Chapter 31

Carefully we’re trying to approach the besieged defenders on the fortified hill in the distance through sneaking.

It won’t be easy.

“Hey be careful and stay moving. We have to go around through by sneaking in and trying to go for areas the orcs haven’t infiltrated yet. But they still might have roaming solitary scouts deeper into the woods that we have to avoid. Then we can come around and get behind the other side of their lines as we move in hopefully undiscovered in the process,” The ranger kid said.

“Stay close,” he called beckoning us impatiently to hurry up the deer trails. He had a way of sometimes staying low in the long tall grass when moving to try to minimize how much of himself was visible.

Before we can even get to the area of the hill that is our target destination, there’s a long slope of woods terrain to navigate through also.

He’d led us like this for some ways already, intending to help us survive and promising we’d be helped in return, although it was probably an empty promise many of us felt anxiety about having our fellow students whom we’d known all our life become an extinct population. Thus we’d agreed to go after a vote, which I know they’d somehow regret later. I hoped it would work out too, but somehow I doubt adversity would always be profitable.

In the end though even though I didn’t believe him I knew there were more orcs behind us than ahead of us. So it made sense to try to use whatever was in front of me to try to keep going and stay alive. And if there are other defenders with us, that could buy us some survival time also while we figure out how to work magic and skills that we’d discovered.

The rest of us tried to imitate his sneaky type of moving too, but we weren’t quite as good at it and it wore at your muscles trying to do so. Moving like that also made your knees tired and could give you a backache if you hunched over while moving like that. But for the rangers somehow they made it seem easy and light to do, which it was not. Was that part of their beast mimicry magic?

I wanted to stop and ask them but we didn’t have the time for it. Yumi seemed OK moving even, thanks to the stress resistant functions of the defender job’s special energy shield.

“This sounds scary, and I can’t believe I’ve already been in a real battle,” Asakura said, her hand on my shoulder.

“Just stay close. We’ll get through it,” I said. I wasn’t trying to mean anything special just that separating from the group is basic behavior to get into trouble, but before I could resume moving suddenly Sensei ended up giving me a quick hug and making me blush. It was shocking, she felt very soft and warm. Her bulges pushed up against me. Oh, this felt good. Plus her blouse and skirt were really thin, so I could feel her body more than I should have.

I broke away, afraid I’d want to stop too long in her hug; plus it was awkward to be suddenly embraced here. Plus Rina was giving me a jealous look. She looked like she was angry too.

The others didn’t get a hug. I tried to hide my smile.

“You aren’t claiming my brother are you?” I thought I heard her whisper.

But Asakura turned before I could see her facial reaction. I’m pretty sure I saw her face turning really red.

What was that about?

I couldn’t worry about it any longer but kept moving with the others.

We tried to go for the deep part of the woods with more cover. But that by itself also was almost as scary as meeting with orcs because it meant we would have no warning if any of them came from out from the brush, and the space became more closed in. There was also no guarantee there weren’t other predators and creatures hiding in the dark here, since we knew very little about this world.

In fact, because there were no towns in this valley or the area near it, the chances of having predators in an evil world like this seemed extremely high. I suspect the ranger also ‘felt’ this inside of him, though he might not be thinking of it consciously.

The ranger was also watching for animal tracks on the ground while guiding us too, I noticed. I caught his eyes roving around looking for bent grass, paw prints, orc footprints, and scratches on the tree trunks from bears or panthers while trying to be quick about it. It must take a lot of concentration to do all that, while watching for enemies at the same time I thought. But I also realized I was learning real skills by watching how he did it.

Were the others also trying to learn those skills?

“How did you find us? Even as a ranger, that should’ve been really hard to do,” Asakura called out to him, while she was running behind me staying close.

He stopped quickly at a fork in the trail, and then looked at both. Then after he’d made up his mind which part of the trail to take he got us jogging again.

“The Crow Summoner told me,” he nodded, over his shoulder. Despite the quick break in concentration and so much to do he seemed to be sweating it out less than I thought he would be.

