CH.185 VS. Giant Orc

CH.185 VS. Giant Orc

“Here. You should hold onto these two cards for now.” I said to Ria as I handed her Element Valkyrie and Firebird. They will be good for her to start with and if she does well with them, I might just give her the Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys later.

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“... where should I hold them?”

“Your fanny pack, your pocket. Anywhere really, as long as they won’t accidentally fall out of there. And you should already know how to use them, right?”

“Just say the name? Oh. I can actually read it now.”

“Yeah. You need Card Summoner to be able to read them. You also can’t use the ones with that protective sleeve on them without Card Summoner.” Both of her cards actually have a toploader, but small difference.

“Okay. Should I summon them now?”

“Not just yet. Let me summon a few monsters first. I picked a few with weapons that you might enjoy using.”

“... they are alright, but I don’t think they are for me.” Ria said after testing out the twin daggers of Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke and the arm blades of Performance of Sword. I had also let her test out my mithril sword, but she didn’t like that either.

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“I see. That’s too bad. Thanks, you two. You can go back now.” I said before I unsummoned the two monsters. “Let’s try these next. Cestus of Dagla.” I activated an equip spell that summoned two weapons that were not too far from punch daggers. Just a bit over sized.

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As they came out of the card, I took a hold of them so they wouldn’t fall to the ground. Compared to their size, they were actually quite light, so they shouldn’t get in the way of Ria’s fighting style.

“Here. Test these out.”

“Sure.” Ria moved to receive the weapons from me, but as soon as they were fully in her hands. “Ah!” She let out a little scream and dropped them.

“Ria! What happened?”

“They just hurt me.”

“The weapons?”

“Yes.”

“... okay. Why?”

“You should tell me that.”

Is it because they are an equip spell? Did it get equipped to me when I activated it? It shouldn’t be that. I have given equips to other people before. Like when I gave that guard the Legendary Sword during the wyvern incident.

“Alice, could you try picking them up?”

“... do I have to? Won’t they hurt me as well?”

“I’m not sure, so I’d like to find out. This is the first time an equip has hurt someone. I do have an idea as to why it might have, but that also doesn’t fit how I’ve been able to use them previously.”Fôllôw new stories at novelhall.com

“... fine, but if they hurt me, I’ll expect an apology gift.”

“Sure. If they hurt you, I’ll give you an extra card. Is that fine?”

“Yes.”

Alice moved to pick up the fallen Cestus of Dagla. She picked them up and seemed to be holding them with no problem.

“... they don’t hurt?”

“Why do you seem surprised by that? They shouldn’t hurt. That is the norm.”

“Then why did they hurt me?”

... yeah. That is the question.

(Laura, any ideas?)

(One. Her race. She is a dhampir and Cestus of Dagla is only for Fairy-type monsters. That difference could cause the damage.)

(But neither Alice or I are fairies.)

(But you are humans. Humans are an adaptable, neutral race. The cards might not treat you as any race in particular, so you can equip any of the usually limited cards.)

(... okay. So humans can use everything, but Ria can’t use fairy equips as she is half-undead?)

(Yes. That could be the case.)

(Well, let’s assume so until we have more data.)

“... sorry Ria, this one is on me. I didn’t take your race into consideration.” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Those blades are made for fairies. And while a human can use them, a dhampir seemingly cannot, as you are basically half vampire.”

“I see. Well, I don’t think I’d have liked them anyway. They are too big and bulky.”

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Alice and Paulina used that time to take some more distance, and Ria took that chance to finally charge in.

With her eyes glowing slightly, she used Flicker Step to get behind the orc and jumped up to its neck. Using her legs to hold on, she pierced her fingers into the orcs eyes, blinding the monster.

GRAAW

The orc let out a scream and dropped its bone. It then used both of its hands to try to get to Ria, but as soon as Ria saw them coming, she jumped off of the orc and took some distance.

“Stone Spear!”

“Dark Spear!”

Two spear spells came from the magicians as soon as Ria jumped off of the orc.

The stone spear hit the orc in the right shoulder, causing a small wound, but Alice’s Dark Spear hit it in the stomach and actually pierced quite deep. Her Magician’s Power skill must be working overtime again.

GRAAW

The orc roared again. It held its pierced eyes with one hand, and placed the other onto its bleeding wound on its stomach.

“Alice, another one.” Paulina said, and began a chant. “Stones, gather and fly as my spear, Stone Spear!”

“Dark, form a spear and strike my enemy, Dark Spear!” Alice followed her lead.

