Understood. The ranking system, as defined by the human race, makes its calculations based on the quantity of the subject’s magicules. However, even if two subjects with the same quantity of magic fought each other, the competitor with skills and Arts that consume this magic more efficiently would have a decided advantage. A subject’s “level” is an arbitrary figure, with no official method of calculation, and is thus not reflected in an individual’s ranking.
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Ahhh. So levels didn’t count as far as the Sage was concerned. Not like you can really say what “level” you are in life, and have anything to back that up with. This wasn’t a video game, after all—some things you could only figure out by actually fighting dudes and seeing how you stacked up. Maybe that was why Hakuro, already high level to start with, exhibited such a startling change in physical strength with his evolution.
You could have all the power in the world, and it meant nothing if you couldn’t harness it. Gelmud proved that much. I couldn’t lose.
“Ya know,” I said tauntingly, “you can go around calling yourself a high-level magic-born all you want, but you don’t look like much of anything to me. Or do you have some kind of last resort you’re hiding?”
Yeah, what kinda skills does he have? ’Cause I didn’t feel like I was in any kind of danger, but I wanted to glean as much intel as I could. I wasn’t letting my guard down—my mind was on the orc lord’s potential moves, but he still didn’t seem interested in moving at all.
“All right,” he said. “I will let you join my cause. Soon, I will—”
I punched him.
Does he listen to anything people say?
“Agh! S-stop, stop! Wait a minute! I have the backing of a demon lord behind me! You will not get away with this—”
Oh, now he comes out with that. Man, what a pain in the ass.
“So?” I asked. “And what’re you gonna say when you run back crying to this guy? You don’t think he’d actually let you stay alive after this, do you?”
Gelmud began visibly shivering, face painfully tense.
“Gaahhhh!! Get away from me!” He stammered the words as he crawled backward. “You’re dead! The demon lord will never forgive this!!”
The demon lord, huh? Leon, hopefully—I had a date with him already. I doubted I could take him right now, really, but I was curious how strong he was.
I knew there were multiple demon lords running around, but were they all about the same, power-wise? This guy seemed to know a thing or two about them, and I’d love to pick his brain for a while, but I’d hate to blink once and have him slip through my fingers. I had to think about that as I interrogated him. Hopefully he’d stay just as loose-lipped as when he revealed his role in all this.
A pity I couldn’t just consume him and gain all his memories. That worked for magical knowledge, for some odd reason, but even that was kind of the luck of the draw. I could always extract skills from that, though, which almost seemed like cheating.
Speaking of that, I quickly decided to use my Sticky Steel Thread skill to keep Gelmud in place before he got any funny ideas. He had already been levitating into the air, chanting something—probably attempting to fly off, I assumed. But that was no problem now.
“Damn you!” he shouted, attempting to unravel himself as I approached him silently. “S-stop, get away! Hey! Orc lord! Over here! Help me!!”
Now he was seeking salvation from the very orc lord he called a fool and a dunderhead a moment ago. Talk about a lost cause. I always respected a leader who had the high regard of his staff, but I hated the opposite. Especially when they treated the people under them as disposable. I was merciless against that.
He probably had a lot of juicy skills on him. No need to waste any more time. But having the chance to speak to Gelmud beforehand made the thought of eating him more than a little unpleasant.
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The heaps of corpses that now surrounded him made his heart cry out in pain.
—I’m hungry…
—Hungry…
—You? A high-orc kid? Why don’t you just die already, you worthless brat?
—All of us are starving now… O great magic-born, grant us your mercy…
—Don’t touch me! You’ll get your grime all over my clothes… Hmm? Wait. You…
—Is it all right if I eat this?
—Of course. No need to restrain yourself. Eat until you’ve had your fill, so you can grow big and strong.
—Thank you, o great magic-born!! I will never forget this—
—It is fine. From today forward, you may consider me as your father. Ah yes. Let me give you a name. Your “name” shall henceforth be—
Scenes from the past flashed in his mind. Memories of the first time he was picked up by the magic-born who adopted him. And now he was following his adopted father’s orders, hoping to repay the favor any way he could.
The two shared the same mission—to transform the Forest of Jura, this bountiful place, into a second paradise for the orcs. So they could abandon their own starvation-racked, disease-ridden homeland, so barren of anything that even the demon lord no longer paid it any mind.
If he could only gain control of the forest, his father would have his talents recognized by the demon lord. He would become part of the demon lord’s leadership, and once that happened, he promised that he would provide aid to even more of his allies.
But to do that, he needed power. He needed to consume the higher-level races of the forest, gain more strength—and build a new paradise for the orcs, a safe haven to build upon. The forest’s blessings would ensure their comrades never had to think about starving again. The other races might suffer, perhaps, but they would have to accept that “survival of the fittest,” that absolute, incontrovertible law, applied to them, too, in the end.
This war, after all, was a struggle to find the seeds capable of survival.
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…It should have all worked out that way.
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—If only you would’ve evolved into a demon lord already…
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What did he mean? What did his father, Lord Gelmud, want from him?
For the one called the orc lord, all he could do was stare at his adoptive father, with his dull, yellowish eyes.
✦ ✦ ✦
Gelmud, paralyzed by fear, fired bolt after bolt of magic at me, materializing them out of thin air despite having his hands restrained. A very skillful act, but it didn’t help him. They harmlessly bounced off my Multilayer Barrier—the bolts counted as a melee attack, I guess, so they couldn’t penetrate my defense at all. I knew that from my previous Analysis, so I knew I no longer had to bother Predator-ing them.
The former sneer on his face was replaced with a gasp of despair.
“Dammit!” he shouted. “Help me, orc lord— I mean, Geld!!”
Ah. So he had named the guy after all. I suppose he wanted to conceal his relationship to the orc lord, for reasons I couldn’t surmise. He said he was “forbidden to meddle” before, which I imagined had something to do with it.