Chapter 211

Growth

Spring arrived, and the alliance resumed its full-scale expansion.

Just as Karath had intended, the warriors were divided between the east and west, allowing both fronts to advance simultaneously.

Neither force encountered any major problems as they absorbed new orc tribes and goblin clans into the alliance.

The goblins were easy enough.

Thanks to the hobgoblins’ communication network, most had already heard about the alliance and were simply waiting for the day they could join.

The orcs were a little more troublesome.

Without Karath personally present, there was always the possibility that an independent tribe might refuse.

Karath had told Krog to use Kairin’s magic when persuasion proved difficult.

Krog, however, felt that magic alone lacked a certain impact.

To absorb new orc tribes, they needed overwhelming charisma.

He had spent some time wondering how he could imitate even a fraction of Grand Chief Karath’s imposing presence.

Surprisingly, the solution came from an unexpected source.

“Ohhhh!”

“Messenger of the heavens!”

A wyvern descended toward the newly discovered orc village.

“SKREEEE!”

The creature cried out as Krog rode upon its back.

The orcs below stared upward in awe before bowing in reverence.

To an isolated tribe far removed from anything resembling civilisation, the sight was almost supernatural.

A wyvern was a terrifying monster.

Yet here was an orc flying through the sky upon one.

“I am not a messenger of the heavens!”

Krog raised his voice.

“I am merely a messenger of the great Grand Chief Karath!”

He did not allow their reverence to become his own.

Every bit of awe inspired by the wyvern was redirected toward Karath.

“The Grand Chief? Who is that?”

“Our great leader, whose mission is to free every orc and goblin in these mountains!”

“Ohhhh!”

If even a miraculous Wyvern Rider served this Grand Chief, then Karath himself had to be far greater still.

The new tribe’s reverence toward a leader they had never even seen rose dramatically.

And so, yet another orc settlement joined the alliance.

Once the negotiations were complete and the new tribespeople were out of hearing range, Krog approached Kairin.

“Thanks, Sister Kairin.”

“Keh heh. You’re getting better and better at talking like that.”

The wyvern Krog had ridden was one of the five Karath had subjugated with the Sigmund School’s domination magic the previous year.

Krog had suggested using the wyverns during the expansion campaign.

To make that possible, Karath taught Kairin the magic required to control them.

He had not taught her the entire system of Sigmund School mental magic.

Kairin had only recently mastered the Third Circle.

Learning the school’s full body of techniques would have been far beyond her.

Instead, Karath taught her exactly one thing.

How to engrave an imprint into a wyvern and control it.

Once Kairin became sufficiently comfortable with the technique, Karath transferred control of two of the five adult wyverns to her.

“Heheh. Are you going to take care of them afterward again?”

Kairin asked with a knowing smile.

Krog merely smiled back.

Without answering, he carried over some monster meat he had prepared in advance.

Two adult wyverns rested nearby.

With them were two young wyverns, their offspring.

Krog stroked the neck of the wyvern he had ridden, then placed the meat before the two juveniles.

The adult wyverns had already hunted and eaten monsters during the journey.

But that was not the only reason Krog fed the young ones personally.

It is the same as when we tamed the Giant Wolves.

Krog was trying to domesticate the young wyverns.

Karath had explained clearly that only the adults had been subjected to the black mages’ magic.

The young wyverns had never been brainwashed.

Yet after growing up while watching their parents peacefully follow orcs, they displayed no hostility toward them.

If so, perhaps they could be domesticated just as the Giant Wolves had been.

“Eat as much as you like.”

Krog smiled as the young wyverns eagerly tore into the meat.

He imagined the day when they would become adults.

And when he would ride one of them through the sky without needing magic to force its obedience.

“They absorbed another tribe?”

“That’sh right. The plan to use the wyvernsh seemsh to be working very well.”

Karath nodded as he listened to Berners’s report.

Choosing Krog had definitely been the right decision.

Even Karath had not expected him to come up with the idea of using wyverns as part of the alliance’s showmanship.

But the moment Karath heard the proposal, he realised how effective it could be and approved it immediately.

The results had been excellent.

Karath no longer needed to fly back and forth across the alliance every time an independent orc tribe required convincing.

Placing Krog in command had produced another advantage.

