Chapter 28

These nine viscous creatures were obviously more experienced and some kind of upgraded orcs that are now coming towards us. They also looked stronger with rippling muscles compared to the ones in the demon box dream state. Plus the fact that the larger orcs created more fear from their wicked presence.

Curiously they seem to be wearing some kind of feather and skull decorations as part of their tribal insignia. We started to notice there also were pained symbols on their shoulders or on their chest, with some kind of rank markings too. Some of the jagged symbols differed from each other, but still all of them seemed to be symbols of violence and cruelty like slashes, skulls, claws, teeth, or spears. Orcs obviously didn’t value clothes much, but rank insignia were very visibly large in bright colors from various dyes on their bodies, showing their militaristic lifestyle.

Suddenly to our shock and horror the nine really big orcs were running towards us. I heard some of the others praying, and some of them swearing from the stress.

“Why do people want to be adventurers in stories? It looks scary,” Rina suddenly said.

“I don’t know either Rina. It doesn’t make any sense,” Asakura responded.

“Ah crap,” Yumi gasped. She was trying to stay ready, but I could see her and the others were terrified, almost to the point of shaking in their boots.

“This is intimidating...” I admitted openly.

The orcs hit us with full force and tried to bowl us over with their inertia and battle rushing techniques. In order to do so they had charged and ran fast suddenly, but Akira instantly chopped his log down and crushed the first leading orc’s face and skull. I also then noticed, it was partly because Akira’s hands were bigger that he could wield such a log, which I hadn’t picked up on before.

Seeing the lead orc die instantly didn’t help the enemy in front of us. That had a lot of impact on the morale of the other orcs following him. A lot of the rest of us either dodged, or parried as they ran into us.

But the effect of hitting their squad boss, made them not want to approach us, giving us time to maneuver and strike back!

Remembering way back in middle school during recess that I would end up dropping the ball, whenever I flinched when someone threw it to me I knew in order to not ‘drop the ball’ here it would require full concentration in the same way. I instead embraced the idea of smacking into the orc up close without closing my eyes or flinching. I would have to be unafraid of them hitting into me, but cutoff their blow before it would connect and watch for the timing carefully of both together.

The one big orc charging me had swung his club down so hard on my axe blade that the durable steel had made his club snap in half. He was surprised, but then saw my axe was a vastly superior metal alloy to the orcs’ own homemade wood spears and clubs.

The exploit of steel against wood would always work in my favor!

But the problem is that he’s still bigger and stronger than I am!

So instead, he’d pulled out a secondary hand axe of some kind, also primitively made proceeding to follow up with a new approach. So the harder he swung or attacked me the more a brittle non-metal weapon would be against the axe. But then he adapted and realized he had to be careful of his weapons breaking and that he didn’t have an infinite supply of weapons. Some of the others had a benefit of defense against the charges with their long handled sturdy spears.

But I was lucky I had a sturdy alloyed axe and not a sword. An axe blade is wider, got more depth, and less narrow than a sword and therefore more durable; being built to take pressure, but a sword blade would have gotten notched or damaged on a heavy swing like that I think. Even if it didn’t get nicked or damaged now, in the future it could easily happen.

Some of the kids weren’t able to parry effectively though, and nearly died in the first crash of forces against each other. They knocked over one of the smaller kids that had recently joined us, and Sensei and Rina only stayed alive because the extra spear length had let Sensei brace her foot on the spear butt and get first strike by piercing an orc in the chest that had been trying to run up and grab her. With it being on the ground it forced the one that attacked them to be instantly gutted as it ran against the sharp end of the spear, providing that the first strike wasn’t missed. Rina tried to follow her example, but was a bit clumsier, thus they both concentrated on the same orc. Yuriko fell to the ground also from the orc charge, but before she could be finished off Akira kicked his foot into the orc’s chest plate, making it shrink back and yelp as it was knocked back harshly into the dirt.

This was a start. They were starting to get used to the idea of having to work together in basic combat techniques.

