Chapter 86 AR Display

It was too bad learning a tongue didn't work like learning a skill. I'd just have to wait until the System said I was through learning such and such people's tongue, saying it's a passive skill, and that would be a done deal. Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy, but I'd say compared to the conventional way of learning a tongue, that was literally a cheat.

At any rate, that's how I learned a language. And spending an additional three minutes both listening and speaking with the orcs, I asserted I was comfortable enough with speaking their tongue. Oh, and just when I thought that the quest "You passed da test!" was apparently completed.

As I saw the quest be completed, reading the System's notifications and whatnot, a strong hand grabbed on my collar. "Enough!" And a grand voice instantly ruled over the tense atmosphere of this place. The warchief spoke up, and everyone fell silent. The orcs turned to him and realized they were offending the superior orc—the ogre.

As they respected rough power above all else, the silence witnessed the demi-human bowing their heads to the stronger leader. Somehow, maybe the demi-humans also bowed to me. The warchief and I were right next to each other—the humanoid-looking ogre brought me down to his height and glared a thousand fires at me. "You. Brother. You're different. Tell me. What happened?"

The warchief had messed up. Trying to recruit a powerful asset, though he knew it was a fool's errand to take such a huge risk—no matter how much of a simpleton the monster did look, it was still risky to bring him to their side so rashly as they didn't know anything about the monster yet—he still ventured to try. Now, he failed. The warchief was insulted. Meeting his fiery eyes and scowl, I scoffed in a voice that didn't belong to me. "Heh heh… So you can see me—"

"You!" His grip on my collar strengthened as his bones cracked.

"There's no denying it. That "Dwelling" skill is waaay too flawed if I'm not playing carefully—"

"You…!" His fiery eyes threatened to burn my whole existence away.

"Well, what can I say?" A strong, sharp hand was plunged into my ribs. Man, it was a rash move, just now. Even with a monster inside, the crazy orc was still alive, y'know, I thought. The crazy orc coughed more blood, but he grinned. "I'll just have to have the old fart teach me a thing or two about mana… Cough!" Even though it was just a Receptacle, I still felt the pain.

As I pushed the warchief away, my voice, the dull, deep growling voice of the orc, hollered the loudest titan-like roar it could muster, and I gave the go-ahead to the grumpy old man.

The old man was a knowledgeable warrior of the brains… and sure enough, with strong magic power, that meant he also had lots of potential with a sword. So what did the old warrior do? He blew the whole place away in less than a split second. Did he have that much strength? This couldn't be, right? It was so strong. I'd have to ask him.

With the grumpy gramps finally unleashing his pent-up resentment against the orcs, who had assaulted his poor grandchild out on the battlefield, "that" took place. Yes, that. I'd not even know how to call it, but if I had to, I'd go for "the inevitable." It was simply a blast of light.

The meager walls collapsed to the ground. The poor empty ceiling brought down on our heads. And all the orcs, all my friends, didn't have a second or so to see it all go down. In a blink, the quest indicator saw a terrible increase in my kills.

I knew I gave the old man the go-ahead, but my blood was chilled frozen. The bulky crazy orc I dwelled in had to shrink to the tiniest. Getting down, I covered my head with my limbs and waited. With "Mana Perception," I took a peek at it. Following my whole soul, the time itself was second to be frozen in place. And then, it was a blade, a sword, a slash. It wasn't comparable to anything I'd seen before. The blade of light sliced neatly through the air, bringing every orc down in two distinct pieces.

I sure was glad to have instinctively shrank. If not, I might have also been sliced through the chest. The only two orcs who weren't slashed this way were me and the warchief. Did he survive this? Surely, he didn't. Since he was tinier in stature, unlike the other orcs, he was perfectly beheaded.

When all the bloody red orcs fell lifelessly to the ground, like fall's reddish leaves, the foundations of the crude-looking tent fell down with a Flap of its many sheets of leather and hide, too.

Around me and the orcs, the walls more or less formed a square, crawling to the soil of the earth, refusing to separate me and my old man (he'd just jumped to me from outside the square) from the rest of the world, where dozens and dozens of orcs were starting to be put together.

Like curtains, they were brought down, and on the stage, a massacre of both human prisoners and orcs alike was presented to the arriving audience. The orcs who had noticed the commotion steadily grew bigger in numbers. Both the old man and I ignored them—

"Didn't this old man warn you, my grandson! I taught you carefulness, didn't I?" An old, upset voice rang out to my ears. Following it, the grumpy old man appeared in front of me as quickly as lightning.

