The Ace Adventurer

“Stay cool, swordie,” Vi muttered.

The orc, seeming amused by the swordsman’s low stance, began strolling forward, his weapon clasped tightly in his right hand as it scraped and lugged clumps of dirt off the ground. The swordsman appeared tense at the orc’s approach, but he retained his focus and dug his feet firmly in the ground. Did he have a plan? Was he confident in his speed? Could he react to any move made by the large creature before him? Whatever he was thinking, Vi realized that there was no longer any time to change tactics.

“Hey Orc, I’ll just let you know right now. I’ve never once lost after taking this stance,” the swordsman said with a grin.

Vi bit her lip. His complacency was going to ruin the bet. Did he really have that much confidence that he could beat such a daunting opponent? Or was he just an empty talker?

“Look closely, Akendorf. My blade’s speed is…”

It was at that moment when everyone realized just how much danger they were all in. The second the orc had finally entered striking range, the club had already crashed into the ground where the swordsman stood with a boom that shook the ground beneath their feet. The explosion of dirt rising from the strike was like a fountain of earth sprouting out into the atmosphere.

No one in the crowd had seen the swing. It defied reality. The ability to even conceptualize that a creature that massive could unleash such a swift attack was but a fantasy to them, and it was seeing it with their own eyes that had finally allowed them to truly comprehend the terror that was the Orc Champion. But if he was so terrifying, then perhaps they must have thought that the swordsman before him was too for having sidestepped the blow.

“I wasn’t finished talking!”

His beautiful leap to the creatures left allowed him to unsheathe his blade and strike at the right arm of the orc in an upward crescent motion. It was a quick and gorgeous swing worthy of one nearing master level.

“Oh, not bad,” Dee said.

However, the metallic CLANG that had echoed through the town had shut out any hopes of victory.

“Wha-…” Before the swordsman could even register the physical response, his vision had been obscured. The meaty, red left hand of the orc had already found itself smothering the head of the swordsman before he even managed to touch the ground from his leap.

“What an idiot.” Vi sighed while placing her palm to her face. The frustration of losing the bet had caused her to mutter as much. It was obvious to her that, when avoiding a blow, one should dodge towards your opponent’s blind side for your counterattack. Jumping into the orc’s free arm was like signing his own death warrant. Did he have that much confidence in his blade? Vi wondered what empty compliments had swelled his brain to the point where he would become so foolhardy against an Orc Champion.

The muscle may as well have been untouched. There appeared to be shallow cuts on the surface of his rough skin, but the orc was still in pristine condition.

“Let go of me, you foul thing!”

The swordsman’s muffled screams were only as pointless as his attempts at stabbing through the left arm of the orc. While he did manage to cut the arm open with a few of his desperate pokes, the muscle tissue was so thick that it felt impossible for him to deal any meaningful damage.

The orc produced a satisfactory grin whose decayed dentals were so revolting that Vi felt herself grow sick. The elation over his victory was so sweet that he wound up snarling something in monster language at the sky, causing the crowd to erupt into a frenzy of screams at the sight of their champion in such a sorry state; a sight that almost seemed like peering into a crystal ball at their own future.

The orc took the moment after his gloating to toss the swordsman up into the air. Hunching his body forward, he set his left hand next to his right on the grip of the club, then twisted his body towards the now falling swordsman. A symphony of shrieks drowned out the sound of the man’s skull cracking under the strength of that hurricane of a swing, and his body hurdling through the air, so far off into the distance that some onlookers thought it may just have been swatted all the way west of Vulturia.

“Thank you for your patronage,” Dee said, scooping the gold coins over to her side of the table to the sound of the swordsman’s blade hitting the ground.

Vi didn’t respond. She instead chose to project her aura of displeasure at her sister through the grossly comical scowl she was wearing. It was her mistake, and to voice complaints about it would only damage her pride even further.

“If there aren’t any more human champions then…. then your town will be ransacked,” the boy said. He was cowering, but it appeared that the brutality of the scene hadn’t affected him quite as much as it had the townsfolk.

