Chương 2: Garthon

Chapter Two"Kieeeeeek!" Crack! It was early morning.

"Haaah..." Karath opened his eyes to the beautiful wake-up call that had been echoing beside his ears. Eight years had already passed since his reincarnation as an orc. Despite his earlier determination to transform the settlement, he had yet to accomplish anything particularly significant. He was still too young to take command of projects or persuade the adults to follow his plans. That did not mean he had spent those eight years doing nothing.

Karath had continuously studied the tribe and its way of life, preparing for the day when his body would be old enough to act. Change and innovation required proper stages, and any reform had to suit the society in which it was introduced. He could hardly walk into a primitive hunter-gatherer settlement and suddenly declare the establishment of liberal democracy. Thanks to his efforts, Karath had completely mastered the orc language.

The elders often stared at him in amazement and wondered how such a young child could speak so fluently. He had also uncovered several important facts about his new home. One of them concerned the tribe's location. Their settlement stood in the middle of a vast forest, and that forest was anything but ordinary.

"Kraaaaaaah!"

"Kieeeeeek!" It was a monster-infested forest. Every morning, Karath woke to the roars and shrieks of monsters. At first, the horrifying sounds had nearly sent him into convulsions. After hearing them every day for eight years, however, they had become strangely familiar. They now reminded him of the birds he used to hear whenever he stayed in the countryside back on Earth.

"Karath, would you like to go outside with your mother today?" Delina had awakened to the same friendly voices of the forest and was already preparing to leave the hut.

"Yes!" Karath did not have a father. Before he was born, while Delina was still carrying him, an ogre had attacked the settlement. In games and fantasy stories, ogres were often little more than convenient opponents used to demonstrate a protagonist's strength. Reality was different. An ogre was a massive monster capable of reducing even a fully grown male orc to a heap of broken flesh with a single blow. Every adult warrior in the settlement had been forced to fight in order to protect the tribe.

Among those warriors had been Karath's biological father, an orc named Garthon. Garthon had charged the ogre without hesitation and fought until both he and the enormous monster died. His sacrifice had saved the settlement. Karath had heard the story so many times from his mother and the village elders that he could practically recite it word for word. His father was regarded as one of the tribe's heroes. The proof lay inside their hut.

A massive hide covered much of the floor, while the skull of the slain creature hung from the wall. The skull alone was nearly as large as the upper body of an adult human. According to the tribe, there was another piece of evidence. Karath himself. The orcs believed that the soul of the ogre lived within his body. In their primitive society, eating a powerful monster or animal was believed to allow the hunter to inherit a portion of its strength.

Since Garthon had contributed the most to killing the ogre, Delina had been awarded its heart, the organ believed to contain the greatest portion of its spirit. The tribe therefore believed that the ogre's soul had passed from the heart Delina consumed into the unborn child inside her. Thanks to Garthon's sacrifice and the beliefs surrounding Karath's birth, neither he nor his mother suffered poor treatment despite their fatherless household.

In truth, children in the settlement were unlikely to be mistreated merely because one or both of their parents had died. The adult male orcs responsible for defending the settlement faced death every day. Losing warriors to monsters was tragically common. For that reason, the settlement functioned as a complete community. Every adult orc shared responsibility for raising and protecting the tribe's children, regardless of who their parents were.

It was still far better than being born in one of those treacherous ninja villages from old stories. In a place like that, a child might have been tormented for carrying a monster's spirit, losing his father, or simply being different. With that pointless comparison passing through his mind, Karath followed Delina out of the hut. The sight outside was exactly what he had expected since infancy. It was a primitive settlement made entirely of crude huts.

Karath, Delina, and the other villagers wore rough garments made from leaves or animal hides, covering only the most necessary parts of their bodies. As Karath observed the miserable surroundings and quietly considered how they might someday be improved, a heavy sound echoed from the center of the settlement. Thud! Thud! Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. It sounded as though someone were striking an enormous drum. Karath naturally turned toward the source of the noise.

Thud! Thud! Two muscular adult orcs were trading punches in the middle of the settlement. In human society, the sight of two grown men fighting in public early in the morning would have prompted everyone nearby to separate them. The orcs reacted quite differently.

"Keh keh. They certainly have plenty of energy!"

"The right arm! He should have struck his face with the right arm!"

"They are still young. Plenty of spirit, but no technique!" The villagers watched the fight as though it were a form of entertainment. That was one thing Karath still could not get used to. He shook his head while watching the two adults strike each other with broad grins on their faces. Fighting was considered a kind of game in the orc settlement. From the perspective of a modern human, the custom appeared completely absurd.

After examining the circumstances more carefully, however, Karath had discovered that it was not entirely without reason. The settlement stood in the middle of a forest filled with monsters. Every male orc had to grow into a capable warrior if the tribe wished to survive. There was also very little entertainment in their primitive society. Whenever the orcs grew bored, they fought one another. They did it to become stronger, and supposedly, to have fun. The second reason probably mattered more.

Watching the two men laugh heartily while driving their fists into each other's faces made that suspicion difficult to dismiss.

"Delina, why not let the children play together?" Someone addressed his mother while Karath remained distracted by the fight. The speaker was Aunt Gerina, who lived in the neighboring hut. The orc tribe was organized as a clan. Nearly everyone living in the settlement was related by blood, which meant Gerina was not merely called his aunt out of familiarity. She truly was a relative of his father.

