Chapter 123 – Pink Orcs.
Error messages and a throbbing headache was Jack’s morning alarm this time. He peeled open one eye, the right one being glued shut with caked on blood.
[Error: Please choose a skill to remove to make room for Skill: Final Strike]
“Later…” Jack groaned at the flashing error message, counting his teeth to make sure they were all still in his mouth. The last thing he remembered was getting clocked in the head by a treasure chest flying at him at mach-speed. The Tower could be an absolute dick about things sometimes.
[Error: Please choose a skill to remove to make room for Skill: Final Strike]
“Will you give me a second, holy shit,” Jack swiped at the message. Or at least he tried to. He glanced down to see his arms pinned down to his side, several wrappings of chain running across his torso.
Jack let out a long sigh, letting his head hit the back of whatever he was tied to with a dull thud, sending another wave of pain through his still throbbing brain. He gave his surroundings a scan through the flashing error message. He was going to have to deal with that sooner rather than later, but first he needed to figure out exactly what kind of shit he was in.
It wasn’t good. It was also very confusing.
Hannah had done a fair bit of research into what other races were currently active in the Tower. One that she repeatedly warned him to watch out for were Orcs. Apparently, they tended to operate on a make war first and ask no questions after because they’ve burned, destroyed, and pillaged everything in sight. The description Hannah had given him was they were large, muscular, had some protruding tusks, and green skin. Jack was tied up in a makeshift camp surrounded by about twenty of them if he had to guess.
The thing that struck him as odd was their very pink skin.
I’m concussed Jack thought to himself. That was the only thing that made sense.
“I told you those potions weren’t for drinking!” a high-pitched voice squealed. Jack’s eyes darted over to a group of the pink orcs who had the tiniest goblin Jack had ever seen surrounded on all sides.
“Fix. Skin. Now.” One of them snarled.
“Complete waste of time and resources. The effects should wear off in a few days. Probably.” The little goblin huffed, his tone astute and a little offended.
“Then I suppose you aren’t needed anymore. Roast the goblin runt. Throw him in the stew for dinner.” The orc commanded as he stalked off towards the opposite side of the makeshift camp. The orc was slightly larger than all of the other seven-foot orcs. He had a large black braid that ran from the back of his mostly bald head down to his waste. His tusks stuck out more predominantly than the rest, one of them decorated with a golden tip. His armor was leather, with spikes of ivory sticking out of every spot that wouldn’t directly stab him. Strapped to his back were two absurdly large battleaxes. Jack’s eyes followed that orc as he made his way through the camp. He seemed to be the leader type.
The orc joined a group of six other orcs all huddled around something. They quickly parted ways to make room for their apparent leader. Jack was able to see two of the orcs using their swords and axes as makeshift pry bars to bust open a large treasure chest. A large treasure chest with the number nine emblazoned across the lid.
My treasure chest damnit.
[Error: Please choose a skill to remove to make room for Skill: Final Strike]
Jack had some choice words to say to the Tower that he bit back. He didn’t need anyone knowing he was awake just yet. The orc leader looked like he wanted a turn at prying at the chest, so Jack took that moment to deal with his ability problem. He pulled up his abilities.
Abilities [5/5] —
Lightning Centipedes Bite [Uncommon, Novice - Low] [Error: No Core detected]
Storm Step [Rare, Novice - Low] [Error: No Core detected]
Lightning Engine [Legendary Rare, Journeyman - Low] [Error: No Core detected]
Chain Lightning [Rare, Novice – Low] [Error: No Core detected]
Core Self Destruct [Rare, Prodigy – High] [Error: No Core detected]
Ability slots, from what he understood, increased with core rarity. While the system still showed him having five abilities, he didn’t technically have five abilities that he could use. Or even five ability slots. What he was looking at was explained to him as “system remnants.”
An ability initially binds to the core, with your brain being sort of rewired to utilize the ability. Upon using an ability, it gets ingrained into your body, and even your soul. Sure, he lost his core and all the abilities imprinted on it, but the remnants of those abilities still remained. He could still run through the general motions of the ability, he still knew how they worked and where he needed to send mana. He just didn’t have any. He was told they would eventually disappear from his status screen, but it had been a year and they still remained.