“Eh? Crow Summoner? So there’s another new job it seems,” Yuriko said, huffing as she kept moving up the trail.

Ranger didn’t respond. He couldn’t do both his job and talk to his all the time it seemed?

Right now he was trying to buy our survival and find the safest route possible. He took choosing our route very seriously. He felt anxious or panicky whenever we had to slow down for him to determine the best route it seemed.

We moved single file while jogging as best we could, with Yumi and Rina having the worst of it. But I knew this type of activity Rina couldn’t do for very long and soon she’d need recovery time and a safe place to rest. She struggled and was supported by Yumi with one shoulder sometimes stumbling but fighting to go forward and not wanting to pull us down. I also began helping carry one side of her though I didn’t feel the strength to do so. The others couldn’t really stop to help since needed everyone combat ready. I would have to risk going slow for her and would never leave her behind.

There was also the problem that because these were deer foraging and migration trails that we were following, they weren’t on even open terrain. Often they had a slight elevation angle that continued for a period of time, and there began to be a consistent onward climb towards the hills that were getting closer to us. They would also weave around harder to reach camouflage spots too. It’s natural that deer would seek the hills and mountains for safety to escape predators after all. But that meant that we felt the drain on our stamina more, not only from trying to jog, but it not being very fun to jog uphill even if it wasn’t a very sharp angle.

The one good part about this area was it looked untouched by humans and intelligent life, though if the orcs were to stay in this area long it too would be spoiled. If it weren’t for this land being infested with monsters, it would have been the ideal type of land and place to build a nostalgic sounding mountain cabin and live a peaceful life. The ground here seemed to have really good soil too, ideal for growing things and for life to prosper here. I wished we could stop and follow the temptation to stay and map it better so that we could one day come back here, but I dared not do so under these circumstances.

It would have been fun to build on…If only there were no orcs or orc fortress near by…

But then as I thought about it I wondered, what if there was more than one orc fortress near here? I had no guarantee there was only one. Plus they’d mustered so many people so quickly.

This was something else I had to ask the fox girl and Sunghee. In theory, I could get a lot of information out of them, which could help me in reality! But I should focus on combat information more than anything, given how crazy this world is.

How many orc scouts were spreading out over this land? Would they leave after we could get away from them or would they stay here and pollute the land?

As we continued going down the trail we organized ourselves for the best possible defense. I reasoned that if we were to be attacked it would most likely come from the front or the back if we were to keep moving steadily.

Therefore we arranged things so that Akira was rear guard, since it seemed that’s where they would come from the most predictably. This I carefully plotted out while we moved rearranging people piece by piece. Each person was given a spot and position where we thought would boost survival for everyone and not just individually survive, if we were to be attacked while traveling.

Yumi was ahead of me and Rina next to her, with the ranger being ahead of both of them with everyone else behind me. If the ranger needed help Yumi could offer support for him immediately, but she could also protect Rina for me, and easily reach others also. It would also let the ranger move unhindered guiding us. The others were between me and Akira.

I made a note to remember this arrangement for future travel protection.

The ranger was also believed to have had some combat skills, since they were the first group to figure out their jobs and role.

This fellow I also noticed as having kept his home made sling and stones ready, a spear on his back, and several throwing javelins with it. But it seemed that I wasn’t sure if I could trust his range skills just yet, or how good his normal melee combat skills were. But according to talk, the rangers do get a damage bonus with naturally made nature weaponry like handcrafted spears and sling like stuff.

We didn’t know everything though; only had some clue that Yuta had them training and practicing some kind of sparring practice with each other and that they were excited for new things they’d found, but we didn’t get a full knowledge of what those things were.

Wouldn’t range skills take more time to acquire and a lot of practice compared to up front combat? I also didn’t know how quickly the magic of this world was changing us and why and how that worked. So I decided not to trust his range skills just yet on those reasons, though he seemed a capable guide.

I made a mental note to later on ask the fox girl how the magic of this world was affecting us. Surely she’d have some clues and explanations on its reasoning as well. I also wanted to ask about technology more.

