Chapter 25 Part A

But then something strange happened after I couldn’t get Sunghee to talk anymore. I felt myself pulled through and warped to somewhere else. The sensation was strange like suddenly I was melting into the floor, which had turned into black cold goo. Then I was falling, much like the dream of when you are falling.

Seconds of darkness later I found I was a different spot where I was spat out onto the floor. I brushed myself off and saw after the darkness faded I was in some kind of medieval stone structure. It was similar to the cell from before in architecture and construction. However, instead of being in the dungeon cell this appeared to be some kind of castle training room. It had very little in it that I could pick up or use but there were some kind of wooden dummies to practice shooting arrows at, and martial arts posts, and other kinds of dummy posts for other kinds of melee weapon training.

Near those two areas another corner of the room had what looked like some kind of dueling pit, complete with greenish black blood dripping there onto the dirt floor of the pit, even though the room appeared to be empty. It appeared to have been used recently, but there wasn’t any bodies left in the room.

But it strangely didn’t feel like a human castle. Like before it was a bit dark, and giving the feel of being underground without being able to see any windows but this place had a lot of room to train in. There was probably at least twenty orcs worth of space to be able to train, which could all be used at once. There wasn’t any real ornamentation or furniture that suggested a culture that had writing and reading, or advanced crafts. Everything seemed to be for war only, with an armory in the last corner of the room. There were strange symbols painted in dried blood on the walls though, probably some kind of death threats but I couldn’t read them. Plus the masonry and the way the stone was fit together had a poor look to it, though it did look stable.

Being an orc room it also smelled funny. I didn’t like the smell. It was like the mix of stale air and poor castle hygiene.

The only non-war ornamentation was a stone staircase that was near the armory area of the room and that rose up onto a parapet area near the tops of the high ceiling-ed walls so observers could look down into the area below. The other side of the balcony also had a matching symmetrical staircase.

If not for the pine pitch torches on the wall I wouldn’t have been able to see. Because of that light I could see the armory didn’t look like it had anything usable. Everything looked broken and rusted.

But where was I? Were the rooms connected then? Did this room connect with where I was before?

“Hahhhhhhhh!!!!!” I heard the yell just as the sword came down from the top parapet balcony area to attack me. It hit the ground heavily and I could feel the thud of its owner had come down with it.

“Whattttttttttt!” I fled and dodged, but the sword crashed into the earth again from a second heavy blow that was aimed at my head and missed. It was a type of primitive orc sword and then I could see an orc holding it while glaring at me with murder in its red eyes. He hissed and spit at me, but didn’t seem very smart otherwise, or very cunning.

Where had he come from? How was he here? I hadn’t seen any orcs trapped in the dark crystals. This was still the demon box dream pocket dimension. The demon box also didn’t belong to the orc boss anymore. So how had this thing here? Was he here the whole time or did someone bring him here?

I dodged again to the left, and ran while he was chasing me.

Damn! I didn’t know I was going to be fighting so I didn’t have the steel axe with me. Where did I leave it again? “Have to think fast…Have to think fast,” and “have stay moving,”…I kept telling myself.

I dodged again as he kept chasing me. This was a smaller orc, so it didn’t take a lot of trouble to evade him. But as I quickly found out, even the small orcs are really dangerous. He even resorted to trying to spit at me while chasing me.

“Shun! You can’t escape me! I will have my revenge!” a feminine voice seemed to echo down through the ceiling. It was a girl’s voice that I didn’t recognize before. I felt puzzled wondering who it could be. I’d never done anything I was ashamed of to any women, that I knew of; except once in first grade I’d put a booger in a mean girl’s tuna fish sandwich.

“Who are you? How did you know my name?” I called out, but there was no answer.

I still had to dodge the orc who was swinging the primitive sword still. He was strong, but not as fast as I was. So I ended up running up the stone steps and around the top of the walls on the raised balcony area while I thought up a plan and evaded. I could hear him chasing me even while the voice came down to me again. But he’d had to slow down on the stairs because of how narrow they were.

“Shun, you can’t run forever! I know where to find you!” the voice called again. It goes without saying that it wasn’t an orc’s voice, but what did she have to do with this orc? How did she know my name? It also wasn’t Sunghee’s voice, or any of the survivors that I knew so far.

As I ran I desperately remembered my axe was in the item box so I flicked the belt switch and pulled it out as I ran. Still I kept running while shutting the belt, because the axe was difficult to wield over the narrow balcony. It wasn’t that I’d really forgotten it but the sudden surprise of the situation had me in half panic and made me scatter brained.