Now though the Tower was sending him annoying messages at terrible times telling him that apparently, he can just remove an ability to make room for a new ability that doesn’t have a core to imprint on and he can’t even use it. Because it was obviously super important that he needed to do it right now.
“Why the fuck you haven’t just gotten rid of all my abilities already is beyond me…” Jack grumbled as he scanned through which ability to give up.
“Core Self Destruct,” he quickly decided. That ability should probably stay a one hit wonder, Jack thought.
[Replacing ‘Core Self Destruct – Rare’ with ‘Final Strike – Epic’]
Just like that the abilities had been swapped and the error message disappeared. Jack dismissed his status screen and tried to reorient himself to his new pink friends.
There was an orc in a brown tattered robe with a bent wooden staff sitting with his back facing Jack. He glanced down at the ground and saw strange runes drawn into a giant circle all around him. It glowed with a dull blue and gave off a low monotone humming.
Probably some sort of prison runes to keep me locked up Jack immediately thought, his mind drifting back to the time he was a prisoner inside the dungeon. He strained against the chains a little, giving them a test. They seemed to bind even tighter in response to his movement.
Jack glanced back at the camp and surrounding orcs, namely the leader orc who seemed to be having no luck pry open his treasure chest. Jack grinned at that.
“Brother,” another orc in a hooded robe of deep blue stepped out of a nearby tent and the other surrounding orcs seemed to pay him the same sort of deference they did the axe wielding orc.
“What,” he grunted, veins bulging at his forehead as he tried again to pry open the chest.
“This chest belongs to someone of the ninth rank. Are you sure we should be messing with such a person? We might be inviting trouble we cannot handle. Surely, he is an important person.”
Both the orcs glanced over at Jack, and he quickly went back to playing knocked out.
“He’s human,” the orc leader said, disgust plain in his voice “the idiot got knocked out by his own supply crate. If this is the caliber of someone who has managed to achieve the top ten of their species then I say we have nothing to worry about,” he finished with a loud, mocking laugh. This prompted several of the other orcs to laugh and cheer in response.
“Tell me,” the chief said, silencing everyone, “what equipment did he have in his storage?”
Jacks’ ears perked up at that. He felt at his index fingers. Both of his rings were missing. He assumed his void sack was gone as well.
“I’m still running counter spells. I can’t detect any sort of entrapment on his void storage, but I’ve been proceeding with caution due to his rank.”
“Enough, not another word of his rank. You-” the chief turned and pointed at one of the orc bystanders, “go open the void sacks. Now. And you, brother.” he snarled, turning back to the robed orc. “Figure out how to open this chest.”
“He needs to be the one to open it. Anything we do will likely destroy the contents inside before we manage to break into it,” the robe orc offered.
The chief glanced over at Jack, and then stalked towards him.
“Is it working?” He heard the chief asking the other robed orc who was sitting guard right outside the rune circle.
“Yes chief. Although something odd about this one. Took a long time to mark his mana core and bind it to the prison.”
“Something odd? Are you sure he’s cut off from mana?”
“Yes chief. No mana detected from this one at all. The prison binding worked.” The orc confirmed. Jack bit back a grin.
He heard the footsteps of the chief as he walked through the spell circle with a surprising grace, careful not to touch any of the glowing runes. Then he kicked Jack square in the face, slamming his head back into the tree he was bound to.
“Wake up,” the orc Chief commanded.
“FUCK” Jack screamed, blood pouring out of his nose, head ringing all over again. “Was that really necessary?” He stared daggers at the orc, who looked wholly unimpressed.
“That chest is yours, correct?”
Jack didn’t respond, which earned him another savage kick to the stomach.
“Answer”
“It’s… not mine…” Jack gasped.
“Then who?”
“It’s… It’s… Your mothers. She gave it to me last night. Told me no man had ever satisfied her the way I did, and then she gave me the chest as a thank you gift.” Jack flashed the chief a blood-filled smile.
The orc chief didn’t respond with violence. Instead, he went cold. His enormous hand slowly reached out and wrapped around Jack’s neck.
“I will bring the chest here,” he said, his grip tightening it, “and you will open it.”
