had no time to explain.

He lightly struck Jean, and the man, already far beyond exhaustion, immediately lost consciousness from the tiny impact.

“Carry those two. Berners, is there somewhere nearby where we can safely rest tonight?”

“There ish, Grand Chief!”

Leo had already fallen asleep in Karath’s arms.

He ordered the two orc guards to carry Jean and Anna, then followed Berners toward a suitable campsite.

They travelled for another half day.

By the time the sun began setting again, Berners guided them to a place where they could rest.

Jean’s family had surpassed their physical limits so completely that none of them awakened despite spending half a day carried through uncomfortable undergrowth.

“Grand Chief, who are these humans?”

“Why are you protecting them?”

Karath’s subordinates had postponed their questions until they reached safety.

After laying the family down, they finally asked what they had been holding back.

Humans were diverse.

Some had driven the orcs and goblins into the forgotten corners of history.

Some exploited and killed even their fellow humans.

Others might devote themselves to helping everyone around them.

Karath could have explained that the humans he brought were good people and could be trusted.

Such an argument would never persuade orcs and goblins.

As usual, he decided to rely upon the ancestors.

“You know that Karath entered the human settlement to retrieve food according to the ancestors’ revelation.”

“That ish correct, Grand Chief.”

“There was one thing he did not reveal before leaving. The ancestors told Karath not only about the food, but also about the people who would cultivate and manage it.”

These three were the chosen bringers of agriculture, appointed by the ancestors themselves.

“Then these are the ones chosen by the ancestors?”

“But how can they be humans?”

“They chose us instead of humanity. The humans pursuing us are proof.”

“Humansh are chasing ush?”

“That is why Karath moved with such urgency. These people agreed to help the alliance, so the enraged humans are now trying to kill them.”

Had Jean’s family been awake, they might have foamed at the mouth again while accusing Karath of fraud.

Strictly speaking, the humans were probably pursuing them less because of the escaped serfs and more because of the involuntary operation performed upon Young Master Alvin.

Most of all, they wanted to capture the surgeon responsible.

“Then should we not simply kill every human pursuing us?”

The two orc warriors’ eyes shone with anticipation.

“That would be possible if we were alone. However, we must safely escort the family chosen by the ancestors back to the alliance.”

“Ah...”

With the explanation finished, Karath ordered the orcs and goblins to prepare sleeping places.

They would take turns standing watch.

If the humans awakened or anything else happened, they were to wake him immediately.

For the first time in two days, Karath finally slept.

Chapter 136

The First Humans of the Alliance

“Grand Chief... Grand Chief.”

A faint voice entered Karath’s ears.

It reminded him of being awakened for night watch during his military service in his former world.

“What happened?”

“The humansh are awake.”

Karath opened his eyes immediately.

The summer sun had already risen.

A strange tension hung between Jean’s family and Karath’s subordinates.

“It appears an explanation is necessary.”

Karath straightened and addressed the family in the human language.

Centuries of separation had created significant differences between human speech and the languages of the orcs and goblins.

The difference resembled that between a standard language and an extremely heavy dialect.

After living together for several months, they would probably learn to understand one another.

For now, however, the languages might as well have been foreign.

“What is happening?” Jean asked in a trembling voice. “Why are we surrounded by monsters?”

Despite his fear, he was still trying to fulfil his responsibility as the head of the family.

“Before answering, Karath must correct one thing. We are not monsters. Humans merely decided to call us that.”

“We?”

Jean and his children looked at him strangely.

They had believed Karath was human.

“That is correct. Orcs and goblins speak, think... and live just as humans do.”

Karath hesitated for a moment after saying they could think.

Kaden and Parker had suddenly appeared in his mind.

“And Karath is the Grand Chief who leads the orcs and goblins. Karath Bloodclaw.”

“G-Grand Chief...”

“You deceived us?”

Jean stared in astonishment.

Anna’s expression was filled with betrayal.

“Karath apologises for concealing the fact that he is an orc. Everything else he said was true. He swore upon his life that you would never need to sell your daughter because of money, and that no one would discriminate against you for being serfs.”

The family stared at him with complicated expressions.

“Who cares if he is an orc?”

Leo suddenly spoke from Jean’s arms.

“He saved us! He saved Father and Sister from the bad man who beat Father and tried to hurt Sister. No one in the village helped us.”

“Leo.”

Jean and Anna’s expressions grew even more conflicted.

Jean released a slow breath.

“My son is right. Humans treated us like livestock. Perhaps living with orcs would be better.”

“Father...”

Jean and Anna had made their decision, though uncertainty still remained upon their faces.

“You have chosen well. If you work for us, we will protect you.”

With the immediate problem resolved, Karath ordered his subordinates to prepare breakfast.

The two orc warriors and the goblin scout went hunting, leaving Karath, Berners, and Jean’s family at the campsite.

They soon returned with meat, and the group prepared to roast it over a fire.

“Are we going to eat a monster?”

“Is there a problem?”

“H-humans cannot eat monster meat.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. Monster meat contains toxins. Humans become ill if they eat it.”

Karath considered the new information.

This might make matters easier than expected.

“Did you hunt any ordinary animals, such as rabbits or foxes?”

“We will go again immediately.”

“It will not take long.”

The orc warriors and goblin scout departed the instant Karath asked.

He felt slightly guilty for making them hunt twice.

“They will bring back animals. Wait a little longer.”

“Can we afford to remain here so calmly while being pursued?”

Jean’s face already looked skeletal from malnutrition.

After running for two consecutive days, he resembled a half-dead corpse.

“You said humans cannot eat monster meat.”

“That is correct.”

“Then the pursuers will have just as much difficulty obtaining food. They followed us in such haste that they probably did not prepare enough supplies for several days.”

Jean finally understood.

Karath had seen close to one hundred soldiers pursuing them.

Finding enough ordinary animals to feed a hundred people in the forest would be difficult.

Moving through monster territory in a group that large was also like loudly announcing their position to every creature nearby.

They would encounter far more monsters than Karath’s small group while continuing the pursuit.

At this point, they had nearly escaped.

Monster meat contained toxins harmful to humans.

Perhaps that explained another reason humanity had left the Grimwood Mountains untouched, beyond the internal conflicts between kingdoms.

Food supply was one of the most important matters in warfare.

Thinking about humans and war naturally reminded Karath of the battle two days earlier.

He had killed seven knights with his own hands.

They were the first humans he had ever killed.

Strangely, the experience had caused no serious psychological shock.

During the previous two days, Karath had been too occupied by pursuit to think about it.

Even now, with enough leisure to reflect, he felt little.

He did not know whether that was because he had lived as an orc for sixteen years, or because slaughtering countless monsters within the Grimwood Mountains had made him accustomed to cutting through flesh and bone.

This was not the time for such thoughts.

The enemy would struggle to pursue them deeply, but there was no guarantee the chase had ended.

“Remove the clothes you are wearing.”

Jean’s family stared at him.

“W-why do we need to remove our clothes?”

Anna’s voice sharpened so suddenly that she seemed to forget they were being hunted.

“We need to create false tracks.”

To demonstrate, Karath removed the clothes he had purchased from Jack.

They were already little more than rags.

He rubbed them against the corpse of a monster his subordinates had killed, soaking the fabric in blood.

“We will scatter the clothes across the ground like this. The pursuers must believe monsters killed us.”

Jean’s family nodded after understanding the explanation.

For some reason, Anna’s face turned red again.

She had repeatedly flushed since two days earlier.

Perhaps she suffered from a serious condition affecting her face.

“D-does that mean we must travel without clothing?”

Anna looked at Karath with a sharp expression.

“We can make clothes from animal and monster hides.”

Karath pointed toward the garments worn by his subordinates.

“Ah...”

Her already red face grew even brighter.

At this rate, it might burst.

After creating false evidence with their discarded clothing, they began the journey home.

Jean and his children possessed almost no combat ability, so the group avoided monsters whenever possible.

The cautious route took longer than Karath’s original journey to the Crimson Mountains.

Even so, they returned to Root after seven days.

“The Grand Chief has returned!”

The warriors standing watch upon Root’s walls shouted at the sight of him.

A crowd gathered to welcome them.

“Humans?”

“Why are humans here?”

Every orc and goblin stared at Jean’s family in confusion.

“Summon the advisers to the Grand Chief’s house.”

Karath had no desire to repeat the same explanation several times.

He would explain everything once through the advisers.

“Endure a little longer. A house where you can rest will be prepared shortly.”

He led the former serfs toward the Grand Chief’s residence.

First, he needed to introduce them to the advisers and explain the future he envisioned.

Karath guided them to his house at the centre of the village.

“This is Karath’s home.”

Returning after fifteen days produced a strange feeling.

He had begun regarding journeys into human territory as travel or infiltration while thinking of a primitive earthen house as home.

“You summoned us, Grand Chief.”

While Karath reflected upon that change, the advisers began arriving one after another.

“Everyone, sit.”

Once they had all gathered, Karath addressed them in a serious voice.

At last, the time had come to build an agricultural city.

Chapter 137

The Foundation of an Agricultural City

“These are the people I rescued from the human settlement.”

Karath opened the meeting by repeating the explanation he had given his subordinates when they first encountered Jean’s family.

They were the people chosen by the ancestors to secure the alliance’s food supply.

After hearing the full explanation, the advisers studied the human family with expressions suggesting they were not entirely convinced, but could find no grounds to object.

Jean and his children merely returned their gazes with visible tension.

Karath had introduced them in the language of the orcs and goblins, so the family had no idea what had actually been said.

“The introductions are finished,” Karath told them in the human language.

“N-nice to meet you. My name is Jean.”

“H-hello. I’m Anna.”

“I’m Leo!”

Jean’s family bowed and introduced themselves to the advisers.

“Ahem. Welcome.”

“You abandoned the human world for our sake. That was truly courageous.”

“Krahahaha! We leave our food in your capable hands!”

Once Karath translated their greetings, the advisers welcomed the family in return.

Some still appeared reluctant but chose to accept the Grand Chief’s decision. Others seemed ready to welcome the humans sincerely.

Kaden, as usual, simply looked delighted by everything.

Silence descended immediately after the greetings ended.

They would become accustomed to the language eventually.

Whether they liked one another was a secondary problem. They could barely communicate in the first place.

Karath could serve as an interpreter and build the first bridge between them, but he could not remain attached to Jean’s family forever.

Fortunately, the differences between their languages were closer to an extreme dialect than entirely separate tongues. After several months of living together, they should begin understanding one another.

“And Orga, did you bring what I requested?”

Karath changed the subject before everyone spent the rest of the day staring awkwardly at one another.

During the journey back to Root, he had contacted the village through Berners.

He needed reports on recent developments and had also sent several instructions ahead of his arrival.

“Yes, Grand Chief.”

Orga shyly extended a greyish stone.

Sometimes, watching Orga made Karath wonder whether the man was truly an orc.

A bashful expression had no business appearing on an orc’s face.

Yet Orga had somehow produced one.

It was an assault upon the eyes.

“Ahem. Th-this is certainly much stronger than the sample I showed you before.”

Karath avoided looking directly at Orga and examined the lump of hardened cement in his hand.

“Further research is still necessary, but it already seems considerably stronger than the earthen walls we currently use.”

“You have worked hard, Orga.”

Karath willingly praised him for producing real results.

Ever since Karath had filled his head with visions of cities and unbreakable walls, Orga had lived an extraordinarily busy life.

During the day, he directed wall construction and the building of earthen houses as the alliance’s construction foreman.

At night, he returned home and repeatedly experimented with cement and concrete.

The rainy season had at least halted most construction work, allowing him to concentrate entirely upon his research.

“This achievement belongs entirely to you, Grand Chief.”

“No. Your efforts produced these results.”

