CH.349 Big Orc Hunt

CH.349 Big Orc Hunt

With the meeting with the Queen done, the next thing waiting for me would be meeting the King. At least as far as I’ve understood my job in the capital. And after that is done, I’ll no longer have to officially be in the capital.

But that was a waiting game, as I didn’t know when I’d get to meet the King, so I had to come up with something else to occupy my time.

And today that came in the form of an outing with Einar, Eline and Unika. It started with Einar and Eline asking me to take them out somewhere where they could fight with their tigers, and when Unika heard of that, she wanted to come along.

At first, my idea was that we could head into the Green Dungeon and kill some monsters there, but Unika was against it, so instead we headed for the capital’s adventurer’s guild and checked it out for some quests. Maybe we can find something good to hunt.

We found a handful of good quests, but the one we ended up taking was a search and destroy for a B-rank monster. Specifically a big orc, as well as the handful of orcs that were with it.

Of course a search and destroy is nothing difficult for me. I can just summon Gradius, a B.E.S. monster, or even have HomeBase move a bit and we could use their OP sensors to locate the monsters in no time at all, but this time, I was out here because I’d been asked to take Einar and Eline for a hunt. And for that, I wasn’t going to ruin the fun. If we need the help, I’ll summon something, but until that happens, we are on foot and looking with the help of Lumi, Fer and Rum.

I guess you could look at what we were doing as a test, in a way. I was kind of like the ‘overseer’ adventurer, looking after a group of junior adventurers taking on a quest beyond their rank. And because of that, I was only planning on cutting in if they needed me.

So by extension of me hanging back, Unika became the party leader, as she was the most experienced. Actually, she is more experienced than I am, so even if I was taking part, if we were going by experience, she should still be the one in the lead.

As we began moving in the direction where some other adventuring party had spotted the big orc, Unika began letting out some strange sounds. They almost sounded like bird chirps.

And that was exactly what they were. Because for some reason, Unika was speaking bird at this moment. I knew Unika had Language Comprehension (beast), I learned that when we were testing out Summoning Magic, but I still didn’t really get why she was speaking bird.Nnêw n0vel chapters are published at novelhall.com

The reason was revealed to me soon, as a few birds began to fly close to us, one of them even coming and landing on Unika’s shoulder. These birds were nothing more special than small birds you would find on earth. Technically they were F-rank monsters, but they never really attack humans, because they are too weak. People also don’t hunt them, because it really isn’t worth it, unless you are desperate or level 1. And even if the birds did attack you, the worst they could do is peck you. As I said, they are just regular birds.

Unika then softly petted the bird. At first I was wondering what she was doing, but then I quickly realized. She was taming the bird.

“... why are you taming it?” I asked.

“For scouting. And it is just a temporary tame.” Unika answered.

“... you can do that?” Admittedly, I didn’t know you could just temporarily tame a monster.

“Yes. Tamed monsters aren’t like the summoned ones you use. You have to take care of them after you tame them. So if you don’t want a permanent monster you’ll have to feed, you can tame them temporarily and let them go afterwards.”

“That’s a useful trick.” I commented.

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“There is nothing wrong with asking for help.” I reminded her.

Admittedly, this should be an easy-ish fight for them. They were facing one B-rank and some C-rank orcs, and they had a fighting force of two B-rank monsters, two C-rank monsters, as well as Unika. Eline and Einar weren’t that confident in fighting on the frontline against an orc, so they were going to be hanging back.

Unika gave the final battle plan to Einar and Eline, and then they were off.

The fight started with Unika letting off an arrow from her bow. They were some of the special arrows Wilma had made for Unika, and they came loaded with a paralyzing poison. Why paralyzing and not toxic poison you might ask. Well, it was to keep the meat of the monster edible. The paralytic poison was a lot easier to wash away later, compared to a toxic poison.

