With his hair fluttering wildly in the wind, Noah held on for dear life as Talal, the size of a car this time, swiftly flew through the air towards the direction of where Mark was fighting the orc. Fortunately for Noah, Talal was flying so fast that this situation didn’t last very long. Soon enough they came upon the clearing where Noah and Mark were jumped and heard sounds of metal clashing against metal, and two distinct voices grunting, one in particular was screaming expletives which made Noah smile because if Mark still had the energy to curse, then he was definitely still fine.
As they came upon the two bitter foes locked in a fierce stalemate, they saw that the orc scout almost immediately pushed Mark away with a kick, then threw its axe at them and tried to make a run for it, as if it sensed that death was looming over it, in the shape of a bird of course. But, unfortunately for it, it was not fast enough to escape the sharp talons of the all-black Roc.
Before the axe could even get ten feet from our position, Talal quickly vanished from his spot, magically dropping Noah off to the side with shadows dancing around him and reappeared with a talon pierced through the orc’s chest.
“FINALLY, THIS MAJESTIC ME HAS REACHED LEVEL 15”
Noah looked on in jealousy at Talal as he walked over towards Mark who was already shining in a resplendent, holy light, indicative of him using his [Heal] skill on himself. When he got into whispering distance of his cousin, he couldn’t help but say “Notice how his personality changes when he changes forms?” he said pointedly
“Yeah, probably because he treats him-speaking in his human form as a different language all together. I read somewhere that personality changes somewhat depending on your views on the culture of said language, changing races or forms probably amplifies that.” Mark said matter-of-factly
“Yeah, I read that too. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bit annoying”
“You’re just jealous because he’s ten levels ahead of us.”
“Yeah…” Noah sighed and visibly deflated “I just… When are we going to be that strong? It all seems so far away.” He said wistfully
“Well, we’ve only been hunting for food and not levels so we can’t really complain. We’re probably going to have to step up our efforts up if we want to become stronger, faster.”
As if a light bulb lit up in his mind, Noah had an idea. He walked over to Talal who was seemingly looking into blank space, probably looking at his status screen and said “Hey Talal, what would you say to a little scouting mission?”
The Roc shrunk down again, changed forms into that of a human and said “Hmmm, you wish to scout out the place where that orc came from?” Talal held in his chin thoughtfully then said “I agree but on one condition, I will not kill any of them, I will only scout it out for you since I consider you my friends. Besides, you guys need the levels”
“Great! Exactly what I thought!” Noah stayed like that looking at his Roc friend expectantly for a few moments when Talal said
“Why are you looking at me like that? You will not be coming with me.”
“Awww, why not? Since it’ll be Mark and I who’ll be doing the cleaning, shouldn’t one of us at least come with you?”
“No need, I have a very good memory, I can draw you images on some paper when I get back so let’s meet back at the building.”
With that, Talal morphed into a ball of shadows and melded into the ground before zooming off into the forest in the direction of what they assumed to be an orc base of some sort.
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Despite what Noah thought, he was not omniscient, so he zipped around trying to find orc tracks and, find them he did. He found some vaguely humanoid tracks with one thing of note, they were deeper, much deeper. This suggested something much heavier had left them, most likely orcs, as they were taller and packed with more muscle than the average human.
He followed the tracks around the forest for a few minutes but couldn’t help but be annoyed, the tracks kept on ending abruptly at one point then resuming a couple tens of meters away. “I’m following an orc scout’s tracks aren’t I? That’s annoying. Do I just morph back and fly around then? But I don’t know if those orcs can sense my presence or even how they’ll respond to it. Hmmm, well, it won’t be my problem anyway.”
Talal then transformed back into a car-sized bird of prey and rose into the air eager to get this favor for his new friends over with. As soon as he got high enough, he managed to spot smoke out in the distance, at least 5 kilometers away. He got closer and realized that it wasn’t just one column of smoke but multiple. When he flew even closer one of the orcs, a skinny variant much like the scout he skilled blew a horn and started shouting at its fellow orcs while pointing at him. “Well, that answers that question, they can definitely sense me or at least their scouts can.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
He said sorry to Noah and Mark in his head and proceeded to mentally count how many orcs there were, while counting, he managed to notice that there were actually much bigger orcs in the makeshift encampment, he used his acquired spell [Identify] and found out that they were called war orcs and they were surprisingly close to his level at 13. Then he also spotted a few orc archers that even matched him in level and last but not least, one single massive [Orc Warchief – lvl 24] barking orders at the other smaller orc archers, presumably to start shooting at him.
Before they could bombard him with arrows, he morphed into a ball of shadows and melded into his surroundings before completely disappearing from the orcs’ sight.
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Mark paced back and forth in front of the door to the tenth floor, anxiously waiting for Talal’s return. It had already been twenty minutes since he went out scouting and Mark was starting to get worried, not for the roc’s wellbeing, no, he was worried about how many orcs there were or if their base was that far away if it was taking this long for someone as fast as Talal to scout their base out.
“Mark, why don’t you calm down and sit down beside me.” Noah said as he pat the spot on the floor next to him “We both know how strong Talal is, there’s no need to worry”
“That’s not what I’m worried about, I’m worried about the orcs. What if there’s too many of them or they’re too strong for us? We’re only level 5 Noah, we could barely kill that one scout earlier.”
“Don’t worry Mark, I’ve got a plan, it might even be a genius plan if I do say so myself” Noah pointed his nose upward as he bragged.
Then the door suddenly opened and Talal came out with a smile on his face which sent a shiver down Noah’s spine for some reason.
“So, I’ll just get straight to the point, there are one hundred orcs total.” Talal’s smile almost reached his ears as he looked at the two humans’ expressions change. “Of those one hundred, sixty are normal orcs, fourteen are scouts, fifteen are archers, ten are warriors and last but definitely not least, the Warchief which is the highest level at twenty-four.
As he heard that, Mark couldn’t help but finally sit down in disbelief. They just sat there for a few minutes, the humans sitting down with their mouths open and the roc, with a smile that reached his ears.
Talal broke the silence a few minutes later and said “Come on, don’t be like that guys. I believe in you! Though of course you’re going to have to prepare A LOT before you actually go and raid their encampment but otherwise, I think you can do it!”
Noah’s mouth opened and closed a few times as if he was going to say something but after the fifth time this happened, he ended up just looking at the sky with a thoughtful look on his face.
Mark meanwhile was deathly pale and on the verge of shaking as he asked “How about the rest of their levels?”
“Oh, the others aren’t really noteworthy, you should start with the normal orcs and scouts, they range from five to ten with the scouts in the higher end of that spectrum.”
Some color visibly returned to Mark’s face at that answer and he finally started thinking that maybe, just maybe, they could do it. It was a daunting task with a hundred enemies sure but, together they could probably do it as long as they whittled down the number gradually. He looked at the thoughtful expression on Noah’s face and was reassured “As long as Noah doesn’t give up, I don’t see how I could.”
Eventually, Noah returned to Earth and said “I’m hungry, Mark let’s go continue our hunt for some food then we can discuss what we’re going to do about the orcs. Sound good?”
Mark smiled and said “Yeah, sounds good.”
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They were out beyond the parking lot again, sitting across from each other when Noah let out a mighty burp.
UUURRRP
Noah looked at Mark shyly and opened up a hole in the ground, he threw the rabbit bones, he picked so cleanly with his teeth to the point that not even a morsel of meat could be seen on them, in. He could only wonder what chefs could make with such superior ingredients, on that note, he thought “Wonder if there’s someone out there with a chef class” he began salivating again even though he was full.
Mark looked at his cousin salivating while looking into space and laughed, he couldn’t help but think that he was certainly weird. At the end of the world where everything could kill them in their sleep and all his cousin could think of was food.
“Hey! Why are you laughing while looking at me?!” Noah asked while smiling
“It’s just hilarious, we’re about to face a hundred orcs, most of them higher leveled than us and all you can think about is food.” Mark kept on laughing for a good three more minutes before Noah suddenly had a serious expression on his face and said.
“Right the orcs, we need to come up with a plan of action. First, I was thinking I should make a new spell, something more powerful than [Air Blade] because as we discovered with that scout last time, it wasn’t that effective and that was only a level eight scout. What more if we encounter their warriors or God forbid, that chief of theirs.” Noah shuddered at the thought
“I actually already have a few ideas for some spells but I don’t know if they’ll be strong enough to do any damage so testing those will be priority number one for us.”
EHEM
Noah cleared his throat and continued “Second in priority will probably be to boost you in levels seeing as you’ll be the one facing them in melee range. I don’t like our chances if you can’t hold your own if my spell doesn’t kill them in one go so, no arguing with me there” he shot a glance at Mark who looked like he was about to disagree. “Our goal should be to get you to at least level ten, that should net you thirty more stat points and a higher chance at repelling any orcs that come for me.”
“Third of course will be my levels, because although over a hundred points of mana is good, it’s not nearly enough for a spell made for fighting something at level twenty-four. So, any questions?