“You showed Orga the direction and even built every facility required for the experiments.”

Orga spoke as though accepting Karath’s praise would be unthinkable.

His words were not entirely wrong.

Karath had constructed specialised facilities for the research.

The rainy season brought excessive humidity, which could easily distort the experimental results.

To solve that problem, he had created a dehumidifying facility capable of removing moisture from mud, sand, and limestone.

It used cockatrice bones that carried a faint flow of mana, though they were inferior to drake bones.

Karath had also noticed that crushing limestone into powder by hand with a hammer consumed enormous time and effort.

He therefore created a magical facility for grinding stone, again using cockatrice bones.

“Even if someone gives a warrior a weapon, the achievements earned with that weapon still belong to the warrior. They do not belong to the one who provided it. This accomplishment is yours.”

Karath might have provided the tools, but Orga was the one who conducted the experiments and produced the final result.

“Thank you, Grand Chief! Orga will work even harder on the experiments!”

The orc shouted with renewed inspiration.

Because Karath had entrusted all research into cement and concrete to Orga alone, the other advisers merely watched their exchange with puzzled expressions.

“This was created by processing limestone, the grey stone found near the ancestral ruins.”

Karath displayed the cement powder and concrete Orga had brought, then briefly explained their functions and methods of use.

“We will use these materials to construct a new wall around Root.”

The advisers exclaimed.

“Will we reinforce the existing wall by covering it with this material?”

“No. We will construct an entirely new wall. It will surround the outer edge of Root and expand the village itself.”

“Is this preparation for absorbing more tribes?”

“That is correct. The Greenskin Alliance already numbers more than fifteen hundred, and over one thousand of them live in Root. The village has reached its limit.”

“How much do you intend to expand it?”

“The alliance may reach three or four thousand by next winter. Would three times the current size not be sufficient?”

“I intend to prepare an area ten times larger than Root is now.”

Every adviser stared at him.

“T-ten times its current size?”

“Driving the monsters from that much land will not be easy,” Krog warned.

“Do not speak so weakly, Krog!” Kaden roared. “If the Grand Chief commands it, Kaden will crush every monster’s skull!”

“Chief Parker will join his younger brother, Grand Chief!”

“There is no need to clear the entire area immediately.”

Karath stopped Kaden and Parker before they could seize their weapons and charge outside.

“Using this concrete and cement, along with the iron reinforcement produced at Blacksmith Village, we can build walls stronger than our current fortifications. We will not claim all that territory at once. We will gradually widen the wall outward from the current boundary.”

The advisers nodded in understanding.

“Krog is also correct that we do not presently need land ten times larger than Root, at least not merely to house the alliance’s people.”

Confusion returned to their faces.

Even Krog, Dagon, and Berners, who had begun developing the habit of thinking through Karath’s intentions, failed to understand this one.

That was natural.

None of them had ever experienced an agricultural society.

“After constructing the wall, we will use the empty land inside it to cultivate crops. Crops require a long time to grow. They will not flourish if simply abandoned. They require constant care. That means we must grow them within the walls.”

Such precautions would not have been necessary in the human world beyond the Grimwood Mountains.

The farmers of Viscount Lindberg’s territory cultivated vast fields outside their settlement walls.

The Grimwood Mountains were different.

This was a forbidden land where a monster could emerge from anywhere at any moment.

Anyone farming outside the walls could be attacked without warning.

Even if the farmers survived, there was a considerable chance that they would awaken one morning to discover their entire field destroyed.

“We will first surround a territory much larger than Root with walls. If the alliance continues growing and the population within Root exceeds five thousand, we will begin cultivating fields outside the walls as well.”

“We will not construct another wall then?”

“There should be no need to expand it again by that point.”

Several advisers suddenly understood.

“If five thousand alliance members live in Root, the Greenskin Alliance’s total population will be at least seven or eight thousand,” Dagon said.

“Then we will possess more than two thousand warriorsh,” Berners added.

“Even after assigning forces to defend the other villages and patrol the waystations, more than one thousand warriors could remain in Root,” Krog concluded.

The three explained Karath’s reasoning to the others almost as though they had rehearsed the exchange.

“Exactly. Once the alliance exceeds seven thousand members, its warriors will number more than two thousand. At that point, clearing every monster from this region should become entirely possible.”

Bloodclaw had contained roughly one hundred people when Karath was born, with the number of warriors usually hovering around thirty.

Unless unusual circumstances intervened, other tribes maintained a similar ratio.

The current alliance was no exception.

Its population had surpassed fifteen hundred, while its combined force of orc and goblin warriors remained slightly below four hundred.

Karath had considered that ratio and the number of warriors required to secure the region surrounding Root.

This was the conclusion he had reached.

“Beginning now, we will construct a wall encompassing an area ten times the size of Root and lay the foundation for an agricultural city.”

Karath turned toward Jean’s family.

“Jean, which crops can be cultivated in autumn?”

“For staple food, autumn wheat and barley would be the best choices.”

“Then sort the seeds we brought and set those two aside. Tell me in advance everything required to cultivate them.”

Karath possessed little practical knowledge of farming.

Fortunately, he now had an expert.

As long as Jean told him what was required, the alliance should be able to provide it.

Most importantly, they could freely obtain the single resource Karath knew was essential to agriculture.

Water.

Even someone as ignorant of farming as Karath understood that water was one of its most important requirements.

The four great civilisations of Earth had all emerged beside rivers.

That was precisely why Karath planned to transform Root into an agricultural city.

The largest river in the entire region flowed nearby.

Chapter 138

The First Fields of Root

Once the meeting ended, Karath personally searched for a house suitable for Jean’s family and guided them there.

He also appointed a teacher who would remain with them, teach them the local language, and explain daily life within Root.

They had entered the alliance under the Grand Chief’s authority, but many orcs and goblins might still hate humans.

Karath therefore took every reasonable precaution to protect them and ease their settlement.

The following day, the alliance began construction in earnest.

The first stage proceeded as it always did.

They cleared the land where the new wall would stand, removing every tree and boulder in the way.

“ROOOAR!”

The noise attracted monsters.

“Maintain the formation!”

“Goblinsh, fire above the orc warriorsh! Do not hit their backsh!”

Nearly two hundred orc and goblin warriors eliminated the approaching creatures without serious difficulty.

These were the warriors who remained after excluding the forces defending Blacksmith Village and the village near the ruins, along with those patrolling the waystations and transporting construction materials.

The villages surrounding the ancestral ruins had completed their integration shortly before the rainy season.

During the storms and Karath’s journey beyond the mountains, the warriors from those tribes had finished their training and received iron weapons.

Their numbers were not the only thing that had improved.

Whoosh!

Thud!

“Oh! He struck an enemy from that distance.”

“Clio! Excellent shot!”

The goblin warriors who followed Berners and had suddenly become obsessed with exercise at the village near the ruins had visibly improved their archery.

More precisely, their increased strength had extended both the range and power of their bows.

They had only trained for slightly more than two months, so the transformation was not extraordinary.

Still, consistent weight training had begun placing visible muscle upon their formerly thin bodies.

According to Berners, other goblin warriors had also started exercising after watching the muscle-obsessed group.

Since goblins coated their arrows and darts with poison as well, the alliance’s military strength could increase dramatically after another year or two.

“HRAAAH!”

Slice!

Karath was also fighting at the front this time.

Previously, he had enjoyed remaining in relative safety while claiming that his absence encouraged the warriors to grow.

This time was different.

His battles against the human knights had revealed the truth clearly.

His close-combat ability still fell far below the strongest warriors of human civilisation.

Karath intended to refine his aura techniques through actual combat.

“The Grand Chief killed the Cyclops!”

“Attack!”

A Cyclops was considered at least equal to a minotaur.

Karath circulated mana through his body and split the monster’s head apart with Silvertusk.

It was still insufficient.

He had nearly lost his balance while strengthening his legs with mana and leaping into the air.

Karath recalled the movements of the knights he had fought several days earlier and continued battling.

Whenever monsters gathered, the warriors killed them.

Whenever the area became quiet, they resumed clearing the land needed for the wall.

“These pieces were made to matching measurements!” Orga shouted. “Check their sizes carefully before fitting them together!”

Once enough space had been secured, the women of Root began construction under his direction.

They assembled the preformed concrete sections sent from the village near the ruins.

Iron reinforcement bars produced at Blacksmith Village were inserted through the prepared holes.

The remaining narrow gaps were filled with cement.

The same process continued again and again.

Considering the physical strength of the monsters within the Grimwood Mountains, ordinary concrete alone could not be considered exceptionally durable.

The situation changed once its thickness surpassed one metre.

Even this was merely a simplified construction method forced upon them by the limited supply of concrete and cement.

The base of the completed wall Orga was designing would exceed five metres in thickness.

Once it reached that scale, even an ogre would struggle to destroy it with one or two punches.

Construction continued beneath the scorching summer sun.

By the time the season approached its end, the Greenskin Alliance had successfully completed a new wall enclosing an area roughly twice the size of Root.

They remained far from the ultimate goal of ten times the original area.

Even so, they had created the minimum foundation required to begin farming in autumn.

Chapter 139

Two Months in Root

“ROOOAAAR!”

“Mmm. Morning already?”

Jean awoke to the same morning call he had heard for the past two months.

During his first few days in Root, the terrible roar had startled him awake every morning.

Human adaptability was a strange thing.

After only two months, Jean now treated the monstrous cry like the crowing of a rooster.

“Ugh... You’re awake, Father?”

Jean was older and slept less than he once had, so the noise was enough to rouse him.

His seventeen-year-old daughter, Anna, still looked half asleep.

“Snore...”

Leo, who was only twelve, slept peacefully through the roar.

His ability to adapt was truly remarkable.

“Sleep as long as you like.”

Jean smiled warmly at his youngest child and stepped outside.

“You are awake.”

“Good morning.”

The residents of Root who had already begun their morning work greeted him as he entered the village streets.

They were orcs and goblins, creatures Jean had regarded as monsters only a few months earlier.

Not every resident greeted him.

Some had accepted Jean and his family only because Karath, the Grand Chief who brought them there, had ordered it.

Those residents still carried a strong aversion toward humans.

Even so, none of them harassed the family.

They simply pretended not to see them and walked past.

Jean did not resent them for it.

The human world was no different.

People always regarded outsiders with suspicion.

Now that Jean had reached forty, he knew that such wariness usually faded after people spent enough time living and working together.

“You can find your way here without anyone guiding you now.”

When Jean reached his destination, Krog greeted him with an unusual smile.

The orc had been assigned to care for Jean’s family during their first few days in Root.

“Hahaha. After repeating it every morning and evening, it has become a habit.”

Jean laughed awkwardly and approached the enormous clay jars.

They were filled with river water.

Splash.

Other orcs and goblins took turns scooping up the water and pouring it over themselves.

The place was essentially a communal bath for men.

Jean still remembered what Krog had said the morning after his family’s first night in Root.

“Human. You stink. Wash yourself.”

At the time, their languages had been too different for Jean to understand.

Now he knew exactly what Krog had said.

He had never imagined that those he once considered monsters would complain about his smell.

The experience had been humiliating, but it also revealed how comfortable life in Root truly was.

Calling a settlement in the middle of a monster-infested forest comfortable might sound absurd, especially when its society still resembled the Stone Age.

Yet Root offered a better life than Jean’s old home.

He had been a serf.

What serf could afford to wash his entire body with soap every day?

Bathing was not the only improvement.

His youngest son could sleep late without punishment.

Under their former lord, Leo would already have been awake and working in the fields beside his father.

“Let’s work hard again today.”

Jean finished washing, thought of his son sleeping peacefully at home, and headed toward the fields within the newly constructed wall.

Female orcs were approaching from another direction when he arrived.