It’s almost miraculous more people didn’t die than they did. But there were casualties in the other people that we’d gather up last minute.

I had to block the attack of a really heavy guy, and then roll away from the chop of a second one also hitting me at nearly the same time as the first. With two on me at the same time I couldn’t even get a chance to counter yet, having been forced into defense mode. Again and again, I had to dodge and block chops from hand axes and try to keep a distance so I wouldn’t get swarmed. The long length of my axe handle and its durable coating on the handle also helped with having an advantage against the smaller length primitive hand axes.

Again Akira seemed to help us hold the line by blocking another orc and then using his massive log to maim a new attacker’s arm, but we were still struggling. Now with more orcs than defending people we were forced to put everyone on the front line. But I worried the girls wouldn’t be able to handle this, and I was probably right.

Somehow I’d have to also cover getting the others back up.

Still there was another extra orc that come out of nowhere and ended up grabbing the same girl that barely escaped death only a few seconds ago, with her being knocked down early in the skirmish. We were instantly alerted by her terrorized screams.

“Damn it!” I heard Akira scream as now two orcs were trying to disarm the girl, so they could carry her off. We only had a few seconds before she would be taken. But both Akira and I were already busy and being hard pressed.

But then we were surprised again, suddenly Yumi had a blue screen popup and even the orcs were surprised and didn’t attack her. It seems they were afraid of the blue screens for some reason, I noticed. Out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t help but notice a blue energy shield had also manifested itself having clamped tightly around her arm, wrist, and some kind of strange anchoring device on her shoulder all of which was made of the same blue energy. With all which she could easily block orc attacks and not be worried about them trying to disarm her. Her eyes were wide in surprise and excitement.

When orcs hit against it unlike before she suddenly wasn’t getting jarred or flinching anymore. “Oh sweet!” she said like she’d just won the lottery. In a way it was, since the currency of this world is survival.

A defender magic shield! That was just the right timing too. I was lucky to have seen one of them but didn’t quite understand how they worked yet.

The glow of the blue energy from the magic shield did also seem very similar to the color of the blue spark of my heal. It was a strange translucent pale glowy blue in a long rectangular solid but translucent shape. Was that the color of mana? Did all mana have this color or was there several types? Would most magic skills have that same color?

“Oh, I can’t believe it! This is so addicting!” Yumi cried out, testing out the new magic glowy shield on her arm excitedly. Now she was pushing not just one but two orcs back at the same time. She could easily push them away from Rina now and hardly even had to brace her feet into the ground to do so, which I was quite thankful for since I was having trouble just watching myself.

WOW!

“Eh?!” Rina was astonished, but the rest of us were too busy to notice. Yumi shouldn’t be this strong. How was she doing that?

“Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” Akira growled, warning her as Yumi tried to push forward beyond the boundary of our line.

But she just smiled, “oh you don’t understand, even when they grapple the shield it’s like…really light! It has some kind of anti grappling anti heavy feeling magic applied to it, I think. They can’t pull down at the shield but it resists it. It also still has …I don’t know some…mass when I bash them with it! Teehee!” She said a bit too cheerful. She was now using it aggressively.

“Uh, that’s not a good idea to stray from the defense line. Stay with us,” I said, seeing her push forward as I kept dodging orc attacks.

Actually I was really lucky.

That session with fox girl trying to kill me had actually helped out a lot, particularly where my courage was concerned. Without it I wouldn’t be surviving or able to keep up with Akira and Yumi now because of their newly manifested abilities; even though I didn’t want to believe it I wasn’t super human. I realized that part of losing also came from hesitation and not willing to decide quickly what to do when bad situations surface. Without realizing it, she’d prepared me for this and for being ready to fight orcs without school fortifications. The extra training was really helpful and had also helped me be mentally ready for them being in the open against us, not be dependent on other tools too much, and not just from the physical part of the stress.

