Chapter 84
“Hold the line!” shouted Maxime, sword in hand, keeping an impassive face with piercing eyes.
The orcs charged, brandishing crude but formidable weapons.
Garen, despite the fear knotting his stomach, brandished his sword with determination.
“What are you doing, rookie? Stay at the training center!”
A deafening voice came from behind Garen, the next moment he felt a hand on his shoulder.
He turned his head and saw a red-haired young man watching the orcs as if they were watching his prey. Continue reading stories on My Virtual Library Empire
“You’re not backing out again?”
“Ah, yes of course!”
Garen and the other recruits were surrounded and protected by the experienced mercenaries.
With their ordinary physiques, they could get killed by the orcs in one fell swoop.
Shortly afterwards, the first lines of orcs pounced on them with relentless brutality, and soon the sound of weapons mingled with the war cries and growls of the creatures.
Jean, positioned in the center with the short bow Ernest had entrusted to him, tried to keep calm.
He inhaled deeply, bracing his bow.
The first arrow went off, striking an orc in the chest and lightly piercing the creature’s thick skin. Unfortunately, due to the lack of power, it failed to reach the creature’s vital organs.
But a victorious smile played on his lips as he managed to hit the target where he wanted.
He really felt a disconcerting ease to aim and shoot where he aimed when he was holding that bow.
Even he was surprised, feeling that the world was wrong to despise the bow.
In his opinion, if every human could have a bow, the threat from orcs could be drastically reduced!
He just didn’t know that he was the one who was special.
For ordinary people, picking up an arrow and cocking the bow was complicated enough.
Shooting correctly was good enough in the beginning.
However, asking a beginner for precision was like asking an ordinary villager to kill an orc with a simple sword.
The difficulty was very high indeed.
Back on the battlefield, mercenaries with less than 2 physics points had some difficulty fending off the orcs.
Due to the lack of space, none of them could use their agility as they had done in the village.
As a result, they found themselves wounded and outnumbered.
Only Maxime could easily block the orcs’ attacks, but he couldn’t kill them, because every time a gap opened up, an orc would attack Maxime, forcing him into a defensive position.
He did, however, notice Jean at the rear, aiming his arrows with an impressive calm for a novice, and a glint of approval shone in his eyes.
On the other hand, Ernest had dropped his bow and had long since drawn his sword to reinforce the mercenaries’ defensive position.
Unfortunately, he underestimated the strength of the orc in front of him, who was attacking him, and ended up clumsily parrying a sword blow.
The orc’s brute force almost caused him to drop his sword and suffer a direct and serious injury.
Rodrigo sprang up beside him and with one swift blow, pushed the orc back using his body.
“Ernest, keep your concentration!”
But the orcs continued to pour in, and the mercenaries struggled to maintain their formation.
Laura and Andrew fought hard, trying to maintain a solid front to protect the new recruits.
However, despite their valiant efforts, the line was eventually breached, and a massive orc managed to infiltrate, rushing towards Jean in particular with a terrifying roar.
Caught off guard, Jean stepped back, his bow useless against the imposing creature.
But just as the orc raised his axe to cut it down, a figure appeared from nowhere.
Garen, armed with his heavy sword, lunged forward and interposed himself, repelling the orc with a powerful thrust of his blade. Out of breath but determined, he smiled briefly at Jean.
“This is no time for daydreaming, Jean!
Jean nodded, grateful, and immediately resumed his shooting, covered by his friend.
Obviously, Garen’s strength was still very much lacking so the orc was only slightly pushed back a few steps and could quickly come back.
Fortunately, Terry, who had unwittingly let the orc penetrate their circle, quickly came up behind him and pierced his head with a swift sword thrust.
The orc naturally fell to the ground before the stunned eyes of the new mercenaries.
Lira, who had been observing the scene closely, felt her heart quicken all at once.
“He’s so beautiful…” she murmured without realizing it.
Terry quickly returned to Piedro, Tena and Charles, the closest mercenaries fighting with him.
His absence had quickly caused an outburst.
“That was hot there Terry, don’t do that again!” exclaimed Tena in a cold sweat.
“If you could stop flirting on the battlefield that would be great!” commented Piedro with a light laugh.
Terry shook his head amused, with his physique, although he couldn’t notice Lira’s words, he could see her shining eyes looking at him.
But he quickly refocused, his life and that of his comrades was at stake.
As the battle raged on, the mercenaries grew more and more tired, but held their ground.
Only Terry had managed to kill an orc, and 49 orcs remained, most of them only slightly wounded.
In a 20 vs 49 situation, the situation was really starting to become critical.
“Henry, be careful!”
A powerful high-pitched voice cut through the small group of mercenaries.
It was Ultia, who had just screamed at the top of his lungs when he saw that an orc had started swinging his axe into Henry’s blind spot and that no one could block it for him.
The latter, being an apprentice knight with solid skills and having already had systematic training, had very good reflexes.
So, as soon as he heard Ultia’s cry, he immediately detected the danger and managed to block the axe.
“No, there’s another one Henry.”
Henry had also noticed that a smaller orc had snuck up on him and taken advantage of his weakness to attack.
With all his strength already invested in defending himself against the orc with the axe, he had absolutely no way of striking back in this situation.
“What the hell…”
*Pshit*
A dagger had just pierced Henry’s light armor and blood began to spurt everywhere.
“NOOONNNN!”
Ultia screamed loudly and began to unleash her extraordinary strength.
She managed to push back all the orcs in front of her and rushed towards Henry, who was still in a contest of strength with the axe-wielding orc despite his wound.
The hole she had left was quickly filled by Andrew, Rodrigo and two other experienced mercenaries nearby.
“Miserable human, what are you going to do?”
Surprisingly, a hoarse voice came from the little orc who had just planted Henry.
Of course, the term “little orc” was relative, as he was still the size of a normal human.
And in theory, all orcs could speak the human language, but very few invested any effort in learning it.
The vast majority spent their time training, mating and hunting.
He looked at Ultia with a smirk and blocked her path.
“Get out of the little green shit!”
The fierce Ultia went straight for the little orc and attacked with a broad sword thrust.
But the latter gave a slight mocking smile in response.
“These humans are always so stupid.
He easily avoided the broad sword thrust before Ultia’s stunned eyes, and began an attack aimed at Ultia’s neck.
If he succeeded, Ultia would undoubtedly be decapitated!
“Damn it Maxime, I told you it was a bad idea to bring recruits with us!”
“Now look at the situation our elites find themselves in!”
Simultaneously, Rodrigo arrived at the little orc’s side and swung a violent kick at him, sending him flying for a few meters.
However, he was not particularly hurt.
On Henry’s side, Izo arrived and attacked the orc blocking Henry, forcing him backwards.
“Are you all right, Henry?” asked Rodrigo worriedly.
He wanted to say he was fine, but he suddenly dropped to one knee and put his left hand on his wound.
He felt extremely weak.
An incessant stream of blood flowed onto the floor.
Everyone could see that in the blood was a strange green matter.
New mercenaries such as Garen, Lira and Jean looked on in fear.
The other mercenaries kept their composure, but looked grim.
“The dagger was poisoned,” Henry murmured with a bitter smile.