Chapter 7: Alchemist! Spotted
Day 5
Orc Lands
Territory: Govan region
Location: The Borderland Wilderness
Current Faction: The Black Moon Clan
Torug's POV
Three days had bled into the dirt since we broke camp and fled the scorched ruins of our old settlement. For three days, we had marched blindly through the dense northern wilderness, yet we had still to find a territory suitable enough to lay down the foundations of our new Horde.
Throughout the grueling trek, Dabok had remained completely silent. The old shaman hadn't uttered a single word since our confrontation by the pike, and I found myself keeping a highly cautious, watchful eye on him.
My biological brother, Urim, on the other hand, stuck to my side like glue. Spending this time with him made me realize something about the tribe's social structure—Urim was an absolute outcast among the other males. They actively disliked him because of his strange, unusually expressive nature. Although my hardened gangster mind hated to admit it, I actually found his company incredibly refreshing. He possessed an almost human-like capacity for empathy and emotion, even if his basic orc anatomy made his speech thick, broken, and rough around the edges.
During these three days of marching, I had systemically scanned the fourteen remaining orcs in our band. The data was consistent: they were almost entirely Level 9 brawlers, save for two younger males who sat at Level 8 and Level 7 respectively.
After dropping a few subtle questions during our rests, I discovered a fundamental truth about this world's inhabitants: these primitives had absolutely no concept of "levels" or a system interface. To them, strength was a simple, pragmatic equation—the more bloody battles you survived, the denser your muscles grew and the heavier your strikes became.
It didn't take me long to connect the dots to my knowledge of Salvation in Pride. On the human side of the border, the progression system worked exactly the same way, but on a much more microscopic level. Humans didn't just rely on raw combat; they actively manipulated natural mana nodes to harvest power, effectively treating ambient magic as raw experience points.
Because of this hidden mechanic, a brutal, eternal war for magical resources raged constantly across the continent between every civilized nation and monstrous race. After validating a few more geographical theories, I came to a solid conclusion: the world's mana nodes, which the kingdoms mined to extract high-value mana stones, functioned as a direct alternative to EXP.
If I wanted my clan to survive the coming storm, I didn't just need a hidden valley. I needed to seize a mana node.
Earlier this morning, our path crossed with a low-tier magical beast—a massive, tusked boar crackling with faint elemental energy. I had hunted it down and slaughtered it myself, purely to test a mechanical theory: could a Great Orc harvest experience points from the native wildlife?
The answer was yes, but the payoff was disappointing. The soul-shifter energy that flooded my system felt significantly lesser, almost hollow, compared to the explosive surge I had felt after crushing the skulls of those human knights.
Normally, the ethical weight of that realization should have bothered my modern sensibilities. But looking down at my thick, clawed hands, I knew I was already too far gone to indulge in useless human guilt. I was no longer a human being. The office, the suits, the legal facade—it was all dead. I was a monster now, and it was time to do away with the pretense.
Though, if the system had given me a choice during transmigration, I would have chosen to inherit the body of a pure magical beast instead of a humanoid hybrid. In the novel's lore, beasts possessed the highest evolutionary potential in the entire world. Hell, the ultimate villain of the later volumes was an ancient magical beast. Their explosive, terrifying growth phase began the exact moment they ascended to the Order of the Second Circle, a threshold where their localized magic allowed them to freely shift into flawless human disguises to infiltrate kingdoms.
Orcs, by contrast, were classified by the human scholars as a half-civilized race. We were renowned for our savage, animalistic fury, but we were also biologically bound to a strict, internal code of honor and the ancestral laws of war. Left to themselves, orcs naturally organized into small warbands or isolated tribes. But under a sufficiently powerful leader, they were capable of forging dark alliances with trolls, ogres, and goblins, uniting their bloodlines into a cataclysmic force known as a Grand Horde.
Yet, according to the ultimate hierarchy of power in Luegad, only a single orc in history had ever successfully broken into the continent's top ten power rankings. He had achieved the impossible by establishing an organized, fortified sovereign nation with a massive, terrifying population of 774,586 orcs—the empire known across the seas as the Great Horde.
That legendary emperor was the only successful example of the Great Orc evolution path I had ever read about. But his success didn't mean there weren't other hidden bloodlines waiting in the dark.
In the original timeline of the novel, it wasn't until the proud Degr Empire was pushed to the absolute brink of extinction by human crusades that the other monstrous factions finally emerged from the shadows. Accusing the human kingdoms of having no true honor, the beast-races formed a historic, continent-spanning alliance tagged by historians as the "Others." But all of that grand warfare was slated to take place way down the line, around Volume Four of the book. I was still stuck in the prologue.
"Sssh..."
I broke out of my calculations, my brow furrowing as I threw up a heavy hand, signaling the warband to freeze.
The orcs complied instantly, dropping low into the brush, though their heavy faces carried thoroughly confused expressions. They couldn't hear what my over-tuned, First Circle ears had just picked up from the ridge ahead.
Not far from our position, a series of sharp, grating voices sliced through the wind, sounding like shrieking, malicious children.
"Krriki... Humans, kikiki!"
"Sssh..."
Leaving the warband behind, I crept forward alone, using the thick foliage for cover until I could peer down into the ravine. A scouting party of goblins was crouched along the rocks, their yellow eyes greedily spying on a small human merchant convoy moving stealthily through the valley floor. The merchants were traveling without banners, dragging a heavily reinforced wooden cart packed to the brim with crates.
Studying the tight formation of the guards and the unique shape of the crates, my street-enforcer instincts flared. Smugglers. This wasn't a standard trade caravan; they were illegally running weapons across the borderlands. Unfortunately for the humans, their mercenary escort was far too small to survive a coordinated ambush from the goblin pack waiting in the cliffs.
