Thank you for the review from Mr. Kuso Zako Namekuji.
The visuals are quite plain.
I will stall the Orcs for a month by myself.
I thought there would be a fuss, for better or worse, about me doing it alone, but perhaps I threatened them too much with Intimidation, because my actions were approved.
The enemy consists of fifty-odd normal Orcs of Rank 3, four Orc Soldiers of Rank 4, and one Orc General of Rank 5.
If we were to fight them head-on, the militia without Combat Skills wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket. Even properly trained soldiers would need to outnumber the Orcs by more than ten to one.
If you were of sound mind, you would think that at least a hundred people would be needed just to consider stalling that many.
If you were “sane,” that is.
If I searched, I might find the house where Jill and Shuri lived, but I don’t intend to go that far out of my way.
I’ll buy them time to escape, but whether their younger brother and stepmother flee or stay here is their choice.
I asked the Guild for the general location of the Orcs, but after getting more detailed information from the first soldier, I headed to the Orcs’ base that very day.
The distance is about two days on foot for an Adventurer, so I should be able to shorten it by about half a day.
The place used to be a village about ten years ago, so there’s a road wide enough for a carriage, but after ten years, it’s just a beast trail.
When the road turned into a grassy field, I examined the ground and found several large footprints that seemed recent, so it seems I’m on the right track.
After that, based on the footprints I found in several places, it seems the Orcs are acting in groups of about three, not alone.
The intelligence of Orcs is slightly better than that of Goblins, but the higher species are said to have considerable intelligence, so it seems they are being properly led.
If it’s three Rank 3s, I might be able to handle it…? The problem is not so much defeating them, but the possibility of them calling nearby comrades if I can’t defeat them all at once.
The strength of Monsters lies not in the flexibility and adaptability of humans with multiple Skills, but in brute force with a single Skill and high Status.
So, even if I’m the same Rank 3, the Orc’s Overall Combat Strength is only about half of mine, but if their numbers increase, I won’t be able to whittle them down due to their high HP, and I’ll be on the defensive.
Also, even if I defeat the Orcs, if their corpses are seen and the Orcs realize they are being attacked, there is a possibility that they will attack the town in retaliation.
The omnivorous Orcs are currently taking and eating the crops from the farms left outside the town, so there’s no problem, but like humans, once they are satisfied, they will crave meat.
I think they are hunting around the Abandoned Village, but if that disappears, the Orcs will definitely attack that small town.
What you must not misunderstand here is that I am neither the “Hero (Yuusha)” nor the “Saint.”
What I’m doing is not the “extermination” of the Orcs, but “buying time” for the townspeople to escape, and I must not forget that.
To do that, I needed to maintain the current situation, not hunt the Orcs who were procuring food and drive them into a corner.
“…At this point, the plan is already not ‘sane,’ though.”
＊
After hiding and advancing through the Forest for about half a day, I encountered Orcs walking in the Forest.
[Orc (Normal)] [Beastkin Race]
[Mana Capacity: 98/108] [HP: 392/420]
[Overall Combat Strength: 278]
As expected, they seem to be acting in groups of three, and they seem to be armed with rusty Spears and crude stone axes, but their numbers aren’t impossible to defeat with a surprise attack.
But Monsters are still troublesome because of their high HP.
They don’t have any hunted prey, so maybe these guys are like patrol soldiers eliminating intruders.
If so, if these guys don’t return, it will only put them on alert. Even if I were to target them, I would have to wait until they were quite far from the settlement.
After that, I spent several encounters passing by Orcs in the grass, or crawling on the ground to get past them, and finally arrived at the Abandoned Village where the Orcs were said to be.
The village originally seemed to be surrounded by a wall made of logs driven into the ground, but now there are quite a few damaged and rotten parts, and the Orcs were haphazardly piling stones there to block the holes.
I returned to the Forest for the time being, and smeared the dirt from around there on my cloak to disguise my appearance and smell, and dirtied my face and hair with mud.
From now on, I must not be found even once.
Until this is over, I must not be noticed even once.
I finished my meal with just a small amount of dried meat and nutrient-supplement pills made with alchemy, and waited for the surroundings to darken while clinging to the trunk of a tall tree.