Fighting the orcs out in the open was about ten times scarier than the school because we didn’t have a wall of desks to control their flow with, and we didn’t have the brick walls of the school either as a safeguard. We were just lucky that these orcs were front line fighters without any range weapons. The hellish feeling of being out in the open with no cover felt like being caught with your pants down in a way. I couldn’t run because the others were stuck here too, and we didn’t have enough protections or armor and weapons still.

But even with fox girl’s training I could feel fear trying to grip at my heart, eroding at my will. Even though I was getting the basics of what worked, I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that mathematical it’s impossible to do something like this forever without something bad happening or getting hurt, and that was attacking my courage constantly. It felt like winter training to get you ready for the cold. The training seems very similar like being against the cold and for how to live in it still works, but you still would feel the cold and how awful it is. But it did help that there were more students earlier to help us out and having people next to me helped me to stay calm when I was tempted not to be.

Finally I was able to chop at one of the orcs in the bicep part of the arm when they’d gotten tired from swinging away at my defense. It later ended up becoming a fun spot to disable them from by aiming at elbow joints. The impact made a ‘spluck’ kind of sound and then he was screaming and on his knees. The green blood spray also showered his own face momentarily blinding himself on his own gore. Since he had a huge chunk out of his arm with the bone being exposed he wasn’t able to stay and fight from the injury alone, retreating awkwardly crawling away. His arm hung limply and uselessly; it didn’t kill him, but there was a chance the sickness and disease of a bad wound like that would a few days later.

But I had to make sure Rina and Sensei were safe before going after wounded trash orcs. But if I worried too much over them I’d compromise my own defense and blocking.

“How long are they going to keep coming? I see more of them ahead and they’ve noticed us,” Akira said.

“Where’s Ranger Kid? I think he ditched us!” Asakura Sensei suddenly said.

“Eh? Why? Why would he do that to us? He left us?!” Rina gasped, clearly upset while exerting herself to her fullest. She was having a hard time, and I felt my anger surge when out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of her skinned knee and shin.

“What?!” I cried out.

Then I see that she was right.

I hadn’t had a chance to think about it before, because he wasn’t a permanent group member. But he’d sworn to help us, and still bailed on us. But his loss was a big deal; the rangers had shown their value several times ever since we’d discovered them.

“I was wondering where that little cockroach went,” Akira growled said in surprise. Akira then mumbled something about ramming the log up his ass when he saw him next. I think the others agreed it was a good idea.

“Why didn’t he at least try to get some of us to flee with him?” the new girl who I didn’t know said.

“Don’t know. I’m watching you for if you try to run,” Yuriko said. Yuriko ironically had a lot of grit, but wasn’t that effective as a fighter yet. She was just barely avoiding not getting killed it seemed.

While we fought we could hear other sounds of battle nearby…things were getting worse.

“I’m tempted to run right now,” the girl I didn’t know said, while crying miserably. It was the same one that was almost carried off. Yumi had just saved her by bashing the orc with her shield only a few seconds ago. I could now see how the she magic shield also helped counter Yumi’s natural lack of strength, smaller, stature, and less mass than the orcs.

Crying girl still stayed with us though, but she looked like she might run if anything changed for the worse. I could still hear her sniffing after she tried to stop crying long after that.

“Those three other kids wouldn’t have died if Ranger Kid hadn’t done his job and stayed to help out. If you want to be mad at someone be mad at him instead,” Akira growled suddenly, while renewing his vigor against the orcs in his swings. He used his aggression to punish more of the orcs and made them bleed terribly. Yet even as we were gutting them a few more orcs were almost to us and reinforcing their losses.

“They are coming from more than one place ahead of us,” Yumi realized. “There’s the spot ahead and a place West North West from us that they are coming from.”

“Both those places had several huts each where survivors were gathering,” Sensei said. “Are those people gone? Were they killed or…? Did they evacuate in time?” The last part of what she said made our blood chill.