"My son seems eager to play with Karath." Gerina gently pushed forward the boy clutching her hand. His name was Krog. In simple terms, Gerina wanted her son to fight Karath. She was not trying to bully either child. Fighting was simply part of the tribe's play culture.

"That sounds wonderful. They are the same age, after all." Delina readily accepted the suggestion.

"Karath, you must start playing diligently if you want to become a brave warrior like those uncles, and like your father." Delina pointed toward the adult orcs beating each other senseless in the distance and smiled with genuine pride. This was the same mother who had spent an entire night desperately fighting to save him when he was an infant.

"M-Mother?" Karath had accepted his life as an orc, but the idea of exchanging punches with another eight-year-old child still made him uncomfortable. He opened his mouth to escape the situation somehow.

"Hehe! Time to play!" Krog was already far too excited to wait. The young orc charged forward and slammed a fist into Karath's face. Thud! The blow immediately cleared Karath's mind. He had been thinking of Krog as an eight-year-old child, but Karath was also eight years old. Orcs appeared to mature faster than humans. Both boys already stood around one hundred and forty centimeters tall, giving them bodies comparable to human children several years older. In other words, Krog's punch hurt like hell.

"You...!" After receiving such a painful blow, Karath immediately lost any desire to show mercy simply because his opponent was a child. Fighting was considered a game here. No one would punish him for striking back. Back on Earth, people sometimes claimed that children grew through fighting. In that case, Krog was about to experience considerable growth.

"Prepare to get hit!" His temper flaring after the first punch, Karath charged at Krog. Thud! Thud! What followed was a crude and senseless brawl. Karath possessed the mind of an adult, but his previous life had been completely disconnected from physical combat. He had no practical fighting experience and knew nothing about proper technique.

"Oh! Those two little ones are really going at it!"

"Krahaha! They are going to become fine warriors!" As Karath and Krog wrestled and punched each other, the village elders watched them with the delighted expressions of adults enjoying a children's performance.

"Karath, keep going!"

"Krog, you are doing well!" Delina and Gerina even began cheering like enthusiastic spectators. The sheer absurdity of the scene helped Karath recover the composure he had lost during the initial exchange. Once he calmed down, Krog's movements gradually became easier to read. Left fist. The moment Krog clenched his left hand and began swinging, Karath noticed the movement in his arm and twisted his upper body aside. Krog's fist passed through the space where Karath's head had been.

The same thing happened several more times. Punches and kicks repeatedly cut through empty air as Karath avoided them. Krog was still a child, and every one of his movements was painfully obvious once Karath stopped panicking. As he continued evading the attacks, a memory from his previous life surfaced in his mind. While developing a realistic fighting game, Arnold had spent a great deal of time watching martial arts footage.

The movements of one of the fighters from those videos appeared clearly within Karath's memory. Was it done like this? The moment he pictured the technique, his body moved naturally to reproduce it. As Krog threw another punch toward his face, Karath twisted his upper body slightly and stepped forward. His left fist shot out in a cross counter. Thud! The impact produced a sound far too heavy for a fight between two eight-year-old children. Krog's own forward momentum combined with the force of Karath's fist.

The doubled impact struck him directly in the face and sent him rolling across the ground. Karath barely noticed his fallen opponent. Had he really done that? In his previous life, Arnold had been almost completely incompatible with physical activity. He had possessed such terrible coordination that even a month of direct training would not have allowed him to imitate a technique he had only seen in a video. This time, he had merely imagined the movement, and his body had reproduced it perfectly.

Was this the physical ability of an orc? The difference between his former body and his current one was so enormous that Karath almost felt dizzy with astonishment.

"Ooooooh!"

"As expected of Garthon's son!" While Karath remained shocked by his own performance, the villagers watching the children erupted in admiration.

"He does not look tired at all. How about another round, Delina?"

"Then let him fight my son next!" Before Karath could object, the adults selected another opponent as casually as people taking turns at a fighting game cabinet. At first, the situation seemed ridiculous. Thud! At some point, however, Karath began enjoying himself. He did not enjoy striking other children. What fascinated him was the sensation of controlling his new body. After defeating Krog with a boxing counter, Karath tested a different technique against every new challenger. This worked too?

His eight-year-old body reproduced every movement exactly as he imagined it. He experimented with low kicks, middle kicks, and high kicks. He tried basic punching combinations, left straights, tackles that transitioned into mounted positions, flying knees, and even spinning back elbows. One challenger after another fell before him.

"Ooooooh!"

"Did you see that? Karath used his elbow perfectly!"

"Krahaha! That boy is incredible!" By the time Karath had defeated six children his own age, the elders were shouting as though a village festival had begun. One orc reacted even more enthusiastically than the others.

"Karath! Oh, my precious son!" It was Delina. When Karath had mastered the orc language with astonishing speed, she had merely smiled and praised his intelligence. When he demonstrated reasoning far beyond that of an ordinary child, she had reacted in much the same way. Now, however, her smile was so wide that it nearly split her face. She looked like a proud mother who had just learned that her child was a once-in-a-generation prodigy. In orc society, the greatest talent was not intelligence or scholarship.

It was the ability to fight. In Delina's eyes, Karath had just revealed himself as the greatest young genius in the entire tribe.