Jack didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond really. He couldn’t even breathe the orcs grip was so tight. The orc held Jack in his grasp for a long perilous moment. His heart started pounding in his head and the edges of his vision started to go black before the chief released him and stomped off to retrieve the chest.
Jack gulped in several breaths of fresh air and then looked down at the chains.
“Alright you little parasite, I’ve bought you all the time I can. It’s time to start earning your rent,” he whispered.
Sometime during the commotion of everything, his new pet centipede had peeled itself off his arm and started working on the chains that kept him bound.
To Jack’s surprise it was able to bite through the chain-links with its fangs. It was already through two of the wraps of chains and working hard on the third. Wiggleworm looked back at Jack and gave him what felt like a reassuring nod before it bit into another link. So fucking creepy, Jack thought.
They had him tightly wrapped up several times over with a very long chain, even after cutting through two links the tension had barely given way, so he had to buy the centipede as much time as he could.
Jack was hoping he could make the chief waste time by flying into a rage, but he was clearly the type who became cold and focused when pissed off. He had misplayed his hand there and now every second counted.
“Tell me,” Jack said aloud to the orc still sitting outside his circle, “what’s the average level of your warband?”
“Twelve,” he grunted, a note of pride in his voice.
Jack felt the tension in the chains loosen up as Wiggleworm cut through another link.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“And the chief? What level is he?”
“Fourteen. Now shut up. I’m done talking to the dead.”
Jack nodded at that. He watched as the chief reached the chest and stopped briefly, arguing with two orcs about something. From the sounds of it the goblin they were supposed to cook was causing all sorts of trouble. Apparently, he made some sort of bomb out of all the ingredients in the stew and the camp cook was now dead. Jack really wanted to follow up on that, but he felt the chains loosen even more and he retrained his focus.
“One last question. Do you have any weapons on you other than that staff?”
The orc turned around, and quickly stumbled backwards. Jack was standing outside the spell circle with a smile on his face.
“How? How did you break the chains? Your mana core is bound to the rune prison!”
“Yea. Here’s the thing. I don’t have a mana core.”
The orc’s face went from panic, to shock, to confusion all in an instant. He opened his mouth to sound the alarm.
Jack exploded forward and sent out six punches fast as lightning straight to the orcs throat. A raspy gasp was the only thing that escaped. Jack straightened out two fingers and stabbed them into the orc’s widened eyes like a stiletto. The orc grasped at his gouged out eyes and fell forward in pain. Jack bashed the back of the orc’s skull in with his heel.
You have slain climber Durg Swallowstone
+25,530 AP
By this time, several of the other orcs had heard the commotion and were all staring at the scene with looks of confusion plain on their faces.
Jack glanced down at his body. He had no weapons. Was wearing shorts and t-shirt after that asshole god stripped him of all his amour. He didn’t even have shoes.
Wiggleworm shot up out of the sand and latched onto his ankle. Jack briefly hoped that his centipede familiar would turn into a suit of armor like his shadow mimic–he did eat it after all. He felt the bug turn back into a tattoo and climb its way up his body. Instead of moving to his arm it went to his neck, wrapping around it. A black shroud materialized over his shoulders, hiding his upper body. One part of the shroud extended back behind him like a long, slender cape, trailing far back into the air with a life of its own. It zigged and zagged in an erratic, unnerving fashion.
Several of the orcs stumbled backwards in fear.
“Centipede…” one of them growled.
Jack glanced down, spotting the gleam off a dull iron hunting knife tucked into the belt of the orc he had just killed. He let himself fall, hand extended towards the knife.
The second his fingertips grazed the handle, he launched forward.
He slammed the knife into the next closest orc’s skull before anyone even realized what happened. There were more shocked screams from the surrounding orcs as Jack suddenly appeared, killing one of their companions.
Something about this new cloak that Wiggleworm had become seemed to be far more terrifying than the old centipede cloak he had. Maybe because it was an actual centipede, Jack mused.
He kicked off the body of the orc, twisting sideways as he launched as his next target. This orc had at least managed to react in time, but not nearly fast enough. His sword was only mid swing as Jack’s found purchase in the orcs heart. Red blood sprayed out of the orc and coated Jack’s face as he pulled the knife free. Jack spun it around in his hand and trained his sights on his next target.
