Chapter 107: Locating the Orc Camp with a Drone!

The forest blurred past them.

[Running has levelled up: Level 5 > Level 6]

[Running has levelled up: Level 6 > Level 7]

Two levels in twenty minutes of sprinting with a kobold under his arm. The skill corrected his posture mid-stride, a smoother transfer of force in his ankles and knees that made each step push harder without wasting energy.

He stopped in a clearing about an hour southeast of the village and set Griks down. She wobbled for a second and grabbed a root for balance. Her tail was puffed up from the speed.

Eren pulled the drone out of the box and started assembling it. Rosa had picked a basic quadcopter, maybe 500 grams with a camera that could shoot decent video from half a kilometer to a kilometer away. Not military grade by any stretch but for scouting a forest from above it was more than enough. She’d packed two batteries and a tiny instruction card that Eren ignored because he’d used similar drones at a friend’s birthday party two years ago.

The thing buzzed to life and lifted off from his palm. Griks scrambled backward and hissed at it.

“Calm down, it’s a tool. Like a flying eye.”

“Flying eye that buzzes like angry insect!” She pressed herself against a tree trunk and watched the drone climb above the canopy with suspicious slitted eyes.

On the phone screen linked to the controller, Eren could see the forest from above for the first time. Green canopy stretching in every direction, broken only by the occasional rocky outcropping or river reflection. The village was a tiny brown cluster far to the northwest.

This is insane. Two months of walking through this forest blind and now I can see everything from up there.

He flew the drone southeast toward the area where he’d spotted the temporary orc camp last week. Three crows noticed the buzzing thing almost immediately, swooping close with tilted heads like they were trying to figure out what it was. One of them flew directly at the camera.

Eren grabbed a stone from the ground and threw it near the crows without aiming to hit. The stone cracked against a branch fifty meters up and all three birds scattered.

“Okay. No more bird problems hopefully.”

He flew the drone in wide circles expanding outward from their position. The forest below was dense and the camera struggled to pick out details through the canopy, but clearings showed up as bright patches against the green and Eren checked each one.

Nothing for the first forty minutes. Then the battery indicator started blinking at fifteen percent.

Come on, give me something before this thing dies.

At maybe seven hundred meters southeast, the camera caught movement in a gap between the trees. Eren zoomed in and saw an orc walking along a narrow dirt path. Big and armored but not as massive as the ones he’d seen at the temporary forward camp. This one carried a short spear and a canvas sack over its shoulder, walking with the casual pace of someone running errands rather than patrolling.

It stopped at a stream, looked around, set down the spear and the sack and squatted behind a thick bush.

The orc is taking a bathroom break. I’m watching an orc take a dump through a drone camera in a magical forest. My life is so weird.

Griks climbed onto his shoulder to see the phone screen and made a clicking sound with her teeth. “That one is regular fighter. Not chief. Carries food bag back to camp.”

The orc finished its business, picked up two small animals from a crude trap near the stream and stuffed them in the sack. Then it started walking east with purpose.

Eren followed it from above with the drone, keeping the buzzing machine high enough that the orc never looked up. The battery was at nine percent now.

“Come on, come on..”

At six percent the orc turned south off the path and pushed through heavy undergrowth toward a section of forest where the canopy was so thick the camera could barely see the ground. Eren dropped the drone lower and caught a glimpse of firelight between the trees before the battery warning went critical.

He landed the drone on a branch, swapped the dead battery for the fresh one Rosa packed and launched again in under two minutes. His hands were shaking a little from the adrenaline.

Thank you technology. Thank you Rosa. Thank you whoever invented swappable batteries.

The drone climbed back above the canopy and Eren flew it toward where the orc had disappeared. The camera found the camp almost immediately because from above the gap in the canopy was obvious, a roughly circular clearing with cook fires and structures that looked too organized to be temporary.

“Griks. I found it.” He showed her the screen.

Her oversized eyes went wide and her tail curled around his forearm. She counted under her breath in broken Elvish. “Twelve… fifteen… more in big tent. Maybe twenty total. This is a real camp.”

