Chapter 157 - The Orcs Attack - III

Merlin could feel the grainy scales rolling around in-between his fingers, and once he felt like he had enough, he charged forward at one of the orcs.

The orc was quick to notice something wasn't right, as Merlin wasn't being subtle with his movement at all. But fortunately for him, he didn't need the stealth to complete his plan, it was just more convenient if the four orcs didn't group up on him right away.

The orcs had started spreading out as they intended to circle around where the group of rangers were hiding, this worked in Merlin's favour.

Once he was almost face to face with one of the orcs, he threw a pinch of mothflower scales at its face, he made sure not to throw all of it, as he still had three more orcs to hit.

As the scale-like pollen splashed the orc's face, Merlin's invisibility quickly ran out, causing all the orcs to notice his presence. They immediately stopped focusing on the location where the rest of the group were and all started charging towards Merlin.

The one orc that was hit suddenly dropped its large two handed axe and reached for its throat. Merlin saw that its eyes were almost immediately bloodshot, and he quickly leapt out of the way as it dropped to its knees and began throwing up bile.

One of the orcs had made its way behind him, this one carrying a severely dented longsword. Merlin barely managed to dodge the strike before throwing another pinch of mothflower in its direction, causing the same effect to occur.

While that orc started falling to its knees, another orc had started swinging its axe at him, Merlin turned around in time to see an arrow hit the orc's helmet, barely scraping the metal before flying off into the forest.

It didn't serve much of a distraction unfortunately, and Merlin had to immediately throw himself into a roll to dodge the strike, as he leapt out of the way, he released the entire handful of mothflower scales into the air, causing a large cloud of scales to appear in front of the orc.

He unfortunately wasted everything but the few scales that remained stuck to his hands, but it seemed that at least that orc was now beginning to suffer from the effects, so he realistically only had one threat to deal with.

Merlin sent out his vines, wrapping them around a tree branch. He quickly pulled himself up the tree and scanned the area around him. He couldn't find the last orc immediately, he thought it would have chosen to attack him during the fight but it seemed to have gone after the rangers instead.

He saw a group of rangers and the knight run over to his position, with a dead orc laying on the ground behind them.

The three orcs that were alive were still suffering the nasty effects of the mothflower, with his most recent victim only now entering the nausea stage, while the first orc was desperately clawing it its own throat while gasping for air.

Now knowing he was safe, Merlin leapt out of the tree and began dealing damage to the helpless orcs. The rangers started doing the same, and all the orcs were dead not long after.

"I didn't imagine you'd have mothflower on you." Callisto remarked, "You sure do always come prepared, no wonder Tuli likes you."

「You have earned +5 familiarity with Callisto.」

"I don't have much, unfortunately." Merlin said, "So I'd like to save some for the warlord."

"Good idea." Callisto nodded before turning towards the knight. She signalled for him to lead the way.

Mothflower, or specifically the scale-like pollen of the mothflower plant, was usually harmless to most creatures. But there was a specific group of monsters, namely goblinoids, that suffered a severe allergic reaction and an extreme case of nausea when they were exposed to the pollen of a mothflower plant.

Goblinoid was a general term used to group together monsters such as goblins, hobgoblins and orcs, to name a few. And while many of the creatures under this umbrella varied greatly, they all shared some level of genetic detail, and in most cases appearances and weaknesses.

Goblinoids were a strange group of creatures that typically defied the usual expectations of biology. The race was not as genetically restricted as most other races were, and they had the ability to breed with almost any other mammal and have the end result not automatically be a horrific amalgamation of cells.

Some researchers believed that the orcs were a mutation that occurred after a goblin had tried mating with an ogre. The end result was a creature larger and stronger than the strongest hobgoblin, yet smaller and weaker than most ogres. Although this theory was yet to be observed in nature, and Merlin hadn't heard any further updates about it since.

A key detail that usually came up in heated arguments of whether orcs were actually related to goblins or not was that orcs didn't have the signature tar-like blood that the goblin and hobgoblin species shared. Rather their blood was similar to other humanoid creatures, for the most part.

As the group continued their travel through the orc infested forest, they fortunately didn't find themselves in any further encounters.

The group had made their way towards the fourth location marked out by the scouts, and they saw a large army of orcs sitting around a makeshift camp, some of which were eating burnt slabs of meat that seemed to be various wild animals that could be found in the forest. 

Around one of the many campfires scattered around the campsite was an orc much larger than all the others. The black veins under the orc's skin made themselves visible, even from a distance, it was clear that this was their target, but there were way too many orcs around to just charge in recklessly.

"Well, that's a very large group of orcs." Merlin remarked. "What's the plan?"

"We're going to have to cause a diversion, we need to drag as many of them out of the camp as we can, or at least separate them from the warlord." The knight answered. 

"Don't you think we should bring some more groups in?" Merlin asked while looking at the small group that he was working with. "We're heavily outnumbered, jumping in would be a stupid idea."

"Don't you have that powder?" The knight asked, "Can't you just use that powder stuff you have on the entire camp?"

"I don't have nearly enough for even a quarter of that camp." Merlin retorted. "And we aren't even entirely sure that whatever the Despoina cult did to that thing, didn't make it immune to the flower. So it's barely a last resort, definitely not something to rely on."

The knight quickly stopped talking, and Callisto proposed that they should probably find at least another group to help manage the crowd.

"There should be another few groups checking other camps nearby, if we just wait here or check around, it's likely that we'll find a group or two in a few minutes." The knight interjected.

"That's better than nothing." Callisto remarked. "Lead us to the closest camp, the rest of you will stay around here, inform any other groups of our plan and run away if you're spotted. Don't do anything until we return."

The knight, Callisto and Merlin made their way through the forest once more, following the knight's guidance. They heard the sounds of fighting as they got closer to where the next camp apparently was.

The group picked up the pace, and after making their way nearby, they saw a group of roughly twelve knights fighting against seven orcs. They seemed to be holding their own, but besides the twelve who were standing, there were several more knights laying around the battlefield, all of which were wounded, although the severity varied greatly.

The trio charged towards the orcs, Merlin slipped into invisibility once more and made his way behind an orc who was just about to deal the finishing blow against a knight, only to find that its heart and a lung had been pierced.

Merlin and Callisto ripped through the horde of orcs to the best of their abilities, with the knights barely serving as decoys as they managed to take three orcs down in total.

Merlin and many of the other knights watched as Callisto held the last orc in a headlock. The creature was struggling with all its might, but Callisto's raw strength clearly outmatched it. The group all witnessed Callisto, with an angered expression plastered on her face, snap the orc's neck with ease, before throwing its limp corpse to the ground.

Merlin's attention briefly panned over to his stream chat that he had been ignoring up until this point, and he made it just in time to catch one comment that stated that they were jealous of the orc, causing Merlin to shake his head in disappointment.

"Merlin, do you have any medicine on you?" Callisto asked, looking at the various knights who were wounded.

"Yeah, I'll deal with this." Merlin said, pulling out the mortar and pestle from his inventory before yelling at the rest of the knights. "Gather up the wounded, point me in the direction of the most severely injured knights first."

Merlin had to use four of his eleven brewed potions on the more critical patients, but he managed to deal with the rest of them with just the raw herbs and water.. Unfortunately there were several deaths that not even he could stop with his current capabilities, but most of the group had survived.