The men who had bathed with Jean made their living through hunting and combat.

Agriculture was therefore conducted under Jean’s direction by female orcs and goblins.

There was no particular problem with women performing the work.

Many human women also laboured in the fields.

More importantly, the female orcs were far stronger than Jean.

“Hup!”

They wielded the iron farming tools Karath had ordered made after listening to Jean’s instructions.

The female orcs dragged and swung the tools through the earth with the power of oxen.

Farming, however, could not be accomplished through strength alone.

Seeds had to be planted at consistent intervals.

Water and manure needed to be applied at the proper times and in the correct quantities.

“Jean, should we divide them into portions this large?”

Fortunately, those finer tasks were not a serious problem either.

The orc women handled the heavy labour, while the goblin women took responsibility for work requiring greater precision.

“Leave this much space between each row before turning the soil.”

“Too much water is also harmful. Reduce it slightly and spread it more evenly.”

Jean’s actual role consisted mostly of demonstrating each task and directing the workers.

They were all quick to learn.

After watching him several times, they performed most tasks without assistance.

Jean had initially feared that the fields were far too large for his family to manage.

The new wall built over the summer enclosed an area roughly twice the size of old Root.

There was enough room for around four hundred small houses.

They could not cultivate directly beside the wall because it cast shadows and warriors needed space to patrol.

Even after accounting for that, the remaining farmland was vastly larger than the fields Jean and his children had worked in Viscount Lindberg’s territory.

Yet the labour of the orc and goblin women made cultivating it surprisingly manageable.

“Time to eat!”

After they had worked for several hours, women responsible for the village meals arrived carrying food.

Anna was among them.

“Father, we have fish today!”

Karath had learned that humans could not eat monster meat.

Because of that, Jean’s family received priority whenever the alliance obtained ordinary animals or fish from the river.

“Hahaha.”

The sight was even more astonishing than his son sleeping late or residents washing themselves every day.

They could eat fish without treating it as a rare luxury.

Jean had spent his entire life far inland.

Fish had been something he might taste only a few times in his entire life.

Meanwhile, the dry bread and watery soup he had eaten almost every day did not exist in Root.

The alliance had only just begun agriculture.

It possessed neither wheat nor barley to serve as staple foods.

Instead, they ate meat and fish as ordinary meals, foods humans usually treated as the main course.

From a nutritional standpoint, their diet was wildly unbalanced.

To Jean, however, it felt like an extraordinary life.

While Jean directed the work in the fields and Anna cooked alongside the orc and goblin women, Leo sat outside their house and stared blankly at the sky.

Jean believed his young son was resting comfortably instead of suffering in the fields.

That was only half true.

Leo was resting.

He was also isolated from everyone else in the village.

The orc and goblin children did not bully him.

The Grand Chief’s command prohibited anything of the sort.

In fact, many of them had approached Leo when he first arrived.

Since infancy, they had heard that humans were the sworn enemies of their people.

Then the Grand Chief brought a human family into the alliance.

Whether Leo was human or not, few things could have been more fascinating to curious children.

There had been one problem.

When Jean’s family first entered Root, they could barely communicate with the residents.

Children lost interest quickly.

Their curiosity toward someone who could not understand them did not last long.

Jean gradually formed relationships through farming.

Anna did the same through cooking.

Leo had been left behind.

After two months, his father and sister had encouraged him to practise the orc language.

Krog and Karath also visited their house from time to time.

Leo could now hold simple conversations.

Even so, his shyness prevented him from approaching the other children first.

He did not like being alone either.

That was why he sat outside the house, staring into the distance and quietly hoping someone would speak to him.

Karath would have approached them first.

The face of the Grand Chief naturally entered Leo’s thoughts.

To Leo, Karath was a hero who could accomplish anything.

He was the hero who defeated the villain tormenting his father and sister.

Because Leo was still young, differences between races mattered far less to him than they did to adults.

Scratch.

Scratch.

As he thought about Karath, Leo picked up a branch and began drawing upon the ground.

He had always enjoyed drawing.

He had never received any training.

His impoverished family could not afford paper or paint.

When Leo was very young, he used branches to draw pictures in the dirt.

Back when the family had still been free commoners, his father and mother had watched him with fond smiles.

After they became serfs, Leo rarely had time to draw.

Jean, exhausted by their circumstances, had once scolded him for drawing upon the edge of a field instead of working.

The experience frightened Leo enough that he stopped.

Now, after being left alone for so long, his hands instinctively returned to drawing.

“Mmm?”

He did not even notice the orc and goblin children gathering around him.

“Isn’t that the Grand Chief?”

Leo was already too absorbed to care whether anyone watched.

A life-sized image of Karath gradually appeared upon the ground.

The drawing did not end there.

Leo recalled the day he first met Karath.

He drew the towering Grand Chief and the horribly crushed face of the villain lying at his feet.

After adding foam to Alvin’s mouth, Leo finally lowered the branch.

“Waaaah!”

Cheers suddenly erupted around him.

Leo snapped out of his concentration and stared around in surprise.

Orc and goblin children had surrounded him.

“Did you draw the Grand Chief?”

“Y-yes.”

“Wow! Who is that human?”

“A bad man the Grand Chief punished.”

“Waaaah! A bad man! He defeated the bad man!”

The children began chattering excitedly after learning about another of the Grand Chief’s heroic adventures.

“Oh?”

Their voices also reached an elderly orc who enjoyed spending his days watching the children play.

Jark Bloodclaw had watched Karath carefully since the Grand Chief’s childhood.

He had lived far beyond the average orc lifespan.

Most of his muscle had vanished, leaving him with a body not unlike that of an elderly human.

Yet the sight before him seemed to revive the laughter of his youth.

A picture of the great Grand Chief crushing a human villain.

What could be more satisfying?

“Human child, did you draw this?”

“What kind of picture?”

“One year ago, the great Grand Chief hunted a very large and terrifying monster called a drake.”

Like a grandfather telling an old story, Jark described the drake hunt to Leo and the surrounding children.

Except for Leo, the children had already heard the tale dozens of times.

Whether because of Jark’s storytelling or their admiration for Karath, they listened with shining eyes.

“H-he really defeated a monster that large?”

Leo’s reaction was the strongest of all.

“Do you think the Grand Chief could not defeat it?”

“No! The Grand Chief can definitely defeat anything!”

“Krahahaha! You truly are a child brought here by the Grand Chief. I disliked the thought of a human child living among us, but the Grand Chief never makes such decisions without reason.”

Jark smiled with obvious satisfaction.

“Human child, can you draw the story I just told you?”

“Yes. I can draw it, Orc Grandpa.”

“O-Orc Grandpa?”

“You called me Human Child, so I thought people here put the race in front of the name when speaking to someone.”

“Krahahahahaha!”

Jark stared at him in bewilderment for a moment before bursting into booming laughter.

It was so forceful that it seemed dangerous for his aged body.

“You are right. That was my mistake. Call me Grandpa Jark. What is your name?”

“Leo.”

“Very well, Leo. Will you follow me for a moment?”

“Where are we going?”

“To draw the story I just told you.”

“Yes! I’d like that!”

Jark began walking toward his house, and Leo followed.

“They’re going to draw the Grand Chief!”

“Let’s go watch!”

The orc and goblin children hurried after them.

Chapter 140

The Alliance’s First Painter

“Wait here for a moment.”

When they reached Jark’s home, the elderly orc left the children outside and entered the house.

“Try drawing upon this.”

He returned with a piece of monster hide and charcoal from burned wood.

Jark had seen younger warriors drawing maps and assumed the same materials could be used for pictures.

“Mmm. It will be difficult to draw with this, Grandpa Jark.”

Leo shook his head.

“Why?”

“The hide is too small.”

“Then draw a smaller picture.”

“The Grand Chief is an incredibly large and great person. I don’t want to draw him small.”

Jark’s eyes widened.

“Krahahaha! You are absolutely right.”

He laughed again with genuine delight.

Jark could not remember the last time he had laughed so freely.

Perhaps it had been when he first realised how extraordinary Karath was.

He had never imagined that a human child would make him feel this way.

“Then wait here a little longer.”

Leaving the children behind, Jark walked around the village.

When he returned, several adult orcs and goblins followed him, carrying bundles of monster hides.

“Can you draw it if we connect all these hides?”

“Yes! I can!”

Leo answered excitedly.

Ever since hearing Jark’s story, a magnificent scene had been forming inside his mind.

He took the charcoal and began moving it across the unusual canvas.

Leo worked upon one side while women who had brought the hides stitched them together using bone needles and strips of plant fibre.

The scene Leo imagined was so enormous that no one could understand what he was drawing at first.

More hides were added.

The image continued spreading.

“Ohhh!”

“Grandpa Jark! Was the drake truly that enormous?”

As the outline of the monster slowly emerged, the onlookers stared between the drawing and Jark in amazement.

Leo heard none of them.

He was completely absorbed in his work.

His only concern was how to express the image within his mind more effectively.

Because Leo had never studied art, he drew entirely through instinct.

He lacked the skill to create delicate lines or precise details.

Instead, he relied upon broad, powerful strokes.

The result possessed a heavy and wild quality.

For a picture depicting the Grand Chief hunting a drake, the style suited its subject perfectly.

The canvas itself had been crudely assembled from the hides of many different monsters.

Its surface was uneven and awkward to draw upon.

Leo used even those flaws.

The ridges and textures of the hides gave additional depth to the bodies of Karath and the drake.

The sheer scale of the painting meant that even broad strokes required hours of work.

None of the spectators moved away.

They watched in silence, captivated by the scene taking shape before them.

More residents arrived from across the village.

They had approached out of curiosity after noticing the crowd, only to stop the moment they saw the painting.

Leo was only twelve.

Yet throughout the hours of work, his concentration never faltered.

At last, he drew the drake’s eye exploding beneath the force of Karath’s spell.

“WAAAAAAH!”

The crowd erupted into cheers.

“Who would have guessed that Leo possessed such talent for drawing?”

“Indeed.”

Krog answered Karath’s unconscious murmur with a strange smile.

Karath had only recently returned from a hunting expedition.

The sight waiting within Root was something he could never have imagined when he left.

A canvas formed from stitched monster hides stretched nearly five metres in both height and width.

It was filled by an enormous drake and an equally imposing image of Karath.

The worship was somewhat excessive.

When Karath first saw it, embarrassment had made his face feel hot.

This was the price of his own actions.

He had invoked the ancestors so often while acting as Grand Chief that all those lies had effectively become layers of gold painted upon his own face.

Embarrassment aside, Leo’s painting had already begun changing the alliance.

“The residents of Root seem to have taken quite a liking to Leo.”

“Yes. I cannot remember the last time Elder Jark laughed like that.”

“If Elder Jark has accepted him, there is little more to say.”

Karath knew an awkward distance remained between Jean’s family and the alliance’s residents.

He had chosen not to interfere further because excessive protection might only isolate them more.

They all needed to work and live together.

Karath had expected their relationship to improve slowly with time.

One painting from Leo had erased much of that tension at once.

That was the power of culture.

An old saying about culture’s ability to unite people naturally came to mind.

Leo’s talent would also help with something Karath intended to accomplish during the coming winter.

He began modifying the plan within his mind to include the young painter.

“After finishing the picture, Leo apparently went to play with the alliance’s children.”

Krog’s expression became nostalgic.

“With the other children?”

“Yes. The same way we used to play when we were young.”

So that explained Krog’s expression.

“Krahahaha. That was only two years ago.”

“Two years ago was merely the last time. We began playing those games when we were eight.”

Karath naturally remembered their childhood.

The first time he and Krog exchanged blows.

The day he taught the children how to play hide-and-seek.

The time he played with boys six years older and sent them tumbling into traps.

