Chapter 122: 067. New Fate -3 (Part Two)

I tugged at the camel’s reins.

We ascended to the peak of the dune and took a look below.

On a stretch of a barren terrain, around forty Orcs were battling against about twenty people who looked to be mercenaries and merchants.

The Orcs were at least two metres tall with brown skin and rippling muscles. Besides some dirty rags covering their important bits, the entirety of their attire consisted of clubs made out of wood or bones in their hands. That was about it.

Their physical prowess seemed over the top, too – when one of the Orcs took a swing with its bone club, a mercenary was flung away on his butt.

“Brown Orcs!” Damon cried out in shock before I could even say anything. “They belong to the upper tier of the Orc species, my lord. Although not as dangerous as the Red Orcs, they are still known to be quite vicious.”

“Oh, really?”

I was about to summon a musket, but belatedly stopped myself.

We were in Aslan. A kingdom that legalised Necromancy.

The thing was, I couldn’t see anyone down there who might potentially be Necromancers. Which meant…

“…Doesn’t this mean I can rampage to my heart’s content?”

Well, since they were mercenaries, they shouldn’t be able to sense divinity in the first place. But even if they did, not only did they not pose any threat to me, no one would believe them even if they chose to blab about it, anyways.

Besides, I could appropriately deal with them depending on their reactions before trouble comes knocking my way.

After making my mind up, I summoned some undeads.

**

(TL: In 3rd person POV.)

“We’re going to die. We’re all going to die!!!”

Although Hans was a merchant by trade, he was also an Alchemist by profession who crafted and sold potions alongside all sorts of magic tools. But at the moment, he was holding his head in desperation while looking around his surroundings.

The mercenaries were protecting the camels they rode on as well as the wagon carrying the cargo.

Meanwhile, a horde of Orcs were rushing down from a dune. At first, they numbered only around twenty, but as the battle continued on, that figure ballooned past thirty and eventually, reached forty.

The newly-appearing Orcs soon outnumbered their brethren lying on the ground as corpses.

“It’s over. It’s all over!”

“Will you stop with that unlucky babbling of yours already?!”

A mercenary angrily shouted at his own client.

However, he still knew. Even his fellow mercenaries all knew it, too.

They knew that it was difficult to survive once you ran into Brown Orcs in the desert. No matter how far the battlefield was, the Orcs would hear the commotion and show up here sooner than later.

These starving monsters would no doubt rush over here, surround their prey, and continue attacking until their new food sources collapsed from sheer fatigue.

“You said you’re an Alchemist, right?! Don’t you have something like magic explosives or something?!”

The leader of the mercenaries, Kasal, shouted at Hans.

“T-that! H-hang on!”

Hans began rummaging through the wagon before eventually pulling out a purple-coloured crystal sphere.

“I-I have this!”

“And what is that?!”

“It’s a vial containing poison! It’s a weapon that will detonate once you inject it with Mana or demonic energy. That’s why…”

Even though Hans eagerly pushed the poison sphere forward, the mercenaries loudly yelled back at him.

“There’s no freaking way we know how to use Mana or demonic energy!”

These mercenaries were only third rate – charitably speaking, barely second-rate, actually. Obviously, they wouldn’t know how to control Mana or demonic energy.

Hans, with an expression of a man left with no other choice, personally injected Mana into the crystal sphere. It began trembling right away.

When the item began working as intended, Hans’s complexion brightened in an instant.

Just as he was about to chuck the sphere at the group of Orcs, a hatchet flew in from somewhere and severed his hand holding it.

“Eh?”

With a thud, the sphere fell to the ground. After trembling for a bit more, the container exploded.

“Uwaaaahk?!”

“My eyes, my eyes! I can’t see!”

Hans held his severed right hand and screamed at the top of his lungs. A portion of the mercenaries, meanwhile, were struck by the poison bomb and began writhing in pure pain.

“Bloody hell…! This is why one should never escort a damn Alchemist! A treasure trove, my ass! What bloody treasures, when we’re about to get slaughtered?!”

Just as Kasal angrily yelled out, an Orc pounced on him.

His eyes belatedly spotted the massive club rapidly closing in his direction, and he could only go, “Oh, sh*t” after failing to defend himself in time.

But then, a single ray of light stabbed cleanly through the Orc about to smash down on him.

“…?”

Kasal flinched nastily and stared at the Orc with a big hole in its chest.

As for the monster, it stopped and began tilting its head. It curiously poked the bloody hole in its torso with its finger before collapsing on the sand with the whites showing in its eyes.

Kasal stared at the ‘arrow’ that had pierced straight through the Orc, which was now stabbed into the ground. The projectile seemed to be made out of magic because it was gradually dissipating away in gentle light particles.

He dazedly looked behind him.

Inside the storm of sand some distance away, he could see several transparent spectres in the shapes of women lining up.

“…Banshees?”

Indeed, they were Banshees, the ghosts that sang songs of sorrow.