Interestingly enough Ranger’s sling appeared to be made from someone’s belt from our world that had a pocket sown into it somehow and arranged so that it could release stones without the pocket also trapping them and causing a misfire. Thus it was probably more durable than leather from this world, but even well cared for and crafted leather didn’t last forever.

Wait a minute. Something is off there.

Just now, I did notice he still had his own belt, and I frowned realizing he’d taken someone else’s belt. Was it salvaged from the dead or stolen? Or did he steal from someone? If it were the belt of a dead person wouldn’t it have blood on it? Yet the sling he’s made from the belt doesn’t have any blood on it.

Since the rangers were closely connected to Akimoto and Yuta; and also most of us didn’t bring a change of clothes to this world I doubted the extra belt was taken fairly. But I can’t confront him about it right now.

I made a mental note that Akira and I would probably have to discuss with Sensei how far we could trust Akimoto later and the others, plus have rules for the survivors to keep from preying off each other. But that also raised the question if it was ethical to take clothes from the dead and other gray areas which would take a lot of time to iron out. The more it was a gray area then the less people would be on board to things without arguing about them. If others saw the property salvaged from the dead, even if it was taken ‘fairly’, they might have a negative reaction too, noticing it belonged to their recently dead best friend. That could easily cause fights and tons of awkward situations, where some people thought things were fair game.

I also had to somehow salvage clothes for the girls trapped in the crystals and give it to them somehow…

And I need to find Rina a shirt, since she’s using my jacket and doesn’t have one anymore.

“Keep coming, it’s not too far,” ranger-san said trying to encourage us. He seemed to be trying to take his role seriously. As we moved sometimes he’d defer to me about any group decisions, since he’d noticed that Akira and Yuriko, who he already knew, seemed to be acting like I was the person in charge.

“Tell…us …about this new….job?” Sensei gasped.

“He’s here, you can ask him yourself. He’ll come down any minute now,” ranger said, going around a bend and pointed up in the air. He was looking up at a black bird high above us circling. But that didn’t make any sense to me at first.

We kept moving steadily, but I kept worrying if we were going fast enough. I was further encouraged with this kind of thinking when Akira suddenly bellowed out behind us at the end of the line and smacked an orc scout down with a killing blow with his log. Then he bashed it a few times again to make sure it was properly dead.

“Stay…moving…even if I stop…” he gasped and ended up wiping the gore from his log and on his hands onto a nearby bush. With his larger gait and pace he seemed OK, except the fact that he was breathing hard.

“What…kind of….job is…a crow summoner?” Rina gasped, trying to keep up.

A crow then suddenly flew down low and landed on Rina’s shoulder. It was the one we saw flying above us from before. She shrieked and then tried to hit it so it resumed flying a bit, till it landed on my shoulder after that. But then surprisingly it talked, though it somehow seemed dejected that Rina wouldn’t let it stay on her shoulder. I could have sworn I heard it say something when she chased it off.

Yumi of course gave it an ugly look, noticing who it had landed on first. It fit the pattern of the wolves going for the honey, after all.

“I’ve scouted ahead *errrp*; you can take this trail all the way to the pond ahead. *Eerrrp* But before you leave sight of the pond, you need to veer north for a half a mile or you will hit a whole camp of heavily armed orcs,” the crow said in a human voice with a strange sound sometimes appearing when he talked. He kept shaking his wings too when he talked. Was that his crow form version of hand gestures? Or maybe talking through a crow is harder than I thought?

“How…is it…crow can …talk?” the new girl asked. I kept making a mental note to find more out about her but I already had my hands full.

“Yuta found it yesterday. It’s how we found the other school up north. We were keeping it a secret to work a plan on how to counter Akimoto and his faction. But then Yuta turned into a dumb ass,” the ranger called back and cursing under his breath. The vein pulsing on his forehead seemed to show his sincerity in his hate for Yuta.