As we came down the steps I then surprise attacked the orc who was still on the steps after I’d hit level ground. As I thought, the finer heavy metal of the axe bit through the clumsy primitive weapon easily. His arm was hurt by my blow, forcing him to end up dropping the broken sword.

I should take a closer look at it to figure out what kind of materials it was made of. But it was so dirty and primitive that made things difficult. Plus I wasn’t a metals expert, but if I could identify the materials it might help me understand the structure and ecology of how they lived. Even if the demon box had produced the orc somehow, it must have patterned him after an existing model somewhere.

He wailed in pain, and was looking at me with pure horror while I approached him to end things. Then while I swung at him again he wailed again seeing the death blow coming at him while I was impaling the axe in his chest. He died miserably after that while choking on black and green blood that was drooling down his mouth. Apparently I also learned that it’s harder for orcs to scream when they are drowning in their own blood.

That was surprising too, in games the enemies you fight don’t scream or look terrified when something is wounded or it’s suffering. Still, even an orc dying doesn’t look good. I didn’t like to watch it, but was surprised when suddenly the body evaporated into thin air. The body and blood evaporating proved we were in some kind of sub-reality after all.

“Ah, so you aren’t a wimp after all are you? When you started running away you kind of had me fooled for a bit,” the girl’s mischievous voice called down from the ceiling again. I tried to follow the voice this time, but it wasn’t working because it seemed as if the voice was coming through the ceiling materials, defying physics.

“What do you want?” I called up. I looked around again and again, behind me, in the corners, and all over the ceiling. I was also afraid she’d try to sneak up behind me, when I was looking in other places. I still couldn’t see anyone there visible attached to the voice. But she had to be observing from somewhere right?

No answer came back for a few seconds. But then there was laughter as I saw two orcs this time appearing, just like the previous one. They appeared in the middle of the training room again, and narrowed their eyes looking around until they spotted me.

So I faked them out and ran away again. When you are outnumbered running away is good. They thought I was running for fear but in reality I was trying to get to the stairs, so they couldn’t double team me. There was a section on the stairs, right before it hit the balcony where I could still use my axe without both orcs being able to strike me at once.

As I worked over to the spot it worked. They were trapped in going up the incline in single file and I swung out to parry the orc’s attack. Then to trick him I parried a few more of his blows and tire him out letting him waste his strength and endurance, while his impatient partner ran back down the steps to cross over to the other side of the room. There, he was planning to use the other set of stairs and go up the other end of the balcony and come at me from behind.

“Ah, isn’t that cheating! Cheater! Cheater!” the girl’s voice said, as after the third parry I suddenly kicked out at the orc to stun him by knocking the wind out of him. Then I brought the axe down into his skull and ended up drenching the stairs in ugly filthy goblinoid blood, which flowed more like the viscosity of how vegetable oil flowed on the ground when you spilled it. The body and his blood then evaporated into nothing while the other orc was still trying to catch up.

Strange, why did they evaporate and leave nothing behind?

It still wasn’t enough though. By the time the second orc had caught up with me, I was down at the bottom of the stair again.

He had a sword just like the others. In fact, they all looked strikingly similar to each other as if they were all clones. Were they all clones I wondered? They could be, but I wasn’t used to seeing orcs and that made it harder for me to check the details well.

This time I tried something different. I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to disarm the orc first before he died. Would the weapon evaporate still, even if I was holding it, or would it stay with me? What about his other belongings?

The orc swung at me using all his strength so I dodged again. Then as I backed up I let him tire himself out again with a few more wild swings. He was strong but still not fast, so it could also be predictable to tell where his swings would go. Plus the more energy he used the wilder his accuracy became. After the third swing I got ready again, and then when he was about to swing for the fourth time, I again kicked out this time in his kneecap knocking him off balance. But instead of bringing the axe down on his skull, instead I chopped savagely against his arm.

The howl of pain and rage was horrific and noisy as hell. He instantly dropped his sword and was on the ground crying, while I then chopped at the other arm, before he could get control of his screaming again. While I didn’t amputate either arm, both of his arms were still terribly mangled and bleeding while he was rolling around while falling into shock. So then I kicked him in the gut and picked up his sword.

