Max ran until he entered an open area filled with tree stumps. A rge could be seen in the distance, along with several rge stacks of wood logs. The pce appeared to be abandoned, which was likely due to the presenaing ord goblins in close proximity.

  He was moving slightly uphill, so he didn’t notice it instantly, but there was a wide stream of water passing behind the .

  ‘The river!’

  A group of people were hurriedly washing themselves ier, undoubtedly the rescued guards. Max could make out the looks of surprise on their faces. He’d been slower than them earlier, so they probably didn’t expect him to actually survive, much less catch up to them.

  “Gun! You’re alive!” The vice-captaied him warmly.

  “Sure am! But there are more ing, so you o head south quickly!”

  “More? Did you enter one?”

  “Yes, I’ll tell you about it ter. For now, you o move ASAP. I think I pissed off their leader.”

  “How did you- no, never mind, aren’t you ing with us?” Parker was ed.

  “I fot to tell you before, but I’m actually one of the summoned heroes. Basically, even if I die, I’ll resurrect, so you don’t o worry about me. I’ll stay bad guard your retreat.”

  “H-hero?” Parker stammered, “The hero summoning really worked?!”

  Max started to feel impatient. It was a strange impatience, because it was the NPCs’ lives that were in immi danger, not his. They should be the ones in a hurry to escape.

  “Yes, your captain should tell you all about it back at town. For now, please hurry and follow the river. I will stall for time when the orcs arrive.”

  “Uh, I think they already arrived.” Anuard spoke up.

  Max spun around but didn’t see any orcs. “What do you mean ‘arrived’, where are they?”

  “That red glow from your pants.” He poihe pocket holding Max’s message bead, “That’s from one of the orcs, isn’t it? I don’t think you had one earlier.”

  Max noticed the red bead was ing light in short bursts. “Yes, I acquired it from one. Why?”

  “That’s a unication bead. It blinks like that when its owner is nearby. They should be within half a kilometre now.”

  “O-okay!” Parker now felt the urgency of the situation, “We’ll run back to the captain now!”

  “Great! Don’t slow down!” Max had already started running back toward the .

  She called after him. “We won’t! Thank you, Sir Gun!”

  He didn’t respond as he was already looking for a way to climb to the roof of the . Orcs moved at speeds of over 10m/s, so they would be here ihan a minute.

  Max po use the gable roof of this wooden as cover; its slope would protect him from projectiles if the ehrew anything at him, and it was tall enough that they could not scale it with one jump. There was a vely-pced wood pile behind the , so Max used that as a springboard to climb up.

  The was built almht on top of the river. Max had read ohat floating logs down rivers was the most ethod of transp the wood from felled trees ba medieval times. A strong current would push the heavy logs along the river, so they didn’t o be carried or carted by bourers. The logs would then subsequently be caught downstream for further processing. It was quite smart, really.

  Surveying the area from the roof, Max graciously thahe developer or AI program that decided to put a logging camp in this exact spot. All the nearby trees had been chopped down, so he had an unobstructed line of fire in a 130m radius from his position, aside from a few rge wood piles and a small nearby outhouse which probably housed a trine.

  Unfortunately, his sightseeing was cut short when an orc abruptly burst out from the treeline. Without dey, Max took an arrow from his quiver, aimed and fired. It was a fair distance, so he opted to go for a bodyshot. If he got greedy and aimed for a headshot, he might miss. Plus, his main objective was to slow the orcs down. For that purpose, kill-shots weren’t strictly necessary.

  The arrow sailed over the tree stumps and struck the orc squarely in the tre of its chest. The orc, which had not yet seen Max, was caught off-guard and fell over, rolling several times and losing its momentum, before hurriedly pig itself up and running back to the trees in panic. During this period, two more orcs were hit in simir ways.

  “A-archer! On building roof!” One of the warriors spotted Max in the distance.

  Immediately after calling out, an arrow whizzed past the spotter with a loud aerial vibration. The orc warrior felt relieved at having seemingly dodged the arrow, before clutg its ned feeling the texture of a warm liquid seeping through its fingers.

  ‘Okay, they’re within headshe now, just barely.’

  Max switched up his aiming strategy to inflict more damage. Over a dozen orcs had now emerged from the treeline, but he kept shooting arrows, uurbed. To him, it didn’t matter how many orcs there were, so long as he could slow them down.

  Luck was on his side, because the sun was in the eastern sky. The orc force could not easily see the ining projectiles due to gre and were struggling to dodge because of it. Max took another set from his quiver a off a rapid barrage at the frontmost orcs.

  The reason he aimed at the front orcs was not just because they would reach him first, but because it worked quite well as a fear tactic. The idea was that enemies would see their rades falling in front of them and would instinctively feel the urge to run away. In fact, a few had already retreated back the way they came, blog their rades and disrupting the charge in the process.

  Max was too busy to notice, but the speed of messages scrolling past in his stream chat increased ninefold during this time.

  “Coward!” The rearmost orc, bigger and more menag thahers, grabbed the neck of an orc that tried to run past him, “You would flee from a single human?! Turn around before I kill you myself!”

  Instantly, the orcs that had been fleeing turheir feet back around to the and gave a strange-sounding battle cry.

  “Damn.” Max regretted not being able to halt their advance.

  The enemy leader had boosted his side’s morale right at the pivotal moment. That, or the orcs were just terrified of their own leader, he wasn’t really sure.

  Making sure not to ease any pressure, he took three arrows at ond shot them in quick succession, once again targeting the frontrunners.