When the Banshees breathed into the bows in their hands, arrows materialised there. The spectres pulled on the ethereal bow strings and took aim at the horde of Orcs.

“Why are Banshees here?”

Could it be that a Necromancer was nearby?!

Kasal’s dazed muttering prompted the other mercenaries to turn their heads.

Even the Orcs stopped fighting and turned their large heads to look up at the top of the dune.

…Because, existences glowing in brilliant silvery hue were marching out from the rough sandy winds.

Clack!

Looking rather out of place in this barren desert landscape, an army of skeletons marched forward while kitted out in full-body armour, shields, and all sorts of armaments.

The army of undead marched perfectly in sync. They stepped on the soft, burning sand below while an eerie blue glow oozed from their eye sockets.

They gradually approached the horde of the Orcs before coming to a stop in front of them. As if to suppress the spirit of the other side, the skeletons coldly glared at the Brown Orcs.

“H-hang on, are they… really skeletons?”

Kasal was genuinely impressed.

The sense of presence these undeads gave off was on another level. Every single one of these skeletal soldiers felt like a powerful warrior.

The Brown Orcs glared right back as if they didn’t want to cower, but their eye muscles were twitching from the rough sand-filled winds.

And then…

“Waaaaaaah!”

An Orc roared out when it thought their momentum was being suppressed. But in the blink of an eye, this very Orc’s head went flying away.

A headless Orc crashed down to its knees, and the horde of undead opened their jaws to screech out even louder. Their mouths were opened so wide that their jawbones threatened to dislocate; vicious howlings escaped from their openings.

-Ku-ooooooh!

Finally, the Orcs flinched.

“Rah-oora-biba!”

The Orcs cried out something in an indecipherable language while pointing at the undead. More Orcs rushed in from beyond another sand dune, their numbers reaching about fifty. The thirty skeletons and ten Banshees watched the arrival of the enemy reinforcements and got ready for combat.

And then… the two camps collided.

The skeletons evaded the Orcs’ weapons, lowered their backs, and used their blades to slice apart the monsters.

They kicked and stabbed down with their spears.

They shoved back with their mighty shields and struck the Orcs in the heads with their maces.

The Banshees, on the other hand, floated and darted freely among them while firing their magic arrows.

The legion of undead massacred the Orcs in a display of overwhelming might.

“What in the world…?!”

Kasal had to doubt his own eyes at this sight.

The surviving Orcs couldn’t even manage to destroy a single undead, and resorted to urgently escaping from the battle in terror.

However, as if they didn’t want to let the Orcs go, the Banshees continued firing their arrows away, while the skeleton soldiers snatched away the reins of the camels belonging to the mercenaries and mounted the reticent rides to give chase.

“W-wait, they even know how to ride camels, too?!”

A shocked expression was etched on Kasal’s face.

But in the midst of all this chaos, Alchemist Hans’s eyes were figuratively sparkling away.

He stared at the skeletons and dazedly muttered out. “Undead possessing divinity! Just who can…?”

It was then, the vicious sand winds began to die down. Three individuals riding on camels emerged from the sandy storm.

The skeletons kneeled down as if they served this trio.

The one at the front was a young boy wearing a robe, while to his side was a middle-aged man who seemed to be the boy’s attendant. The last one was a small Elf child.

Since Aslan treated all demi-humans as slaves, Kasal automatically assumed this boy to be some kind of a noble that had an Elf slave.

The mercenary leader hurriedly knelt down and bowed his head. “I offer my greetings to the noble priest-nim who worships the god of death! And also, thank you for saving us lowly servants!”

Here was a being capable of controlling several powerful undeads. Someone like that had to be a renowned aristocrat at the bare minimum, or alternatively, there was a good chance that he was a scion of the king ruling the land of Aslan.

After seeing how Kasal reacted, the other mercenaries also chose to offer their greetings first instead of dealing with their injuries or treating their wounded colleagues.

Aslan’s nobles could be quite overbearing. No one knew for sure how they would react if you got on their bad books.

Hans too knew this, yet he didn’t offer any greetings yet.

He was too busy alternating his gaze between the never-before-seen undead wielding divinity, and the three unknown individuals commanding them. The Alchemist’s eyes were already dyed in the greed of a researcher.

He must’ve already forgotten about the pain from his severed hand, because he was staring straight at the three unknown people and asking a question, instead. “M-may I enquire as to what your name is?”

Even before revealing his name first, Hans threw out this query. In a certain sense, one could think of his attitude as belittling the Necromancer.

Kasal freaked out and shot back up to his feet, trying to grab the idiot’s head and make him bow down, but then…

“It’s Allen.”

The boy suddenly opened his mouth.

“My name is Allen.”

Kasal and Hans both flinched a little as they stared at the boy.

While standing amidst the desert winds, the boy commanding the undead stood proudly and addressed them.

< 067. New Fate -3 (Part One and Two) > Fin.