Chapter 92: Orcs!

Eren left at dawn with Emily and the wolves.

Rosa wanted to come but Emily shut her down before she finished the sentence. “You’re staying with Griks and Nimbo inside the village alright? Nobody leaves the perimeter without us.”

Rosa didn’t argue. She’d heard about the orc tracks from last night and the look on her face said she understood. She just squeezed Eren’s hand once at the door and went back inside.

They moved south through the slime field first. Eren could see the tracks Fury had found last night. Three sets of deep footprints in the soft earth, each one wider than his boot and pressed at least two inches deeper. Whatever made these was heavy.

Emily crouched next to one of the prints and ran her finger along the edge. “Wide foot. Flat sole. No claws.” She sniffed the dirt which was a thing hunters apparently did in this world. “Leather wrapping. They wear boots.”

“Boots means equipment. And they look heavy as shit!” Eren smiled when Emily nodded with his words. She wasn’t shy about curse words and she was chill for most of slurs he would rarely use.

She looked so cute with her head shake…

“Equipment means also dangerous, silly.” Emily stood up and adjusted her katana on her back. Her hunting clothes fit tight from the run and Eren had to look somewhere else for a second before his head went to the wrong place.

The tracks led southeast toward the swamp border. They followed them for about an hour before the prints turned east into denser forest. Emily took point with Fury running ahead and Rury covering their left flank.

The forest changed about two hours out from the village. The trees got thicker and the undergrowth went from scattered bushes to a dense wall of ferns and moss that came up to Eren’s waist. Something was making low vibrations in the ground that he could feel through his boots and a clicking sound came from the canopy above them that didn’t belong to any bird he’d heard in two months of living here.

Emily held up her fist. They stopped.

Through the trees about three hundred meters ahead Eren could see figures moving in a clearing. Big figures. He activated Wolf Eyes and the distance snapped into focus.

Orcs.

The first one was standing near a fire pit with its back to them. It was taller than Thadric by at least a full head and twice as wide. Iron plate armor on the chest and arms, strapped together with leather belts that looked like they’d been repaired a hundred times over. A two-handed axe hung from its belt and the blade was bigger than Eren’s torso.

The second orc was sitting on a log sharpening a weapon with a stone. Full metal helmet with a nose guard and chain mail underneath the plates. This wasn’t a beast wearing scrap metal. This was a soldier maintaining equipment the way Thadric maintained his ranch tools.

Eren counted six more in the clearing. All armored and fully armed with metal things.

These things make trolls look like puppets.

He wanted to get closer. His stats were over 50 and his body was telling him he could take most of them in a fight.

But something stopped him. A feeling in his chest that he’d learned to trust over the past weeks. His half-elf instincts had saved him from a shadow panther and three poison trolls by screaming “wrong” at exactly the right moment.

They were screaming now!

The weakest orc in that camp felt like Emily at full power.

Not Emily cooking breakfast or teaching Rosa sword swings but Emily cutting through six trolls and a kobold formation without breaking a sweat. And there were eight of them sitting around cooking lunch.

Orcs were tinier than trolls but they were smarter and stronger and more packed with armors.

They were really dangerous.

He couldn’t see their levels, but he really wanted to.

Unfortunately, the system didn’t work that way unless he killed them or the totem scanned them. He was guessing based on how his body reacted and his body was saying Level 40 or higher.

“We should go back.” Emily whispered. She’d seen enough too. Her hand was on her katana grip but not drawing. Emily didn’t draw unless she was committing and she wasn’t committing to eight orcs in full plate.

They pulled back quietly. Fury led them on a wide circle east and then north.

[Eight fighters. Three fires. Supply bags.] Fury reported once they were safe. [This is not a scouting party. They live there.]

“A forward camp.” Emily said. She chewed on her bottom lip. “How far from the village?”

“Four hours for us. Six or seven for them because they’re bigger and heavier.”

“That’s still close enough for a morning raid mister.” Her eyes were sharp but her voice was calm. Emily got calmer as things got worse. It was one of the things that scared him about her.

They spent the next four hours checking the other directions because Emily wanted a full picture and she wasn’t going home without one.

North side was the worst. Three separate troll groups within a two-hour walk, all bigger than the ones Eren had been fighting. Two were the regular Rotwood type, bark-skinned and leaking green sap. The third group was different. Bigger, darker, with what looked like natural stone plates growing out of their shoulders like some kind of biological armor.

Emily called them Mountain Trolls. “My mother killed one once.” She said it while studying one through the trees from a distance. “Took her three hours and she came home with a broken rib and a new scar.”