He then tried to get mad again and bite me though. Seriously how did he even retain sanity at that point? Was there some trait in orcs that made them fight even when they couldn’t win? I couldn’t help but hypothesize that this was the case because even with all his pain over and over he kept trying to bite me. There was something in their blood that made them enraged quite easily. He flailed his scrawny legs too, but his brain was being overwhelmed with all kinds of uncomfortable feelings that he didn’t know how to deal with right now.

Even though his primitive rusty sword was now hanging from my belt and he was unarmed he still tried to keep biting at me. He then tried to copy my idea of kicking so I then kicked away and stripped off his loincloth after beating him savagely with the flat blade of my axe.

Interestingly enough he couldn’t stop me from stripping him when he had the wind knocked out of him.

But the experiment was almost ruined because I noticed his clothes stank of urine and some kind of putrid orc body odor. In the end, I discovered orc clothes are only good for burning and I wondered if there was risk for catching disease by even touching them. Not to mention that orcs didn’t bathe as much as they should. However, even if they did wouldn’t that pollute the water supply? They also were good for cockroach breeding though. So I threw them away and then chopped his head off while he was going into shock from trauma.

Chapter 25 Part B

“Ah, I didn’t know you could do that. Isn’t that cheating?” the girl’s voice said pouting again. “I didn’t know you could strip their weapons in the dimensional pocket here. Orcs aren’t very smart anyway though. But at least you’ve kept me entertained,” she said tiredly and I picked up a yawn. Sure enough I could still feel the orc’s sword on my belt. It wasn’t dissolving like the dead orc.

“Who are you?” I called out, keeping my grip steady on my weapon. I wanted to try a peaceful negotiation, but someone who made orcs chase you forced you to be alert.

No answer to my question, but the voice did respond about ten seconds later.

“Maybe that one was too small. You outsmarted that one but he was just a lowly runt sized grunt. That was the first orc I found in the boss orc’s memories you know? It was the friend he killed to have his first real meal as a warrior as a young-ling. The orcs raise their babies to kill each other to enter manhood when they don’t have enough food too. But they aren’t as interesting as other creatures so I probably can’t tell you much more than that. If you don’t kill, then you don’t climb ranks in their society. Bet you didn’t know that huh? Should I send something bigger this time?” she said with a bit too much excitement.

I swore in frustration and then ran to the stairs.

Just as I’d gotten to the top part of the stairs sure enough she’d summoned another orc. But this orc wasn’t like the others. He was a good foot taller, looked meaner and with bigger teeth and muscles. As soon as he saw me then he screamed some battle cry and charged at me with his full strength. I discovered he was running faster somehow too, and with more zealousness.

I didn’t like this. He looked more dangerous. The other little one didn’t look half this scary!

He hit the stairs fast enough, and I was saved by the fact that the stairs forced him to not run up them as he was going after me. I could then use the top part of the balcony’s edge for more footing and swing at him. The incline also helped to slow down his mass and inertia because his feet were so big. With the narrowness of the stairs he was slowed down considerably with his swinging too, and forced to fight clumsier.

“************* *** ******” the orc spoke something this time and I nearly froze.

It’s true I didn’t understand it.

But he’d clearly said something and even gestured to me in a friendly like manner. It looked like he was trying to shake my hand. This surprised me too. I’d thought the orcs were all dumb animals, but he’d tried to establish contact.

I was about to lower my guard thinking he was trying to parley with me when he suddenly swung out with a big club that smashed into the balcony rail, sending splinters of wood everywhere. I barely got out of the way in time. I dodged again, and again, realizing it was a mistake to try to talk to him. Furthermore, some of the wood splinters had stung me in the cheek, and my skin felt numb but at least wasn’t bleeding very much.

The girl’s voice was now laughing at me for awhile, until I then swing the steel axe with all my strength and it broke through the orc’s club and clipped part of his arm. Unfortunately it wasn’t a grave enough wound to limit the use of his arm, but it did scare him.

He said something else in that strange language and then tried to trick me, then tried to fake going to run left but went right. I almost fell for it but jumped back at the last second as he tried to grapple me for my weapon. He then swung out and tried to kick me so I dodged it and kicked him instead in the other knee, where his balance was currently resting on. He recovered and picked himself up quicker than I liked.

With renewed vigor, he was coming at me again as I looked for another defensible position. But I had to be careful because he was stronger and taller than I was, and as a result I wasn’t able to put much force into the next hit after that. Plus he was built really solid. I had to prioritize not being dog piled or having my weapon stolen from me.