They hiked toward the position for another twenty minutes with the drone guiding them from above. When the smell of the orc camp’s poison perimeter hit him, a bitterness like burned chemicals that made his eyes water, he knew they were close.

[Poison Resistance has levelled up: Level 4 > Level 5]

[Poison Resistance has levelled up: Level 5 > Level 6]

The outer perimeter was ringed with stakes driven into the ground. Each stake had dark purple plant matter wrapped around its tip, dripping a thick sap that evaporated into poisonous vapor on contact with air.

Griks coughed violently the second the haze reached her. Eren backtracked fifty meters and set her down behind a massive boulder well outside the poison zone. Her reptilian face was greener than usual.

“Tell me about their leaders.” He crouched beside her while the drone circled overhead on autopilot.

Griks wiped her eyes with the back of her scaly hand. “Orc camps have… one chief and two or three sub-chiefs.” Her Elvish was worse than usual like the poison had scrambled whatever the language skill gave her. “Chief is biggest. Always biggest. They don’t… trick or politic like elves. Biggest orc is leader because nobody can beat him.”

“What about their weapons?”

“Heavy. Very heavy things.” She spread her arms to show the size and her wingspan barely covered a meter. “Axes bigger than me. Armor too, thick metal on chest and arms. Legs less protected because orcs… don’t think about legs. They only attack forward.”

“Never retreat?”

Griks shook her head. “Orcs don’t have a word for retreat in their language. I hear them talk. Closest word means… ’temporary forward movement in a different direction.’”

They literally can’t say the word retreat. They call it moving forward differently. Either incredibly stupid or terrifyingly committed.

He looked at Griks while she recovered. She was sitting with her knees pulled up and her tail curled around her feet and even covered in sweat and greenish snot from the poison she was strangely cute in a way that made zero sense.

Four feet tall with a dragonic face, tiny horns poking through her dark hair and a body smaller than Lyra’s that looked like a child playing dress-up in leather scraps. But something about the proportions and the way her oversized eyes caught the fading light made his stupid hormones react.

Why. Why am I like this. My intelligence stat is 57 and I’m still having weird thoughts about a four-foot kobold girl. What is wrong with me.

He asked about her class to distract himself from his own brain.

Griks tilted her head. “No class. Level 12. Too low.”

“Right. You need 15.”

So there was no charm skill or social passive causing this. No system explanation. Just Griks being whatever Griks was. He’d noticed Thadric acting the same way around her and even a couple of the younger elf men had started finding excuses to visit the ranch.

Maybe it’s some kind of natural racial trait that doesn’t show up in the system. Like pheromones. Or maybe I’m losing my mind from not sleeping with Emily.

He grabbed Griks and climbed the tallest tree near the boulder, fifty meters up to where the branches split wide enough to sit. From here he could see the camp’s glow through the canopy while staying well outside the poison range.

Griks clutched the drone to her chest like it was a pet and pressed her back against the trunk with the bags between her knees. Her eyes were darting between the distant firelight and Eren’s face. Scared but also trusting in a way that made something complicated twist in his chest..

He checked the drone footage on his phone. The camp was bigger than the forward position he’d seen last week. At least twelve orcs visible around cooking fires and weapon racks, maintaining gear that would’ve looked at home in a medieval war museum. Four more patrolled the perimeter in pairs carrying crossbows the size of small tables with melee weapons strapped to their backs.

Every single one of them stood at least a full head taller than Eren. Their armor wasn’t kobold scrap metal bolted together but forged plate with hammered joints and chain mail underneath, darkened with oil to prevent reflection. These were professional soldiers.

But his eyes locked on the tent in the center.

Twice the size of the others with hide walls stretched over a frame of massive bones that didn’t come from any animal he’d seen in this forest. Standing outside the tent flap was an orc that made the others look small. Nearly two and a half meters tall with shoulders wide enough to block a doorway and a two-handed battleaxe resting across its back. The axe head was bigger than Eren’s entire torso.