"Now, you've gone and become an orc! My grandchild has become an orc!" Obviously angry for reasons I ignored, the old man arrived at the scene, complaining that, now that I'd become an orc, how would he ever brag to people saying "I've got a wonderful grandson home, too, did you know!" and show them pictures of both me and him, happily having a grandpa-grandson moment together, when I looked like such a barbaric and big creature.

That was rude. Now, he said, his friends would rather not believe he had a grandson, and rather think, rightfully so, that the old gramps had turned crazy so much he wanted a little son. "W-What's more, young man, they captured you! We agreed to do that together! Adventuring! What if you get captured to your own death again and I lose my partner, oh, hm?!"

Slowly climbing up, the crazy orc stood on his sturdy legs and feet, and sure enough, the old man looked so measly compared to his "grandchild." Well, I felt sorry for the old man. When I looked at him with a meek smile of embarrassment, waving my arms around playfully and saying "What, ashamed of your only grandson's appearance, old man? You'll break my heart," he first stepped away from me, but after he thought to himself for a second, he stepped back toward me, jumped at me, and hugged me tightly.

He cried out and said his grandson even spoke orcish, now. Whoops. I did speak the orc tongue without paying attention, but how did the old man understand? Don't tell me he spoke their language, too. Anyway, man, what was wrong with my uncle, now, hugging me so tightly? After our little moment of messing around, the old man pulled back and grew serious again.

He looked me over and nodded to himself. I coughed a mouthful of blood and placed a hand on my upper abdomen with a pained expression. I'd been stabbed in the ribs right at that point. Too bad the crazy orc would be going down, too. I mean, I could have always let him live after I was through learning the orc tongue. Well. No matter.

Before the old man told me he'd been worried—a lot worried—I asked him how it went. "Assessed me enough? Was it all really necessary anyway? Old man?" And after a moment's thoughts, the old man solemnly gave me a simple curt answer. It had been enough. I asked him again why he had me doing all this in the first place—was it really all about assessment to see where we could go in life? But the old man didn't reply, and as so many orcs were clustering around us, I decided not to press the interrogation.

Incidentally, the only thing that prevented the orc army from attacking the old man and me was that I was an orc, right now. As far as appearances were concerned, at the very least. Still, it was enough to keep them at bay. Some comments and calls were tossed at me in orcish, but I didn't answer them.

Instead, I briefly explained to the old man the state of things. In the past, it was only a day ago, he had insisted I told him everything about me and my unusual powers. He already knew about the System, after all. He'd called it ancient magic or something along those lines. As he was my advisor, he told me his usefulness lied in the fact he was a walking library, so he insisted I give him reports of the power inhabiting me.

The System. Exchanging glances with the orcs outside and holding a hand to them, thirty seconds were enough—I briefly told him about the two quests I pursued. One he already knew about and I had just completed. For some reason, as I probably gave the order for him to attack, the last remaining enemy I needed to slay was in fact killed.

And so, I got the next instructions for the main quest. The short story was, after I killed so many enemies on the battlefield, I was tasked with capturing one of the enemy warlords' heads, and heading to the humans' side with my cover (the System had arbitrarily put me in the same team as them), and for now head to the Guild Bureau, where I'd most likely trade the warlord orc head.

What was a warlord? Well, I had one sleeping right beside me. The old man served me his head. Time was running out and the other orcs were dangerously coming closer to us. Playing the king, though I really felt like a king, staring down at my subject from above, I told the old man a simple word. "Retreat." It felt great being so tall. I would tell him later about the second voluntary quest I completed.

With this word, the old man vanished. That left me all alone. At last, the overload of the Receptacle's mana core, the System notified, was too intense. I didn't hold my aura in any longer, and the crazy orc, whom I used as a Receptacle, promptly burned in white flames before I exited him.

The burning process was really that fast, and the white flames already did away with the dead crazy orc. At this point, the orcs had all decided to roar as one and rush toward the suspicious individual, who had supposedly just made vanish an old human (an enemy) and made one orc brother crumble in white flames.

Before I kicked off the ground and went away, some manifestation of the System I never witnessed before was shown to me. As I quickly crouched to pick both the warlord head and the orcish dagger I was offered, some blue AR display—the same usual panel of blue light usually giving me the System's notifications and whatnot—popped up next to both objects.

The two objects were respectively labeled "Warlord Orc Corpse: Orc Head" and "Seal: Orcish Dagger." Shaking my head at yet another strange aspect of the System, I ignored the additional information I was given about each Quest Object (the Seal: Orcish Dagger was said to be a precious gift of thanks offered to me as proof I was an ally of the Ladafar Orc Tribe, and the Orc Head was said to be a necessary item for the completion of a certain upcoming quest) and sprinted out of the battlefield at a tremendous pace.