Other memories followed, six years filled with fighting, running, and throwing one another into pits.

Karath froze.

“W-wait. Leo is playing those games?”

“Yes, Grand Chief.”

Krog smiled warmly.

“Survival hide-and-seek, combat football, and all the fighting?”

“Yes.”

“With orcs?”

“Who else would he play with?”

Karath fell silent.

Those were not games a human body was meant to survive.

“Leo is still alive, correct?”

For a moment, Karath feared the alliance’s first painter might already have disappeared.

Chapter 141

The Girl Who Wanted to Fight

Autumn had fully settled over Root, and the village was peaceful.

Most warriors had departed on patrols or hunting expeditions.

Karath had taken thirty warriors on another expedition to secure additional labour for the alliance.

The women who remained behind cultivated fields, prepared food, and performed their assigned duties.

As for the children, they were absorbed in the games Karath had created during his childhood.

“Catch them!”

“We’ll win today!”

The games were no longer exactly as Karath had designed them.

They changed after goblins joined the alliance.

Goblins were born with less physical strength than orcs, so they developed their own methods of competing.

Like adult goblins, they began incorporating ranged weapons into their games.

They did not use sharpened arrows or poison.

No matter how violent their games became, those were genuine weapons capable of killing someone.

Once the powerful orcs and the agile, dexterous goblins began playing together, the games evolved dramatically.

“Advance behind the shields!”

“Circle around the house! Avoid the shieldsh and shoot from the side!”

They had progressed beyond hide-and-seek or simple survival games.

The children were now conducting miniature wars.

“Haa...”

Within that vicious little battlefield, Leo struggled to catch his breath.

He had only recently begun fitting in with the other children of Root.

Playing with them was enjoyable.

The problem was that his frail human body could not yet endure the difficulty of their games.

“Pay attention!”

Clang!

A broad back appeared in front of Leo and struck aside a blunt arrow while he stared dazedly from exhaustion.

“Neria.”

“Honestly. I told you to remain behind and shoot with the goblins.”

The dependable back belonged to Neria Hellsong, a young female orc from the Hellsong Tribe.

She scolded Leo, who was sitting on the ground.

“B-but the Grand Chief always fought at the front.”

“That is because he is the Grand Chief.”

“I’m going to become like him!”

Neria shook her head at his stubborn reply.

More than a month had passed since Leo began playing with the other children.

The main reason he was still alive was that Neria always joined his team to compensate for his lack of strength.

Leo watched with envy as she protected him and fought fearlessly at the front.

That evening, Neria returned home with none of the energy she had displayed among her friends.

“I’m home.”

“Neria.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Her mother regarded her sternly.

“You will soon be thirteen. It is time you began learning my work.”

“Yes...”

Neria’s expression darkened.

She knew exactly what her mother meant.

Butchering meat, cooking, farming, and the other tasks normally performed by the women of the tribes.

“Neria, I know you are currently the strongest among your friends. But that will only last until you are twelve. Once you reach thirteen or fourteen, it will become difficult. The same thing happened to me.”

Her mother attempted to comfort her after seeing her expression.

“Some of my friends have already started growing! I can still defeat them.”

“That is only because they have not learned to control their new size and strength. By the time they are thirteen or fourteen, the difference will become much greater.”

“Yes...”

Neria could only lower her head.

Her frustration worsened as her thirteenth birthday approached.

“Attack!”

The more painful her thoughts became, the more fiercely she threw herself into the children’s games.

Even if her mother scolded her after she returned home, Neria surrendered herself to the excitement of combat and ignored the future she did not want to face.

One day, after another long game, she was walking home to receive the lecture she knew was waiting.

“The Grand Chief has returned!”

The cry from the gate stopped her.

As though pulled by an invisible force, Neria ran toward the entrance.

Karath stood at the head of dozens of warriors entering Root.

Newly integrated tribespeople marched behind them.

“Grand Chief!”

The moment Neria saw him, she shouted with all her strength.

“Waaaaah!”

“Grand Chief!”

She was hardly the only one calling for him.

Every resident gathered near the gate was cheering the Grand Chief’s return.

Neria began lowering her head, believing her voice could never reach him through the crowd.

Then she froze.

Whether by coincidence or because he had truly heard her, Karath was looking directly at her.

“Can women become warriors?”

The question escaped her the moment their eyes met.

She spoke before she had time to reconsider.

Karath had been speaking with Krog while entering Root after the final expedition of the year.

“With the tribes that joined us this time, has the alliance’s population surpassed two thousand?”

“That is correct, Grand Chief.”

The alliance lacked enough concrete and iron reinforcement to continue rapidly widening Root’s wall.

Karath had therefore paused the construction and led an expedition to secure more labour.

The wall would continue expanding through late autumn and winter.

By spring, the alliance needed enough protected land to cultivate fields on a far greater scale.

Karath was considering those plans as he passed through the gate.

“Grand Chief!”

A desperate voice reached him.

Every resident was cheering, but something in that particular voice carried a different weight.

Karath instinctively turned toward it.

A young female orc stood within the crowd.

“Can women become warriors?”

Her question struck Karath like lightning.

After sixteen and a half years as an orc, he had unconsciously accepted the belief that men became warriors while women handled every other form of labour.

Considering what he planned to begin soon, that assumption was remarkably foolish.

Karath changed direction and approached the child instead of continuing toward his residence.

He did not know what had happened to her.

Yet when he came closer, he could see desperate hope within her eyes.

Karath placed a hand upon her head.

“Wait a little longer. The day when women can become warriors will arrive soon. I promise upon the name of the Grand Chief.”

Perhaps she heard the certainty in his words.

The girl wiped the moisture gathering in her eyes.

“Yes! I’ll wait, Grand Chief!”

She answered boldly and ran away.

That confident energy was probably her true nature.

The following morning, Krog reported to Karath outside the Grand Chief’s house.

“Everyone has gathered.”

Karath stepped outside.

All the senior advisers of the alliance were waiting for him.

He had prepared several plans to make proper use of the coming winter.

“I summoned all of you because there is something I intend to teach.”

The advisers leaned forward with excitement.

“What will you teach us?”

“The axe art left behind by the former Grand Chief, Muhe Lionheart.”

The first part of Karath’s winter plan was to pass down Muhe Lionheart’s axe art and mana cultivation method.

“You have all noticed that the power behind Karath’s axe grew absurdly strong beginning in autumn.”

“Was that because of the axe art left behind by the former Grand Chief?”

The advisers had witnessed Karath wielding his axe through mana several times.

They reacted as though the mystery had finally been solved.

“That is correct. Beginning today, Karath will teach this axe art to all the warriors of the alliance.”

Karath had considered teaching it for some time.

He had delayed only because his own skill remained insufficient.

Few things were more foolish than teaching someone a technique one could not yet perform properly.

Now Karath had reached a level where he could at least guide beginners.

After fighting the human knights and continuously battling monsters, his aura control had reached roughly the intermediate Aura User level.

What happened the previous evening, however, had altered the plan.

“Once winter begins, all of you will help Karath teach the same axe art to the warriors, the women, and the children.”

The advisers stared at him.

“The women and children as well?”

“That is correct.”

“Is there a reason to teach people who are not warriors?”

Karath had originally shared the same assumption.

The axe art was a combat technique.

Naturally, he intended to teach it only to warriors.

That was before Neria asked her question.

“What do you believe separates your axe techniques from the art Karath learned from Muhe Lionheart?”

The advisers hesitated.

“Does the Grand Chief simply use more strength?”

None of them could sense mana yet, so they had no way to understand the true difference.

Even Krog, Dagon, and Berners failed to answer.

“By continuously practising this axe art, you will begin sensing and manipulating a special energy called mana.”

“Mana...”

“Once you can use mana, you will be able to produce the impossible strength and speed Karath has demonstrated.”

The advisers reacted with amazement.

“Then fighting monsters will become much easier.”

“That is correct. It is also why you must teach the women and children. Mana does not care about age or sex. A child capable of using mana could become stronger than all of you. A woman capable of using mana could also surpass every warrior here.”

The advisers stared at him in shock.

That was the reason Karath had changed his plan.

The difference between those who could manipulate mana and those who could not was undeniable.

It remained true even if the person using mana was a child or a woman.

Chapter 142

The Axe Art of Muhe Lionheart

After explaining why every member of the alliance needed to learn the axe art, Karath began the first lesson.

“One!”

“Hraaaah!”

“Two!”

“Hup!”

Following Karath’s count, the advisers performed the first motion he demonstrated, swinging their axes in sequence.

“Every one of you is wrong. Watch carefully and copy the movement exactly.”

Karath shook his head and slowly demonstrated a vertical downward strike.

The advisers stared at him.

“What was different?”

They had also swung their axes from above to below.

At a glance, the movements appeared identical.

“Watch Karath’s motion, then repeat it at the same slow speed.”

Before explaining, Karath instructed them to perform the strike again.

They looked confused, but obeyed.

Each adviser slowly lowered his axe from above.

“You are already wrong, Kaden. Stop there.”

Kaden’s mistake was obvious enough that Karath chose him as a demonstration model.

Kaden looked completely bewildered.

“You are using too much strength. Your arms have spread apart. Pull both elbows farther inward.”

Karath adjusted his posture.

“When the downward movement begins, bend your wrists to this angle. That will amplify the transfer of force.”

He continued correcting each flaw and changing Kaden’s stance little by little.

Kaden’s body began trembling.

The unfamiliar posture placed strain upon muscles that lacked flexibility because of his excessive bulk.

“G-Grand Chief, this feels far more uncomfortable! The attack will be weaker!”

“It only feels that way because you are not accustomed to it. Once you master the axe art, the power will increase. Swing again, slowly.”

At Karath’s order, Kaden forced his arms through the awkward motion.

“Stop!”

The axe had not even descended ten centimetres before Karath halted him and corrected another flaw.

They repeated the process several times.

“Grand Chief, this cannot be right!”

Kaden had never objected to Karath once since he became Grand Chief.

Now he shouted with an aggrieved expression.

“How can anyone kill a monster by swinging an axe at the speed of a crawling snail? Let Kaden swing normally! He is already confident he can split an ogre’s bones!”

Kaden spoke with complete confidence.

With his monstrous strength and drake-bone battleaxe, he probably could cut through an ogre’s bones.

That power, however, came entirely from his absurdly developed muscles.

“You will never sense mana that way.”

His current strength would eventually reach a limit.

“While swinging slowly and repeatedly changing your posture, did you feel how every muscle moved?”

Kaden stared blankly.

“Begin by swinging the axe slowly. Pay attention to every change within your muscles. If you continue concentrating upon those tiny movements, you will eventually sense the special energy flowing through your body.”

Only then did the advisers begin understanding the purpose of the training.

“The stances Karath is teaching stimulate the parts of the body through which that energy, mana, flows most easily. That is why you must not swing the axe carelessly. Every movement must remain precise from beginning to end.”

Muhe Lionheart’s axe art had originally been created for exactly this purpose.

Calling it a method of axe fighting was almost misleading.

It resembled a form of physical meditation performed while holding an axe.

The practitioner repeated exact movements slowly and continuously.

They observed every change occurring within the body and gradually learned to sense the mana flowing through it.

Karath’s own training had proceeded in the wrong order because he could already sense and manipulate mana before learning the axe art.

Slow and steady repetition did not suit an orc’s temperament.

That was probably why Muhe Lionheart had struggled to pass the method down.

His additional mistake of telling the orcs to imitate human methods must have made the situation even worse.

“Karath will demonstrate again. Follow every movement.”

None of that concerned Karath.

He had no intention of making the same mistake by telling the orcs to imitate humans.

“Wrong! Do you dare reject the knowledge left behind by the ancestors?”