He was capable of keeping hot-blooded warriors such as Kaden and Chief Parker under control.

Thanks to Krog’s leadership, the western expedition continued expanding without significant trouble.

The eastern force under Karath was doing just as well.

Only one month had passed since expansion resumed.

Yet between the two forces, they had already created four new villages and absorbed more than fifteen orc settlements.

The pace was incomparable to anything they had achieved before.

Once we have more Wyvern Riders and more soldiers, expansion will become even faster.

Eventually, they might not need two expeditionary forces.

They could divide into three or four.

“What happened to the residents of the tribe that joined us most recently?”

“Their relocation to the new village ish nearly complete. Construction of the wallsh ish also almost finished.”

“Then we’ll need to move again soon and establish the next village.”

“I’ll look for a suitable location.”

“Good. I’m counting on you.”

“Yesh!”

Berners answered energetically.

Then his gaze drifted into empty space as he concentrated.

Karath sensed an almost imperceptible mana fluctuation emerging from the hobgoblin’s horn.

Berners was apparently communicating with hobgoblins living throughout the surrounding area, asking for information about possible settlement locations.

If only I had managed to finish that spell.

Karath had continued his research throughout the winter.

Even so, he had failed to create magic capable of perfectly reproducing the function of a hobgoblin’s horn.

Replicating a mechanism created by nature, or perhaps by some divine force, was not easy for a mere orc.

Still, the research had not been completely fruitless.

Karath had failed to decipher the exact method by which hobgoblins encoded and decoded memories, emotions, and information.

But he had learned part of the reason their communication worked across far greater distances than the Sigmund School’s mental magic.

With additional refinement, Karath believed he could eventually create a spell capable of transmitting something similar to written messages.

It would not carry complete memories or emotions the way the hobgoblin network did.

But even exchanging words across long distances would be invaluable.

Karath was still thinking about the communication spell when Berners’s expression became slightly troubled.

“Grand Chief.”

“What is it? Did something happen?”

“I’m not shure whether it countsh as a problem, but there’sh something unusual.”

“Unusual?”

Berners hesitated.

“There ish a settlement of humansh about four daysh from here.”

Karath frowned.

“A human settlement?”

The Grimwood Mountains were not a place where ordinary humans could survive.

The fact that a group of them lived here immediately raised one possibility.

Another group of black mages?

“Mmm. We should investigate.”

Karath considered it briefly.

“I’ll take only a few Aura Users.”

“Are we attacking them?”

“Reconnaissance first. We identify who they are and how strong they are. Then we decide.”

“Understood.”

Chapter 212

Growth

The following morning, Karath departed for the human settlement.

He brought Buddy, two Silver Wolf warriors, Berners, one goblin, two orc warriors, and the wyverns.

Aside from the wyverns themselves, everyone in the group was an Aura User.

It was a small but highly elite force.

During the first day, they practically carved their way through every monster that blocked the path.

By the evening of the second day, even that stopped being necessary.

The human settlement Berners was guiding them toward lay near the outer edge of the Grimwood Mountains.

The farther one travelled toward the outskirts, the weaker the monsters became.

Most were small monsters.

Only occasionally did a medium-sized monster appear.

And those smaller creatures fled the instant they saw wyverns overhead.

As a result, a journey expected to take four days lasted only three.

“Is that it?”

“That’sh the place.”

“Mmm...”

The settlement was hidden in an area where towering trees and thick vegetation blocked the surrounding view.

It was tiny.

Eight or nine miserable wooden houses stood clustered together.

Karath estimated that only twenty or thirty humans lived there.

If all of them had been black mages, that number would have represented tremendous military strength.

But they almost certainly were not black mages.

There were no monsters surrounding the settlement.

And even if they possessed a few controlled creatures, Karath was not particularly worried.

This was the outer region.

At most, they would probably have medium-sized monsters under their control.

More importantly, the people Karath could faintly see beyond the vegetation looked far too poor and ragged to resemble powerful mages.

They do not seem like a threat to the alliance.

What puzzled Karath was why such people were living here at all.

The monsters near the outskirts might seem weak by the alliance’s standards.

For ordinary humans, even small monsters could represent a life-or-death struggle.

And that assumed they were trained mercenaries or soldiers.