Then again, high-value smugglers usually carried a trump card—a hidden, high-level mercenary or an enchanted relic. I decided to hold my position and watch the trap spring.
Down in the ravine, a scout leader among the goblins pulled a jagged, orange-glowing stone from his pouch and hurled it directly into the center of the marching convoy.
BOOM!
A violent, miniature explosion tore through the dirt, the concussive blast instantly scattering the horses and throwing the mercenary adventurers into a state of blind, screaming chaos.
My pupils constricted to pinpricks as I leaned over the ridge. Alchemy!
In the lore of Salvation in Pride, Alchemy was an exceptionally rare and punishing class to evolve into. It required an immense amount of specialized intellect, making it notoriously difficult for a low-level character to wield effectively. My mind raced through the encyclopedia of the book. There was only one notable goblin in this entire northern sector who had successfully unlocked that volatile class—Lovan Ironbark, the cunning Chieftain of the Ironbark Goblins.
Their fortified settlement, a walled stronghold known as Harun, was hidden somewhere deep within these wild orc lands, situated just outside the frozen cliffs of the Cold Valley. The Ironbark tribe spent their days mining raw stones from the earth, completely oblivious to their true worth, until the Cilldean Royal Army eventually caught wind of the deposit and waged a genocidal war of conquest against them, backed by elite units from the Empire's Golden Army.
The catalyst for that entire war was a single, nameless human adventurer who had accidentally stumbled upon Harun's incredibly rich deposit of high-quality mana stones. He had quietly sold the coordinates to a corrupt border baron for a fortune in gold, before fleeing south to Jurl Town to live out the rest of his days as a wealthy, untouchable merchant prince.
I am incredibly lucky... I thought, a slow, predatory grin spreading across my tusks. Staring down at the green, screeching saboteurs, they suddenly looked absolutely beautiful to my eyes. They were sitting on a goldmine, and they didn't even know it.
While I was calculating the coordinates of Cold Valley, the slaughter below reached its peak. The goblins descended from the rocks like locusts, their rusted daggers tearing into the wounded guards, some of them already greedily munching on the raw flesh of the fallen adventurers.
A heavy rustle behind me caught my attention. Urim had crawled up the ridge, his face tense as he peered into the ravine.
"Gobs... Sssh!" I whispered cracked and low, gesturing for him to stay down. The remaining twelve orcs crept up behind him, watching the horrific commotion with stealthy, calculating eyes.
Down in the dirt, another goblin alchemist hurled a second orange stone. A brilliant flash of fire consumed the last escaping mercenary, silencing his screams instantly. When the dust finally settled, the goblins began dragging the human corpses back toward the treeline, completely ignoring the heavy, overturned cart of weapons. To their primitive minds, raw meat was a treasure; forged steel was dead weight.
It was a smuggler's bounty, left entirely unguarded.
The moment the goblin pack disappeared over the northern ridge, I turned back to my warband, my voice dropping into a harsh, commanding whisper. "Take every blade, axe, and shield you can carry. We move them back to our temporary camp."
The orcs grunted in eager asset, their eyes lighting up at the prospect of free steel.
"I will return shortly," I ordered, adjusting the grip on my pitch-black battle axe. "Nobody leaves the camp while I am gone."
I turned to scout the trail the goblins had left, but a heavy, ancient hand caught my shoulder armor. I turned my head to find Dabok staring at me, his old eyes dark and unreadable.
"Here... Black Moon land?" the shaman rasped, his tone probing, testing the boundaries of my ambition.
"No," I answered flatly, prying his fingers off my steel.
Dabok didn't press further. He simply bowed his head, stepping back into the shadows of the trees as I melted into the brush, trailing the scent of sulfur and goblin blood.
Frank's POV
Three days of agonizing preparation were finally complete.
The pristine borderlands that had seen such chaotic warfare a few nights ago had fallen completely, horribly silent. The beautiful valley was no longer a forest; it was a mass graveyard of the unburied dead. Fifty of our finest vanguard men—men I had personally drilled, bled with, and commanded for years—now hung limply from sharpened wooden stakes, their armor defiled and their flesh drying beneath the merciless northern sun.
The sun continued to shine, and the cool mountain winds continued to blow across the grass, but far to the south, in the warm stone avenues of the capital, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters would be waiting by their hearths in vain.
I stood at the edge of the clearing, staring up at the horrific display, a profound, suffocating gloom settling deep into my chest. Unconsciously, I bit my lip until the taste of copper filled my mouth, my knuckles turning white against the hilt of my broadsword. I closed my eyes, but all I could see were the faces of the boys who used to play in the castle courtyards with wooden sticks, laughing at each other's silly, youthful tales. Now, they were nothing more than meat for the crows.
'All of this for a political alliance', I thought, a bitter, treacherous rage boiling beneath my skin. 'All of this for one noble woman's hand in marriage... so many brothers slaughtered in a single night.'
Fifty elite knights, frozen in their final, agonized moments, their dead eyes as immobile as their shattered limbs. Their souls had long since departed these mortal realms, embarking on the lonely journey to the celestial planes to walk among the ancestors in the lands of the Gods.
Despite the fact that we had recovered Lady Suffia alive, my soul knew the truth. To me, the battle was completely lost. The monsters had won.
Unable to control the volatile surge of my emotions, I felt the temperature around my boots drop. Within the darkness of my heels, the liquid shadow-creature began to writhe and hiss, growing dangerously restless from the feast of my grief.
Forcing my voice to remain steady, I turned to the vanguard remnants behind me and barked a cold order. "Bring them down. Bury our brothers with full military honors."
We have set up our temporary military camp a mile away from that cursed, defiled land, desperately trying to curb the dark weight of our grief while we map out the terrain.