Chapter 857: Creating My Own Orc Army (Patreon)

The Cloud Tyrant carried Luke away from Marlow's capital. Below, the orcs were busy reinforcing buildings and making the city their own. Marlow had also become a testing ground for Luke's experiments with dangerous plants, and its inhabitants provided a steady supply of subjects. Mist from the [Tree of Mother Freya] kept the air poisonous, while [Dread Aura] let him study what prolonged fear and panic did to living creatures.

Reason didn't work on awakened orcs. Strength and cruelty did. Unlike ascended orcs such as Kobi, Rheera, and Rukhara, the awakened were little more than beasts. They had no empathy, not even for their own kind, and moved in hordes, destroying whatever stood in their way like a plague. To an Orc Lord, creatures like that were good for one thing: war.

Back in his kingdom, Luke bypassed the castle and landed near the Great Tree. Inside the cave at its base, a small forest he'd grown himself formed a living barrier across part of the cavern. Beyond it, he kept the experiments he wanted isolated from the rest of the kingdom. He'd barely stepped through the trees when he heard a chain scraping across the ground.

"Master? Oh, yes... Master is back."

Zamor, Rokhan's former right-hand man, shuffled toward him, hunched over and hobbled by a chain fastened around his ankle.

"Fresh wounds? Angie's really putting in the hours."

She'd worked him over plenty of times already, and given how much he knew, she probably wasn't finished.

"I'm cooperating, Master. I've told Lady Angie everything. I keep telling her there's nothing left. But she won't stop."

Zamor acknowledged Luke as his master now, though whether he feared him or Angie more was anyone's guess.

"And how did it go, Master? With the generals?"

"Everything's going according to plan."

"I told you, Master. We orcs respect the strength of an Orc Lord. I told you everything."

He had. Zamor had given up the generals' names, their specialties, and a rundown of their loyalties. Luke knew which ones still stood by Rokhan, which needed to be brought to heel, and which the former Orc Lord had considered weak or expendable.

Farther into the cave, the stink of rotting meat grew stronger.

"They're restless," Luke said.

Piles of meat lay scattered among the orc larvae he'd collected. Angie had wrung every detail she could out of Zamor about raising the creatures, including what Rokhan had learned through his experiments. Luke had ordered those experiments to continue.

In his laboratory, the ingredients he'd prepared were already in the cauldron. Luke drew his kukri, cut open his forearm, and let his blood drip into the mixture.

"What are you doing, Master?"

"Rokhan put blood in their food. It gave the larvae more nutrients and made the orcs they produced more vulnerable to mind control. I'm doing the same."

Zamor glanced between the cauldron and the piles of meat. Luke let him wonder. He'd spent plenty of time in Marlow refining the mixture while his captive stayed behind to tend the larvae.

"That one's getting close to hatching, Master."

Zamor pointed toward the largest larva with a hoe-like tool. He used it to portion out the meat and shove back any of the creatures that tried to eat him. The routine was meant to condition them early, though the larger ones had already grown too aggressive to handle, attacking anything that came within reach.

[You have successfully created a Potion!]

Luke poured the potion over the meat. His plant-like blood could absorb other ingredients and carry their effects, making it both a powerful potion ingredient and a catalyst. That allowed him to deliver extra nutrients without changing the larvae's diet.

"They're carnivores, Master. Can't feed them other things. They spit it out. Sometimes they get weak."

"I know what I'm doing."

One of the larvae lunged for a potion-soaked chunk of meat and swallowed it whole. Luke let that answer for him and approached the largest specimen. The creature was grotesquely swollen, and a faint, wet clicking came from somewhere deep inside it.

"Such a beautiful sound," Zamor murmured, running a hand along the larva's side. "The orcs' levels depend on what the larvae eat. Strong beasts, strong humans. But don't give them orc meat. Never orc meat. Makes them sick. Weak, too. Human meat, though? That's the good stuff. I figured that out, you know. I was the first..."

Angie had interrogated him so often that he'd started answering questions nobody had asked.

"So they could come out at level 1 or level 100. Depends on what the larva's eaten."

"Yes, Master. Yes."

Food quality wasn't an issue. The cave was stocked with meat from powerful creatures killed in the Underworld, including triceratops and even pieces of the Serene Bulwark.

"Meat from humans makes smart orcs," Zamor added.

The massive larva swallowed one last chunk of meat, then stopped eating.

"It's ready, Master. What did it eat before you found it?"

"It was one of the first ones I found. It had already eaten a woman named Alice, one of Rosemark's generals, along with plenty of people from the city."

The swollen creature dragged itself into a corner and lay still.

"Funny thing is, I wasn't planning to feed these things at first. Then that one started swelling up on its own," Luke said.

Whatever the larva had eaten before he found it had apparently been enough to start producing orcs. Once the process began, there was no stopping it from hatching. His original plan had been to let Norn devour the newborn orcs, and he'd spent the following months keeping the larvae fed with Nara in mind as well. Now he had another use for them.