Ordinary peasants might need three or four people simply to defeat one.

“Grand Chief. More humansh are approaching.”

Berners pointed.

Karath looked in that direction.

A group was forcing its way through the vegetation.

There were roughly twenty of them.

Every one was armed.

Most wore crude equipment made from leather and wood reinforced with pieces of iron.

Several, however, were encased almost entirely in proper metal armour.

With that many armed men nearby, surviving in this region made more sense.

More importantly, they clearly were not black mages.

They posed little threat to Karath’s group.

Perhaps we should simply leave.

This was near the edge of the forest.

The alliance had deliberately avoided expanding too far outward in order to prevent unnecessary conflict with humans.

Karath was almost ready to turn back.

Then something strange happened.

Clang!

The twenty armed men reached the village.

Every one of them drew a weapon.

Karath stared.

He had naturally assumed they belonged to the same group.

The villagers immediately dropped to their knees.

Men and women alike began begging for their lives.

Curious, Karath focused his hearing.

Roughly a hundred metres separated the hidden expedition party from the settlement.

For an orc accustomed to the Grimwood Mountains, that distance was close enough to catch most of the conversation.

“Please, Sir Knight! Spare us!”

“Hmph. Pathetic vermin. How disgustingly cowardly.”

The man addressed as a knight spoke rather ridiculous words for someone currently threatening unarmed villagers with a weapon.

“You had no courage to stand and fight, yet you were bold enough to break the law and flee all the way here.”

Karath finally understood what kind of settlement this was.

These people were fugitives.

Runaway serfs or slaves who had escaped their former lands and settled secretly within the wilderness.

How terrible was their old life that this place seemed preferable?

Even the outskirts of the Grimwood Mountains were still monster territory.

Yet these people had chosen to flee here rather than remain under their former lord.

“You should be grateful that Viscount Magos has been merciful enough to overlook your existence.”

“Of course! Of course we are grateful, Sir Knight!”

“If you are truly grateful, then show it.”

The knight looked down at them.

“You prepared what I asked for last time, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir! Of course! Bring it out! Hurry!”

An elderly man who appeared to be the village leader urgently waved several middle-aged men forward.

They disappeared into one of the houses.

Then returned carrying several objects.

Karath’s eyes widened.

What is that?

Chapter 213

Growth

Karath had expected the villagers’ tribute to consist of crops or preserved food.

Instead, what they brought out was completely different.

One young man carried several objects shaped somewhat like pottery.

Yet the texture was wrong.

The material was faintly translucent.

Karath recognised it almost immediately.

Glass.

It was nothing compared with the perfectly transparent glass produced on Earth.

Perhaps their techniques were crude.

Perhaps the raw ingredients contained too many impurities.

But there was no mistaking what it was.

Others brought candles.

Clothing.

And several other manufactured goods.

“Mmm.”

The knight inspected the offerings sharply.

His expression suddenly twisted in anger.

“You dare deceive us?”

“M-my lord? Wh-what do you mean?”

“There are fewer finished products here than there should be compared with the materials we gave you last month! Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“N-no, my lord! We would never! What would we even gain by hiding them? Even if we kept some, we have nowhere to sell them and no use for them ourselves!”

Karath continued listening.

They gave them the materials.

So the authorities already knew this village existed.

The villagers were runaway serfs or slaves.

Yet rather than capturing them, Viscount Magos’s men supplied them with raw materials.

The arrangement became increasingly obvious.

A secret source of money.

Karath did not know the laws of the human territories in detail, but runaway serfs and escaped slaves living in an illegal settlement would not appear in any official registry.

For practical purposes, they did not exist.

Goods produced by people who officially did not exist could then be sold through unofficial channels.

Glass.

Candles.

Perhaps other valuable products.

Any money generated through that system could remain outside formal records.

Karath did not know how much profit it produced.

The amount hardly mattered.

Unrecorded wealth was useful precisely because it left no trail.

Viscount Magos was probably allowing these people to live so he could exploit them as hidden labour for a private fund.

A smile slowly appeared on Karath’s face.

Officially, these villagers had already vanished from human society.

Then absorbing them into the alliance should cause relatively little trouble.

And this was still the Grimwood Mountains.

Karath and his companions were orcs, goblins, and wolffolk.

