Thunk
Thunk
A chopping noise reached my ears, waking me up from my slumber as I opened my eyes to find myself in a cage-like space. I didn't know how much time had passed, but looking at the surroundings, I could tell that this wasn't a place meant for the living.
Beneath me were a bunch of corpses—mutated animals—and surrounding us were similar cages made of wood.
The sound was coming from the orc who was chopping up the corpses into pieces on a stone slab in front of me. He didn't pay any attention to my movements, probably because he thought of me as a weakling, I suppose.
"I think I got placed in the wrong cell. Do you know where the prison is?" I asked in the orcish language, pulling out the bullet lodged in the back of my head.
The orc, clearly confused by my words, turned around slowly. It was probably his first time seeing a human speak his language.
"How do you know our language?" the orc asked, stepping toward the cell with a knife in his hand.
"I learned it from an orc," I replied, standing up on the pile of corpses.
"Is the orc you speak of… still alive?"
"The last time I saw him, he was doing well."
The orc looked around for a moment before opening the cage. "Take the stairs to the right. You'll find what you're looking for."
"You… won't try to kill me?" I asked, not expecting him to open the cage so casually.
"You are no warrior. There is no honor in killing you," the orc said, walking back toward the stone slab, ignoring me once again.
"…Don't get out of this room until the sun sets," I said, stepping out of the cage. "Somnus."
Thud
The orc tried to turn toward me, but before he could, he collapsed to the ground, falling completely unconscious.
"You've grown soft," Moriarty stated as he took over, walking out of the kitchen and following the directions the orc had given us.
The prison was located beneath the surface, so the light sources were questionable at best. There were barely any torches placed along the staircase, and there weren't any orcs patrolling it. The chef may have known this when he sent me here.
As I walked into the cell room, I saw rows of wooden cages made from rough logs, tied together with old rope and rusty nails.
The air was damp and reeked of rot and sweat. The walls were covered in moss, and the floor was uneven, with dirty water running through shallow trenches. Some cages held silent prisoners, while others were empty—their doors creaking in the torchlight.
"Young master?" a voice came from one of the cells to my right as I walked toward it.
The man who spoke was around eighteen years old, with messy brown hair and black eyes. He wore a dark green combat suit—an older model that still fit well on his robust frame—but he wasn't carrying any weapons.
"Cooper! There you are!" I exclaimed as I stepped closer to the cell, grabbing his shoulders through the bars. "I came here to find you, actually, but I believe a lot of time has passed—I blacked out for a while. You need to leave before my backup arrives."
"Your backup? Why would you come here alone, young master?!" Cooper shouted as I broke open the cell door.
"Because you let yourself be captured. I don't leave my people behind," I replied in a stern voice, activating my ability and running through the room to locate his equipment before handing it over to him.
"I'm sorry for troubling you, young master," Cooper said, reluctantly taking back his gear.
"It's fine. You need to stay alive to take care of your father. Value your life a little more before doing reckless things like this," I said, waving my hand in front of his face. A bright green light engulfed Cooper, returning his body to perfect condition. "Get checked by Risa when you get out of here. The shamans might have placed some curses on you."
"Thank you, young master," Cooper said with a light bow.
"Free everyone else and make your way out through the front door," I instructed as I turned to leave the room.
There weren't many cadets in the cells, but the more chaos they could cause, the better Cooper's chances of escaping.
There weren't any orcs on the ground or underground floors, aside from the chef I had put to sleep. It was possible Tommy had already started fighting them, but it seemed unlikely that the entire outpost would recall its troops for a single intruder.
That's what I had expected… but when I got to the second floor, I realized just how wrong I had been.
The entire floor was covered with the bodies of dead orcs. Each had been stabbed or sliced a single time—on the neck, chest, or femoral artery. Blood coated the walls, the floors, even the stairs.
"That is some good precision…" Moriarty said, clearly impressed by the nature of the wounds. "You don't see that from your everyday hunter."
We didn't hear any noise as we walked up to the top floor, which raised a doubt in our minds. We didn't hurry—just climbed the stairs quietly.
It didn't make a difference, however, because we soon found out why it had gone quiet.
The upper floor was completely intact. Several orcs stood guard, protecting the shamans behind them. A barrier shielded the shamans from the one hunter who had already killed more than half of their tribe.
"Raymond, you sure took your time," Tommy greeted me without taking his eyes off the orcs.
He was covered in blood, but none of it was his. Surprisingly, he didn't have a single scratch on him.
"You got through all that, and you don't even know what Mana Interference is? How did you get here in the first place?" I scoffed at his ignorance, walking up to the barrier that was being continuously recast by the shamans to prevent Tommy from using magic interference on it.
Mana Interference is a technique that allows someone to interrupt a spell while it's being cast by destabilizing its foundation. This is different from Magic Interference, which requires a counterable mana path. With Mana Interference, as long as you know the spell being cast, you can disrupt it using less mana than the original caster.
"Compress," Moriarty said, placing his hand on the barrier as the shamans stared at him, trying to figure out what he was doing.
The barrier didn't disappear—it changed. Its function was replaced, and it slowly began to shrink.
The orcs stepped back in confusion as the shamans tried to pull away their mana, realizing what Moriarty had done… but it was too late. The spell was already complete, and none of them could stop it now.
The orcs struck the barrier repeatedly, hoping to break through, but nothing happened. We watched as their muffled screams reached our ears, all of them being crushed inside the very thing that was supposed to protect them.
"Still think I'm a support-type wizard?" Moriarty asked with a smile, walking out of the room.
"No… now I think you're a nerd who knows a lot of spells. That was brutal—even by my standards," Tommy replied, watching the small ball of compressed corpses drop to the ground. "Disgusting…"