Then the chief slammed into him from out of nowhere.
Jack was barely able to react moving just fast enough for it to be an indirect hit, causing minimal damage. Still, he had been knocked halfway across the camp and his ribs were now throbbing.
The chief let out a roar that sent out a shockwave. All the other orcs were wiped of their confusion and fear instantly and let out primal roars of their own, some even taking on a red hue as they activated abilities.
The chief was now wielding both of his battleaxes. He launched at Jack again, and this time he got a good look at the ability that caught him by surprise the first time.
It was a charge of some sorts, launching him forward and speeds so fast it left charred ground behind him. Jack dashed out of the way of the charge and the chief slammed both his axes into the sandy ground, causing an explosion of magma to burst out from the deep rents it created. He swung his axes hard towards Jack, sending a rain of lava at him.
Jack weaved through the lava back at the chief but was cut off by two large arrows landing just at his feet. Jack glanced to his right to see an orc drawing another arrow and firing at him. The arrow split into two, then four, then six. He looked back over at the chief who roared at him again, only this time lava spewed out of his mouth as he used another ability. Jack opted to meet the arrows head on, deflecting two with his dagger and dodging through the rest as lava bit at his back.
By this point the orcs had all but reformed their ranks and were starting to act like a proper warband. Spears shot out at him from every angle, arrows that glowed green with poison or yellow with fire rained down on him from multiple archers within the camp. Sword and axe swung at him hard, launching out arcs of power from their weapons. He could tell they were getting more confident the longer the battle raged on. Jack couldn’t help but smile. He had been very bored for a long time now. There was only so much he could do to test his limits on the first floor. The conditions were by no means ideal, but that was fine. He had been waiting for a fight like this for a while now.
It was time to kick it up a notch.
Jack jumped out of range of the orcs and instantly stopped all movement. He took several deep breaths as he let all the tension bleed out of his body, closing his eyes and dulling his senses to the world around him.
Then he disappeared.
Jack’s first target was the archer. He was annoying and needed to die. The orc didn’t even realize Jack was behind him until he buried his knife into his back and ripped down hard. The orc let out a blood curdling death rattle as he fell to the ground. Jack didn’t give them time to reorient themselves. As soon as they turned around Jack disappeared in another explosive burst of speed. This time appearing behind a group of three soldiers.
One of the orcs must have sensed it, because she turned around and launched at Jack with her spear. Her weapon glowed white and as she thrust forward twenty other ethereal spears joined it all launching out at him. Jack stepped into the flurry of thrusts and caught the spear with ease. He had seen this ability before. Ghost spear or something like that. Creates twenty or so fake spears to distract your opponent while you sneak in with the real attack.
Jack jerked back on the spear and the orc stumbled forward, surprised her attack was so easily seen through. Jack stabbed her three times over in the stomach.
By this time their discipline was starting to break back down and the fear was returning. Jack could almost taste it. He let a smile creep onto his face as he let the tension bleed out of his body once more. Then he launched at another target, this time someone in the middle of the group. When the orcs realized they weren’t safe even when surrounded by their own companions, that’s when the fear really seemed to overwhelm them. Some even dropped their weapons as they jumped for safety.
Jack wasn’t moving at instantaneous speed. He was just fast. Really fast. His mastery level over Dexterity was only at Adept, so that meant he couldn’t move this fast all the time. But if he used every ounce of concentration and focus he had available to him, for a few small seconds he could utilize every single bit of the 103 points of Dexterity to its fullest potential. This trick wasn’t without limit though. He was already getting slower each time he did it. His concentration was beginning to slip a little more with each burst, his body breaking down from the constant pressure. Jack burst once more, this time taking out the second archer.
The chief, who had been mysteriously quiet up to this point, finally made his return to the battlefield as Jack flashed back into the group once more. The orc chief was there this time to meet him, and he slammed his axes back down into the ground, causing another torrent of magma to burst upwards like a geyser, even showering one of his own orcs in lava in the process. Then he jumped to another spot and did the exact same thing, destroying the ground and caking the area with lava. Then he did it a third and a fourth time.