“Let’s bet on whether or not that kid is a captive or a willing follower,” Dee said.

“Are you trying to rip me off some more?” Vi sighed. “He’s a captive no matter which way you slice it.”

“Really? He knows monster language though; doesn’t that strike you as odd? He might just be raised by Orcs.”

“But then, why does he know Vulturian at all? It’s not like the orcs could have taught him. Find a better bet.”

At those words, a third, silent individual, stepped out from behind the two of them. They had both barely reacted to his dark silhouette leaping like a nimble cat onto the table they sat on after his stealthy approach. However, neither of them said anything. They only watched in silence as he slid the window open and hopped outside.

“Wanna bet on…” Vi muttered.

“Forget about it,” Dee said.

Vi shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Once he landed out onto the ground, suddenly appearing almost out of nowhere before the orc’s ring due to the window’s close proximity, an abrupt silence swept over the panicking masses. It was hard for them to hide their dismay. A new potential champion had stepped forward onto the ground before the Orc to rescue them, stopping just a single foot outside of the ring.

However, his height did not inspire much confidence in them. He stood at a little over five heads tall despite his maturity. There was also an issue in that he didn’t seem to be carrying any weapons. It was entirely possible to them that something was being concealed from within his dark cloak, whose hood was resting comfortably down at his shoulders. But even if that were the case, how was someone that tiny going to get through those thick muscles if a great swordsman like the previous fighter couldn’t?

The two girls on the inside could only offer up a sigh.

“Why does it seem like that man is always drawn to spectacle?” Vi asked.

“It’s in the name, surely,” Dee replied. “I keep telling you, those with two sounds in their names are just destined for grandness.”

“Or their parents are just kooks who don’t know any better.”

“But at the very least,” Dee continued with a warm smile. “Hero’s parents may have been on the mark when naming him. And so were we for getting so attached.”

The wind caught Hero’s cloak, granting it a gentle kiss that allowed it to flutter in rhythm with the single lock of hair that hung down the right side of his face. He remained unmoving as he sized up the great opponent before him. The orc, standing at over twice the size of his new challenger, found it difficult to mask his disappointment. Examining Hero had almost caused him to stomp his feet in frustration.

“H-hey kid! Get out of there! That thing’s gonna kill you!” someone from the crowd yelled. The one voice acted as a catalyst for other members of the large gathering to urge him to stay back. Their fright was becoming difficult to ignore. It seemed as if they still hadn’t recovered from the sight of the swordsman’s body being splattered like a mosquito. “Don’t you have eyes?!” an old woman shrieked.

Though the orc was even less pleased by his appearance than the crowd had been, something changed in his demeanor when he glanced at Hero’s face. A face, whether it belongs to a man or a monster, can tell you a lot about someone at a particular moment in time. And Hero’s expression had thrown the crowd into a state of panic and had caused a noticeable shift in the orc. It communicated the abandoned caution that allowed him to take a single step into the ring while still staring the orc right down the center of his terrifying face.

It was unclear what it was about Hero’s expression that had bothered Akendorf so deeply, whether it was the mere existence of that vague presence of confidence or if he felt taunted by his gaze. Regardless, this confidence had caused anger to bubble up within the creature, causing him to snarl once more. However, it did nothing to stop Hero’s other foot from stepping into the ring. Though, one might wonder if he should have taken the hint, as a blur of red had slid across the ring towards Hero.

Vi gripped the windowsill tightly as it dawned on everyone present that it wasn’t just the orc’s swing that was quick. He had closed the gap between the center and the edge of the ring in an instant. Their gasps and yells were like a thunderous roar after a flash of lightning.

Hero had only just stepped into the ring when the Orc found himself before the small man. The horizontal, cross-body swing that dragged the club over from his left side in a clean arc over to his right had created such a surge of winds that Vi and Dee were assaulted by the turbulence as all the windows flew open from the immense pressure. The sound of glass crashing under the pressure of the gusts caused them to flinch as they barely held themselves together under the gust.

Recentering themselves among the broken glass after being knocked off the table had taken them a moment, but they both leaned their upper bodies back onto the surface to update themselves on the situation.

