Of course, while I was busy naming a small city’s worth of orcs, my ogre mages weren’t just screwing around. They were on their way to the treant settlement, guided by Treyni. I had left procuring our food supply to them, although privately, I had my concerns about how they’d come up with enough.
Treants were monsters that lived off water, sunlight, air, and magic. They didn’t need food in the first place. But they did produce fruit from the magic they didn’t need, which were beyond the reach of most—treants couldn’t set foot nor root outside of their own sanctuary, so they simply collected and stored the fruit on-site.
These were magical fruits, of course, and when dehydrated, they would never go bad. People called these dried treants, and as I found out later, they were considered rare delicacies on the public market, going for outlandish prices among foodies and the like. Considering how treants almost never connected to the outside world, you just didn’t see them all that much. But rarity alone didn’t dictate the prices—dried treants were packed with an intense amount of magical energy, enough to keep you alive and well for seven days at a time without even feeling hungry. A condensed drop of manna from heaven, in other words.
It was these dried treants that we were apparently going to receive a bountiful supply of, helping the orcs stave off starvation.
I wasn’t too worried about the transport process. Keeping up proper supply routes was always the thorniest part of waging war; starving the soldiers on the front lines quickly spelled total defeat. They needed to be fed, and that was always a logistical challenge—but these fruits didn’t take up much space at all.
The real problem was transport time, and the tempest wolves were ready to help with that—or to be exact, the starwolves evolved from them. As a newly minted tempest starwolf and leader of his pack, Ranga was able to evolve all the other wolves in his pack to regular non–tempest starwolf status. Each one was ranked around B, making them high-level magical beasts, and while we still only had a hundred, I had a feeling we’d be caring for more soon.
As part of his newfound skills, Ranga was able to summon something he called a Star Leader, an A-minus commander wolf that would serve as his representative during the transport effort. His take on Replication, I supposed; he could summon and dispel it at will. Geez, Ranga, you really don’t want to leave my shadow, huh? …Ah whatever.
It was worth mentioning that all the starwolves were now capable of Shadow Motioning themselves around. Not at the near-lightning speeds that Soei and Ranga could manage, but still far quicker than their feet could take them. That was the neat thing about Shadow Motion; it always brought you to your destination in a straight line, ignoring all obstacles in between. As a rule of thumb, the starwolves could traverse this straight line at around twice their regular speed.
With their enhanced strength, the starwolves would load up with the food at the treant settlement and bring it back. A regular caravan would take over two months to traverse the roundabout path one way; with them, they could do a round trip in one day. Crazy. We’d need to build a larger cart-accessible highway sometime, but at least that wasn’t a problem for now.
One little snag: The wolves’ hobgoblin riders couldn’t accompany them, since they could only remain in Shadow Motion space for as long as they could hold their breath. It’d be nice if they could be trained to fix that, somehow, but in the meantime they were helping me with the whole orc-naming process. I definitely didn’t want them idle while I was going through this ten-day-long ordeal.
Either way, we finally had a nice, clean solution to the most present problem facing us. I was satisfied.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ten days later, I limped my way to the finish line. I could see nothing but numbers dancing in my head by the end, but the feeling of achievement was like nothing else. I mean, we’re talking 150,000 here, you know? Think about even counting that high, and you can get an idea of how much torture it had been.
By the time I had wrapped it up, they were already starting to distribute our new food supply. Fifty pieces of dried treant per person. Each one somberly accepted their ration, fully cognizant that losing it meant death.
The naming process had evolved each orc into a high orc. I didn’t use any of my own magic for it, so they didn’t need to see me as their “ruler” or anything. They entered the alliance under their own free will, and I could only hope that we remained on sunny terms.
In terms of monster strength, they had gone down from their former Ravenous-driven C-plus rank to around a C—which was still better than D, so I’m sure there were no complaints. Their intelligence had undergone a nice upgrade, too, and they had retained all their intrinsic abilities. The evolution, in other words, had made them far more adaptable to a variety of new environments.
Each of the tribes thanked me in turn and set off for their new homes, guided by a squad of ten goblin riders. We were planning to send tents and other supplies once they reached the area of their choice, along with technical instruction so they could build their own settlements. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but wherever they settled down, I was sure they’d have better lives than before, at least.
Treyni was sending notice to the races that lived near the areas where we were planning to have the orcs set up shop. She could teleport around magically, too, pretty much, so the notification process apparently went quickly. Nobody would be willing to turn down the request of a dryad (whatever they thought about it internally), so I hoped no major problems cropped up. We had deliberately chosen areas that weren’t populated by intelligent races, so I figured we’d be fine, but you never know.
Soon, the high orcs set off on the road to their new lives.
✦ ✦ ✦
But we weren’t done yet. I turned toward the several thousand remaining souls.
It seemed that the orc general, along with the high orcs who directly served him, were insisting upon working directly under my command. I said yes, as reluctant as I was. I did need some spare hands to handle the work around there, and we were still chronically short on people to build the town. They wouldn’t number enough to put a major dent in our food supplies, either.
So I didn’t need to think too much about my decision, even though it meant a lot more people answering to me. Around two thousand, in fact—the remainder of the elite orc corps, numbering two thousand or so, decked out in their black full-plate armor. Their strength must’ve been what helped them survive this long.
If they were going to be my elite guard of sorts, I couldn’t very well put them in the same naming series as the rest. But if not, what, then? Given the yellow auras they emitted, I figured I’d name their tribe after that color instead.
Through the lens of Analyze and Assess—like Shuna, I could use it to analyze people to some extent via my eyes alone—I sized up the elite guard, then lined them up in the order I decided on. I then gave them numbers from strongest to weakest, without dividing them by gender.
Such was the birth of what would later be called the Yellow Numbers.
That left only the orc general to tackle. I had a feeling I’d have to contribute some magic of my own into this one. Fortunately, I already had a name picked out. Hopefully he’d be able to pick up where the previous orc lord left off.
“I hereby declare that you shall inherit the will of the Orc Disaster. You shall be called Geld from now on!”
“Yes, sir!!”
Our eyes met. His overflowed with tears. And the moment I gave the name, the orc general’s body was wrapped in a yellow aura as he began to evolve. At the same time, I could feel the magic flowing out of me. Oh crap. Not that much…
Once more, I was back in sleep mode.