  Three orc warriors were stru different parts of their faces. Two of them let out a pained cry, while the third fated and briefly slid along the ground, scraping the dirt with its body until its head hit a tree stump and cracked loudly.

  Max’s intimidation efforts affected the orcs’ as. Fifty metres out, they unsciously slowed down so as not to be at the front of the group, while also redireg their charge away from the , instead opting for the nearby wood piles, which offered enough cover to shield them from arrows. Max smiled broadly when he saw this.

  It ractically impossible for Max to take down this many orcs if they all ran toward him at once, but if they were frightened into taking cover rather than approag, he could pick them off one by ohis was the best oute for him!

  After a few seds, all of the orcs were obscured behind wood piles, with the exception of the leader, who was seemingly fused by the as of his subordinates. Apparently, he didn’t know what fear was. Max shot an arrow at the leader’s head to test that theory.

  The orc, which had been looking at its subordiilted its head, causing the arrow to fly narrowly past its ear. It turo look at Max without any ge in expression.

  Max felt chills. ‘Creepy!’

  Before he could spare a thought on how to deal with the leader, he was forced to duck as a log came hurtling toward his head. Max coughed in surprise as the log shot past and plunged into the river behind the .

  ‘S-so fast?’

  Max had expected the orcs to throw logs at him from the log piles. What he had not expected was for those big and heavy logs to be thrown at nearly the same velocity as his arrows!

  ‘They’re that strong?!’

  Max had not yet fought the or a proper frontal bat, so he did not know the extent of their strength. Now he kheir strength was immense!

  Max cursed as he sidestepped to dodge again amidst returning fire. The oreeded to expose themselves to hurl the logs with any accuracy, each throw granting Max a small opening to take them down. As long as they didn’t coordiheir throws, which he doubted they had the intelligence for, he should be able to dodge the logs... probably!

  Max lowered his head again as an flew past above him, quietly thanking whichever a civilisation popurised the use of sloped roofs, as they were truly architectural heroes.

  In the orc’s eyes, he vanished from sight for a moment before reappearing on another part of the roof and releasing an arrow. He was ging positions to avoid being suppressed uhe stant fire of log-javelins, using the roof ine as cover. It worked quite well, as the remaining orcs quickly became flustered and looked to their leader for dire.

  ‘Actually, that’s right, where did their leader go?’

  Max realised that the leader hadn’t joihem at the log bundles. However, even if he’d been distracted, he still would have noticed if an enemy was moving straight toward him. That meant...

  ‘I’m being fnked?’

  He hadn’t expected an orc to be smart enough to fnk him from the side. If all the orcs had dohat at the start, then he would have been in serious trouble.

  Max’s eyes sed the area as he searched for the enemy leader, quickly finding his target. The leader had moved to a small outhouse off to one side, diagonal from where Max had been shooting. This fused Max, as the outhouse was not even close to where he was. Had the leader decided to give up and hide?

  This thought was dispelled when the orc leader walked up and brutishly tore off the door of the outhouse using its bare hands. Holding the door in front of its body, it seemed to smirk for a moment before it turo face Max and broke into a run.

  “Sh*t!”

  Max quickly fired an arrow at it, which lodged itself in the door without breaking through. He fired another arrow at the orc’s fingers, which were curled around the improvised shield. One of its fingers was nearly shot ly off, but the orc did not even falter and tio approa rge strides.

  Helpless, Max turned his attention back to the other remaining orcs. There were only a few still uninjured, since he’d spent the st half-minute knog them down.

  The orcs didn’t stay idle during this time. One log hit a small ey which Max hadn’t even noticed existed, smashing it into smithereens. Broken pieces of stone rolled down the roof and over the eaves.

  An orc poked its head out from one of the wood piles wielding a log over its shoulder in a throwing stance. Instantly, a sharp arrow ehe orc’s eye, and the log dropped to the ground. Another orc tried to approach using a log as a shield, simir to its leader, but the log was not nearly wide enough to cover its rge body, so Max shot the side of its face, causing it to spin and fall.

  Just as Max was firing his st shot at the orc warriors, he saw that the leader, who was now only a short distance away, had retracted the door and ulling it back horizontally.

  Feeling a strong premonition of danger, Max twisted his body back as the entire door soared past his face. The handle knocked his hair as it flew up into the sky.

  Max let out a string of expletives as he stood bad equipped a dagger.

  There was no time to take more arrows out of his iory. The orc did a running jump, leaping up and grabbing onto the edge of the roof. Without a moment’s hesitation, Max threw his dagger at the orc’s hand, hoping to disable that hand and make the orc fall.

  The orc did not fall. Instead, it proceeded to lift itself up with the injured hand, blood oozing out from the wound. Then, to Max’s utter astonishment, it ripped the dagger out using its teeth and threw it behind him before fshing Max a toothy grin. The dagger made a slight g as it hit the orc’s bck metal pauldron on the way down to the ground.

  “You’re not bad for an archer.” The orc leader spoke as it hoisted itself up, “I’ve never bothered to try taxidermy on a human before, but... I’m willing to make an exception for you.”

  “...” Max held a hand behind his back as he secretly took arrows from his iory.

  The orc leader stood up on the roof, allowing Max to see its full size. It was twice his width and nearly twice his height, carrying a two-headed battleaxe which extended over a metre long.

  [ High Orc: ‘Azrog’, Level: ?? (Quasi-BOSS) ]

  “Provided you stay in one piece, that is.”

  “...”

  Just as Max prepared to act, a rge object smashed against him a him flying off the roof.

  ...Spsh!