I blinked as one of the chieftains crumpled to the floor, his neck twisted over a hundred and eighty degrees. In common with humans, orc heads were apparently not supposed to do that. Things had cracked, and a shard of spine was sticking out at an odd angle.

  The surviving chieftain kicked the corpse, then smirked.

  [Mana Sensitivity] was a Skill I thought little about. It would become important in the future, once I got [Dagger Mastery] to its final stage, but for now it had such a short range and limited sensitivity that I mostly forgot it was there.

  Now I was reminded, because the final chieftain lit up with mana, glowing like some sort of heavily enchanted item.

  The other orcs didn't react, being too busy charging at the village's defensive wall, and not having noticed the chieftain's death.

  Another of them died, while I realised the disconnect between this situation and my last meeting with a chieftain. He'd brought half a dozen orcs with him when he chased me, even if he'd ended up outrunning them. In contrast, these two were operating alone. Had that been planned? Had the last surviving chieftain arranged this situation specifically to kill his competitor?

  And that mana...

  Now that there was only one, commanding the forces of all three villages, was he evolving? Was I, at this very moment, witnessing the birth of an orc king?

  It couldn't be allowed to continue.

  I rushed forward. "Stab!"

  The orc twisted, avoiding my attack, but that was only to be expected. I'd already had experience fighting one of these monsters and knew what I needed to do. I circled around, trying to force him back toward the forest as he evaded swing after swing.

  The task was a lot harder with only one dagger, but not every part of the situation was to my disadvantage: while the evolution of the orc would result in something I wouldn't stand a chance of fighting alone, the process of that evolution was taking its toll. The skin of the monster writhed as the flesh beneath surged and twisted. One leg grew by a centimetre seconds before the other caught up, briefly throwing off his gait. A claw swipe was thrown off course when one of his muscles spasmed.

  One of my swipes drew blood, the orc failing to evade it properly despite seeing it coming as his own body fought against his control.

  And then the wound instantly sealed itself.

  "Crap," I muttered. Was the regeneration temporary, while he was evolving, or a new ability he'd gained? Not that the exact cause mattered. "Stab!"

  Our exchanges continued, but the orc was growing. With each second that passed, his reach grew longer, his strength grew greater. In the short term, it didn't help him, as unused to his changing body as he was, but in the long term... I needed to end this quickly, before I was overpowered.

  The chance came when a muscle in his right leg spasmed. It was only a second, but for that second, one leg was locked in place. I redirected my dagger downward. "Stab!"

  The invisible blade of the Skill dug into his knee, the orc powerless to evade it. The wound started knitting itself back together in moments, but it still turned that single second of immobility into two. Enough time for me to drive my dagger deep into the flesh of his leg, lengthening his paralysis even further.

  He clawed at me, forcing me to release my grip on the dagger and jump backward to avoid a punctured lung, but with one of his legs locked into position, dodging was easy enough. As was getting a grip on my dagger once again the moment the danger had passed.

  "Stab!"

  With my dagger already stuck into his leg, the invisible blade of my Skill pierced straight through. The leg buckled, the evolving orc falling onto one knee.

  I really wished I had some sort of [Slice] Skill. With the orc in this position, he'd find a slash far harder to evade than a stab, but I needed to make do with what I had. I ripped the dagger from his leg, parried a claw, then slashed it at his neck. Even without an active Skill, I could still do damage, and the dagger cut in a couple of inches before getting stuck.

  The orc clawed with his other hand, seemingly not slowed down by the dagger embedded in his neck, but his mutating flesh sent the attack wide. That would be his final error.

  I put all of my Strength into twisting the dagger, pointing its tip toward the orc's spine.

  "Stab!"

  Pity it only counted as an orc chieftain, and not a king, although since the existence of a king would technically mean we'd failed our quest and I wouldn't get quest experience for it, perhaps that was for the best. But speaking of blue boxes, where were the other notifications? Hadn't Lee and Ryan killed any more orcs while I'd been dealing with the chieftain?

  ... Yes, they had. Lots thereof. It wasn't a situation that had arisen before, but apparently the System was intelligent enough to not distract me with notifications while I needed to concentrate on a fight to the death.

  And they were still going. I didn't have time to hang around; I had orcs to stab.

