Chương 9: Invasion

Chapter Nine Invasion It was the heart of winter. Bitter winds swept through the forest while white garbage poured endlessly from the sky. An unprecedented silence hung over the Bloodclaw settlement. Combined with the freezing wind, that silence sent a sharp chill crawling down Karath's spine. Careful not to disturb it, he concealed every sign of his presence and advanced one cautious step at a time. Then he stopped. A faint sense of familiarity came over him, accompanied by an uneasy warning.

Karath carefully extended one foot. Whoosh! A net woven from vines shot upward from the ground. Karath had withdrawn his foot the instant it touched the trigger, allowing him to avoid being dragged into the air with it. Relief passed through him.

"Attack!"

"Kill him!" Perhaps because their trap had failed, the figures hiding nearby abandoned all stealth and charged from every direction.

"Killing him is going too far!" Karath shouted back while watching the older boys close in around him. Three months had passed since Chief Grild ordered him to teach hide-and-seek to the twelve-to-fourteen-year-old boys. The survival game, in which a single careless blow might send Karath into the afterlife, had continued without pause. Somehow, he had survived. More precisely, none of the older boys had managed to land a proper hit on him even once.

That also meant Karath had spent the past three months tormenting them at every opportunity. As a result, the settlement's heavily muscled adolescents were now rushing toward him with the determination to capture and murder him.

"We will catch you today!"

"Rokta!" Their eyes had turned red, as though the blood of the orcs had swallowed their reason. The sight of those hulking older boys charging at him sent another chill down Karath's spine. It was not as though he had tormented them because he enjoyed it. The chief had ordered him to participate, and survival had forced him to fight back. Karath's body had not even begun its adolescent growth. If those enormous boys caught him and beat him properly, he would be sent straight across the river of death.

Thus, the hide-and-seek match that began with stealth and traps transformed into a vicious chase. Karath was supposed to be the seeker. He should have been chasing them.

"Do not let him reach the tree!"

"Kurdan! Circle around from the other side!" For some reason, every hidden player was chasing the seeker instead. A round of hide-and-seek ended when the seeker touched the designated tree and called out a hidden player's name. Alternatively, the hidden player could reach the tree first. The older boys had no interest in touching the tree. They were entirely focused on touching Karath with their fists. Karath had no intention of allowing himself to be caught. Capture meant certain death.

"Huff... huff..." He sprinted through the settlement with enough force to make his breathing turn ragged. Whoosh! Running in a straight line would never allow him to escape boys whose bodies were far more developed than his own. Karath used the earthen houses built during autumn as shields, repeatedly turning left and right as he slipped through the settlement. Thud!

"Argh!" The boys chasing him ran directly into traps he had prepared behind the houses and collapsed onto the ground.

"When did you set this one up?"

"Yesterday evening!"

"That is not fair!" The remaining pursuers cried out in anguish as they watched their companions fall. Karath felt no guilt.

"You prepared your trap in advance too!" They were no different from him. The entire settlement had long since been reduced to raw material for their insane survival game. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Traps installed by Karath and the village's other young orcs filled every corner. The game had evolved into a competition over who remembered the most trap locations and who could identify hidden traps through observation alone.

Adult villagers occasionally fell into them as well. No one scolded the children. Instead, the unfortunate adult became an object of ridicule. How could an orc, a descendant of warriors and hunters, fail to notice a trap laid by mere children? When a young orc fell into one, the adults simply repeated one of the tribe's favorite teachings. Learn by being hit. They treated every accident as valuable experience. After all, every trap was designed only to restrain or disable.

None were intended to threaten anyone's life. As the first orc to introduce traps and strategy into the game, Karath naturally possessed the best knowledge of those scattered throughout the settlement.

"Uaaaaah!"

"Damn it! We lost him again!" After a chase lasting nearly thirty minutes, Karath succeeded in trapping every older boy and calmly reached the tree. More than ten boys had joined forces to capture him and failed. They shouted in frustration, but their disappointment lasted only a moment.

"Finger! Fist! Palm!" Orcs lived faithfully according to the emotions of each passing moment. As though they had never been angry, the boys immediately began the hand game to choose the next seeker. The brief period between choosing the seeker and hiding lasted less than a minute. It was the only rest Karath received. He had originally feared that winter hide-and-seek would be unbearably cold. Contrary to that concern, the game was far too violent to allow anyone to remain still.

Every round forced Karath to run until sweat formed beneath his feet as the older boys tried their best to kill him.

"Krahahahaha!"

"Damn it!" Laughter and curses mixed among the group as the hand game produced its result. Crack! At that moment, the sound of a branch breaking came from somewhere nearby. Karath initially assumed that one of the frustrated orcs had lost control and broken a tree. Crack! Crack! The faint sound grew steadily louder. Realizing that it came from the right, Karath turned his head. His eyes widened. A gigantic boar was charging toward the settlement. Calling it a boar hardly seemed appropriate.

