To put it briefly, an orc lord was a unique monster with advanced leadership skills. They appeared one at a time, out of the blue, once every few hundred years, to spread chaos across the world. One bad hombre, in other words.
What made them so nefarious was the skill they were born with—the unique skill known simply as Ravenous. It allows the caster to make his allies devour everything around them, like a swarm of locusts, afflicting them with a severe hunger they never have any hope of sating. It sounded like torture for the victims, but it had great benefits for the caster. It very efficiently removed all organic matter from entire regions at once, transforming it into energy for yourself. And even if it starved your people—hell, because it starved them, the ultimate effect was tremendously powerful.
But the scariest thing of all was that whatever monsters the hordes consumed in their mad dash for sustenance, their skills would be transferred over to the caster. Monster powers, physical attributes, even skills. It wasn’t a sure thing every time, but the more monsters you consumed, the better your chances. In other words…
“The orcs aren’t trying to eradicate the forest’s higher-level monsters at all? They’re trying to take their powers for their own?”
Silence fell upon the room. It indicated, once and for all, that my compatriots had already made that conclusion.
✦ ✦ ✦
We all paused for a few moments. The air had grown heavy around us, whether we had solid evidence of an orc lord in our midst or not.
We weren’t helpless against this threat, of course. This monster had appeared on the scene before, multiple times, and there was already a known strategy for dealing with them.
“And this is?” I impatiently asked. The ogre mages responded by giving one another awkward looks. Kaijin and Rigurd stared at them, a tad put off.
“It embarrasses me to say it,” Shuna finally began, “but the orc lords of the past have all been defeated by human efforts. Ravenous is a powerful unique skill, no doubt about it, but it works only by seizing the powers of those the orc lord defeats. While monsters may have intrinsic skills or other magic-oriented effects an orc lord can take for itself, humans bear none of that. They bear Arts, not skills, and those are strictly the fruits of practice and effort. That’s what enables a human nation, or band of nations, to defeat such a threat.”
Huh. Don’t feed the beast, and it won’t grow, huh? I suppose they hesitated to say it because it meant we’d have to get humans involved, sooner or later.
Well, at least we had something to go on now. We had a general idea of the skills the orc lord might’ve seized, and we could find ways to counter them. It might not be that much of a threat yet, assuming it hadn’t been around for too long.
Maybe this’ll be easier than I thought? Maybe not. He already had a knight corps, for one, not to mention that two-hundred-thousand-strong horde of slavering, starving orcs. That, and whatever organization fronted the funds to equip and armor all those guys. No point being too optimistic. If it gained any intelligence boosts through Ravenous, it could even become a demon lord in time, I bet.
Bad news all around. Definitely should’ve gotten to him quicker. But ah well. Right now would have been a great time for some lofty hero to show up, but I didn’t have one handy, to my regret.
“All right. Let’s see if this orc lord exists or not, before anything else. If one’s really been born, I suppose we should get a message over to Kabal and the rest of my adventurer friends.”
“Yes, my lord!” Rigurd nodded at the idea.
They had mentioned they were affiliated with a group—the guild, they called it—that provided assignments. Maybe the guild could help us out, if Kabal provided an in. I was expecting more pushback, really, but none made itself known. Kabal and his friends were certainly kind to us before, at least. No stereotyping or the like.
I figured I could sell a few hunks of magisteel I had left to raise the money for the guild’s help. They might turn down passing monsters, but they couldn’t turn down the right price—that, or I could just have the dwarf brothers negotiate on our behalf. An orc lord would threaten the humans as much as us. We had a lot of chips to bargain with.
In fact, if we knew that humans would play a key role in this, perhaps we should send a message out ASAP. If the lizardmen were already goners, the orcs would very likely be going after human kingdoms next. And whether they could “feed” off humans or not, two hundred thousand orcs would be a life-or-death threat to pretty much any nation out there.
For now, we needed more information. That was my watchword as I continued the conference—but suddenly, Soei stiffened, wincing.
“What is it?”
“Well,” he began, “one of my Replication clones has made contact with someone who insists upon communicating with you, Sir Rimuru. What do you think…?”
“Contact? And they name-dropped me, even? Who the heck…?”
I still didn’t have many acquaintances in this world, really. Was it Kabal, maybe, speak of the devil? Nah. It took them several weeks to travel here from their home base, they said. Over a month’s round trip. Not possible.
“This contact has not given me a name, my lord. She simply seeks to send you a message, and she is quite adamant. She is a dryad.”
Everyone’s eyebrows whipped up in surprise. A pretty well-known monster, I guess.
“No!” Rigurd exclaimed. “It has been several decades since a dryad has last made itself known, has it not?”
“They have practically vanished! Why would one appear now?!”
To the hobgoblins, they were all but mythical figures. And judging by the ex-ogre Soei’s response, they must’ve been pretty high level. One who had spotted and made contact with Soei, despite how gifted he was at concealing his Replications. That proved the caliber we were dealing with. Better not get this dryad angry, then.
“All right. I’ll meet with her. Guide her over here.”
It would appear my thought was correct. Not long after I gave consent, the conference room door opened to reveal a new figure. It had not lost a second to the Soei Replicant, even when he used Shadow Motion to guide him back.
Calling her an “it” would be rude. She was a woman, and a beautiful one. Her hair was green, her skin light, her figure well toned—chiseled, even, like a Nordic goddess. Her luxuriant lips were a shade of light-blue, matched perfectly with her deep-blue eyes. She looked about twenty years old by human standards, but human she definitely was not. She was semitransparent, and any observer could tell that her body had no weight or actual physical presence.
Dryads were, indeed, descended from the fairy races, as close to a form of spiritual life as one was likely to ever witness. I later learned they served as the guardians of the treants, the living tree people that were another high-level presence around the forest. In terms of ranking, they were easily A or better—up there with Ifrit, and no doubt a terrifying presence for Rigurd and the hobgobs.
But what did she want?