He seemed to have good physical stamina and running and talking didn’t bother him that much. I was jealous. The rest of us were desperate for rest, but knew the orcs were too close to do so. Trying to do it is like trying to work or go to school on like three or four hours of sleep. I never wanted to do this again.

We needed to find a town, fast.

“*Eerp*…yeah that disgusting jerk Yuta found my job. Made me promise to join him or he wouldn’t tell me what my job was or it’s skills. Then his cronies would come around to ‘remind me’ who I belonged to. *Errrp* I hate blackmail *errrp*. Turns out all those years of bird watching back home influenced how this world changed it so somehow I can use crows to talk and scout things with…*errrp*,” the crow said.

“Eh? That’s a cool job right?” Yumi said aloud. I had forgotten that she kind of liked birds, although I doubt she preferred crows.

“Only if you like crows,” Rina whispered with her face scrunched up. She didn’t like birds much, since when we were little kids she tried to feed a bunch of ducks and they pooped on her. The scars remained to this very day.

“I’m glad you think so, errp*,” crow sounded pleased with himself. He began cleaning his feathers with his beak while somehow keeping amazing balance on my shoulder. Sometimes he’d hop up and down while we traveled.

“Yeah about the crows, don’t count on it; he can scout and use long range intelligence but no immediate combat ability. The crows themselves are too weak to do anything in combat. We also found out they need rest periods after flying distances, which also can make them weak. When Yuta found that out he sort of seemed to forget the benefits of how important scouting is,” the ranger said dourly.

“Do you think he’s useful?” Yumi asked genuinely interested.

Ranger snorted, “Anything that reveals enemy troop movements and gives away their position when they don’t even have your own put at risk is a big advantage, especially if it can move fast and with low suspicion. In history how many wars do you think were won just from having more intelligence on troop positions?”

“No combat ability is hard though,” Rina said.

“I’m still special, *errrp*,” crow tried to say to recover his position; it seemed he didn’t like not having any combat ability. Since crows aren’t very good looking compared to other birds and from what he’d heard the others say he was in the throes of despair; no one comforted him.

“Oh, I didn’t think of that. It must be hard if you can’t fight,” Sensei said.

Crow seemed to ruffle his feathers as he stood on my shoulder. “Errrp*…I’ve been watching you guys for about an hour, maybe two. We need to hurry faster! So it was me that sent ranger to go rescue you and how to find you…but then right after he left it became like we need you to come rescue us instead…errpp*.”

“Eh? So we’re heading towards a battle?!” Rina gasped, stopping her jog in mid stride. Without realizing it everyone also stopped momentarily.

“Stay moving. The orcs coming from behind us are surely more numerous than those deeper in the hills either way. Remember we’re doing this to have survival by numbers not so we can fight more. But we have to do whatever it takes to survive,” I reminded them. Remembering that everyone started moving again, but they were still nervous as we tramped through the long field grass. They didn’t want to rush into another battle after all, and I couldn’t blame them.

As long as there were no ogres, perhaps we’d be OK.

I liked that the grass here was long enough to duck down and hide in however. Plus, there was the fact that there were so many tall trees around us. I kept thinking that places like this would be good for escaping the orcs, but just require a lot of time to be crawling through the grass and hoping other predators didn’t show up.

“All these fox tail grass shoots make my legs itch,” Yumi said, as we kept running through tall underbrush. The girls mostly having school uniform skirts on didn’t help that. They would surely complain about it later.

“What are the chances we run into orcs on the way to where you guys are?” I asked, directing my question to crow.

Then I heard Akira crush another orc scout behind us. He’d caught it sneaking up from behind a tree. How did they even get this deep into the woods? Were there more of them this deep in?

“I’d say pretty high *errp*,” crow replied, noticing Akira’s crushing blow.

“So what are the chances you can prevent anything from sneaking up on us?” Sensei asked.

