Chương 107: Chapter 111 Victory or Death

Crack! Kaden's battleaxe tore through the neck of the third cockatrice. The Lionheart warrior who had guided Karath's group stared at the scene with his mouth hanging open. He knew exactly what kind of monsters they were facing. The Lionheart Tribe had once been an exceptionally powerful orc tribe. United by their pride as descendants of the final Grand Chief, they had numbered more than three hundred. More than eighty of them had been warriors.

When they first discovered the ruins, their confidence had been absolute. They left only twenty warriors behind to protect the tribespeople and sent everyone else to challenge the monsters. More than half of that force was slaughtered. The previous chief had naturally died during the battle as well. The orc who had spoken with Karath was a newly selected chief who had taken the position only after his predecessor's death. There was a cruel contradiction in the outcome.

The Lionheart warriors had survived only because the slaughter had been so overwhelmingly one-sided. More than sixty warriors attacked, yet even after half of them died, they had inflicted almost no meaningful damage upon the monsters. Had they seen even a small possibility of victory, courageous orc warriors would never have chosen to flee. Only the complete hopelessness of the massacre forced the survivors to retreat. Decline followed.

Although the tribe still possessed nearly three hundred members, barely more than forty warriors remained. They could no longer protect the tribespeople properly from the monsters of the forest. That desperate situation had produced the stone wall Karath saw around their settlement. It was one of many attempts made by a tribe grasping at anything that might preserve its people. What is this? The guide had personally witnessed the catastrophe that brought his tribe to ruin.

He understood better than anyone how terrifying the cockatrices were. The Greenskin warriors before him belonged to an entirely different class from the Lionheart Tribe. He had already witnessed their strength during the journey, but those earlier battles were nothing more than a prelude. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Watching them toy with creatures that had seemed like messengers of death to the Lionheart Tribe was almost miraculous.

For an orc warrior who worshipped strength, one sight stood above all others.

"GRAAAAH!" Crack! Kaden crushed another cockatrice's neck. The guide could barely comprehend the strength required to destroy such a monster with a single blow. At that moment, he was completely overwhelmed by the warrior named Kaden. Then why is that warrior not the Grand Chief? The strongest warrior became the chief. That was the natural order of an orc tribe. Why, then, was this magnificent warrior not their leader? Could the Grand Chief standing over there be even stronger?

While the guide struggled with that question, Kaden finally severed the neck of the fifth and final cockatrice. Crash! The headless corpse collapsed to the ground. Every warrior of the Greenskin Alliance turned toward Karath at almost the same moment. Karath had exhausted himself pouring mana into the soundproof barriers that blocked the cockatrices' sonic attacks. He concealed every trace of fatigue, drew the deepest breath he could manage, and mixed a small amount of mana into it.

While repeatedly resisting the cockatrices' sound waves, he had begun to understand part of their principle and imitate it. Karath possessed an ordinary build by orc warrior standards.

"Victory or...!" Yet a roar far too powerful to have emerged from such a body exploded across the battlefield.

"Death!"

"DEATH!" Every warrior of the Greenskin Alliance completed the cry. A strange shiver passed through the Lionheart guide. The warriors' answering roar caused every hair on Karath's body to rise with exhilaration. It was not merely the volume of the shout. They had all grown. Even without Karath commanding them personally, the battle had unfolded cleanly. The result surpassed his expectations. The cockatrices had been dangerous enough to reveal how far the warriors had progressed.

They were almost inferior versions of drakes. Their size and physical strength fell somewhat short, but their sonic attacks made them more troublesome than ogres. Perhaps Karath would eventually be able to create something resembling a lion's roar through magic. The cockatrices' attacks had already shown him a new way to use mana. His understanding remained incomplete, and for now he had only managed something similar to magical amplification.

Even so, Karath had never expected to discover magical principles outside Renstein's books in this manner. That was merely an additional reward.

"Return to the ancestral ruins!" The main prize remained the ruins and the limestone used to build them. Somewhere around the time the Five-Tribe Alliance formed, the cry "Rokta Ogar!" had begun spreading among its warriors. Karath had originally popularised it within the Bloodclaw Tribe, and someone eventually asked what the words meant. Karath had once again invoked the ancestors. He claimed it was an ancient expression meaning "Victory or death."

As a result, Rokta Ogar had become the official battle cry of the Greenskin Alliance. Karath felt somewhat uncomfortable whenever he remembered how it began. Still, few cries could have suited orcs better, so he allowed the tradition to remain. The warriors collected the cockatrice corpses and returned to the ruins.

"As expected." Once Karath examined the structure from nearby, he confirmed that its pillars were made from limestone. A smile spread across his face as he spent some time touching and examining one pillar after another.

"Grand Chief! Krog found something strange!" Krog's shout pulled him away from the stone.

"What did you find?"

"There is a path leading downward through a crack here. It resembles the entrance to Root's freezer." One section of the ancient ruin had been heavily weathered and damaged. Beneath the broken limestone floor, a passage descended into darkness. Could something truly be hidden here? The Lionheart chief's story naturally returned to Karath's mind.

"Remove the floor!" The orc warriors obeyed. Once the shattered stones were lifted away, a staircase concealed beneath the ruins appeared.

"Karath will descend first." The stairs were narrow enough that only one orc could pass at a time. Darkness filled the underground passage, so Karath created a sphere of magical light and began descending. When he reached the bottom and saw what waited there, his eyes widened.

"No one come inside! Remain outside and wait!" Nothing dangerous occupied the chamber. What he had discovered was something far more complicated.