Chương 10: Invasion 2

Chapter Ten Invasion 2"Kweeeeeeegh!" Crack! The squeals of the boars thundered behind Karath. Wasn't there a saying that life was a tragedy when viewed up close and a comedy when seen from afar? Being chased by pigs might have looked comical to an observer, but the experience felt entirely different to the person running for his life. That was especially true when the pigs were as large as rhinoceroses and charging in a herd.

"Huff... huff..." As four-legged beasts, the Horn Boars could run at a speed far beyond that of any orc. Karath and the older boys were sprinting with all their strength, yet the distance behind them continued to shrink.

"Kweeeeeeegh!" Crack! There was no need to look back. The violent noises created by the Horn Boars were growing closer with every passing moment.

"Kweeeeeeegh!" Crack! It was the sound of death approaching from behind. Thump. Thump. Was his heart pounding because of his fear of death, or because the blood of the orcs was awakening his desire to fight? Perhaps sprinting at the absolute limit of his body had simply placed too much strain on it. Even through the deafening noise produced by the Horn Boars, Karath could clearly hear the violent beating of his own heart. He forced himself to think. He needed to keep thinking.

Strangely, his mind became colder and clearer as the danger intensified. Karath knew the locations of almost every trap in the settlement. That included not only the traps he had created, but also those installed by the other young orcs.

"This way!"

"Kweeeeeeegh!" Karath led the older boys and the charging herd toward the nearest trap. Just before they reached it, he shouted.

"Scatter!" Karath and the boys immediately separated to the left and right.

"Kweeeeeeegh!" The Horn Boars had been sprinting at full speed on four legs. Unable to overcome their own momentum, they continued another step forward. The trap Karath had chosen was a pit covered by a thin platform constructed from small branches and concealed beneath soil. It was only wide and deep enough to trap the lower body of an adult orc. Considering the size of a Horn Boar, it was hardly a threatening trap. That did not matter. The pit was large enough to catch one of the monster's legs.

For the moment, that was all Karath needed. Crack! Crash! Bang!

"Kweeeeeeegh!" The leading Horn Boar caught one leg in the pit and tumbled violently across the ground. What followed resembled a massive pileup on a highway. One Horn Boar crashed into another, and the entire herd collided and rolled across the ground amid a deafening storm of noise. Watching the monsters collapse into one another sent a peculiar thrill through Karath's body. This was the reason he had continued playing the survival game called hide-and-seek with the young orcs.

They might have been young, but their bodies had already reached the level where they could slap a barbarian across the face and call Ronnie Coleman a brother. All of that training had been preparation for a day like this. When Karath first introduced hide-and-seek, his only goal had been to secure some quiet time for himself. At some point, however, the game had evolved into a bizarre survival exercise, and any hope of peaceful contemplation had disappeared.

Despite that, he continued playing with the settlement's young orcs. Just as he had told Grandfather Jark when the game first began, Karath no longer wanted to watch members of the tribe die meaningless deaths. The endless games of hiding, chasing, and laying traps might have appeared to be nothing more than childish entertainment. Now, their value was finally being revealed. This was not the time to lose himself in satisfaction.

"Kraaaaah!" Karath roared and approached the Horn Boars sprawled across the ground. Whoosh! Thud! He hurled a stone he had picked up while running and struck one of the fallen monsters directly in the face.

"Kweeeeeeegh!" Enraged by the blow, the Horn Boar rose while screaming. Its thick hide had prevented the stone from leaving even a visible wound. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Some of the Horn Boars trapped in the middle of the collision appeared to have suffered serious injuries after being crushed from both sides. The monsters at the front and rear, however, had escaped with little more than scratches.

They had survived despite falling with enough force to produce a collision resembling a major traffic accident. Their hides and bones were terrifyingly durable. Fighting creatures like these head-on would be suicide. Karath had never intended to fight them directly because of the overwhelming difference in their size. After witnessing their endurance, he became even more certain. Nevertheless, he stepped closer and shouted.

"Come at me, you damned pig!" Fighting the monsters directly would be suicidal, but that was equally true for the other tribespeople. Karath needed to keep the Horn Boars focused on him so they could not attack anyone else.

"I am right here, you filthy pigs!"

"Come and get us!" Thud! Thud! The older boys followed his example, shouting insults while throwing stones and gravel at the Horn Boars. Karath briefly worried that the blood of the orcs had consumed them again. A closer look revealed that the redness had disappeared from their eyes. After regaining control of themselves, they had understood his intention and were helping him draw the monsters' attention.

"Lead them toward the traps!" Karath shouted one final instruction in case any of the boys had still failed to understand. He then turned and fled with one enraged Horn Boar pursuing him.

"Got it!" The older boys answered enthusiastically. Like Karath, each of them began running through the settlement with one or two Horn Boars chasing behind. Karath and more than ten young orcs raced across the entire village, guiding the monsters into traps scattered throughout the settlement. Crash! Crack!

"Kweeeeeeegh!" Destruction echoed from every direction. Objects throughout the settlement shattered, including some of the earthen houses the tribe had worked so hard to build during autumn. The traps could only delay the monsters. As Karath had already recognized, they had been designed to restrain opponents, not kill them. Even so, there was a reason he continued leading the Horn Boars into them.

"Please finish off the Horn Boars that have fallen!"

"Krahahahaha!"