Crow’s wings seemed to shrug, “*Eerrp*…well maybe pretty good...if you stay moving. But my ability to scout is good but that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t hide from me too. Nobody else can move so quickly and high in the air without getting engaged but we still don’t know what kinds of abilities and jobs the orcs have. It’s possible they have some kind of anti-scout skills. We know they have scouts too, but just …*errp* not what kind or how they are different than us. I can lead you in through the route of least resistance, *errp*;...since I can see where the battle lines are formed on the land below, and where the troops are gathered.”

“That…is a pretty good advantage,” Yumi reasoned.

“How many crows can you control right now?” I asked curiously.

“Errp*….two…but one of my black winged babies got shot down this morning. So I’m trying to find another. I just found out that I can’t pull crows under my control instantly. I have to somehow find living birds in nature and work them under my influence. That can take some time. By the way the hill battle isn’t going well. We have wounded and things are not doing so well. I hope you can hurry,” he replied.

“Any dead so far?” ranger asked.

“We were doing pretty good until the Yuta faction ran off with half our forces that can really fight. That was pretty recent so we need you to get there fast. We’ve…had losses, but we’ve managed to hold our position.” Crow said sadly. He seemed reluctant to answer that question, so I suspected there were more than he wanted to admit.

We couldn’t get him to say anything more after that for awhile. Perhaps he didn’t know more, or perhaps he was depressed. However we benefited greatly by his scouting ability. He could fly up above and ahead, easily spotting orcs. Then he’d fly back down and have ranger guide us off the trail during pieces of our trek. He could circle or send signals when he saw things to help guide us. Several times he re-arranged our direction to hide from enemies spotting us.

We found ourselves having to cross a small creek some time later. We also at that point had to slow our pace to a march so we wouldn’t be drained of energy later. Plus the others were already tired to begin with. I think only the fact that they were running on high adrenaline survival mode had kept everyone going this far.

As usual crow hopped on the very way he wanted us to go, with ranger helping him with possible routes to scout. Bit by bit, the mountains were getting a bit closer, but this wasn’t the main part of the range where the other school was.

“Need to rest,” Rina gasped. She was sweating pretty heavily. We kept her up but I wanted to try to wait a bit before doing another heal, since it would cost me a lot of stamina too.

“Wish we had some water bottles to store some of this,” Sensei said. We all knew food and water were almost as serious as the issue of the orcs.

It was then that I suddenly realized the ruined school the crow summoner had found was probably Korea Town! Or else there was another school nearby it that was also ruined that could be it. I hadn’t assumed so before hand because of the fact that it seemed that fox girl was telling me the Egyptians had done many kidnappings from other worlds over a long period of time.

After crossing the creek we had to be more careful because the ground around the creek didn’t have as much tree cover. Still crow had us lie in wait, hiding while he went ahead. We grew impatient and scared until he came back about ten minutes later.

“Errrp* …OK, this way. This way! Be careful! We’re getting close. Must stay quiet from here forward,” ranger said as we ended up in a sick part of the woods, full of brambles and thorny patches with drier looking wood. In some cases the thorny patches were thicker than my wrist. It was a wild and strange part of the woods that had a lot of differences compared to the other parts.

“Your ogre friend is looking for us even now,” Crow said suddenly during one of his fly by reports. Our blood ran cold. Did that mean he was close by?

“Sh--!” I heard Akira cursing in the back. Apparently he had good ears.

“Eeerp* Keep moving, keep moving. As long as we don’t stay here we’ll be OK,” Crow said. Then he left to do more reconnaissance.

“So is it crow summoner talking or the crow with more intelligence?” Rina whispered as we trekked through the grass.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Yumi wondered.

“It’s me the crow summoner, pretty one,” he said, hoping quickly on his feet. Apparently flying was so new to him that he liked the ground still, sometimes. That was further proof the crow was being controlled by a human, I realized. Of course, a human would have trouble adjusting to flying and how air sickness worked because it had to do with how his human brain was processing other senses.

It wasn’t too much further to go. Over time we found our way finally making it up the back side of the mountain where crow had said they were just over the other side at the top.

If there was a job like Crow Summoner, I wonder what else might pop up?