Humans already considered them monsters.

If a group of people living illegally inside the monster-infested forest suddenly disappeared...

Who would seriously investigate?

“Move toward the village carefully.”

Karath gave the order.

It was time to recruit artisans who knew how to make glass and candles.

“You bastards must have a death wish!”

The knight’s voice exploded again while Karath’s group approached under cover.

“N-no! Truly, sir!”

“Th-there were simply mistakes during production!”

The villagers pressed themselves against the ground, trembling as they tried to explain.

Considering the miserable state of the settlement, mistakes were hardly surprising.

“You make mistakes doing work this trivial?”

Karath’s expression darkened.

Trivial?

Glassmaking was skilled technical labour.

As someone who had once worked in a technical profession himself, Karath found that description personally offensive.

He silently decided that this particular knight would be his.

By then, Karath and his warriors had reached the edge of the settlement.

“Since you wasted our materials by mistake, perhaps I should cut off your heads by mistake.”

“P-please spare us, Sir Knight!”

The knight had apparently lost whatever restraint he possessed.

He raised his axe toward the elderly village leader.

Before he could swing, Karath signalled the goblins.

Thud!

“Ghk...”

A soldier standing toward the rear suddenly collapsed.

“How dare you!”

The knight immediately withdrew his axe and assumed a defensive stance.

“Filthy little fugitives.”

Amusingly, he appeared to believe the villagers had attacked him.

Whoosh!

Another arrow flew.

A second soldier fell with a shaft buried through his torso.

“Show yourselves, or I will kill everyone in this village!”

The knight shouted the threat toward the surrounding forest.

It was ridiculous.

But unfortunately, it was also effective.

Karath had come here specifically because he wanted the artisans alive.

“Attack!”

He could not allow the knight to begin killing them.

“Hraaaah!”

Karath charged with Silvertusk raised.

His target was obvious.

The knight who had been irritating him from the moment they arrived.

“Orcs!? Goblins and wolffolk too?”

The knight stared in shock.

He had expected hidden villagers.

Then his gaze fell upon Silvertusk.

“Krahahaha! That weapon is wasted on an orc! It seems it has finally found its true master today!”

Greed flashed in his eyes.

At least the man had enough discernment to realise Silvertusk was extraordinary.

Unfortunately, he lacked the discernment required to understand its owner.

“Hraaah!”

Karath swung Silvertusk toward the knight’s head.

The knight started to meet the strike with his own axe.

Then stopped.

“Tch.”

He hurriedly retreated instead.

Karath initially thought the man had sensed Silvertusk’s sharpness.

Then the knight spoke.

“I can’t damage a weapon I’ll soon be using myself.”

Idiot.

He was in the middle of a lethal battle, yet he was still worrying about preserving loot he had not even won.

Karath attacked again.

The knight’s retreat had surrendered the initiative completely.

Karath reinforced his body with aura and unleashed one axe strike after another.

“Wh-what is this?!”

The knight shouted in disbelief as an orc forced him onto the defensive.

He narrowly avoided several attacks.

But repeatedly dodging Silvertusk destroyed his balance.

Karath’s axe swept toward his face again.

“Damn it!”

At last, the knight abandoned his obsession with protecting Silvertusk.

He swung his own axe to block.

Karath put his full strength behind his strike, intending to split both weapon and skull at once.

CLANG!

Karath’s eyes narrowed.

The result was unexpected.

He was an advanced Aura User.

He could channel aura directly into Silvertusk.

Yet the strike failed to cut through the knight’s axe and body together.

An advanced Aura User.

The knight had reinforced his own weapon with aura.

Karath had suspected the man might be skilled after watching how well he evaded the earlier attacks.

Still, his level was higher than expected.

The knight, however, was far more shocked.

“Y-you’re insane!”

He had not expected his aura-enhanced defence to barely hold.

And holding was all it had done.

They might both be advanced Aura Users, but Karath possessed an orc’s superior raw strength.

He also wielded Silvertusk.

CLANG!

CLANG!

Every collision forced the knight backward.

Hairline fractures spread across his axe.

CLANG!

On the fourth collision, the weapon shattered completely.

“W-wait...!”

Karath ignored the desperate cry and swung Silvertusk into the man’s face.