The sandy ground had quickly morphed into a magma covered hellscape with both friend and foe scrambling to find a safe spot to stand. Jack grimaced. The one thing he did need to move quickly was decent footing. The chief seemed to have caught on to that and decided to just destroy the ground itself. Jack had to put a stop to this before it got out of hand. He flashed in behind the chief ready to bury his dagger into the orcs back.
Then he slipped.
Jack glanced down at the one patch of ground behind the chief that was safe to land on. It was covered in ice. He looked over to see the other orc in the blue robe, the chief’s brother. He had frozen the patch of ground right behind the chief. It was a trap.
“Looks like I underestimated you guys,” Jack muttered.
The chief’s only response was to spin around with his axe, swinging it harder and faster than he had previously shown capable. Looks like I wasn’t the only one holding back, Jack thought to himself as he ducked under the swing. He slammed his knife into the chief’s thigh, only for the knife to shatter upon hitting his skin.
Jack hit the ground, and pushed off it, slipping slightly on the ice. The chief capitalized on this, and shoulder checked him, throwing him further off balance. Jack tried to stumble away but he had lost all momentum and where there wasn’t ice, there was magma. He couldn’t get a decent footing to launch himself away. He glanced back to see the chief wasn’t even chasing him, just watching with a smile on his face as Jack stumbled awkwardly away.
Then Jack felt an ice bolt hit his foot. It wasn’t painful, but it did root him in place.
“Shit.”
The chieftain did his charge again, slamming into Jack’s back and launching him across the camp. Jack flew into one of the tents and slammed into a bunch of crates, groaning in pain.
He mentally ran through his options. No weapons. No abilities. Outnumbered. He was also pretty positive his back was broken with that last attack. Jack let out a sigh of relief when he could still wiggle his toes. He glanced around for something to fight with, finding a large splinter of wood from one of the crates that broke his fall. Then he looked to his left at an orc who was sitting there with a sort of dumbfounded look on his face. He was holding a gun.
“Hey… is that my gun?”
----------------------------------------
[Nutt]
Nutt was having a bad day. First, he was chased off his floor for “alchemical experiments unbecoming of a goblin”, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Then, he was promptly captured by a band of slavers. Then, that band of slavers was raided by a band of idiot orcs and Nutt was again, captured and forced into slavery, becoming a double slave. Then, the health potions he was forced to make but secretly made into love potions in an effort to take control of the band of orcs backfired rather dramatically. What was supposed to make the orcs fall madly in love with him instead turned them pink, and consequently, made them very very angry with him. Nutt was now in a boiling pot, currently being turned into stew. He had thoughts about getting out of the cauldron, but when he peered over the edge of the large pot, he saw an enormous black centipede carving its way through the warband. He let out a long sigh and slid slowly back into the stew.
He went from alchemist, to slave, to double slave, to orc food, and now it looked like he was going to be monster centipede food. Nutt opted to float aimlessly in the cauldron, thinking through his options. He wasted his emergency alchemy supplies blowing up the chef orc. Had he known a monster was going to show up and wreak havoc on the camp he would have chosen a better moment to use his emergency bomb.
Several large bangs interrupted his thoughts, and the entire earth shook, knocking over the cauldron in the process. Nutt flipped it all the way over best he could and hid underneath it like a turtle in its shell. As things quieted down, he pushed it up just enough to peek at the outside world. Everything was on fire and lava was spilling towards him. Nutt pushed off the cauldron and quickly scrambled back up to the table, careful not to make too much noise as he scanned the area for anything useful he could use. Nutt couldn’t help but watch the orcs instead, who seemed to still be dealing with their monstrous opponent.
The ground was littered with dead orcs and those who remained were closing in on the supply tent. Bokmaw had his axes hefted at the ready, edges dripping with hot magma as he stomped closer to the tent. His brother Gramgo held up the rear, forming multiple giant icicles all pointed at the same spot. Nutt gripped the cauldron lip tightly and watched with rapt attention.
“Come out now you coward,” Bokmaw screamed at the tent.
The only response was a loud bang. A boulder blasted out of the tent and took off the upper third of Bokmaw’s body. His lifeless remains dropped to the ground.