Instead, Karath would invoke the ancestors the orcs already revered.

He felt no guilt.

Muhe Lionheart would probably have welcomed any method that allowed his knowledge to survive.

“Ahem.”

“Call Lightning.”

A bolt of divine punishment struck an adviser who repeated the same mistake too many times.

Fortunately, the ancestors seemed to cherish their descendant, because the lightning had been greatly weakened.

“Look! The ancestors have become angry and struck him with lightning!”

“That appeared to be the Grand Chief’s magic.”

Krog interrupted Karath’s scolding.

“Fireball.”

A sphere of flame appeared above Karath’s palm.

“What did you say, Krog?”

“I said we must faithfully follow the great will of the ancestors, Grand Chief.”

Led by Krog, every adviser resumed swinging his axe with a solemn and reverent expression.

Chapter 143

Paper for the Coming Winter

Three weeks had passed since Karath began teaching the axe art to the advisers.

“One!”

“Hup!”

“Two!”

“Hraaaah!”

Perhaps because they were all accomplished orcs in their own right, three weeks of practice had allowed them to reproduce the movements with reasonable accuracy.

“Hup!”

Among the dozen large orcs, one much smaller figure was working his body with all his strength.

“Berners, are you all right?”

“I can do thish!”

It was Berners, the hobgoblin.

As the alliance’s head of communications, Berners was counted among its advisers, so his participation was only natural.

Still, Karath had never imagined that he would someday teach an orc axe art to a goblin.

Goblins did not even use axes.

Fortunately, five months of consistent weight training since early summer had given Berners a sturdier body.

He still looked unimpressive beside the surrounding orcs, but visible muscle had begun forming across his frame.

With an axe sized for his smaller body, Berners continued practising the movements with determination.

“Once you can sense mana, you may use a bow instead of an axe.”

Watching him struggle so earnestly was beginning to make Karath feel sorry for him.

The goblins’ primary weapons were bows and poisoned darts.

Ideally, they should learn a mana-based archery technique rather than an axe art.

The problem was that Karath knew nothing about archery.

He had only recently reached the intermediate Aura User level and become capable of teaching the orcs Muhe Lionheart’s axe art.

Creating an entirely new martial art remained far beyond him.

“No! Goblinsh will become strong and fight from the front with axesh, just like orcsh!”

“Krahahaha! A courageous ambition!”

“It will not be easy! Your body is still far too small, Berners!”

Some of the practising orcs cheered him on, while others stared at him as though he had lost his mind.

“Jusht wait and shee!”

Their reactions only made Berners shout more confidently.

The sight of a goblin beating orcs with an axe would certainly be absurd.

Judging by Berners’s attitude since beginning weight training, however, Karath suspected that ambition might eventually become reality.

He silently wished the hobgoblin success and resumed the lesson.

“One!”

“Hraaaah!”

“Woof!”

“Two!”

“Hraaaah!”

“Woof!”

“Three!”

“Hraaaah!”

“Woof!”

Karath fell silent.

At some point, another strange participant had joined the formation.

“What are you even doing here?”

The silver creature stood out sharply among the dozen advisers.

Buddy had grown beyond the size of a large dog and was now almost as massive as Karath.

Following Karath’s count, the giant wolf barked and swung one front paw through the air.

Karath stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and turned back toward the advisers.

Paying attention would feel like admitting defeat.

“Grand Chief!”

While Karath continued working the advisers and Buddy, Jean approached from the distance.

“We finished harvesting all the crops today.”

“Oh! You have worked hard, Jean.”

The alliance’s first attempt at agriculture had successfully concluded.

“Were all the crops placed in storage as we discussed?”

“Yes, Grand Chief. We also separated the high-quality produce from the poorer harvest, just as you instructed.”

“Krahahaha! Excellent.”

The lower-quality crops would serve as emergency food during the winter.

The best crops would be planted again the following year.

Karath had never studied biology, but he assumed selective breeding began through something like this.

“Now that the harvest is finished, will the fields remain unused for some time?”

“Yes, Grand Chief. We should have no need for them until late winter or early spring.”

“Understood.”

Karath nodded and arranged the coming schedule within his mind.

Autumn was nearly over.

Winter would soon descend upon the Grimwood Mountains.

The mountain range’s merciless cold severely restricted outdoor activity, making expansion difficult.

Precisely because of that, winter was the perfect season to strengthen the alliance internally.

Karath had prepared several plans for the coming months.

The first was teaching Muhe Lionheart’s axe art to the alliance.

It was time to prepare the second.

“Jean, after dinner tonight, come to my house with Leo.”

Leo’s artistic talent would be extremely useful for Karath’s next plan.

That evening, Leo arrived while tightly holding his father’s hand.

“H-hello, Grand Chief.”

“Welcome, Leo.”

When Karath greeted him warmly, the boy sat across from him with visible embarrassment.

“Leo, do you recognise this?”

Karath presented something he had made during the autumn.

“Is it... paper?”

Leo studied the object uncertainly.

It looked somewhat different from the paper he had seen in Viscount Lindberg’s territory.

“Krahahaha! Correct.”

Despite its unusual appearance, it was indeed paper.

More precisely, it resembled traditional fibrous paper from Karath’s former world.

Teaching the advisers physical exercises disguised as an axe art had not consumed every hour of Karath’s autumn.

Both he and the advisers possessed other duties, so they could not spend the entire day practising.

Whenever the advisers left to complete their responsibilities, Karath used the time between his own tasks to make paper.

He relied upon memories from a school trip to a traditional paper workshop during his former life.

Those memories were decades old and far from precise.

Karath had endured countless failures.

Through those failures, however, he eventually produced something that resembled usable paper.

“Leo, what would you most like to do with this paper?”

“What I want to do?”

“Yes. The thing you want most.”

“Mmm... I want to draw!”

A smile appeared on Karath’s face.

The child’s honest enthusiasm was endearing, but more importantly, it was exactly the answer he wanted.

“Karath intends to prepare a great deal of this paper. He would like you to draw upon it.”

Leo wanted to draw more than anything, so his face immediately brightened.

“However, this time you may not be able to draw whatever you wish.”

Karath did not simply intend to let Leo create pictures freely.

“Could you draw the pictures Karath requests, one by one?”

“Yes! If the Grand Chief wants them, I can draw anything!”

“Krahahaha! Excellent.”

Leo tilted his head.

“What should I draw?”

Karath smiled and began explaining.

Chapter 144

Nine Hundred Students

The following morning, the residents of Root gathered inside the territory that had been expanded during the summer and used as farmland through autumn.

After adding another village during the recent expansion, the Greenskin Alliance’s total population had barely surpassed two thousand.

Around thirteen hundred, more than half of them, lived in Root.

Of those thirteen hundred residents, approximately nine hundred gathered in the former fields.

Karath excluded the elderly who had already retired and those approaching retirement age.

They had struggled throughout their lives and deserved a more comfortable old age.

Children younger than ten were also excluded.

Karath ordered the older residents to care for them during the training.

“Thank you all for gathering!”

Karath addressed what had effectively become a vast training ground filled with nine hundred people.

To ensure that everyone heard him clearly, he used the sound-amplifying magic he had learned by studying the cockatrices.

“Beginning with Root, every resident of every alliance settlement will perform the axe art Karath teaches today, once every morning and once every evening!”

The time had come to pass Muhe Lionheart’s axe art and mana cultivation method to the entire alliance.

Karath wondered how many of them would eventually sense mana.

It would be extraordinary if every alliance member succeeded.

Realistically, that was probably impossible.

Karath had possessed a natural sensitivity to mana from birth, but such cases were exceptionally rare.

He would be satisfied if even ten per cent of the alliance eventually sensed it.

The alliance already possessed two thousand members.

If ten per cent became capable of using mana, two hundred Aura Users would appear almost at once.

Considering the number of knights compared with the overall human population, even that estimate was absurdly optimistic.

For the moment, Karath allowed himself to think positively.

“First, Karath and the advisers will demonstrate the axe art you are about to learn.”

He raised Silvertusk.

The advisers positioned throughout the crowd copied his movement.

They would serve as instructors.

Karath could not personally supervise nine hundred people at once.

That was why he had trained the advisers first.

“One!”

“Hraaaah!”

“Two!”

“Haaah!”

Following Karath’s count, he and the advisers performed the same movements in sequence.

Once they completed the entire demonstration without mana, Karath stepped forward alone.

“Hraaaah!”

This time, he repeated the axe art while circulating mana through his body.

“If you continue repeating these movements, you will eventually sense an energy called mana!”

After demonstrating the difference, Karath explained why he had gathered the residents so early in the morning.

“Every alliance member will gather before beginning the day’s work and again after finishing it to practise this axe art! Whenever your duties end early or you have free time, practise independently as well!”

After completing the explanation, Karath and the instructors demonstrated the movements once more.

“One!”

“Two!”

Karath began walking slowly through the training ground while continuing the count.

Just as he had done while teaching the advisers, he carefully inspected the residents’ movements.

The instructors also moved through their assigned sections and corrected mistakes.

“That ish wrong!”

“Pull your armsh in a little more!”

Every instructor worked earnestly, but Berners stood out most of all.

As the only goblin adviser, he had been assigned to the goblins living in Root.

“Bend your kneesh!”

“How lazily did you train if you cannot even do thish?”

He was hounding them without mercy.

Karath decided the goblin section required no further supervision.

He turned his attention toward the orcs.

Perhaps because they had witnessed the power of mana, or simply because the Grand Chief had commanded them, none appeared to be treating the lesson carelessly.

Every orc was doing their best to repeat the movements.

One participant stood out among them.

It was the young female orc who had asked Karath whether women could become warriors.

She possessed a keen eye and natural control over her body.

After seeing only two or three demonstrations, she had already produced a reasonably convincing imitation.

“Spread your legs slightly farther apart at that point.”

The child jumped in surprise and turned toward Karath.

“Ahem. Keep your attention upon the axe.”

“Y-yes!”

“Use your wrists during the final part of the swing.”

“Yes!”

Her determination pleased him.

Karath corrected several smaller details she had missed.

“Train diligently. If you learn to sense mana, you may become a warrior.”

“Yes! Thank you!”

After encouraging her, Karath moved on.

He liked the child’s attitude and natural talent, but he could not devote all his time to one person while supervising nine hundred students.

His attention next settled upon Jean’s family.

They were also members of the alliance.

Jean had been excluded because of his age, but Anna and Leo were present.

Both looked pitiful.

Rather than swinging their axes, they appeared to be swung around by them.

Anna still carried the habits and values of the human world and showed little desire to become a warrior.

Perhaps that was the normal response.

The orcs, especially the young girl from earlier, were the unusual ones.

How many people would willingly choose difficult and dangerous work?

Unlike Anna, Leo’s movements were a complete disaster, but his eyes remained alive with determination.

“Leo.”

“Yes?”

When Karath approached, Leo lowered his head in embarrassment.

He was clearly ashamed of his clumsy axe work.

“You appear too young for the axe. Once today’s training ends, begin weight training with the goblins.”

“Weight training?”

“Exercises that will strengthen your body. Berners will explain the details.”

Karath briefly explained the unfamiliar phrase and patted Leo’s back.

He continued walking through the crowd, correcting individual stances and encouraging those who were struggling.

“One!”

“Hraaaah!”

“Woof!”

“Two!”

“Haaah!”

“Woof!”

A strangely familiar sound reached him.

“Buddy?”

Karath turned in surprise.

An unbelievable sight awaited him.

“Woof!”

Buddy was scolding an orc warrior.

Even Karath could see that the warrior’s posture was awkward.

Whenever the orc demonstrated the incorrect movement, Buddy barked and struck the flawed part of his body with one paw.

“You bastard!”