East was kobold territory but not the scattered patrols they’d been dealing with. Eren spotted two separate camps with at least thirty kobolds each. These ones had iron crossbows instead of crude wooden ones, matching leather armor and organized watch rotations. One camp even had a crude watchtower built from lashed-together logs.

“These aren’t wild kobolds.” Eren said.

“Griks was right. The master’s been arming them.” Emily looked at the watchtower. “And training them.”

The west side was the only direction that felt somewhat safe and even that had a surprise. They stumbled across two groups of creatures Eren had never seen before fighting each other in a torn-up clearing. Giant foxes the size of small vans against a pack of wolves that made Fury and Rury look like puppies. The battle was fast and ugly and neither side noticed the four figures watching from the tree line.

[Those wolves are not our kind.] Fury said. His voice had an edge Eren hadn’t heard before. [Wild. No pack bond. No intelligence. Just hunger.]

Rury pressed against Eren’s leg. [I don’t like them. They smell wrong.]

The fight ended when the largest fox killed one of the wild wolves by biting it nearly in half. The remaining wolves scattered and the foxes disappeared west into the undergrowth.

Emily studied the carnage on the ground. “The forest is filling up. Everything is being pushed toward the village from all directions.”

So the orcs are camping four hours south. The trolls are thicker than ever in the north. The kobolds are organized and armed in the east. And even the west has giant predators fighting each other over territory. Everything is closing in and the totem keeps getting weaker.

What the hell am I supposed to do with all this?

..

They got back to the village in the late afternoon.

Eren was walking toward the house when Rabbu-i appeared from the direction of her place near the forest edge. She fell into step beside him and hooked her arm through his before he could react. Her skin was warm and she smelled like crushed wildflowers and something spicy underneath that he couldn’t name.

“You’re back.” She walked close enough that her hip bumped against his with every step. “How was it?”

“Bad. Eight orcs in full armor south of us.”

“That sounds terrible.” She squeezed his arm against her chest. “You need to rest. My place is quiet.”

He knew what that meant. He’d dated enough women before Emily to recognize the difference between a genuine offer of rest and an invitation that had nothing to do with sleeping.

And his body was interested. That was the part he hated admitting. Days without Emily and his stats making everything worse. Rabbu-i was pressing herself against him and his half-elf hormones were not cooperating with his brain.

But Emily hadn’t put Rabbu-i on the list. Selena and Lyra were the first two. Rabbu-i was freelancing.

“I need to talk to Emily first.” He pulled his arm free gently.

Rabbu-i smiled. “Of course. Emily first.” She let go and stepped back but her eyes stayed on him for a couple extra seconds. “For now.”

She walked away and Eren forced himself not to watch.

I need to level up to 50 and I need to stop getting ambushed by beautiful women on the way home from actual military missions.

He found Rosa near the garden with Mel and Nimbo. Rosa had her phone out and was showing them something on the screen. Mel’s face was about two centimeters from the glass.

“What is that?” Mel pointed at the screen. “Is that a tiny person inside the glass?”

“It’s a video.” Rosa tapped play. “Moving pictures with sound.”

Nimbo leaned over his sister’s shoulder. “How does the person fit inside?”

“They don’t fit inside. It’s… never mind. Just watch.”

Rosa scrolled through her camera roll showing them photos of buildings, cars, her kindergarten class from last year. Mel kept pointing at things and asking questions faster than Rosa could answer. Nimbo was quieter but his eyes were huge.

Eren leaned against the garden fence and watched them. Rosa was laughing and explaining and her whole face was lit up in a way he hadn’t seen since she got here. She looked like herself again. The Rosa from three years of dating who could talk to anyone about anything and make them laugh within five minutes.

He added walkie-talkies to the shopping list in his head. Two pairs at least. They needed real communication between patrol groups before things got worse.

He turned toward the house to find Emily.

But walking past the totem he slowed down. Two more leaves had turned yellow since yesterday morning. Kelion had said the tree was weakening for the first time in a century and Eren could see it now with his own eyes.

The dragon was watching this tree. The master was watching this tree. And whatever was underneath it was big enough to show up on a stone map carved by elves who’d been dead for hundreds of years.

Eren walked into the house and found Emily sharpening her katana at the kitchen table.

She looked up. “How bad?”

He sat down across from her. “We need to talk about an evacuation plan.”

Emily’s hand stopped mid-stroke on the blade. She held his eyes for a long second and then went back to sharpening.

“Tell me everything.”

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