The battle was over.
That was…yeah, pretty rough. If he had fully completed his evolution, I don’t think anyone could’ve beaten him. I won precisely because we made it to him in time—just in time, as it turns out. It would’ve been so much easier pre-evolution, too; I was still kicking myself over that. But I had it coming. I should’ve killed him fast instead of getting all cocky. It was more than half luck that earned victory for me, in the end.
But the rewards I reaped from it made all my regrets look like a drop in the bucket. That’s right—it’s unique skill time!
I had obtained my fourth unique skill from the spirit of the demon lord Geld, although I guess it got merged into Predator without so much as a peep. The Great Sage gave me the rundown after the battle:
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Report. Following the merger of the unique skill Ravenous with the unique skill Predator, the unique skill Predator has evolved into the unique skill Glutton.
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The Sage had the habit of combining skills that resembled one another a fair bit, although everything was still downward-compatible. I analyzed this new skill, then closed my eyes.
This skill, Glutton, consisted of four old abilities—Predation, Stomach, Mimic, and Isolate—combined with three new ones—Corrode, Receive, and Provide. The new ones worked like this:
Giving each the once-over, I had to say, this was some pretty damn sweet stuff. My Stomach got a huge upgrade—it felt maybe twice as big. And Rot sounded downright scary, although handy for things like destroying armor.
Receive and Provide were the real plums, though. This meant, basically, whatever new skills people like Benimaru and Ranga earned when they evolved, I could get ’em for myself, right? And redistribute them to anyone on my team I wanted?
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Understood. You may interpret it as such, yes. However, there are restrictions to providing abilities. You will not lose the original skill, but if the receiver is not capable of making full use of the skill, they will not be able to obtain it.
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Seriously…?
It appeared that my underlings tended to grow stronger whenever I did, and vice versa. Giving skills to them seemed to offer no disadvantage, but I guess the receiver still needed to have whatever latent talent the skill required for it to work. I couldn’t just pass around skills willy-nilly, in other words, which was fine with me.
In a way, this skill was pretty scary, too. I couldn’t use it to share personal knowledge or magic spells, and I would still need to put in the daily effort to raise my level, but still, it was really something. I gotta hand it to that Orc Disaster. I was kind of pissed that he got Gelmud and all, but if anything, this was an even better bonus. The more I put into it, the more I got out.
By the way, it appeared that Analysis, originally part of Predator, had been merged into the Sage itself while I wasn’t paying attention.
Huh? I don’t remember being asked for permission on that, much less giving it. But ah well. I’m probably just overthinking it. No way the Sage—nothing more than a skill, really—would do something on its own volition. Analysis always seemed a little weird for the Predator umbrella anyway. No point giving it much more thought than that, I figured.
Still, the battle was over, as was all the joy and sadness and despair that swirled around the battlefield. Hoo boy. I can’t help but think this every time, but the cleanup’s always much more of a pain than the battle itself.
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The day after the demon lord Geld fell, representatives from all the races were gathered inside a temporary tent pitched in the central part of the marshes.
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On my end, I was with Benimaru, Shion, Hakuro, and Soei. Ranga was inside my shadow, as per usual, and I was sitting on Shion’s lap in slime form. I had pretty much revealed what I really was when I defeated Geld, so there was no point hiding it now.
Treyni was here to represent the immobile treants. She had appeared without me having to toss a Thought Communication her way, claiming she caught the “waves” the two of us released or something. What a case. She was hiding just as much power as I was, I supposed.
From the lizardmen, we had the chief, the head of the chief’s guard, and her assistant. Gabil was currently in a cell somewhere on charges of treason. Son of the chief or not, they couldn’t exactly let his acts go unpunished. As idiotic as he was, a lot about him piqued my interest. But I was still in no position to provide unsolicited advice on his treatment.
The goblins were represented by each chief of the assorted villages, somewhat huddled at the far corner of the table as they marveled at all the high-level monsters surrounding them. That was understandable, given how there was a dryad in the room, something they never would’ve imagined seeing even if they lived to be a thousand years old.
Finally, from the orcs, there was the sole surviving orc general, along with sixteen chiefs from their tribal federation. The mood was understandably gloomy among them, given how they were the main catalyst of all this. Whether the orc lord had seized their minds or not, it wasn’t like they were completely free of responsibility. They must have known that, judging by the hangdog looks on their faces.
It wasn’t just guilt driving them, either. They were near the end of the food supply they had brought with them. Soei told me they carried little with them, and Geld the demon lord didn’t offer much to them, either. They were in danger of starving all over again, except this time, they weren’t under the spell of a unique skill that kept them pressing forward. Cannibalizing one another to do so. That certainly wasn’t normal orc behavior. In fact, being freed from the spell made some of the orcs faint immediately from malnutrition.
Their current situation cast a pall over the entire tent. The orcs had no meaningful reparations to offer, everyone knew, even if they had asked. Their whole impetus for going to war, in fact, was the desperate starvation they faced in their homeland.
There were still around 150,000 left, and I doubted they had the ability to feed themselves at all. All those soldiers, and they still lacked the will to continue warring. Nothing summed up their mental state better at the moment.
Without Ravenous, they really would starve—and my peek into Geld’s memories taught me even more. I had mentioned the number 150,000, but those survivors also included women, the elderly, and children. In other words, the entirety of every orc clan was right there, in the marshes.
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The issue was a famine.
The lands ruled by demon lords were generally safe zones with bountiful arable lands, protected by the great powers of those who ruled over them. Even if a monster or magical beast stirred up trouble, the magic-borns who served the demon lord would ensure that law and order ruled the day.
All of that, of course, came at a cost—in this case, high taxes. In exchange for living among fertile lands, the citizens were required to give up a healthy percentage of their harvest on a yearly basis. And the orcs, who tended to multiply quickly when they had the resources, were an indispensable part of demon lord lands, their labor keeping the farms and mines humming along smoothly.
Failure to pay these taxes, though, meant death, though not at the hands of the local demon lord himself. The lands were dangerous. Many monsters attacked it, seeking bounties for themselves. If anyone didn’t pay their due to the lord, the lord wasn’t obliged to protect them. And that was that.
The orcs were normally able to take care of themselves well enough. Even if an attack killed off half, they reproduced so quickly that their numbers were right back to normal before long. But the current famine made it impossible to pay their tax to the demon lord—or lords, as it happened. The orcs’ territory had the misfortune to border the domains of three different demon lords. Attempting to raid the lands of such powerful beings would mark the end of the orc species, but without the protection their taxes bought them, they had no way of surviving in the suddenly barren land they called home.
So they streamed into the Forest of Jura, all but chased away from their homes, in search of food. They wandered around its fringes for a bit, fighting off the hunger, and that was when the orc lord was born. But even that wasn’t enough to make them strong enough to fend off the monsters that harangued them constantly.
It was at that point when Gelmud extended a hand to them. Help they readily accepted, not realizing what was motivating this unexpected benefactor. And that was when their troubles began.