“That is the Grand Chief’s wolf. Do not touch him, idiot.”

“Grrr...”

Apparently unaware that Karath was watching, the warrior exchanged those words with the orc beside him before resuming the exercise.

“Woof.”

Thump!

Once again, Buddy punished his incorrect posture.

Karath watched in disbelief.

Under the wolf’s relentless correction, the warrior’s stance was gradually improving.

Buddy was like a village schoolmaster’s dog that had learned to teach simply by watching lessons.

No, even that comparison failed to explain this.

“That bastard... He really does not seem like an ordinary wolf.”

At this point, Karath was beginning to question Buddy’s true nature.

Chapter 145

The Alphabet of a New Age

Every day in Root began with morning exercises resembling a slow martial art.

More precisely, it began with training in Muhe Lionheart’s axe art.

The villagers practised only once in the morning and once in the evening. During the rest of the day, everyone remained occupied with their own duties.

Construction on Root’s wall had resumed after being paused throughout autumn.

Only the construction itself had stopped during that season.

Blacksmith Village and the village near the ancestral ruins had continued producing iron reinforcement and concrete, transporting the materials to Root whenever possible.

Thanks to those stored supplies, the alliance could now expand the wall without further delay.

Karath taught the axe art every morning and evening.

During the day, he assisted with construction or handled his other responsibilities.

Around fifteen days after the preparations for winter began, Jean visited the Grand Chief’s house one evening.

“Grand Chief, Leo has finished every picture.”

“Then Karath will inspect them now.”

“I will bring Leo and the pictures here.”

“There is no need. The child must have worked hard to draw them despite his other duties. Karath can visit him today.”

“But the Grand Chief is also busy.”

“Krahahaha. Then serve him a meal while he is there.”

“That goes without saying, Grand Chief!”

After their brief exchange, Karath followed Jean to his family’s house.

“G-Grand Chief?”

“W-welcome!”

Anna and Leo stared at him in surprise.

They had clearly not expected him to visit personally.

“Karath heard that Leo worked hard to finish the drawings, so he came to see them.”

“Anna, the Grand Chief will eat with us. Prepare a portion for him as well.”

“Y-yes!”

Anna hurried away to prepare the food.

Karath watched her briefly, then turned toward Leo.

“Leo, can you show Karath the pictures you drew?”

“Yes!”

The boy behaved shyly during the morning and evening axe training, but his confidence returned whenever he spoke about drawing.

“Oh.”

After examining the pictures, Karath understood why.

He was no artist and possessed no particular knowledge of painting.

Even so, he could tell that this was far beyond what an ordinary twelve-year-old should have been capable of producing.

Each image was immediately recognisable.

That was exactly the standard Karath needed.

“These are excellent, Leo.”

“Th-thank you.”

Leo blushed and smiled at the praise.

“Grand Chief, may Jean ask one question?”

“Go ahead.”

Jean had been watching his son with a proud expression.

He pointed toward the strange symbols written beneath the pictures.

“Are these marks truly letters?”

That was Karath’s second major project for the winter.

He intended to teach the alliance how to read and write.

Writing was an essential tool for preserving and transmitting knowledge.

The alliance currently relied upon hobgoblins for communication, but that would no longer be enough as its population continued increasing.

Teaching literacy presented one major problem.

The writing system used by humans in this world was extremely complicated.

Karath had not learned it from Roberto in a day or two.

Roberto had taught him only the basics.

Karath had developed genuine literacy by struggling through Renstein’s books.

The alliance members were already busy every day.

They were also impatient by nature.

Expecting them to master such a complicated writing system would be difficult.

“That is correct. It is a phonetic alphabet from Karath’s former world.”

He had no intention of teaching the language itself.

The grammar of his former language had been complicated in its own ways, filled with irregular spelling, honorific structures, and countless idiomatic expressions.

Instead, Karath intended to borrow only the alphabet’s ability to represent sounds.

“What is drawn in this picture?”

“A tree, Grand Chief.”

“Correct. The symbols beneath it represent the word for tree.”

The local word for tree was pronounced “Raio.”

Karath had written the sound beneath Leo’s picture using the phonetic alphabet of his former world, with the initial consonant highlighted.

He had asked Leo to create pictures representing each consonant sound.

He had done the same with vowels and added several symbols for sounds that existed in this world but had no exact equivalent in the original alphabet.

“Then... will we also be able to read and write?”

“That is correct.”

Jean stared silently at Leo’s pictures and the letters beneath them.

Karath answered calmly.

Jean’s eyes began filling with tears.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Jean is simply happy and sad at the same time.”

It was another answer Karath could not immediately understand.

Rather than pressing him, he waited in silence.

Jean eventually steadied his emotions and spoke carefully.

“Our family was not always made up of serfs.”

Karath listened.

“Four years ago, Viscount Lindberg’s territory suffered a severe drought. We had saved a little money as free commoners, so we managed to survive the winter. But we had nothing left to begin farming again in spring.”

“I see.”

“We borrowed money from Viscount Lindberg and planted crops.”

“Did the harvest fail?”

“No. It was an abundant harvest.”

“Then why did you become serfs?”

Jean hesitated.

“The agreement Jean made said the debt would be repaid in autumn. But according to the written contract the viscount presented, Jean had promised to repay three times the borrowed amount.”

Karath stared at him.

What kind of insane interest rate was that?

“It happened because Jean could not read. Our family became serfs. My wife fell ill from the shock and died that winter.”

Karath found himself unable to speak.

What words could possibly comfort someone after hearing such a story?

“Jean is happy that he can finally learn to read. He is also thinking that if this had happened a little earlier, perhaps his wife might still be alive.”

Jean smiled despite his reddened eyes.

“He does not blame the Grand Chief.”

“As long as you remain with the alliance, such a thing will never happen again.”

“Yes. Jean was afraid at first, but he now trusts the Grand Chief and the people living here.”

An awkward silence settled over the room.

Leo lowered his head, his own eyes wet from memories of his mother.

“What happened to everyone?”

Anna entered carrying food.

Her eyes were also red.

The small house had no soundproofing.

She had undoubtedly heard the entire conversation and was merely pretending otherwise to change the atmosphere.

“Krahahaha. Nothing serious happened. Let us taste Anna’s cooking.”

Karath understood what she was doing and deliberately brightened his voice.

Then he looked at the meal she placed before him.

His mouth fell open.

Chapter 146

The Alliance’s First Culinary Researcher

“D-does the food displease you?”

Anna looked anxious.

“I’m sorry. We did not know the Grand Chief would visit, so I only prepared enough for our family.”

“No. Karath was surprised because he likes it so much.”

How could he dislike it?

The food spread across the table resembled the human dishes he had eaten at the inn in Viscount Lindberg’s territory.

There was pasta and bread, apparently made from the wheat harvested that autumn.

Several additional dishes had been prepared with meat.

Karath had believed he would not see such a meal again for several years.

He picked up the fork Anna provided and began eating.

His eyes widened.

He looked back at her in astonishment.

“This is incredible.”

The meal Anna had just prepared tasted even better than the food served at the inn.

“Krahahaha. My daughter inherited her mother’s talent for cooking, Grand Chief.”

“Father...”

Jean had unintentionally mentioned his late wife again.

The atmosphere immediately grew uncomfortable.

“Ahem. Since the Grand Chief is here, Jean should bring out what he mentioned before.”

Perhaps feeling responsible, Jean stood and moved toward another part of the house.

He soon returned carrying two wooden cups.

“Oh!”

A yellow liquid shimmered inside them.

“The beer is already finished?”

“The first batch we prepared at the beginning of the harvest has nearly completed fermentation.”

Karath already knew Jean had been brewing beer.

He had personally ordered it.

As with the wheat, the highest-quality barley had been preserved for planting the following year.

Jean had used the lower-quality grain for brewing.

This appeared to be the first trial batch.

“Kraaaah.”

Karath drank the beer as though entranced, and a satisfied groan escaped him.

It was a crude first attempt made with inferior barley.

Naturally, it did not taste as good as the modern beer he remembered.

That hardly mattered.

Being able to drink beer in this primitive environment was already close to a miracle.

“Krahahaha! The Grand Chief truly knows how to appreciate beer.”

“He certainly does. Beer cannot exist anywhere nearby, so how can he drink it so naturally?”

Karath flinched at Jean and Anna’s remarks.

He could hardly explain that he had consumed it frequently during his former life.

“Ahem. Anna, may Karath ask you something?”

When a conversation became dangerous, changing the subject was the safest solution.

“Yes. Please ask.”

“Would you take responsibility for researching food for the alliance?”

Anna blinked.

“Researching food?”

“Exactly that. Have you seen how the alliance’s residents normally eat?”

“Yes...”

Her expression turned awkward as she remembered.

Calling the alliance’s meals cooking was generous.

Food was either eaten raw or roasted over fire and seasoned with a few herbs.

Those were effectively the only choices.

“Karath wants the alliance members to learn the pleasure of eating proper food. He wants you to develop dishes they can eat.”

“B-but Anna cannot prepare food for the others. Humans cannot eat monster meat, so she cannot taste it while cooking.”

“Do not worry. Karath will assign residents to assist you. Prepare the food as you would a human dish, then let them taste the result.”

“Serving food Anna cannot taste herself seems dangerous.”

“The basic methods should not be completely different, so the flavour will not be wildly wrong. More importantly, unless the dish is an absolute disaster, it will still taste better than what the residents currently eat.”

Anna fell silent.

She seemed to remember the alliance’s usual meals and found herself unable to disagree.

“Find proper cooking methods and teach them to the alliance. Let the residents experience the joy of delicious meals.”

And allow Karath to eat something that actually resembled food.

He kept that final thought to himself.

Karath was not making the proposal solely because he wanted tastier meals.

“There is one more type of food Karath wants you to research.”

“What kind?”

“Do you know how to make fermented food using salt?”

“Salt preservation? Salt was too expensive for our family to use often. Anna did not know food could be prepared that way.”

“If food is sealed together with salt, it can ferment instead of rotting.”

“Oh... Anna never knew salt could do that.”

Her eyes seemed to ask how the Grand Chief knew such things.

“Root was built near the river, so monsters and animals approach frequently. Fish are also easy to obtain. The freezer allows us to store large quantities of food.”

“Yes. The freezer was astonishing.”

“However, the alliance possesses three other villages. Unlike Root, those settlements may suffer food shortages during winter.”

Anna slowly understood.

“Karath needs a method of preserving food for a long time and transporting it far from Root.”

“Can salt preservation solve that problem?”

“That is correct.”

Once the alliance began farming on a much larger scale, it could transport grain and other crops.

The current harvest was nowhere near large enough for that.

Karath had prepared three major projects for the winter.

The final and most important was salt preservation and fermented food.

Because he knew little about cooking, he had originally considered filling clay jars with rock salt and meat, then sending them directly to the other villages.

Anna possessed genuine culinary skill.

If he entrusted the work to her, perhaps she could use salt to produce preserved food that still deserved to be called cuisine.

“C-can Anna truly do it?”

The sudden weight of the responsibility frightened her.

“You are the only person in the entire alliance capable of doing this.”

Karath looked at her with complete confidence.

Anna hesitated before finally nodding.

“Then... Anna will try.”

Thus, the Greenskin Alliance gained its first culinary researcher, someone who would take responsibility for developing its future food culture.

Having successfully recruited her, Karath smiled broadly and continued enjoying the dishes and beer she had prepared.

Agriculture had now been followed by writing and cooking.

For the first time, Karath truly felt that the alliance was beginning to escape the primitive age.

Chapter 147

The Alliance’s Printing Workshop

Karath had already completed the three most important tasks he had planned for the winter.

He taught the alliance members Muhe Lionheart’s axe art, commissioned Leo to create materials for teaching letters, and assigned Anna to research cooking.