That surprised me. If I’m in a demon box pocket dimension, then who had summoned the orcs? If their bodies had dissolved then they were some kind of pocket summon or an illusion right? So how did this one have intelligence? It clearly had enough intelligence to covet my weapon and try to trick me in order to go after it.

“Oh, wow, you are doing so well! I’m pleased!” the girl’s voice said again.

“You made them smarter this time didn’t you?” I called back angrily.

The voice didn’t answer back. But I think I heard a really quiet but twisted laugh, “fu, fu, fu.”

The strong and huge orc tried to fake me out again with which direction he’d attack from, and a few more after that. But I saw it in time and this time swung the axe low under his arms that tried to grab it in mid-swing. When I parried my axe, being heavy metal against his primitive metal, also helped me to counter his heavier weight and inertia; partly because he could see his weapon had the potential to break against mine. My axe’s blade bit into his knee cap making a sickening crunch and exposing the flesh underneath while showering the floor with black and green gooey blood that sprayed outwards away from us and that stank. He then fell on his back, and I was able to follow up with another hit from him being not ready to defend himself.

He screamed like he was rabid dog mad when he got hit too, just like the other one. Unfortunately once you get hit with something heavy and sharp or blunt you aren’t really going to be fighting much longer after that in reality. It’s too hard to keep your concentration after all. Pain is incapacitating after all.

So I finished him off too, after mauling his arms and then robbing him. I ended up cutting his belt off, which gave me a small sack of money. Strangely enough when I looked at it his coins while he was bleeding to death and suffering a lot, I could see the orc money wasn’t pillaged human money. It had tusked orc king faces on it. There weren’t very many coins, but there were a few still, and some is better than none. So I slipped them in my pockets.

That was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard of. I’d expected it would be some kind of human money that had been stolen. But why would the orcs have their own money? I hadn’t expected that they would be that clever. So if they found human money were they melting it down and putting their own symbols and faces on it? What a weird concept, or a lot of hate for humans.

“What the hell?” I said aloud.

Then I finished off the orc while trying to study my surroundings more. After all, having them scream like that non-stop is terrible for your ears. I was getting tired of it. So noisy…

“Well I didn’t expect you would beat that one. You look kind of weak. I doubt you can handle two of them…so sorry for the inconvenience coming up!” the voice said in a sing-songy lilt.

“Damn it...”

Two more orcs just like the previous one spawned in the middle of the courtyard.

It was interesting to observe them. They didn’t act like orcs in a game. They actually stopped, then saw me, and pointed at me to alert each other while shouting commands to each other. In a game they would just run at you with no facial expressions and no other unnecessary movements in their limbs, which these did do, often with blocky movements. That was very weird too. It was surreal even. As they ran at me I went for the stairs again, but the orcs hesitated.

They also didn’t rush at me blindly. How was that possible?! It seemed they’d figured out it was a trap.

One of them noticed the stairs were dangerous, and if I’m not mistaken he was telling the other why I’d gone to the stairs, and that it was a trap. I could see him pointing too, and he had a smug look on his face.

They both stopped and then began pointing at me and laughing at me, not wanting to go into my crowd control area of influence. They didn’t approach but stayed down there. The way they talked was strange too, not only was it a different language, but the way the orcs spoke it was like their lower jaw was kind of heavy somehow and they’d kind of …stick out their lower jaw a lot in the strange words they used.

Dang. I can’t cut them off?

Were these two even smarter than the other two then?

Because they were laughing and taunting me I picked up a few rocks from the ground and then chucked them at them. While doing so they tried to bait me to come at them instead. I missed the first few times, but then hit one of them in the face pretty hard, which made him scream at me some more. The damage was very small, but I’m sure getting hit in the face and nose feels pretty bad. I could see the blood run hot in his face under the skin as he got mad.

That finally made him charge at the stairs where I was standing.

It worked.

I’d tricked them again. Because they were both smarter, the one who hadn’t gotten hit by rocks didn’t charge the stairs with his friend. He probably was screaming at him to come back and that it was a trap but I wasn’t certain. At least that’s what I’d have said in his place. So even being smart can work against you if it gets to your fear I realized.

I parried two hits then swung the axe hard again using it to smash his club into kindling. Unlike before I’d only waited for two hits because I knew if I hesitated too long or waited, then the other orc would gang up on me, thinking I was scared or that the other orc was doing well.

The second orc was running up the other side’s staircase when I smashed the axe head into the first orc’s arm crippling it. He fell to the earth screaming and wailing in their ugly language. Then he started to look desperate and beckoned for his friend to come save him. But I wasn’t able to finish the first orc off before the second orc attacked.