After confirming that the surroundings were dark enough, I tied the rabbit fur I had prepared to the back of my boots to counter the sound of my footsteps.
I used Mana Control, which had reached Level 4, to blend the Mana Particles in my body into the surroundings, and used Stealth, which had also reached Level 4 thanks to Mana Control, and I began to move in the Darkness as Darkness itself.
I won’t touch the Orcs. I won’t reach out even if there’s an opening.
According to “knowledge,” you should approach Stealth from downwind, but that’s only half the answer in this world.
If I erase my scent with [Purify (Clean)] and disguise it with mud, I can completely melt my existence into the Darkness by moving to match the speed of the slightly flowing night breeze, rather than creating an unnatural flow of air by deliberately going against the wind direction.
Calculating from the area of the village and the number of houses still remaining, this village should have been a village of about 500 people.
It was surrounded by fields, with 30 houses in the center and 20 houses each in the west and south, and the Orcs seemed to be using the half-rotted houses as they pleased.
The first thing to investigate is the exact number of Orcs and their distribution.
How many Orcs are in each district? And where are the Orc General and the four Orc Soldiers? If I don’t know that, I can’t make accurate predictions.
As a result of investigating until morning, there are about 15 Orcs in the west and 1 Orc Soldier.
About 20 in the south and 1 Orc Soldier.
About 15 in the center and 2 Orc Soldiers. I guess the General is also in the center. The only reason that’s a guess is because I judged it was dangerous to get close just from the strong presence emanating from there.
The reason I said the numbers were “around” is because there were several individuals on night watch, and I couldn’t measure the exact number, but even so, it shouldn’t be too different from the “fifty-odd” that the Adventurer investigated.
I returned to the Forest before it got light, and started collecting wild plants away from the Abandoned Village.
Medicinal herbs and poisonous plants. The plants that grow in that area and the materials I have on hand are the only types of poison I can use, and the ones that can be eaten raw will also be my food.
If I were to make poisons from Forest materials like this, insects and frogs would have stronger toxicity, but it would be meaningless unless I could secure a large amount, so I decided to focus on plants from the beginning.
Among them, I found a rare mushroom that can be both poison and medicine, so I collected as much as I could, tied it with vines, and hung it on a tall tree to dry.
I’m not just doing that all day long.
At the same time as watching the Orcs’ movements, I also have to investigate the range of activities of the Orcs who go outside, such as the food procurement unit.
As long as I don’t know when the Orcs will change their behavior and invade that town, I can’t let my guard down.
I’ll divide my sleep into a maximum of five minutes, and three hours a day in total should be enough.
I continued that kind of life for about a week, and I was able to read the Orcs’ general behavior patterns.
About ten Orcs go to the town’s farms to collect crops once every three days. I think these are the Orcs who attacked the town first, but one of the times I witnessed it, an Orc Soldier was accompanying them.
And every day, as soon as morning came, about ten Orcs went hunting for animals, but these were all smaller, younger Orcs with lower Overall Combat Strength.
Even though I’m keeping myself in good condition with pills, I can only maintain perfect condition for about a week with pills alone.
So I try to consume the fruits and dried meat I find in the Forest in places away from the Abandoned Village. Surprisingly, I found a lot of wild beans and yam fruits, but they’re still not tasty when eaten raw.
I had gathered most of the information in a week, so I decided to start taking action soon.
The first step is hunting animals, but not for me to eat.
I realized while watching that the Orcs aren’t very good at hunting animals. Because they are a large species that is not suitable for Stealth, there are occasionally days when about ten Orcs hunt but don’t catch anything, and on those days they only bring back Forest fruits.
The reason why the Orcs hunt every day is because the higher species prefer meat to beans and vegetables.
So, in order to postpone them attacking the town in search of meat, I decided to hunt rabbits and deer and leave them around the Abandoned Village.
They wouldn’t eat a fallen corpse if they were human, and they would be suspicious, but they seemed to think their comrades had hunted and left it behind. When they found a fresh animal carcass, they would happily carry it back.
At the same time, I began preparing materials to create poisons suitable for the situation.
It’s quite difficult to make poison for fifty bodies in the forest without alchemical tools, so I started little by little.
I dried poisonous herbs and mushrooms, processed them with a 【Harden(Hard)】-made mortar and pestle, and used the medicines and materials I had on hand to make poison.