  A quick glance at the palisade showed the defensive wall had proven its worth several times over; orcs were trying to climb it, but Stacy and Daniel were beating them down with ease. A couple of corpse piles suggested Ryan had used [Earthquake] when the orcs had threatened to scale it by simple mass of bodies, and Lee was loosing arrows at strategic targets. Had the chieftains been directing the assault, perhaps things would have gone far more poorly, but as it was, the orcs weren't using even the most rudimentary of tactics. Each orc was operating individually.

  We could actually win this.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I hurried to the back line, taking out orcs from behind, managing to get another half a dozen before Lee ran out of arrows.

  Alas, with Ryan and Lee out of action, things started falling apart. The orcs weren't only trying to climb the wall, but some were trying to tear it down. Without ranged support, there was nothing Daniel's party could do to stop them.

  Claws dug into soil, attempting to uproot trunks. The simple press of bodies threatened to topple them.

  Daniel stabbed his spear into one final orc face as it raised itself over the edge, then the entire party turned and fled.

  Meanwhile, I kept on stabbing. For as long as the orcs were concentrating on the wall and not their backs, I could act more or less with impunity.

  Not that I believed I could take them all out without them noticing me. I was going to need to run at some point, at which point more Stamina would be welcome. Thankfully, I'd just hit level thirty.

  The extra boost to [Dagger Mastery] wasn't as qualitative as the switch from [Dagger Expertise] to [Dagger Mastery] had been, but it still helped my dagger to slip between vertebra with just a little more ease, as the Skill frayed the edges of reality.

  I managed to get ten more before an orc turned to where his pack member had been standing a second earlier, only to see me ripping my dagger out of his corpse.

  "Uh... Hi?" I said.

  The orc howled, attracting the attention of the surviving half of the horde.

  "... And bye," I added, and legged it back towards the forest.

  The timing was actually pretty good. Without Daniel's team defending the palisade, the orcs had torn into it with surprising speed, and there was already a hole. Now the orcs' attention had been caught by me before too many of them could get into the village and wreak havoc. The villagers would surely appreciate having mostly intact homes to return to.

  Hopefully, they'd appreciate it enough to not pay too much attention to the fact that we'd led the orcs to them in the first place.

  I didn't think they had the right to complain—had an orc king been born, their village would have been attacked at some point, anyway—but I suspected that people whose homes and livelihoods had just been destroyed by a rampaging monster horde wouldn't be in a mood to consider things rationally.

  Not that it was too late for the rampaging monster horde to cause issues. There was still a village worth of orcs left alive, and if my party left, what would they do? They were leaderless, and it seemed rather unlikely that they'd simply return to their village. Rather, there seemed a high probability that they'd take their frustration out on the woodcutters.

  "Damn," I muttered, realising it was all going to be up to me. Again.

  I veered off sideways the moment I was deep enough into the forest to get out of their sight, then curved around them. The rudderless orcs were, for now, blindly chasing me, despite having lost sight of me. I doubted it would last long, but it didn't need to.

  Five of them fell before the orcs at the front of the group decided that blindly running into a forest when they couldn't see or track their quarry wasn't the best option.

  A howling match ensued, which I couldn't interpret at all, but guessed was some sort of debate as to what to do next. They didn't even notice that five of their number had gone missing.

  At least until the group turned around—aiming back for the woodcutters camp—and spotted the most recent corpse.

  Thankfully, that only seemed to make the orcs angrier. It certainly didn't make them smarter. They charged back in the direction of the village, not looking back once.

  On the bright side, not looking back meant that they still didn't notice me picking off their back-line. On the downside, it meant they reached the village pretty quickly, charging the palisade once more.

  The palisade whose recent breach had been blocked. A couple of the fallen trunks had been slotted back into place. Other pieces of wood had been hastily nailed across the gaps. There were planks, but there were also raw branches. There was even a cart.

  Daniel's party once again stood upon the platform behind the makeshift barrier, but this time they weren't alone. Villagers were up there with them. Apparently, they'd all made good use of the time I'd bought by leading the orcs on a chase through the forest.

  The thinned ranks of the orcs continued their charge regardless, only to be pelted by Ryan's [Rain of Stones] and Lee's arrows. Ryan must have recovered some Mana, and Lee either recovered some arrows or found some in the village. The result was yet more orcs falling. I continued to pick off the back-line, orc after orc, and once enough of them toppled, Daniel, Lee and Stacy jumped from behind the palisade, engaging the enemy directly.

  "Quest complete," I declared. "And now can we please go back to bed?"

  Patreon.