Even so, the duties awaiting the Grand Chief remained endless.

To handle another of them, Karath entered a building in Root.

“Grand Chief!”

Around twenty orcs greeted him inside, including Kairin, the former shaman of the Bloodclaw Tribe.

Every orc gathered there had once served as a shaman within their respective tribe.

Kairin acted as their leader.

She had begun learning magic from Karath before the tribal unification even started.

More than a year had passed since then.

She had already surpassed the Second Circle and begun studying Third Circle spells.

As Karath’s first disciple, Kairin was responsible not only for her own magical research but also for teaching magic to shamans who newly joined the alliance.

Teaching her in the beginning had been terrible.

Her ability to manipulate mana was excellent, but her reasoning and logical skills had been painfully underdeveloped.

It had felt like teaching the C programming language to a child in elementary school.

Now she stood at the threshold of the Third Circle.

The change filled Karath with a strange sense of accomplishment.

If he forcibly compared magical Circles to the mathematics taught in his former world, the Third Circle resembled quadratic equations, something around the difficulty of late middle school or early high school.

Kairin had effectively completed the previous level and begun preparing for the next.

The Fourth Circle, which Karath had mastered, was comparable to the final years of high school.

The Fifth Circle he needed to reach next resembled specialised university mathematics, such as linear algebra, calculus, or engineering mathematics.

In programming terms, Fifth Circle magic required him to code five separate functions or classes simultaneously.

Karath had studied engineering and worked as a programmer for more than ten years during his former life.

Given enough time to sit down and think, he could solve problems of that difficulty.

The problem was that casting magic required him to solve them instantly through mana manipulation.

It was like completing complex mathematics or programming entirely inside his head.

Karath had learned magic easily until the Fourth Circle because his memories and education from his previous life had already given him a strong foundation.

That did not make him a genius capable of solving such complicated problems through mental calculation without effort.

That was also why he continued practising the mana cultivation method despite already studying magic.

With sufficient effort, he was confident he could reach the Fifth Circle.

Advancing beyond it, however, would probably require an enormous amount of time.

Renstein’s writings ending at the Fifth Circle only made the problem worse.

Karath clicked his tongue inwardly at the thought.

“Is the paper production proceeding well?”

Those concerns were not the reason he had come.

The building where the shamans studied magic had now become a paper mill.

More accurately, Karath had converted their magical academy into one.

“Yes, Grand Chief.”

“We continue making paper with the spell formation you created.”

Karath approached the production area while listening to their reports.

A magical formation occupied the centre of the workshop.

Its purpose was to grind wood into fine pulp for producing fibrous paper.

“Hnnngh!”

“Kraaaagh!”

Several shamans were pouring their mana into the formation to shred the wood.

The formation contained no material capable of supplying mana on its own.

Karath had already used every available drake and cockatrice bone for other facilities.

Instead, he decided to use the shamans as its mana source.

In the past, shamans had consumed their own life force to perform rituals, so Karath had encouraged them to rest as much as possible.

There was no longer any need for such caution.

He had taught them how to gather and use mana safely.

“Karath came because there is another task he must entrust to all of you.”

After watching them labour for a moment, he finally raised the reason for his visit.

“What task is it, Grand Chief?”

Rather than answering Kairin and the other shamans immediately, Karath presented the teaching materials Leo had drawn.

“This was created to teach letters.”

“What are letters?”

“They are pictures that represent the words we speak.”

“Why do we need such a thing?”

“Words spoken aloud are eventually forgotten. Words carved into pictures can remain for a very long time.”

Some shamans still looked confused.

Others seemed to grasp at least part of the explanation.

Their time spent studying magic had apparently improved their ability to understand unfamiliar concepts.

“For that reason, Karath intends to teach letters to the alliance. The first people he will teach are all of you.”

The shamans stared at him, unable to understand why they had been chosen first.

“You all know Karath is too busy to visit this place and teach magic every day.”

“Yes, Grand Chief.”

“For now, he can still come from time to time, and Kairin can teach what she has learned. As the alliance grows, however, Karath will only become busier. That is why he intends to prepare books containing the ancestors’ knowledge for you.”

“What is a book?”

Karath barely stopped himself from sighing.

He carefully explained the concept.

“Ah! Then we will use these books to learn the ancestors’ shamanic arts?”

“That is correct. For that reason, all of you must learn to read.”

“We are deeply grateful that you care for us so much, Grand Chief.”

Their moved expressions made Karath feel slightly guilty.

That was not the true reason he had come.

“There is one problem. Everyone in the alliance must learn to read, but only one set of these teaching materials currently exists.”

Karath had already asked Leo to draw additional copies.

There was still a limit to how many the boy could reproduce by hand.

In the modern world, a printer could produce thousands of identical pages.

No such machine existed here.

“From now on, your task will be to create plates capable of reproducing these pictures.”

Karath could not build a true printer, but he intended to make something resembling movable type and engraved printing plates.

The shamans would provide the labour.

“Karath will create a device like the formation over there, but this one will generate a wind blade capable of cutting iron plates. Use the device and your mana to carve every picture and symbol from this paper onto metal.”

“You mean the pictures on this paper?”

“That is correct. Engraving these images will also serve as practice for producing books in the future.”

“The books containing the ancestors’ shamanic arts?”

Karath nodded.

“As you carve every letter using mana, its meaning will be deeply engraved within your minds. Repeatedly consuming and recovering mana will also increase your familiarity with it.”

“We never realised the task held such profound meaning.”

“Thank you, Grand Chief!”

“We will finish it as quickly as possible!”

Every shaman looked deeply inspired.

Karath wondered how long those expressions would last.

Individual letters could be prepared in advance and reused like metal type.

Pictures were different.

A new plate would need to be carved for every new illustration.

That meant the shamans would have to pour their mana into the work whenever a new book was produced.

Karath already imagined the future awaiting them, which left him feeling slightly uncomfortable.

There was nothing to be done.

The speed of civilisation’s development had always been proportional to the number of engineers being ground into dust.

Was Karath not a former engineer himself?

Someone who had already been ground down knew best how to grind others efficiently.

He knew which methods produced the best results and exactly how far someone could be pushed without breaking.

Unfortunately.

Chapter 148

Morning of Expansion

Time passed quickly after Karath fed the shamans into the machinery of progress.

Every morning and evening, the residents of Root practised the slow physical exercises known as Muhe Lionheart’s axe art.

Anna’s efforts gradually improved the quality of the alliance’s food.

Leo produced additional teaching materials by hand, and Karath used them to teach the advisers and several senior warriors how to read first.

After around a month, reports began arriving that the villages outside Root were running short of food.

Fortunately, Anna had developed several types of salt-preserved food during that time.

Karath sent them to the other villages through the troops patrolling the waystations.

The shamans, ground relentlessly beneath the wheels of their assignments for an entire month, finally succeeded in engraving every page of the phonetic alphabet teaching materials onto iron plates.

After that, they merely needed to press those plates onto the paper previously prepared at the mill.

There was also the tragic detail that the same exhausted shamans had produced all that paper.

In any case, mass production of the teaching materials had become possible.

Karath distributed one set to every household in Root.

The advisers and several warriors had already learned the alphabet from Leo’s handmade versions, so finding enough instructors was not especially difficult.

Another month passed as the alliance continued printing and distributing the materials.

The cold winds of winter gradually weakened.

The frozen surface of the Huge River began to thaw.

“How is the delivery of teaching materials to the other villages proceeding?”

“Blacksmith Village and Void Village are nearby, so distribution there is complete. Heritage Village should receive its final shipments soon.”

It was now the boundary between late winter and early spring.

As always, Karath was meeting with the advisers and receiving reports about every alliance settlement.

Void Village had been created during the alliance’s final territorial expansion the previous autumn.

Unlike Blacksmith Village, which possessed iron ore, or Heritage Village, which contained the ancestors’ legacy along with limestone and rock salt, the new settlement had nothing particularly important.

That was why Karath had named it Void Village.

“How is the axe-art training progressing?”

“We assigned the warriors travelling from Root on patrol to teach the technique. Reports indicate that it has taken root in all three villages.”

“Berners, did you verify that through the hobgoblins?”

“I did! According to the memoriesh the other hobgoblinsh shent, everyone sheemsh to have learned the posturesh accurately!”

If Berners considered their postures accurate, then the training had probably been transmitted properly.

He still lacked strength compared with the orcs, but his relentless effort had made his form nearly flawless.

“Orga, how is construction on the wall proceeding?”

“During autumn, we expanded southward from Root’s original wall. Throughout winter, we completed the eastern and southeastern sections! Only the western construction remains!”

“Then you should finish within spring. You have worked hard, Orga.”

“Thank you, Grand Chief!”

The Huge River occupied the land north of Root.

The new walls were therefore expanding broadly toward the east, west, and south.

They had not yet reached the original goal of enclosing an area ten times larger than Root.

Even so, the territory already secured was sufficient to cultivate enough food for the alliance’s current population.

Agriculture, cooking, and writing.

The Greenskin Alliance was slowly advancing toward civilisation.

Only one result remained disappointing.

Not a single alliance member had begun sensing mana.

They had practised the axe art throughout the winter, but none had awakened that perception yet.

Expecting success within only two or three months was probably too greedy.

If sensing mana were that easy, every human would already know how to use it.

Karath had planted the seeds.

Eventually, some of them would sprout.

He decided to wait patiently, like a farmer watching over a field before harvest.

In any case, the work he had planned for winter was largely complete.

Several days later, after finishing the remaining preparations, Karath stood before Root’s new gate with one hundred warriors.

During the previous year alone, the alliance had created three additional villages and integrated fourteen tribes.

Expeditions had become familiar to them.

This departure, however, felt different.

Thump!

“Grrrrr!”

Thump!

“Kiyaaaah!”

Thump!

“Hwooooh!”

Every resident of Root had gathered as though celebrating the Sprouting Festival.

They were singing “Morning of Battle.”

Even when Bloodclaw contained only one hundred members, the song had possessed a strange power that stirred the blood.

Now it emerged from the throats of more than one thousand residents.

Orcs sang among them.

“ROOOAAAR!”

Goblins raised their voices as well.

“KIYAAAH!”

Even Jean’s family had joined the crowd, awkwardly copying the motions and forcing out uncertain cries.

“AAAAH!”

The warriors preparing to depart had also changed.

In the past, orcs wearing shabby monster hides and carrying stone or bone axes had left the tribe to hunt for the Sprouting Festival.

Now they wore sturdy iron armour.

They carried iron weapons or arms fashioned from drake bone.

Most importantly, today was not the Sprouting Festival.

Even without a festival, they could now sing “Morning of Battle” without fear.

In the past, the tribe had dared to sing it only once a year because the noise might attract every monster in the surrounding forest.

Only two years had passed since Karath reached adulthood.

The world had already changed this much.

Perhaps this was what orcs had once been like before humanity drove them away.

Admittedly, the alliance no longer consisted only of orcs.

Perhaps that made the moment even more meaningful.

For now, Karath chose to believe so.

“Throughout the winter, we strengthened the alliance from within. Now it is time to straighten our backs and advance once more!”

Spring was approaching.

The time had come to expand the alliance’s territory again.

As “Morning of Battle” reached its peak, Karath shouted and strode toward the gate.

“WOOOOO!”

“KIYAAAAH!”

“Kill them all!”

Already drunk upon excitement, the orc and goblin warriors roared and followed him.

They were supposedly embarking on an expedition to expand their territory and integrate other orcs and goblins.

Karath had no idea why some of them were shouting about killing everyone.

“Woof!”

As the warriors approached the gate, Buddy barked at Karath.

The young giant wolf was still slightly smaller than a fully grown member of his species, but he had already begun surpassing Karath in size.