“Hero!” Vi yelled once the winds had subsided. She tilted her head and searched for any sign of him. Had he gotten killed in a single blow?

“Vi, over there!” Dee pointed.

Sure enough, by following Dee’s gaze, Vi found that Hero was perfectly fine just a few steps away from the swing. His body was hunched forward, holding in his grasp his signature twin daggers, their curved edges drawing the eyes of the crowd as they caught the sunlight. He stood up and turned back to face the orc, who was still frozen in place. Then suddenly, a deep red sprayed out from the calcaneal tendon on the back of the orc’s right foot, causing him to fall to one knee.

The person who appeared the most shocked at the sudden turn of events wasn’t the Orc or the crowd, but the boy standing at the podium. The onlookers, who were previously frantically screaming, had been overwhelmed with an elated confusion by the sudden turn of events. The orc himself hadn’t even seemed to register what had happened. He attempted to lift himself back onto both feet with a roar, but his right foot gave way, throwing him back down to his knee. The boy could only look on with a dumbfounded expression on his face.

“N-no way… someone that puny…?”

Hero twirled his daggers in his hands, rolling his shoulders as the Orc had earlier, and slowly approached the downed creature, his cloak floating in the wind behind him. Regardless of how the battle was about to go, Hero had dealt a grave blow to the creature. It would be difficult for him to chase down the townsfolk in that state. In fact, it was entirely possible that he would have to surrender, as reinforcements from the Rock would catch up to him eventually in that state.

That perhaps was why there was some surprise when, despite the orc’s downed stature, another gust of wind enveloped the area as that blur of a swing made its appearance once more at Hero’s head. However, Hero pushed himself off the ground and allowed his entire body to shift into a graceful flip over the attack, slicing through the bicep tendons in the Orc’s right arm with great precision. The sudden jolt of pain caused the creature to let go of his club, as it went hurdling through the air towards the boy on the podium, who somehow managed to duck under it as it crashed into a nearby building.

Hero had no time to check on his surroundings. Despite his right arm’s newfound limpness, the left arm of the orc had already come barreling at him as it had the swordsman before him. He used the momentum from his landing to lower himself to the ground on all fours, rolling under the arm and slicing upward at the same tendons in the orc’s left arm. Blood spurted out from the wounds as Akendorf could do nothing but growl out. Both arms hung lifelessly thanks to the lacerations Hero, who was now covered in the creature’s thick blood, had applied.

While an ordinary human being might have surrendered when placed in that position, there was only one move left for the orc champion, whose eyes were so red with rage at his shattered pride that they blended in with the color of his skin. With a desperate leap forward using his only good leg, he roared, and his jaw widened in a telegraphed attempt to bite Hero’s head off and salvage the battle. The move, which Vi thought had been so pathetically lethargic compared to the previous attacks, gave Hero no cause to bother evading it. Instead, he spun his twin daggers around by the hilt and thrust the blades into the eye sockets of the creature lurching forward.

Before those menacing, hammer-like teeth could chomp down into Hero’s tiny body, the Orc jolted from the pain, squirming and craning his neck in all different directions while still attempting to force himself forward to rip his foe’s head off. It was all he could do now that he was beaten. His pride was in tatters, and the feeling of invincibility he’d basked in for the entirety of his life had been stripped away like a desert illusion.

However, even this final attempt at a win was all for naught as Hero dug his feet into the ground, preventing himself from being knocked over. He continued pressing the blade deeper into the back of the orc’s head, as blood oozed down his hands, until he felt that he had plunged his knives halfway into the creature’s brain.

And so ended the tale of Akendorf, orc champion of the famed Mezereth tribe, slain by an orphaned adventurer with the stature of a teenage boy. Despite his size, he was a master at systematically dismantling his opponents by overwhelming them with speed. After this day, tales of the ace adventurer’s battle with the orc would spread far and wide, a circumstance that put him on the map as a contender for being The Baening’s strongest warrior.

His clash with the orc champion had lasted forty-three seconds.