“Holy shit! Did you guys see that!?” A man walked out of the tent, black cloak hanging lifelessly from his body. He had a flintlock pistol resting on his shoulder and was grinning ear to ear. “Even I wasn’t expecting it to do that much damage.” He inspected his pistol, not paying any attention to the orcs now surrounding him.
“Huh. That’s weird.” He said, a confused look on his face as he stared at his weapon.
Nutt looked at the human in confusion. Who the hell was this guy? Where the did the centipede go?
Gramgo let out a cry of rage and pain at the death of his brother and launched the massive icicles he had been forming at the man.
Nutt felt a shiver of awe and excitement run down his spine as he watched the human transform. His lifeless cloak sprang to life, shrouding him in the likeness of a black centipede. His gun disappeared and two long black daggers appeared in either of his hands.
This time though the man didn’t fight with the same as had before, picking off the orcs in a ruthless efficiency of speed and violence. Nutt narrowed his eyes and watched closely. He wasn’t going for killing blows. He was simply cutting at the remainder of the orcs, slashing at arms and legs wherever he could. Casually dodging attacks and abilities, satisfied to only land a small cut on them here and there.
The only one he killed outright was Gramgo. The man disappeared once more in a burst of speed appearing just below Gramgo as he readied another volley of ice spears. The orc didn’t even have time to properly react. He launched upwards with his daggers burying them into the mage’s ribs, gutting him with a practiced brutality.
Nutt looked back at the orcs who had previously received only shallow wounds from the man. They were screaming madly and seemed to be infected by something. Their veins turned black, and they screamed in agony while swinging their swords wildly at the air as if something invisible was attacking them. One of the orc warriors even chopped off his own arm to stop whatever the monstrous man had done to them. One by one the remaining orcs succumbed to a madness and pain that drove them to a not so swift death. All the while the man just stood there, watching, an annoyed look on his face as the final orc fell dead.
Nutt glanced around the table. He was in the ‘kitchen’ portion of the camp, if it could even be called that with how disgusting it was. He grabbed a small discarded pot from the ground and immediately set to stuffing it with whatever he could find. Mostly monster guts, dead orc parts, and the occasional alchemical reagent. He held his hand over the vile smelling concoction and let some of his mana pour into the pot. It came out like green acidic sweat that dripped into the pot, sending a revolting plume of smoke up each time it made contact with the mixture. To finish it off Nutt grabbed a couple of coals from the campfire and stuffed it into the pot, quickly covering it with a lid and wrapping it with a cord so none of the pressure could escape. He shook it hard several times over and then held his ear to the side, giving a satisfied nod to the sizzling noise inside.
Nutt looked over to find the man, only to find him standing right behind him, a curious look on his face. Nutt froze in fear, hands gripped tight around the dirty bomb.
“Are you the goblin who made a bomb?” the man asked him.
“Yes.” Nutt squeaked, eyes going wide.
“Is that a bomb?” he asked, looking down at the pot.
“Of sorts.” Nutt answered again, narrowing his eyes at the man. He seemed far too relaxed.
“And what exactly are your plans with that bomb?”
“Well… I suppose I was going to threaten to blow us both to kingdom if you tried to kill me.”
“Will it actually blow us both up?” He asked, more curious than afraid.
“...Maybe? Impromptu bombs are always a little bit of a wild card.” Nutt admitted.
The man nodded like he understood completely. Meanwhile the pot started to shake violently.
“One last question. Why are you naked?”
Nutt looked down at his body. He was in fact naked. The orc chef had stripped him down and lathered him up in seasoning before throwing him into the cook pot.
“It’s a long story,” Nutt shrugged.
“Been there,” the man sagely nodded. “So, can you actually disarm that thing?”
He was of course referring to the pot, which was now bouncing violently across the ground as whatever reaction was happening inside was reaching its crescendo.
“We should run,” Nutt suggested.
“Just don’t look at the explosion. Cool guys never look at the explosion,” the man said as he scooped him up and launched across the camp in a burst of speed. Nutt couldn’t help but nod in agreement as he trained his eyes forward while a large boom echoed out behind them both.