“You wanted it.”

Slash!

For roughly a tenth of a second, the knight finally became Silvertusk’s owner.

There was only one minor problem.

Instead of holding it in his hands, he was wearing it in his face.

Chapter 214

Growth

The leader of the hidden settlement stared blankly at the scene before him.

His entire body trembled.

He barely noticed.

It was a massacre.

The knight who had tormented them for so long had lost his face to an orc’s enormous silver axe almost instantly.

For a moment, the old man genuinely wondered whether the knight had been a fraud.

Perhaps he had merely been a soldier pretending to be a knight.

It did not take long for that hope to disappear.

The orc wielding the enormous silver axe was like a moving storm.

Whenever he swung, whatever stood in his path was cut apart.

Sword.

Spear.

Shield.

Armour.

Nothing mattered.

Naturally, the bodies inside the armour were split apart along with it.

Looking at the carnage now, the knight who had managed to block and evade nearly ten exchanges with that monster suddenly seemed remarkably impressive.

The village chief was an ordinary man.

A former serf.

An old man already past the strongest years of his life.

There was a simple reason his mind had wandered into such absurd observations.

When reality became too impossible to accept, people often escaped into meaningless thoughts.

And the slaughter before him was far too unreal.

The enormous orc alone was horrifying enough.

Then there were the other monsters.

Goblins were supposed to be weak creatures that an ordinary adult man could kill in single combat.

Yet every arrow these goblins fired sent a soldier crashing to the ground.

The projectiles moved so quickly that the old man could barely see them.

Only after noticing the horns on their foreheads did he realise what they were.

Hobgoblins.

Creatures he had only heard about in stories.

The other orcs and wolffolk charged directly into the soldiers and knights, tearing humans apart with axes and claws.

“Awooooo!”

Then there was the enormous silver Giant Wolf.

One sweep of its forepaw struck a knight wearing full plate armour.

Claws ripped through steel and flesh alike.

Seven monsters.

That was all it took.

Three knights and seventeen soldiers were dead in less than a minute.

Shouts.

Screams.

Weapons and armour breaking.

Flesh and bone being torn apart.

For a short while, those sounds filled the hidden village.

Then silence fell.

“Hiiiik...”

Only then did the village chief and the others finally abandon their denial of reality.

Terrified sounds escaped them almost like convulsions.

They had not escaped a wolf only to enter a tiger’s den.

That would have been preferable.

They had never even attempted to flee from the wolf.

A tiger had simply appeared from nowhere, killed the wolf in front of them, and then turned toward them.

Tears of regret filled the old man’s eyes.

So this is fate.

At that moment, he hated the heavens.

How much had they sacrificed to escape the hellish territory where they had once lived?

How had they managed to reach this dreadful monster-infested forest and discover a hidden place where they could barely survive?

How many people had died along the way?

If they had not encountered runaway serfs and slaves from other territories and joined forces with them, fewer than five of their original group would probably still be alive.

They had somehow built a fragile peace here.

Then Viscount Magos discovered them.

That peace shattered.

And now, as though even that suffering had not been enough, the heavens had sent something even worse.

Fine.

Take my life.

The village chief was already an old man.

He had not endured slavery, humiliation, and begging before knights because he valued his own remaining years.

“Take the children and run!”

The frightened old man vanished.

In his place stood the leader responsible for everyone living in the settlement.

He pushed himself up from the ground and charged directly toward the monsters.

“Run!”

Several middle-aged men followed him.

Even one second.

We only need to buy them one second.

The chief prepared himself to throw away his life.

He swung his fist toward the terrifying orc carrying the enormous silver axe.

Grab.

His fist stopped.

The orc caught it effortlessly in one hand.

The chief looked around.

Every man who had charged with him had already been subdued just as easily.

“Ahhh! Heavens above! How can you be so cruel?!”

Despair overwhelmed him.

He shouted toward the sky.

“The heavens have always been indifferent.”

The old man froze.

Perfectly natural human speech had come from the mouth of the orc holding his fist.

His eyes widened until they seemed ready to fall from their sockets.

“But do not worry.”

The terrifying orc smiled, revealing enormous tusks.

“I am not.”

The village chief, who had prepared himself to die only moments earlier, wet himself on the spot.