Chương 5: Chapter 4 - Orcs

In the Brown Wolf Tribe, Luan walked toward a structure that resembled a hall. He arrived and asked the guard, "Is it possible to meet the chieftain or the elders of the tribe?" He pressed further.

"Can you tell them I have something to say that could help our tribe grow stronger?"

"There's a meeting ongoing inside," the guard replied.

"We've been told not to let anyone in."

"Please, tell them it's important. Something that could help our young warriors grow stronger." Luan kept his tone insistent. The sooner this reached them, the better.

"I'm sorry. Even if you say that, the chief's order was absolute," the guard insisted. Then his gaze fell upon Luan. The young wolf stared back at him, his ears lowered and his head slightly bowed. His eyes, usually sharp and watchful, were soft with an unmistakable desperation. He made no sound, offering no growl or protest—only that quiet, imploring look, as though he were asking the guard to make an exception.

The guard held his gaze for a long moment, then thought, unbidden, of his own son back home—the exact look the boy gave right before bedtime, angling for five more minutes he already knew he wasn't going to get, and getting them anyway more often than his wife would have liked. Left with little choice, the guard finally sighed and went inside. Once in front of the meeting, the guard bowed slightly.

"Chieftain, Elders, apologies for the intrusion. A young wolf outside insists on meeting you. He says it's important, something that could help our young warriors." The chieftain's voice cut through the room.

"Let him in." A moment later, the young wolf stepped inside and stood before the gathered elders.

"Thank you for letting me in, Chieftain, Elders," Luan said, dipping his head.

"I'm Luan, a herb gatherer, just returned from duty."

"So what exactly do you mean by helping our young warriors?" Elder Fang asked, arms crossed.

"While out gathering herbs, I ran into a mysterious merchant. He proposed a business deal." Luan spun the story carefully.

"He said that in exchange for four Seeker Early Stage corpses, he'd give us fifty fruits dense in spiritual essence." He opened his bag and pulled the fruit free to show everyone.

"This was given to me as proof. He said all fifty fruits would carry the same density." He passed it to the chieftain for inspection. A ripple of shock passed through the room. The offer was far too generous for a handful of corpses.

"A Mortal Peak Stage fruit..." Elder Brolf turned it over in his palm.

"We could make five Peak Stage pills from this alone."

"Four Seeker Early Stage corpses for fifty of these?" His voice went smooth, almost silky.

"That's not a trade. That's a gift. And gifts from strangers are usually poisoned."

"Four Seeker Early Stage corpses isn't a small hunt," another elder cut in—older, quieter, the kind of voice that didn't usually need to raise itself to be heard.

"We'd be sending hunting parties after beasts strong enough to kill half of who we send, and handing everything they bring back to a stranger who won't even show his face."

"We hunt Seeker-rank beasts already, with or without this deal," Fang said.

"The only thing that's changed is where the corpses end up."

"The only thing that's changed is who we're risking our people for." The elder didn't back down.

"There's a difference between hunting for our own stores and hunting on the word of someone we've never met." The chieftain wore his own suspicion openly, but he couldn't ignore the opportunity. Herbs and fruits for pill-making were rare and costly to come by.

"Could it be that they own a spiritual tree farm?" Elder Fang wondered aloud.

"People sitting on that kind of supply usually sell in the Free Trade City of Beasts—more profit there. Which makes this whole thing strange. Suspicious, even." Given how small and modest their tribe was, the suspicion made sense. Luan kept his eyes down, playing the part of a wolf still a little intimidated by his own boldness.

"Yes, you're right, Elder Fang, I wondered the same thing," Luan said.

"But the merchant said he couldn't sell there, for personal reasons."

"He said someday he will. Said it was tied to some grand revenge of his." The lie rolled off him easily. It didn't matter how true it was, only that it sounded believable.

"Revenge, huh." Elder Fang rubbed his chin.

"Maybe a fallen merchant. Or revenge for his family. Either way, we can't pass this up. Whether it's poison or a blessing, we won't know until we've tried it ourselves." He spoke with conviction, urging others to take the risk. The danger, if there was any, seemed manageable enough with the right precautions. The elders traded glances. A madman with a grudge against the city: that was something they could understand. A motive that made sense.

"How do we meet this person?" the chieftain finally asked. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"In ten days," Luan answered.

"He said the corpses should be ready by then to complete the trade."

"Very well. Elders, prepare your hunting parties." The chieftain's tone left no room for argument.

"You might as well join the hunt yourselves, for safety's sake." The meeting broke apart with none of the ceremony that had opened it—elders rising, already murmuring between themselves about which warriors could be spared for the hunt. Nobody said out loud that some of them might not come back. Nobody needed to....

In the Forest of Wilderness, the soul tree watched and listened to the entire exchange between Luan and the tribe's upper echelon as clearly as if he'd been standing in the room himself, arms crossed beside the chieftain, judging the pill quality along with everyone else. Soul Parasitism, it turned out, had another function he'd never realized existed. It worked the same way Luan's thoughts reached him directly: intent translated into something he understood, filtered through the connection between them.

As long as he had someone linked to him who could understand a language, he could understand it too.

"Still, it only works when my avatar is close enough." Better to just learn the language properly than to lean on it forever.

"Not bad, though. Got a good look at the ranks of the chieftain and elders." That much, at least, he was satisfied with.

"Chieftain's Rank 3 Mid-Stage. Elders range from Rank 2 Mid-Stage to Peak Stage." It struck him then just how insignificant he still was, compared to beings at that level. He'd also learned something new: a place called the Free Trade City of Beasts existed somewhere in this wilderness.