Again, both of the spells landed. If I’d have to say, Alice’s did just a bit more damage, but this time, it was more difficult to tell. Maybe Paulina was holding back with her last spell, or maybe the orcs shoulder is just tougher.

The orc then moved to pick up its bone again. And as it opened its eyes, I saw that it once again had its eyes intact. It had regenerated them. I didn’t know it could do that. Even the wound from Alice’s first spear in the orc's stomach had begun to regenerate somewhat.

The orc then charged at the two mages. Not walking like it had been, but a full on sprint. And it was fast. For something so large, it can move quickly.

Paulina began dodging to the left and pushed Alice to the right to get her moving as well. They made a large enough of a space between them where had the orc still been blind and operating based on the direction the attacks came from, it would have charged through the empty area where they had been.

But as it could see once again, it saw what the two were doing and chose to go after Alice. Probably because Alice’s spears do slightly more damage.

As the orc approached Alice, it readied its bone for a strike onto her.

“Dark Shield.” Alice quick casted a defensive spell before the orc had time to bring the bone down.

But as the bone came down it first hit the wall and shattered both the wall and the bone. But a remaining piece of the bone hit Alice, throwing her back a few meters.

“ALICE!” Paulina called out.

I considered stopping the practice match right now, but as the orc turned away from the downed Alice, I don’t think that is strictly necessary. Alice also didn’t receive a full blow, so she should still be alive. Hopefully.

I guess I should add a little detail. The reason Threatening Roar or Spellbinding Circle didn’t automatically activate is because I removed both of them before the match. They are too much of a crutch for Alice and she shouldn’t rely on them most of the time, so I don’t want her developing any bad habits. When we are out there, doing actual adventuring work, is one thing, but as this is basically a practice match I said it would be better if she couldn’t rely on them.

“You two! The fight is still on! I’ll take care of Alice!” I called out to the two still active combatants, as I ran to the fallen Alice. On the way, I took the Guardian Angel Joan that I had already put into my pocket out, placed it on my Duel Disk, and summoned her. “Heal her.”

I looked Alice over as Guardian Angel Joan got to work. She didn’t have any obvious punctures, probably because she has on the leather armor she got from her father. But that amount of blunt impact trauma would still cause some damage.

“Is she?” I asked the angel.

“She’ll be fine. She lost a lot of HP, but it wasn’t a lethal blow.”

“Good.”

I turned back to the fight.

Another stone spear from Paulina was flying towards the orc. And then another. And they were doing a lot more damage than they had been.

The spears, that had previously only penetrated a bit, were now piercing all the way through the orc.

As the orc approached Paulina, Ria came back into the fight. With the complete passthroughs of the spears, she had plenty of opportunity to go in and use blood magic to draw out more of the orcs blood. She latched onto the orc's back and the wound that had been bleeding only a bit began gushing out blood like someone had fully opened a slightly leaking faucet.

The orc tried to get to Ria, but getting to the middle of your own back isn’t the easiest thing. Especially as Paulina was still casting spells. She had swapped from her spear spell to a stone toss, something with more impact force, but less penetrating force. Good call on her part as friendly fire is most certainly on and over penetration is a thing.

The orc, for its part, tried to get Ria off of its back, but it proved to be impossible. Perhaps because of the blood loss, or maybe because of the rocks hitting it in the head, it was getting more and more disorientated.

But then the orc seemed to catch its second wind and it struck the ground with its right hand, pulling out a fresh bone from the card that had appeared at its feet when it did. With the bone back in its hand, it seemed ready to strike again.

Its first move with its new bone was to strike its own back, and Ria who was clinging to said back. The bone impacted Ria hard and shattered. Those things aren’t very durable. Ria let go off the orc and fell to the ground. Like with Alice, the orc ignored her for the future and turned its eyes onto Paulina.

I pulled up Ria’s status through my own and saw that she still had just over 200 HP remaining, so she was fine enough for now. She still needed healing quite badly, but it wasn’t like she would die in a few seconds or anything. I then had Laura minimize the status screen so that only Ria’s HP was visible. I should have asked Laura to do this earlier. Having active HP bars like this is super useful.

Paulina, as the last combatant standing, stared down the orc that was waddling towards her. The orc was clearly moving slower than it had even at the beginning of the fight because of the mixture of blood loss and all of those stones hitting it in the face.

“Earth, crush my enemies, Earth Crush!” Paulina chanted, causing two slabs of ground to raise and clamp around the orc.

The orc must have been pretty low on HP already, as that final spell did it in, and the orc vanished into specks of light.

Battle over. Winners, Alice, Ria and Paulina.