Buddy barked again, turned his head, and pointed toward his own back.

“You want Karath to ride you?”

The wolf nodded.

“Karath is quite heavy.”

Karath stood only a little over one hundred and eighty centimetres tall, but his enormous muscles pushed his weight far beyond one hundred kilograms.

Silvertusk, strapped across his back, was also absurdly heavy.

“Hmph!”

Buddy merely snorted and lowered himself.

His attitude seemed to say that Karath should stop talking and climb on.

Karath laughed despite himself, then leapt onto the wolf’s back.

“Awooooo!”

The moment Karath mounted him, Buddy rose and released a powerful howl.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

The “Morning of Battle,” which had seemed close to ending, surged once more in response.

“Grand Chief!”

“Please save the orcs!”

“Protect the goblinsh!”

The wishes of the gathered residents rose between the renewed verses.

“Advance!”

Mounted upon the enormous wolf, Karath pointed Silvertusk forward and shouted.

It marked the beginning of a great war of expansion against the monsters for control of the forbidden land.

Chapter 149

The Orc Who Flew

The Stormhowl Tribe was an ordinary orc tribe.

The forest they inhabited was far from peaceful. Every day brought battles against monsters, and losing one of their people had become part of ordinary life.

They were so accustomed to that existence that they considered it peaceful.

Haku, one of Stormhowl’s warriors, believed that day would be no different.

The warriors would hunt together.

One or two might be wounded or killed, but most would return alive.

He had expected the same routine as always.

Then they invaded the settlement.

“ROOOAAAR!”

“S-stop them!”

“Evacuate the women and children!”

The chief and the more experienced warriors shouted orders in response to the sudden attack.

Their trembling voices inspired little confidence.

It was rare for a brave orc warrior to sound so frightened in the presence of an enemy.

Haku could hardly blame them.

The creature attacking their village was an enormous monster.

An ogre.

The king of the forest.

A single ogre embodied such overwhelming violence that an entire settlement had to risk its survival merely to defeat one.

Stormhowl’s warriors were not so weak that one ogre alone would reduce them to despair.

The problem was that there were three.

“ROOOAAAR!”

Crunch!

Boom!

A casual punch or kick shattered a hut.

Orc warriors attempting to block the creatures were crushed beneath their limbs.

The ogres had invaded from three separate directions.

Everywhere Haku looked, he saw destruction and slaughter.

“Ah...”

He was descended from orcs who delighted in battle.

At that moment, however, Haku experienced an emotion he had never felt before.

Despair.

“B-break through one side!” the chief roared. “We must at least save the women and children!”

Crunch!

After issuing that final order, the Stormhowl chief was shattered beneath an ogre’s arm.

At least his command gave the remaining warriors a purpose.

Even if every warrior died, they would open a path for the women and children.

“RAAAAGH!”

Haku prepared to throw himself forward like a moth flying into the flame that would consume it.

“ADVANCE!”

A tremendous voice echoed from somewhere within the forest.

It was so powerful that it seemed capable of shaking every tree, rivaling even the roars of the ogres.

“ROOOAR?”

The ogres paused their slaughter and turned toward the sound, perhaps believing another of their kind was approaching.

Haku looked in the same direction.

What he saw made no sense.

A force of orc warriors nearly equal to Stormhowl’s entire population was charging toward the settlement.

Were they coming here to join the ancestors?

There were three ogres.

Even though the newcomers were all warriors, victory was far from guaranteed.

Still, their arrival gave Haku a little hope.

Together, they might at least create enough time for the women and children to escape.

As the warriors drew closer, however, his expression became increasingly strange.

Why were goblins among them?

Cowardly goblins ran between the brave orcs.

Their weapons and clothing were also unusual.

They carried objects shaped like Stormhowl’s stone axes, yet the material was smoother and strangely refined.

Instead of monster hides, many wore peculiar garments made from the same smooth substance.

Clothing made of stone?

What kind of absurd attire was that?

Yet none of those things drew Haku’s attention as much as the warrior leading them.

“ADVANCE!”

The orc thundered the command as he charged at the front.

More precisely, he was charging while mounted upon a giant wolf.

“A Giant Wolf?”

The bizarre warrior rode the enormous beast directly toward the ogres.

“Is he insane?”

The ogres had scattered while slaughtering Stormhowl’s people.

The wolf charged toward the nearest one, carrying its rider ahead of the other warriors.

The ogre swung an arm as though swatting away an insect.

“Awooo!”

The Giant Wolf evaded the blow with astonishing agility.

It stepped closer.

Its claws and fangs tore into the ogre, while the warrior upon its back carved wounds with an enormous axe.

“ROOOAAAR!”

The irritated ogre swung its limbs wildly.

The wolf continued slipping around each attack, while the injuries covering the monster steadily multiplied.

Then the ogre kicked.

“Awooo!”

The wolf dodged.

At the same moment, its rider launched himself into the air.

The ogre immediately punched at the airborne warrior.

Haku’s eyes widened until they felt ready to burst.

“He flew?”

The warrior stepped upon empty air and leapt a second time.

With two jumps, he rose to the height of the ogre’s head.

“RAAAAGH!”

Then he brought down his enormous axe.

Crunch!

The ogre’s skull split apart with a single strike.

Thud.

The symbol of unstoppable violence collapsed with its head divided in two.

The warrior who had flown through the sky landed beside the corpse.

For a moment, he exchanged a silent look with the wolf he had been riding.

It seemed as though the two were communicating without words.

Karath’s first thought after landing was simple.

He had nearly died.

Everything had gone reasonably well when he first charged the ogre on Buddy’s back.

Karath had been confident.

His original intention was to test how much stronger he had become during winter while delaying one ogre until the alliance warriors defeated the other two.

He was not yet certain he could kill an ogre alone, so he had no intention of taking unnecessary risks.

During the journey, Buddy’s mobility and combat instincts had already proven extremely useful.

Karath had believed the wolf would easily help him stall the monster.

Then Buddy moved far faster than expected.

That was where the problem began.

They had prepared no saddle.

Whenever Buddy made a sharp turn, inertia threatened to tear Karath from his back.

He had been forced to clutch fistfuls of the wolf’s fur while swinging his axe at the ogre.

Karath looked down at the clump still trapped in his hand and released a hollow laugh.

He had never expected the fur to come out entirely.

Buddy’s hair had failed to withstand Karath’s strength and momentum.

The moment it tore free, Karath had been thrown into the air and exposed directly to the ogre’s fist.

No one who had not experienced it could understand the terror of floating helplessly while an ogre’s fist approached their face.

Faced with death, Karath’s mind worked far faster than usual.

Almost simultaneously with the thought, he formed an Aero Shield in midair.

Using mana reinforcement, he stepped upon the barrier and launched himself upward.

Then he strengthened his body again and split the ogre’s skull.

It had been a miraculous victory decided within a fraction of a second.

Had Karath reacted even a tenth of a second later, the ogre would have smashed his entire body and sent him tumbling across the ground.

“Woof! Woof!”

Buddy stared at him with a strange expression.

Karath could not tell whether the wolf was upset about the bald patch on his head or apologising for throwing him.

“Sorry.”

The empty spot in Buddy’s silver fur looked painfully obvious.

Karath apologised without hesitation.

“WAAAAAAH!”

“The Grand Chief killed one!”

“Attack! Offer victory to the Grand Chief!”

The warriors’ thunderous cheers erupted behind him immediately after the apology.

The alliance forces charged the remaining ogres with weapons raised.

“Karath will apologise again later.”

Leaving Buddy behind, he lifted Silvertusk and moved to assist them.

The remaining two ogres did not last long.

The alliance warriors had already fought five cockatrices simultaneously.

Struggling against only two ogres would have been embarrassing.

“Ohhh!”

“Thank you! Thank you!”

What was trivial to the Greenskin Alliance could still be extraordinary to others.

The members of the unknown tribe they had rescued knelt and bowed repeatedly.

“Karath is the Grand Chief of the Greenskin Alliance, chosen by the ancestors to save every orc and goblin in the Grimwood Mountains.”

He introduced himself to the primitively dressed orcs.

Normally, this was the point where he would perform a magical spectacle to persuade them.

“Just as we thought!”

“We knew it when you flew through the sky, Grand Chief!”

No demonstration was necessary.

Karath frowned inwardly.

When had he flown?

Then he remembered the desperate midair manoeuvre.

To the Stormhowl orcs, his frantic attempt to avoid being pulped must have looked like effortless flight.

“C-can we join this Greenskin Alliance?”

“Please save us as well, Grand Chief!”

The misunderstanding had removed the entire need for persuasion.

The world truly worked in strange ways.

“If you are willing to join Karath in saving the orcs and goblins of these mountains, then you are welcome within the alliance.”

“Ohhh! Thank you, Grand Chief!”

“The Stormhowl Tribe will follow you!”

“Excellent. Everyone may rise.”

At Karath’s command, the Stormhowl members slowly stood from the ground.

“Are there any unusual stones, fruits, monsters, or poisons in this region?”

Karath hoped they might know of some resource capable of advancing civilisation or strengthening the alliance.

The tribespeople exchanged murmured words among themselves.

One warrior stepped forward.

“My name is Haku, a warrior of the Stormhowl Tribe, Grand Chief.”

He hesitated.

“We know of a strange fruit that might be useful as poison.”

“What kind of fruit?”

“Our tribe calls it the Devil’s Fruit or the Flame Fruit.”

“The Devil’s Fruit?”

Karath nearly laughed.

This was not some pirate story.

“When eaten, it feels as though flames will burst from your mouth. Later, heat continues rising from inside your stomach. The next day, when relieving yourself, it feels as though your backside is burning. In severe cases, blood may appear.”

Karath considered the description.

To anyone listening, it certainly sounded poisonous.

“Long ago, we sometimes ate small amounts during winter when the cold became unbearable. The problems afterward were so terrible that no one eats it anymore.”

“It does sound like poison.”

“Yes. Its shape also resembles a man’s... that part. That is another reason we call it the Flame Fruit or the Devil’s Fruit.”

“A man’s...?”

After hearing the entire explanation, one vegetable appeared clearly within Karath’s mind.

That was a chilli pepper.

Chapter 150

The Devil’s Fruit

The news was astonishing.

Chillies existed within the Grimwood Mountains.

During his former life, Karath had loved spicy food.

Chilli paste was one of the greatest expressions of that flavour.

The usefulness of chillies was not limited to cooking.

Before the development of modern chemical weapons, powdered chilli had sometimes been used like tear gas.

It might even serve as a weapon.

Still, Karath’s main interest was food.

Spiciness was not something he intended to abandon.

After leaving several warriors behind to protect the Stormhowl settlement, Karath followed Haku toward the place where the plants grew naturally.

If he could find beans as well, the possibilities would multiply.

Beans could be fermented into blocks.

Those could become soybean paste and soy sauce.

Adding chillies would make chilli paste possible.

Perhaps Karath could revive the cuisine of his former world within the Grimwood Mountains.

He followed Haku while imagining the spread of proper food into another world.

“Awooo!”

Buddy, who had been sulking because of the bald patch on his head, suddenly began howling.

“Awooooo!”

“Awooo!”

Dozens of Giant Wolves emerged through the undergrowth.

“Form ranks!”

The warriors raised their weapons immediately.

Wild bloodlust shone clearly within the wolves’ eyes.

They had not come to play with Buddy.

Karath looked toward his companion.

He was not even completely certain Buddy belonged to the same species, but he still preferred not to slaughter the wolves in front of him.

That did not mean they could simply allow themselves to be attacked.

Karath drew breath to order the warriors forward.

Before he could speak, Buddy raised his head.

“Awooooo!”

Howling loudly, the silver wolf walked alone toward the pack.