"Small next to the city..." He turned the phrase over like a kid finding out the world was bigger than his backyard.

"So that means there's plenty out there stronger than these guys somewhere." Discouragement came and went. Curiosity replaced it faster than expected. He stopped to let the idea soak in. A city of beasts. Real, organized, intelligent cities. He had spent his youth reading fantasy novels, not expecting to see such a place in real life. Now he found himself standing in a forest that bordered the city.

"I wonder what they look like," he mused softly.

"The cities. Do they have walls? Markets? Streets with names?" There was no answer from the forest.

"Yes, probably. And there I am, a tree, watching all others live their lives." He almost laughed.

"I suppose that's the reason I became a tree." With that, he turned his attention to producing more fruit, each one costing a tenth of his spiritual essence.

"Being productive again. Takes me back to my first factory job." He let himself sink into the memory for a moment, one of the rare good ones from before. He produced five fruits, burning through half his spiritual essence and holding the rest in reserve, just in case...... A few hours later, something drew his attention several kilometers off: beasts, tearing into each other over ground neither of them had claimed a minute earlier. There was no ceremony to it.

No formations, no weapons, nothing that resembled the fights he'd already survived. Just claws finding flesh, teeth answering claws, blood soaking into the dirt before it had time to cool. Whatever lost simply stopped moving, and whatever won kept eating. No begging. No hesitation either. Just hunger doing what hunger did. He should have looked away. He didn't. Something about the honesty of it held him—no lies, no mercy performed for an audience, just want answering want until one side ran out.

He watched longer than he meant to, some part of him leaning into it the way you lean into a wound to see how much it actually hurts. He was still watching when the ground began to shake behind him. Then suddenly. He spotted a group of pig-like beasts charging toward him, snouts wrinkled, tusks gleaming, muscle packed so tight their skin looked ready to split. They'd caught the spiritual fluctuation rolling off the fruit. One Peak Stage, eight Mid Stage, six Early Stage. All of them barreling straight for him.

The one at the front barked something short, and the pack shifted formation without breaking stride, practiced, not panicked.

"Stay close, Harn," the leader said, not turning his head.

"I'm not a cub anymore, Captain." A younger voice, near the back, faintly annoyed.

"You were a cub yesterday."

"That was years ago."

"Then you've got years left to prove otherwise." Harn snorted.

"You planning on retiring before I make captain, old man?"

"The day I retire," Gordon said, "is the day my daughter stops asking when I'm coming home for good." A ripple of quiet laughter passed through the group—the kind that only exists between people who've marched together long enough to have worn all the edges off each other. [Name: Gordon (Orc)] [Rank 1: Peak Stage] [Attribute: Earth] A jolt of alarm shot through Dendron. His own complacency had let them close the distance without him noticing.

He forced himself to stay calm and opened six portals, six roots ready to strike. They were already within his root range, but he wanted the element of surprise anyway. Portals bloomed behind the heads of six lower-rank orcs. Six roots shot forward in the same instant. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Gordon threw up two earth walls—one to his left, one to his right—shielding two of his warriors. The other four weren't so lucky. Their skulls caved in with a sickening crack that echoed through the clearing.

"BATTLE FORMATION!" Gordon's voice cracked out like a whip, a command that brooked no argument. The eight remaining orcs snapped into position—three collapsing inward to guard Gordon's flank, the rest fanning wide without needing to be told where to stand. It was the discipline of warriors who'd survived far worse than this.

"Since when does a spirit tree fight?" one of the younger orcs muttered, voice shaking.

"Shut your mouth, Bruk," Gordon barked without even glancing over.

"Eyes forward. Keep your fear where it belongs, in your gut. Fear is a knife. Use it to sharpen your instincts, not slit your own throat." He looked over at the fallen, their heads burst like overripe fruit, and his jaw tightened. His voice, though, stayed level.

"Bruk, you owe me a drink after this. Your sister's brew, the strong stuff. Because once I'm done turning this tree into firewood, I'll need something to wash the taste of your incompetence out of my mouth."

"Yes, Captain," Bruk stammered. The ground began to tremble beneath their feet, as if an earthquake had struck. Dendron generated the tremor himself, roots shifting underground, deliberately rattling the formation the orcs had built. Then he sent a wave of roots surging upward toward the disoriented line, aiming to catch them off balance.

But halfway through the strike, he pulled two of the roots back mid-flight, a feint meant to bait a reaction, while the remaining four pressed the actual attack home with a sharp whoosh. Gordon was ready this time, watching for the telltale shimmer of a portal. He slammed his fist into the dirt. A wall of stone tore up between the portal and his face, and the root that struck it snapped uselessly against rock instead of flesh.

"Gorak! Harn! Walls, now!" Earth rose. Bone grew. Ice crystallized. A three-layered barrier wrapped around the survivors, a fortress built out of desperation. Dendron's roots crashed against it. The walls shattered, but so did he—a hundred small failures traveling up every root at once, the recoil landing in him like the wall had hit back. The backlash sent a sharp jolt through his awareness.

"Shit, that hurts," he hissed. The pain was a wall. He climbed it anyway. Crack. Splinter. Crunch. Every blow was a gamble. Some landed clean. Others failed outright. But the tree had patience on its side, and roots enough to wear down a mountain given time. That was when Gordon summoned a gargantuan earth spike. The soul tree groaned as it slammed into his base with bone-jarring force. The trunk fractured deep into its core, shedding a storm of bark and splintered limbs.

Still, the tree stood—broken and bleeding sap against the darkening sky, but defiant. Dendron felt the agony in full. The scream tore through him silently, but it tore through him all the same.