Unika’s arrow flew straight and hit the big orc around the neck area, imbedding itself deep into the orc’s neck. You could even call it a perfect shot. And with that, the fight was on.

Lumi and Mufasa both quickly rushed in, both attacking an orc of their own, while Unika ran around with Fer and Rum to focus on the other two C-rank orcs. After their flank was complete, Unika sent Fer and Rum forward to get the attention of the orcs, while she herself prepared another arrow into her bow.

Unlike Mufasa and Lumi, who could quite comfortably take on an orc, the two iron foxes really weren’t going to be able to hold out against the orcs solo, so without taking too long to aim, Unika let another arrow fly. This one was just a standard one, but it was still a high quality arrow with an arrowhead made of tempered steel, so if it hit, it would do a lot of damage. Unika’s first arrow was a clean hit on the chest area of one of the orcs and her second shot hit the other orcs' right shoulder. Neither was an immediately deadly hit, but the chest hit would likely bring the orc down if given some time to bleed, while the shoulder hit would make it more difficult for the other orc to use its right arm.

With the two orcs Fer and Rum were keeping busy injured, the big orc not able to move much because of the paralytic poison, Unika aimed her bow towards the two orcs Lumi and Mufasa were fighting. And because of the force of the B-rank monsters, Unika was able to take a bit more time to aim her arrows, so with two shots, two arrows pierced the heads of the orcs, bringing them down.

“Order them to focus on the other orcs!” Unika quickly called to Einar and Eline. She wanted to take down the C-rank orcs first, so they could focus all of their efforts on the B-rank.

While Unika waited for that to happen, she pulled another paralyzing arrow from her quiver and shot it at the big orc. It was still not moving from the first arrow, so the second paralytic arrow also landed clean, likely leaving the big orc in an even more difficult situation.

Not that the two other orcs were doing much better. Both of them had an arrow embedded into different parts of their bodies, while also having an iron fox and either a mountain lion or a blizzard tiger also bothering them. Even without the arrows, the combo of a C-rank and a B-rank monster double teaming a C-rank orc would have been difficult, but with the arrows, it was impossible, and fairly soon, the dog and cat combo brought down the orcs.

With that, they turned their focus on the big orc that was still partially paralyzed. The lion and the tiger then unleashed some magic on the paralyzed orc. Mufasa used something similar to the Stone Spire spell, which caused a spike of earth to shoot upwards from the ground piercing the orc from below, while Lumi used her ice magic to shoot multiple ice spikes towards the orc. That assault combined with one more arrow from Unika’s bow, which hit the orc in the forehead, ended the big orc and marked the compilation of our quest.

As we headed out of the forest, Unika began giving her feedback to Einar and Eline. The two hadn’t done a bad job at commanding their familiars, but Unika still had a few pointers.

“Eline, you should be careful when using attacks targeting the crotch of orcs. Orc testicles are quite valuable, so you don’t want to break them. And Einar, you don’t want to inflict too many wounds on the orc, because the more holes in the hide, the less valuable it will be.”

They were actually something that I could also learn from ... were it not for my cheat skill called Storage. Because Storage was already able to fix all of the damage the orc hide took, and while it couldn’t restore a completely crushed testicle, lucky for us, Mufasa’s attack only grazed them, so I was able to fix them up as well.

On our way back, Unika let the birds she temporarily tamed go. We also ran into a few weak monsters, but Unika and I took care of them no problem. Then we just rode my carriage back to the capital and reported on the success. As well as selling all the orc corpses to the adventurer’s guild, and sharing the money from that between Einar, Eline and Unika. No, I didn’t take a cut, even though they tried to give me my cut. I mean, I didn’t take part in the fight, so I’m not going to take a cut.

With the money now in their hands, Einar and Eline asked to visit a few stores. Mainly anything related to tamers so they could buy some equipment to take care of their tigers and lion. Unika knew a few places, so we spent some time shopping before we returned to the Sawyer manor, from where I beamed us all up to HomeBase to call it a day.