That’s the leader. And everything in my body is telling me it’s at least Level 50. Emily-strong. Maybe stronger.

“Stay here.” He handed Griks the phone with the drone feed still running. “Don’t move and don’t make a sound.”

She grabbed his sleeve with both scaly hands. “You go alone?”

“I go alone.”

Griks looked at the distant camp, then back at Eren. She let go of his sleeve and hugged the drone tighter against her chest.

He dropped from the tree and landed without a sound. Drew both kobold scimitars and started running toward the firelight.

She can’t follow me into this and Emily would never forgive me if I held back because I was worried about the kobold behind me. This has to be a real test.

He cleared the poison stake perimeter in a single jump that carried him four meters into the air. He landed between two cooking fires and the closest orc didn’t finish turning its head before his scimitar opened its throat.

The camp erupted. Orcs grabbed weapons and shouted in a guttural language that sounded like rocks being crushed in a machine. Two crossbow bolts flew past his shoulder and one clipped his arm, cutting through the skin just enough to draw blood.

They actually cut me. Nothing has cut me in weeks.

He killed three more on his way to the central tent with ugly kills that relied on speed over technique because these things were fast. Not half-elf fast but enough that he couldn’t stand in one place and swing.

Then the tent flap exploded outward.

The leader came through with its battleaxe already mid-swing, a horizontal arc that covered everything at chest height in a three-meter radius. Eren dropped flat and the axe passed over him close enough to shave the hair on the back of his neck.

The follow-through cleaved one of the tent’s bone support poles like a twig and the leader stepped through the collapsing wreckage without slowing down.

Eren came up swinging. His right scimitar connected with the orc’s chest plate, bit into the metal maybe a centimeter and stopped dead. The impact traveled up through the handle into his wrist, his forearm, his shoulder and it felt like hitting a brick wall at full sprint.

The orc backhanded him. Just a casual swipe with its free hand that caught Eren across the chest and sent him sliding backward through the dirt. He kept his feet but barely, boots carving two lines in the ground.

That thing just slapped me ten meters. It slapped me. Its casual backhand hit harder than a troll’s full charge.

The leader raised its axe overhead. The other orcs had formed a loose circle and none of them were interfering. This was apparently how orc leadership disputes worked.

Eren brought both scimitars up to block.

The axe came down and the left scimitar shattered on impact. Pieces scattered across the dirt and his hand went numb from the shockwave. The right scimitar held but a crack ran from the tip halfway down the blade.

[Congratulations! You have learned a new skill]

[Combat Mastery (Passive) Level 1 – First Evolution League]

The skill settled into his muscles and his stance shifted on its own. Feet finding a wider base, weight dropping lower, his remaining scimitar angling to a guard position he’d never been taught but suddenly knew.

A combat passive. I learned it from getting my ass kicked by an orc.

The leader swung again. This time Eren’s body moved with the new skill guiding it, sidestepping instead of blocking and letting the massive axe head pass through the space where his ribs had been a quarter-second ago.

He looked at his one cracked scimitar, then at the orc leader already pulling back for a third swing.

Eren dropped his last weapon. A kobold blade wasn’t going to cut through forged orc plate no matter how hard he swung.

He let his passive skills bleed outward. Love Love Love filled the air with a pressure that made two watching orcs take an involuntary step back. Wolf Eyes sharpened the world into crystalline detail. Combat Mastery whispered corrections into his muscle memory.

The orc leader paused. It studied Eren with those small dark eyes and something crossed its brutal face. Not fear because orcs didn’t have a word for that either. But it knew it was looking at something different from the elves and kobolds it had been bullying for months.

Eren smiled and clenched both fists.

His heart was hammering so hard he could hear it in his ears. The testosterone and adrenaline burning through his veins wasn’t panic or excitement but something more basic than both, the chemical reality of a half-elf at peak physical condition who needed to kill the thing in front of him to protect everything behind him..

First real fight in two months where I might actually lose.

Let’s go.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep