Thalion dashed toward the big tower where Kael and Sylas were standing.

"Hey, so where are the attackers?" Thalion asked as he looked around, seeing only some movements behind the trees after landing besides the two.

"They're gathering. I don’t know what their goal is, but I don’t think they want to attack. They are waiting for us to go out hunting," Kael said with a sour face.

"So you want to attack them?" Thalion asked a bit excited. This was a problem and could be a big indicator that they were supporting the undead faction. Which did not make much sense. Why would orcs support the undead?

"Are we completely surrounded, or is it just this side?" Thalion said while pointing in the direction where he had spotted movement.

"We are completely surrounded," Kael said in dismay, "and as long as they keep their distance, it will be very difficult to get rid of them."

"The good thing is that most hunting parties had already returned before the orcs did arrive," Sylas commented, "but Lisa is still out there, along with Evelyn and Kargul."

"I could rouse them a bit and search for the others," Thalion suggested, trying to be helpful. Why did they not just fly over it? This all would give him a chance to travel to the mountains too. Well, just in case he couldn't help more, and a flying form would be very helpful in the fight against the orcs.

"How do you want to break through? The orcs have archers that will shoot you out of the sky when you try to fly over them," Kael said, shaking his head in disagreement.

"What were you even doing the whole day? No one saw you," Sylas asked, interested. Which was a bit of a weird question given the current situation.

"Cultivating," Thalion answered both their questions. "I think I will be fine." In no world would he wait here until the orcs had left. Yeah, it was definitely time to get a bit crazy.

With that, he shot into the air. After he had climbed over 300 meters, he deemed it high enough and dashed over the forest. The moment he had left the fortress, three-meter-long arrows were launched at him from the ground. His reflexes were so fast that he could dodge them easily at this current height.

He dashed over the orcs in the jungle. From above, he saw some tents between the trees. They definitely planned to stay here for a longer duration. After he passed the tents by over 500 meters and no arrows were fired at him, he dashed down. Thalion landed on a tree branch and transformed into the umbral predator. Let's see how strong those orcs were. It was time for carnage, Thalion thought with a crazy smile playing around his lips.

Kael looked on as he saw the crazy one fly off, just soaring over the orc blockade hiding in the jungle, dodging all the arrows shot at him with ease. Every other mage he knew would have died multiple times at that point.

"Holy shit, how is he doing that?" Sylas said in disbelief, standing next to him.

"Doesn’t matter. Let’s prepare. When we see the fighting start, we will go in with small groups to slowly break the blockade," Kael said, his confidence rising. If Thalion didn't manage to create an opening for them, they might have to wait for the systemshop.

Thalion jumped from tree to tree. He could already hear the voices of the orcs. He noticed the effect his body tempering had. Even if it was only his skin, he felt how his power had grown, and his senses were sharper. His speed had also improved a bit. He wondered how strong the effect would be when he had fully infused his flesh and muscles.

He kept moving through the trees. His goal was to catch a group that was patrolling the perimeter, and he soon got lucky as a group of four orcs were moving in his direction.

<--

Thrazz was scouting for that stupid human who managed to break through their blockade on his side. His comrades Grommuck, Vorgar, and Krushnak were all berserkers, like most orcs. Thrazz was one of the archers who tried to hit the quick human and close to Level 39. He enjoyed hunting humans. They died with one arrow and gave a lot of experience and credits.

After the special quest had arrived, their leader ordered them to march here and block the human settlement. Now, over a thousand orcs were camping here, starving the humans of experience. They were not finished building the two ring walls, which should surround the human base. They needed to watch out for attacks from behind. His leader said that the gods could communicate with the humans, and they might get attacked from the outside.

They were not worried, though. Orcs were stronger than humans, and they had almost finished their blockade, which would provide them with a great advantage if the humans would try to leave their base. They had stopped sending their healers with the group of fighters who tried to catch the humans in the jungle since they were the first who got attacked and most often even died. To counter this, they protected the healers in their camps. When a fight got too rough, they would just retreat, and after a short healing session, they would be back at it again. It took a lot of damage to kill an orc at F grade. Humans needed to work together to take one down, while orcs only needed one solid hit.

Fighting against humans almost went the same way. They got stung by a few arrows or those spells, then they started smashing humans, and next, most of the surviving humans started running. It was easier than killing beasts, especially with the slightly bigger humans. This exact scenario happened often since they had arrived in front of this giant human base. It was even easier to hunt those humans because they were coming home after a hard day of hunting, so most didn’t even manage to outrun them.

"Should we split up?" Vorgar said in a deep voice. "I know one of the chieftains said we should go as a group because the human might be an elite warrior, but what can a human do against us? This is embarrassing."

"I don’t care what you think; we will stay together. There might be more, after all," Thrazz rumbled. Not that he didn't agree with the other orc. It was definitely a waste of time, but such powerplays were needed to stay in control.

Vorgar looked to the ground, and they kept searching for the humans, hopefully finding some additional runaways hiding.

Then Thrazz heard the ripping of flesh and bones, and he looked back. Was this an ambush by other orcs? But what he saw startled him more than he thought was possible.

A being of otherworldly darkness was standing behind one of his Berserkers, holding his head in his hand while the body was already falling to the side. His eyes and the violet ones of the beast met. They were cold and uncaring. It did not even stop for a moment as it blurred to the side where Krushnak almost wasn’t fast enough to get his spear up. As its claws clashed with the shaft of Krushnak's spear, the orc was still pushed back a few meters. Just how strong was that thing? Thrazz thought in shock. Thrazz drew the bow with one of his arrows, which were almost longer than a human. However, the beast was smart and fast. It moved so that he didn’t have a clear shot, always having the Berserker between them. Krushnak was just barely holding on, and before Vorgar could help him, flesh and blood were already flying left and right. The beast was ferocious and with every strike of its claws, it easily ripped through the orc's skin. Normally, an orc didn’t need to fear melee fighting since their hide was thick and they were stronger than even most beasts. Well, not with this opponent.

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Krushnak's spear couldn't do much in close range, and it looked like the beast was stronger than even Krushnak—but not by much. The lighter Vorgar engaged with his axe, swinging down on the head of the beast, but at the last moment, as it had waited for the attack to come, it exploded with speed, almost too fast to watch. It dodged to the side, grabbed Vorgar's axeshaft with one arm and his shoulder with the other, spinning around, and the whole orc was flying at him while his sword arm was dangling at his side, probably broken.

Thrazz dodged to the side and saw how the beast bit down on Krushnak's throat, but the orc was fast enough to redirect it down, where the jaws bit into his flesh. From the teeth, a deep black mist was rising, and it left some of the festering darkness on the wound. Thrazz loosened his arrow. He didn’t care anymore if it would kill Krushnak too. The orc was already badly injured and wouldn’t help him in this fight. His arrow pierced through the orc's back and the chest of the beast, which screamed in agony. With a triumphant smile, Thrazz drew the next arrow, only to see the beast rip out the whole arrow in one go, the wound closing with visible speed as black tendrils shot from its body, turning the corpses of Krushnak and Grommuck into darkness before the tendrils returned to its body.

In fear, Thrazz let go of the arrow, but it was too late, the beast easily dodged the arrow by stepping to the side, and within moments, it was on him, ripping with its claws through his flesh. Soon enough, everything turned black.

Thalion stood in the place where he had just devoured the four orcs. Even though he had a stealth attack, the fight was much harder than expected. That arrow, however, did a great deal of damage. He didn't expect the archer to just sacrifice his comrade to get a shot in. He needed to learn to fight much better. He had speed and strength on his side. It should have been impossible for them to wound him in such a fight if he had more skill in fighting as a monster.

In the end, the gains were worth it.

You have killed Orc Level 39

...

...

You have killed Orc Level 37

You have reached Level 33

You have gained 1 strength

A whole level and permanently one strength more in the bucket was great. One thing he didn't understand about his forms was that the stats he gained counted for all his forms, while the affinity was only with the body and didn’t transfer.

There would shortly be more orcs here, so he sprinted a bit back, looking for survivors belonging to Kael's base while he kept umbral predator's instinct running, but he didn’t find anyone in the surroundings.

After a bit of thinking, he decided on more orc killing than searching for survivors. If they had managed to hide until now, then they should be safe anyway. Time to get some more exp, credits and help out the people in the base.

With that, he started searching for orcs, and he spotted the next group pretty quickly, but this one was obviously not informed that some had breached the blockade, as they stood on a small wooden platform on one of the tree branches, completely relaxed and talking.

Thalion snuck up on them, using his instinct ability to shroud him even more and taking a quick look around, but they were the only orcs in the area.

When he came closer, he saw what they were holding. It was a human head, and they had one of their giant arrows sticking out of one of the trees thirty meters away from them.

One of the orcs threw the head at the tree and failed to hit the arrow, if that was what he aimed for.

The head exploded on the impact with the tree a bit below the arrow, spraying blood and brain on the ground.

The other orcs laughed loudly, and then it was the turn of the next orc, and he also threw another human head, this time missing the tree altogether.

Thalion was slowly sneaking up on the orcs. It was difficult to get close unnoticed since there were torches on the trees next to them, which lit up the perimeter.

The orc who missed was angry and channeled a powerful fireball, throwing it at the tree, almost completely destroying the arrow that was stuck in the tree and most of the tree trunk on that side, but it was not enough to fell the tree.

Thalion was pretty close now. He slowly pushed his body through bioluminescent leaves of vines that were hanging from the branch above while the soft moss under him suppressed all sound he would have made.

Now he was five meters above the orcs and jumped down, aiming for the mage who had thrown the fireball before. With one strike of his claws, the mage's head flew off, and shortly after, before the last two orcs could act, they also lay dead on the ground. Thalion devoured the orcs, earning him one permanent point in strength. Killing the three orcs, even when they were over Level 35, didn’t even bring him another level. Leveling had become way harder than he had thought. The amount of plants he had devoured only pushed him a bit over halfway through the next level. Those orcs must have killed a lot to be this high leveled.

Thalion kept moving, he didn’t want to get too close to the orc camp for now. Slowly, after he killed the three orcs, he found another outpost with orcs on it. They were a bit harder to kill since they were four, but after he killed the archer and heavily injured one orc, the fight was pretty easy. His stealth attacks were devastating, giving his target almost no chance to survive. If the next stage was some kind of desert, it would make life harder for him in his umbral predator form. Well, he was still fast and strong, and his passive healing made most mortal wounds a joke for him.

But if they saw him first, he was not even sure if it was possible for him to win this fight. Those orcs had absolutely powerful attacks if they managed to hit, and they could take a lot of damage before going down. After a bit of searching, he gave up on finding another lookout. So, it was time for the main course, Thalion thought while he was moving in the direction of the blockade.