Chapter 286: Demon in the Mist

Ten men, including the guide knight, heading towards the orc village.

Despite occasionally looking back with concern for Victor and the others left amidst the herd of giant orcs, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Ultimately, the only way to help their comrades was to resolve this situation.

“There it is.”

The guide pointed ahead from behind a rock. There were several simple tents made of animal hides sewn together.

Lutz tilted his head in confusion. It was completely different from the orc village he had seen before. When he mentioned this to Josel, he immediately agreed, indicating that he had been thinking the same thing.

“Yeah, they should have the ability to build houses from wood, and quite elaborate ones at that.”

In the previous battle, hostages were locked inside large wooden buildings and set on fire, causing them considerable trouble. The memories of that incident quickly came to mind.

“Perhaps the orcs haven’t lived here for long, but have just arrived.”

Gerhardt said, stroking his white beard. Although he hadn’t participated in the previous orc battles, his knowledge of monsters was deeper than anyone else’s.

“They might have been traveling, or planning to build a temporary base to establish a full-fledged village. Hmmm…”

Gerhardt pondered while stroking his beard.

“There must be something in this area. It’s reasonable to assume that the orcs who happened to come here were inadvertently involved.”

With sharp eyes, Gerhardt took out a cloth from his pocket and covered his mouth. Everyone followed suit, putting on masks. While it wasn’t clear whether inhaling spores would cause infection, it was certain that they didn’t want to breathe in spores from mushrooms growing on the bodies of giant orcs.

“Let’s go,” Gerhardt said, leading the way. The knights couldn’t help feeling somewhat uneasy about Gerhardt taking command, but they didn’t complain.

He had performed admirably in the recent battle against the giant orc and had even engaged in a fistfight with the captain the previous night. His demeanor exuded a sense of command. The Fourth Knight Order should be the one leading here, not being directed by a suspicious old man. Arguing against this would only create confusion.

Keith, the former leader of the Thirteen Knight Order, didn’t say a word of complaint to Gerhardt, so the other knights couldn’t either.

For Keith, who had cut off his attachment to former Captain Leonard, the most important thing now was to resolve the incident and protect the village. For that, he didn’t care about his insignificant knightly pride. Even if everything was being led by a strange blacksmith and knights from other territories, he didn’t mind. Well, he did mind a little, but he kept it all to himself.

As they approached the village, they could see something resembling white mist. As they got closer, the true nature of the mist became clear.

They didn’t want to know, but they found out anyway. It was spores floating all around. And beneath their feet were countless orc corpses drained of nutrients, with mushrooms growing from them. In a sense, it could be described as a somewhat fantastical sight.

“Surprisingly, this might be what heaven looks like.”

Gerhardt made a joke that wasn’t funny. The knights looked at him with reproachful eyes, wondering what he was saying at a time like this. But only Lutz chuckled at the dull joke.

“Gerhardt-san, were you planning to go to heaven?”

“I see, it doesn’t concern me at all. Hahaha!”

Adventurers tell jokes without considering time or place.

Keith approached Josel and said.

“Your master is a little strange…”

But Josel couldn’t say anything in response at that moment.

After a good laugh, Gerhardt tightened his expression as if flipping a switch.

“Lutz, get on with it. It’s obstructing our view.”

“Yes.”

There was no need for words. The issue at hand was clearly the spores filling the air.

Lutz drew kyoka suigetsu from his waist and approached the desiccated orc corpses. With a slash, he cut through the mushrooms at their center, and the mushrooms and corpses crumbled to pieces.

“Wow,” came the admiring voices of the knights.

Lutz continued to cut down mushrooms one after another. One, two, three, four. Gruesome tombstones were destroyed, and orc corpses turned to dust, blown away by the wind.

Although the source of the spores hadn’t been completely eradicated, the visibility had improved significantly.

Suddenly, as if a spell had been broken, a towering rock wall appeared before them.

“Is this the terrain…”

As everyone looked up at the rock wall, Keith pointed ahead.

“Hey, doesn’t that crack look like something a person could fit through?”

It was a crack of a subtle size that a human could indeed enter, but it would be impossible for ordinary orcs, let alone giant ones.

“Shall we check it out?”

Gerhardt advanced without hesitation. It was the adventurer’s golden rule to investigate suspicious places.

Thud, a rumbling echoed. It was the vibration of a massive body moving, a sensation they had experienced several times over the past few days.

“…Well, I figured as much.”

Gerhardt sighed as he removed the cloth covering his sheath.

He had a premonition that there would be guards. Based on his experience so far, reaching the treasure without any trouble was never the case. There was no anger or disappointment towards fate at this point.

Looking around, Lutz and Josel also had their weapons ready as expected. Although some of the knights showed slight unease, none of them were faltering.

…I do quite like these young folks after all.

Surrounded by dependable comrades, Gerhardt chuckled and discarded the cloth covering his sword.

When the massive figure emerged from the spore mist, all the composure and joy vanished from Gerhardt’s face, replaced by a tense expression. He gulped audibly, a sign of nervousness or perhaps fear. There was an unpleasant awareness of his own discomfort.

“What… is this?”

A blasphemy against life. That’s what this creature embodied.

It was a giant orc. It had three faces, five arms, and four legs. If one were to dismantle an orc’s body and haphazardly put it back together, it might look something like this. It resembled the work of an easily bored child with clay. The problem was that it wasn’t just clay; there was life dwelling within it.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll crush you, I’ll kill you, you bastard!”

The face in the front cried out, shedding tears of blood, and attacked swinging a log it had grabbed with its two arms.

…How cruel can the world become, Damn it!

Gerhardt retracted his previous statement; he did want to curse fate after all. He lifted his mask slightly, spat, and firmly gripped his beloved sword, “Ittetsu.”

Previous chapter | TOC | Next chapter