This time his higher intelligence worked against me because the orcs were real; or at least they thought they were real. The second orc was now trying to save the first orc’s life. This seemed bizarre because I knew I was in another world, but the orcs were clearly brought here by magic. I hadn’t expected orcs to try to save each other either, because they are orcs and evil creatures of darkness aren’t they? Did they do that because they really cared or because it was easier to murder and pillage with more of you to share the work?

So for whoever had pulled them here to make them smarter…it said something about how dangerous that person was. I’d have to be careful with whoever it was. It seemed like she’d manipulated them somehow.

I dodged the orc who was swinging fast and desperate. In fact, he was trying to rush so fast that I ended up running away down the balcony area overlooking the training hall. When I got to the bottom of the other stairs, instead of swinging at him directly I switched things up to confuse him. So I ended up throwing a wooden stool at him, in order to throw him off balance while on the stairs. He still didn’t lose his balance on the stairs, which showed me he had some better movement balance too. The orc would have surely tripped over himself.

He swung at it, smashing it into bits with what was left of his club. Then I realized it wasn’t just their intelligence or cunning that was better. Their whole capacity or traits were all higher. His strength shouldn’t have smashed the stool so easily in one hit.

I threw another rock and he swung at it, smacking it away too. So I tried it again, but this time to tire him out making him use up his energy. Sure enough, his dexterity was also higher. He batted it away like he was playing baseball. It was easier of course for me to throw rocks at him than it was for him to be swinging away with the club. But it wasn’t foreseeable that he would successfully bat away every rock that I threw at him.

Then I ran across the open floor, while his friend was crawling away from us trying to get away and brought the axe straight down the middle of his exposed spine. I wondered if it would have mattered though, since he was already wounded to the point of never fighting again.

Both orcs screamed terribly in fury and pain. The one screamed because he was now dying and suffering and the other was doing so because his brother was now going to be a casualty within another minute of bleeding and suffering.

He was really inflamed with rage then so I had to be careful. This wasn’t what I’d expected at all. He hounded me with more vengeance than I thought possible as I tried to again go up the stairs and cross over the balcony again. But he was way too mad this time to let me go and stayed with me.

I started to grow tired even while moving, with him on my heels trying to close the distance between us. Around and around I circled again trying to find an opening. This guy was tough and making me sweat it out and have to really work hard. After another minute he nearly caught me so after I came down almost to the stairs again, I instead did what he least expected.

I rolled backwards under his legs using my axe’s blade to punch him in the balls with the sharp edge by pushing up while I rolled under. That sent him spinning into the ground.

If possible he was screaming louder than the other orcs ever could. Did raising someone’s stats or higher potential make them more self aware and more sensitive to pain I wondered? If you had more intelligence were you really more aware? So being more aware could work against you if you were desperate and thinking about your fear it seemed.

He was momentarily stunned, so with another follow up hit I was able to maim his arms, then stole the club and added it and the other weapon to my item box. Then I finished him off.

But I had to stop to catch my breath after that. I wiped the sweat off my forehead.

“Ah, I see you have the boss orc’s demon box. Good, I was hoping to confirm that part. Well you hiding it and not using it in front of me wouldn’t have helped anything. I still would’ve known you had it and where to look since I’d seen the orc boss use it before. He wasn’t very careful after all and pretty full of himself. He could never beat me by the way,” the girl said boredly.

“You know, it gets dull watching you fight orcs after awhile, so I’m going to have to end this sooner than expected. You have my condolences, this is the end for you” the voice said. “You did surprise me a couple of times with some neat tricks, but you are humans after all. And humans are the weakest of all the intelligent creatures in this world. Even with magic this world is physics based after all…and you can’t fight physics even if you have a steel axe and get really clever moves.”

“Eh? You know what physics is and means?” I wondered carefully. How was that possible?

“Tch...silly human, of course I do. Did you think that just because you are human that other creatures can’t know about math, physics, physiology and anatomy and other things related to science and arts? Humans have taken and destroyed much of that, trying to prove first right to rule,” she sounded annoyed.

I had a bad feeling suddenly when something much bigger and way more sinister appeared in the middle of the training room floor. Plus she knew about a lot of stuff, that I hadn’t expected.

Damn that thing was big…and what the frick was it?!

And what did she mean by humans being the weakest of all? Somehow that sounds really bad.