None of us answered. We were afraid to even know. We had lumps of anguish in our hearts to answer that question already. The screams we’d heard before implied…

Have to focus on what’s in front of me now, I thought to myself.

Akira savaged another with a skull crush, and I managed to clip the knee of mine with the blade of my axe at almost the same time as each other. Overall I was doing OK, since I didn’t have super strength like Akira. As it fell to the earth it looked like it was screaming for mercy, and so I gave it the mercy of death after chopping its arms into something that looked like it had just come out of a blender stained sewer dark green.

“Rina and Sensei try to stay in the back now that Yumi has more ability to fight,” I encouraged.

The orcs weren’t as organized now, but there was a steady stream of them.

Akira kept chopping at them.

Yumi provided cover.

I just tried to stay alive through sheer desperation. Since my skills weren’t either offense or defense it was like I was being pushed harder than the others, since I couldn’t reasonably stay in the back and let Rina or Sensei get hurt. Both of them tried to help support me even, with their spear attacks also creating openings for me to dodge. But sometimes they had to watch out for other things too.

It wasn’t easy to admit also that my movements were blocky and crude. It was a long way before I’d be a true master at combat. When I swung, because of partly the fear gripping at my heart, it wasn’t easy to make the movements fluid and smooth. This was why I also used the system of blocking and dodging till I could find an opening. But somebody with good training and real skills wouldn’t need to do that. They’d be able to beat the orcs in their swings and cut them down before it happened.

Suddenly I noticed a new problem that I’d not realized before. It was trying to improve my technique that made me notice it, when I was trying to think about how to improve my footwork.

“Akira! Yumi! After each batch of orcs, back up a few places; the rest of you back up too,” I said.

“What?” Akira questioned, but then he caught my meaning when he nearly slipped too.

With over ten dead orcs suddenly the ground was getting slippery with gore. If we stayed in the same place the whole time then we’d end up dying from falls or accidents with enemies coming at us. Dodging orc blows is also much more dangerous with slippery gore around, which was why I was the first to notice it.

“We do have a small problem,” said Sensei, interrupting.

“What’s that?” I said.

“If we’re still fighting them here when it gets dark tonight, they will check mate us. We need an exit strategy,” she replied.

Dang it.

She’s right.

They have advantages that we don’t in the dark.

“What?” Akira asked. Then he had a big revelation of how bad that might be. “Oh, yeah. I guess just staying here forever is probably a good way to get surrounded.”

That serious phrase made the new girl starts to openly bawl, when she heard the word, ‘surrounded’.

“They have more supplies than we do. They will have equipment prepared for fighting in the dark and have been doing night raids from many years of murder planning; while we don’t even have food supplies,” she explained.

“Good job thinking ahead,” Rina cheered.

“You aren’t supposed to be cheerful when she says that. Don’t dwell on the negative too much either you,” Yumi replied.

“But Shun and Akira will work it out because of Sensei’s warning right?” she said back.

“We’ll make it work out, Asakura,” I said as I parried another orc’s attack. I just wasn’t sure how exactly that was going to happen yet. Like before, it worked well to fight them first with parrying, and then counter striking. Since the orcs were so focused on attacks, this type of combo usually worked well in wounding them. Sometimes I even had an edge over Akira, since Akira’s attacked focused on attack versus attack. So if he didn’t kill them right away he could potentially have a hard time. Sometimes his wrists were getting scratched up it seemed too.

“I think I’m getting this,” Yumi said, using the energy shield to bash one, and then followed it up with a killing blow with her other hand having a spiked club, also taken from orcs.

“Good, because more of them are coming,” Akira said. He tried to wipe orc gore off his log but it wasn’t working well. I actually thought lots of gore on the log would have like more fear effect from his monster aura, but if I said that it might upset him.

“Uh, what the hell is that?” Sensei said even more scared than before.