It’s been two weeks, and the Orcs still haven’t moved, probably because I’ve been feeding them meat. If they move now, all my preparations will be ruined, so I’m moving on to the second phase of my plan.
The important thing is that even though Orcs are monsters that attack people, they are still ‘living creatures’ that eat and drink water.
The well in the Abandoned Village was buried with dead leaves that had turned into soil over the past ten years, but there was a pond where water was still springing up in one place. The water was stagnant, but the Orcs, being monsters, were drinking from it without any problems.
I sneaked in at night and gradually mixed the poison I had made into the pond.
I gradually familiarized them with the poison so they would get used to the taste.
Orcs can eat muddy water and rotten meat, so a half-hearted poison won’t be very effective.
In addition to the taste, if I suddenly mixed in a lot of poison and made them sick, they would be wary and stop drinking it, so I gradually increased the amount of poison to the point where it would affect the monsters.
That’s not all I’m doing.
I sneaked into the houses where the sleeping Orcs were and soaked the scattered food with poison. Of course, I’m also gradually mixing poison into the meat I’m using as bait.
In addition to that, although there was only a small amount, I gradually soaked the joints of the Orcs’ weapons, which were carelessly placed outside the houses, with an acidic drug to reduce the strength of the weapons.
Without rushing, I carefully permeated the Orcs with “my” “malice.”
I won’t do anything foolish like rushing in.
I’m not a strong person like Feld or Grave. I’m not overestimating myself to the point where I think I can keep them at bay by gradually defeating a small number of individuals.
My failure will directly lead to the deaths of many people.
If I act and the Orcs’ actions even slightly exceed my expectations, that will be where I die.
Failure is not allowed. I must not give the Orcs even the slightest chance to retaliate.
That’s why I don’t smash the huge rock that is the Orc horde with a Greatsword, or break it apart from the outside with a hammer, but instead, I drill a hole with a needle and pour in “malice (poison).”
But even that is reaching its limit…
The poison I used isn’t much. In the first place, it might not even be called poison.
What I used was ‘Gut Purge’ and ‘Rhinitis Relief’.
Gut Purge needs no explanation. It’s originally used to remove toxins from the body, but if you take it for a long period of time, it will cause dehydration and reduce your HP.
And Rhinitis Relief has the effect of suppressing runny noses during a cold. However, as a side effect, it makes you extremely thirsty.
And the more water they drink, the more my malice eats away at them.
Three weeks passed, and most of the Orcs were dehydrated.
The Orcs finally began to think there was a cause, and they thought it was because they had eaten the fallen meat.
I had actually laced the meat with poison, so they were half right.
So the Orcs sent out Orcs who were dehydrated to hunt, and Orcs to steal crops from the town, in order to obtain food other than meat.
But even that won’t be enough food for long. More than that, the higher-ranking species that prefer meat will choose to attack the town.
There’s only a week left until the residents who can escape are evacuated… I realized that I was reaching the limit of stalling for time, so I started the final phase of the plan: directly stopping them myself.
Three Orcs walking through the Forest. They’re holding fur made into bags instead of Spears, so they’re probably planning to collect fruit instead of hunting.
But unlike three weeks ago, they have no energy in their whole bodies, and they seem to be having trouble even walking on the Forest’s undulations.
…This might work.
【Orc (Normal)】【Beastkin Race】
【Mana Capacity: 85/105】【HP: 127/410】
【Overall Combat Strength: 166 (260)】36% down
【Condition: Weakened】
I jumped out of the tree where I had been looking down on the Orcs, and stabbed the Black Dagger into the skull of the Orc whose combat strength had been halved due to weakness from directly above.
“Bumoaaaaaaahhhhhh!”
The other two noticed and raised a warning cry. But their voices won’t reach the other Orcs from this position.
I threw the Pendulum’s Blade at the two Orcs who were charging at me at the same time, causing them to rub their eyes, and I simultaneously stabbed the two Orcs who reflexively raised their chins from under their chins to their brains with the Black Dagger and a thin Knife in both hands, killing them.
Rot here in the ground.
Another strategy without a sense of exhilaration (laughs).
Next time, the confrontation between Aria and the Orcs whose fighting power has dropped.
I will slow down the update speed a little from next week.