"At least you've taught me something useful. The more I feed them, the faster they hatch."

"Master, I still don't understand why you keep feeding them. The orcs that come out aren't like me or the others. They're not awakened. Only an Orc Lord can control them."

"Just keep doing your job."

Luke left him with the larvae and headed to another part of the underground forest, where he kept his plant experiments. He spent the next day studying Angie's notes while he waited for the creatures to hatch.

"The larvae absorb experience points from corpses, along with something else carried in the blood. Zamor calls it strong blood. You call it nutrients because of how your plants work. Maybe DNA has something to do with it. My guess? We're all partly right. Keep an eye on the larva that devoured General Alice Strider."

Luke closed the notes and pulled up his quest.

[Kings of the New Era]

[Time Remaining: 1 Month : 0 Weeks : 4 Days]

Just over a month to get the Teleportation Array under my control. Then I can attend the meeting. See my mother.

He needed to move faster. Luke got to his feet.

"W-where are you going, Master?"

"Got a few things to take care of."

"Wait, Master! If that larva hatches, the orcs will kill me! Don't leave me here! That powerful orc will eat me alive!"

"Then for your own sake, Zamor, you'd better hope I get back in time."

Outside the Great Tree, he summoned the Spectral Beast and took to the sky. He flew across the region until a sprawling military camp came into view below. Jungral's banners fluttered above row after row of tents and defensive positions. Far too many soldiers moved between them for a routine border deployment.

They really are getting ready for war.

Luke conjured a knife, held it out over the camp, and opened his fingers.

[Meteor Shot]

At first, it was just a blade falling through the sky. Halfway down, it became a meteor and slammed into the center of the camp. Light erupted across the tents as the blast tore through the surrounding structures, and notifications flashed across Luke's vision.

[You have slain a Human...]

[You have slain a Human...]

[You have slain a Human...]

[You have slain a Human...]

Luke ignored the notifications. He hadn't killed everyone, but that was never the point. He brought the Spectral Beast down close enough for the nearest soldiers to hear him and remained mounted. Survivors scrambled through the wreckage as officers shouted orders. A few raised their weapons at him, but none dared approach.

"Keep marching, and next time I'll kill every last one of you."

Then he took off straight through Jungral's airspace, making no effort to avoid its villages and cities. Alarms followed him from one settlement to the next as people spotted him overhead. Near the major population centers, new towers had gone up, some equipped with massive ballistae.

"They're even getting ready to shoot you down," he told the Spectral Beast.

Angie had already scouted the capital from the air at night. Her report mentioned ballistae throughout the city and more than fifty thousand soldiers stationed there, not counting the generals.

Beyond Jungral's borders, Luke reached an orc outpost in the region separating it from Marlow. The sentries recognized him as he approached. He landed and headed straight into camp.

"I want an update."

"We've begun sending the orcs to the Ogremaw Forest, my lord," General Thork reported. "But w-we have a problem."

"What?"

"I found General Lufftar."

Rokhan had sent him and several other generals to raid cities while his main army marched across the continent toward Marlow. They were expendable distractions, meant to spread chaos and draw the human armies away from his real movements.

"And what did he say about serving me?"

"He said he won't serve you, my lord."

Luke said nothing for a moment.

"Oh. Did he now?"

"Yes, my lord..."

Luke seized him by the throat.

"Mercy, my lord!"

"Shut up."

The Spectral Beast appeared beside them. He shoved Thork toward it, and the creature snatched the general up in its claws. Luke climbed onto its back, and they took off. Before long, they reached a village occupied by more than three hundred orcs. The place was surprisingly well fortified, with makeshift walls, defensive positions, and reinforced buildings.

Luke landed at the entrance, where the Spectral Beast dropped Thork onto the ground.

"Follow me."

"Yes, my lord."

They'd barely started forward when the orc guards raised their bows.

[Dread Aura]

Their hands began to shake. Not one of them fired, and Luke walked straight past with Thork following a few steps behind. At the center of the fortress stood a throne built from human bones and beast remains. Lufftar sprawled across it, watching Luke approach without bothering to get up.

"You've got guts, human. And you've got one of Rokhan's generals following you around like a dog. So you're the human who killed him. The one they're calling an Orc Lord."

Luke stopped in front of the throne.

"I'm your new Lord."

"Is that so?" Lufftar spread his arms and looked around at the orcs gathered before him. "What do you think, my soldiers? Is this human our lord?"

A few of them grinned. Thork wasn't among them.

"You must've used some trick to kill Rokhan. Not that I care. I was ready to turn on him myself. You think I'm going to swear loyalty to you?"

"You'll serve me. You'll acknowledge me as your Lord. And you'll be my new dog."

Lufftar bared his fangs and rose from the throne.

"You've got a lot of nerve for such a scrawny human."

The general stripped off his bone armor, dropping each piece to the ground. Then he cracked his neck.

"I'm right here, Lord. If you want me to serve you, make me."

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