I’d been too focused on the new opponent in front of me to see it, but now I could catch out of the corner of my eye something really big was with these new orc group that was gathering just far enough away from us to be obviously planning to engage us. They were hanging back a bit and watching us, while using the big guy to rally more support with his death threats and angry rants to stir up more of their friends before coming against our line. It was working, though he sometimes had to beat the orcs to get their fighting spirit raised. That was also something to worry about too, because if we waited for them to get too many allies we’d get swept away easily.

It also seemed that the orcs were sometimes comparing our scary looking Akira to their much bigger looking champion in deciding if they were going to be bold.

No, it couldn’t be…

This…

This was one of the same types of creatures that had nearly killed me before that the fox girl had summoned in that dream state place! It also looked strikingly much like him! This was really bad, really bad. I briefly understood why some people could be tempted to pee their pants when they weren’t sleeping. This was one of those types of situations for some of our team members. I resisted of course.

But the hair on my neck was standing up in alarm. In the demon box’s dream state just one of them alone way outmatched me, but this fellow had a full orc squad with him.

How would I keep the others alive?

“What is that ugly fuck over there Shun?” Akira asked, hoping I’d know. He somehow felt reluctant to engage it too. By now, we were managing pretty good control of the few orcs that were engaged. There wasn’t as much danger as before.

“Its evil is what it is. If it’s evil then we crush it right?” Yumi said, without stopping her impenetrable defense. Her mentality of good and evil…was she...I wondered if her class or job was a paladin or a knight? Was she picking up on the evil, or just coincidence that she’d felt that?

“It’s an ogre,” I said adamantly. “And don’t get anywhere close to it. It’s basically a killing machine and not something we’re ready for.” I recalled nearly dying several times on the other one, just from trying to run from it, let alone engage it.

“Are you sure?” Rina asked me.

“I’m sure. But I can’t tell you how I know,” I replied.

“I can take it,” Akira said, flexing his muscles so Yuriko could see. He appeared to briefly be flirting with her. Yuriko looked nervous though, seeing the other guy had at least another foot of height beyond his own.

“Ah no, no you can’t. I forbid it,” I said, thinking it through and very sure of myself. Akira would not be enough for this thing. Even with strength half of what I’d seen in the other one I doubted Akira would do anything to it. Even he would have a hard time with its savage ferocity, I thought. I remembered also how easily it had smashed up the stone masonry of the stairs in the dream state. To my knowledge, I wasn’t that confident that Akira could smash up masonry like that.

“So what do we do?” Sensei asked. I understood her then. She wanted logic to fight her fear. Her and my kind of thinking was somewhat similar in the idea of if you had a plan in mind you’d be OK if the plan had contingency options. It was similar to how I fought, while Akira and Yuriko just used their strength and force with tenacity.

“The only one that can fight this thing without getting mauled to death is Yumi and her magic shield. Akira you’ll have to hide behind a girl this time and look for openings to hit back,” I said.

“Me? B-b-but that’s …big…bigger than Akira! It’s also freaking scary! Hell no! I refuse! Let’s run away,” she gasped. “Please let’s run away right now! If it’s too big for Akira, then it’s too big for me!” she cried out.

“With legs that long he’d catch up and just pick us off one by one,” Sensei said logically.

Crap, she had a point.

“Your magic glowy shield somehow can cushion blows. Think about it, there’s no way the orcs should be able to be deflected with your shield with you having such low strength. They are probably more than twice as strong as you. I’ve seen you try to lift weights in gym class so I know what I’m talking about. Yet it works because it’s got something inside it to cushion the blows and amplify your need. You even push them back with it because what you said about its anti-grappling is true. If it’s anyone else blocking the ogre, one hit from that thing will surely maim and kill them very quickly,” I said.

“I’m sc-scared,” Yumi whispered hoarsely with really big eyes seeing it approach.

“So am I,” Akira breathed slowly. He had a deer in the headlights kind of look, that might have been funny to look at with his goatee, if we hadn’t been about to die.

If it’s Yumi and that energy shield thing she had…we might just live through this if we do it right. Maybe…

But it will only work if we can convince her to fight.