"We are eating boar tonight!" The village was not populated only by young orcs. Most of the adult males were away hunting or patrolling, but the adult women still possessed strength that overwhelmed ordinary human men. More importantly, the strongest warrior in the Bloodclaw Tribe remained in the settlement.

"Kraaaaaaaaah!" Grild Bloodclaw, chief of the Bloodclaw Tribe, had been training his muscles in front of his spacious home as he did every day. In his hands was an enormous bone. It was the femur of the ogre Garthon had killed nine years earlier. The ogre had possessed strength and size that defied common sense, and its femur was harder than most stones. Even without its value as Garthon's final possession, the bone's extraordinary durability made it worthy of becoming the chief's favored weapon.

Grild first heard the faint crack of breaking wood when he was halfway through his daily goal of ten thousand training swings. At first, he assumed the noise had been created by women performing household work or children playing somewhere in the settlement. The sounds of breaking wood continued, however, and gradually drew closer. Thump. Thump. More importantly, faint vibrations began rising through the ground beneath his feet. Something was approaching the settlement.

Certain of that fact, Grild moved toward the direction of the noise.

"Kweeeeeeegh!" The moment he began moving, a deafening pig-like scream erupted from the western side of the village. The vibrations beneath the ground grew stronger. Grild immediately understood what was happening. A herd of Horn Boars had invaded the settlement. They were among the most notorious destroyers of the monster-infested forest, stupid beasts that understood nothing except charging forward. A single Horn Boar possessed combat ability greater than that of an ordinary orc warrior.

Grild, as the strongest member of the tribe, could defeat one in direct combat. That was not the true problem. Judging from the vibrations, there were far more than one or two. More importantly, countless tribespeople inside the settlement needed protection. Grild decided to place himself at the front and stop the Horn Boars' charge. Nine years earlier, Garthon had taken that role from him. This time, Grild intended to fulfill it himself.

"Protect the tribespeople, you bastard!" A young but powerful roar came from the direction of the approaching herd. Karath. The boy's voice had cracked and become so bestial that it sounded completely different from normal. Grild was not such a foolish chief that he could no longer distinguish the voices of his own tribespeople. He did not understand why Karath had suddenly shouted those words. Their meaning, however, struck directly at the chief's heart.

"Hup!" Grild ran at full speed, determined to reach the children before the Horn Boars struck them. Then something unexpected happened. Before he could rescue them, the children suddenly separated and began running in different directions. Several moved toward the younger children. The others followed Karath toward the side of the settlement opposite Grild. The cursed Horn Boars chased after Karath's group.

"Damn it!" Grild had no intention of condemning children for fleeing from a herd of Horn Boars. Even adult orcs could not withstand a direct collision with the monsters after they built up speed. Confronting such a charge would be outright suicide. The young orcs were people the warriors were obligated to protect, not warriors expected to fight monsters themselves. The problem was that they were running in the opposite direction from their chief. Karath was leading the retreat.

Despite all his extraordinary qualities, perhaps the boy was still only a child. Grild assumed that panic had prevented Karath from examining his surroundings and noticing where the chief stood. That belief lasted until he witnessed the collision. Crack! Crash! Bang!

"Kweeeeeeegh!" Grild stopped despite the danger surrounding the village. More than ten Horn Boars lay tangled across the ground after falling into a trap created by the children. Karath had deliberately led them there. Training and real combat were entirely different things. Many young orcs spent their childhoods fighting constantly and appeared invincible within the village.

Yet when they entered real combat for the first time during their coming-of-age ceremonies, it was common to see them swing their stone axes at empty air. Karath was only eight years old. An enormous herd of monsters had been chasing him with the intention of crushing his body. Even under those conditions, he had remembered the location of a trap and guided the monsters directly into it. Grild had never witnessed or even heard of anything similar throughout his entire life as an orc.

"Come at me, you damned pig!" That was not the end. Karath struck a Horn Boar with a stone, drew its attention, and began leading it toward another trap. The other boys followed his example and guided the monsters throughout the settlement. An eight-year-old child was leading boys five or six years older than himself. He was doing it to protect the members of the tribe. Grild had been one step too late again. Nine years earlier, Garthon had moved before him. This time, Garthon's son had done the same.

Unlike the day Garthon died, however, Grild felt no regret. Karath appeared to have absolutely no intention of dying together with the monsters.

"Krahahahaha!" Laughing heartily, the chief charged toward a Horn Boar that had fallen into a trap. The children had drawn the monsters' attention, but they lacked the strength to finish them. Grild's role was obvious.

"Die, you filthy pigs!" He raised the massive femur and brought it down with all his strength upon the fallen Horn Boar. Crash! The femur struck the monster's head with a sound like two boulders colliding. The Horn Boar's face collapsed so completely that its original shape became impossible to recognize. Its shattered skull ensured that it died immediately.

"Krahahaha! We are having roasted boar tonight!" A thrill passed through Grild as the impact traveled from the weapon into his hands. The sensation of crushing a living creature's bones with his own strength caused his orc blood to boil. Grild willingly surrendered himself to that feeling and approached the Horn Boars scattered throughout the settlement. He continued swinging the massive bone to finish them. Crash! Each swing shattered another Horn Boar's skull.

In a direct battle, even Grild could not defeat one of them so easily. Killing monsters that had already fallen, however, required little effort. As an orc and a warrior, he found the ease of it slightly disappointing. Crash! As chief, however, Grild valued the safety of his tribespeople far more than his personal enjoyment of battle.