Arnold had never seen a wild boar in person on Earth, but he was certain none grew to such a size. Despite moving on four legs, the creature stood nearly one and a half meters tall. A vicious horn protruded from its forehead. Apart from its general appearance, it seemed closer to a rhinoceros than a boar.

"Horn Boar!" The older boys had also heard the monster approaching. One of them shouted its name.

"Kweeeeeeegh!" As though realizing it had been discovered, the Horn Boar released a scream violent enough to tear at their ears and accelerated. Crash! The settlement's wooden palisade, which was nearly useless against the monsters of this forest, shattered instantly. Through the cloud of flying splinters, Karath saw the mad creature's bloodshot eyes. Perhaps it was the Horn Boar's violent momentum. Perhaps it was the killing intent filling its gaze.

"Kraaaaaah!" The eyes of the young orcs, who had been innocently enjoying their survival game moments earlier, began turning red. The fighting instinct buried within orc blood had been forcibly awakened by the sudden danger. Thump. Thump. Karath felt it as well. A violent urge seized his body, demanding that he charge forward and crush the enormous boar's skull. Fierce heat surged from his heart and spread through every limb. He had to run. Karath refused to allow that instinct to steal his reason.

Doing so would have been far too foolish.

"Kweeeeegh!" Crash! There were too many enemies. The Horn Boar charging into the settlement was not alone. More than ten of them were rushing forward as a herd, each possessing a body comparable in size to an adult orc. Even an orc would have every bone in his body shattered by confronting that charge head-on. Monster attacks on the settlement were common. Nine years earlier, an ogre had invaded and killed Karath's biological father.

This terrible wilderness was so thoroughly filled with monsters that it deserved to be called a forest of monsters. The adult male orcs conducted regular patrols, but their numbers were limited, while the forest extended endlessly in every direction. Patrols could never block every possible approach. Monsters periodically slipped past them and entered the village. Most were weak creatures that had lost their way and soon became prey for the villagers. Once every few years, however, a genuine crisis struck.

Each time, many orcs died. The nature of the orc race contributed greatly to those deaths. Orcs possessed physical abilities far beyond those of humans. Yet the forest contained countless enormous monsters that surpassed even orcs. Survival should have demanded strategic decisions. Orc blood often prevented them from making such choices. During violent battles or moments when death stood close, they surrendered themselves to the orcish rush and charged directly at the enemy.

"Grrrrr." Just as the older boys were doing now. Karath's memories of being human allowed him to suppress the excitement with great difficulty. The young orcs surrounding him began releasing breaths that sounded more like the growls of beasts. Inexperienced orcs generally struggled to control their excitement. That was why most casualties during monster invasions occurred among orcs between ten and fifteen years old. They did not die because they were weak.

They died because they became intoxicated by their own blood and rushed toward monsters like moths flying into flame.

"Kraaaaaaaaah!" Karath roared at them. It was not the result of calm reasoning. He desperately wanted them to stop. He needed them to hear him. Perhaps that desperation reached them. The orcs who had been about to charge toward the Horn Boars turned to face him.

"Kurdan!" Karath's voice emerged as an animalistic roar difficult to imagine coming from the body of a child. Until then, he had spoken respectfully to the older boys because they were biologically his seniors. The emergency stripped that habit away. The rough command was far more effective against orcs whose blood had begun to boil. Hearing his name called like the roar of a beast, Kurdan turned away from the approaching monsters and looked at Karath.

"Evacuate the children somewhere safe!" Karath pointed toward the group of eight-to-eleven-year-olds who had been playing among themselves.

"Grrrr." Kurdan was still consumed by the instinct to fight. He did not appear willing to obey.

"Protect the tribespeople, you bastard!" Kurdan's eyes widened. Some of the red haze filling them disappeared. The duty of an orc warrior was to protect the members of the tribe. Kurdan had heard that teaching so often since infancy that it bordered on indoctrination. Remembering it finally pulled him free from his fighting instinct. He was not the only one who recovered.

"Kuro, Kei, and Kalas, follow Kurdan and evacuate the children!" Karath selected several boys whose eyes had cleared and ordered them to assist Kurdan.

"Kweeeeeeegh!" He had wasted too much time calming them. The first Horn Boar had already broken through the palisade and was nearly upon them.

"Everyone else, follow Karath!" There was no longer time to remain in place and explain. Karath shouted the order and immediately began running. He glanced behind him despite himself. Fortunately, the remaining orcs were following.

"Karath! What do we do now?" One of the older boys running behind him asked urgently.

"Do what we have always done!"

"What we have always done? Hide-and-seek?"

"Exactly!" Hide-and-seek was beginning again. This time, it was not the survival game they had jokingly called deadly. Their lives truly depended on it.

"And those insane boars are the seekers!"